Panty Liner Soccer

I love watching the cats play.  Steve and Lola are batting something all over the kitchen floor.  They're having so much fun.  Galloping to and fro - the epitome of feline friskiness.

I throw a glance their way - can't quite make out what they're playing with.  White and... pink??  What are they playing with?  It looks like a wad of toilet paper maybe?  Nope.  A paper towel?  Noooooope.

It's a panty-liner that they've stolen from the upstairs bathroom waste basket.  It's a panty liner that Steve is now carrying in his mouth.  Thankfully, it's a panty liner that has been rolled onto itself, thereby trapping any residual... (insert inappropriately descriptive imagery here) in its centre.  And all I could think was this:  Thank God we flush tampons.

Crazy-Ass Hand Veins

When did I start having these crazy-ass hand veins?  How did that happen?!?  I'm 44 with the hands of a grandmother.  I want to raise my hands above my heart so that all the blood rushes from them and I can pretend they are still young and pretty and not all  blue and bulgy and veiny.

The last time I was under a general anesthetic?  I didn't have bulgy veins for several weeks.  It was fantastic!  My hands looked like a teenager's.  Does your blood get thinner with a general?  If I had elective surgery every little while, would my hands look younger too?  They could give me a shot of botox for my forehead lines, but do it while I was under a general and I'd wake up with a young face AND young hands. 

My hands totally give me away.  My face, from a relative distance, appears young - full of vim and vigour.  My hands?  Might be mistaken for the Evil Queen's from Disney's Snow White.  I shall endeavour to turn this into a 'glass 1/2 full' moment... If I were to be hospitalized, they'd have NO problem finding a vein for the IV.  There, see?  Always a bright side.

Although, when I'm having sex, I do try to leave my hands over my head so that David doesn't think that he's giving an octogenarian a good rogering.

Got me by the short and curlies!

Curly hair.  Not every stylist gets it.  You just can't cut curly hair the way that you cut straight hair.  It has a life of its own.  You lose length when it dries.  It SPROINGS.  My regular stylist - Amanda - the one who can cope with curly hair, is off work, expecting her third child.   She obviously doesn't understand her importance to me.  When you only get trims on a quarterly or half-yearly basis, you need someone who knows what they're doing.  She abandoned me in my hour of need.

I asked the new stylist (whom I was assured could cut curly hair) for several shorter pieces to give the top layers some bounce.   Amanda does this all the time.  This is what I ended up with:

Yes, this shank of hair is 5 inches shorter than my shortest layer.

I want Amanda to come back.  I want her to quit having kids and going on Mat Leave.  Although, by the time I go for my next trim - she'll probably be back and my hair will have grown out again.  So I will chalk this up to a learning experience.  And next time?  When I'm booking my appointment? When I ask "Can the stylist cut curly hair?"  and they say yes... I will have a follow-up question.  "REALLY?"

Where's my salt lick?

Anybody else craving salt?  I feel like I could have a freaking salt lick and it wouldn't be enough for me.  I keep making "nom, nom, nom" noises when I pass the salt aisle at the grocery store.  You know the one... chips, peanuts, popcorn, tortilla chips...

I want to take the salt shaker and shake it directly on my tongue.  Is that wrong?  When I go to our local movie theatre, they have a popcorn salt shaker on the counter.   I shake-shake-shake it into the popcorn and then jostle the popcorn so that the popcorn salt will settle and then I'll shake-shake-shake it again and jostle...  I might even do it a third time.  In addition to totally loading it up with salt, in ensures that neither David nor Rissa can eat the first 1/3 of the of popcorn.

Are my taste buds out of whack?  Am I low on sodium in my diet?  Would it be wrong to carry a small bar of salt in my purse - just for emergency purposes? Then when I get the craving, instead of eating a bag of chips or making nachos, I could just have a couple of surreptitious licks of the salt and I'd be good to go.  Less calories, more sodium.

How early is too early for Pina Coladas?

I open up the freezer, seeking concentrated orange juice.  I've got a brutal cold and my body is craving the vitamin C.  I am Stanley, looking for my Livingstone.  This is one of those real adventures into the freezer.  I lift things up.  Sole filets from 2010, Freezies from when we moved to this house, freezer-burned mixed veggies... No orange juice.  So I'm phlegmy AND there's no orange juice. 

But there are a couple of frozen pina colada mixes...  7:03 a.m.  Too early for pina coladas?  I look at the caloric value - if I don't eat any actual food for the next 12 hours, I should be okay.  Plus the rum might just take the edge off my cold.

You ever have one of those mornings??

Lie on me!!

"Wait!  Wait!" Rissa says, as I'm trying to depart her bedside.  She clutches at me.  "You can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to lie on me!!"

"Because why?"

"Because then I can put my arm on my stomach and see if I can escape."

(This is one of those things that happened by accident one night and is now apparently 'the thing to do' at bedtime.)

Rissa arranges her limbs - one arm out to the side and then one lying across her stomach.  "Okay, I'm ready.  Hit me!"

I collapse my considerable torso upon her tummy. Rissa wriggles like an ineffectual escape artist for several minutes - giggling madly, snorting and gasping with the effort to dislodge her hand.  I get up.

"No!!  No!  Not yet!!  I can do this!  Let me try the other arm!!!"

"You're insane."

"Yes, but I'm uniquely insane."  She puts her other arm on her stomach.  "Lie on me!!!"

We repeat the same procedure - she almost manages to extricate the hand at one point, in spite of my nearly double body weight upon her.  She has worked herself into a near seizure doing so, which brings on another gale of giggles.  Unable to resist, I find myself snorting, almost choking on laughter.

"You are a goof," I say, kissing her goodnight. 

"I know," she says.  She snuggles down under her duvet contentedly.  "But I'm a satisfied goof."

Popcorn Apocalypse

It's afternoon snack time!!  I have just thrown in a bag of microwave popcorn when David calls to have me find a file.  I run upstairs to find it, but immediately realize the folly in leaving unattended microwave popcorn, so I run back downstairs and ask Rissa to stand guard.

"Can you please listen for the popcorn?  2 seconds between pops." 

She rolls her eyes - immediately transforming into a 20-something who knows everything.  "I know Mummy! I know how to make popcorn.  I'll get the popcorn."  She then gives a 'you scoot' gesture with her hand.

I head back upstairs.  2 minutes later I'm wondering if I'm having the beginnings of an epileptic fit.  I'm smelling smoke.  Acrid, eye-stinging, oily...

Rissa comes up the stairs...

"I might have, um...  maybe just a little...."  She collapses on the floor.  "I can't make popcorn!!!  WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!"

In my head, I'm remembering a conversation we had not three minutes before.  "Dude!  I just told you.  You were right beside the microwave!  You had to wait 45 seconds!  What happened?"

"I don't know.  I was washing up dishes and then... then... WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!  I... I... I...
I CAN'T MAKE POPCORN!!!!"

You know how long the odour of scorched popcorn permeates your house?  48 hours.  Plus, we now need a new microwave - it looks like vagrants used the inside of it to keep themselves warm before adding gasoline and allowing it to really spark up.

Rissa - in mid "WAILEY"