The House Hippo...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" from Rissa downstairs.

"What?  What is it?"  I bolt to the top of the stairs.

"This!  JUST. LOOK. AT. THESE. PICTURES!"

"What are you looking at!?!" 

"I signed up for the House Hippo Instagram feed..."

Oh thank God... She hadn't found any of those pictures...

House Hippos AKA Skinny Pigs AKA Hairless Guinea Pigs.  She has been obsessed ever since she discovered them at our local Buskers Fest's Crazy Creatures booth.  It was love at first sight.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  It's SO CUTE!!!"

Even I have to admit that I dig them.  I mean, what's not to love?  They're like naked mole rats but so much cuter.

She devoted several hours one afternoon to finding house hippo names for a pet she will probably not have until she's in university.

Boys	Girls
Cédrique	Aurelia
Ignatius	Helena
Lysander	Hermia
Demitrius	Bambina
Constantine	Celeste
Aloysius	Edna
Wolfgang	Wilhelmina
Remus	Maude
Sirius	Harriet
Bartholomew
Bram
Elwood
Paco
Tom
Inigo (Montoya)

    


















By reading her list of names you can glean pretty much all of her media influences:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Harry Potter, The Incredibles, The Blues Brothers, Love Actually, Studio 60, clowning, cartoons... My favourite: Inigo with (Montoya) in brackets because you know that although she would call it Inigo she would be thinking Montoya in brackets 100% of the time.

Summertime Bitch

Heat and hormones don't mix.  I get mean in the heat.  You know when you can hear yourself losing it?  When vitriolic tones spill from your lips and you don't even want to be around you?   That's me in the dog days of summer.  The rest of the year I do my best to be a kind person.  I open doors.  I use my pleases and thank-yous...  I actually mean them.  When there's a heat wave?  My kindness evaporates and I want to murder fluffy bunnies.

Swollen ankles and feet.  Sweaty shins.  Pressure on my chest.  The urge to weep because of the afore-mentioned...   Crabby, whiny, petulant - and that's with me not even voicing 3/4 of the things that I wan to say.

Random person says, "I just love this heat!"    I think, "I would love to see your decapitated, iced head on a platter providing me with the Popsicle that I so badly need right now."

Random person says, "Enjoy it while it's here!  This is Canada..."  I think, "Are you a fucking moron?   Environment Canada has told people to stay indoors so that they'd don't DIE!  This is not a perk!!"

Random person says, "It's shorts and skirt weather!"  I think, "FUCK YOU AND YOUR THIGH GAP!!!  I have literally stopped while walking down a busy sidewalk, grabbed the purse sized medicated Gold Bond powder stashed within my messenger bag, lifted my skirts and powdered my inner thighs IN PUBLIC to stop the rubbed-raw skin from KILLING me."

This may be why David makes me so many cocktails in the summer.

Come the Zombie Apocalypse...

Sitting naked on the side of the bathtub.  Legs out over the edge.  Wet hair dripping into the tub.  Humming "Smoke on the Water" to myself.

David stops on his way to the bedroom.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine."

His eyebrows low on his forehead.  "Why are you sitting there like that?"

"I'm conditioning my hair."

"Oh..."  He turns to leave... "You can't do that in the shower?"

"Oh I can.  I just don't want to waste water.  This is deep conditioning.  I'm doing this for seven minutes.  Come the zombie apocalypse, we're going to have to know how to conserve water.  I'm practicing."

David nods sagely.  "Good plan.  As you were."