Chawing on one's neck...

Yesterday, before heading into the backyard to weed everything that had the sheer mendacity to raise its head beyond the mulch, I sprayed my entire body with citronella.  Every inch.  And then, as a mosquito sexually assaulted me - sticking its nasty proboscis INTO my jaw - I realized - FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY!  I DIDN'T DO MY FACE!!!!  My hair, my neck, arms, torso, ass, thighs, calves and ankles - especially the ankles.  Wouldn't you figure that the fog from that amount of citronella would dissuade those frickin' vampires?

And how is it possible that the same word used to describe the feeding mechanism for ethereal butterflies...

is the same word used for the stabbing, blood-sucking noses of these scourge of the outdoors - mosquitoes. 

How about this?  WE KILL THEM ALL!   And yes, I am aware that mosquitoes feed bats and spiders and any other number of animals up the food chain.  But now, as I must use every ounce of will within me NOT to scratch deep to the very bone of my jaw,  I DON'T care.  KILL THEM ALL!  Yes, I am ready to willfully cause an eco-disaster of epic proportions - that will have ramifications for our entire planet - perhaps our very solar system, but you know what, right now, I DON'T care.  By the time that happens, I'll probably be dead, Rissa and maybe my grandchildren will be dead, so it'll be someone else's problem.  The food chain adapts all the time.  I'm going to start carrying a placard: "MURDER MOSQUITOES - PROTECT PEOPLE"

I can't scratch it.  If I scratch it I will end up looking like a scabby small pox survivor.   Maybe if I just scratch around it...

It's possible I might be tired. Up early so that I could braid Rissa's hair for her track meet.   I staggered into the bathroom to help her and then crashed back into my bed, but had six notes of a song in my head.   And you know why?  Because in the bathroom, while braiding her hair, this happened:

Rissa; I really didn't like the bit they did for the Tony Awards from Jesus Christ Superstar (yes our daughter is a huge musical theatre geek- just like her parents)

Me: No?

Rissa:  The Judas guy was all wrong.  I needed to get the right song in my head.  So I went to You Tube looking for the Original Cast Album of the song, but couldn't find it.  It just kept giving me clips from the movie and that Judas was wrong too.

Me: That's because Carl Anderson is good, but he's not Murray Head.

Rissa:   No!  Not that guy either.  The guy from the Australian recording.

Me:  You and I will have to agree to disagree on that one Riss.

Rissa:  I know!! I know!!  But I went to our music collection and listened to Superstar on the computer and then because I was there I had to listen to the key change at the beginning of Chess - you know the one?  "Ba ba bum bum, ba ba bum... ba ba bum bum bum... SRO...  S...R...O...!"

She then goes blithely off, and I'm lying in bed with "SRO... S...R...O....!!!" careening through my head.  ARGH!!!  You might wonder what SRO even means.  It means Standing Room Only.  I only knew that's what they were singing, having listened to the original album of Chess for 2 decades, after seeing the recent concert version with Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal and that dude... oh God - I hate when I have those moments of early-onset Alzheimer's.  You know the guy...  curly hair, bit of a...   HAH!  Josh Grobin!  HAH!  And DOUBLE HAH!  I didn't have to Google it.

That's why!  It's freakin' Google that is giving me early onset Alzheimer's.  No one has to remember ANYHING because you can just Google it.  I used to be able to remember all sorts of useless trivia.  Names, lyrics, dates when things were published.  I don't have to anymore because of Google.  Google is encouraging generations upon generations to lose the trivial parts of their brain.  Fight the power people!  Work through the pain and remember shit on your own!

Waking up to Tom Sawyer

Most mornings, after the radio sounds - my mind remains muzzy.  It is warm and comfortable, clinging to precious unconsciousness.  Today... playing at approximately 6:45 a.m. on Jazz 91.1... today I discovered The Lost Fingers' cover of Tom Sawyer.  Yes THAT Tom Sawyer.  The one by Rush.  As a 1930's style gypsy jazz tune.

http:/www.thelostfingers.com/disco/

I'm not saying that my life will be forever altered, but my day certainly has been.  I will be going to ITunes and purchasing at least one of their albums - Lost in the 80s is looking to be top of my list, although Gypsy Kameleon is pulling  a close 2nd.  Usually David whacks the snooze button immediately - or maybe I've been sleeping more soundly lately, but this morning had me leaping from the bed on a veritable quest to discover who had done this mind-blowing cover.

And you know something?  You can't get through to Jazz 91.1 until 9:00 a.m.  WHAT THE WHAT??  I KNOW there are people in that building - I was LISTENING to them on the radio - but I can't ask the producer who did the song.  There are those of you who are shaking their heads - why didn't she look at the playlist?  I DID!  I looked at the stupid playlist and it made no mention of ANY band playing a fabulous version of Tom Sawyer.  It goes from 6:34:56 Benny Green - Opus de Funk to 6:48:52 Scott Hamilton - Swingin' Till the Girls Come Home.  A blank spot where I NEEDED to know the band.  So I went to YouTube searching for "Tom Sawyer Jazz Version."  That led me to a cool jazz trio, The Bad Plus, that played an instrumental of it.  But NOT the version I had heard mere minutes before.  I had to hunt for a good 7-9 minutes before I found the Lost Fingers' cover.  Then I did a little happy dance in my rolly desk chair.

I love, I mean, ABSOLUTELY FREAKING ADORE, finding new cool music.  I admit, my tastes run from the sublime to the ridiculous - this being sublimely ridiculous in the tastiest way possible.  I love bad lounge music - swing - torch songs... I know that part of me must have been from an earlier era.  But I also love alternative and prog rock and classic rock and classical and Philip Glass, the Violent Femmes and Nina Simone.  I like tasty things.  Music with bite or humour or that extra kick to the gut when you listen to it.  Affecting Art.  Inventive Theatre.  Film that surprises.  This morning - waking to this song was surprising in the best possible way.  Thank you The Lost Fingers - you really made my day!

Listen to your body...

Last night we went over to our fabulous neighbours' place for dinner.  Kaye holds the title for  BEST COOK I KNOW.  For the longest time my Mom held the title hands down, but Kaye is a beast when it comes to cooking.  We had this appetizer that was 1/2 an avocado with crab salad inside it. I am a cooking neophyte in comparison to her. 

Way prettier than any appetizer I will ever serve.

Food was great, company was great, conversation was great, 1st glass of wine was great. The other THREE glasses of wine is where it begins to go wrong.  No one else was drinking white.  When Kaye had asked if we liked seafood, I thought the main course was seafood - not the incredible sirloin that we ate - so I got a nice bottle of Soave for everyone.  But then I was really the only one to drink it - because I felt kind of obligated - they're not really white wine drinkers.  I was being a good guest.  Over the course of 4 hours drinking several glasses of wine isn't really a problem.  I wasn't drunk - I was pleasantly toddled.  But unfortunately when that happens, my taste buds think it's time to eat again.  So those BBQ chips that were on the counter?  Somehow managed to end up in my tummy.  Before going to bed the sodium and booze in my system convinced me to drink lots and lots of water.  I took a couple of prophylactic Tylenols - cause I thought to myself "You might be thinker than you drunk you are."  Crashed and slept straight through to 7:00 a.m.  

Whereupon I awoke with a blinding headache and hot flashes.  Weather system shift, plus too much alcohol in my system = BAD.  Jet engine through my torso and ocular migraine.  Alcohol and caffeine are bad for peri-menopausal women.  I KNOW THAT!  I should have brought over a bottle  of sparkling water or at least held onto my wine glass so that they couldn't keep filling it up.  

It's just that wine tastes so good with good food.  Doesn't it?  And sparkling water is for pussies.  But I made David promise this morning that FROM NOW ON I should only have one drink.  ONLY ONE... ONLY ONE... and not for any hangover stupidity, but rather the frickin' hot flashes.  Dumb, dumb bunny.

That's the good thing about being older.  I'll remember this shit now.  I want to avoid aftermath.  I can learn from my mistakes.  Can't I?

The Perils of Florence...

I slept in this morning.  All the way to 6:00 a.m. before bodily urges had me rising.  Still warm and sleepy, I attempted to crawl back into my toasty bed, snuggled next to my husband but was foiled by  Florence.

No, I thought.  No!  You're going back to sleep!  You still have half an hour!  You can do this!   Don't let her in!  You're sleepy.  You haven't had caffeine yet!

Too late!  There she was - singing gleefully - my first coherent thought of the day.

You hit me once

I hit you back

You gave a kick

I gave a slap

You smashed a plate over my head

Then I set fire to our bed

Oh, this song.  This mind-worm of a song.  With its 2:04 of power and fury - signifying...   what?  Rissa and I sing this in the car.  At the top of our lungs (HAH!) as David generally looks on in horror.  Not at our singing, but rather, the lyrics we are so joyfully sharing, windows down, with passers by.  Every time I belt the words, my subtext - beyond the initial layer of - THIS SONG FREAKING ROCKS!!! - is - "It's sung ironically.  Please God, let her have recorded this song in an utter state of irony."  'Cause when this song grabs hold of you - of your very ovaries - it won't let go.  It's girl pop thrash at its best - a great hook  that you can't help growl out with Florence.  A song that demands you sing along, smiling and cackling at its fantasticness.

Yet it was only this morning that I actually researched the song - released in 2008 - but new to me since I had given it to Rissa in 2010 to encourage the female rock empowerment phase that all young girls need to go through.  Imagine my relief when I read that, no it wasn't, in fact, about a physically abusive relationship.

"Kiss with a Fist" is NOT a song about domestic violence. It is about two people pushing each other to psychological extremes because they are fighting but they still love each other. The song is not about one person being attacked, or any actual physical violence, there are no victims in this song. Sometimes the love two people have for each other is a destructive force. But they can't have it any other way, because it's what holds them together, they enjoy the drama and pushing each other's buttons. The only way to express these extreme emotions is with extreme imagery, all of which is fantasism and nothing in the song is based on reality. Leona Lewis's Bleeding Love isn't actually about her bleeding and this song isn't actually about punching someone in the mouth." (Florence's My Space Blog)

Oh thank God!  I don't even have to sing it with irony!  I can sing it embracing its expression of all-consuming passionate love!!  Nay, reveling in that!  I'll be able to explain when my 12 year old daughter shares it with friends.  I can point the horrified parents to the quotation and not be turned into a feminist pariah.  Phew!  That's a load off my mind.

Now that that's settled, I can I work out my burlesque cabaret number to Florence's cover of the Ludes' Girl with One Eye - such a tasty bit of Kill Bill-esque imagery - blatantly encouraging me to raise the eyebrows of our small town theatre-goers.  Oh there's a thought to bring a smile to a girl's face!

My brain might be melting

The release of steam at the end of a day.  This is what blogging is for.  Things like my cat.  Lola.   Or as we affectionately call her - Lola 'Bola Virus - who decided that she wanted to wear my rhinestone necklace this morning at 4:47 a.m. Our little cat burglar tried to abscond with it whereupon I had to chase her down the hall in my all-together, retrieve said necklace, and then hide the necklace and lock the bedroom door.  Plaintive meowing and pitiful paws under the door did not move me.

Plus, my daughter has a disease.  Not a dangerous one.  Don't freak out.  Fifth's Disease.  She has that "just slapped" look to her face and a lacy rash upon her body - which she shows off with pride.  "Look at my BELLY!!!  It's all rashy!!!" (pat, pat, pat upon her tummy)   Thank God she doesn't have any other symptoms other than the rash.  No aches, no fever - just this crazy-ass rash.  And Rissa can be prone to some interesting shit.  From  the time she was little-little, she could spike a fever of 104 to 105 (or 40 - 40.55 for those who know what SICK is in Celsius.)  Sometimes with an inner ear infection - for which she apparently had no pain at all, but when we took her to the Emerg they looked like they were going to call children's services when they looked in and saw how inflamed her ears were.  "She wasn't crying.  She wasn't in pain.  I DIDN'T KNOW!!!"  Sometimes the kid will spike a fever with the Common Cold.  I guess that should be common cold - if it's common it shouldn't be capitalized. 

Speaking of crazy-ass... I have this weird thing with my circulatory system.  (Well, to be fair, I have weird things with many of my systems.)  My fingers, toes and lips turn blue if my body thinks it's cold.  (Reynaud's Syndrome)  It can be like 22 degrees out and I'll start shivering.  David popped me into an emergency warm-up bath because one side-effect of my crazy-ass circulatory system is, um... chest pains.  That aren't real chest pains - trust me, I've had them for 4 years - I probably have small vessel disease for which you can do NOTHING but maybe take a shot (or 3) of Scotch - (I'm not saying take 3 to any docs that are out there - it's hyperbole), which I do, and the pain generally goes away.  Problem is now - when I get stressed - like as I'm working out the scheduling of important people for a big audition, this chest pain tends to stand up and want to be counted.  David's suggesting that I just stay slightly drunk most of the time to counteract those effects because alcohol helps with the relaxation you know.  He likes to fix things.  I suggest that perhaps that's not a good thing to start doing.  Although having a chocolate martini every afternoon might well be delicious, the extra calories would be bad.  Yes it appears I'm more worried about gaining extra weight than becoming a raging alcoholic.  I look at the world through Cosmopolitan glasses.

Good God the heat - the HEAT!!!

Yes.

I used to placate my mother when, in her 40s and 50s, she would say "Is it hot in here?"  Our whole family would.  My father, brother and I would say "PHEW!! Yes, MAN is it HOT!  Steaming!!!"  She was not amused, and she always said to me, "It'll come back to haunt you, you know."  And it has.

Holy Crap I am BURNING from the inside out.  I am SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTING!!!  I started flashing when I was 36.  (Hot flashing.  The regular flashing I'd been doing from way earlier than that.)   36!   Hot flashes and torrential periods all at the same time - you'd figure that if there were any justice in the universe it'd be one or the other.    So I'm sitting here at the computer and I have a jet engine through my freaking torso, but this time the jet engine has some blow-back down my arms and up to my neck and head.  Seriously??  I could take off every item of clothing that I'm wearing and it wouldn't make a difference.  If I had a candy thermometer handy and put it under my breasts, I'd be way past the soft ball stage - I'd be at caramelized sugar stage -  I'm THAT HOT.  Maybe I'll submerge myself in a cool bath.  Oh God, I just started salivating at the thought. 

My mother has said a lot of things will come back to haunt me.  "I hope that you have 6 daughters - all like you!!"  Then I had Rissa.  My mother will freely admit that Rissa... is enough. Rissa is awesome and deliciously off-centre and is almost never quiet.  I remember calling my mom when Rissa was about 4.  I was beside myself. "She NEVER stops talking!!!"  From my mother's end of the phone all I could hear was maniacal cackling and the phrase "REVENGE IS MINE!!"  In her wallet, my mother has a piece of paper.  It says, "When my daughter is 16, I will let her do whatever she wants."  It is signed by the 16 year-old version of me.    When I am 48 - oh GOD,  that's only 4 years from now -  I will have that 16 year-old daughter and my mother will be gleefully flapping that piece of paper at me, dancing around singing "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HAH!  Ha-ha-ha-ha-HAH!"

Tomorrow I have signed on to be one of several chaperones on a Grade 6 trip to a camp in the Kawarthas.  A 36 hour overnight trip where there will be 8 girls in my cabin with another chaperone and apparently they discourage the wearing of ear plugs, you know in case something might happen to one of the little darlings. Come on, throw a mother a bone here!

I am NOT an outdoorsy person.  Camping for me is not having 4 inch baseboards.  It's still buggy and when looking at the weather forecast they are expecting THUNDER STORMS!!!  And apparently I have to be happy for all 36 hours.  All of them.  Happy.  David says so, because he's going as well and is chaperoning the boys, so he'll know if I'm crabby.  I have not been on a field trip since the disastrous Jiggi Jump Jive trip in Grade One which sucked IQ points out of my brain.  (shudder) You may witness below what I had to endure.

So I just haven't been.  I have  a lot of time to make up for.  And who knows?  Maybe spending 36 hours with my kid and her friends in the freaking wilderness will be a good thing...  I will coat myself in bug spray and smile for 36 hours.  I can and will do this and I will be magnificent!!

La La Land

I thought the cold was done.  Kaput.  Finito.  I was misinformed.  I woke up this morning and I was - to quote Will Farrell - "a cotton-headed ninny muggins."  I was in freaking La La Land.  Eyes, ears, balance?  Blurry, plugged, OFF.   And I'm not sure, but I might have had a seizure this week.  Possibly two.  The second one could just have been because I was downwind of the Mr. Sub shop, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

What I think I actually had was an olfactory (smell) hallucination due to a migraine.   I was sitting at the desk typety-typing along with a titch of a headache (brought on by a stray reflection in the stainless steel sink when I was rinsing my lunch dishes) when suddenly I smelled burning wire.  I turned to David who was working across the room at his desk and said "Did you smell that?"  He said, "Smell what?"  Then I felt like my head was in a bit of a vice and my brain kind of went whoomp whoomp for a sec and I thought it might be best if I sat on the floor for a bit.  So I did.   It's amazing how quickly David can move - really quite impressive - like ZIP-BOOM fast!  And then after a couple of minutes it was done.  Olfactory hallucinations, I was pleased to read soon thereafter, can in fact be associated with migraines.  YAY - it's not necessarily a seizure!!!   If it happens again I'm seeing my Doc, but until then I'm not worrying too much. 

I swear that I'm not being lackadaisical about this - my body is just so freaking bizarre and sensitive to weird-ass crap that I really only pay attention now when I absolutely have to.  I wonder if the script-writers for House are looking for any new symptoms - I could give 'em a run for their money for sure.

When a person is sick they shouldn't exercise, they're supposed to rest up.  But when I don't exercise I find it hard to sleep at night and then I tend to just get sicker.  Because I know this about myself, I might exercise sooner than I should for fear of the Cold Catch-22 happening.  Which is probably why today I felt like a zombie and did next to nothing.  My big accomplishment was diving under our deck to get the stand for our off-set patio umbrella so that I could doze on our outdoor sofa in relative shade.   I had to sleep for a whole hour to get over the excitement of it all.

It's the long weekend in May and I refuse to be sick for the whole weekend.  Je refuse!!  I will get a good night's sleep tonight and arise tomorrow a new woman!  A woman with purpose.  A woman with verve!!  And I shall eat pancakes!!!  I need to chest bump something.