Condoms +

"He may only touch your boobs if he is doing it with two separate Swiffers held from the length of their poles."

My daughter is now of an age where there's a real possibility that dudes will be touching her boobs.  She has a boyfriend (whom I adore), but he's still a teenaged boy with all the attending testosterone.  He's going to want to touch her boobs.   Hell, I'm her Mom and I want to touch her boobs.  That sounded wrong didn't it?  Oh God, I'm going to turn into that Grandma from Sixteen Candles!  I'm going to be feeling up my granddaughters.  It's just that new boobs are the antithesis of 45 year old, having nursed one's young, boobs.  There's a level of visual fascination there.  Mine haven't been like that in SOOOOO long.

Is it wrong of me to want my daughter to wear a mask that makes her look like Quasimodo?  Convince her to walk with a limp, talk in a terrifying accent?  Just until university. Knowing that she's holding hands?  Totally cool with that.  It's adorable.  I hear that she's being kissed goodbye on the doorstep and I have a moment of commiserative joy, of me going "Awwwwwwww."  Then I remember what it was like to be having those first kisses.  And then I remember what happens when you start to feel tingly.  When there's pressure to let him to second base and then to third and then he wants to slide home...

"You need to tell me when you start getting tingly.  Seriously. 'Cause then you need to be on the pill. Along with the condoms.  You cannot use condoms alone as birth control.  You can't!!!  It has to be Condoms +.  Condoms + spermicidal foam.  Condoms + the patch.  Condoms + an IUD!!!  And if he gets an orgasm, you get one too!!"

I'm facing the battleground folks.  I have a teenaged daughter.  From now until she leaves home, we're standing guard against teen pregnancy. There are those parents who will just forbid sex, or ignore the possibility that their kids will be having it, but I remember what it was like being 16 and feeling tingly.  I remember.  Sex is a biological imperative for boys, and though some parents don't want to admit it, girls too.  It's what we want to do - as a species.  To turn a blind eye to that fact is insane.  You might as well deny climate change.  12-15 years from now I will be ready to be a grandmother.  Until then, I will stand armed with a fireplace poker, ready to disable any sperm provider that wants to knock up my daughter.

I'm not being euphemistic.  It's a promise.

A sucker for snow

I woke up this morning and saw this in my backyard:

Then out the kitchen window, looking east:

And from our front window:

I know that there are naysayers out there, who hate the snow, who grumble and pout at the first sight of it, but I'm not one of them.  I love the first real snowfall.  Second and third snowfalls too.  The sixth and seventh ain't bad either.  I LOVE them.  Waking up to new fallen snow makes me happy. 

You know why?  Because it immediately brings out the 5 year old in me, filled with wonder and awe and the possibility of a snow day. That fresh snow, topping the pines, decorating the junipers... it's a moment of natural perfection.   White and clean - looking like a real-life Christmas card just from frozen precipitation. It makes me want to grab a toboggan and rush to the Catholic high school's track and giggle and shriek my way down to the bottom of the hills that surround it.  Let me have that.  Let me enjoy the moment before the +1 this afternoon turns the beautiful white into slushy grey and brown and has me yelling at family members to make sure to clean their feet off outside.

Carpe freaking nix folks - it's Canada, we're Canadians and winter is here!

Bankrupted by the Bulk Barn

They all seem so innocent.  Those plexi-glassed bins, with their silver scoops.  The aisle with its spices and herbs - the colourful cake sprinkles.  The plastic bags with their attending labelling closures.   The cute little golf pencils, to label the afore-mentioned closures.  A little of this, a little of that...

"Ooooooh.... plantain chips!  I LOVE plantain chips.  Aztec hot chocolate?  That's a must-have!"

Then you get to the cash and you find out that the 18 small items in your shopping basket, which don't even fill half the basket, total (attending ominous music) ...

$89.21  

"I'm sorry?  The total is WHAT?!?  Is the coloured sugar actually coloured cocaine??  This is less than ONE bag of food!!  $89.21?!?"

When you finally have that receipt in your hands, you are a crazy person.  You are the wife of a suspected philandering husband.  Your eyes flash over the totals.  Is this really stevia sweetener or is it diamond dust? What's that charge??  I just spent $6.78 for a scant cup and a half of white chocolate chips?!?

You've got to know your shit at the Bulk Barn.  The gluten free section??  HAH!  Gluten-free all purpose flour, pre-mixed, is 83¢  per 100 grams.  If you buy the individual ingredients separately and just mix it together at home?  32¢  per 100 grams.  And yet, it's still a billion times more expensive than regular flour.

And then add to that, the emergency mid-afternoon sugar-crash snacks that you buy, which, if you could just eat a chocolate bar instead, you could grab at the freaking Dollarama, and you'd spend less than 5 dollars on a week's worth of mid-day sustenance to stabilize your wayward blood sugar.  But no, you're at the Bulk Barn with their chrome impulse-buy shelves at the front cash. Those chrome shelves filled with Lara Bars and Luna bars and everything else that's so healthful and fucking pretentious... gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soy free, non GMO, vegan, kosher... and they cost between $1.79 and a gazillion dollars per bar, but sweet glucose index, you're eating healthy.

I come back from the Bulk Barn and I have to shift funds from one bank account to another to cover the impending shortage.  No seriously.  Sunday after I was at Bulk Barn - I had to move money around.  On the plus side?  I do have miniature muffin wrappers with adorable gingerbread men on them sure to elicit "Aren't they adorable?" murmurs at our holiday tea this year.

Chihuahua in my pants

Friday night.  Bedtime.  Rissa wriggles spasmodically under her blankets.

"I've got something in my pants!"

Sigh.  "What do you have in your pants?"

"A sliver or something!"

"A sliver?  How can you have a sliver?"

"I don't know, maybe from the dance studio."

Stalling.  She is stalling the bedtime process.

"Just ignore it."

"Ignore it?!?  ... IGNORE it?!?  If I had a Chihuahua in my pants would you tell me to just IGNORE it?  Would you tell me to worry about it in the morning?!?"

"WHAT?"

"Seriously, what if it was a... cannibalistic Chihuahua...?"

"WHAT?"

"If it was a cannibalistic Chihuahua...  and there was... was...  say a Golden Retriever... NO!  A GREAT DANE down there too..."

"You're telling me that there is now a Chihuahua and a Golden Retriever AND a Great Dane in your pants?"

"No, only a cannibalistic Chihuahua and a Great Dane - I needed complete opposite dogs to make an example.  Plus, after I said the word 'cannibalistic' I realized that the chihuahua couldn't be attacking me, I had to have another dog down there for it to attack."

"So you have a Chihuahua and a Great Dane in your pants?"

She then rolls her eyes at me.  "Of course not, but if I DID, you would just want me not to worry about them in my pants?"

Face palm.

In lieu of writing...

I am posting this... and so usher in the beginning of the holiday season...   Merry Christmas!

(Who knew that Kmart had it in 'em?)

My husband's so mean...

"Just rip it out!!  Please," I begged.

"Oh, love, I can't," said David.

"Yes, yes, you can!  Just take a spoon, or your thumb, or a FREAKING NAIL FILE, and pop out my eye.  Scramble it if you have to, but get it out!!!  Any of those will hurt less than the invisible railroad spike that is presently stabbing through my eye socket."

"I can't do that.  But I can get you a cold pack to put on your neck.  Did you take your drugs?"

"I took my drugs," I whimpered, pushing the heel of my hand into the cavity below my right eyebrow, desperately trying to remove the pressure.  "I took as many drugs as I can without damaging my liver.  They haven't kicked in yet.  Why haven't they kicked in yet??  Could you just knock me out please?  Just coldcock me upside the head and..."

"I'm not going to knock you out," David, holding my hand under the blankets.

"How about sawing my head off?  That'd do it..."

"Nope, not going to happen."

"WHY NOT?!?"

"Because I like your head.  And I like your eye.  Sure, you'd rock an eye patch for a while, but talking to one-eyed pirate version of you would get old pretty fast."  He gently squeezed my hand as I quietly sobbed.

Trepanation, by Herbert List 1944

"How about you drill a hole, just a small hole, in my head and we put in a wee pressure valve thingie??  You know, bring back the ancient art of trepanation," I suggested in a sultry tone, but I couldn't be too flirty with this appeal on account of the fact that I couldn't even open my eyes, because even the light from the night light was too bright, and my seduction really comes from my eyes.  And my boobs.  I arched my back a bit, hoping that the boobs might do the job on their own.

"No."

"You know how they have tornado sirens?  Maybe they could develop an early-warning system for barometric pressure shifts.  Like 20 minutes before it happens, the weather service could send out emergency emails to all those migraine sufferers who want to kill themselves when it shifts from extreme high pressure to extreme low pressure.  Then we could all dope ourselves up with our maximum drug dosage, before the pain has us suicidal.  Can we start a petition for that?"

"That, I will do for you."

And good morning to you...

Ggggggggggrowl...  grumble... grumble... grumble...  "Stupid yoga pants!  Stupid bra! My boobs don't belong in a bra yet!"  grumble... grumble... grumble...

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.  "Stupid stairs."

Trip. Slip.  "Stupid cat toy!"

grumble... grumble... grumble... "Stupid morning."

"Still sleepy, huh?"  Rissa comes over, enveloping me in a purple terry cloth hug.

grumble... grumble... grumble...  "Not awake yet..."

"You need a warm beverage," David says.  "The kettle's already on."

sigh.  whimper.  "Stupid kettle...  Sorry.  I'm tired."

"Yes you are."  Rissa pats me on the arm.

Collapse.

"Need to be on the floor, huh?"

"Yes."

"Comfy down there?"

"No... it's cold."  grumble... grumble... grumble...

David helps me up.  "Sit."

"I don't want to."

"Fine, don't sit.  Rissa, do you want 1/2 a banana?"

whimper...  tears... 

"Do you want 1/2 a banana?"

"Yes.  But then I'd be taking food out of my own child's moooouuuuth!"  Bigger tears.

"Okay.  You sit.  Here is a banana.  You going to be good to go in five minutes?"

sniffle... sniffle... "I don't want to go outside."

"I'll drive.  You just have to drive back.  You can do that right?  You'll be awake by then?"

"I DON'T KNOOOOOOW!!!"

David and Rissa share a commiserative look.

"I'M A BABY BEAR!!!! " grumble... grumble... grumble...

"Yes you are."  Pat. Pat. Pat.

"My eyebrows don't work."

"No, they haven't woken up yet either."

"I haven't even peed yet!'

"Well, you'd better go do that then."

***

Washing my hands... sniff... sniff... sniff... "This is disproportionate emotional response."

"Yes it is.  Come on." David hands me my decaf.  "This might help.  I'll drive.  You can even lie back and sleep for the 10 minutes."

***

whinge... whinge... whinge... "I can't lie back AND drink coffee!  Now I have coffee all over my coat..."

"You weren't supposed to be drinking the coffee, you were supposed to be sleeping."

"Which is it?? Do you want me to be awake enough to drive back or do you want me COMATOSE?!?  Sorry... sorry..."  tears

This is me, when woken in the middle of a sleep cycle and then being forced to drive.  I apparently need a sign: DISTURB AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Hot flashes and flatulence.

I fell off the wagon last week - again.  I answered the siren call of caffeine and gluten. We've got one of those single serve Keurig coffee machines at the office and I'm always jealous because there are all these snazzy, olfactorily orgasmic caffeinated flavours, wafting their way through the office air.  Flavours that people who can drink caffeine willy-nilly, carry around in their mugs, making disgusting yummy noises.

I caved.  Twice.  The Hazelnut Cappuccino and the Southern Pecan seduced me.  I'm a whore for sweet coffees.  I freely admit it.  Perhaps others will learn from my mistakes. I dropped my loonies in the peanut butter jar that we use as a "CONTRIBUTE TO THE COFFEE FUND" receptacle and picked up the caffeine crack pipe.  Plus I might have had a french vanilla latte from Tim Hortons.  Then, oh DEAR GOD, I had a chocolate mint black tea at home, because my body was now jonesing for the caffeine. 

So there was all this caffeine RAGING through my blood stream, bouncing around like a hamster in dryer, that had to come out.  How does it exit my body?  Through my torso.  Hot flashes that could power the eastern seaboard.  I was waking up stinking of sweat because I'd been flashing all through the night.  My usually sweet-smelling arm pits reeked of wrestler...  from sleeping.  Pajamas on, pajamas off.  Hair matted to my skull from head sweat.  David woke up one morning and let out a panicked shriek until he realized it was actually me in bed with him.

Then there was the gluten.  If you're going to fall off the wagon, you might as well just throw yourself under the wheels and allow your severed body to land in the ditch, right?  We had an office meeting (which is where the first hit of caffeine came in, the sinful hazelnut cappuccino).  Timbits were at the meeting.  Timbits are from the Devil.  I never have them because the combined gluten and sugar puts me into a near sugar coma.  I stopped counting at 10.  And then, later in the week, when we had an off-site meeting, with more Timbits, I had another... we'll call it 10.  And I had pizza that night.  I ate my thin-crust pizza, moaning my way through the crusts.  And then I ate David's crusts, from his rising-crust pizza, dipping them in ranch dressing, synapses in my brain over-firing from the delicious gluten.  The flatulence happened shortly thereafter and was SPECTACULAR.  From the reek of me, you'd have thought that I'd eaten a small cow who'd been fed a steady diet of garlic for its short life.

Nice girl, shame about the flatulence.

So this week I am starting over.  No caffeine - no matter how good it smells.  Decaf all the way.  Wait!  I can get flavour shots!  I could line up bottles and bottles of flavour shots by my desk and turn my sad decaf into giddy, flavourful, pseudo-sex drinks!  Plus having those bottles would be incredibly festive, you know since we're in the holiday season and all.  And I picked up a gluten-free pizza crust at the No-Frills on Saturday so we're set there.  When life hands you flatulence...

THIS is R-rated?!?

WARNING - THIS POST IS RATED R FOR LANGUAGE.

Rissa saw her first R rated film when she was probably 10.  Yep, we were those parents.  The movie was Love Actually.  You know the one... Richard Curtis's quintessential feel-good Christmas film?  Probably one of the sweetest holiday movies ever?  The one where even the most manly of men will be crying when the kid jumps into Liam Neeson's arms?  That one.  It was rated 14A in Canada and rated R in the States for language, sexual situations and nudity.   And yes, Bill Nighy had some colourful language and there were some comical positioning of nearly nude bodies as body doubles, but it was pretty freaking tame.

Richard Curtis's latest film, About Time, also got an R-rating in the States.  We'd been looking up reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, found out it was rated R and suddenly we felt we had to develop a strategy for sneaking Rissa in.  Turns out we didn't have to worry for two reasons: 1) the movie is rated 14A in Canada and Rissa looks like she's 18 already, and 2)  in researching the MPAA rating system, we realized that David and I can take Rissa into any R rated movie we want to because we are, in fact, her parents/guardians.  Did you know that?  We could take her to see the next graphic slasher film - in the theatre - WE'RE NOT GOING TO, but we could.   

         MPAA Ratings

• Rated G: General Audiences – All Ages Admitted.
• Rated PG: Parental Guidance Suggested – Some Material May Not be Suitable for Children.
• Rated PG-13: Parents Strongly Cautioned – Some Material May be Inappropriate for Children Under 13.
• Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian.
• Rated NC-17: No Children Under 17 Admitted.
  
  Canadian Motion Picture Ratings

• G - General Audience - Suitable for all ages.
• PG - Parental Guidance - Parental guidance advised. There is no age restriction but some material may not be suitable for all children.
• 14A - 14 Accompaniment - Persons under 14 years of age must be accompanied by an adult.
• 18A - 18 Accompaniment - Persons under 18 years of age must be accompanied by an adult. In the Maritimes & Manitoba, children under the age of 14 are prohibited from viewing the film.
• R - Restricted - Admittance restricted to people 18 years of age or older.

After viewing About Time, we were mystified as to what could garner an R rating for the film.  No gun violence.  Yeah, there'd been some language, but David and I found it all pretty mild.  In the ratings systems in both Canada and the US apparently you get ONE FREE FUCK in the script without having to up your ratings.

According to the MPAA "A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context.4 or more utterances of 'hard language' gets you an automatic R rating."  Which I'm thinking means that if you're using fuck as an adjective and not sexually, you can get 4 before you get your R rating.  But if you say you want to fuck someone then it's automatically an R rating.  Because fucking, folks, we all know is bad.

As to the language in the film... There were a few haphazard fucks in the script, but I double checked with Rissa and apparently the fucks really start flying in the school yard at around the age of 11, so the brief use of language of its ilk in the film for our 13 year old daughter doesn't freak me out because she will literally hear worse at school.  There wasn't any nudity in the film apart from arty photographic shots of Kate Moss at a gallery in the film.  We figured that the rating had to come down to the joking mention of  oral sex and actually uttering the word 'cunnilingus.' So  About Time gets its R rating in the States for alluding to pleasing a woman orally and using technical language to describe that act... in a joke.  Although I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, Rob Ford crassly mentioned having "more than enough to eat at home" and the gasps could be heard around the world.

And yet... AND YET... violence in PG13 movies in the States has been ramping up and up and up for decades, but that's okay.  God no, don't even allude to consensual sex, but showing rampant gun violence?  Not a problem.  Snapping people's necks?  Shooting them?  Completely fine.  ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!? They just did this study that's catching a lot of air time this week: GUN VIOLENCE TRENDS IN MOVIES.  Well worth a read.  And perhaps a re-examination of the ratings system, and how 'bout while we're at it,  a re-examination of what really is okay for our kids to be exposed to in film?  Cause here's the thing: I would love, love to share the Kill Bill films with Rissa for their strong portrayal of women and the brilliant visual stylization of Tarantino's film-making, but Rissa will not see those until she's at least 16 because of the extreme violence in them.  Not the language.  I really don't give two fucks about the language - the language isn't going to hurt her, isn't going to scar her.  Violent images, however, just might.  She's my kid, I've got to to look out for her.

I've been HIT!!!

BANG! 

Even on this windy, windy November's day, the sound ricocheted off buildings.

"What the hell was that?" David asked.

I looked around wildly.  "I don't know, I don't know!"  My shoulder ached a bit.

"Are you okay?  Were you hit?"  David  gave me the once over, checking for blood.

"I think maybe...  I don't know what it... what the... WHAT THE?!?"  There, on my right shoulder was the bullet.  Green, about 2 inches long by 1/2 inch wide. Shot from the ass of a Canada Goose, still wending its navigationally-challenged way north-west, hundreds of feet above me.  The winged beast was honking in elation  "SUCKER!  SUCKER! SUCKER!!"

"Oh God!  GOD!  I've been hit!  I've been HIT!!! It was a fly-by!"  I felt faint, but I didn't want to move my head too much in case I got goose shit in my eye.

"Hold on, hold on," David said.  "You're okay... it's okay."  Chivalrously, he reached down and grabbed some freshly fallen maple leaves, using them to wipe the goosey bomb off me.  The turd actually made a thumping noise when it hit the ground.  We both jumped back, examining it.

"That's some shit."

"Yep."

"That's not like a little seagull turd."

"Nope."

"They say that getting bird poop on you is good luck."

"I'm feeling pretty lucky that it didn't hit me in the head.  I'd be dead now."

"TURD TERMINAL VELOCITY."

"Har-dee-freaking-har..."

"Seriously though, you're okay?"  He was looking me over, all concerned for my well-being.

"Yes, yes  I'm... HOLY FUCK!!!   MOTHER OF... MY EYE!"  In the wind, a maple leaf had apparently decided to commit hari kari on my face.

"Was that a leaf?"

"YES.  STEM. DIRECTLY IN MY EYE. IS THERE BLOOD?  IS THE EYE STILL IN ITS SOCKET?"

For the rest of the walk I was like an informant, waiting to be taken out.  Things always come in threes... That third thing was there, lying in wait... It had to be coming...

Oh yeah, I'm HIP... *

Oh yeah, I'm on the cutting edge...

On my way home yesterday, it became apparent that I could never be one of those kids who wears his pants half-way down his ass.  As I was cutting through the Via Rail parking lot, I could feel the waistband of my tights begin to give.  I've had these tights for probably a decade - it's understandable that they might be giving up the ghost.

By the time I was over the tracks making my way down George Street, the crotch of my tights had descended by at least 3 inches - I could feel the air gap under my hooha getting wider... and wider.  Another half a block and I could now feel my underwear, in apparent solidarity, beginning to give up its tenacious hold on my hips and slide downward.  My skirt was a scant inch below my coat and even though I tried my best to surreptitiously hitch up the tights on my upper thighs, I knew I couldn't get them up high enough without showing my wares to the public.  Fuck it!  I thought, glancing around the vacant street, and hiked everything up.  There!  Good to go.  Only 5 blocks and I'd be home.

Nope, the tights were apparently dead.  The closer I came to the main road and actual people, the more my waistband lolled around like a llama in a coma.  I crossed the next intersection and could feel air, ice cold Canadian air, on my ass crack... and then seconds later, as my underwear fell, I could feel that same ice cold Canadian air, underneath the shelf of my ass.  I was now striding like a bow-legged cowboy, thighs wide apart, praying that the tights and underwear wouldn't get to my knees before I made it home.  Laughing maniacally the entire way - wondering how it is that all those near-pantless kids in high school can stand it.  How do they not just go into hysterics every time they leave the house?  I almost fell 12 times and I was walking 5 blocks.

As soon as I closed my front door, those tights came off.  I held them before me like the Olympic torch and walked majestically towards the kitchen.

"You have served me well opaque black tights.  Thank you for your years of service.  But this, my friend, shall be a one-time anecdote - you shall not betray me again.  Adieu." 

I have to say though, it was pretty invigorating, having -17 degree air whistling through my nethers.  Perhaps on one of those 'hard to wake up' mornings, I just won't wear underwear to work.

*This post used to be entitled, Oh yes, I'm 'GANGSTA'...  It was brought to my attention last week that the word 'gangsta' can have racial overtones.  Please, let me know your thoughts on the 'G' word and whether its common cultural use today causes you offense.

How bad days become brilliant.

Last Saturday we were having a house showing. Our house isn't even on the market, but our former real estate agent will send city folks to see our place every now and again if they want a massive century home that takes 4 hours to clean. Prepping one's house for a showing has to be amongst the things I despise most in life. David always states: "We will not do anything special, the house isn't on the market, they'll just have to cut us some slack."

I just can't. It has to be more than clean, more than just tidy. It has to look pretty. It has to be inviting.  It has to say "Look, aren't I a beautiful home? Wouldn't you want to live here?" I can't 'haphazard' it before a house showing - I CAN'T!  I 'touch-up paint' the freaking kitchen cupboards, I fold my visible sweaters in the walk-in closet, if putting a sprig of parsley in the kitty litter was a sign of clean kitty litter, I'd do that. Having a house showing stresses me the fuck out.

Which is why, when I was tidying our bedroom and noticed that David's t-shirt drawer in the dresser wouldn't close, it made me mental. With slumping shoulders I pulled the drawer out to look inside the dresser to see if there were internal reasons why the sucker wouldn't close.  I looked at the back of the drawer and saw that the floral drawer liner paper that I'd placed in it years ago was askew and was bunching out the back of the drawer.  I tugged on it once and the freaking drawer fell apart on me!  Its antique bottom fell completely out. Panicking, I clutched the drawer's contents to my chest. Thousands of t-shirts against my bosom with no fucking clue as to how to just shove them back into the drawer and then cram said drawer in the dresser and pretend that nothing had happened, because stupid-ass strangers were going to be coming to our house in mere fucking minutes!! Rage welled within me; angry tears on the periphery.  I dropped the drawer onto the floor and began adjusting those fucking t-shirts.

A glint of something caught my eye. A silver chain. Its appearance caused me to literally catch my breath. There, amidst the well-worn cottons of my spouse, was part of my broken heart. A coloured glass pendant on a chain, my most treasured gift from my late friend Shannon. Strike that. Not 'late.'  Dead.  Shannon is dead and although she was often 'late' in life (a fact she, herself, would freely admit), calling her 'late' in death seems to homogenize her dying.  Sugar-coating it doesn't help, she is dead.  Missing her is a part of my life.

I had been searching for the pendant for months when I had assumed our cat Lola had stolen it (I think I might have to report my cat to Interpol). Lola must have pushed it off the dresser into the slightly open drawer beneath. The pendant's reappearance, at any time would have been a happy discovery, but at this particular moment, it was miraculous. My impending tears of rage did a complete 180 and I found myself laughing and crying in complete and utter joy.  I fastened that chain around my neck, feeling the weight of the pendant against my chest, and recognizing that a piece of my heart, missing for months, was now once again present.

My craptastic morning turned ecstatic in an instant. Me... so stressed and anal about tidying up the house, so worried about shit that nobody cares about... If I hadn't cared, that pendant would still be in that drawer, lying in wait until we eventually moved from this house and David had to finally go through those t-shirts. And although I would have greeted his discovery of the pendant, probably years from now, with spectacular joy, I'm glad that I found it myself, and I'm glad that I found it in juxtaposition of doing stupid-ass tidying up. Little things can and do mean a lot. I have definitive proof.

I have the PERFECT idea for Dragon's Den!

WARNING: THERE IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION IN THIS POST.

Winter in Canada.  Cold, right?  In some places VERY COLD.  We're not even into ACTUAL winter yet and I can see the effects on my poor spouse.  We went for a walk on Friday night as the sun was going down and David was unprepared.  After our invigorating half hour walk we decided we needed an emergency warm-up bath.

So here's the thing... A guy's penis is pretty much his very own fleshy thermometer.  You guys out there know what I'm talking about.  You've all jumped into a cold lake at one point in your life and felt the penile effects (she types with knowing raised eyebrows) on what I'm sure is a 'better-than-average-sized' male organ.  A dude's testicles basically try to climb up into his pelvis for safety.  Really, the human penis's external nature is a BIG design flaw.  One hoof to the sack and you're down.  I'm not sure, evolutionarily speaking, why having it all out there in the open was a good thing.  But I digress...

Friday night.  We get home from our walk.  We've filled up the tub with near-scalding water.  (According to David, I have asbestos skin and what could boil a regular person, feels tepid to me.)  Teeth chattering, we've stripped off our clothes.  Poor David was blue.  Down there.

"Oh honey..." I commiserate.

He glanced down.  "I'm COLD!  I'm very cold."

"I know love."  I give him a salacious wink.  "Oh, I know that you're not in top form right now."  I immersed myself in the water.

Unwilling to boil his boys, David sat on the edge of the tub and dipped his feet in. The poor guy was shivering badly.  So I did what any helpful spouse would do, I warmed up my hands in the hot water and cupped them around his uh... manly bits.  The sound that David let out was a cross between eating the best chocolate in the world and well, a girl cupping her warm hands around one's manly bits.  He was happy.  His biology loosened everything up and he gave me a "SO THERE" glance with waggled eybrows.

"Told you I was just cold."

And that, my friends, is when I came up with the idea for the  CockMitt ® (patent pending).  Some variation on a sport cup with a heated malleable memory-foam-esque lining that would form to a man's very personal dimensions and ensure that he stayed warm in the winter months.  The PERFECT Christmas gift.  I'm already working on exterior cup options:

Ambushed in the change room!

By my own ass, no less.  It's the 3-way mirror's fault.  Feeling great about myself - finding that cute perfect-for-me dress - that I actually have the money in hand to pay for - I sashay my ass into the change room.  I cast off my clothes and as I'm turning around, I catch a glimpse of something in that 3-way mirror.

I was wearing a thong on account of the fact that the particular jeans I'd worn were tightish and I didn't want panty  lines.  This was not a sexy thong - I still wear the maternity thongs that have that nice wide waist-band - even though the last time I was pregant was almost 9 years ago.  They are fashioned from man-made fibres - they will survive the APOCALYPSE as long as I continue to wash them.  Which I do and have been ever since I bought the suckers.  I know how important it is to be wearing clean underwear...  Sorry, I got distracted by the thong...  The glimpse that I caught in the mirror was my bruised ass!  On either side of the thong bit that goes between your cheeks, I had deep blue bruises on my ass.  What the hell had I done to myself?  How could my ass be bruised? How does one even DO that?!?

I reach down to see if the bruises actually hurt and they are not actually bruises... it's ass lint.  I have blue ass lint from my jeans.  AND as if that wasn't depressing enough, as I haphazardly glance up, I can also see my back in the mirror.  Bulgy-bulgy-back-bulges around my bra.  Above it and below - made worse because I'm contorting my head around to view the ass lint damage.  I spin back to face front, but I'm in a 3-way mirror - and although I can no longer be horrified by the ass lint I can still see on both my right and left, bulgy-bulgy-back-bulges.   I have to jump to the side, out of the mirror's view and flatten myself against the wall NOT to see them. In the blind spot of the change room, I  struggle into that perfect-for-me dress.  I reach out with one leg and unfold the mirror's right side - then I do the same to the left side so there is now one large flat mirror in front of me.  I jump in front of the mirror - giving a heroic "HAH!"  And damn, don't I look fantastic in that dress! 

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?