This is what a spatula is made for...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"  I shake my fists to the heavens in rage. 

"Mummy?"

"There is NO peanut butter!!"  It's one of those morninigs.  You know, one of  those mornings when all you want is a certain thing for breakfast?  All I wanted was peanut butter on my toast.  And only one piece with peanut butter - I needed a tablespoon and a half of it - the other piece of toast was going to have seedless raspberry jam.  Was that too much to ask for?  Wait!  Wait! Rissa doesn't eat peanut butter.  David would have been the last to eat it, which means he would have 'finished' it, which means it would... still be sitting in the sink...

"HAH!"

"Hah?" asks Rissa.

"YES!  HAH!!  All I have to do is drain the water, grab a spatula and voila!  Peanut Butter Toast!  THIS.  This is what a spatula is made for... this exact task!"

"Un-huh..."

"See??  See how much peanut butter is left?"

Rissa avoids eye contact, because that's what you're supposed to do with crazy people.

The spatula is the most perfect of kitchen utensils.  I pour out all the soaking water, then hold the spatula aloft like Excaliber.  A deep breath and I begin to scrape the sides of the jar.  Press down the sides, swirl around the bottom, press and swirl... "AHA!!!  Take THAT Mr. Doesn't-know-when-a-jar's-empty!!"

"Happy now?"

"Yes.   Yes, I am."

You know what else a spatula is good for?  Smoothing peanut butter on your toast.

Out of the mouth of Rissa...

"Agnes the camel has three humps..."

"Agnes the camel?"

"Yes."

"O....kay..."

"Agnes the camel has three humps...  Wallace the camel has two humps..."

"You don't remember the actual song, do you?"

"No."

"It's Alice the camel, although I have to say that I prefer Agnes now..."

"Well, obviously."

"It's Alice the camel has 10, 9 8, etc.  etc. humps.  Until you get down to no humps and you find out that she's actually a horse... of courrrrrrrrrrse..."

"Ahhhhhh...  Wait then....  Agnes the camel has three humps...  because she is a three-humped camel and that's how she rolls... Wallace the camel has two humps - completely unrelated to Agnes - he is of the two-humped variety...   Margaret the camel has one hump... and is slightly jealous of Agnes and Wallace. Baby Joey the camel has no humps because he is adopted and is a horse, well, actually a zebra - so he doesn't have humps, instead he has stri-i-i-i-i-i-ipes."

She's here all week folks ...  enjoy the veal...

Soft Porn at the Spa

 WARNING:  Adult matters discussed in this post

Let it be proclaimed from the mountain tops:  I have the best spouse and daughter in the world.  For Mothers' Day this year they gifted me a spa afternoon (with light lunch).  Four treatments in 4 hours: a facial, massage, pedicure and manicure - all in the delightful surroundings of a local spa.  Even though only one of the treatments was a 'masssage,' I got 4 massages in the time I was there.  During a facial, your face, shoulders, neck and hands are massaged.  During a massage your back, legs, neck, shoulders and arms are massaged.  During a pedicure your feet, and calves are massaged and during a manicure your forearms and hands are massaged.  I walked out of the spa like an overcooked lasagna noodle.

"What are you looking for in today's treatments?" my esthetician Casey asks.

"Relaxation.  Complete and utter relaxation."

My regular massage therapist, Erin, works on my body to heal it.  She gets in there with her elbow, releasing the knots in my shoulder and back - I love Erin - I love her therapeutic massage - I love that she fixes me, but unless I tell her to go easy on me, those massages are generally not relaxing.  I was signing up for a day of sighing and relaxed drool seeping out of my mouth.   I checked that box.

During the facial, I almost fall asleep twice. 

"Okay, when you're ready, come on out and we'll get you set up for your soak and massage," Casey says in her softest voice.

Alrighty... time to get up.  I sit up very slowly, feet testing the floor.  I grab the bathrobe and snuggle in and toddle out the door.

Casey meets me with a red wine glass full of lemon water and directs me to the next room.  Candles are everywhere.  Massage table in the centre.  To the back of the room, a jacuzzi tub.  Casey leads me over to the steaming tub.

"Okay Heather, I'm going to leave you here to soak for about 20 minutes.  The controls are on the side here.  You just relax, lay back and enjoy.  I'll be back in 20 minutes."  She backs out of the room in complete silence.

Soaking in a tub is one of my most favourite things - forget raindrops on roses - nearly scalding water with a good book in my hand, and I'm in heaven.  Soaking in a tub in a room full of candles?  Decadence. I hang my fluffy robe on the chrome hook on the wall, swig back half my glass of lemon water and sink into the perfectly heated tub.  This.  This is fantastic.  I reach over to the controls for the jacuzzi and hit the "ON" button.

It's like there is a 250 HP power motor somewhere in the room. The propulsion of the jets nearly lifts me from the tub.  Where is the low setting on this sucker?  As I'm desperately searching to adjust the settings, one particular jet gives me a jolt in my nether regions. 

"Whoa!"  I jump. I let out a surprised snort of laughter.  Do I have to pay extra for that?  And then you know how sometimes you have those thoughts that you oughtn't have?  Not-for-public-consumption thoughts?  There I was, in a jacuzzi tub with jets that apparently wanted to please me, and I had them for 20 minutes.  I sat with my hand on the controls, debating for a full minute and a half.

NO.  It would be WRONG.  Wouldn't it?  But I am supposed to be here to relax and that would relax me...  I glance over at the door.  I look at the clock on the wall.  What time had I come in?  Was it 2:00 p.m.?  I hadn't looked when I sat in the tub.  How much time had I wasted?  Then I got to thinking about the logistics.  Where were the jets?  The good ones, I mean.  Not directly under me.  So I'd have to kind of  have to position myself on one hip to get the kind of massage I was now contemplating.  Well, it wouldn't hurt to just try...

"WHOA!"  Too much!  The 250 HP was too much.  My finger punches the low setting over and over.  Where was the 'just right'?  Where was that setting?  Shouldn't there be a setting with a star beside it or something?  To let you know that if you're going to attempt something wholly inappropriate in a near public location that THIS is the setting to use?  I start giggling.  This was some sort of twisted version of Beat the Clock.  I couldn't relax under these circumstances!  Now I was totally thinking about it too much.  Here I'd already wasted a good 7.5 minutes just trying to figure out the right setting.  I snort again.  By the time I figure it out to get the full benefits - she'll be knocking on the door to let me know it's time to get out of the tub.  I turn off the jets completely.

"Get thee gone temptress.  Away with your bubbly wiles."

Still, it did keep a smile on my face for the rest of the day...

Wait a second... this isn't apple crisp...

We've been watching Pushing Daisies again.  We watched it when it was on Network television in 2007-2009 - loved it so much that we bought the boxed set.  Recently we introduced Rissa to it.  It has become one of Rissa's favourite things ever...

"That, and Sherlock... " Rissa quickly amends.  "Every time the theme song to Sherlock comes on, I get all goosebumply.  But with Pushing Daisies, you just don't know what's going to happen.  Ned and Chuck - they can't ever touch!  But they're in love... what's going to happen?!?"

Pushing Daisies is chock full of quirk, humour, art direction, vintage clothing and... pie.   Watching an episode pretty much always makes us hungry.  Last night's episode was particularly pie-filled.  Half way through we couldn't take it any more.

"That's it!  I NEED pie!" I exclaim.

"ME too," David and Rissa chorus.  "What are we going to do?  Are we going to go buy some pie?"

The thought of leaving the house, even to run the 2 blocks to the grocery store seems impossible.  We are all pajama-fied.  Having to dress in proper pants once more is a painful contemplation.

"APPLE CRISP!"

My intellectual triumphance has us pausing the episode to bound to the kitchen.  A quick inventory ensues.  We have all the ingredients - cue happy dance.

"Can we use the fancy-schmancy apple peeler thingie?" asks Rissa.

"Most definitely."

She lets out a burst of maniacal laughter as the first ribbon of apple peel hits the counter.  David and I put together the ingredients for the crisp: rolled oats, butter, brown sugar and (my valiant attempt to add healthy protein) 1/2 cup of ground pecans.

A half hour later, we have apple crisp.  We each enjoy two full dessert bowls topped with sour cream.  Our pie craving has been met.

This morning, I gleefully realize that we have leftover crisp in the fridge.  I skip to the refrigerator to extract it.

"Dessert for breakfast," I sing.  "DESSERT FOR BREAKFAAAAAAAAAST!!!!"

"Having dessert for breakfast, are you?" queries Rissa.

"I AM!  And it's 'healthy' !!"

"Uh-huh."

"Totally is.  What with all these Omega whatzits in the pecan part of the crisp part." I notice some dropped crisp topping on the counter, in my excitement I must have missed the bowl.  I pop the bowl in the microwave and grab the wee bits of crisp topping on the counter and pop them into my expectant mouth - an unwarmed sweet prelude to my formal dessert breakfast...

Chew... Chew...  This is not quite the texture nor the taste I was expecting.  It tastes less like crisp and more like something that is... off.  As I'm swallowing the pre-vomit saliva - I accidentally swallow whatever I had mistaken for the crisp.

"PAH!  PAH!!!"  I run to the sink for a glass of water.  "Not good.  NOT good."  What was it?  What had been left out there on the counter, right beside the fridge... looking almost exactly the same as the crisp topping.  Kind of brownish - like the ground pecan parts...  Brownish... Beside the fridge...  Where we feed the cats ... gag...  their wet food.

Cat food.  The taste had been cat food.  Expensive, urinary tract health, wet cat food.  The kind of food, that when you crack open the top,  forces a gal to control her gag reflex when the smell hits her nose.  I can now attest that cat food tastes exactly how it smells.  Good thing I had a full bowl of apple crisp to get it off my palate.

Your bra's best-before date...

I'm needing some lift and separation folks.  What with my apparently swelling mammary glands - I'm finding that my standard bras don't seem to be doing the shaping that they ought.  The cups are a little wonky, the band is stretched...

I can't remember the last time I bought a real bra.  You know,  a bra that wasn't supposed to stay on only until David got hard.  A bra that you get on sale at Victoria's Secret or La Senza... the  balconette bras with matching cheekini - the '15 seconds until naked' bras, the 'va-va-va-VOOM' bras, the 'giving your partner the opportunity to motorboat you' bras.  I've got at least a dozen of those bras. 

But those bras have nothing to do with the type of  bras that actually offer true support to your girls.  The bras that Jane Russell and Sophia Loren wore under their clothes.  I need one of those bras.  The t-shirt bras are all well and good, they sure as shit mask those pesky nipples, but they don't really shape the breasts. They do not give me the shape that I really want underneath my clothes.  I want two distinct breasts - both level and pointing straight ahead, with no added back fat.

How much is that gonna run me?  What do I have to lay out in 2014 for that kind of bra?  The last time I bought a chi-chi, properly fitted, read-about-it-in-a-magazine, where the sales clerk comes into the change room with you and gets up close and personal, bra was probably five years ago.  I know it was well over  $100.00.  If I'm spending over $100 on a piece of clothing, I still want to be wearing it in five years' time, don't you?  I don't even know where that bra is any more.  Even if it no longer fits me, I should, at the very  least, have it framed in a shadow box for posterity.  

"That... That is my ESB.  European Shaping Bra.  The girls never looked as good as they did in her.  And to your right, you'll find..."

Gearing up for a bra expedition is akin to going to war.   Nobody ever re-measures before they go.  You can get the gals as Victoria's Secret (all touted as bra experts) to wrap you in their measuring tape, but they will never be as good as that little old Italian woman who's been in the bra industry for 50 years and who can look at your tatas and instantly know that you are not the D cup you thought, but instead an F.  "NO!  No, you don't want that!  You want this!"  And then she holds out something so un-pleasing to the eye, so industrial in style that you could be filming a niche-market porn film.  But you are terrified of displeasing Tia Rosa, so you slink into the changing room and put it on...  It still looks awful.  "Put on your top!!" she orders.  Cowed, you do.

You come out... your girls are... perfect.  They are up and out - when you turn, the bra's band hasn't dissected your back fat into above and below... an angels' chorus sounds, a divine light envelopes you... And all you have to do to achieve this, is to throw everything you think you know about your sizing out the window and not be defined by the number you thought you were.  Does it fit?  Do you have two equally sized, upright breasts?  Then you're good to go.  It doesn't matter if five years ago you were a 34 DD.  Now you are a 38 C, or a 42 F - or whatever the number and letters are - if you're wearing the right size, I can guaran-freaking-tee you that you'll feel better about yourself.    From my mouth to Tia Rosa's ears... 

Mad Cats R Us

We turn them crazy...  our cats.  They start off normal, but somehow along the way, they lose their little cat  minds.  After a move, or the introduction of new kittens - they invariably go off their nut.

Minuit went mental when we went to live in New York for 6 months.  She had been fine until then.  We'd housed her when she was about 16 weeks, in that gawky, teenager stage of kitten.  She was snuggly and playful and svelte - until we went to New York.  She didn't seem to mind the trip down.  Her innate curiosity came out.  She didn't hide.  She sat either on our laps or on the stack of pillows beside Rissa in the backseat...  She chirrupped and purred contentedly.

The minute we opened the door of the apartment in New York, Minuit had a mental breakdown.  She disappeared for a week - the only proof  of a cat residing with us was a used litter box.  She didn't eat.  She would run from newcomers - skittered past David as if he was the Great White Cat-Eater - so fabled in cat mythology.  By the time we left New York - our svelte little kitten had morphed into a jittery mass of feline pulchritude.

Minuit remains terrified of David, even though, during this last move, he was the one to sit on the bottom cellar stair for quarter of an hour stretches to coax her to eat.  He was the one to cuddle her into his arms and carry her upstairs into our bedroom.  He was the one who put the electric blanket into the cellar, because he worried that she'd catch a chill.  If David so much as takes a breath near her while she's eating, Minuit high-tails it back upstairs under our bed.  Which is kind of hard for her now, seeing as her back end doesn't have full mobility since her spontaneous paralysis during the move in March.

"Can you grab the cutlery, hon?"

"I can't.  Minuit's eating."  David stands stock-still in the middle of the room, barely breathing.

When David is in the 'office' (loosely named - we can't fit a desk chair remotely close to the desk area), it takes Minuit a full 5 minutes to make her way past him.

Her head appears at the top of the stairs.  She ceases all movement when she spots him.  Impossibly balanced on her weak back legs - methinks it's through sheer force of will - because she has to sit side-saddle to eat now.  One paw moves imperceptibly, then the next.   Eyes wide, terror-filled, glued to the monster that stands feet away from her.  She hugs the wall until she is within inches of him and then careens past at Mach 10, chased, she is certain, by the  Hounds of Hell.

Steve, started talking to himself in the new house.  He prowls and yowls.  He's jonesing for the cellar.  Ever since we stopped letting the cats downstairs,  he now wanders the main floor crying to himself.  Rolling on the floors and wallowing in his despair before then sitting at the cellar egress door bawling.

"Why?  Why won't you let me down there?  WHY?!?  WHY?!?  You hate me, is that it?  You despise my very being... WHY?!?"

 I don't know what was so damned exciting about that damp, dank cellar - but it's the only place that Steve wants to be now.

And Lola?  Lola has started licking her nether regions bald since we moved here. 

That is NOT a white patch on her stomach.
It's where she is now bald. 

(It must be an after-the-move thing, because we had another cat, Bardolph, who licked himself bald from the waist down when we moved to our last house.)  She has also because an expert in cat parkour.  She likes to demonstrate her abilities in this area between the hours of midnight and 5:00 a.m.  She bounces off walls, bounds across our bed - only our bed, mind you - emitting blood curdling cat sounds.  She'll jump on my pillow and then bound from there to my feet. 

This house is 1/2 the size of our last one and yet she manages to get lost in it.  We'll be upstairs in bed and hear her wailing in the night.

"Lola!  LOLA!!!  We're up here!!"

"Prrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwl?"

"Up here dopey!"

"Prrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwl?

At which point I usually leave the bed to stand at the top of the stairs "Puss-pussing" until she sticks her head around the corner of the bottom of the stairs. 

"Come on you dope.  It's bedtime..."

That's when Lola usually tears by me and bounds across the bed, using David's stomach as a trampoline.  We then shoo all three cats out of our bedroom, but that only works to a point, because our bedroom is Minuit's safe haven and at 5:00 a.m. she's the one strong-pawing the door.  Putting her shoulder into it. 

Thud.  Thud.  Thud.  "Please let me in.  Please, please PLEASE, let me in!!!  LET ME IN!   LET ME IN!!!  LET ME THE HELL IN!!!"

So, if you're finding that your cat is just a little too sane for you?  Send it our way - we'll set you up.

Game of Thrones could give a gal a complex

Breasts.  Oh, the breasts on  Game of Thrones... They are everywhere.  You can't possibly miss them.   People have been making graphs about the boobs per episode in the show.  They are the pertest, highest, smallest areola'd breasts I've ever seen.  The Red Priestess Melisandre?  SPOILER ALERT Has areolas the size of  dimes.  I mean sure, she's probably cold, most of the time when you're seeing her breasts she's in a bath, or a cool breeze (or at least the breeze from off-camera fans), so it's understandable that her nipples get all tightened, but...  Milisandre's nipples look to be the size of pencil erasers - albeit raspberry-tipped in colour.

If a gal is auditioning for Game of Thrones, is that just a part of the process?  "Great audition!  Loved your take on that scene, beautiful range...  Now if you could just do that scene again naked..."   Quick question: Where are the real boobs?  It has become clear to me that Game of Thrones must be cast entirely of women who have never breast fed a child.

Hate to break it to the Game of Thrones viewers, but womanly areolas are not the size of dimes.  My areolas?  (Please excuse me while I grab the ruler.)  Holy crap!  That can't be right.  They are three inches across!  Seriously?  Let me just measure again...  yep, still three inches.  Now that's at a dead stand-still with no cool breeze or arousal to erect those nipples, and I am a D cup, but I don't think that I'm alone in sporting a pair of ta-tas with areolas larger than a silver dollar. 

I know that the titillation factor on the show is out for a certain demographic, but people aren't just watching for the gratuitous soft porn.  Right... RIGHT???  It's giving viewers a totally unrealistic idea of what to expect from your average free-range breast. The same way that porn makes dudes think that you can have a triple E cup size that doesn't sag.  The producers are really doing a disservice to viewers everywhere by not throwing in a couple of pendulous breasts with dollar-pancake-sized areolas.

And while we're at it, how about some equal full-frontal for the dudes on the show?  You can't possibly tell me that boobs are less a sexual characteristic than the penis.  I mean they're right there - out in front - TA-DA!  Yes they're meant to breast feed our young, but that's not the first thing that goes through a person's head when they see them. "Hey look at those great lactation glands..."  is not tripping off the tongues of viewers.  Sure, the occasional male ass gets thrown in, but it's never for long and you never get the same fondling of a male ass that you get of the female form.

EQUAL FONDLING!
REAL BOOBS!
THROW IN A PENIS NOW AND AGAIN!

I'll have to work on the chant, but you get my drift.