What's happening to our Tupperware?

I must have a symbiotic worm hole in my house.  I swear to God that for every lost sock in the dryer, a Tupperware container also disappears.  I could earn a doctorate in this area.  I'm going to get a grant for the next phase of my thesis.

We have a billion Tupperware lids - all stacked in the island drawer - they must be going at it like rabbits in there.   I always check the fridge when we seem low on containers, and sometimes there are the science experiments in the back of the fridge, but that still doesn't explain the multitude of extra lids residing in the drawer.  We haven't been doing any house painting which usually takes up containers.  And let's face it, you can't really take a sandwich container without a lid unless you want a stale sandwich for lunch. 

Are gremlins in our house destroying just the containers?  For gremlin fun?  Are they dancing madly upon them as we sleep - cracking the questionably recyclable plastic - leaving us with only the lids -  which are freaking useless?? Strike that, not useless.  I have an artist friend, Lisa, who does eco-art.  She can take bread tags and create lighting shades for twinkle lights.  She has salvaged copper wire and bicycle wheels and made a freaking Korean Dragon.

Dragon, 2005,  Lisa Brunetta

So I'm going to send her all my old lids - she'll know what to do with them.  She'll create art, it will be astounding.

And I?  I will take my ass to the No Frills and purchase my biennial replacement containers.  WAIT!    WAIT!   GPS chips!!  We could put in wee little GPS chips...  create another layer of plastic on top - like a skin graft, but a plastic graft - which would allow them to still be washed, but would have them programmed so when you asked a family member if they knew where the containers were and they said no, you could say "AH-HAH!" and dance around calling them a liar, when you found said missing containers unde their bed. The technology's not quite there yet, but I feel confident that, within the next year or so, I could perfect it.  I will be having my IPO in 2015.  Who's in?

My ass is not happy.

We are on the hunt for a sofa bed.  On account of the fact that our new house does not have a guest room.  As Canadians, we need to be able to offer extreme-weather lodgings.  It's in the Canadian Manifesto.  Or it would be if Canada had a Manifesto.

My Mom took great pride in emphatically stating that we could sleep 22 people in our house.  We were military - you never knew who might stop by.  We had more sofa beds and guest beds than your average bear. It's a badge of family honour for me.  A tradition.   I need to be able to find space for 22 people to sleep in my new home.  My new, 1500 sq. foot home with NO guest room.  David's already started devising plans to jerry-rig some beds from an alternate dimension.  Patent pending.

I am determined to be able to sleep at least two.  At the very least we need a sofa bed to take care of overnight guests.  All I want is a functioning sofa bed that is actually comfortable to sit on.  Okay, a functioning sofa bed, comfortable to sit on and that doesn't look like crap.  Is that so much to ask?  Is it?  Not a fricking futon on a pine frame - I'm 45 years old - not a first year Arts student.  Not something that feels like you're balancing your derriere on concrete.  Something with a modicum of style that can accommodate overnight guests.  It's like searching out the Holy Freaking Grail.

I have been trying out sofa beds for weeks now.  My ass going from shop to shop to shop.  Kind of like Goldilocks, but with no "just right" in sight. 

This has nothing to do with the post,
but when I was trying to find a good Goldilocks
illustration I got distracted.

They're ALL too hard.  All of them.  You can look all you want online, but you cannot buy a sofa without letting your ass feel it. So we've been trolling the furniture shops.  We find the exact model that we like, that our asses enjoy - ask if it comes in a sofa bed - and the salesperson won't meet our eyes when they say "Yes."  Because they know.  They know that somewhere in the fabrication of inexpensive sofa beds, (Because, let's face it, we are NOT going to spend $3,000 on a piece of furniture.  EVER), that the base and ass cushions are injected with some sort of concrete polymer that ensures that one would rather sit on the floor than on this piece of furniture masquerading as comfortable. 

I'm desperately trying to find an alternative to IKEA here folks.  I'd love to shop local and support the little guy, but those damned Swedes with their good prices and relatively comfortable pieces and delivery are calling to me.  "Ve huv sofas end matchink sofa beds end cumfy chayerrs - ull vith slip cuverrs...  Cooom to de Scandinavian siede Headder!"  Oh God, it may be too late!

Did you guys KNOW about this?!?

It was a revelation.  With the first one I thought I'd just been lucky.  Even the second.  What a happy coincidence!  How delightful!  It was only upon savouring the third that I thought something was up.  I looked at the box.

Ladies and gentlemen, Pot Of Gold makes a CARAMEL collection!  I am undone. 

Dear God what was I thinking? I had five of them.   Okay, possibly six.   Which means that in 6 mouthfuls of sin, I ingested over 30 grams of sugar and 380 calories. Which, when you really think about it, considering the oral orgasm that I had, isn't that bad a calorie count.

I'm in rehearsals right now, we're getting down to the crunch - rehearsing on the set, bonding with the cast and crew, and people are bringing snacks to the rehearsals.  And apart from a fantastically healthful crock pot of lentil stew on Sunday - the food is utter crap.  I mean, it all tastes a-fucking-mazing, but it's crap.  M&Ms, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate bars - the newly discovered box of caramels...

Fruit plate.  We need a fricking fruit plate.  Or a vegetable plate.  Communal food is terrible for me.  The snack table, in my peripherals, beckons - it seduces.  Shiny wrappers and colourful bags with their upwards of 25 grams of sugar in them, waiting to spike my blood sugar and then allow for a good old, wallowing in my willpowerless misery, sugar crash.  High, and then not-so-high, in the space of minutes.  Eyes rolling back in my head.  People with 911 at the ready, in case I actually do slip into that sugar coma.

I need to get my shit together.  I have two days before I'm called again.  I shall gird my loins for battle.  Time for the buddy system.  Time to call in the big guns.  I have at least 5 girlfriends in the show who know me well.  They know what sugar does to me.  They shall be my security team.  See?  The first step is admitting you have a problem.  The second?   Asking for help, so that you don't have to conquer this shit alone. I'm following Bill Withers's advice.  I know I'm not strong.  I'm leaning. 

WARNING: Prone to Theatrical Displays of Melodrama

"Mummy, do you know where the plastic container with the clicking lid is?"

"No.  I do not.  I'm not sure where it went.  Maybe Daddy took it to school."

Rissa sighs deeply.  I barely hear her say,  "I call her 'Clicky'."

"Pardon me?"

Rissa now speaks loudly and clearly.  "I call her 'Clicky'."

"Did you just say that you call the container 'Clicky'?

"I call HER 'Clicky'!"

"Sorry.  This container is a girl?"

"Yes, she is a girl.  Don't judge my love!"

"I'm not judging..."

"You don't know what we have together..."  I think at this point, Rissa flings an arm up to demonstrate her heightened emotional state.

"You are completely right.  I DO NOT know, nor do I understand, the relationship that you have with the, uh... plastic container you have dubbed 'Clicky'.  Not that there is anything wrong with that."

Still doing her best Garbo, Rissa exclaims, "Why can't you support my choices?"

Then she dissolves into snorting laughter.  In betweeen snorts, "Today will be a laughing day, I can just tell!"

"Awesome."

"Every time I laugh today, I will do a different laugh."

"You do that little thing." 

"I will!"  She then lets out a burst of mad scientist mania. 

"MOO-HOO-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!"

"You are SO weird."

"Unique.  I am unique."

"You're something alright."

I'm going to die - I just know it!

Thud.  Thud.  Thud.  Yowl.  Yowl.

David and I share a glance.  Shake our heads.

Thud.  Thud.  More pitiful yowl.

"I don't understand why she has to be in here with us.  Rissa's door is wide open - she could just be in there."

Thud. Thud.  THUD.

We jump.

"She put her whole body into that one."

"Is she actually running at the door?"

Then we hear this:

"Oh woe is me!  WOE is me.  WAILEY!  WAILEY!  WAILEY!  I'm going to die - I just know it!  If you don't let me in, I will actually perish here in the hall and you shall have to step over my limp, lifeless body in the morning. WOE is me.  WOE!  WOE IS ME!!!"

At least we hear the cat equivalent of that - which is much more pitiful and sounds closer to death.  But we remained strong.  We wanted a good night's sleep and when the cats sleep on/with us - we don't have a good night's sleep.  Eventually Minuit left.

This morning...

Thud.  Thud.  THUD.  "I'm still here.  I can totally hear you two talking.  I know you're awake.  Why must you torture me?  All I want to do is share my love with you and purr.  Can you blame me for that?   Is it too much to ask to let your cat, your oldest cat, your most beloved cat, purr for you?!?"

That cat has stamina.

Which face is better?

Rissa asks.  At bedtime.

"Pardon?"

"Which face?  If you had to rate them?"

"This?"  She does her best impersonation of a bucktoothed gopher with a cold.

"This?" She looks like she's been hit in the head with a shovel at her left jawline - lips all askew across her face.

"This?" She sticks her tongue out slightly and rolls her eyes back in her head.

"Or THIS."  She puff out her cheeks like she a blowfish - eyes wide and glassy.

"You are so weird."

"Yes, but which is better?  You need to rate them on a scale of 1 to 4.  4 being the best and 1 being the worst.  Oh wait - plus there's this one too!"  She drops her jaw, scrunches her nose and crosses her eyes.

"On a scale of 1 to 4?  But there are five faces now!"

"Yes.  Plus there's SEVEN!  THE GOLDEN MONKEY!"

"Who ARE you?"

Rissa: Bringer of New Millennial Dadaism

And that's why I should be having sex more often...

WARNING: THERE IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION IN THIS POST

On account of the fact that when it's this lackadaisical, only when we we're not exhausted, happen to be on the same bio-rhythms kind of encounter, my body feels like this the next the day.

And we weren't trying anything new here.  We were doing our standards.  Nothing groundbreaking - nothing we had to stretch for.   I hadn't thought that I'd done myself an injury.  It wasn't like when you're first together and you go at it for so long and so hard that you can't walk the next day.  But they never tell you about that in romance novels or erotica.  Nope.  It's all banging for days, trying out numbers 32-49 of the Kama Sutra, hanging from the chandelier...  Literary depictions rarely mention the Epsom Salts baths and two days of rest you need before it doesn't hurt to pee because of micro tears around your lady bits.

Nor do they mention the bladder infections that you get if you get too cuddly after sex. When David and I were first together and were going at it like bunnies, I ended up in the Emerg - all feverish and having... shhhhhh.... blood in my, um... urine.  

The triage nurse looked at me...  looked at David.  "You're a new couple?"

 "Um, yeah... fairly new."

"You need to pee after sex."

"Pardon?"

"You need to pee after sex."

"Because why?"

And here's where she told me something that NO ONE ever thinks to tell you.   Until you wind up in the Emerg and the nursing staff give you these sad commiserative glances and finally pass along information that should be de rigueur in Sex Ed.

"Because seminal fluid can wind up in your urethra and you can get a bladder infection."

So trust me ladies - if you're at that point in your relationship where you've both been tested for STDs and he's good and you're good and you're on the pill, or the patch, or the shot and you're riding bareback - as much as you might want to cuddle right after you've done the deed...  DON'T!  Get up, race to the bathroom, pee, wash, and then head back to bed and do the cuddling then.  It can still be all romantical and snuggly - just a little bit later.  Save youreself a trip to the Emerg.  TRUST ME.  And when you're older - invest in lube.