How Rissa almost blew chunks...

This is the story of how Rissa almost blew chunks on the family room rug.

My mothers-in-law came over for dinner the other night.  They brought regular fruit crumble and gluten-free, possibly sugar-free crumble.  David's Mom is doing the gluten-free thing, I'm doing the gluten-free thing.  The rest of the folks got the sugary-gluteny-oaty-goodness and Mer and I had the gluten-free, extra crunchy bits, slightly-sweet, 'good for us' crumble.  And it was pretty good.  I'm used to gluten-free alternatives.  I was thankful for it.  Because there are people in the world who hardly get to have ANY food at all, let alone gluten-free fruit crumble.  I had ice cream on mine.  I can only go so far with being good.

Fast-forward to the next night after dinner, when Rissa discovered a container of leftover fruit crumble in the fridge.

"Can I have the rest of the fruit crumble Mummy?"

"Yes.  Yes you may." 

She slathered it in whipped topping (mmmm, edible oil product) and put a bite into her mouth.  She chewed twice.  She then said,  "Euls lis la gooen hree hrungle?"  (Is this the gluten-free crumble?)  I nodded.  Her eyes may have rolled back in her head a bit, and she looked like she was contemplating a projectile vomit.

"Swallow it!" I said.  "Do not throw that up."

Her eyes rolled more - she gave a chewing performance worthy of an Oscar.  Watching her, one could have sworn that she was eating raw worms covered in diarrhea, instead of a healthful dessert.  After several MINUTES of chewing, followed by the most dramatic swallow I've ever seen in my life, she said, "THIS.  IS. NOT. GOOD."

I could have have warned her.  You see, that morning, I had eaten the leftovers of the non-gluten-free crumble.  Because it was there.  Staring at me from its see-through container from the second shelf of the fridge.  Saying "Heather... Heather... Look at my oaty-goodness...  See my brown-sugar crisped topping!!  Imagine how good I would taste in your mouth!"   I CAVED, alright?  I CAVED.  I didn't feel like sprinkling brown sugar all over the gulten-free, mostly sugar-free crumble to make it taste like the real crumble.  And honestly, I don't think that oats are that much a problem for me.  And the amount of white flour used in crumble?  Come on... it's like half a cup - tops!!!  For the whole recipe, which would mean I'd be eating maybe a tablespoon of flour... And yes, I know that I'm making excuses.  I don't care.  It was a perfect choice for breakfast.  I had vanilla yogurt on top, which is... healthful.  It was healthful and totally worth the gluten/sugar headache that I got after eating it.  And you know what?  The brown sugar was freaking awesome!  And there was none left, because I ate it ALL.

Which is why Rissa had taken the gluten-free crumble, which had been masquerading as regular fruit crumble, because they had been placed in see-through containers and they looked remarkably similar.  She was making "Pah!  Blech!  Pah!" sounds at the sink where she was rinsing her mouth out with water and gargling. 

Then she held up a piece of something in front of me.  "Okay this... "  She put a piece of something between my eyes.  "THIS was in the crumble AND IT'S GREY."  She was holding a sunflower seed.  "THIS HAS NO PLACE IN CRUMBLE."   Then she glared at me and said, "I'm having frozen mango!"  Can't fault her for that.  When your mouth is expecting a certain taste and you're left with bits of sunflower seeds NOT covered in brown sugar?  I can see it would be disappointing.  And if was a a good mother I would have given her a heads' up on it.  Her reaction was so totally worth my being labelled a bad mother.

Aaron Sorkin is a GOD!

Aaron Sorkin has a new series on HBO.  The Newsroom.  Thank the freaking universe!!  It's been so long since Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and even longer since The West Wing and Sports Night.  David PVRd the show without my even knowing that there was a new Sorkin show.  He presented it to me me like a Tiffany ring.  I almost wept.  It tasted like the best chocolate ever... in my ears.

Sorkin is BACK!

Afterward, I was bouncing on the couch.  "Can we download these scripts and just read them out loud... NAKED?"

It's the intellectual/auditory equivalent to porn.  At least for me.  Well, for us.  We salivate as we get ready to watch.   We snuggle and sigh as we let the words rush over us.  I make yummy noises.

And you know what?  The Newsroom isn't even his best show.  I hate to say it out loud, because I'm just so thrilled that there IS a new Sorkin show, but...  it's a little... heavy-handed.  I'm okay with that though, because we seem to be the same kind of liberal-minded people, and I agree with what he's writing, but it's a little too "Rah!  Rah!"  For me.  But still, I'll take what I can get.

We started re-watching Studio 60 the other night and Rissa turned to us and said "THIS IS SO GOOD!  Everything's so fast!!!" An added bonus for Rissa was that Matthew Perry stars in the show and she LOVES Matthew Perry - she is addicted to Friends.  (I know, I know, we are TERRIBLE parents for letting her watch Friends.  But honestly, Friends is pretty freaking tame when you compare it to the sit-coms out there now.  Like The New Girl (totally hilarious, yet WAY too sexual for a tween) and How I Met Your Mother.  We had to ban HIMYM from Rissa for a bit, because we felt that her idolizing Barney Stinson at the age of 9 was inappropriate.  Now that she's 12, she can watch once more, with the caveat that she cannot discuss any of the episodes about sex, binge drinking or general douche-baggery with her friends.  We only let her watch 2 episodes (44 minutes) of any show anyway.  Unless she's watching something with us; that doesn't count as her viewing minutes, because we're 'educating' her.)

Oh and by the by... Aaron Sorkin wrote a part that William H. Macy played on Sports Night and Macy was drop-dead sexy.  Continually cast as the nice, milquetoast character, Macy was freaking brilliant as a seemingly ego-maniacal network fixer guy.  There are some scenes with William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman where I got wet watching them together.  I would rewind and watch him give her this 'look,' that was... I'm digressing.

William H. Macy as Sam Donovan on Sports Night

Sorkin's writing is tasty, tasty, tasty.  It's fast, it's furious and it's fan-freaking-tastic.  Even when it's a little too "Rah, Rah" it's still pretty much the best thing on television.

But he was gay, and this is yoga class!!!

Warning - lurid adult content

I should have known it was a dream, because I was in a yoga classs.  I don't take yoga class.  I think I can honestly say, that apart from the impromptu yoga instruction that my friend Alice gave David, Anna and me on the beach of her cottage property, that I have never done yoga in a group.  (I don't exercise well with others - see previous blog post I DON'T GLOW)

But this dream seemed SO real.  There were a bunch of couples all taking the class and it was the warm-down portion of yoga.  Warm-down from YOGA??  Is this where your heart actually stops?  Plus, couples were doing yoga?  I should have known how the dream was going to turn out.   (Feel free to insert the 'bow-wown-chicka-wown-wown' music cue here.)

So here I am on my yoga mat, in the very dimly-lit yoga studio that is apparently at some fancy-schmancy Muskoka-like resort.  (Again, should have known it was a dream - we can't possibly afford to go to a place like that.)  And there's this friend, who is sort of an amalgam of every gorgeous gay male I've ever been friends with/met.  In the dream he's married to a woman (??),  but I'm still convinced that he's gay, and that his wife must just be oblivious to his obvious gayness.  Because he's the best dressed guy in the yoga studio and could out-panache freaking Cyrano.  And this dude is on a yoga mat beside me.

Then this absolutely gorgeous gay friend of mine starts talking dirty to me!  Luridly, descriptively dirty.  Telling me all the things he wanted to do to ME.  I was understandably shocked because 1) he's GAY and 2) we're in YOGA CLASS.  I was also shocked because although we've been in an exhausting yoga class,  I'm not all sweaty and gross.  I look around, but nobody seems to be the wiser because the lights are low and I guess everyone is in their own 'cone of silence' and they can't hear all the incredibly descriptive things he's saying to me.  I'm thinking to myself, "I'm not flexible enough for half of what you're suggesting."

And I say to him, "Dude!  We're in yoga class.  Your wife is right over there."  Then, in possibly the sexiest voice I've ever heard since Johnny Depp said in Chocolat "I'll come round sometime and get that squeak out of your door," this guy says, "I don't care. I just want to take my (random body part) and rub it all over your (random body part)... " and he itemizes once more all the things he wants to do with my body.  And there I am, just trying to do the Cobra and mind my own business, in spite of the fact, that the guy is very, very, very attractive and even though I know he's gay and that his wife is in the room with us, and David is probably somewhere around too, I'm worried I might cave.  But I persevere.  I do not break my Cobra pose.

Then, as he's still talking to me, the dude starts to... uh... get 'friendly' with himself.  RIGHT THERE IN THE YOGA CLASS.  "Dude!!  You're in a room full of people!"  "I don't care!  All I can think about is...(many more vividly descriptive words)..."  So then he... um... finishes... STILL describing everything he wants to do to me, and there's no possibly way that people couldn't know what he's been doing, because frankly, it looks like he's had an accident with a squeezable mayonnaise bottle and... he's wearing black.  Which should have also let me know that it was definitely a dream,  because it was so much more than a teaspoon, if you know what I'm saying.  And he goes off to clean himself up and he rest of the class is looking at ME, while I'm still in Cobra pose.  And they're all giving me the "Heather, what have you done???" look.  To which I panic and say, "NOTHING!  I'm just doing my Cobra pose!"  And his wife is really not pleased with me.  And I don't know what to say to the wife of a gay man when she apparently doesn't even know that the man she's married to is gay.  I mean maybe he's never talked to her that way and she's upset that he had that much of a response to my proximity.  Then I think I was banned from yoga class in spite my objections.  "But he's GAY!!!  And I was doing the COBRA pose!  My hands were on the ground!!"

Any couch-psychologists care to analyze that sucker?

I'm raising a cynic

There are ramifications for encouraging one's child to pay attention to shit.  For encouraging an awareness of female behaviour and how women are perceived by the media and the world.  At 12 years of age, Rissa has become a dyed-in-the-wool speech pattern cynic.

Rissa loves cake decorating shows.  She loves watching people design cakes.  She loves the engineering of them.  She LOVES when they create flowers out of icing that look like real flowers.  When we go to the Bulk Barn, instead of candy, she asks for fondant, you know, so she can sculpt with it at home.  Hoping to find her something other than Cake Boss (shudder), I tried DC Cupcakes.  It looked promising - two sisters in DC who start their very own cupcake business.  Possible female role models in the making.  We started watching.  Rissa nearly went apoplectic.

"Mummy!!  These women sound like idiots!" (She changes her tone to Valley Girl speak) "They speak in, like, questions?  Where they, like, SAY things? And they use like as a comma or just as a, like, pause, be - like - cause they don't have brains?  ARGH!!!!" 

(Rissa at 12, is now realizing that how women are perceived in the world may be directly proportionate to how they present themselves.  My plan to indoctrinate my daughter has totally worked!  YAY me!!)

Rissa was particularly upset when the women on the show thought they might be arrested for making a cupcake slot machine, when in actuality they were almost arrested because the route they chose to drive had their truck driving near the White House thereby they were nearly flagged as terrorists and because they were riding in the back of the truck without seatbelts.  You'd figure that living in DC, these gals would know that trucks are pretty much not allowed anywhere the White House.

While we were watching DC Cupcakes, Rissa also realized that reality tv shows have pretty much NO content.  They repeat the same clips over and over, so in 22 minutes of a 30 minute slot, maybe there are really only 17 of actual show.

"They just keep repeating everything!  I KNOW this already!  I KNOW that this one customer is trying to surprise her husband for his 40th birthday at a fancy-schmancy hotel.  I KNOW that they are going to try to make a cupcake slot machine, and I KNOW that the one girl's husband is going to be the one trying to make the cupcake slot machine work.  Why do they KEEP telling me this????  I AM WATCHING THE SHOW RIGHT NOW!!!!"

At this point she collapses on the floor in a heap - a move she has perfected, in spite of her giraffe-like legs.  Then she says "WAILEY!  WAILEY!  WAAAAIIIIILLLLLEEEEEY!!!!!" (She's a big fan of Terry Pratchet's Wee Free Men - which if you haven't read - you should.  Google it.  There's a character called "not-as-big-as-medium-sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-wee-Jock-Jock")

First book in three.  One of the best YA series ever!!!

"So I take it, we don't need to save any more of these shows?" I ask, rhetorically.

She looks up from the floor in utter disbelief.  "NO!!!!  We never need to see another one of these.  EVER.  EVER."  She bangs her head on the ground.  "EVER!!!!"

What's scary?  This show made Cake Boss look almost tolerable.

I am STILL a dirty old woman...

It's Zeb's fault.  David's friend Zeb, who posted to Facebook about someone wearing a vintage Hanson t-shirt.  I'm thinking:  "VINTAGE HANSON?  How old does that make ME??"  But next thing you know, I'm googling Hanson to get my timeline right - it can't be 20 years ago and it's got to be at least 20 years before something qualifies as vintage, doesn't it?  I refrain from watching MmmBop - I don't want to head into Skanky Cougar land right away.  No it ISN'T 20 years - a mere 15 since 1997, when MmmBop hit the charts.  I find out that they are still together - still performing and, more importantly for my purposes, are now ADULTS. 

Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson circa 2012

Which makes me feel so much better, because I lusted after Taylor Hanson when he was 14 freaking years old.  Which wouldn't have been bad except for the fact that I was... let me do the math here, oh good God!  I was 29 years old.  He was skinny, he was blond, he could sing.  And boy, did I have a thing for skinny, blond, artistic types.  (actor Leonardo DiCaprio, skater  Ilia Kulik, any random blond, skinny, teenager busking near me) If I couldn't lift them over my head, or at least carry them under one arm like a clutch purse, what was the point of the crush??

I wasn't going to look at the old videos 'cause that's just SO wrong on SO many levels.  Until I realized that while I shouldn't be watching those videos, my 12 year old daughter Rissa could TOTALLY watch the videos with pre-teen immunity!!!

"Rissa, come here!  I've got something to show you!!!"  I drag her to the tablet and load up MmmBop.

First thing she says, "Are those guys or girls?  'Cause they kind of all look like girls."  I guess long hair for boys isn't the style in 2012.  But she totally dug their music.  "This is WAY better than One Direction!"

So, Taylor's the one on the left,  NOT the one in the middle - I am not THAT much of a perv.

It all came rushing back.  Just looking at the photo now makes me blush.  I am quickly writing the next paragraph before I get arrested for impure thoughts!

In my 'research'  (wink-wink-nudge-nudge),  I found out that they're still making music, still touring, still gaining fans.  In fact, they are going to be in Peterborough, ON August 25, 2012 - on the same freaking night that my rock opera has its showcase presentation in Toronto.  (I raise an arm to the Heavens and yell "WHY, GOD?!? WHY?!?")  But what's really cool?  It appears that these guys have a sense of humour and are just generally good people.  Check out the video for Thinking 'Bout Somethin' that they made in 2010, where they riff on Ray Charles' scene from The Blues Brothers...

AND ... but wait there's MORE!!! Last year a dude started a video blog campaign to have Hanson play at his wedding.   He made hundreds of video pleas to Hanson.  He was DETERMINED.  After 458 videos this is what Hanson did in return:

I know, right?  Not able to make the wedding, they offer to play the HONEYMOON?!?!?  So they're NICE, too??  And now, I'm pretty much convinced that Taylor Hanson would be the perfect artist to play the lead vampire, Aethan, in my rock opera.  You know, when we hit Broadway next year...  Just as a reminder, scroll back to the top of the blog and look at him - he's the one in the middle.  Just imagine HIM, in an Armani Suit - preying upon the female form...  I might need a second.   A girl's gotta dream.  And now that HE'S 29, I wouldn't even get arrested!

Please Sir, I want some more...

Please.  Please... someone in television land, bring back Firefly.  Please.  I'm begging.  I really need a hit of Mal.  For those who might say, "but you can see Nathan Fillion on Castle."  I know, I know - Nathan Fillion is on Castle, and it's fine...  Richard Castle is snarky and marginally sexy and all that, there are some good puns, but it's not a Joss Whedon series with Joss Whedon dialogue, and it's not Mal.  I am not craving Nathan Fillion, the actor, but rather the character Malcolm Reynolds. 

WAY darker than Castle

Don't get me wrong.  I very much enjoy Nathan Fillion.  In spite of the fact that right now I'm holding  a wee grudge against him (which I'm sure I'll get over soon) because he wouldn't pose with twine for the Bloggess - which you kinda figure he'd do, given that he appeared in Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog and didn't balk at saying "The hammer is my penis."  I'm a little disappointed, because I thought he'd have a better sense of humour, and although I get that he shouldn't have to give in to every petty plea from every crazy Comic-Con fan out out there, I just wanted him to... I don't know... take each plea on an individual basis maybe?  I kinda figured that he might give the benefit of the doubt to someone who, although she might appear completely insane in her initial request, he would realize, if he had actually read her posts, that she's not certifiably crazy and is well deserving of a picture with twine. 

I think I'm digressing.

Really, what I want, is another full season of Firefly.  Except that the movie Serenity explains the whole series, so that's probably not going to happen.   But maybe they could start AFTER Serenity is over - except then some of the characters (I won't say who, in case you haven't seen Serenity - which you HAVE to see, because it's a fantastic movie - the opening sequence alone is worth the price of admission) are dead.  And that makes me sad.  And you will be too, when you find out who Whedon killed off.

Maybe if Firefly can't come back, Joss Whedon - who should have a helluva lot of clout right now after having knocked The Avengers completely out of the park - could make a NEW series.  It could really be about ANYTHING.  Doesn't need to be vampires, or sci-fi - actually I'd still like it to be sci-fi - I dig the sci-fi... but it doesn't have to have Nathan Fillion in it.  A character almost exactly like Mal, though, would be good.  Just saying.

Bring me your furry, your potentially rabid...

The kitten... the feral one? That hung onto my hand with its teeth after I picked it up, because it was so terrified? The one I had to have "just in case" rabies shots for? It's back... And David says I'm not allowed to touch it. Not even a little bit.

Now in cat adolescence, it was following its siblings across the bottom of the yard. I must have drawn in my breath in that kitten-there-is-a-kitten!! sound and s/he spooked and instead of running after its siblings through the east side of the fence, it turned tail and ran a good 20 feet to the west fence and disappeared. A couple of minutes later it tried to cross again, and even though I was NOT making the kitten-there-is-a-kitten!! sound, (because I was purposely holding my breath) it looked at me, spooked again, and ran back under the west fence. 

And really, of course it would, because I was the crazy human who picked it up and refused to throw it down when it bit me. In the feral cat world, I am now an urban legend. "Don't go in THAT yard. The crazy lady lives there. She mauls and traps kittens and then makes coats out of them."

Then the other morning? The kittens - ALL THREE OF THEM - were playing ON OUR DECK in the sunshine!! I held my breath at the back door, trying to look inconspicuous so that I wouldn't spook them, while calculating whether I could open the door without it making its tell-tale creaky noise. Not that I was going to go pick up the kittens or anything, I just wanted to door to be open. You know, just in case they decided that they wanted to come in the house and spontaneously... cuddle. As feral cats often choose to do.

Sadly, I have not seen the kittens in a couple of days. What I did see yesterday evening after dinner, while my friends were over, was a young RACCOON!!! The neighbour's dogs had chased it from their yard to ours. It climbed up our play structure and hung out in the tree.

Sadly, this did NOT happen last night. But I wish it had. 
Picture from http://anothernortongirl.blogspot.ca/

We weren't sure, but we think that that raccoon might have had... issues. Intellectual issues. Perhaps rabies issues. It was severely uncoordinated for a raccoon, had a rough time navigating the tree and looked like nobody had taught it how to climb down the tree headfirst, which raccoons can totally do.

Example of the headfirst descent

The other thing that made us feel like maybe the raccoon wasn't altogether there, was that after it left the play structure tree, it then came over to the deck, not 8 feet away from us, and nonchalantly climbed one tree, then shinnied down, then climbed the next tree, then walked on the deck railing, then climbed the next tree and shinnied down then climbed the NEXT tree to that had small branches touching the roof and then tried to make its way onto the roof where it looked VERY confused and gave us the "Can you give me some help here?" look. 

Either the animal had major depth perception issues and couldn't tell that the first trees were nowhere close to the house, or its brain was already completely scrambled from the rabies. As it was trying to get onto the roof and looking like it might fall, I may have stood under it with my maxi skirt held in front of me like a rescue net they use for potential suicide jumpers. David told me that if I got bitten he was not going to take me to the hospital for my second series of rabies shots, I would have to drive myself. 

We are used to raccoons being on our roof. Last spring we had a mother and her 5 kits living in our eaves. We enjoyed an elaborate game of Watch-the-raccoons-leave-put-up-the-extension-ladder-screw-in-boards-to-cover-the-raccoon-holes for several nights, thinking we had finally purged our freeloading tenants, when in fact there was still that raccoon scrabbling sound (okay now I'm imagining a family of raccoons playing Scrabble, perhaps enjoying pink lemonade with cocktail umbrellas) in the eaves, and then we'd have to climb up the ladder and unscrew the boards and then slide them out of the way, because I couldn't bear the thought of potentially murdering a family of raccoons in our eaves.

One night, we thought we had done it. THEY WERE OUT!! We did our happy, raccoon-free dance. Then, the next day, the mother raccoon was back. In the day time. Climbing the ladder to the roof and walking around. Not that weird in itself, except for the fact that we were having our chimney re-built at the time and there we two dudes with mortar and bricks and a very loud radio on the roof. She was walking around and going up and down the extension ladder - and let me tell you, watching a raccoon descend headfirst down a 32-foot ladder freaks me out. 

One might well ask: "Why would a raccoon be out in the daytime, hanging out with the masons??? It seems so odd!" Until I heard her kits crying for her. Because we had boarded them up in the eaves!!! This realization made me nearly puke with anxiety. 

I HAD SEPARATED A MOTHER FROM HER BABIES!!! 

This is one of the several reasons I might wind up in Hell. 

David wasn't home, and we have a rule that you cannot climb the 32-foot extension ladder if you are by yourself (no matter how fast the job is), so I called my friend Nathalie and got her to foot the ladder while I climbed to the roof. I'm not afraid of heights per se, but it's not my favourite thing in the world to be up high without a harness. Less fun when you're climbing with a cordless drill in one hand. I unscrewed the boards and moved them out of the way. Then I watched from the office window as the mother raccoon transported all of her kits, one by one, down the extension ladder. After they were all gone, I went back up and boarded it over again. 

Crisis averted.

Except there's this SMELL this summer, that makes me think that maybe one of those kits DIED in the eaves. I'm hoping it was just a runty kit who wouldn't have made it anyway and not because I had trapped it without its mother and it died of a panic attack.

All this to say, that I was so worried about the ghost of runty raccoons past that I made David put up the extension ladder so that our latest raccoon visitor could use that as a route back down in case the small branches that touch the roof seem too spindly and breaky for the beast when it tried to get down the tree route. I think we'll have to wait and see whether it abandons the roof or takes up some small tools from our garage, opens up the boards on the eaves and announces to all its raccoon buddies, "Penthouse!! Over here!"