The House Hippo...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" from Rissa downstairs.

"What?  What is it?"  I bolt to the top of the stairs.

"This!  JUST. LOOK. AT. THESE. PICTURES!"

"What are you looking at!?!" 

"I signed up for the House Hippo Instagram feed..."

Oh thank God... She hadn't found any of those pictures...

House Hippos AKA Skinny Pigs AKA Hairless Guinea Pigs.  She has been obsessed ever since she discovered them at our local Buskers Fest's Crazy Creatures booth.  It was love at first sight.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  It's SO CUTE!!!"

Even I have to admit that I dig them.  I mean, what's not to love?  They're like naked mole rats but so much cuter.

She devoted several hours one afternoon to finding house hippo names for a pet she will probably not have until she's in university.

Boys	Girls
Cédrique	Aurelia
Ignatius	Helena
Lysander	Hermia
Demitrius	Bambina
Constantine	Celeste
Aloysius	Edna
Wolfgang	Wilhelmina
Remus	Maude
Sirius	Harriet
Bartholomew
Bram
Elwood
Paco
Tom
Inigo (Montoya)

    


















By reading her list of names you can glean pretty much all of her media influences:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Harry Potter, The Incredibles, The Blues Brothers, Love Actually, Studio 60, clowning, cartoons... My favourite: Inigo with (Montoya) in brackets because you know that although she would call it Inigo she would be thinking Montoya in brackets 100% of the time.

Summertime Bitch

Heat and hormones don't mix.  I get mean in the heat.  You know when you can hear yourself losing it?  When vitriolic tones spill from your lips and you don't even want to be around you?   That's me in the dog days of summer.  The rest of the year I do my best to be a kind person.  I open doors.  I use my pleases and thank-yous...  I actually mean them.  When there's a heat wave?  My kindness evaporates and I want to murder fluffy bunnies.

Swollen ankles and feet.  Sweaty shins.  Pressure on my chest.  The urge to weep because of the afore-mentioned...   Crabby, whiny, petulant - and that's with me not even voicing 3/4 of the things that I wan to say.

Random person says, "I just love this heat!"    I think, "I would love to see your decapitated, iced head on a platter providing me with the Popsicle that I so badly need right now."

Random person says, "Enjoy it while it's here!  This is Canada..."  I think, "Are you a fucking moron?   Environment Canada has told people to stay indoors so that they'd don't DIE!  This is not a perk!!"

Random person says, "It's shorts and skirt weather!"  I think, "FUCK YOU AND YOUR THIGH GAP!!!  I have literally stopped while walking down a busy sidewalk, grabbed the purse sized medicated Gold Bond powder stashed within my messenger bag, lifted my skirts and powdered my inner thighs IN PUBLIC to stop the rubbed-raw skin from KILLING me."

This may be why David makes me so many cocktails in the summer.

Come the Zombie Apocalypse...

Sitting naked on the side of the bathtub.  Legs out over the edge.  Wet hair dripping into the tub.  Humming "Smoke on the Water" to myself.

David stops on his way to the bedroom.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine."

His eyebrows low on his forehead.  "Why are you sitting there like that?"

"I'm conditioning my hair."

"Oh..."  He turns to leave... "You can't do that in the shower?"

"Oh I can.  I just don't want to waste water.  This is deep conditioning.  I'm doing this for seven minutes.  Come the zombie apocalypse, we're going to have to know how to conserve water.  I'm practicing."

David nods sagely.  "Good plan.  As you were."

Worth every last penny...

They sell food at Winners.  Gourmet food.  High-end, gluten-free, organic, tri-coloured pasta type food.  For a fraction of regular high-end, gluten-free, organic type prices.  If I wanted to have a 12 year Balsamic Vinegar at bargain prices, I can get it.   Now, on occasion, I will spend 5 times as much for a specialty food item.  Yes, I can get coarse salt for less than $2 at No Frills, but I can get PINK Himalayan rock salt at Winners at a mere $7.99 for... 1/2 of the amount.

This is one of many things that causes my mother to shake her head at me, blood pooling in her gums from a bitten tongue.

But I say this to you: Pink Himalayan salt has restorative powers - worth more than $7.99 for 454 grams.  Every single time I fill up my salt grinder and see that pink salt in it, I smile.  Every time.  I'm looking across the kitchen at that grinder filled to the brim with pinkness right now, not even touching it and it is giving me joy.  When my hands are actually on the grinder, I get a contact high.   My life is better with Pink Himalayan salt.  454 grams will last me months and months.  For a mere $0.05 a day I have visual (and culinary) joy. What else can you get for five cents a day that has the ability to induce immediate joy? 

One might say, "But the joy a child or pet brings is free - the love you feel for them is priceless." I call bullshit.  You're wrong. 

Sure, you can acquire the kids or pets for free, but on a daily costing basis?  My child eats at least 8 bucks of food a day.  The cats, are much more economical at only about a buck for food and litter.  I'm not saying that the Pink Himalayan salt gives me as much joy as my child (who will gargle Gershwin) or pets (who will chase their tails), but when I need a quick hit?  Casting a glance at the Pink Himalayan salt makes me feel like this:

Flat cats...

"Blergh."

"You okay love?" asks David solicitously.

"Heat.  Blergh. Sticky. Thighs... chafing..."

"But you're not even moving - your thighs can't be chafing if you're not moving."

"You'd think that would be the case, wouldn't you?  It's because I'm just thinking of moving.  My thighs, they know that I'm thinking of moving, and they've already begun to chafe."  I turn my head to the side and murmur despondently, "Je déteste l'été..."

I am one of very few Canadians who do not relish the dog-days of summer. I will choose winter over summer.  My seasonal picks run thus: spring and autumn in an equal tie for first place, then winter, then near-spring, the-day-before-autumn, near-winter and finally, after every other possible combination... summer. Give me a day of 23 degrees Celsius with zero humidity and I'm ecstatic. 30 with a Humidex of 39 and I'm threatening to murder inanimate objects.

"You fucking viscous oak dining chair!  Let go of the back of my thighs!  I will chop you into pieces and decimate you with the molten heat from beneath my breasts!!"

David purchases floor fans to move conserved cooler air from the window air conditioners around.  I hog the revolving tower fan in the living room as we watch episodes of IZombie.  It is a delightful show of skirt-raising as I  hunker down to air out my hot-enough-to-double-as-a-panini-press nether regions.

The poor cats.  I've never seen them so flat.  They ooze into the floor.  

Flat Minuit

Flat Steve

The cats are so uncomfortable that they aren't even asking for food.  And this is from beasts who routinely beg for their meals at least an hour in advance of feeding  time.  It appears that they, like me, become nauseated by the extreme heat.  Pro-side?  This heat-induced nausea has put us all on a meal apathy diet.  How do you feel about dinner?  Meh...

As a gal who freely admits to getting truly nasty during a heatwave, I'm also the first to say that  ingenuity is a heat-hater's best friend.  I have it down to a science.  The window air conditioner runs at full blast for the 15 minutes before bed, then the floor fan, at level 3, oscillates.  A cool shower, an ice pack wrapped around my neck and accompanying Gravol for the nausea, et voilà!  Not only can sleep be attained, it can be enjoyed.  And tomorrow night, if I can fight against the urge to slip into a heat-exhaustion, near-coma-post-work nap - I'll actually be able to sleep when I hit the sheets.  Bright side?  I managed to pen this post at 2:00 a.m.

The secret to reducing crows feet...

You wake up in the morning and do the zombie shuffle to the bathroom.  The light goes on; your ill-prepared eyes close - too much light, too soon.  Your pasty mouth makes a smasking sound as you open and close it, you wonder what crawled in to die overnight.  You stick out your tongue, making sure that it isn't coated with a layer of scoopable kitty litter.  Your eyes finally focus as you lean in towards the mirror and that's when you see them.  The creases on the side of your face - the ones by your eyes - the... crow's feet.  It's not just dermatographia from the pillow case either.

The crow's feet have epic prominence this morning and you look like you've gone 10 rounds.  You poke the skin around your left eye - the puffiest eye...  It wasn't this puffy last night when you went to bed.  Did you have an allergic reaction to something?  Did one of the cats cold-cock you in your sleep?  There's no better word for it, your face looks... SMOOSHED.   poke - poke - poke...  It's as if all the skin has been pushed into a Shar Pei version of its regular self...

And that's when it hits you. Your face has been smooshed. You slept your face into its present state.  The weight of your head, as you slept on your side, has distorted your aging facial skin.

Let's face it, when a woman looks at those crow's feet on her face, its the rare bird who says: "Hey look at the aged beauty and character upon my visage!"  Age and character just doesn't seem to fly for the feminine set - it's not accepted and revered the way it is on the male form.

You've passed 40, you've tried your fair share of eye creams.  You've probably spent some cool pocket change on different varieties before you read the Internet articles telling you that once the lines are there, you're pretty much fucked.  Unless you're wealthy and can go the surgical or Botox maintenance route - those crow's feet are here to stay.  By the age of 47, you don't even really mind the crow's feet - it's the puffy smooshed bird nest by association that makes you die a little inside.

Fear not!  You don't need the bullshit (probably not literally made from bullshit) hundred dollar face creams.  You don't need Botox.  In a woman's fight to lessen the appearance of crow's feet and their accompanying bird nest, there is a simple solution.  One that we can all implement - starting today.  Are you ready?

REDEFINE THE TERMINOLOGY.  

How about this?  How about we call them what they actually are?  SMILE LINES.  I have SMILE lines. I've spent 47 years smiling.  That's almost half a century of smiling.  I can't and shouldn't want to erase these lines.  They're the marks of a life full of fucking good moments...  Of moments that made me smile,  giggle, snort, titter and guffaw with laughter.

The poofy smooshed face?  I've got something for that.

SLEEP ON YOUR BACK.

Let gravity be your friend.  Buy yourself a kick-ass, neck-supporting, Obus form pillow and convince that thin middle-aged facial skin, which I hope is chock full of smile lines, to slide earward overnight.  You'll thank me in the morning.

The Ballad of Menstrual Woman...

"I'm going to have a quick shower!" I say, heading up the stairs.

"O....kay..." This from David in the kitchen, his tone oddly sarcastic.

"Pardon?" I say - ducking down to catch his eye.

"Nothing," he shrugs before smiling falsely.

The temperature in the room has dropped about 15 degrees.

"Is something going on?" I ask.

"No, no, not at all..." He stands there belligerently.

I take a step further up the stairs, but then step back down.  "Are you sure nothing's going on?"

He heaves a deep, frustrated sigh.  "It's just that you don't really have quick showers," he says aggressively. "And we have to eat in 15 minutes."

My spirit crushed, I sit down on the stairs.  "Pardon?  I can have a quick shower..."

With a slightly patronizing eye-roll  he says,  "Yes, sure... yeah you can."

"I CAN have a quick shower!!"

"Uh-huh."  He's standing there, chest puffed out - looking ready to do a Krump battle.

"I CAN.  I'm going upstairs right now and you'll just see how quick!"

"O...kay..." His hands up now in a Whoa... Whoa... who's the crazy lady? gesture.

"Guys," says Rissa.  "This is not important."

"It IS!" I say stomping up the stairs.

I shoulder my way into the bathroom - my clothes off in mili-seconds.  The water is thrown on, I don't even adjust the temperature.  "See if I can't have a quick shower..."  I rinse my scalp and then slather on the conditioner, grabbing the back scrubber and smearing it with Grapefruit body wash.  Scrub... scrub... scrub... arms done!  Armpits done!  Legs done!  Hoo-ha (gently) done!  Feet done!  Hair, rinsed.  Water off.  Out.  Towel on.  Moisturizer on.  Towel off. Leave-in conditioner in.  Drag my fingers through my hair.  Grab the mousse and apply palmfuls of product to my curls.  Scrunch.  Scrunch again.  I speed-walk to the bedroom.  I grab my bathrobe, tying it as I come downstairs.

David and Rissa are still making Kraft dinner.  I sit triumphantly on the sofa.  I muffle my "HAH!" as best I can.  I glance pointedly at David.  Showed him.  Now would be the time to sit in regal silence.

"TOLD YOU!"

"Yes you did.  I am sorry for doubting you."

He has apologized.  I should accept it gracefully.  "If you want to talk time wasted in the bathroom, how about the 45 minutes that you can spend?  Just  sitting, over top of your own pooh!"

At this moment, with the word "pooh' ringing through my ears, I realize that I might not be as rational as I'd felt just 6.5 minutes before. 

"It is possible," I say (quietly).  "That I am a titch hormonal.  I thought I was done being hormonal for the week, but I was incorrect.  The floodgates have opened once more and I am now attributing paranoid judgmental adjectives to everyone's speech patterns."  I do an internal check - my rage has dissipated.  "I think I'm safe again."