Lie on me!!

"Wait!  Wait!" Rissa says, as I'm trying to depart her bedside.  She clutches at me.  "You can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to lie on me!!"

"Because why?"

"Because then I can put my arm on my stomach and see if I can escape."

(This is one of those things that happened by accident one night and is now apparently 'the thing to do' at bedtime.)

Rissa arranges her limbs - one arm out to the side and then one lying across her stomach.  "Okay, I'm ready.  Hit me!"

I collapse my considerable torso upon her tummy. Rissa wriggles like an ineffectual escape artist for several minutes - giggling madly, snorting and gasping with the effort to dislodge her hand.  I get up.

"No!!  No!  Not yet!!  I can do this!  Let me try the other arm!!!"

"You're insane."

"Yes, but I'm uniquely insane."  She puts her other arm on her stomach.  "Lie on me!!!"

We repeat the same procedure - she almost manages to extricate the hand at one point, in spite of my nearly double body weight upon her.  She has worked herself into a near seizure doing so, which brings on another gale of giggles.  Unable to resist, I find myself snorting, almost choking on laughter.

"You are a goof," I say, kissing her goodnight. 

"I know," she says.  She snuggles down under her duvet contentedly.  "But I'm a satisfied goof."

Popcorn Apocalypse

It's afternoon snack time!!  I have just thrown in a bag of microwave popcorn when David calls to have me find a file.  I run upstairs to find it, but immediately realize the folly in leaving unattended microwave popcorn, so I run back downstairs and ask Rissa to stand guard.

"Can you please listen for the popcorn?  2 seconds between pops." 

She rolls her eyes - immediately transforming into a 20-something who knows everything.  "I know Mummy! I know how to make popcorn.  I'll get the popcorn."  She then gives a 'you scoot' gesture with her hand.

I head back upstairs.  2 minutes later I'm wondering if I'm having the beginnings of an epileptic fit.  I'm smelling smoke.  Acrid, eye-stinging, oily...

Rissa comes up the stairs...

"I might have, um...  maybe just a little...."  She collapses on the floor.  "I can't make popcorn!!!  WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!"

In my head, I'm remembering a conversation we had not three minutes before.  "Dude!  I just told you.  You were right beside the microwave!  You had to wait 45 seconds!  What happened?"

"I don't know.  I was washing up dishes and then... then... WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!  I... I... I...
I CAN'T MAKE POPCORN!!!!"

You know how long the odour of scorched popcorn permeates your house?  48 hours.  Plus, we now need a new microwave - it looks like vagrants used the inside of it to keep themselves warm before adding gasoline and allowing it to really spark up.

Rissa - in mid "WAILEY"

Thigh Sliver

"So, how was your day?" I ask Rissa.

"People looked at me weird when Nerine was holding my leg while I was feeling up my inner thigh."

Beat, two, three...  I close my eyes for a moment.   "O...kay...  Explanation...?"

"In Science we were using plasticine and toothpicks for a project, and I ended up sitting on one of the toothpicks, so I had a sliver in my jeans, so I went to the office and asked the secretary if they had tweezers in the first-aid kit, and she did, which was great, but then I couldn't reach it, which was bad, so I needed Nerine to hold my leg up so that I could feel for it... So it sort of looked like I was feeling myself up... In the office.  There were some kids in the hall who gave me some weird looks."

"I can't imagine why."

Maternal Reenactment of event

Okay... SERIOUSLY?!?

Have I pissed off some ancient Fertility Goddess?  Did I poop on Hera's cornflakes?   Forget to return Mama Quilla's call?  Accidentally take Nim-inna's name in vain?  'Cause it's only been 17 days.  SEVENTEEN FREAKING DAYS!! 

It's stress.  It's got to be.  I mean, I forgot to take my special herbal cyclical-extension remedy pill once last week, but that shouldn't throw me back to bloody wolves.  So it's stress.  I'm gearing up to tech week with Peter Pan, running around ragged, just started a new job... that's what it is.

Please, please, please...  I didn't mean it when I complained that it was only 23 days.  23 days would be just fine.  I LOVED my 23 day cycle - it was freaking awesome!!! 

I'm not asking for me - although easing up on the machete to my nether regions would be nice - I'm asking for David and Rissa.  They have to live with me and already suffer through those 36-48 hours of Heather Zombie every 23 days.  It's like The Walking/Curled up in the Fetal Position/Weeping Dead in our house during those hours.  There is a body stumbling around our house that looks like me and kinda sounds like me, but it ain't me.  David turns to me on Day 3 and says "It's so nice to have you back."

So I'm totally cool to go back to the 23 Day Cycle.  Just fine with me.  I'd say I will no longer complain, but anyone who knows me knows that's pretty much bullshit.   But if this is the alternative, I'll take the 23 Days.

Belly Button Lint

I've been collecting David's belly button lint.  In the lip of my crystal ring holder.  You know, just to see how much we can actually accumulate over the course of the year. 

David's pretty hairy, so during the course of a regular day, his chest hair and "Happy Trail," move the lint from inside a garment towards his belly button - kind of like the circling winds of a hurricane, or, or... the Charybdis, except instead of large, sea-faring vessels, his belly button is sucking in lint.  

After a few incidences of discovering copious amounts of lint in David's navel, I got to thinking...  If we collected it, would it be enough, say... to felt minature figures of  Shetland ponies or woodland foxes? Could I begin a new career as a felting artist?  Could I sell Belly Button Lint Minatures on Etsy?  So far this is all I have collected... but I'm hopeful.

Soon this will be transformed into small woodland animals!

Instant Coffee = Gateway Drug

There used to be a time when I could drink flavoured Nescafe instant coffee and think it was good.  I drank it weak.  I drank it full of sugar.  Really what I drank was a hot milk shake with what amounted to a wee bit of coffee flavouring.  Then it all changed with Alice.  Alice made good strong coffee - and once you've had good you really can't go back to crappy.

I now triple filter my coffee.  I pour double the amount of grounds used for a single cup into the filter, then pour 8 oz of just-boiled water over it.  I then take the weak coffee from the carafe and pour it through into my latte mug and then I do it a third time, draining it back into the carafe (being careful not to tear the, now-sodden, filter), just to try to approximate the taste of what you can get from a barista.  And what about that?  I just typed BARISTA!?!  I can use barista correctly in a freaking sentence!!  What the Pooh?!?   

I still don't drink the really good/expensive coffee. I don't store my own beans in an opaque, airtight container (not in the freezer) before I grind them in a fancy schmancy grinder.  I don't have organic espresso.  I buy President's Choice Decaf Hazelnut/Vanilla coffee already ground because I'm a coffee pussy who likes her coffee to basically taste like ice cream.  I can't handle caffeine because of my hot flashes and I can't do dairy because it makes my throat all mucousy.  So I go through this rigmarole* of triple filtering to get myself a decaf, hazelnut/vanilla soy latte in the morning, going through twice as much coffee in a week all because Alice made good coffee.  Damn you Alice!!!  DAMN YOU!!!!  (Closeup of me yelling into the camera with a long pull-back from a crane.)  Next?  Next I'm going to be buying a freaking French Press. How fucking pretentious is that?!?

* So up until JUST NOW I thought that the word was "rig-a-ma-role"  /ˈrig(ə)məˌrōl/ There is no 'a' after the 'g.'  Although there is the implied short 'e' in the pronunciation.  Who knew?

Communal Germ Box

...AKA a box of Timbits.  I'm not supposed to eat Timbits.  They're full of gluten and sugar and everything that can push me to edge of a sugar coma.

But when they're on a table, right in front of a gal?  And when you haven't had a snack?  And when you're in the middle of a rehearsal and stressed?  That's when you reach into the Timbits box.  Where other people, with other fingers have felt up the Timbits.

I had one.  Okay, maybe I had two... Okay, I had three.  Which really?  Isn't even as many calories as a full-on donut.  But it does mean that I stuck my hand in the Communal Germ Box three times instead of one.  It also means that the next day is when my sore throat started.  And my mouth started feeling a little pasty and the blocked nostril thing began.

Basically, I was being punished for eating the gluten and the sugar by the Gods of Reminding Me to Eat Well.  The Gods said "HA-HA!  You think that you won't be screwed over for three little Timbits eh?  Now we will concentrate all the viruses that have come into even indirect contact with every hand that has reached into this box and you Heather shall feel their winter-cold effects."

But for those 5 seconds at a time that those Timbits were making love to my mouth?  Totally worth it.