He was probably dead by the end of the movie.

It was my favourite day.  MOVIE BINGE DAY.  It's right up there with Christmas Holidays with family and Front Row tickets to Violent Femmes.  MOVIE BINGE DAY has to include at least three, if not four movies.  (Just seeing two isn't nearly decadent enough.)  David's even created an app so that you can plan your day, figuring out the best way to see as many movies as possible while optimizing travel times between different locations and possible healthy food breaks. 

We were on movie three. As I was waiting for Rissa and David to come out of the bathroom, I spotted this guy at the edible petroleum product dispenser in the lobby.  I was on the other side of the lobby.  For some reason, I started counting when he began adding the "butter" to his small popcorn.  I counted to 32.  I wasn't 1-mississippi-ing it, but pretty close.  He held his finger down on the button for a count of 32.  I'm just guessing here, but I figure that you probably get at least 1 tbsp of topping per second.  That would be 32 tablespoons of topping on his small popcorn.  2 cups.  He put 2 CUPS of topping onto his small popcorn.  I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

I love movie theatre popcorn.  I adore it.  The salt, the oil.  LOOOOOOOVE it.  I will monitor my food all day so that I can share a large popcorn with David and Rissa.  It becomes a meal for me.  But when they ask " Would you like butter or topping?" I say "Just a little please..."  and then I watch them with an assassin's eye across the counter, shouting after the third squirt, "THAT'S GOOD THANKS!  THANK YOU!!!"

A small movie theatre popcorn, sans topping is about 400 calories.  With two added cups of topping?  This dude was preparing to ingest close to 4500 calories in his small popcorn.  I would be puking my guts out, or at the very least, becoming very acquainted with the feel of a toilet seat for long periods of time.   How many napkins would you need to wipe your hands after ingesting that much topping?  Fats and oils can send your body for a loop.

This one time, David came home from work, looking really green.

"What's the matter, love?" I asked solicitously.

"I was sick.  I had to get off the subway and throw up into a garbage can and then get back on."

"WHAT?  Are you okay?  Do you have a stomach bug?  Food poisoning?"

David couldn't meet my eyes.  "Mumble.... mumble...mumble...mumble..."

"I'm sorry?"

"I ate a few shortbread cookies."

It was becoming clear.  "How many?"

"Maybe 15."

What do you reckon?  1 tbsp of butter in each short bread cookie?  This dude at the movie theatre ate double that amount.  I wouldn't want to be the usher to clean up after that movie.

Trapped in my sports bra

I'm going to have to invest in new sports bras.  More of the kind that do up in the back.  Because, although I can clad myself in one of the pull-over-the-head types, if I very carefully manoeuvre around my damaged shoulder, getting this same sports bra off when it's completely sodden with my post-exercise full-body sweat?  Nearly impossible.

copyrighted to above artist...

It's a couple of months now since I had to start spinning my back-closure brassieres so that I can wear them.  David still needs to help me disrobe at the end of the day, because, by bedtime, my shoulder has said "Fuck It!" and its mobility has vanished.

My preferred sport bra, of which I have a 1/2 dozen, is the pull-over-the-head type that you buy at least one size too small, the type that squooshes your girls near-flat; so that, if you needed to run, like from a tiger or something, you actually could without giving yourself black eyes.  These are the good sports bras.  I feel supported in these bras, I can jump up and down without holding onto my boobs in these bras. Unfortunately, those sports bras, the working ones, if you attempt to get out of them while sweaty, are the equivalent to a spandex, bolero-style, straight jacket.  I remain trapped in its damp clutches until David is around.  Rissa just doesn't have the upper body strength to get me out of the suckers.

At present, I have three crappy, do-up-in-the-back, sports bras.  You know the ones, the ones with no real support for any gal above an A cup. They come on a hanger, in a set of three - originally they were white, but after years of washing they are now a grey dinge.  "This bra comes in white, nude or grey dinge."  Seeing as a frozen shoulder can take up to 24 months to heal, I'm either going to have to buy some more do-up-in-the-back sports bras, shell out some cash for front closure sports bras, or, horrors of horrors, I'm going to have to... hand wash them.  (shudder)

Why not just throw your exercise clothes in the washing machine after each work out, you ask?  Well, in Southern Ontario, unless it's after 7:00 p.m. or on the weekend, you can't just willy-nilly throw loads of laundry in.  They charge you an arm, a leg and 3/4 of your torso for pulling that shit.  I am not a freaking millionaire.  Plus, the idea of running the washing machine with a partial load?  I'm already feeling my mother's hand  smacking me on the back of the head.  "YOU DON'T JUST WASH THREE THINGS IN THE WASHING MACHINE!!!  SOME PEOPLE DON'T EVEN HAVE WATER!!!"

So I'm down to spending money for the convenience of having enough accessible sports bras to last me the full week, or hand washing the three I have in the kitchen sink.  This is the perfect time to tap into my inner 1950s housewife.  I'll make it a game.  I'll put on some of my vintage clothes, tie on an apron and... oh for fuck's sake, I can't tie on an apron, not by myself... wait... wait... I could probably spin it though.  Problem solved!

Sorry, I didn't mean to kill off civilization as we know it...

I was just brushing my teeth.

Brusha, brusha, brusha, brusha...

Tongue a little pasty - better brush that too.  Out comes the tongue!  The toothbrush makes contact...

Brush..... 

If this had been an animated film, you would have seen the bacteria on my tongue hitting the air, not unlike the spores from the kick-ass fungus that almost killed Scully and Mulder way back when.  A puff of self-produced, poisoned, nearly-sulfuric air - exits my mouth.

"Save yourselves!!"

I could imagine the fallout from this stench... covering the room, the 2nd floor of our home, curling down the stairs to escape under the door - out into the world.

This is a Breaking Story from CBC News ...
A small Southern Ontario town has been quarantined after a local woman brushed her tongue.  The woman and 23 residents from her block have all been hospitalized after they succumbed to the bacteria that was released when it was dislodges with a toothbrush.  Although Health Officials are assuring the public that the bacteria has been contained, a steady exit of vehicles can be seen utilizing the nearest 401 exit.  Though the woman and three of the other initial victims remain in critical condition, no deaths have yet to be reported...

"Smell my mouth!!"

Rissa recoils.  "I am NOT smelling your mouth!"

"Oh come on!!  I just want to check something..."

The carpet's not charcoal - it's beige, covered in cat hair...

"Minuit!  Minuit!  For the love of....  Scoot!!  SCOOT!!"

Minuit lies upon our bedroom floor, a vision of feline pulchritude.  She splays every splayable part of her body.  Rolling onto her back, she raises an eyebrow.

"Menh...?"

"Seriously?  I just vacuumed.  How can you produce this much hair in 2 hours?"

"Menh..."

"Plus, I just brushed you this morning."

"Menh..."

"I took a small Siamese worth of cat hair off you."

"Menh..."

David wanted the wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom.  You know, for the cushiness under one's feet,  for the warmth in the winter, for the monochrome colour.  From the instant that carpet went down, Minuit spent her every waking moment rolling on it, leaving cat versions of crime scene outlines all over it.   On her back, with her left leg thrust against the wall and front right paw on her ear.  On her right side, curled into a little ball - but she must have been dreaming because her tail has left a windshield wiper swath of hair behind - sort a cat hair angel on the carpet.   I am this close to shaving her.

You're supposed to live in a house for a year before you make any big changes.  I don't think I'll make it.  Either I will have to devise a vacuum in a backpack that I can wear at all times when I'm in the bedroom, or I will I rip up the wall-to-wall with my bare hands in a fit of psychotic OCD, before manically installing laminate with a small multicoloured - easy to camouflage cat hair - area rug under the bed that doesn't require vacuuming every 12.3 minutes.  Not 100% sure, but I it's just possible that my hormones may have coloured my rationality.  I'm going to pour myself a Scotch and see if it comes back.

When in doubt, add moustache!

"It hurts when I smile," says Rissa, as we're chatting before bed.

She'd mentioned it earlier in the evening.

"The zit?" I ask commiseratively.

"The zit," she confirms - pointing to the right of her nose.  She then does a Vanna White flourish.  She tilts her head to the side and flashes me her best 'fish lips.'

Yep, there it is.  Poor kid.  Day before she starts high school.  For me, it would have been life over.  The wailing and gnashing of teeth would have been EPIC.  I had been very concerned about what other people thought.

"You could always camouflage it," I suggest.

"Balaclava?" she puts forth.

I take a breath to tell her that no one will notice, that everyone else has zits, that the state of 'beside her nose' in consequential in the 'First Day of High School' scheme of things.

"... or a MOUSTACHE.  If it gets bad, I'll just draw a full-on moustache in sharpie.  That'll distract from the zit plus it will give me an air of mystique!"

"Like a little John Waters moustache?"

"NO!" she scoffs.  She then mimes the most elaborate, surpassing Jaime Hyneman, moustache - but hers, of course, would be more well-groomed and waxed to within an inch of its life.

"Definitely the way to go," I agree.

"I'll be a hit with the entire student body..."

"And the teachers..."

"But for the teachers I'll add in this certain je ne sais quoi..."  she raised her eyebrows and looks at me intensely.

"Awesome.   You could throw in your double wink too."

Rissa dislikes the traditional wink, except when Cat Deeley does it.  She therefore created the DOUBLE WINK, which is like a blink, but slightly longer and with much more personality behind it. 

"Oh yeah..."  She demonstrates.  "Okay.  I think I'll be good to go."

Yes, she will.

Music in my vulva...

"OH MY GOD THIS IS SO GOOD!!!  Turn it up!  TURN IT UP!!!"

Muse's Supremacy is playing in the car.  David cranks it.

"Best dirty guitar ever!!!  You know where I feel this?  IN MY VULVA!!!"

"MUMMY!"

"But I do.  Every time those dark notes from that guitar kick in - right there in my..."

"MUMMY!"

"Sorry, but that's where I feel it.  I bet you that Daddy totally feels it in his..."

"You are NOT normal!"

"Actually, I feel the good stuff in my fingertips," David says.  "Like light shooting out of my body."

"See?  Everyone feels music in their bodies! You're a dancer.  You probably feel it all over the place!"

"Well, I don't feel it THERE!"

And then it hits me... This is why those douchey guys drive around town with their UNCE-UNCE-UNCE bass blaring through their car speakers.  They think they're going to attract vulvas.  They think that girls are just going to dive into their open windows, or at the very least - wave them down and beg for a ride. What they don't realize is that UNCE-UNCE-UNCE sound will turn someone off as much as it will turn someone on. Plus, to a gal just walking down the street?  That UNCE-UNCE-UNCE sound, combined with the inevitable hole in the muffler and/or squealing of tires just makes me think that the dude is overcompensating for a really tiny penis.

With Supremacy, it's not just that rough guitar that gets me - when Matthew Bellamy goes into falsetto (freaking falsetto!) just before the chorus?  Say around 2:11?  YOWZA.

Combine that bit with the musical intro for Michael Buble's Cry Me A River? Game over.  Bubbles doesn't even need to sing.  I'm already done.  Alan Chang's arrangement of the strings and bass for the opening 29 seconds has liquefied my lady bits.  By the time that lone guitar strums at the 30 second mark? I need a cigarette.

On second thought... I'd be more than okay if Rissa feels the music in her neck... or not at all.

Peep show on the 401...

Utterly exhausted, I climb into the back seat, voluntarily giving up 'shotgun' to Rissa.

"Really?  I really get to sit in the front?!?"

"Sleepy.  So very, very sleepy."  My mid-afternoon doze is kicking in, in a major way.  Peri-menopause and thyroid disease make for insistent bedfellows.

One pillow is under my head, plus I've added a travel pillow around my neck to counteract any sudden jostling.  Knees folded to my chest as my 5'6" body attempts to utilize every inch of space in the back seat.  Windows are open as we hit the highway, airing out the car before the AC can effectively begin to cool anything.

The open windows are producing quite the breeze.  It fills the car, ruffling clothing.  I can feel it against my...  nether regions?  I glance down.  My skirt, when I am bent into this particular pretzel-shape, doesn't allow for a lot of rear coverage. I'm basically bending over... sideways.  My ass, clad in my cotton cheekinis, is pretty much on show for any car that might pass us.

"Ummmm...  it seems that I am offering a peep show back here."

"Mummy!!"

"Sorry, I can't help it.  I should have worn pants, I guess.  And perhaps visited the esthetician..."  I try to shift to my back, but the geometry of it in our hatchback, combined with the wearing the lap part of the seatbelt makes it difficult.  Eventually, I manage to put my feet against the window, but that just offers a greater view of my under-the-skirt goodies.  In this position, any car to our right could give me a driveby gynecological exam.

"Pillow.  I think I need an extra pillow, you know, for camouflage."

"No worries love," says David.  "We're on two-lane roads for the first hour.  When we hit the 401, I'll just make sure that we stay in the right hand land.  NO problem!"

That's my husband... always looking out for my ass.