Rissa killed it dead!

Rissa murdered my hair dryer.  It was a crafting catastrophe.  One minute she was melting crayons on a canvas - the next my hair dryer was the victim of too much "on."  We suggested she use the heat gun.

"That sounds dangerous."

"No, not if you use it correctly.  It's meant to be super hot."

"And a hair dryer isn't?"

"Not THIS hot.  A heat gun will lift paint off of furniture - a quality you don't usually look for in a hair dryer."

She and David went out to buy me a new hair dryer, and then what did she do?  She immediately tried to use the brand new hair dryer to melt crayons...

"Did I not tell you to use the heat gun?"

"Yes, but I'm worried that I'll melt my arm off.  I'm worried it's like the cornballer."

"You will not melt your arm off...   Don't point it at skin though."

Rissa's eyes got VERY wide.  "I don't think so.  The words NOT SAFE are coming to mind Mummy."

Anticipating the demise of a brand new hair dryer, I decided to give her a heat gun demonstration.  I turned it on.  It hummed to life.

"Ooooooh," said Rissa.  "It's purring.  Sounds so quiet and non-lethal.  The regular hair dryer is louder.  I thought when you started it up it would sound like a chainsaw!   You know...

Ring, da-ding-ding-ding-ding..."

When Rissa saw how quickly the crayons  melted, she quickly became a heat gun covert.  Her eyes took on a gleam.  She brandished the heat gun.  "What else can I melt?"

"Whoa there Tex!  This is when we make a rule that you only use the heat gun when there's an adult around."

Dandy Dandelions

Ahhhh.... dandelions - those delightful, yellow harbingers of spring.  I know they're weeds, I know that their root structure rivals that of a willow tree, but damn they're pretty!  A hillside of them, from a distance, makes me happy.  I love taking up one of the flowers when it's gone to seed and blowing it as I'm walking on a country road.  Sends me tripping back to my youth.  It's only when you see a dandelion up close, when  you're trying to stop their infestation into your own lawn, that you see that they're evil.

Like say, when you look upon your own backyard and count them.  By the dozens.  And then you calculate the amount of time that you'll spend, bent over, attempting to yank them from your lawn.  And, because you have lots of actual grass in the lawn already, battling said dandelions, the weeds then decide to fight back, grow bigger roots, branch out.  You can't get a clean yank when there's a root the size of Ron Jeremy in your lawn.  Even with a special weed thingie, to loosen up the soil.  'Cause you can't just go in once, you have to go down around the entire plant, multiple times, but nobody ever does that.  You try to save time, so you pray that that single stab with the upward twist will be enough, but instead you hear the crunch of the root as you pull the evil greenery from the ground,  leaving the end of that stinkin' root below the grass, dormant for a time before it bursts forth, yet again, ready to spread it's fluffy payload all over the lawn in probably 8 days' time.

I've heard tell of a water-powered weeder from Lee Valley Tools that tunnels around weeds with a shot of high-pressure water - thereby ensuring easy weed removal.  Takes twice or three times as long but removes them.  One. Weed. At. A. Time.   If I start today, patiently using the regular weeding tool that doesn't cost $49.95, by September I might have a clean lawn. 

The luck of the Amish

Rissa, at the best of times, can make words sound nothing like they're supposed to.  Last night she made a weird-ass shape around her belly button, said "DRACULA BELLY BUTTON!" and then dissolved into giggles.  David and I were mystified as to what vampires and belly buttons had to do with one another.

"DRACULA belly button?"  She only laughed harder.

"Not DRACULA belly button!  TRIANGULAR belly button."

"Did you not hear DRACULA belly button?" I asked David.

"That's what I heard."

"THIS shape," Rissa said - indicating the weird-ass finger shape she has around her belly button, "has NOTHING to do with vampires."

"I think that we can safely say that TRIANGULAR belly button makes no more sense.  Can you at least try to make sense?"

"Your ears don't work!  If it were a DRACULA belly button then there would be fangs."

"Fair enough."

"The other night Daddy and I were listening to the radio and this hip-hop dude said he was going to Get Lucky Tonight."  Rissa explained.  "I said 'He must be Amish."

"What do the Amish have to do with being lucky?"

"I didn't ACTUALLY say the AMISH.  I said the IRISH, but Daddy heard it as the AMISH because I did it with an accent."

"The luck of the AMISH makes NO sense."

"Exactly," says Rissa.

He is telling me this because why?!?

David is massaging my feet.   He is the best spouse.  We'd returned from an after-dinner walk; instead of me taking the lead, I'd been dragging my feet a bit, looking a little low.

(I'd had a cardiologist's appointment in the morning.  More tests - this one with me wearing an air-tight mask, riding a bike, hooked up to all sorts of monitors - to see how long it would take for me to get chest pain.  5 minutes.  It takes 5 minutes for me to get chest pain.  "Just another minute or so of data Heather," said the Doc.  "Just 80 seconds more, then we'll have a good reading!"  Giving me the thumbs up sign and smiling a wide, encouraging smile.  Having been instructed not to talk during the test, I said nothing, but I was thinking really hard, "Quit being so fucking cheerful you rat fucking bastard!")

"So," asks David that evening.  "Diagnosis?"

I snort.  "Not yet.  Still have to wait for him to go over stuff.  Although he assured me that 'We'd get to the bottom of this,' and that 'Heart disease in women is different than in men,'  whatever the hell that means.  To me, it sounds like he thinks I have heart disease, which I kind of already had figured out myself."

"He's a cardiologist - he thinks everyone has heart disease.  Don't get all freaked out."

"I'm not freaked out.  Any diagnosis would be a relief."

David is smoothing his hands along my right foot, trying his best to relieve my tension, when, swear to God, he suddenly stops and says, "What is THAT?!?" in a horrified tone.

"What is what?"  I calmly ask.

"You've got this lump on the bottom of your foot," he says.  And then he shows me this lumpy bit of something attached to my foot ligaments.

I poke at it.  It hurts a bit.   And then I laugh.

"Seriously?" I ask.  "You are pointing out more weird-ass health stuff to me, right now?"

"It's probably just a cyst," says David, now realizing his folly.

"Of course it is, why wouldn't it be?  Oooooh!  I'll bet it's one of them ganglion cysts..."

David is now mentally slapping his forehead with his palm.  "Now this in no reason to start researching this sort of thing... "

"You mean I shouldn't research this lump that you just drew my attention to... a lump that heretofore I had never even known about?  Of course not."

"You're actually quite healthy you know."

"HAH!  You mean in spite of all my weird-ass health shit?"

"YES!!  You're not some frail little flower who just reclines on the settee with... with..."

"The vapours?  Consumption?"

"Sure."

"That's not how I roll.   Now look up 'lump on sole of foot" please."

ps.  Totally not a ganglion cyst.  I have Ledderhose's Disease.  I'm going to call it Leiderhosen Disease 'cause that'll be more fun.  Best thing about Lesiderhosen Disease?  Weird-ass foot lumps (plantar fibroma)  completely benign!  Boo Yeah, who says you can't learn good shit on the internet?

We must have a poltergeist

Upon her return from school, Rissa makes her way into the kitchen.  I am writing in the dining room.

"There's leftover tosada stuff in the fridge and some cherry tomatoes,"  I direct from my post at the laptop.  Après school snack reminders are much needed for my child, who, when her blood-sugar is low, can forget things.

"Mother!! OH MY GOD!"

"What?"  I get up to see what the fuss is about.

"DUDE!" she says, indicating the room at large.  "Every cupboard is open!"

I glance around.   It is impressive.  The dishwasher is open, a drawer in the island, the tableware cupboard, the spice cupboard,  the cutlery drawer...

"We must have a poltergeist...?" I posit.

Rissa rolls her eyes.  "What were you doing?"

Both David and Rissa have mocked me mercilessly about my tendency towards Les Placards Ouverts.  Sometimes, I might forget to close cupboard doors. I inherited this family trait from my Aunt Bea. I will admit that this particular instance was truly spectacular, even for me.  I get distracticated.  Usually though, it's a door, maybe two.  I think I was mid putting-things-away.

"You need a snack," Rissa says to me.  "And I'm totally taking pictures of this."

This is what "distracticated" looks like.

I would like to state for the record that the
under-the-sink cupboard is NOT open.

Wounded isn't Newsworthy?

Madmen open fire at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans - but this isn't news??  How has this NOT been on the front page of my CBC newsfeed since Sunday?  Oh wait.  Only 19 people were wounded.  Nobody died, so it's not newsworthy. 

What, did the pitch sessions post 'incident" have news networks postulating, "Naaaaaaah - could've been worse?"  There were over 400 people gathered for the parade and only wounds?  Not as much media punch as Boston or Newtown. And yet there will be another spate of gun purchases and 2nd Amendment Justifications and I'm left shaking my head.

May I please just ask: What the fuck is going on?  Did somebody spike the Kool Aid... again?  'Cause people are getting batshit crazy.  And not just the crazy people, but the people reporting on the crazy people.  Are mass-shootings so common place that they no longer shock?  Has laissez-faire now become the way to govern? The US tried to pass the weakest of gun legislation in April and government couldn't get their heads out of the lobbyist's asses long enough to pass better background checks.  It's like they want crazy people out there with guns.

I'm thinking now might be time to start that commune in the middle of nowhere.  Who's with me?

Hair Loss and Lederhosen

"Daddy, why do you have those weird bald patches on your legs??" asks Rissa one morning.

"I'm not sure," says David, standing in his basketball-length exercise shorts.  He peers down at his hairy limbs.  "These ones here..." he points to his calves and shins, "are probably from socks rubbing..."  He points to his ankles - "These ones are definitely from the shorter sports socks."

He pulls the legs of his shorts up a bit and looks above his knees.  "I don't know what these ones are from."

"When you wear stockings?" I ask.  "With your lederhosen?"

And then he did a little lederhosen dance.  I adore my husband.