The Right way to do Laundry

David and I are doing laundry at my parents' place. It’s such a lovely day that we decide that we’re going to hang the clothes on the line to dry. After about 5 mintues, from within the house, I hear shrieks from my female relatives.  My mother, Granny, Gran and Aunt Bea are all in the kitchen.  My Mother’s voice assaults me from across the deck.

“Heather!  What are you doing?” my mother yells to me.

“I’m hanging up the laundry.”

“You don’t hang up laundry that way!”

“Pardon me?”

“You don’t hang up laundry that way!”

“What way?”

“One sock, one towel, one t-shirt…”

“What?”

“You have to hang things up in groups.”

“What?”

“You have to hang things up in groups.  All the t-shirts, all the socks, all the underwear…”

“Who says?”

“It’s just the way it’s done!”

“Why?”

“Because it makes a nicer looking clothes line.”

“What, are the laundry police going to come out and give us a ticket?”

“Don’t you get smart!”

“All I want to know is who decided that this was the way laundry has to be dried?   I mean, does it dry faster your way?”

“You are not too old for the wooden spoon young lady!”

My mother still threatens me with the wooden spoon.  If I swear in the house, she’ll threaten.  If I’m too sarcastic, she’ll threaten.  If I make a face …  you name it, if I’m 'sassy,' she’ll bring out the spoon.  The thing is – I don’t actually remember her ever using the wooden spoon. I just remember hearing about the spoon.

Let me give you an idea about the type of person my Mom is.  She is the classiest woman I know, even when she’s leg wrestling.  My husband challenged her to a match and she kicked his ass!  She’s one of my best friends.  Not everyone has the privilege of having a friendship with their mother.  I do. Not only do I get along with her – I actually choose to spend time with her, especially when she’s singing obnoxiously at the top of her voice “I am the CHAMPION!  I AM THE CHAMPION!!”  And then doing her half-assed attempt at a fist pump.   

"Whu-whu-whu-whu-whu!"

And you know, no matter how old I am, no matter how much knowledge I have, my Mother will always know more than I do.  Because she did it all first.  And I’ll always turn to her and ask for her advice.  Sure, the details of the advice may not be exactly what I want to hear, but I know that regardless of generation gaps and differences of opinion, a lot of these things that she tells me?  Are exactly what I need to hear.   And what’s scary?  It really does make a nicer looking clothes line.

*This piece is an excerpt from my show How to Leave Adolescence at 30 written in 1999.  As I stumbled about in our laundry room this morning - it seemed appropriate.

Does the clumsy end?

I trip.  I fall.  I run into things.  Have done since I was wee.  I could make falling up the stairs an Olympic sport.

My Mom calling the Doctor's office, "But it won't stop bleeding!!"

"I'm sorry Ma'am, unless it's mostly severed, it'll have to heal by itself."

"But there's so much blood!"

"Ma'am, unless the tongue is barely attached, we can't really do anything."

***

"MOOOOOOOM!!!  Heather's bleeding to death!" screams my brother Michael.

"Again?"

"I can't tell if she still has a leg!"

***

Kim Hickey's father, as I was waiting for Kim to get ready to catch the bus.  "Run into any poles lately?"

"Pardon me?"

"Kim told me that you ran into a pole yesterday at school."

"I did?"

Kim, coming out of her room,  "Heather, you ran straight into one of the support poles yesterday."  She turns me toward the hall mirror.  She lifts up my bangs off my forehead.  I am bruised.  I have no recollection of the event having occured.  This might explain why my brain, she doesn't work the way she should.


***

The custodian, looking at my position, shaking his head.  "How did you get there?"

"I was sliding down the railing."

"But how did your leg get there?"

"I think it slipped."

"I'm going to need a crowbar."

***


"Heather!  Watch out for the...!"

"HOLY MOTHER OF..."

"Are you okay?"

Rubbing my breast bone, where I have just run into a parking meter.  "Sweet merciful...."

***

The triage nurse, "You're lucky you didn't break your neck."

"Usually I'm a very safe diver.  I was just trying to take my bathing suit off when I was in the water."

The nurse looks at me.

"It was going to be a very effective entrance."

***

"What did you do?"  David asks. 

"I gave myself the heimlich carrying this stupid chair."

"How is that even possible?"

"I was distracticated."

"How were you carrying it?"

"Like this."

"Only you."

***

"HOLY CRAP!!"

The room turns my way.

"Sorry... sorry!  Carry on, it's okay."

"What's wrong?"

"I might just possibly have opened my ass on the metal arm of the chair.  I'm good, I'm good.  There's no blood."

***

Encased in my sweater, pretending to be a ninja, I prepare for a surprise attack on Rissa, flinging my arms open wide.

"OW!  OW!OW!OW! OOOOOOOW!!!"

"What did you do?" asks Rissa, eyebrows raised in a near-maternal expression.

"I hit the corner of the stupid newel post!"

"Were you trying to be dramatic?"

"It was going to be funny!"

***

"Why are you on the floor?"

"I slipped."

"Why?"

"I was chasing the cat."

"In your socks?"

"It needed to be done."

"Let me get the drywall out of your arm."

Do not take me into natural light...

When did I get to be so freaking hairy?  I should be in one of those carny magazines with the caption Hirsute Heather as I wear some Victoria styled gown bustled to a steam-punk length and a fascinator to show off my spectacular facial hair.   There is something about the quality of the sun in the summer months.  It's like a night club at 2:00 a.m., when they turn the lights on and you realize that the sexy chick you've been plying with tequila sunrises all night, is actually Ernest Borgnine.

Natural light is horrifying.  I'm not big on waxing.  I shave my lower legs (shin & calf) fairly regularly and I've got one of those epilady things that rips the hair off other parts of your legs - kind of like a garburator but for leg hair - but I forget to use it.  'Cause let's face it, most people don't spend all their time thinking about  leg hair until they are out in public.  If I contort my body to get a good glimpse of the back of my legs, I might put out a rib. NOT looking is really for my own well-being.   Besides, in the safety of your own home, leg hair usually ain't so bad, but when that natural light hits you - that's when this gal of mostly Scandinavian DNA begins to resemble Zorba the Greek.  Stanley could seek out Livingstone on the backs of my thighs. Please devote a moment to visualizing miniature explorers on the back of my legs with machetes.

I heeded my mother's advice for many a year and did not shave above the knee.  The tops of my thighs were mostly blond and not terribly bothersome.  A few years back, to spice things up a bit I shaved... pretty much from the pelvis down (more on the pelvis part later).  They say it's an old wives' tale that if you shave it'll grow in darker.  I am here to tell the old wives weren't making that shit up, because my thigh hair is now no longer blond - it is black.  I'll be sitting on the beach - and I'll glance down and then have to stifle a shriek of horror and surprise.  HAIR!  As far as the eye (or least MY eye) can see.  And I'm in a freaking bathing suit, exposing it to the world at large.  That's when any sane being would just ignore it.  Noone else is going to be close enough to see it.  It's not like people are wearing science fiction "Follicular Glasses" to zoom in on the wild hair on the locals at the beach.  But there I am, shaded in my little half tent, using the nails of my thumb and first fingers as impromptu tweezers to tear out the offending hair, thereby drawing attention to the fact that I have now devolved to ape state to the entire beach front.

I did the Brazilian thing a couple of times - denuded myself of all the hair down there.  I sought out a Russian aesthetician on Yelp who was highly acclaimed, who bent me near in half to get literally where the sun didn't shine.  David, accustomed to the way women are supposed to look like from the canon of adult films, was thrilled.  (See that?  My husband is one of the millions of men in the world who have been conditioned into thinking that having access to what looks like a pre-pubescent pelvis is sexy.  Shudder.)  Me?  Not so much.  I felt like a plucked chicken and about as sexy.  Does this Brazilian make my labia look fat?  PLUS?  There was NO friction.  My body didn't know what the hell had happened to it.  AND (but wait there's more) after having had all the downtown muskrat hair ripped out, when it did come back in (after that incredibly itchy, make-you-look-like-you-have-crabs waiting period), some was missing.

In peri-menopause, I now have this downy coating of mostly (thank freaking God) blond fluff on my face.  When I'm in the bathroom, if there's natural sunlight beaming into the room - my face sort of sparkles with the blonde down - which is a good contrast against the splotchy skin discoloration that has also come upon me at this stage in my life.  Sort of looks like I've been mottled with freckles then dipped in baby chick down.  Rissa, of course, adores it.  "Your face is so soft..."  She'll play with the longer hairs (the ones you don't see until after a social event) around my jawline.  "It's like you're glowing Mummy.  You're so beautiful!"  Perspective shift.  It's then that I usually do my best to re-fucking-lax and get over myself.  That's also when I usually vow to wear sunglasses in the house so that I won't notice all this shit.

I have been worshipping a false idol...

WARNING: This post is about... ahem... grown up toys

The Hitachi Magic Wand
(insert angels' chorus)

Several years ago, David got me a present.   The cadillac of  'personal massagers.'  Variations on this design have been used in adult entertainment since the 70s.  If you've seen an adult film, you've seen  this toy in use.  It is the best 'personal massager'...   IN. THE. GALAXY. 

Sceptre-like in design - I truly feel like a queen while using it.  Surprising and adaptive, it is better than self-pleasuring,  it is like having intimate relations with another person.

You know how it is when you get any new toy.  You play with it a lot.  I played with it a lot.  Let's just say that my hands would vibrate for a good half hour after I'd had some 'relaxation time.'  You want to test out the toy's limits.  You know, for scientific purposes.

Dear Diary, today I saw the face of God 12 times.  

I love my Hitachi Magic Wand.  LOOOOOOOOOVE it.  Used it so much, I felt a little guilty.  Like I was maybe cheating on David.  I'd go to bed when David was still working and by the time he joined me I was in a sated puddle of bliss, still clutching my sceptre, my entire body vibrating.  He'd try to pry it from my hands and I'd offer my best Charleton Heston,  "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!!"

Thing is (why does there always seem to be a 'thing')...  I think I might have uh, drowned my... man in the boat.  The Magic Wand is a powerful toy.  I can only use the low speed.  The high speed would have me clawing the ceiling fan, screaming hysterically.  But here's the sad but truthful news folks: physical pleasure with the Magic Wand, though SPECTACULAR, has meant that physical pleasure without it, is harder to attain.  The lady bits get over-stimulated, making it harder to achieve the big bang sans regal sceptre.  The same way that watching porn for guys gives them unrealistic stimuli, thereby making the sexual act more difficult to enjoy with an actual live partner, so too does the Magic Wand accustom a lady's lady bits to expect a level of stimulation that is nigh on impossible to achieve with regular body parts.  Basically, I've been screwed.  Figuratively and literally.

So please, I beg, heed my warning ladies.  Though you will want to spend all your time with your new toy - DON'T.  If you use it as your 'go-to' for too long - your body will begin to shut down.  Give the sceptre a rest - spend some hands-on time instead - your lady bits will thank you for it.  And even better, it won't take your partner 45 minutes to get you anywhere close to blast-off, which means that you'd still have time to watch another episode of something on Netflix.

Immaculate conception is back!

I woke up in back labour the other day.  I was a titch surprised being as I hadn't realized I was pregnant.  I was having slight discomfort through the night, in that half-awake/half-asleep state where you're pretty certain that you're dreaming it all.  But then as you really wake up, you realize that the 'something's not quite right' feeling that you'd be grappling with throughout the night?  Is actually back labour.  Even more baffling?  The fact that you haven't been pregnant in 8 years.

I might have gotten a little growly as I left sleep behind.  "What the FUCK is going on?  This is not freaking possible!!!"

David gave me a "Huh...?  Wha...?"  Then pat-patted me on my low back - whereupon I may have screamed a bit - then we were both pretty awake.

"I'm up!  I'm up!" says David.

"I'm having back labour!!"

His eyes got really wide.

"Did you forget to tell me something?"  He feels my flat stomach.

My stomach is also cramping.  I wince as I roll onto my side and leave the bed.  I walk at the pace of an elderly tortoise to get to the bathroom.  Then it all becomes clear.

"It's okay!"  I yell.  "I'm just bleeding to death!"

Turns out, as I make my way through peri-menopause, I'm experiencing ALL the symptoms associated with menstruating.  I have never had back cramps - not once - not even in labour with my two pregnancies, but on this particular morning, with this period I get all the bells and whistles.  I mean, what the hell, right?  Sure, throw me a curve.  Migraines with my cycle - nope!  Not until the last time around.  Bring it on you bastards!  If this is a menstrual throw-down I'm fighting back!!

I'm on these freaky pills to try to regulate my wonky cycle - my cycle is still only at the 3 week mark - but I am getting all these new symptoms - so that's a plus, right?  So I've decided that I'm abandoning the medical system now.  I've given it a shot for the last three months - my periods are actually WORSE than when I started.  So, no thanks.  I'll stop with the pills, deal with the inconsistency and then perhaps I won't wake up thinking that immaculate conception is back.  Before I went on the pills, I hadn't had my period in three months - I was okay with that.  This period renaissance?  Not so much.

Living breathing ad for sunscreen.

Edith Vonnegut's Sunblock

I can burn after 2.5 minutes of sun exposure. This is not hyperbole.  The sun in 2013 is different than when I was a kid.  Sure I used to burn if I went completely without sunblock, but it wasn't in 2.5 minutes, I can tell you that.  I lived in California for two years in the early 80s and came back a nice deep... beige.  I ain't a tanner.  I'm a gal who really needs to have the baby sunblock (SPF 50 or higher) slathered all over my person.

Last weekend we entered a sand castle competition in our small provincial town.  We liberally sprayed sunblock 50 all over each other.  David rubbed my back,  I rubbed his back and then Rissa's in turn.  We were good to go.  We gathered our sand gear and trundled down to the beach.  We had a plan.  We were going to sculpt The Mad Hatter's Beach Party .  We would have Alice, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit and the Dormouse all kicking back at the beach enjoying the rays.  If we had extra time (HAH!) we would add Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum and the Cheshire Cat, although everyone knows they were never at the original tea party, and if we ran into a true Alice in Wonderland aficionado we'd be laughed off the beach.

We were outclassed this year.  Turns out in the couple of years since we last competed, people upped their game.  Gone were the cheesy sand castles, there were sculptures of Easter Island and Chinese dragons and trains coming out of tunnels.  And although our sculpture turned out serviceably, compared to these "Family Category" prize winners we were a little half-assed.  People would walk by and had NO CLUE what we were sculpting.

"Is it a crocodile?"

NO, it's not a freaking crocodile!  Does a crocodile have long ears and carry a pocket watch?

The White Rabbit in Repose

The White Rabbit, Mad Hatter reclining upon beach ball
NO IT ISN'T A PUMPKIN!
Alice sunbathing

"Oh, look, they're having a Mexican Fiesta!" said one genius.  I swear to God.  Not siesta, but fiesta.  Not to mention that the Mad Hatter's hat looks nothing like a freaking sombrero.     

Ummmmm, helloooooo?  A sombrero has a wide brim?

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that Alice and the Dormouse were a little low profile, and the Dormouse did kind of look a little more like a cat... but there was one family who knew that it was the Dormouse and seemed horrified when we said that other passers-by thought it was a cat.  "Of course it's the Dormouse - a cat wasn't at the Tea Party.  This sculpture is brilliant!"  (That's the point when we praised all deities that we hadn't had the time to add the other Alice characters to the beach party.  It would have been terrible to disappoint our fans.)  After two soul-debilitating collapses on the base of the sculpture, we managed to get the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter back to a semblance of character completion and felt that we had at least finished the task at hand.

Dormouse and Alice

All in all, it was a grand day at the beach.  5 glorious hours in the beautifully balmy, sunny outdoors.  We were exhausted, but felt like we had truly accomplished, if not sand magnificence, then at the very least sand adequacy.  It wasn't until we got back home and got rid of all the sand and grit that we realized something.  We realized the true power of sunblock.  Turns out, David had forgotten to rub in the sunblock on a couple of spots on my back.  Just around the shoulder blades.  I was wondering why I was feeling a little achy and nauseated...  we soon discovered that where there hadn't been sunblock, I (Heather the fish-belly white),  had spent 5 hours in direct sunlight.  You can see the blistering beginning in the reddest patch.  I'm sending a letter to the sunblock company to commend them on saving the rest of my body from the same fate.

Naked in the mirror after 40

If I'm going to get screwed, I'd like to be in on it.  I'm not generally a passive participant.  I don't just lie back and think of the Queen.  If I'm getting well and truly screwed I want to enjoy it.  I want to scream operatically with release when it gets really good.

Naked in front of the mirror, on Saturday morning, I came to the stark realization that I had been royally screwed and I had no recollection of it ever having happened.  It was like I'd been given GHB when I was 12 and woke up when I was 45.

The first time a doctor told me I needed to lose weight was when I was 12.  I was 5 foot 4 inches and weighed a whopping 120 lbs.  Which is pretty much what you're supposed to weigh when you're 5' 4" tall.  A little less or a little more, but I was definitely in the general area.   I had boobs and hips and I'd already begun to hate them. If I didn't have THESE nobody would bother me.  At the age of 14, I was put on an extra cardio routine to meet my rec coaches' expectations of a gymnast's proper body type.  I wasn't even  a competitive gymnast.  I went to the gym twice a week, my big trick was a back walkover on the balance beam.

In my late teens and early 20s, I wouldn't ever rest my full weight on someone's lap, believing that my considerable heft would cut off their circulation.  I was too round, too fleshy.  I look back at pictures from my early 20s and I was neither.  I looked healthy.  Yeah, I had curves, (see boobs and hips from above), but I was by no means fat.    And yet, at that time, even without a full-on eating disorder, I didn't see my body as something healthy or attractive.

I didn't dip my toes into bulimia until my mid 20s.  I wasn't a card-carrying member - I was more the binge until I felt sick and then throw up to get rid of the nausea kind of bulimic.  Probably only happened about a dozen times, she types dismissively.  But it still happened.  Because I despaired when saw my armpit pudge or my inner thigh fat.

Many women spend much of their early lives (pretty much until they partner up) worried about how they look.  The mating dance is very important.  We buff, we preen, we diet - usually to attract a mate.  (Rarely, in my youth, was I the focus of my efforts.   I am wearing this to look good for me.  I am becoming healthy for me.  It takes a loooooong time before women do things for ourselves.  Some women never do it.  We tend to be so blind to our own wants and needs and even physical appearance that we never emerge from our personal cocoon and spread our wings for ourselves.) 

I hate to say it, but most women are all about snagging the mate.  We are, after all, still mammals, even if our 'higher minded' intellect would prefer not to recognize it. When I was younger, EVERY SINGLE SPRING my body wanted to meet the biological imperative of mating.  Really a lot.  A whole bunch.  And then when I was on the cusp of peri-menopause, I morphed into a 17 year old boy with a sex drive that would rival Casanova's.  Gotta use ALL these eggs up before they go bad!  

Even though society is shifting, that marital urgency is still present.  We'd love to think that we in North America have moved beyond that - but 'partnering up' is still a big freaking deal.   But what happens after you've snagged that mate?  What happens when most of your life has been spent wanting to be seen as attractive to potential partners, what happens after that?  Do you just wake up one morning and not worry about it?  For that first year after Rissa was born - I was not a sexual being.  I was revelling in motherhood.  I really didn't care.  I was too exhausted to care.  It's only now, when I look at photographic and video evidence of that year that I find myself completely horrified.  What had happened to me?  Why was I dressed in sweat pants and baggy shirts?  Did I have no clue that dressing in larger clothes to camouflage baby weight just doesn't work?  I hated myself for caring.  My psyche probably should have shifted - except it hadn't.  Because I'd been conditioned for almost 2 decades to worry about how I looked.  And apparently you can just let that shit go or at least I couldn't.

And even though now, at the age of 45, I'm probably the most fit that I've ever been, I still worry about the extra 20 lbs that I should lose to be at my 'healthy' weight.  I look at my boobs in the mirror - noticing that the left one is slightly lower than the right one - I do my 'mock hunchback' to make them even.  My thighs, my strong and flexible thighs with their extra stores of fat at the top, would probably ensure my survival if my plane went down in the Arctic, but I don't care about that.  I CARE that when I wear stockings, I have  freaking huge bulgy divots in my thighs.  Sadly, it appears that I haven't evolved. Society doesn't tell us how to evolve from sex object to madonna.  In the new millennium, youth is where it's at.  You're not allowed to look 40 when you're 40.  You're not allowed to have lines on your face - smile lines are crow's feet.  Now you have to be a MILF - you have to be vital and sexy and desirable.  WHY?!?  My Mom didn't have to be a MILF.  Until last weekend, she didn't even know what a MILF was.  Thing was, my Mom still got dressed up, made an effort, was still sexy without even really working at it.  Why did it seem so difficult for me to do the same thing?

33 years.  From the age of 12 until now.  I have spent 33 years worried about how I look.  I have focused on what is deemed attractive, to the detriment of health and emotional well being. I have been brain washed by the beauty, fashion and media industries... and by... me.   I think that it's time to snap out of it.  Don't you?

I am a crash test dummy.

I have friends who don't share with their kids.  They don't want their kids to know that they used to smoke up outside the back entrance of their high school around the dumpsters.  They don't talk about pregnancy scares.  They omit the drinking an entire mickey of tequila before heading to a dance and then spending most of the evening getting up close and personal with the porcelain altar. They don't admit that they had to have "peace of mind" HIV testing.

From Scribblenauts

I'm Rissa's Crash Test Dummy.  I do all the stupid shit so that she doesn't have to.  I got the nose piercing that would never quite heal because I changed to the prettier nose ring too fast.  (You really do need to wait more than 3 weeks.)  I have had the painful tattoos. (The one on my lower back which had me singing operatically at the tattoo party while holding several peoples' hands to deal with the pain.  The 'just to say I had one' crappy psychedelic flower on my thigh that now looks like a mistake.)  I had the elective surgery. (Tummy tuck in 2009 - do you know how many pieces of camouflaging lingerie you can get for what it costs for a tummy tuck?)  I gained 50 lbs with my first pregnancy. (Let's do the math folks - an average baby + placenta + amniotic fluid + blood amounts to about 12 lbs - that meant that I still had to lose THIRTY-EIGHT lbs!!  I had to lose a freaking toddler!!).

I share with Rissa.  A lot.  I don't embarrass easily, so it makes the sharing easier.   It is my sincere hope that Rissa will learn from my MANY mistakes.  I'm frank with her because life in the 21st century?  It ain't as simple as when I was 13 in the 80s.  Sure, I had to deal with a pack of feral girls in grade 8, but that pack of feral girls didn't take photos of me and then post them on Facebook and then tag it with "SLUT" when my string bikini top disappeared in the pool while swimming.

I want Rissa to know stuff.  I want her prepared.  Sometimes that means saying things like: "Okay you need to listen to me for 5 minutes."

Already wincing, she usually asks "....Why?"

"Because we need to discuss eating disorders."

"Mummy!"

"I'm serious!  Five minutes!" And God bless her, she usually gives me that five minutes.  Because she knows that I'm old and I know stuff and that I want to make her life easier, not harder.

Turns out I'm addicted to crack...

One of my absolute favourite things in the entire world is movie theatre popcorn.  With extra butter salt.  It's pretty much like crack to me.  Our local theatre has a shaker of butter salt that they leave out for the patrons.  I shake it on and delight in my sodium intake.  Having popcorn at the movies is akin to having an orgasm during sex...  what's the point of going if you don't have one?

I did something really stupid today.  I looked up the calorie and fat content of movie theatre popcorn.  I don't know what I could have possibly been thinking.  There's no way that it ever could have been good news.  I just didn't figure that it would be such monumentally BAD news.

Turns out a large popcorn, which I could totally eat all by myself, has around 1261 calories and over 70 grams of fat -  and that's without adding the edible petroleum product that theatres like to pass off as "butter."  That's like eating two Big Macs at the movies.  And seeing as I feel sick after having just a single McDonald's cheeseburger, when I read that comparative, I threw up a bit in my mouth and then had to swallow it.

I wept for a few minutes while I was reading the numbers.  Because why?  Because now I can't, in good health conscience, eat movie theatre popcorn.  A large popcorn plus a regular drink at the movies is what I should be consuming in calories in a day.

"It's over!" I wailed.  "We might as well NEVER go now!!  We're going to just have to watch movies in in our stinky basement with low-fat microwave popcorn... FOREVER!!!"

David patted me on the back.  "Sweetie - it's not like you eat the whole bag yourself.  We usually share it between at least the two of us and then if Rissa's there - the three of us."

I wiped at my tears and did some quick math calculations.  1261 ÷ 3 = 420.333333   I let out a great whoop of relief.  420 calories??  That's what I try to eat for dinner.  "If we go to the movies at dinner time from here on out and only eat real healthy food the other major meals of the day, popcorn is totally doable.  I'll get a tap water instead of pop, and we can still get a small bag of M&Ms and that's only 500 calories that I'll have ingested!!!  Boo-freaking-yeah baby!!!"

Begin Happy Dance!

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem...

I'm not a 'half-measures' kind of gal.  If I'm doing something, it's usually at full tilt.  I'm very 'event oriented.'  I go on a blitz right up until an event starts.   One year for Rissa's birthday party,  my Mom couldn't believe that I was sewing slipcovers for the our patio cushions 5 minutes before arrival time.  I make curtains the night before our Christmas tea.  I plant flowers moments before a garden party. If people are supposed to arrive at 7:00 p.m. for a party, that means I have until 6:59 p.m. to bake, sew, clean, organize and get dressed.

This week has been a bit over the top, even for me.  I got it into my head that we would 'decorate' our big summer event.  I have spent a full week up to my ass in ancient lath corners, tissue paper, glue and moss.   I blame Pinterest.  I saw these ginormous tissue paper peonies on Pinterest.

Ginormous tissue paper peonies

They had major WOW factor:  Triffid-like size, soft colour and beauty.  They looked SO easy to make.  Which I'm sure they would be if you only made a half dozen or so and had all the supplies at hand. 

Canada, it turns out, doesn't have the exact same drywall corners... the wire ones that look like chicken wire. And if you think you can use regular chicken wire and cut it into long swathes of wire that you then shape those into ginormous flower stalks, you would be wrong.  After a certain height, the chicken wire loses its erection.  Even with copious amounts of tape.  Whereupon your idea of fabulous ginormous tissue paper peonies seems out of reach and you might start crying and drinking a bit and then your husband has to calm you down and take you to the local Home Hardware and explain to the very patient and friendly staff exactly what it is you need for this ridiculous ambitious crafting project.  Thank God for Home Hardware!  Instead we found these rusty metal lath corners that had been just sitting in the back shed of our Home Hardware Building Centre.  I got them for a song - on account of the fact that no one has used these in decades.  That and because they're so rusty that you might get tetanus just from looking at them too hard.  But they would serve the purpose, could be molded (sort of) and held their shape up to about 7.5 feet.

Looking at this is what confirmed my insanity for David.

The little ones didn't seem to freak him out as much.

Each leave had to be molded from 4 pieces of wire, covered
with 4 sheets of tissue and then Papier Mâchéd to within
an inch of their lives.

The flower stalks needed to be covered by at least 4 layers
of tissue paper to cover the lath and the masking tape, which
turns out, really should have been done vertically, so that
you can't see the horizontal lines, and your flowers, when
covered, don't look like weird-ass lime green barber poles.

 

I don't know why the large pliers are there.
I didn't use them for anything.

Does it look like I'm giving birth to these flowers to anyone else?

I'm making 33 of them.  Because I didn't think that 18 would be enough and that's the number that the plastic beer cups (that you fill with quick-set cement for the bases), come in.  I would have been making 36 of them - because really, the phrase is GO BIG OR GO HOME - but we'd been using the beer cups to shovel the quick-set cement into the other cups and we ruined three of them.  So we're down to a measly 33 flowers.

Don't know if you notice in the glamour pic earlier on, but the gal there, is standing in front of maybe 8 of those flowers.  But what it means is that when we, and I do mean we, because I have been using Rissa's friends as slave labour all this week, finish these flowers, the sheer amount of beauty will be (she says with mad eyes and a maniacal laugh.)  FOUR TIMES AS SPECTACULAR!!   And then they'll sit in the basement in our rec room and we can pretend that we live in Oz.  See?  Dual purpose decorations!!

Love means having to say you're sorry...

WARNING: Adult language in this post

I know, I know... That's not what what's-her-face says in Love Story.  Ali MacGraw.  The correct quotation is "Love means never having to say you're sorry."  Which I think is a shitty quotation.  What kind of douche are you if you don't apologize for the shit you do?  The bad stuff.  The unsupportive and biased things you do because you're blind to your own perspective and maybe don't have all the information, kind of things...  What?  Are your loved ones just supposed to divine that you feel remorse?

If you say mean-spirited things...  apologize!  If you hurt someone's feelings... apologize!  If you dissed a friend's new partner thinking you know all the facts, but the truth is you don't... you need to... APOLOGIZE.  And not just if you feel like shit afterwards.

Basically when you realize you're wrong... about ANYTHING - you need to fucking regroup and own up to it.   I'm not saying that you should just lie down and be someone's doormat when you know, deep down in your heart of hearts, that  you're right, but if something suddenly becomes clear to you and you know you fucked up?  You've got to own that.  You need to grow a pair and take ownership of your misguidance.  'Cause hurt feelings can create a chasm between you and your loved ones, which, if neither one of you moves beyond, will grow wider and wider until you can't even make out who's on the other side of the divide.  Life's too short to write friendships off.  Trust me.  Apologize.

Your kids are watching it... what are you doing about it?

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Taken prisoner... Send painkillers...

This morning I awoke to the mother of all migraines.   She looked like this:

Meg Mucklebones from Ridley Scott's Legend

The 1 inch of sunlight from beneath the blind - that tiny amount of light - was akin to having good ol' Meg use her lovely fingernails to gouge out my baby blues.   I popped as many pills as I could * and crawled down the stairs, clutching a set of earplugs.

Why, one might ask, would I need earplugs when Rissa is away with her grandparents for the week and David works in near silence at his computer all day?  Because our roof is being re-roofed this week and there are 5 men on it, with stompy steel-toed construction boots and generator-powered air-nail guns.  Don't get me wrong, I love these guys, they're doing a freaking amazing job at putting what must be (given the cost of the project) gold-encrusted shingles onto my roof and they seem genuinely thrilled when I bring them lavender lemonade (which if you haven't tried, you have to) and key lime squares, but when the pain in your eye sockets makes you puke - construction noise doesn't help.

I staggered to the couch in the family room, pulled the blanket over my head and told David to wake me up in an hour and a half so that I could get ready to go to work.  At 9:00 a.m. when he woke me, I was  insensible from the drugs and speaking in tongues...  or so he says.    He brought me a sleeping mask and called into work for me to let my boss know that I wouldn't be in until the afternoon.

My Mom always knew when I was really sick - by how much I would sleep.  There were many a day when I would get to the end of the sidwalk on my way to school, clutch my abdomen and inform my mother that my spleen had to be removed, but when I was really sick?  I just slept.  Like the dead.  All pale and clammy and barely breathing.

This morning was one of those sleeps.  I was out for HOURS.  And when I finally awoke from the sleep coma, I was delighted to find one of the cats snuggled protectively into the curve of my body and daylight had ceased to make me want to hurl.  The worst was over - but I had the residual raven's claws around my eyeballs - just holding on, you know, to remind me that at any moment it could sever my optic nerves for fun.  Like say, if I caught the gleam of a piece of cutlery bathed in sunlight in the sink at the wrong angle - it'd be all over.  There are times when I have to wear sunglasses in the house or at even at night to stop the glare of headlights from... wait a second!  I can't believe that I didn't realize this before!  Corey Hart must suffer from migraines!   Just like me!  Just like JK Rowling!  Poor bugger was suffering from the pain of migraines and nobody knew because he was hiding it in his lyrics all poetical-like.  I feel so much closer to him now. 

*Yes, I am a pill-popper.  But I'm not a moron about it.  I'm not downing 6 extra strength Tylenol with 4 Avil migraine gel caps.  I take the absolute top limit of what won't a) erode my stomach lining b) destroy my liver c) put me into the hospital for a drug overdose.  Don't be stupid folks - take the recommended dosages - your liver will thank you for it.

I am not your sink whore!

4 days.  I left them for 4 days.  I tried.  I really did.  I was making a point.  My point: do your own frickin' dishes! There weren't even that many:  a frying pan Rissa had used for scrambled eggs, cutlery, some serving utensils, that green, silicone, paint-stick-style stirrer and some wee ice cream bowls.

I couldn't take it any longer.  I couldn't.  The stench got to me.  I can only hold my ground until there's a stench.  I caved.  I washed the dishes.  I couldn't leave them another day.  It was the stench.  I had to eliminate the stench.

Basically, it comes down to this - I am the only one in the house who cares when it is clean.  Just me. In our living room there is a box of old media - VHS tapes and DVDs with a couple of universal remotes and cables thrown in for good measure.  David put the box there 2 weeks ago.  It is not my box.  I didn't put it there.  And yet, I have this preternatural clairvoyance that tells me I will be the one moving it.  Because I will go crazy before the others do.

If I'm cooking in a mad dash and David comes in - he is horrified by the state of the kitchen mid-dinner  prep.  He'll put things away and say things like: "How can you work like this?"  But the house as a whole?  Neither he nor Rissa really give a rat's ass about it.  But if I try to play the 'let's see how long it takes them to notice' game - I'd be waiting until the SECOND FREAKING COMING before it would occur to them to clean up their shit.  'Cause that's the thing - it's THEIR shit.  NOT mine.  THEIRS.  Okay it's mostly their shit.  The chicken wire in the living room is mine, but that's there for a reason.

Dear Abby: I think my cat's into kink

Steve didn't show up for breakfast on Saturday morning.   Which worried the crap out of me because the last time Steve didn't show up for food, he almost died and we spent $1400 at the vet.  My heart sank.  I was going to find him dead.  I was going to go down into the basement and find my cat dead from a recurrent bladder infection.  Stupid cat.  My shoulders slumped.  I took a deep breath and made my way downstairs. 

"Steve?  Steve honey?  You okay bud?"

I peeked around the corner into our rec room.  My eyes widened.  Steve was lying by David's drum kit...  with a clear plastic bag on his head.  I thought he was dead until he let out a single pitiful meow.

"WHAT THE... STEVE!  STEVE!!!"

I rushed over and took the bag off his head, he didn't fight me, didn't look freaked out - kind of looked stoned.  I don't know exactly how long his head had been in the bag, but the bag...  it had water in the bottom of it from where, I'm just postulating here, Steve drooled into it.  I didn't technically find the cat with his pants down, 'cause cats don't wear pants, but I think we can safely say that this is what it looked like:  Feline Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation.  I know, I know... what grown cats do in their private time should stay private, but Steve's kink almost got him killed.  9 lives.  8 lives.  We're on life #7 folks, and if these things come in threes, I shudder at what I'll find him doing next.

HELP! I need a good psychiatrist!

Is what my friend, the OR nurse, thought I'd emailed her about.    (I'd sent an email message to a couple of my nursing friends, because I figured that they are the ones on the front lines and know the good vs bad doctors.)

My friend responded via email. "Very good news that your cardiac issues have been resolved, and about the referral, I am at a bit of a loss.  I work in the OR, so I don't work with any psychiatrists, but I know that the hospital does have a mental health division.  I can look into it more if you still need me to."

What I'd actually wanted a recommendation for, was a PHY-SI-A-TRIST.  Not a mind doctor*, but rather a doctor who deals with optimizing the body as a whole.  All the bits and pieces together: bones, nerves, muscles.  A physiatrist is your go-to doc, to get your body back on track when it's fucked up beyond all measure (dealing with post-stroke victims, pain management etc), but regular specialists (?!?) still can't figure out what your deal is.

What's really awesome, is how completely blasé she was about my having been labeled  a hypochondriacal fucknut, and then subsequently abandoned by a broad spectrum of the medical profession (which is kind of how I feel a lot of the time).  I'll bet that if I had asked if she knew anyone who could help me get rid of a body, she'd have said "When does it need to disappear?"  She's good people.

*ps - By the by, seeking out help for any illness (mental or physical) is one of the bravest things that you can do.  I don't happen to need a shrink right now, but when my existential angst kicks back in, I just might, and I hope to God that I'm brave enough, if/when that happens, to get the help I need.

I love when my boobs sweat.

This is a sarcastic dance.

You know what I'm talking about ladies.  It's awesome, right?   You're sitting at the computer before bed, trying to get some work done or at least check in on the state of the universe.  You're in some sort of nightie/chemise/tank top - sans bra - because wearing a bra in this heat would make you kill puppies.  You've got the overhead fan on full-blast, moving the hot air around you.

After about 30 seconds, you feel it start to trickle: boob sweat.  You pull out the front of your nightie/chemise/tank top and see the wet spots that have appeared underneath your boobs.  First they're just small - like the size of a quarter or loonie, but after about 5 minutes they have grown to the size of pancakes.  The last time I had to deal with wet spots that size on my torso was when my breast milk first came in.   After the wet spots appear, it's usually when you reach into your clothes, you know, to test the temperature underneath your boobs.  I took a thermometer and stuck it under my girls: 104.5 F!

And then you realize that your ass, too, is sweating.  And your inner thighs.  And your shins.  How can shins sweat?  There's nothing to a shin!!!   How are sweating shins even possible?!?

I found myself wishing that the semi-shag rug in the office was made of terry cloth so that I could tear off my clothes and roll on it.  I was this close to doing just that when I remembered that I hadn't vacuumed lately and if I did tear off my clothes and roll on the semi-shag carpet, my sweaty body would then be covered in cat hair and carpet lint.  Although, if someone took a photo essay of me doing that, maybe I could make it into 'art.'