My OCD knows no bounds

During renovations, in a desperate attempt to control the visual chaos of my environment, I've lost my mind.  I've gone round the bend folks.  My obsession this week?  Ensuring that, when I open the shower curtain, all the shampoo, conditioner and body wash bottles complement one another.   Hello Ma'am, we've got a lovely little jacket for you here, fits nice and snugly around the waist and shoulders, and ensures that your arms stay in one place.

I have little loyalty to personal grooming products.  Sure, I could  go out there and spend $25 on an organic, paraben-free, get you to smell like ambrosia shampoo, but  that ain't gonna happen.  Because why?  Because I'm not made of money and there are shampoos, conditioners and body washes out there that will do the same thing for a fraction of "Are you fucking serious?!?" prices.

As a result of my common sense and general stinginess, I buy things when they are on sale.  Love, love, LOVE Olay body wash, but it's a titch pricey, and unless it goes on sale, it doesn't get to ride shotgun home with me.  When there's a moisturizing conditioner on sale for under $3 - I buy it.   If there's a different moisturizing shampoo that's even less expensive - I buy it.  Same goes for body wash, although I do have a predilection for nicely smelling body washes and will sometimes splurge - you know, when I have Christmas or birthday money burning a hole in my pocket and my Mom's given me the directive to spend it on "something you love, just for you."  That's when I head to the local body care shop and avert my eyes when the cash register totals the sale.  I come home with things that smell of gingerbread or lemon scones and line them up on the ledge of my shower and revel in my delectability. 

Problem with buying all these different products is that when they eventually make their way to reside in my shower - they look like this:

Which for a normal sane person (who knows that the shower curtain can just be shut and you don't have to see anything, that you won't even be aware of the fact that nothing matches in size or colour), wouldn't be an issue.  For me, until the house ceases to have a layer of drywall dust over everything, it's made me wiggy.  Sure, you can get fancy-dancy bath containers that cost you an arm and a leg so that everything matches, but I  haven't lost my sense of frugality with my sanity.

So off I went to Dollarama, seeking the perfect body care receptacles.  Small enough to fit on the shelves, but big enough and of such pleasing shape that they would be practical and (in my present state of psychosis), pretty.  I bought cheap-ass hand soaps that looked like the labels could easily be pulled off.

In hindsight, I'll still be picking little bits of glue off them until Armageddon (nail polish remover can take most of the gumminess away, but not all of it apparently), but until then, things will match.  Although, there had been some milk bottle style body wash bottles for $2 a pop that might look even better and would add a whole turn of the century feel to what's behind the curtain...

Parched in the Sahara

WARNING: THERE IS DISCUSSION OF FEMALE ISSUES IN THIS POST.

 

Sam Brown, explodingdog.com

My camel did not make it.   It had been days since he'd died.  I found myself trudging through the desert, my skin burning, sand in my throat...   Hot wind blowing around me, almost through me.  I could feel sand on my face.  Pricks of it picking at my cheeks - then harder and harder as the gusts increased.  Chunks of sand...

CHUNKS OF SAND??

I open an eye.   Lola is there standing beside my head, punching my cheek with her paw.

"Off!!  OFF!!!"

6:02 a.m.  How did she get in?  We'd installed a door to our room just a couple of weeks ago so that this very thing would no longer happen on a Sunday morning - could Lola now walk through walls?  Had our cat actually created a worm hole into our room?  Were we going to become millionaires because of our Mensa cat?  I look over to the doorway and do a face palm.  David hadn't shut the door last night.  Awesome.  I roll out of bed.

I run the gauntlet of falsely affectionate cats and stagger downstairs.  One races me down, another wends its way through my legs and Steve?  He lies across the stairs in all his tomcat glory. This house has somehow transformed all three of our felines into the most languorous of stair lying beasts.  In the other house, they never once draped themselves across the width of a tread.  This house, you're running a fur-covered obstacle course to get downstairs, and with two black cats, you take your life in your hands if you're trying to do anything in half-light.

I feed the beasts and climb back upstairs.  God, I'm burning up.  Why am I so hot?? My mouth is so fricking dry.  HOT.  And then I remember.  The night before, I'd had two glasses of wine and a flute of champagne to celebrate family birthdays. Stupid peri-menopause.  One glass of alcohol.  ONLY ONE.  No matter how good it tastes.  ONLY ONE GLASS OF ALCOHOL HEATHER!  Or what?  You have blinding hot flashes.  I know this!  But it was a really great blended red - went down so smoothly.  Why does my mouth feel full of cotton?  I wasn't drunk - I'd had the booze over a several-hours-long period.

I've lost all my saliva!  I am SALIVALESS!  I scan my memory for what else I'd ingested to get me this parched.  Popcorn.  I'd had some popcorn.  And there'd been feta cheese in the salad... I smask my dry lips...  annnnnnd I am having my period.  Bingo.  Combine salt ingestion and bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig and you're going to get a little bit dry feel like Akhenaten post-embalming.  I down a glass of water and desperately try to source my saliva.  Nope.  I down another glass.  Not yet. My tongue is still sticking to the roof of my mouth.  Another glass.  There.  There now.  Some moisture. 

Fricking period.  Fricking peri-menopause.  I should have known the week before, when I'd wanted to carry around my own personal salt lick.   And now I've been emptying my Diva Cup every two hours or so.  It's astounding how blasé I have become about menstruation.  When I was younger, the notion of using an OB tampon completely squicked me out, but apparently now that I have a blood faucet installed down there, I could become a full-on general surgeon.  Seeing blood on my hands is common place.

My poor family.  Rissa'll be brushing her teeth and glance over at me - I'll be in some state of Diva Cup removal or re-insertion.

"MUMMY!!"

"Sorry.  Look away.  Look away."

She'll turn her back and walk to the door.  The toilets in this house aren't as close to the sinks as they were in the old house.  So there I am in my fluffy pink socks, with my stripey onesie around my ankles shuffling to the sink to rinse out the Diva Cup shouting, "AVERT YOUR EYES!  AVERT YOUR EYES!"

"Nobody else's mother does this stuff you know."

"Think of all the material you'll have for your memoirs."

Fine line between BFF and Stalker

I am totally crushing on Emma Stone. She is perhaps my new favourite person in the world.  Not only is she a great actor, articulate and funny, but she does this?!? 

She killed the battle, AND if that wasn't amazing enough, her first song was Hook, by Blues Traveller - an obscure blast from the past for today's crowd, AND we're getting to the important part here...  Hook is my favourite Blues Traveller song... ever.  I mean, EVER.  And she picked it.  She picked my favourite Blues Traveller song. 

So that's got to be a sign right?  A sign that she and I should be BFFs?  'Cause it's not stalkery at all that I, a 45 year old small-town Ontario gal, have mad fantasies where Emma Stone and I sip lattes at the local coffee joint and we shoot the shit comparing favourite media and travel destinations before maybe going shopping for cute vintage dresses together.  That's not weird right? 

I'm keeping these WHY?

Nope.  Wipe... How 'bout this one?  Nope.  Wipe...  Wait, wait, wait...  this one'll be the one... NOPE.  Scrub.  Wiiiiiiiiiiiipe.  Why do I even have these?!?

Lipsticks.  How many should a gal have?  You know... in the drawer of your vanity, or bottom of your make up kit.  12? 22?  116?  I have an entire drawer of lipsticks that are impossible to wear. Wait.  I'll try to look at this as a positive.   I would be able to sport some of them if I wore heavy makeup and dressed as a drag queen or a geisha.  Note to self: train for a new career.

And yet, instead of throwing them out, I still have them stashed away, like some secret cache of diamonds, some dating back to 1996.  I have this amazing Estee Lauder lipstick that gives off an odd odour, but I'm unwilling to part with it.  What's the shelf life for lipstick?  If, say, I was on a archaelogical dig and found some lipstick (in the perfect shade) in an Egyptian tomb, could I apply it or would I be slowly poisoning myself to death if it became my favourite colour? 

Every time is the same.  I carefully draw on the lip liner - apply the colour to my lips and then jump back from the mirror in horror.  I'm not wearing enough eye liner for this colour.  My skin isn't orange enough for this colour.  I wasn't going for a Goth look, but what the hell...  "Hey David!  How do I get a casting call for Vampire Diaries?!?"  Then the toilet paper comes out.  I pour liberal amounts of makeup remover on the TP and attempt to remove the horrific shade.  Invariably, I end up looking like a clown who's gone on a bender and then have to reapply all makeup from the nose down.

What it comes down to, is that I don't want to give it up the control. You know... my colour-choosing free will, where as an adult woman in her 40s I should know by now what works and what doesn't.  Although considering that I've been  sucking at it royally for the last three decades, maybe it's time to go to Shoppers and sit down in the chair with the Cosmetics Dept person and let them go to town.  Have a good ol' Apply and Wipe session there so that when I want to go out in public I don't have to waste precious time figuring out that I don't actually own a shade of red that looks good on me.  All I want is to achieve 1940s starlet without the harlot, that shouldn't be so hard.    And yet I feel I need to gather a group of like-minded individuals, mount up on steeds and ride the world to seek out the Holy Lipstick.

 

ONE LIPSTICK TO COLOUR US ALL.  

The perfect red lipstick.  Like the magical travelling pants... but in lipstick and you don't put it on your ass.  (Unless you're into that, and more power to you, if that's your kink.)

I'm bringing clumsy back

My adolescence was so much fun the first time around, I thought I'd give it another go.  That's me trying to pretend like I have any say in what's happening now.  It's not so much a choice, as an involuntary action.

I've had a week folks.  Oh, have I had a week.  A week that's transported me back through time to my eleventh year.  (Although, to be frank, my clumsy has enjoyed several  renaissances throughout my life - often hormonally related.)

CLUMSY 1
Enjoying leftovers.  I'd made schnitzel with mashed potatoes the night before - this was lunch-time the day after.  Delicious schnitzel all coated in gluten-free breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese.  I'd actually salivated while it was warming in the microwave.  I got too excited.  I ate too fast.  The strength of my jaw was too great.  I took a chunk of flesh out of the left side of my tongue that had me instantly weeping.  I tried to let out a few colourful expletives, but they were garbled by  my poorly functioning tongue.

"MU...ER  ...U...ER!!  ...EEET ER..FL.... EEEEEE...US!!!"

"What did you do?" David and Rissa chorus.

"I IT Y ONGUE!!"

I showed Rissa.  She jumped back a step.  "Uh... Mummy?  That's not good."

"IT OT?  Y?  UH OES IT OO IKE?"  I went to the mirror.  I had flaps of skin hanging off the side of my tongue.   (3 days later the already-forming scar tissue is a sight, let me tell you.)

CLUMSY 2
Putting cheques in the safe at work.  This is usually a ZIP-BOOM task.  Somehow between the ZIP and the BOOM I managed to slam the ring finger of my right hand in the door.  I danced the pain dance for a good thirty seconds before even looking at it.  Just the tip.  Thank God it was just the tip. (Insert your own joke here.)

CLUMSY 3
Same day.  I'm leaving work - actually on time for once.  So proud of myself - I was going to get stuff done upon my return home.  I reached for my jean jacket, did a matador's cape flourish, throwing my hands up to catch the arms holes and ... put my neck out.

Addendum
Unloading the dishwasher this morning, I attempted to cradle the cutlery tray in my arm when I stabbed myself in the boob with a paring knife.  Blood loss is thankfully minimal.

I thought these things came in threes.  Does that mean that I have two more in this grouping, or that I'm just an over achiever from the first grouping?

Failure in Kitchen Design Promotes Weight Loss!!!

We don't have a kitchen 'work triangle' per se.  It's more a kitchen 'assembly line.'  Our kitchen sink is 21 feet away from our freezer.  It goes like this:  Sink, drawer unit, stove, dishwasher, fridge, old kitchen island, new butler's pantry and then you get to the freezer in the closet of our foyer.

Why would we have an upright freezer in the closet of our foyer, you ask?  Because that's where it fit.  Why don't we have a traditional fridge with freezer, you ask?  Because in our very compact new kitchen, we were trying to scrape together every inch of usable space, and with my refurbished 40" wide HOT POINT stove having already stolen a good 6" (there's a joke in there somewhere),

I required a fridge that was only 24" wide, was counter-depth, didn't cost us thousands of dollars, and actually held more than 8 cubic feet of food, which is what most of the smaller fridge/freezer units end up giving you.  Plus, if I'd gotten a wider fridge, there wouldn't be room for our old island, which I refused to part with.  The domino effect of our appliance planning was far-reaching.

All this to say that the ergonomics of our kitchen are a bit... off.  It mightn't be so bad, but we actually need to go to the freezer. FREQUENTLY.  After decades of badly managing hypoglycemia - I've finally bitten the bullet and I'm avoiding gluten.  So I spend twice what a normal person would pay, for half the bread and I have to store the bread in the freezer so that it doesn't get all moldy if you leave it out for more than 5 minutes.  The toaster... is by the kitchen sink.  The kitchen sink is 21 feet away from the freezer.

This is my morning:

Tromp, tromp, tromp down the stairs.  Yawn and stretch at the bottom.  Turn right and walk to the freezer.  Grab bread from freezer and tromp over to the toaster.  Remove two slices of bread from the bag, pop them in the toaster and then tromp back over to the freezer and deposit the loaf back in the freezer. Yes, I could take the slices of bread out at the freezer and save myself one trip, but that never seems to occur to me until I've already walked over to the toaster. Plus I'm a slow waker-upper and I can guarantee that in my somnambulant state I'd have the freezer door open for longer than is prudent while I was trying to reseal the bag. We were thinking of throwing the toaster on the old kitchen island to get it closer to the freezer, but then the fridge is hinged the wrong way so you'd have to become a contortionist to get to the butter and condiments.  We can move the toaster to under the microwave - beside the fridge on the other side and save 7 feet.  David has a drill at the ready to bore its way through the microwave shelf. 

Making a martini is challenging.  The booze and cocktail shaker are in the butler's pantry, right next to the freezer.  The ice is in the freezer.  We're good so far.  The cut-crystal glasses that I prefer to drink my martinis in?  Are in the cupboard next to the sink.  Why aren't they, too, in the butler's pantry?  Because up until last weekend, we weren't loading any more glassware into the butler's pantry on account of fact that the floors in the new house are too bouncy and the shelves of the pantry aren't thick enough to really support the weight that's already on them, which means that even walking by the pantry created the potential for glasses doing their own rendition of Buffalo Jump.  Now that the pantry is securely shimmed and attached to the wall - I can move some of those swanky glasses over and save myself the travel time.

So that just leaves us with making juice with water from the sink, defrosting frozen meat in a sink full of cold water, cooking with frozen vegetables using... you've got it... sink water... Each activity still requires traversing the 21 foot span from sink to freezer.   There are no problems foks, only solutions.  I am determined that this will be a pro - not a con!  I will do deep lunges every time I make the trip.  My ass and thighs will be spectacularly toned in this poorly organized house. 

How David started the latest sex trend

"Quick!  We have to distract them!" David says.

"How?"

Suddenly it comes to him.

He lifts up his shirt, wets his finger, draws a cirle around his nipple, all the while singing Barnum's Circus March.  "Do-do-doodle-doodle-do-do-do-do...."

He whispers, "It's called 'CLOWNING.'  Depending on the patterning around your nipple - it will act as a code."

***

"And this was some sort of espionage dream?" I ask.  It's bright and early Saturday morning.  David has just demonstrated 'CLOWNING' to me.

David's eyebrows are low on his forehead.  "Yes... I think... Wait!  Wait!"  He fights for memories, as one does when attempting to share the surreality of a dreamscape to another person.  "We were also filming it!"

"You were filming yourself, playing with your nipples, while singing Entry of the Gladiators?"

"Yeeeeeeesss.... but," he's rubbing his forehead now.  "I can't remember why it was so important now... It was some sort of Rickrolling thing...."

"But this was somehow part of a secret code?"

"Yes."  He is definite now.  "Yes, it was.  And when you watched the video the code became clear to you."

"I'm going to get mileage out of this."

"Yeah, yeah."

***

ps.  

Since Saturday morning (when I first heard about this new trend), I have personally 'clowned' over a dozen times.  I have clowned David another dozen.  When I am 102 I will still be doing this.