I learn something from my daughter every day.

For instance... according to my daughter, these are the signs for "Uterus Falling Out." 

Apparently last year, in Grade 7, Rissa and her friends figured it out so that they could torment the boys.  I don't know how accurate it is in ASL, but I'll be signing it myself from now on.  Above Rissa exhibits the commiserative face during the signing, but it can also be done with the angry face.

I jinxed it!

I should have known better than to post that I had an abundance of energy.  Those petty cold gods sure do love their schadenfreude.  Tuesday morning I awoke... no, strike that.  Who am I kidding? I never really woke up during the day.  Went back to bed for a couple of hours to see if I could re-boot, but when the 2nd alarm went off, it merely confirmed that I was in no way fit for work.   My voice drops an octave with a virus - all I have to do is say "Hello" on the phone and people know somethings up.  I'm either sick, or I've just had really great sex with a plugged nose.

I've been GO-GO-GO for so long that when I finally could see the light at the end of the tunnel... the train crashed.  This is a design flaw in our physiology.   Who builds something that does that?  A little bit less stress and the body collapses in on itself?  That's pretty fucked. 

My Mom always knew when I was really sick, because I would sleep.  I must really be sick. I have spent 17 of the last 24 hours sleeping.  This morning I remain entrenched in cotton-headed ninny-muggins-ness, but I can at least stand.  So now's the time when I get dressed and drag my sorry ass in to work.  Because that's what we do right?  We go into work.  We don't want to take the time to get well, because we can't afford it.  We would rather infect the entire office than lose a day's pay.  I might as well go up to everyone and lick them, no matter how much hand sanitizer I bathe in. Sorry folks!  This is all about me and my bottom line - your health is incidental.  Enjoy your complimentary surgical mask.

Here comes the sun (doo-doo-doo-doo...)

Fall Back is my favourite time of year EVER.  To have forgotten to set your clock back on Saturday night  and then have the unexpected epiphany Sunday morning that you can sleep in the extra hour?  And then there's the following Monday!  That day where your body wakes up feeling refreshed, recharged and ready to tackle the work week - it puts me in a state of near-Nirvana.

6:30 this morning I DIDN'T CARE that the cats were whining, it didn't bother me that they were jockeying for position on the bed, ON ME.  For the first time in weeks, I wasn't exhausted.  I came downstairs at 6:45 and the sun was up!  Sweet merciful deities it was up!!  It wasn't dark out - the photosynthesis converted those solar rays into undiluted energy....  Energy for ME.  MY ENERGY.  On a Monday freaking morning.  It never happens.

So I have this proposal.  25-hour days.  'Cause that's all it really took to have me back on track.  Just that extra hour.  If I could just have that hour every day - life would equalize.  I would be a better person.  I'd have more patience, humour and grace.  If there were 25 hours in a day, I could descend a set of stairs like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, I would have the self-possession of Katharine Hepburn, the flexibility of Esther Williams.  I have that ONE day a year.  It's today - the Monday after Fall Back day.    If you cross my path today, just watch... Watch how I glide through the day, watch my smile, see my beatific glow... Revel with me on the day after Fall Back.  I cannot guarantee that tomorrow the after-effects will still be with me.  Get the best version of Heather while you can.

Halloween Hangover



Apparently The Nightmare Before Christmas is much to old to garner immediate recognition.
  Oh God, I just Googled it - 19-freaking-93!!! That is 20 years ago!  HOLY CRAP!
  No wonder I wasn't recognized.  Plus, I was missing some stitched-back-together
 scars when I went to work in the morning.

It was a dark and stormy night in Southern Ontario.  We had maybe a half dozen brave visitors come to our door.  Adorable first-timers. Little pink kitty cats and lop-eared bunnies. "You will be the first house that she came to on her first ever Halloween."  Good thing I wasn't dressed as a zombie.

What with there not being a lot of visitors, that box of a zillion miniature candy bars ended up just sitting there, it's brightly coloured wrappers emitting a siren call.


Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Every single year.  Every single year I say that it won't happen again. Thing is?  Those wee little candy bars?  Well, they're so... wee.  They look so innocent, so harmless, so... not going to make you want to throw up.  I'm 45 freaking years old and I went to bed early - medicated with Gravol - with a tummy ache and questionable GI fortitude.  Next year.  Next year we will give out gift cards to Bulk Barn.  Or raisins.  How many packages of crappy raisins would a gal have to eat to make herself sick?

Netflix is making me emotionally unstable.

Netflix has made me healthier.  Well, Netflix and the tablet whereby I can view Netflix, has made me healthier.  I take my collapsible treadmill out of the closet in our study, pop on a TV show, hit the START button and go.  Minimum 30 minutes a day of guaranteed walking and that's on top of my walking back and forth to work.  My cardio capacity is fan-freaking-tastic.

My emotional stability, however, has been completely fucked by Netflix.  Way back when, before the advent of DVD sets, you used to be able to ramp up to an obsession.  Over the course of years you would become addicted and could develop a healthy relationship with a TV show.  The first clue for me should have been when David and I mainlined the first season of Kiefer Sutherland's 24 in a period of 48 hours when it showed up at Blockbuster video.  Blockbuster has since died, but Netflix's on-demand streaming of television series is sending me 'round the bend.

Watching television on Netflix is akin to starting a tumultuous love affair.  Scratch that.  Love affair is too tame.  Full-On Bacchanalian Orgy would be more accurate.  Netflix is following Alice down the Rabbit Hole. I watched the entire 3rd season of The United States of Tara by Wednesday of this week.

All this, after I get home from work.  Eight of those episodes were watched on Wednesday alone.  Why??  Because I could.  They were right there, Netflix lets you know that the next episode will load automatically in 15 seconds, you don't even have to touch the remote to get your next hit!  15 seconds!?!   I can't wait for those 15 seconds.  I had to know what was happening to Tara right now!!  I had to know what Dr. Hattarus was doing to help her.  I had to know if Marshall would be okay, if Kate would make it as a flight attendant, if Charmaine would gain some fucking perspective, if Max could take any more.

All that concentrated time has convinced me that I have an emotional connection to them.  I care so much.  And not in that patient wanting-to-see-what-happens-to-Daphne-and-Niles way.  With Netflix you don't allow yourself the time to process information over the course of a week.  Watching a series on Netflix is meeting, falling in love, and being cruelly dumped within a weekend.  If you choose to watch shows with the truly fucked up characters, your hold on reality becomes tenuous.  The realization that a particular show only had three seasons, or two seasons without some sort of satisfying conclusion, like say BBC's The Hour - can send you searching for consolation chocolate and a cocktail.  Escapism on this grand a scale has never been so attainable and potentially damaging.  Unless you're doing crack.

David watched the last two episodes of USOT with me last night after having previously viewed only the ender of Season 2.  He was horrified.  But for him it was a perspective shift.  "Whenever I think that you're crazy - I will remember this moment.  You are not that crazy."    That alone, makes today's emotional fallout worth bearing.

Frankenovaries strike again...

WARNING: THIS POST IS ABOUT SEX WITH YOUNG MEN

There are sooooooo many things to enjoy about peri-menopause - it's hard to pick a favourite.  But pretty high on that list would be how my peri-menopausal ovaries take over my higher brain functions when in the presence of young men.  My lady bits are apparently so desperate for that last stab at sure-fire insemination, that the most innocent of contact with a man in his prime, say between the ages of 19-22, will bring on L.U.S.T.  All-encompassing - choke you with its power - LUST.  

The good thing is, by and large, I'm not around young men most of the time. David's 40;  most of our friends are between the ages of 30 and 55.   I'm pretty sure that's what's kept me from getting arrested.  "Ma'am, put the boy down.  Put him down NOW."  Problem is? If this menopause thing doesn't happen in the next 5 years... Rissa will then be 18 1/2, and more than likely, she'll be bringing male friends home who will then be in that dreaded YOUNG MAN age bracket.  And no matter what your average cougar tries to tell you?  It is NEVER cool to hit on your daughter's friends.  NEVER.

I'm scared.  'Cause right now, when confronted with a young man full of youthful testosterone (the essence of stalwart sperm as it were), I pretty much lose my mind.  My failing ovaries do the Frankenstein walk.   

"Sperm.  Must have sperm."   

WAIT!!  Maybe my ovaries are actually ZOMBIE ovaries!  That is probably closer to the truth.  Maybe they've just come back to life and they are hungering for that young sperm because way back then, that's what they were supposed to be on the hunt for!  Somewhere in their little poor little zombie ovary brains they think  recognize virility and they want it.  The final gasp before the shop shuts down and puts the CLOSED FOR BUSINESS sign in the window.

And I mean, sure, I like sex... who doesn't? It's a lot of fun.  But until peri-menopause hit, it wasn't my every waking thought.  It was on the back burner and then right before my period, David would know that something was on the horizon because I was doing my best impersonation of a sailor on shore leave.  He actually said to me at one point, "Honey, I'm feeling a bit like I'm just the man attached to the penis."  I'm chagrined to say that, at that time, he probably was.  There were several years where those ovaries were convinced they needed attention - and a lot of it.  Lately, though, I though that it was all easing up, that the girls had calmed down.  I was wrong.

So this is basically a warning to all the young bucks out there.  Give me and my voracious ovaries a wide berth.  Don't come too close or you may be sucked into our orbit and who knows when, or even if, you'll escape.  I'd say we're like a black hole, but I'm a redhead... (ba-doom-ching) You get the gist, right?  Keep your distance.  It's for your own safety.  Just sayin'.

I am the dog?!? I am the dog?!?

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!  Look at them!  LOOK AT THEM!!!"

"You're a dog!"  says Rissa.

"No, I'm not!"  says I.

"You're totally a dog.  You're all like...  talking, talking, talking, conversing while walking...
SQUIRREL!!!!"

"You can't tell me that you weren't entertained watching those two squirrels chase each other around and around that pine tree.  And then when they went from the pine tree over to the maple tree and did it again? Classic squirrel."

"You are a dog."

"I'm totally NOT a dog.  It's just that squirrels are the kings of slapsti... HEY! ANOTHER SQUIRREL!!!"

"I told you!"

"But just look at him!  He's holding a nut between his little paws!"

I don't carry a cell phone with me to take my own pictures.
This is NOT my actual squirrel. 
Mine was in a tree, but it was even cuter than this one.

"TOLD YOU SO!"

"Yes, but I'd do it with any cute animal.  Cats.  Bunnies.  Kangaroos..."

"Kangaroos?  If there were kangaroos chasing each other around the trunk of a tree I'd watch that."

"See?  You'd stop and notice them.  Basically your speciesist."

"Speciesist?"

"You're speciesist.  If those squirrels were not run-of-the-mill squirrels, but kangaroos instead, you would pay attention, you'd get excited.  SQUIRREL RIGHTS!  SQUIRREL RIGHTS!!!"

"KANGAROO RIGHTS!  KANGAROO RIGHTS!!!"

This might be when the cars started slowing down to rubber-neck.