Condom Races

"Anything interesting happen in school today?"

"My Mom lost to Your Mom."

I gave her a look.

She sighed, despairing for my ignorance.  "In dodgeball today.  We lost."

Ah yes.  Rissa was in a Dodgeball tournament.  She and her friends were split between two teams.  Rissa's team was "My Mom"  and the other team was "Your Mom."  These names were chosen for the sole purpose of how they would sound when announced by the principal over the PA system.

"Today in dodgeball, we have My Mom vs Your Mom." 

"Right.  I'm with you now.  So you were on which team?"

"I was on My Mom."

"And who was on Your Mom?"

"Jacob and Liam"

Mental head shake.  "And My Mom lost?" This was turning into a variation of Who's on First.

"Sadly yes.  We were hoping that we would make it to the finals and that way the principal would have had to announce it all again."

David chimed in.  "Maybe next year you could have new teams.  My Mom's Meatloaf vs Your Mom's Mac & Cheese."

I roll my eyes at him.  "Anything else interesting?"

"In health we had condom races."

I do my best to imagine what that could entail.  "Were you blowing them up and then letting them loose in the classroom?  Passing them like a HOT POTATO game?"

"Let her finish..." David says.  In my mind I'm thinking BANANAS!!!!!

"We had bananas."

"HAH!"

David shoots me a disparaging look.

"There were four to a team." 

Now I was confused.  "Four to a team?"

"Whichever team of four who put all their condoms on the banana first won."

"You were putting four condoms on a banana?"

"Yes."

"One on top of the other?"

"Yes."

David shrugged. "Better safe than sorry."

Jet Engine Torso

Is it hot in here?

I have solved the impending energy crisis!  It's so simple.  We hook up all the women in the world who are having hot flashes... into a power grid.  Women 'of a certain age' giving off their heat - the combined estrus  would produce more energy than the SUN.  As long as there are women enduring peri-menopause - we will have a never-ending energy supply!

Not quite sure of the logistics yet... the way the machines stole power from humans in The Matrix kind of wigs me out - although frankly, if I kept my hair long, the outlet thingie at the base of the skull might be hidden.

Or... no, wait!  WAIT!!  The outlet thingie could be a feature!  You know - embellished with Swarovski crystals and other great shit.  It'd work like Mary Kay!! But instead of a pink Cadillac for so many sales - the more heat a flashing woman gives off - the more bedazzled her outlet would be.  High heat producers would have higher quality platinum outlets with more precious gems - the most prolific of heat producers would get the rarest gems in the world like blue garnets and jadeite.  Women in their 40s and 50s would be the saviours of the planet - we'd be frickin' rock stars.

"Bow to us you lowly youth - we rule the world!  Shower us with chocolate and salt and we will share our mighty power with you!  Show disdain for our wisdom and beauty and you shall die an Antarctic death!"

David just added his two cents.   "Or..."  There is a gleam in his eye.  "You could use some sort of turkey thermometer type thing, but you know with a, uh... vibrating capacity.  The power stations would be more like spas and you would, ahem, insert the, uh, vibrating probe, while women are on chaise lounges having pedicures.  Plus, you could film it.  Pretty much win-win all around..."

Microbes for Movember???

So this appeared in my news feed recently...

Movember moustaches may hold hazards

Seriously?  This is a news story?  What is the CBC doing?  And show of hands, how many men out there don't wash?  And by that I mean EVER.  How many don't wash their faces EVER?  How many don't take the time to wash after having raw fish and/or spaghetti and/or steak tartar? How many wait days and days and days with food and or bodily fluids resting upon your facial hair before you wash? Anyone?  'Cause I'm pretty sure that's when you're going to have hazardous microbes in your 'stache.

So, if you ARE one of those dudes who NEVER washes your face - for God's sake START WASHING - you are not a teenaged goat!  But otherwise, could the CBC stop trying to instill panic in the public at large not to mention the dudes who are just trying to raise awareness for men's health issues??

I think my fingers are having a stroke...

Or... I'm being possessed by the spirits of homophones past.  Instead of the word 'do' I type 'due.' Instead of 'red' I type 'read.'   I actually typed 'aisle' instead of 'I'll' this morning.

So?  Any thoughts?  Any closet neurologists out there?  'Cause right now?  I think I might be in a cross between Memento, Primer & Inception, my mind's feeling THAT fucked.  It's not like they're just typos.  Is this where all those brain injuries I've had through my life are coming back to haunt me?  I really should have had that brain MRI a loooooong time ago.

Does anyone else do this sort of stuff?  And before you suggest it - I don't use auto-spelling. I don't do text speak.  EVER.  That's not what's happening here.   I spell out my words - I never even type "laugh out loud" let alone the ... the... acronym for it.  (Just can't do it - would rather drive a frickin' nail through my eye.) I usually write "hee hee hee" to indicate I'm giggling or "HAH!" to indicate a guffaw of laughter.  And just to really screw me over this morning, it took me a full 30 seconds to come up with the word 'acronym' just then.  BANJO!  Just checking.  I don't use "8" for the 'ate' sound.  So WHAT.  THE.  POOH. 

Last night, I was trying to explain the misplacing my homophones thing to David.  I then spelled the wilderness mammal BEAR as B A R E.  And that was NOT my intention.

"You just spelled B A R E."

"No I didn't!"

"You totally did!"

"Oh God, that's it.  I'm having a stroke right now.  Or I've had a stroke and I've lost all my homophones.  Is my mouth drooping?"

"No, your mouth isn't drooping.  Why would you only lose homophones?"

"It's not just homophones - I lost BANJO the other day, and... and... I lost - SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THESAURUSES...  What else did I lose?"

"I don't know sweetie."

"You see?  OH GOD.  You could totally Gaslight me!!!  If you wanted, you could totally  Gaslight me.  I think I'm losing my mind anyway - so how would I even know?"  I back away from him in the bed, my eyes wild and wide.

"Good thing I'm not independently wealthy.  All you could get would be some crazily bad lounge music and a plethora of holiday decorations with a side of vintage dresses.  Maybe it's the dresses you're after!!!"

He shoots me a look of utter disbelief.

"Although frankly your back is much wider than mine and you'd have to have them altered.  No, not possible.  The amount of body hair that you'd have to shave/wax would deter that.  You don't even like it when I pluck your shoulder hair."

"Shhhh.... It's okay..."  He tucks me into his side and kisses me on the forehead.

"It's NOT okay.  I'm having weird-ass aphasia!"

"Sweetie if you didn't remember the word 'aphasia' then I'd be worried.  I think you're good."

"Due ewe reely mien it?"

If I were ridiculously wealthy...

The phrase "SPARE NO EXPENSE!!!"  would readily fall from my lips.  My holiday shopping would be joyfully a la carte.  I would tip with bills, not toonies.

I don't have that kind of disposal income... right now.  But very soon, very soon (insert scheming world-domination maniacal laughter here) it shall come to pass...

So here's what's going to happen until then.  Every time I see something that I know my loved-ones would go apeshit for, but I can't afford - I'm going to file it.  And for Christmas, I'm going to let everyone know about all the things I will get them when I am ridiculously wealthy.

I'm starting file folders for everyone I know.  That way, when I see that $700 etched print by Liz Menard  that would be perfect for David, I'll add it to his file.  Same with the ridiculous cat bean-bag warmer Cuddle Kitty that would make Rissa giggle...   And when I see an exorbitantly priced coffee table book that I know Meg would salivate for - it's going in her file.   Then I'll just give them the lists of their future gifts.

This epiphany hit me yesterday while I was helping my friend Lisa at the Moose Show.  Lisa, my crazy friend, my incredibly talented artistic friend, the friend who makes me snort ginger ale through my nose.  (That makes it sound like she has me tied to a chair and is waterboarding me with ginger ale.  She totally doesn't do that.  She does, however, make me laugh so hard that I snort and just so you know, snorting ginger ale is painful.  "It burns!  It burns!")

I was watching Lisa yesterday do a wire sculpture of a gold fish, from a freaking photograph.  She had the photograph and was artistically extrapolating.  My brain just doesn't work that way.  What I want to be able to do for her?  I want to be able to commission pieces and pay her WHAT THEY ARE WORTH!!!   If she spends 150 hours making something - she should be earning WAY more than just a couple of bucks an hour for her artistic labour.   I want to rent a public space in downtown Toronto to display her astoundingly awesome 7 foot long Korean Dragon wire sculpture so that the A freakin' G O stands up and takes notice of her brilliance.  Check out her works here: www.lbrunetta.ca

And now I need to research sand sculpting companies who might offer workshops.  Then I can tell David and Rissa that as soon as we're rich, we are going someplace like Hawaii or California and we're going to learn how to build even bigger and more bad-ass sand sculptures than the ones we do now.

'Cause you know what?  Dreams come true.  It's happened to me over and over again.  And I am determined to continue my dreaming in TECHNICOLOR and no frickin' bank statement is going to stop me!

Carly Sioux 2012

ps.  I'm included in a Blogger Soundoff this month at Circle of Moms along with other fantastic women!!

Losing my Nouns

I know that I know this...  Give me a sec...  Starts with a B maybe???

So lately, at least a 1/2 dozen times a day, I lose my nouns.  Yesterday I couldn't remember the word BANJO.  I could see the thing in my mind, knew it was roundish on one end, that you play it like a guitar, picks are really needed to make it sound good - what it was actually called?  Not a fucking clue.  So then this moment of panic sets in.  In the vaccuum that is left of my mind - I'm like a freaking USB drive with nothing on it.  And then later - all of a sudden I'll let out a mighty YAWP of realization:

BANJO!!!!

Relief slides over my being and I can breathe again, because I've been holding that breath ever since I couldn't remember the word.  It's called aphasia.  I know that word, but apparently banjo is just too difficult.  Or economy, or Gwen Stefani or the frickin' colour chartreuse - how can a person forget the word CHARTREUSE??   I mean just LOOK at it!  I'd remember having a stroke right?  I'm pretty sure that I haven't had a stroke, but given what else I've been forgetting, who knows?  I sometimes look in the mirror just to be sure that one side of my mouth isn't drooping.  Nope, still good. 

So this could just be middle age, or peri-menopause - or even thyroid - which I vowed just yesterday that I wasn't going to mention, but from what I've been reading 'brain fog' can totally be one of the symptoms.  Or, it could be from a brain tumor, infection or dementia.  Awesome.  So what I've learned is to never Google 'aphasia' when you're freaking out.  Basically, never Google ANYTHING when you're freaking out.

Let's put some spin on this:  If it's dementia - it could happen relatively quickly and I could be one of those happy demented people who smiles and wants to have sex all the time.  Maybe if it's a brain tumor it could press onto a part of my brain that suppresses hunger?  Or suddenly I might be able to play the piano?  Infection...???  I'm sure there's a positive way to look at that too, I just can't remember the word.

I am NOT an 83 year old woman...

I hear these words coming out of my mouth:  "Oh it's just the microvascular angina, hypothyroidism and the reynaud's syndrome...."  I think: Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!! You are not an 83 year old woman, just say you're 'fine'!  When someone asks you how you are, JUST SAY FINE!!!    Nobody wants to hear it.  Nobody wants your torrent of symptoms and self-diagnoses lobbed at them like a grenade full of energy-sucking leeches.  SHUT THE HELL UP!!! 

Problem is, people keep saying "How are you?  Are you okay?  You're looking a little green."  'Cause right now?  I look like utter crap.  Lay me next to a cadaver and we'd have the same skin tone.  Hence my honest reassurance to folks by poo-pooing all my many symptoms.  "Nothing to worry about... I've got my nitro spray... yadda yadda, sick speak, sick speak."  You can see when their eyes glaze over at the 'too much information."  It's pretty much the same time that the word microvascular leaves my lips... annnnnnnnnd.... they're... done.  Because people don't want you to be honest.  They want you to lie, like everyone else does, and just be FINE. 
 
So this is me, taking a different tack.  I will slather on the makeup - add some blush to take away the pallor, smile and say "I'm well, how are you?"   Cause I'm NOT 83  and won't be for another 39 years.  And even when I am 83, I don't want to be that person who defines themselves by their maladies.   My Granny lived to be 103 years old and I never once heard her complain.  When she was 100 she was knitting knee blankets for the 'old folks.'  She was mostly blind and mostly deaf and dropped a few stitches in those knee blankets, and they are the most BEAUTIFUL knee blankets in the world!    And when I get cold for absolutely no reason in our 20 c house because of my weird-ass health crap, I can wear one of those blankets around my shoulders, put on a hat and a scarf, shut the hell up and channel my Granny.

The most beautiful slipped stitch I've EVER seen!

There's a frickin' blue sky out there today and I'm going to catch some of those rays.  Cause I know for damn sure that fresh air helps EVERYTHING and that all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other and I am determined to do just that.