And that's why you need to know your prices...

If I'm walking funny today, it's because I've been well and truly fucked. $13.38 folks.  I spent $13.38 on 1.365 kg of gluten free flour.* I thought I was doing the right thing, I really did. I thought that buying all purpose, gluten free flour at the Bulk Barn had to be cheaper than getting the Robin Hood all purpose gluten free flour at No Frills. It's BULK for fuck's sake!

Yes, I should have known better.  I've been burned by the Bulk Barn before. I've come out with a handful of pecans and a bill for $17.72, I've spent $25 to decorate a $5.25 gingerbread house. 

Used to be that I'd buy 5 different types of gluten free flours/starches at the Bulk Barn and mix 'em all up at home in my big-ass mixing bowl - rice/corn/sorghum/potato/tapioca residue coating my already pasty white body.  After filling glass jars with my newly amalgamated all-purpose flour, I'd jump into the shower - a gluten free, sticky mess. But lately, I've been lazy. Like teenaged sloth lazy. I've been buying the Robin Hood flour at No Frills during my regular shop for an astonishing $6.49 for 907 g.  

"Highway robbery!!" I would say to myself every time it landed in my shopping cart. Though the ease, and frankly, cleanliness, of not having to mix the flours on a Sunday morning before a batch of homemade pancakes was totally worth it. It'd given up my bulk mix dreams.

But last night, I had to go to the Bulk Barn anyway. You know, for macaroni cheese sauce and apparently... popcorn salt, because it caught my eye and I'm in a constant state of salt craving.  Before I knew it, I was sashaying down that gluten free aisle.  I'll just look, I thought. I'll comparison shop. Trouble is, because my middle-aged/peri-menopausal brain can no longer retain information, I couldn't remember the Robin Hood cost per 100 grams (even though I specifically looked at it on Monday at the grocery store), nor could I actually remember how many grams were in Robin's relatively tiny bag.

Turns out? Big Baking has beat Bulk. That Robin Hood bag of gluten free flour with xanthan gum already mixed in? It's 20 cents cheaper per 100g than buying bulk flours at the Bulk Barn. I would have actually SAVED money, had I spent that money at the grocery store.

Paying through the nose for specialty ingredients and then paying an extra fucking $2.76 at a place that is supposed to save a gal money?!?

*calming breath*

Okay. It's only $2.76 more. Put into my evidently hormonal perspective, it's less than a Fleur de Sel Lindt bar on sale at Shopper's Drugmart. I'm still saving money by baking from scratch even with Bulk Barn's exorbitantly priced, ready-made flour melange. That flour in my cupboard will be able to make at least four pancake breakfasts, several dozen cookies and assorted other baked goods - which if I were to purchase already baked, gluten-free goods, would be 2 boxes of Wow's Key Lime cookies. Don't even get me started on what a pre-made loaf of bread 1/3 the size of a regular  loaf of bread will cost you, I just got my blood pressure down.

*For those who believe that gluten free is just a fad/scam and doesn't really have an effect on people and I could be saving many dollars simply by not using gluten free flour in the first place?  Watch me eat a hotdog in a white bun.  I'll be high after 3.5 minutes. It will last about 1/2 an hour and then I start crying. It's a favourite thing for my boss to watch at company BBQs.

lyrical opposition

"I've figured it out!!" I exclaim.

"You have?  That's great!" says David.

"Figured what out?" asks Rissa.

"It's 'take-a-chance, take-a-chance, take-a-take-a-chance-chance!"

"Runh?" from Rissa.  

His interest now piqued, David stops mid-sandwich prep.

I clarify. "I'm playing ABBA on repeat in the car. I've never been able to sing along with the boys' part for "Take a Chance on Me." So I was listening really hard today and I've got it.  And though it seems as if it's 'take-a-chance, take-a-chance, take-a-chance-chance-chance' in actuality it's not 'chance-chance-chance.' There's another syllable in the phrase and only two 'chances'.  It's 'take-a-chance, take-a-chance, take-a-take-a-chance-chance'! "

David and Rissa are looking at me like I'm nuts. Disbelieving eyebrows grace David's forehead. "Nu-unh," he says.  "It's 'take-a-chance, take-a-chance, chick-a-chick-a-chance-chance.' "

I take a moment to try it out his way.  "Yeah, it works rhythmically, but why would it be 'chick-a-chick-a-chance-chance'? There's no 'k' in 'chance'."

David is stymied for a moment.  He immediately googles the song.

"It would be if chicken were singing the song," Rissa pipes in.

The sounds of ABBA fill the kitchen. We all close our eyes and listen, tilting our heads to one side, ensuring complete comprehension of syllables.  After a couple of verses we turn it off.

"It could be either/or," I say.

"Yeah," says David.  "Take-a and chick-a are very similar."

"Don't discount if chickens are singing it," says Rissa.

Thoughts?

how to raise a diva

A beautiful child is ahead of me in line at the Big Box store. She is approximately 7 years of age, dark hair, striking blue eyes. Freaking adorable. I find myself inclined to smile simply because of her incandescent beauty. And then I hear her scream/whine this:

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"  

The tone immediately pulls back my parental shoulders and raises my "Mummy" eyebrows. I take a calming breath.

Don't say anything Heather. Don't say ANY. THING. Not your kid. She is NOT your kid. Maybe the adult will parent-up. 

I wait patiently. The dad has yet to reply.

He's going to make a good choice. He's got this.

"But sweetie you already have one Kinder egg."

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"

"Now sweetie, what did I just say?"

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"

"Well, you'll have to ask your mother..."

She'll have to...? Did that motherfucker just do what I thought he did? Did he just fucking pass THE PARENTAL BUCK?!? 

"Mummy!  MUMMY!!!"

"What is it sweetie?"

In a slightly less whiny tone. "I want TWO Kinder eggs." No 'please,'  no 'May I have?" 

"You already have a Kinder egg."

"But. I. WANT. TWO!!!!"

I make eye contact with another parent waiting in the line next to mine. We are 1980s Cold War spies. We give each other almost imperceptible head shakes. Present etiquette restricts our ability to act. As long as those parents are not physically or verbally abusing that child in front of us we keep our mouths shut.

"But you already have one sweetie."  

The mother is calm. She won't cave.

"But I want TWO!!!"

"Well, allllllllll right, you pick out one more, but just one..."

What the fuck just happened? Our Cold War spy duo has now become a trio with another parent from the line to my left. You could cut diamonds with our glances. Without saying a word we all know that if that were our child she would not be leaving that store with ANY Kinder Eggs.

Instead, the pocket-sized prima donna rushes to the candy shelf. "Yay!  Barbie Kinder egg!"

Now the father pipes up, "You can have the toy....but I get to eat the chocolate from the second one."

"But I WANT the chocolate too!"

"You'll have enough chocolate with your own egg sweetie," says the mother.

"BUT. I. WANT. IT!!!"

"Oh well, we'll see..."

Oh yeah - this kid's going to be a joy when she's a teenager.

anatomy lessons for aging birds

I do a double-take as I open my elbow. Since when does the skin there look like a plucked chicken?  Like a really old, plucked chicken? Freaking ANCIENT.

"Whoa!  What the....? EEEEEEEEEEEW!"

"What are you doing?" asks Rissa.

"Look at this skin!"

"What about it?"

"My inside elbow looks 90!"

"No it does not."

"Sure easy for you to say, your inside elbow looks like a spring chicken."

Inside elbow.  That sounds awkward. Crook? Inbow? Elbow Pit? Does it have an actual name?  Like a Latin name?  And now I need to know what it's really called so that my irrational haranguing over it can have gravitas.  

It strikes me that if the skin on the outside of your elbow is colloquially called the 'wenis' that would mean that the skin of the inside elbow is dubbed the...

"WAGINA!!!"

Rissa emphatically says NO.

I show her the skin of my elbow.  "Wenis."

wenis

Then rotate my arm so that the interior really old plucked chicken elbow skin is on view. "Wagina."

wagina

 "NO."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Wenis."  Rotate arm.  "Wagina."

"NO.  You're ridiculous."

I feel my logic is sound.

"Fine.  I'll look it up."

Ladies and germs I give you the cubital fossa.

"Fossa cubitalis est mihi senescit."

"You're ridiculous."

"Yes, but I'm ridiculous in LATIN."

DO NOT DIS COHEN

Rissa and I love IZombie.  We love when Liv cooks the brains each episode.  We love when Major's personality transforms after eating mind candy. We love the theme song, the bad puns, the comic panels.

And then Blaine says, "I was singing Hallelujah... the Jeff Buckley tune..." Which is when I lose my shit.

"COHEN!!  IT'S FUCKING COHEN!!!"

"What?" asks Rissa, thinking I've lost my mind.

"He means Hallelujah  written by Leonard FUCKING Cohen! Jeff Buckley did a COVER - a fantastic cover, but it was a FUCKING cover!!"

"Whoa, simmer down there Mama."

"How can they? Grrrrrr....."  grumble, grumble, grumble.

"Mama - seriously it's..."

"No, what if this is like the moment on New Girl when they dissed Birdman and I couldn't respect the writers any more?"

"What if it's just because of Blaine's memory loss that he can't remember that it's Cohen and this is a very in-crowd joke?"

"Then they made the WRONG fucking joke!  Buckley's version is too old.  If you're going to make it a joke for folk-rock fans, they should have said, 'I was singing Hallelujah... the Pentatonix Tune...' which came out 2016 and would have completely let the audience KNOW that it was a joke as opposed to the way they did it, mis-attributing it to Buckley, whose version is, I freely admit, pretty fucking close to perfect, but you don't DENY Cohen's songwriting skills - the dude is a genius!!!  And he's BARELY FUCKING dead!  Even fucking SNL did an obscure tribute to the guy!!!"  snort, grumble, snort.

"Wow," says Rissa. "You weren't kidding when you said you're a little moody with your unexpected period."

There's the possibility that my hormones have hijacked my higher brain function.

Cat Olympics

CRASH!!!

"What the???"  David, Rissa and I all turn towards the laundry closet, from whence the sound emerged.  When had we docked a ship back there and how had it broken free from its moorings?

"What was that?"  We all look at each other, on the cusp of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spocking  for who gets to discover the damage.

"I'll go," I offer.  I creep towards the area of the ruckus.  The box that holds the dryer sheets and lingerie bags is now on the floor - the accordion drying rack is askew on the wall.   On the stacked dryer sits Lola, the smallest of our cats.  The dryer sits at least 6.5 feet off the floor.  The upright freezer from which she obviously jumped, upon which the laundry accouterments rested, is at least 5.5 feet high (165cm).

"How did you get up there?" I ask.

 "Is that Lola?"

"It is.  She's on the dryer."

"How did she get up there?"

"I think she jumped up onto the freezer and then bounced from there to the dryer."  I look at Lola  "Is that what you did?" I ask.

Lola remains coquettishly silent.  She's our cat who can jump straight up in the air and then insert herself perpendicularly at that ascent.  No scrabbling, no clawing. It's kinda spectacular. 

Or at least I thought it was until I saw this video.  If Lola has a shot at the 2018 Cat Olympics we're going to have to up her game.

I need a groomer...

WARNING: This post doesn't pull any punches.

I need a table set up in my home, under the most natural light possible, where a team of  aestheticians clad in neuroscientist's glasses can groom me every morning. This finding  hair on my face, chin, neck, legs - breasts - at inopportune moments has got to stop.

Hairy breasts throw a girl's groove off. Particularly because the discovery of said hair usually occurs after a boisterous lovemaking session where David has spent a great deal of focus, shall we say, on the breastal region. I'll head to the bathroom to freshen up before sleep and I'll see a looooooooong black hair on my breast. I'm not saying there's enough to floss with, but something a centimeter long does draw one's attention, particularly when I could swear that the hair hadn't been there the day before.

Ditto with the sudden beach side/pool side realization that the hair on the backs of my thighs could have me placed in a "Switched at Birth?" ad for a yeti.

"It's lovely to meet you Prime Minister.  Let us retire to the conservatory for our discussion on climate change ."  Passing the elaborate Rococo mirror in the hall, I notice... Oh MY GOD, I have a mustache - a full on - MUSTACHE, that is only visible in natural light!!!

Just this morning in the bathroom Rissa says,  "Whoa, hold on a sec..." before she then proceeds to pluck a long black hair from my spine.

"How am I supposed to check my frickin' BACK for hair?"

She shrugs.

"You do realize that your going to have a full-time position making me less hirsute when I'm elderly and mostly blind, right?"

"I kind of figured."

"I should get the paperwork on that started."

***

Somewhat related tangent: How do porn stars manage? Sure, they're probably waxed to within an inch of their lives, but why don't they end up with ingrown hairs? Or heat rash? On any given waxing/epiladying adventure, I'll develop at least one ingrown hair, which, when you're as fish-belly white as I am, becomes a throbbing red beacon upon my thigh/breast/neck. Do porn stars have their own team of full-time aestheticians, or am I just over-thinking what porn watchers are really there for?