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...