duh duh and a bottle of rum

1. mister monkey forbade me going out and getting more liquor "until we finish what's there." oddly enough, i went along with this inanity for weeks before realising that "what's there" is a bar, and a bar should always be stocked with a mouthwatering variety of drinkies, not treated like a fridge filled with various slightly moldy edibles. so i went out and i stocked up.

2. mister monkey was taking his vitamins and i wanted in on it, so i asked for one.

mr.m: but it's the cute enzyme 10! it's for my heart, you don't need it.
moi: it's also for youthfulness.
mr. monkey (accidentally having poured a whole hill of CQ10 into his palm, looks up at me, looks at the pills, looks up at me): have a lot.

bastard.

3. so far, i like the rain but let's talk in 2 months.

4. i have thus far handed out resumes to most of nanaimo and the surrounding towns, and for the most part been given not an ounce of hope. yesterday i got a call from a dentist who gratuated with me. he also dated my friend. did he have a job to offer me? no. why did he call? because he couldn't quite remember who i was. did the call help? i doubt it. but, hey, thanks for getting my hopes up, and just so you know, my friend thought you were an idiot.

5. today i shall attempt to perfect my cannelloni which, if i do say so myself, is pretty close to perfect already but i will add bechamel sauce. jealous? you ought to be.

nurse, we need 10 cc's of plasma and a bucket of bile, stat

mister monkey has a co-worker who is currently employed on the same island project, but whose wife continues to reside, along with their offspring, in boyle, alberta.

boyle, for those of you not on intimate terms with the northern alberta landscape, is a town whose name is an apt description of its state of being - nothing that couldn't be cured with an aggressive course of antibiotics and a thorough lancing. it is a small, nondescript hamlet on the highway between edmonton and fort mcmurray, and it is rife with pulp mill fumes and john deere trucks.

the town does have an obligatory chinese restaurant, this one named hooters. i presume that the reason the eponymous international chain of burgers'n breasts hasn't swooped in to launch a legal assault on this humble establishment, is similar to the reason why a horde of bloodthirsty mcdonald's lawyers have failed to sue every lonely goatherd who sells kabobs from his yurt in northern mongolia under the moniker "mcnuggets" - there's little fear of either being mistaken for the real deal.

boyle's hooters serves mediocre chinese food and mediocre western food, both deep fried, their only distinction, the former being doused in bright red phlegm sauce, the latter in lumpy sodium-laced gravy - in a word: delicious! there are no hot busty chicks working there, most of them having presumably given up the small town charms of boyle for the promise of the bright lights big city stripper establishments of fort mac. and hurray to them.

my point, as i do indeed have one, is this: what woman leaves her husband to go forth and work in paradise while she stays in a place aptly named after a epidermal condition? i followed mister monkey TO fort mac, while she refuses to follow her mister to vancouver island? what sort of madness is this? is her wednesday bridge club so beguiling? is it her lovely split level with discount laminate flooring and a bay window? is it the promise that lies at the end of the curving highway? what in the fuck would cause a woman to stay when the alternative is so damn palatable?

any ideas? feel free to ignore me in the comments section. bonus points if you tell me your word verification and make up a definition, just because it's fun, and fun is what i am all about, motherfuckers!

i am a one woman smack-down!

remember that worry i have? of dying* from something entirely stupid and preventable? turns out it's completely justified!

last night i left work in the pouring rain, which, as it happens, has nothing to do with the story, but sets the mood admirably, no? i walked to my parked car, fumbled with the bags of stuff in my hands while attempting to unlock the door and, as i went to get in, smacked myself in the face with my lunch bag filled with not one but two heavy glass containers. i now have a welt on my cheekbone and strangers shoot me sympathetic glances (well, they ought to but haven't since i am still sitting on the couch in my bathrobe, surfing instead of breaking fast or working out or any of the number of things i ought to be doing but am not on account of being a battered lump of low self esteem.)

* i know i have written about this at length elsewhere in this blog and i did my utmost just now to find it and link to it for any poultries-come-lately but no luck. recap: although i am a dental hygienist who routinely pokes sharp pointed instruments into the unarmed delicate mucous membranes of the general public and who does it well, i am a gobsmacked klutz when it comes to slicing my hands with kitchen knives, getting deep cardboard cuts and tripping on perfectly smooth surfaces which will one day finish me off in a ridiculously embarrassing way. now you know.

self esteem is for losers

have you heard about this "homework ban" wherein the family of children too overwhelmed by the high stress world of...ahem...existence negotiates with the school to ban homework altogether?

pity the little ones - homework! from school! every day! what can they be thinking, those inhuman monsters some like to call teachers? surely it is WRONG and worse than that, surely it is Detrimental To The Children's Self-Esteem! and god knows, anything that even remotely deteriorates one's self esteem is the product of satan, no two ways about it.

frankly, i am seriously thinking of suing my parents, the edmonton catholic school board and the government of canada for good measure, for all the years in which i did homework, homework that destroyed me, injured my brain, irretrievably took away the time i could have spent playing pacman or reading teen fashion magazines, time, in short, that could have given me a stronger sense of myself, thus Improving My Self-Esteem. 

i'd especially like to sue my parents for allowing me to read well before grade 1 thus depriving me of at least several years of blissfully sweet ignorance, for pushing me to Excel Academically, for expecting Results, for demanding Attendance and, horror of horrors, rewarding me for Making The Honour Roll. what cruel fate to have landed me with parents whose primary motivation was for me to Succeed in School, rather than massaging my trembling self esteem like a kobe beef, hoping that one day i too could be a puffed up loser with a tremendous sense of self importance which, as we all know, is the true measure of success.

grrr.

this is your brain on cake

i suspect that sometime in the last few years i might have suffered a series of mini strokes which have left my vocabulary seriously stunted. i mean, i always have had trouble with one or two words (i now have a separate file on my computer called "fennel" because i am never able to remember the bloody bastard's name*) but it seems to be spreading.

this is especially frustrating when i am in the throes of a particularly pungent post and am in need of keeping the flow, but get stumped on what i know is a basic word. mister monkey is of no help whatsoever. often this degenerates into a very poor game of charades:

moi (frustrated, much flapping of arms): i need a word! i can't think of it! it's like when you're watching a scary film and you don't know what happens next!!!

mr. monkey:...

moi: HELP ME!!!

mr. monkey: fearful! scared! anxious! pineapple!

moi: i need a FUCKING NOUN!

mr. monkey: horror?

moi: AAAARRRRGHHHHHHH!

for the record - the word is suspense. 

and don't tell me to look it up, because the minute i try to thesaurize similar words, my mind goes blank and i can barely conjugate the verb to be.

could it possibly be The Drink? or is it part of that little game brain plays with itself called "Not Only Were You Skinnier And Better Looking In The Past, You Were Also Way Funnier And More Intelligent," a game designed to make you feel bad about your current downfall while retaining some shred of pride in the glory of the past, no matter how delusional all this might be.

*not that i talk about fennel a lot, but it is frustrating, especially when explaining it to non-foodies who look at you funny when you say "it looks like a cross between kohlrabi and fresh dill fronds but tastes like anise"

so like, yeah, all professional and shit

dearest poultries, i have gotten my papers and will henceforth be legally allowed to practice my twinkie debridement skills in the province of british columbia. my first reaction to this glorious event was several hours of hyperventilation followed by nausea and panic. yes, i am THAT happy to go back to work. 

fort mac, you malodorous bastard, when i arrived i was happy to be a dental type person. when i left, a scarred, twitching, quivering shell of my former self, the thought of teeth made me throw up a little in my mouth. thanks a lot, you goddamn prick, you have taken away whatever shred of professional dignity i might have had. now i must get over the fear and panic, remember that not every office is a den of backstabbing retardation and machiavellian machinations in a key of duh, that there are indeed places that, unlike my last place of employment, will respect what i can bring to them and allow me to do my fucking job. hopefully crying on my way home every day will also be optional.

rant over. sort of.

as i was editing my cover letter i was struck by how ridiculous all this cover letter bullshit is. i mean, anyone, barely simian, single-digit IQ, the work ethic of homer simpson, can write herself a glowing cover letter, one that would read exactly as inane and dull as my own and who's gonna know?

moi: listen, "i come to you with a positive attitude and excellent interpersonal skills" sucks!

mr. monkey: well, tweak it a bit then. make it better.

moi: but that's the thing - what can i tweak? it's all true!

mr. monkey: ...

moi: well, okay, except for the positive attitude part.

cleansed in the blood of the lamb, and other plumbing horrors

my little poultries, i have married an innocent in the ways of the lord. listen and marvel:

we were watching a show last week, wherein a character led the congregation of a church in a rousing rendition of "cleansed in the blood of the lamb." when these particular words of the hymn were sung mister monkey turned to me with an incredulous smile on his face and asked if they were serious or if this was some crrrrazy shenanigan cooked up by the writers of the program. he honestly had no idea that people in church routinely sing such grotesque hymns and think absolutely nothing of bathing in the bodily fluids of small furry ruminants. 

they say that when you have a child, you see the wonder of the world anew with the eyes of your babe, amazed at a rainbow, awed by the sparkle of sunlight on soap bubbles, (supply other nauseatingly hallmark-inspired moments of wonder, because i feel my dinner starting to clamour in my gut). i need no child. i have mister monkey. a man completely bereft of any kind of religious education. a man who might have heard passing mention of christ*, but whose attempts to cross himself are as guaranteed to produce hearty guffaws as his attempts to speak french and who knows not one single bible story. 

in short, the very ridiculous nature of organized religion is shown anew to me, through mister monkey's eyes. having grown up semi-catholic, and having spent a goodly portion of my teenage years NOT smoking, NOT fornicating, NOT drinking and NOT doing any of the things my parents hoped i'd eventually get around to just to prove i was not in the clutches of some kool-aid cult, the religious language is second nature to me. i have heard about the cleansing power of ovine plasma so many times that i hardly hear the literal beyond the metaphorical. 

mister monkey has opened my eyes. no more showers of sheep! hurray for atheism!

*"jesus fucking christ-on-a-stick" is a particular favourite of mine, though i don't know if blaspheming counts as spreading the name of the lord to that infidel husband of mine.

sir david attenborough has left the room

mister monkey, out testing his newly refurbished bike, ran in and told me there were two male deer fighting next door. 

by the time i got there, they'd stopped butting heads but kept eyeing each other like a couple of drunk skinheads armed with broken beer bottles in some back alley. every once in a while they'd issue a threatening bleat that sounded almost exactly like the kind of pre-diarrheal fart that has you checking your pants. 

you learn something new every day. nature, i salute you!

pffft!

alright, alright already. 

you've made me see the error of my superficial attention- and approval-seeking ways. you've made me realise that living solely for my...ahem...Art is the loftiest of goals. that gnawing on dried rusks in a garret somewhere in nanaimo and drinking heavily watered wine (when i can get it) is the preferable option to actually being read.

the general gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments and the pouring of ashes on assorted foreheads has softened my cold materialistic heart and for all those who have written (literally single digits!), i shall continue. 

maybe.

funny though, how my heart-rending word picture of lonely little old me speaking to an empty room failed to elicit any sort of emotional response other than disgust at my frivolous desire for an actual audience. 

oh well, you may be jerks and there may only be 4 of you, but you're my jerks and i wouldn't trade you for a hundred blog-reading commenters...oh wait, i would. in a heartbeat! cause i am THAT shallow. 

and another thing

you know, i am this close to giving up on this blog thing here. you wanna know why?

i read blogs, blogs written by intelligent women with interesting (sometimes disastrous) lives. and their blogs are good.  i wonder, is mine as good? well, its merits (or lack thereof) can be debated, as can the increasing tendency to talk at length about food preservation. but i ain't bad. not really. 

so what's my problem? my problem is that to their dozens (or more) comments on every post, i get one comment every dozen of posts or so. if i'm lucky. and i feel like i am standing at a lectern, with my overhead projector humming gently in the background, my transparencies ready, my notes nicely organized in front of me, and as i start my talk, there is no one there. nobody. dust motes dance hypnotically in the light, the janitor pokes his head in to look curiously at the crazy lady delivering a lecture to an empty room, then moves on with the industrial floor polisher, and i drone on.

so perhaps there is that deep seated need to blather at length about all sorts of things that this is a wicked cool medium for, but frankly i can just start to update my facebook status on an hourly basis - i get way more feedback there, and feedback makes me feel like someone likes what i do. otherwise why lie awake all night trying to come up with the perfect turn of phrase for some ridiculous thing i'd seen earlier that day? (well, that is a waste of time, seeing as i never write it down and have rarely been able to emulate in the daytime my nocturnal verbal profligacy) 

but anyhow, this isn't a threat, this isn't anything really, but if i really only have 4 readers, then i might as well shut up as these are people i routinely talk with in real time, and what the hell is the point?

ok. last call for lurkers, or this thing just might just slink off into a dusty corner and jab itself repeatedly in the eye with a pointy stick.

hello? 

anyone?

anyone?

yeah...i thought so.

sauerkraut or bust

the homemade sauerkraut, in case you've been gnawing bits of yourself in wild suspense, turned out fucking delicious! it's lovely how salt+veg+time=production of lactic acid and non specific healthiness and yumminess.

it's too bad north america is so bloody dumb about food. (no, i won't go on a rant again. i promise, but you know what i'm thinking!...ok, maybe just a little rant. a rantlet, if you will.)

they look at fermented foods and giggle nervously, they make fart jokes in the presence of sauerkraut (don't get me started on how using the german word does absolutely nothing to improve this lovely beast's culinary cred - choucroute you'd eat, non? sauerkraut? nein! eh! we call it kapusta kiszona, which just rolls off the tongue, don't it?), they turn up their noses at the vermilion glory that is kim chi, they think pickles require vinegar and that sour milk is a bad thing.

north america, get your head out of your overpackaged, overprocessed ass, and go ferment something! git!

mr. & mrs. monkey, circa 2040

this morning, in a walk-in clinic waiting room

ancient and wrinkled husband: grumble grumble mumble mummummble grum grum.

ancient and wrinkled wife: huh?

aawh: grumble grumble mumble mummummble grum grum!

aaww: what?

aawh: GRUMBLE GRumble mumble mummummble grum GRUM!

aaww: i can't hear what you are saying. *turns away*

aawh: grumble grumble mumble mummummble grum grum.

aaww: ah.

i suspect she still didn't know what he was saying but got tired of the ridiculously low tones that managed to simultaneously lacerate my eardrums, reset my cardiac rhythm and shatter all the urine sample receptacles while remaining completely incomprehensible to any species outside of bats.

grrl power in pink

highlight of my day yesterday:

as i walked by an elementary school, i saw a little girl, no more than 5 or 6, standing outside the chain-link fence. she was dressed entirely in pink except for tiny black patent leather mary janes: pink tights, frilly pink skirt, pink jacket and a billowing pink organza ribbon on her ponytail. 

she hoisted a rubber boot that someone had apparently thrown over the fence, chucked it back over in one fluid motion, executed what looked like a series of ninja stretches, pulled her skirt down and started to climb. the fence was easily 1.5m tall but what's that to a pink ninja grrl?

anybody want a peanut?

where: the shoppers drug mart at the corner of commercial and broadway

when: late enough in the day that "it was early" could not be used as an excuse; early enough that the opposite would have failed just as miserably in explaining our behaviour. we were sober. 

why: mister monkey and i, in anticipation of frequent weekend jaunts into vancouver, decided to purchase a couple of transit ticket books. easy, no? no.

moi: (brightly) hi, do you buy...gobble gobble mugglbrk...*smacks self on forehead*...let's try that again... *points at mister monkey in desperation*

mr. monkey: (brightly) hi, do you sell traffic tickets?

moi: (red faced) he meant transit tickets! transit tickets! for the vancouver transit! in a little book! two of them!

mr. monkey: we're not from around here. we're from alberta. that's why we're like this.

no, i shall not. no, i shan't. will not. nope. fuck off.

today i decided (haphazardly) that i will neither go for a run nor exercise with old fat curvaceous ladies, but will spend the morning making more plum butter and reading blogs, followed by some amount of Getting Things Done when the guilt becomes unbearable.

screw you, jelly belly! up yours, raging wind! fuck your bum, feelings of accomplishment!

today i say NO!

truffle pig, weekend edition

we spent the weekend in vancouver, forcing girlie drinks down g's throat and eating vast quantities of crunchy delicious homemade tofu fingers dipped in polish mayonnaise. it was fun. on saturday, we went on a truffle and wine tour. it started way too early and i did the one thing that is guaranteed to make sure your day rocks - i rued the moment i decided to say yes to a tour that began at 8:30 am and bitched heartily (though internally, for a change) at the very idea of losing my saturday to a scheduled event. i'm serious, the best way to have a great time is to think you're going to have a rotten time. it works every damn time. ah, the joy of low expectations!

so, did you know they grow truffles in canada? yup. they do. we expected walks through mature oak groves with leashed pigs (well, i did, anyhow) but ended up standing around wee little tiny hazelnutlings and oaklings. there were no pigs, but there were dogs and kittens. and interesting people who love mushrooms. a lot. everyone was really really nice, except for the pompous old bastard with furry ears whom we promptly renamed myco-cilia. the mushroom community obviously rocks.

after the tour, we went out to eat (and drink) to prep ourselves for the afternoon wine tour and tasting. lunch was delicious. you all know how sick and tired i am of fancy dining which typically translates to a large white plate with artful chive weavings, julienned roasted pigs ear and puree of caramelized gristle drizzled with a reduction of cauliflower jus. not this place, my friends. the food was fancy but flavourful, though tall.

while perusing the menu, mister monkey asked me how to pronounce boeuf bourguignon, and much hilarity ensued. i swear, i want to take this man to france just to listen to him butcher the language. the fun never ends. we drank two bottles of wine (6 of us), ate a multi-course meal, took a tour of a winery and scowled at the bastards who poured their left-over wine into the spittoon.

then we drove along the american border and hurled insults down south (only at the republicans, my poultries, only at the republicans).

THEN we checked out the lululemon warehouse. it is a great and wondrous place, provided you are a diminutive yoga diva who wears size 0. or a topless fanatic who eschews clothing waist-up. neither of which is moi, so i walked away empty handed, soul aching from the broken expectations.

that night we slept in our very own new westminster condo which is currently in between tenants. the inflatable mattresses were marginally better than sleeping directly on the floor but watching the tug boats on the river all morning made it all worthwhile. i love our place. i cannot wait to live there and have you over and cook you stuff. really. especially after we rip out the wall to wall bacterial infestation that they call carpeting.

it was a weekend of much giggling. let's do it again!

botulism is for pussies

speaking of canning - i have never done it before last week. i have been a virtuous blushing canning virgin. worse, i have not even harboured shameful fantasies involving canning. canning, to me, was what the other girls did. you know the girls i'm talking about, don't you?

so when it came time to do something with the insane amount of plum butter that i produced (from less than a third of our frozen plum arsenal) i took the easy way out and froze some in handy screw-type plastic containers. but there was more...lots more...what to do? 

being in the top 1 percentile of the population, intellectually speaking (shut UP, you), i was able to take 2 (plum butter) and 2 (empty jars) and, following some quick calculations on the back of an engineering magazine, come up with 4 (canning).

oh holy internet, fount of all knowledge, how doth one can jam? i have a big pot, some water, some jars and some jams. surely that ought to be enough?

according to the wisdom of the internet (and those folks who like to make north americans panic about improbable food safety issues while scarfing lean cuisine microwaveable meals made entirely of plastic), the way of our grandmothers, was The Way Of Certain Death Through Botulism.

fuck. apparently bacteria, yeasts and other food borne pathogens have been evolving and now scoff at a jar boiled in water. sterilisation, these days, requires high tech machinery and ridiculous things like thermometers and catheters and nuclear fission. 

fuck that, quoth i. my grandmothers have fed multitudes who took the botulism-infested jams and ATE THEM WITH PLEASURE. my mother has routinely sent me home with small jars of "ginger scented botulism" or "e-coli surprise" and i LOVED it on my toast. so there. what's worked for countless generations will work for us. and if there's a slight greenish layer, we'll scrape it bravely off and eat it just the same.

you've heard me ranting about the north american obsession with expiry dates, on the midnight of which, yoghurt explodes with acinetobacter baumannii and bread turns to pure strychnine. let me add this to the list of funny paranoias. 

btw, feel free to laugh as i lie in intensive care, sad victim of clostridium botulinum and pride, but i WILL NOT buy myself a canner.

the pickling, it just goes on and on

mister monkey has all the self-restraint of a 3 year old, when it comes to things he wants to pickle. 

hey! quoth he, let's make sauerkraut!

but, quoth i, we have no room! every spare bit of space is currently occupied with pickled plums, pickled pears, plum butter and wine. where shall we put the barrel (being a purist, i'm thinking barrels), in the goddamn bedroom?

sure, quoth he, the bedroom would be perfect.

so off i go, on an internet errand, trying to figure out how to make sauerkraut. the problem with this is such: canadian recipes feature vinegar or wine or some other sourifying substance where the whole goddamn point of this exercise is for it to self-pickle, ferment and become insanely healthy (if slightly malodorous) so that we don't get scurvy and die.

polish recipes, on the other hand, take it for granted that you and several generations before you have pickled all manner of things for years and years and years and thus require only the slightest prod in the right direction. polish recipes count on you having cooked feasts for dozens with your grandmother from the age of 2 onward, and say things like "add enough flour to achieve the right consistency" or "mix until ready" and have, on more than one occasion, resulted in me drinking my way out of a bind or going out to eat.

so, we kind of eyeballed it, took the average from several different recipes and so far, the house doth not smell.

will keep you posted.

yum yum yum

one night in victoria (hint: not the night spent in the emergency room) we went out to the cactus club for dessert. we ordered a pumpkin cheesecake and rob feenie's own chocolate peanut butter crunch bar. both were delicious. 

the cheesecake was moist and just sweet enough with little spicy globs of pumpkin placed judiciously throughout to whisper "autumn" to your palate instead of just whacking you over the head repeatedly with a slightly moldy jack-o-lantern. subtle, grown-up, niiiice...

the chocolate peanut butter crunch bar was heaven. it was peanuty, creamy, crunchy, chewy and moist in all the right places. the decorative "crunchy chocolate pearls" tasted like last year's easter bunny earwax, so i let mister monkey eat them, but the overwhelming sensation was one of joyous familiarity. eventually it dawned on me that it tasted exactly like a cadbury  wunderbar, but cost 7 bucks.

bon appetit

the garden of earthly delights

after three hours of increasingly hostile internal negotiations, i finally went for a run. in order to break up the monotony of the word "fuck" on an endless rhythmic loop of misery, i thought about things. these are the things i thought up.

if i were to have a house with a garden on vancouver island or the southern bit of mainland, these are the plants i would plant and why:

1. a palm tree - as a joyous and enthusiastic fuck-you to the rest of canada and its semi-permanent blanket of snow
2. a banana plant - just because i can, also see 1.
3. a holly tree - because who knew this shit was for real and not just a product from the same delirious marketing team that brought you rudolph the red nosed reindeer and santa in a coca-cola themed suit?
4. arbutus trees - because they are the coolest trees on god's green earth except maybe for the baobab and i'm pretty sure those wouldn't grow here 
5. garden gnomes - just because 

what would you plant and why? feel free to ignore me in the comments section.

so tard

here's what i'm so tard of these days:

1. "style blogs" wherein hipsterrific lads and ladies tell us their latest discoveries. filled to the brim with delicate drawings of deer, pink floral rompers, repurposed furniture and key necklaces. yawn. urban outfitters has already cleaned out your local salvation army and is selling the stuff with a stiff mark-up. anthropologie has done it too and better. move on. start a new trend. do something original. do NOT write about how you really think that frilly 80's jumper is so hot because it's not. trust me. it just isn't.
2. lilies.
3. teenage girls with The Bang.
4. jars everywhere. on the shelves. on top of counters. inside cupboards. filled, empty, sterilised, waiting to be sterilised, jars, jars, jars - it's like martha goddamn stewart exploded inside my house and not in a good way.

ye goode olden dayes

back when i was young, thin and miserable, my parents, having had enough of a daughter determined to remain a virgin and a regular church-goer way past common human decency, moved to ontario and left me their house which i shared with several church friends. this was supposed to be a good thing. it was not. turns out good virginal church-going girls are bitches who take long hot midnight showers (to wash away the sin), fail to pay rent on time and sometimes even turn frightening. 

i gave up, rented the house to a nice clean family, and ran away. because i was so poor, i took my least favourite roommate (it made little sense at the time, but we became fast friends, amazing roommates and i really really wish i could remember her last name. alas, i cannot, and so i cannot hunt her down and see how well she got over god) and went searching for a hovel to call our very own. 

what we found was single rooms in a shared basement suite off whyte avenue in a small, old, smelly cold house. it was so cold that i slept fully clothed and routinely spiked my morning coffee with large glugs of bailey's (a likely excuse, i know, i know). sometimes, in a cruel parody of families gathered around a crackling fire, gail and i would stand in front of the open oven, warming our hands, hoping for something better. showers were long and hot, but flip-flops were necessary on account of years' worth of grime embedded grimly in the grout as well as the occasional centipede.

after a month or two of this, we found a basement apartment to share and moved out. although there had been no move in inspection, the slumlord bitch who owned the place refused to refund our damage deposit because we weren't fools and thus left the hovel as filthy as we had found it. instead of taking this to a landlord tenant mediator or threatening a lawsuit (remember, i was young and dumb) i snuck back after we had moved and cut every single last one of the bitch's glorious tulips. she had our hundred bucks but we had lovely fresh flowers to brighten our dickensian poverty.

we were poor but we had fun. sometimes when we felt like doing something really special, we'd split a bottle of beer and a can of corn. mm, mm good. we subsisted mostly on steamed veggies with molly mcbutter* and oatmeal. occasionally i'd crave mashed potatoes and mash them with a fork until a good friend took pity and bought me a real masher. thanks, f! eating out meant rosie's $4.99 palace, where we would order a beer and a $1.49 coleslaw. obviously, we were all about the balanced diet. sometimes we'd go grocery shopping, grab a small container of sherbet and two spoons from the deli and, at the end of our expedition, present the puzzled cashier with the empty. it made shopping way more fun. 

by then, both of us had given up on the whole religion thing (and by extension, the virginity) and so a curious cast of men (in her case) and boys (in mine) came and went, making things fun and interesting. there were occasional fights and tears but overall we got along famously. 

she told me she was moving to fort mcmurray about a day before i found out my uncle would be finally coming to canada and needing a place to stay. this worked out well for all concerned, except poor gail who, for all i know, is still stuck in fort mac, dispensing nutritional advice to fat nouveau riche newfies with horrifying haircuts, thinking she is happy. i never did see her there.

*she was a nutritionist and thus shunned real butter and, from what i remember, all foods except steamed veggies and oatmeal. 

it's a tradegy

tonight, watching the 1996 film, romeo & juliet:

scene - dumb teenage lovers overreact: romeo is too busy swooning to notice juliet waking until after he has taken the perfume sample poison. juliet overreacts and reaches for the gun.

mr. monkey: that's so sad. no, no, don't do it. no, don't do it. no. it'll be messy. don't do it.

moi: she's gonna do it.

juliet does it. falls onto romeo. problem solved.

mr. monkey: that's just the entry wound. there's a lot of brain on his shoulder. that's just not good. 

moi: it's romeo and juliet. it always ends this way.

mr. monkey: that's so sad.

moi: yes, yes it is.

women's work

clearly, making crepes is mister monkey's job. i am standing over the stove producing shoe-leather like discs of little flavour and high lumpiness where his crepes are delicate on the palate and lovely to behold. damn it all to hell. this is what i get when i try to do someone else's fucking job. grrrr.

cochlear cockroach

yesterday i woke up with my ears feeling stuffed with cotton. everything was muffled and as a result i spoke extra quietly to everyone because i didn't want to be The Annoying Loud Deaf Person like my grandfather who used to holler into the phone so that his voice could cross the atlantic and reach us all the way over here.

now there are many things you know about me, but one or two you might not, and one of these hidden gems is that i build up a lot of earwax. perhaps this is because my ear hygiene is not up to mister monkey's standards (he has more q-tips than he can ever use up in the course of one lifetime unless he starts growing ears in petri dishes, while i find the idea of sticking a q-tip in my ear revolting beyond belief) but i blame genetics. damn you, genetics, for my gummed up ears!

so when i woke up with cottoned-up earholes, i knew the time had come for my twice-in-a-decade ear cleaning. the first two times i went to actual registered medical professionals but the last time this happened, mister monkey and i were stuck in niagara falls which, as everyone knows, has no medical professionals of any kind, just touristy t-shirt shops and people sitting in barrels at the top of the falls, waiting their turn. so we went to the drugstore, bought some ear drops, and a rubber snot aspirator and mister monkey went to town on my earwax, gobs of which erupted out and into the tub.

yesterday, we repeated the performance and i must say that it is moments like these that really test the strength of your marriage. if the man you are with can calmly watch a rolled up cockroach sized wad of ear junk plonk out of your ear and still want to cuddle you in bed later that night, then your marriage has the strength to weather whatever life might throw your way.

and now i can hear, which is good. except, good lord, who knew this keyboard was so bloody loud?

speaking of giving the finger to soup

what is it with split pea soup? can anyone explain to me the allure of something that while marginally okay tasting, combines the attractiveness of a puddle of back alley vomit with the gas producing properties of northern siberia?

i made it, using the 1.5 cups of dried green split peas that were lurking among my dry goods. i can add it to my resume but i shall not make it again* and i most certainly will not consume it again. 48 hours of regular periodic ass bleatings produced by us in tandem made sure of that. 

*don't get me wrong, i'm a decent cook and my soup was as good as split pea soup can be. nevertheless, it remained split pea soup. 

oops, i did it again!

i did not get in trouble for greeting mister monkey with wine on my breath yesterday so today i'm pushing my luck.

because what i was craving, we didn't have (i didn't know what precisely i was craving, just that we didn't have it), i started going through our dry goods and, lo and behold, amidst the vast quantities of dried chinese fungus and various legumes, spicy cheddar shortbread squiggles! which are so good! especially when consumed with port! which we have! and so i did! yummy yummy supper. 

fuck you, gas inducing unattractive pea soup. fuck. you.

the lung bone's connected to the nose bone

today the air smells like ass, courtesy of the pulp mill. 

lipstick? pigs? was there a point? no! there was no point!

i am sitting here, drinking wine, reading whoopee and cooking split pea soup. the wine thing is bound to get me in a spot of trouble. whenever i am unemployed, you see, mister monkey comes home from his long day at the quarry, smells booze on my breath and figures i've been lying about drunk all bloody day long, accomplishing nothing. 

the thing is, i am a very organized person, far more so than average and thus i am able to complete complicated tasks in a fraction of regulation time, thus freeing me up to get sozzled while reading blogs. 

i don't believe in work places that penalize their workers for being efficient by piling more work on their shoulders and so i make my temporary place of (un)employment a good place, a place with a comfortable sofa to lounge on, a big box of as yet unpacked wine sitting in a box sending me sexy little winks, a nice little macbook and damn good music,* a place that allows me a good long booze break once dinner is cooked and important issues dealt with. if only the paycheque was a little more substantial...

*the Day of the Pickling featured polish rap and drum and base so prominently that i kept harbouring fantasies of stabbing out my ear drums with a robertson screwdriver. although mister monkey introduced me to some pretty cool music (garbage, portishead and others) overall our tastes are pretty different. i fear his increasing love for polish rap is a manifestation of early mid-life crisis mode which is, arguably, less undesirable than an italian convertible and teenage hookers.

the "lipstick on a pig" syndrome

today i put away our books (yes, alphabetically - is there another way? no, i didn't think so) while mister monkey pickled the shit out of pears and plums. it was a nauseatingly domestic kind of weekend and i liked it. a lot. i even washed the windows without any reason other than that they seemed a wee bit foggy and, damn, we gots a view out here with eagles and shit!

we stopped by home depot to pick up some sort of specialized screw type thingy to screw the shelves to the wall so that they do not topple and bury me under my complete secret danielle steele oeuvre* and as soon as we walked in - BAM! the smell hit us: the smell of wood, orange polyester aprons, tile adhesive and HGTV-fuelled aspirations of middle class north america...the smell of 3 years of our life lost into the spinning vortex of home renovation. 

mister monkey went on auto-pilot and spent a long time cruising the aisles looking for just the right screw until he shook himself, said "screw it!" and grabbed the first pack available before waltzing the hell out of there. we're so done with that shit...until the next time.

*i am so kidding about that. if even for a second you thought that i was serious, i am totally walking out of here and NEVER speaking to you again. 

glorious and revealing

are you the type of person who straightens crooked paintings or flips the toilet paper so it faces the right way? no? you know that i am, right? yeah. not necessarily a good thing, but it's my thing.

wishful thinking

yes, i do realise that the previous post was total wishful thinking. the only people doing any lurking around my blog are my three regular readers to whom i still extend a warm and heartfelt "hi! welcome, welcome..."

hi! welcome, welcome...

as we sat in the port angeles ferry terminal watching the crowds disembark from the victoria ferry, mister monkey kept muttering vaguely in their direction: "hi! welcome, welcome..." over and over again. when asked why, he calmly* explained that he felt these people required a proper welcome to the land of the free.

in that vein, if you are a lurking reader whom i do not know and of whose existence i am unaware, to you i extend a hearty "hi, welcome, welcome..."

feel free to leave me a comment.

*'cause you don't want to cause a scene at an international border crossing, especially in a country as paranoid and well armed as the us of a.

the eagle has landed

the house is sold. officially, as of today, the house is done gone and sold. oh yeah.

i informed my mother of this glorious fact and her immediate response was "so you can stop panicking now." 

why no, mother, now i simply have different things to panic about such as finding tenants for our vancouver condo, trying to keep mister monkey conscious and upright (at least in public), keeping my fingers crossed that the rodent-riddled roof remains relatively waterproof until possession date, and hoping that the little ping-pong ball i just found in a secret drawer of our borrowed antique table was used for ping-pong and not for some hysterical victorian spinster's vaginal exercises.

after that, i might take a break. unless they still don't have that climate change thing under control.

yay!(and not so yay)

i just found out that one of my closest friends will come and stay with us on friday and i am thrilled beyond belief. this sweetens an evening that was all manner of plaid:

1. mister monkey came home really early (good)
2. went driving looking for a hike, got lost (bad)
   
3. spent too much time driving around the oddly circular and often twice-named streets of nanaimo (bad)
   
4. found the hike and it was lovely (good)
   
5. walked it at over 6km/h and got some honest to goodness cardio in (good)
   
6. discovered a local farm market with decent live wednesday music and damn good pumpkin pie (good)
7. got some news (simultaneously good and bad, though mostly good for us, maybe, in a bit, don't know yet, will wait and see)
   
8. made some phone calls re: above (ditto)
   
9. found out the missing tray of silverware is still in our old house in edmonton, totally missed by mister twitchy mcspastic mover guy in a drawer (good/bad - good it was found as it contained both of my 1. imported and 2. expensive garlic presses and i am sick to the DEATH of chopping garlic by hand like some medieval kitchen wench, yo! and mister monkey's grandmother's silver teaspoons, bad it was left behind but i will leave it to the moving company to deal with the consequences of their hiring practices (yeah, sure the drug-addicted and the mentally retarded deserve a second chance but not when it impacts me in a negative way in any way, shape, or form, y'all hear?!?!??))
   
10. got a call from g saying they'll drop by and see us (GOOD!!!)
    

now to excavate the borrowed mattress from behind the tottering pile of boxes containing books. and find bedding. and purchase girly drinks that g will drink (can you even fathom a woman of the french persuasion who doesn't drink wine? that'd be like a polish chick who doesn't drink vodka...oh...wait...never mind.)

don't know what the final score is, but hot dog, tomorrow i'm going to victoria on business. see if i make it there and back in one piece.

animals, take note and cower!

i walked into my newly set-up living room and suddenly noted the following:

1. leather sofa (cow skin, i presume? i don't know though, on account of all the important bits having been removed prior to sofafication)
2. sheep wool rug (knitted, my poultries, knitted)
3. cow hide floor cushions (ok, not knitted)
4. newly acquired second hand gigantic sheep skin from, one assumes, a big fat north american sheep who lived (and died) on a diet of mcdonald's
   

i think that the only thing missing is a chandelier lovingly hand-crafted from antlers and beef jerky.

all this was purely unintentional but does not bode well for my soul searching at this dietary cross roads (to meat or not to meat). i used to say, when confronted by those aghast at my semi-vegetarianism juxtaposed with my penchant for furry neckwear, "i didn't eat the fucking thing." what, oh what, will i say if i do decide to take the bull by the horns and bite a chunk of his yummy yummy rump?

i like to move it, move it!

did i tell you about our excellent movers? i should have, because they were excellent. it is sad that the service industry has fallen so low that the minute one gets friendly service with a smile and a great degree of professionalism, one melts into a puddle and gurgles contentedly. this should be the way the world works most of the time! 

today the movers came and brought us our things, our boxes and boxes of books that i refuse to feel guilty about; our one dresser that is so unhinged that it can be wobbled frontways, sideways, backways and diagonally with little or no exertion; my gigantic tupperware filled to the brim with just my shoes, a testament to the psychological damage suffered from years and years of being too poor to buy shoes in my size; clothes! lots!; good quality kitchenware; unbroken stemware; and finally that gorgeous hand-made hunk of hand-polished walnut where we keep mister monkey's disturbingly large collection of pants.

of course unpacking, even  more so than packing, brings it home how much stuff we have. and there is something humbling (and very embarrassing) when you unpack stuff and realise that some underpaid pack-jockey wasted minutes of his life packing your rocks. yes, rocks. i was instantly overwhelmed with feelings of stupidity and shame that culminated in my finally giving up my shell collection that i've been lugging with me for years for no discernible reason, most probably harbouring some nasty kind of marine bacteria that's just waiting to pounce. 

already we have a large box of items to donate.

and tonight, i sleep in my bed. life is good.

bc parks guide to bear safety (paraphrased roughly but fairly accurately by yours truly)

black bears

you can climb a tree, but keep in mind the bear might climb after you

walk away slowly, and speak in a soft monotone, running and screaming might be perceived as signs of aggression

do not attempt to fight the bear, however as a last resort, you can attempt to hit it with a large object. this might not work. but it might. but probably not.

grizzlies

playing dead is a good option. which might not work. but what else are ya gonna do?

attempting to fight the bear has been known to result in more aggressive bear response but might also cause the bear to go away. but it might not. 

it's a good thing we read this after our bear encounter. as i saw the animals i do remember hoping like hell that they were indeed black bears and not grizzlies in drag. as it is, i don't follow directions well when i am panicking so had we read the directions prior to our encounter, i might have grabbed a stick and ran screaming toward the bears, only to recollect myself, drop down and play dead when i reached them. this might have worked. or not.

life is sweeter now...or is it?

as i sat typing the previous entry (see death, bears, fear etc.) mister monkey came out of the bathroom, scrubbed clean and glowing pink.

mr. monkey: you'll be happy to know that i just brushed my teeth with your toothbrush.

moi: ...

mr. monkey: we don't really need two toothbrushes, do we?

moi: minimalism, huh?

death after lunch, and other light tales of fear and woe

today i faced an enemy. outnumbered, outpowered, separated from my mate, i learned the true meaning of fear.* better yet, i lived to tell the tale.

mister monkey and i went to little qualicum falls today, a lovely (though altogether too civilised**) little hike close to parksville.  i had been there over a decade and a half ago and it stayed with me as one of the world's lovelier places. and it was. the lower falls especially. 

mister monkey and i ventured off the beaten path and started a little light rock climbing. at one point early on in the game i sat down and watched him continue to explore little pools and climb fallen timber. knowing my paranoid nature, he'd periodically wave to me to show me he was still in one piece and not bleeding out from an open wound behind a rock somewhere. i'd cheerfully wave back and go back to scratching the coating from my cheap (yet oh so fetching) sunglasses. 

at one point i looked up and there on the log where mister monkey had been standing less than a minute earlier, was mama black bear and her two well-fed cubs. 

panic feels like a punch to the gut. i stood up, hollered and pointed to mister monkey and then the rest is blank.  i do know that before running the hell out of there, i did turn around to take a photo of the furry trio, and then there is a blur of me sliding on my ass off a rocky outcrop, hoping like hell that mister monkey would somehow make it back to me (the log the bears were on, was the very log he took to get from where i was to where he was now). as soon as i hit the base of the path i heard his voice right beside me, urging me on, and he scrambled out from behind a rock safe and sound. the two of use ran like the wind up the path and away from big scary nature. 

when we got back to the parking lot, lo and behold, there was a completely useless guide to dealing with bears. one of the things it said was not to yell and never run, two of the things i did immediately. luckily there was nothing about taking the time for a once in a lifetime photo op.

and ok, granted the bears were never really THAT*** close to us, it was a hell of a lot closer than i've ever been to a bear (nevermind three bears) without a car around me. moving away slowly and speaking in a low monotone was clearly not an option.

neither one of us crapped out pants, though. ain't life grand?

* ok, total bullshit: i know the meaning of fear. its name is heights.

** yeah, the irony, i totally get that. what i meant was an overabundance of old people in chinos and sensible shoes, paved paths and fences everywhere. obviously bears don't mind old people in chinos and ditto on the infrastructure.

*** 15m, mister monkey says

there's more to life than a red delicious, ya know?

yup, having learned my lesson last night (i wasn't sick or weaving or dancing on tables or undressing in public or anything, just feeling a trifle overwhelmed by the first half of the second glass of g&t, though much of the blame lies at mister monkey's door what with his use of the creative ratio of 4 parts gin to 1 part tonic) tonight i am drinking rum and mango juice. 

hell, i earned it. we climbed a (smallish but steepish) mountain, got lost coming AND going, were overtaken by a family with 4 tiny children, a baby and a fragile looking old lady (on account of getting lost and, instead of taking the wide path, scrambling up the sheer cliff hanging on for dear life to clumps of grass and swearing uproariously (me, not mister monkey, he takes vertical climbs in stride. i, on the other hand, do not: just ask cher monsieur antoine.))

we saw a bit of the island today: ladysmith, chemainus, duncan and that mountain. saw signs to watch for in the future (wineries! lots!), visited a farm stand where they had apples i have never even heard of and fresh, homemade PIE! (i cannot help myself, each time i say it i say it with a deep southern accent really really loudly, like this: PIE!!!) and candied local salmon which was very very delicious and made our fingers smell fishy. this looks like the place to be, if you can ignore the clear cuts and the sheer bloodymindedness of overenthusiastic developers who see the untrammeled wildness of the rainforest and dream of the boredom of civilized lawns. 

overall a good day. would have been better if there was a couch to lounge on and music to listen to, but that is coming soon enough. we are grasping now what it is that we have been missing for the better part of the last 5 years, what with one reno and then another: life. we think we like it.

latest score

moi: 0 gin and tonic: 10

looks like that little "incident" in whitecourt roughly 13 years ago was a harbinger of a difficult relationship. ugh. 

can you remind me to stick to wine, next time, my little poultries? much obliged.

gin and tonic? ok, i'll have one...make it two...doubles? ok!

hi. yes, you know what time it is. it is drunk post time. i think, however, that it will be a tame one, lacking sexual confessions or dark and dirty secrets of a political nature. i know, i know, and i'm sorry.

tonight my husband and i went to the early show, then came home and he plied me with gin and tonics while he whipped up a simple yet delicious supper. we had drinks, good food and the odd bit of chit-chat. odd? not for the average person, for us, however, this felt like a milestone, as does the plan for tomorrow - starting with homemade breakfast and an island day trip. 

it just feels so very very strange to not have a day filled with various types of home improvements; so odd to have a wonky deck door that we do not have to deal with; bizarre to see mister monkey whipping around the kitchen making delicious things to eat. ah. this is what others call life, is it? nice. i could get used to this.

a steak through the heart

hi. i have a confession to make and i don't know if i should, but here goes it anyhow.

at a wedding bash last saturday, mr. monkey dished himself up a hefty helping of bigos, which, as everyone knows,* comprises cabbage, sauerkraut and various multitudinous kinds of meat. it is waaaay better than it looks or sounds, and in some sort of alcohol-fueled madness i got him to get the big meat chunks out of the way and feed it to me. it was good. it was, in fact, so goddamn delicious, that we spent what felt like the next several hours standing by the food table dishing out more and eating it. there were bits of meat in my mouth and i didn't mind. worse, i kind of liked it. 

yesterday we stopped for the night in the fraser valley and went to dinner at earl's. i had the salmon and mister monkey had the steak. in a wholly experimental mood, i asked for a small bite. i ate it with a great degree of pleasure and satisfaction. the second bite evoked a similar reaction. guilt? nope. given the fact that i routinely consume sea creatures great and small, i figure guilt at this point would be nothing but an exercise in self indulgent hypocrisy.

my dearest poultries, i hope i'm not lying to myself too badly when i say that i was never a preachy kind of lacto-ovo-pesco vegetarian. if i was, i apologize; i do believe that what one eats is a matter of personal choice. i think i always admitted that all those loopholes in my vegetarianism were a matter of deliciousness far more than philosophy. 

so, am i going to start randomly shooting passing cattle so that i can gorge on their still steaming entrails? no, i think not. but i think it increasingly likely that if i find a nice humane free range antibiotic-free grass-fed butchery, i might indulge in the flesh of dead things from time to time. suddenly my gastronomic horizons seem that much wider. bacon, anyone?

*ha!

step away from that casserole

driving along the fraser valley, listening to some current events show on the cbc, something about food security.

moi: food security! that sounds exciting! i think that might be a really interesting course to take, a fascinating career path!*

mr. monkey: food security? huh..."step away from that pancake!"

yeah...something like that.

*no irony. i totally dig the whole local, healthy foodism movement. i also dig the highly intelligent programming on the cbc. i'm a nerd. i know it.

fur on the tongue and a headache

the movers come tomorrow to pack up our precious belongings. i pray not one of my tasteful collection of china dogs gets chipped. that would really suck. it will be interesting to sit there and watch someone else do the work though (ok, you could say i have been doing just that the entire period of my unemployment, but the thing is, i have never actually seen mister monkey at his post. not ever. so it doesn't count.)

in other news: last night we went to a wedding bash. because i won a best out of three at rock-paper-scissors (i papered his rock, followed by two ties) i was the designated drinker. alas, my body said enough after two glasses of wine, while mister monkey's continued to holler an enthusiastic yes to a generous and varied selection of pretty much everything the bar had to offer so i drove. guess who had the hangover this morning. fuck.

in the hood

last night while walking through a neighbourhood of mostly middle class houses and the occasional mansion:

mr..monkey (pointing to one of the more magnificent mansions): now that guy! he built himself a HOUSE!

moi:...

mr. monkey (pointing to the statue of david* in the immaculately coiffed yard): they even got testicle guy!

*i kid you not: you know you have arrived when you have a statue of michelangelo's testicle guy in your yard

we're engaged!!!!

we just spent a lovely weekend in vancouver: the weather was gorgeous, our hosts lovely, and the only issue was the fact that my schweinegrippe refused to go away.

but it isn't only the h1n1 virus that is in the air, oh no, there is also romance (good god, as far as segues go, this one should be locked up in a padded room and medicated until it stops hearing voices). anyhoo - back to the romance.

everyone will have to agree with me that vancouver is one helluva photogenic city, and all over the west end couples were having "we're engaged!!!" photos taken by professional photographers with their harried assistants holding the light diffusing sails. the women were coiffed, the men were manly, the photographers were professional and the assistants were...harried. 

now if you know me, you know i find the idea of "we're engaged!!!" photos repulsive. i mean, come on. so you're engaged. ok. good. this love on display thing really makes me queasy.

one thing that's obvious, though - if there is one industry that is recession proof, it's the Young People Lacking Imagination Spending Their Parents' Money industry. blech.

dollar store gourmet

my lunch:

double-baked german rye and brie grilled cheese with a peach and peppered goat cheese mesclun salad with homemade garlic-brown sugar-balsamic vinaigrette. not bad, considering i ate the sandwich off a dollar store plate and the salad off a styrofoam tray that used to house tomatoes. the fork alone was of good quality. but hey, all this with an ocean view. i could get used to this extreme minimalism.

die schweinegrippe of the soul

1. general feeling of spiritual malaise? check.
   
2. two days of nausea-inducing migraine? got it!
3. desire to eat every edible (and semi-edible) item in our house and in all the houses in the neighbourhood? yup.
4. bleak outlook on life, future, possibility of house selling, career change, surviving into old age? absolutely!

ladies and gentlemen, i do believe the little pink pills do not lie: PMS, welcome. make yourself at home, hone my bitchiness and increase my naturally occurring suicidal tendencies and don't forget to shut the door on your way out in a week, you bastard.

minimalism: the extreme edition

last night i slept in a borrowed bed, this morning i sat on a borrowed chair at a borrowed table and ate my cereal out of a yogurt container. the spoon was mine.

flora and fauna and hearing difficulties

last night in bed, after mister monkey came back from his eucalyptus scented shower:

moi: (sniffing mr. monkey around the neck) mmmm, you smell like a koala bear.

some smooching ensued

moi: blech! from the mouth you smell like a wino!

mr. monkey: a what?

moi: a wino!

mr. monkey: a rhinoceros?

mo: no, a street drunk.

aaah, love sweet love

watching tv on the couch, eharmony commercial comes on ("blah blah blah...you could meet the person of your dreams...blah blah blah")

moi (grinning madly)

mr. monkey: why are you grinning like that?

moi: because you are the person of my dreams. i looove you.

mr. monkey: you're drunk.

car snacks and cucumbers

on our road trip to tofino we brought the usual suspects: carrot sticks, hummus, tomatoes and a large english cucumber because it's fun to whip it out of your backpack in public and wave it around in a vaguely threatening manner. and then you can even eat it if you want.

mr. monkey: you know what i'd like with my hummus? some nicely julienned cucumber sticks...

moi: (looking around at the rather complete lack of knife in car)...

mr. monkey: ?

moi:(grabbing the cucumber, lightly using my incisors to break the skin and forming something somewhat but not entirely unlike slices) SNAP!

mr. monkey: i asked for julienned sticks not chew medallions, woman!

moi: snarf! chew medallions! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SNAP! here's another one.

mr. monkey: (sullenly chewing)

once upon a time...

• in the last few days i have seen a whole gaggle of seagulls standing around sheepishly with starfish sticking out of their beaks. i've never actually seen one swallow. oh gluttony!

• coming home from an island hop last night we caught sight of a couple having balcony sex. short attention spans, though, or too much porn: each pose was held for an average of 7.5 seconds, except for the crowning glory, the 9.3 second blow-job. we were very disappointed when they went indoors, as, i am sure, was their neighbour several floors down who was enjoying a leisurely smoke and sex show.  oh disappointment!
  

• on our drive to tofino we stopped at a roadside fish-and-chipperia where we were fed undercooked french fries and captain highliner's atlantic cod fingers by a tubercular chef and her earnest though under-washed assistant. several kilometers later we entered the world of locally sourced seafood establishments served, no doubt, by persons of robust pulmonary health and immaculate personal hygiene. oh mycobacterium tuberculosis!

• in a couple of days we will be moving into our ocean-view rental* suite which, until the movers get there in a few weeks, will be sumptuously furnished with a borrowed mattress, two borrowed chairs, an antique table and two plastic dollar store plates. no, you can't come over quite yet. oh minimalism!

*sweeter words were never spoken - rental, thy name is leisure! no hammers shall come near thee, except for the glorious hammers of picture-hanging! no drywall compound shall mar thy beauty! no bestial whirr of drills shall disturb thy quietude! oh how i love thee, oh rental suite!

yet another sign of the decline of the north american empire

elmo's tickle hands.

one word: why?

or 

three words: good god, why?!?!

scientifically speaking

i have lately discovered a deep aversion to dark chocolate, quality notwithstanding. the smell itself makes me vaguely nauseous. strict scientific experiments under tightly controlled conditions proved that milk chocolate produces no such ill effects. apparently my body is rejecting the high quality antioxidants found in dark chocolate. i have increased red wine consumption accordingly.

one more sign of the imminent decline of the north american empire

"restaurant inspired feline cuisine"

no need to say more, methinks.

i'm off

to nanaimo tonight, to see my mister monkey, to dip my toes in the ocean and to eat any fish that comes within eating distance of me.

house, i still command you to sell, motherfucker! i might be gone, but don't think you can get away with any of that "i'm just gonna sit here and NOT sell" shit, you hear?

i have decided i am going to miss my family tremendously, especially since they are already making the possibly-will-never-come-visit-you-in-the-land-of-god noises, lazy bastards all!

bivalve mollusks beat rhovane, crowd goes wild

my mantra for last night: peaceful and clam

worked like a charm - i managed to fall asleep within a reasonable amount of time sans pharmaceuticals. bivalve mollusks will henceforth be my go-to mantra for tough ADD brain-rodent nights.

my dinner last night: glass of sauvignon blanc, a bowl of baci gelato and a peach so ripe its juices ran down my arm and into the sink

my stress levels: meh.

the whole breathing thing: meh.

other stuff of varying importance: bit through the fear and paranoia and bought aeroplane tickets to nanaimo for this friday, right after having thrown a rather embarrassing freaky fit to mister monkey on the phone about how stressful it is for me to go online and pick dates and such and get on a plane to see him. i'm embarrassed to even write this. talk about rich white girl's entitlement blues. but i persevered, i did. others die for their convictions, me? i buy aeroplane tickets to a beautiful island location to see my husband. ijit? u-huh.

randomnessity: stole a brand new chatelaine magazine from work. yah! 

why, old people, why?!?!?!?

why are you trying to kill me, motherfuckers? you're obviously doing well, what with the brand new shiny automobile that you choose to use as a dirigible of death, as you suddenly and for no apparent reason swerve into my lane, the lane that i am currently occupying, meaning no one any harm, just driving calmly in my goddamn motherfucking lane until you decide in your old decrepit brain that your lane is a far inferior lane and must henceforth be changed to my lane, the lane, in case you didn't get it the first time, that I AM CURRENTLY IN.

and if my laying on the horn scared you, then i must admit i do not currently give a shit because you almost killed me there and then and THAT would have made me oh so mad. 

old people, you are bad drivers; you are blind and deaf and frightened. old people, take a motherfucking cab, so i can live to move to b.c., ok?  ok.

that thing with the lungs and the air is broken again

spent the last couple of nights medicating the crap out of the maddened rodent that keeps the brain wheels turning. the last two nights it refused to stop or even slow down, despite my increasingly frantic chanting of "peaceful and calm*" as i lay in bed bombarded by all the things that could go wrong (we'll never sell this house/we priced it too high/we'll never make back the money we put into the house/why in the name of all fuck did we just spend two fucking years renovating a house that we are now trying to sell/will i ever sleep again ?/i think i am dying/i cannot breathe, oh god, i cannot breathe and so on).

since then, several people (including a zara employee with improbably thick gorgeous glossy hair) have promised to send positive thoughts my way and it must be working because i feel marginally better. but. but i do not deal well with stress (what? you noticed? is it THAT obvious?). this must end.

house - i command you to sell! you have one week, motherfucker!

today i shall exercise (it forces the lung and air thing to work better) and then go to work. it seems now that booking three days of work this week might not be a bad thing since it will force me to focus on calcified mouth matter instead of my house woes, which, come to think, might not be that much of a step up, but i am far less likely to give a shit about your periodontal problems than my own real estate issues. 

the day i start hyperventilating because someone refuses to floss is the day i pay someone handsomely to have myself shot.

*i mistyped "clam" and thought it might make a wicked mantra. i mean, have you ever seen a pissed off, stressed out clam? me neither!

melons! melons, i say!

i went to see the new southgate mall expansion - yowza! it's like a real growed up mall in a real world class city, y'all! they don't even have a hitching post anymore and there is barely any straw on the brand new marblelicious floorage! no, really! (although there is a store that caters exclusively to that mouth-breathing segment of the population that considers pimped out baseball caps the height of self-expression to go along with their gangsta jeans)

so, what does the new southgate offer? zara, sephora, ecco, coach (a.k.a. highly overpriced not particularly attractive baggage) and other assorted consumerist wet dreams. 

and since we are on the topic of spectacular man-made edifices, i saw a woman there whose spray-on tan, perfect belly button and platinum hair had nothing, and i mean nothing, on her perkalicious, utterly globular, perfectly hemispherical silicone breasts. now i have met women with implants before, but typically they look like...well, breasts. this particular pair was straight from a low budget porn directed, no doubt, by her bronzed, gold-bedecked muscular boyfriend with the über sexy highlights. 

to my everlasting chagrin, mister monkey and i will never be that hott or that sexxy.

beware of words!

district 9 write-up on imdb:

"rated R for bloody violence and pervasive language."

does this mean that language use should at most be sporadic, sprinkled judiciously here and there? that the excessive use of language will somehow corrupt our youth? are we returning to the silent film era? or a new wave of cinema mime?

would the film be rated PG if the violence was not bloody? what if there were no puncture wounds or eviscerations but merely a thorough 2 hour beating administered using a phone book? would that be ok? 

good to know i have an R-rated career, though. 

the monkey's back in town

mister monkey finally came home yesterday but did it in classic mister monkey fashion. 

he told me he'd leave round 8. instead it was 10:30 before he managed to pack the vehicle and eat breakfast and say his goodbyes. he found himself tired on the road so he pulled over to take a (3 hour?) nap. 

my increasingly frantic calls from work remained unanswered until 6:30 pm, when he called the receptionist to tell her he was alive and well and would be arriving in an hour. 

it takes mister monkey to travel 500 km in 9h. 

perhaps it was aliens.

rodent renos

the beast in the wall is at it again. it sounds like he's either rewiring the place, dragging furniture, or working on the plumbing. i do hope he gets some sweet digs out of the deal. then again, once mister monkey arrives, we plan on shutting the one visible access to the attic, so screw him and his mid century modern pad with its little eames rockers and saarinen table. 

up yours, beast in the wall, up yours!

just keep it down when people come to look at the place, ok?

the french certainly know how to do it

movies, that is! what did you think i meant? you dirty minded poultries!

i just got back from summer hours with my aunt and cousin-in-law. this is a movie that would implode if hollywood got within ten feet of it. a movie in which nothing much happens which brings to a sharp focus the kind of movie watching i am used to because each time a character gets behind the wheel of a vehicle, i expect a fiery crash. each time two characters rummage through their newly deceased mother's étagère, i expect them to uncover evidence of unspeakable acts or the mummified ear of a missing relative. none of this happens. they disagree, they discuss their disagreements, they come to terms with them, they move on. life moves on.

the 72 year old actress who plays the mother makes me wonder what it is that french women know that lets them age so gracefully: she is gorgeous and not in that horrifyingly plastic tight-as-a-drum joan rivers way. let me tell you, if i can manage to look like that at 72, i will have all the pool boys i want. in fact, given the toll that stress has been taking on my skin lately, i'd settle for looking like her when i hit 40. 

lovely movie. you might want to check it out.

that's not a skunk! that's me!

ok, so maybe i panicked a little bit last night (you would too if you had a beast in the wall) but there was no skunk smell. i blame my aveda chakra I balancing mist. last night it seriously unbalanced me.

things that go bump in the night and potatoes (which mostly don't)

one of the problems with the beast in the wall is that it causes me to have nightmares involving the beast in the wall. i had a bad night last night: cold, alone, pursued by nighttime demons, listening to the beast in the wall, and suddenly finding myself thinking furiously about the farmers' market baby potatoes that are languishing in my fridge.

that's when i got mad.

i had to give myself a stern talking to. i mean imagine, with the renos, house sale, packing and moving on my mind, do i really need to be worrying about the state of my potatoes? i think not. 

throw in beast in the wall and global climate change into the equation and i think i have plenty to worry about without even considering root vegetables.

sometimes i really do annoy myself.

then i look at how fab my legs and butt are starting to look with the thrice weekly run and i sort of get over the potato paranoia and chronic insomnia. who cares about mental instability when your ass looks good?

more exciting news in the world of weather! and then a skunk happened!

this april felt like february.

this may felt like march.

this june felt like april.

this july had at most 2 weeks of actual july weather.

this august, outside of 2-3 days, has so far felt like october.

also, am i imagining the smell of skunk? is the beast in the wall a skunk? please dear lord baby jebus in whom i do not believe, please, pretty please, let it not be a skunk who decided to skunkify in response to my repeated wall banging.

also, while we're talking, dear lord baby jebus, could we have some summer, please?

thank you.

the beast in the wall

several weeks ago i woke up to what sounded like a small saint bernard running around up in the attic. then nothing. i figured it was birds or stupid squirrels (how can anyone like that least charming of all rodents is beyond even my power of imagination) or something on the roof.

last weekend we had a friend stay in his sexy orange VW camper van in our driveway and as i was falling asleep i thought i heard him come in to use the facilities. after several minutes of strange scrambling noises and the occasional knock, i figured he might need some medical attention, or at least to be swiftly distracted from my minibar. i got up, wrapped myself in my increasingly threadbare pink robe and looked out. no antoine. but the mysterious noises continued. 

my next thought was that our tenants had somehow over the course of the weekend come into the (hopefully temporary) possession of a dog and it was in the hallway in some kind of kennel. i looked down: no dog. but the mysterious noises continued.

i self-medicated and went to sleep. fuck the wall beast, i had the folk fest to attend and needed to be rested.

last night i heard it again and called up our tenants to back me up. it is easy to start questioning one's grasp on reality when confronted with repeated scratchings in the wall. they heard it too. 

today the beast returned and i am contemplating murder. for a rodent (what else could it possibly be?) it is extremely loud, sounds like it's swinging from the electrical wires like some furry little tarzan with continuously growing incisors, and refuses to be frightened of the sustained banging i keep administering to the wall.

knowing myself, if it eats its way through the wall and ends up in either my spare room closet or the backstairs one, i will chase it and beat it to a pulp with my bare hands. 

no, i do not like squirrels.

i got some 'splainin' to do

for the last few weeks/months i've been working my ass off making our little house a total gem. just so we could sell it. this is not the first time we've pulled a stunt like that and i just hope that one day, one day soon, we will work our asses off on a home that we'll actually plan to live in. 

as a consequence of the above stress (plus not knowing until literally last week if/when/where we are going to go next) i have been cranky. and i have been really trying hard not to be THAT person: the one you start to avoid after a while because she's just a cranky old bitch who has nothing good to say about anything.

so maybe i should just shut up since people do tend to pick out only the negatives i spout (and you'll all agree (all 3 of you) that i spout a lot) and i am not only tired of being negative but also tired of being seen as only negative, especially since a) i've really been trying and b) i do not believe that to be the case. i like to think of myself as more of an opinionated realist with a side of tentative optimism.

yes, i hate hummers. but i also love my mister monkey, my friends, my life overall, my (soon to be ex) city, my family, music, books, my (soon to be ex) province, good food and wine and even some little children. i'm not a total ogre and i am finding it less and less funny to be called one, even if it's for a laugh: oh that monkey woman, she's always bitching. well, i'm not. at least i'm trying not to.

yes, my life has been stressful. yes, we are selling our lovely house. yes, we are moving to the glorious vancouver island. yes, i've been spending days inhaling paint/grout/epoxy fumes. please, be a little patient with me. i'm trying to be nicer because truly, i'm so incredibly thankful for my life, even if at times it drives me nuts, that i wouldn't want anyone (least of all a higher power if such a beast exists) to not realise that. 

the end.

23

the number of hipster girls wearing tank tops with high waisted skirts and wide belts i counted at the folk fest on saturday alone. they also all had the same hairstyle. every last one.

the question is: why?

hi

just thought i'd let you know that the whole "mayan riviera" thing is nothing more than a marketing ploy. when i ask you where you're going and you give me that particular answer, guess what, you might as well say "mexico" because that's all i get out of it. there IS no mayan riviera, you gullible fools! but hey, i just spent 2.5 years living in the northern alberta paris, so i might be a wee bit out of the loop.

dat paper iz fer ijits

why does the sun* insist on front pages with screaming headlines of carnage pasted on completely unrelated pictures? 

a recent headline hollered something about a rapist while the picture (of a slightly creepy looking man standing in the shadows) turned out to be the police spokesman. 

today's headline proclaimed something about the heartbreak of a father and daughter killed in a horrific car crash. the picture? two extremely flexible girls doing acrobatic stunts on top of each other. if that's a car crash i know a few guys who want in. 

* edmonton's go-to newspaper for the semi-illiterate: 78% car ads, 20% pictures of semi-nude young honeys, 2% text.

everything

tastes like chicken. why is that?

grout grout grout

my supper tonight was a big bowl of homegrown salad with homemade vinaigrette and a bowl of sunchips, washed down with red wine.

i had a huge hankering for bi bim bap but the two i hollered at to arrange a sociable bi bim bap consumption failed to respond. bi bim bap seems like a friendly food so instead of heading to bul-go-gi house alone and burying my nose in a book like the pathetic loner that i am, i had the nutritionally balanced meal i mentioned above. 

then (at 10:30 ish or so) i entered the tub and began to grout. then i exited the tub and began to blog.

good lord, my life is the stuff fairy tales are made of: complete lack of any social interaction, marked failure to consume korean food and excessive grouting. why go anywhere else when you can get it all right here?

locust sammich

so i survived yet another folk fest, along with its corollary social activities. we had our annual folk fest BBQ (this year's theme was The BBQ-less BBQ, on account of us not having a BBQ) which was attended by the usual suspects and failed to be attended by those whose attendance is, at best, spotty. i went to workshops, got a sunburn and even spent a good hour or two in the beer gardens. the music was fine although this year failed to produce the sort of wows and awe that characterized last year.

good friends, good times, good music: all good. i must be getting old, though, because i am glad it is now over and i can go back to my normal hermit-like existence (eating locusts in the back yard, wearing nothing but the loincloth i fashioned out of dead squirrels).

and now? it's off to grout i go.

said the little mouse to the arrhinoceratops

i am tired. i have been tired for what feels like hours. instead of going to bed, however, i keep pounding away at the goddamn keyboard, playing disturbingly long rounds of tetris, checking and rechecking facebook furiously, hoping, against all hope and reason, that someone somewhere has done something interesting (which they had not, damn you all to hell, my boring "friends"!!!).

the question that instantly forms on one's lips is why the hell don't i just go to bed? why don't i, huh? 

the answer is so bloody embarrassing that it embarrasses me to even mention it, on account of it making me all embarrassed with the embarrassment of it. 

ok, here it is: i am too bloody lazy to wash the make-up off my face, to floss and brush my teeth, and to take my clothes off, and since it is a part of my unspoken contract with myself that i do not go to bed with make-up on, with a crusty dentition and with clothes on, so i linger on the couch, hoping against all hope that somehow, somewhere, someone will twist the fabric of space time in such a way that i will suddenly find myself clean-faced, squeaky-toothed and nekkid, in my goddamn bed. 

a girl can dream. 

this happens a lot with me, and while i give mister monkey shit for failing to go to bed at a reasonable hour given his 4 am wake-up, i keep putting off the rituals that precede my own bedtime which then put me to bed past my natural sleepy time and i get overtired and cranky and insomniac and then  bitch about it here. 

LIFE IS SO BLOODY UNFAIR!!! WAAAAAAH!!!

hurray for stupid!!!

i was sitting on my front steps in my ultra sexy painting get up, waiting for a friend.

my phone rang and it was her:

"i'm right in front of your house."

"um, no, you're not. because i'm right in front of my house and i don't see you."

"oh. good thing i didn't ring the doorbell. what's your address again?"

i gave her my address and asked her what car she drove so i could keep an eye out for her.

"a little smart car."

so i went back to my steps, had another sip of wine and lo, what's this? is this a smart car i see coming up the street? why yes!

i proceeded to run to the front of my yard, waving my arms frantically and jumping up and down (just a little).

there were two strange men in that smart car and they gave me the nervous smile reserved for that crazy street person on the corner. the smile you hope is calming, the smile you hope will tell the demons to relax, the smile you hope will let you walk away alive, unscathed. yes, that smile.

i deflated and sheepishly walked back to my stoop. seconds later she arrived in her smart car.

oops.

punctuation punks

alright, you all know how much i hate it when people use ellipses instead of commas. what i am looking for is a little input regarding a phenomenon i have been witnessing on facebook, that communal repository of wit and wisdom, in the last little while. it is a sort of hybrid punctuation that goes something like this:

"were you at the ex today...? cool...i was there too...!!!!"

why the delayed question mark? why the delayed exclamation marks? what is the psychological and/or philosophical basis for this? 

is the writer a little slow on the uptake (YES!) and thus forced to take his time processing the query or the excitement? now i have met some slower-paced people who actually speak with ellipses, but what i wouldn't give to hear someone say the sentence above.

do something for me, my little poultries, tell a friend what a comma is and how it differs entirely from ellipses. have your friend pass this on to others. in time, we might eradicate the true pandemic that is sweeping the world - grammatical ignorance. thank you.

one more for the "graceful and shit" file

i was hanging curtains in the kitchen today. i took what i thought was a half a step back and found myself completely off the chair i had been standing on seconds earlier. because i knew that the kitchen floor behind me was littered with paint cans, screwdrivers and other pointy miscellanea, i attempted to flop my way backwards onto the far safer (?) tile. i had forgotten about the laundry basket thankfully filled with clean laundry and the one bottle of red wine i had tossed in there as i came up from the basement. 

i managed to upend the basket, spilling a rainbow shower of mister monkey's underoos as well as the bottle of wine. i also scraped my elbow something fierce.

i figured the bottle of wine was fine until i tried uncorking it several hours later. the entire neck was broken but hey, i'm nothing if not resourceful, at least when it comes to alcohol, so i managed to gently uncork it and then pour it into the decanter using a funnel and fine sieve to get the glassy chunks out. 

and if you're worried you'll be drinking glass-filled wine, worry not. by the time you come over, it'll be a whole new bottle, and i will have been graceful in many fun and creative ways. hey, i may even be dead!

one more drunk post? why thank you, i believe i shall.

you know how you're not supposed to drink and drive (at least not while you're pregnant) or drink and propose, or drink and...blog? anyhow, i often lose both my patience and my inhibitions after that third glass of wine and this time i decided to caulk. i caulked two bits of the bathtub that were threatening to turn into black mold right under my watchful gaze if not dealt with right this very second, and one bit of the fireplace surround, but i had to give that up because i was going a wee bit wobbly. 

still, it's not always a good thing to undertake home renovating projects while under the influence of The Grape. i (vaguely) remember putting an ikea coffee table together while tipsy. it's still together, although bits of it had to be reassembled once i a) sobered up and b) got an actual flathead screwdriver instead of a butter knife.

the more interesting thing happened when i put together a storage shelving unit. that was not the problem: i assembled it flawlessly. the problem was putting the storage shelving unit inside the storage room. something in the space time continuum refused to add up and i ended up (drunk), with a shelving unit jammed crossways into the storage room, levitating in an off kilter sort of way, refusing to budge in either direction. mister monkey had a good laugh. 

no wonder, though, that he refuses to let me play with electrical outlets and such: he knows my propensity to play drunken holmes on homes, and isn't yet in the mood to go shopping for a new wife.

good night. 

all graceful and shit

today i dropped a loaded paintbrush (twice, no, thrice) and a spoon covered in yogurt. i also banged my head forcefully on the low bit of ceiling on the basement staircase.

but i'll have you know, i did it all beautifully, with much grace and poise.

the "fuck" that followed each and every one of these balletic moments, was clearly enunciated and spoken in a well-modulated genteel tone, to go with all the grace and poise, of course.

a steak by any other name...

as i drove by a fruit bouquet boutique i realised that there is a huge business opportunity that is being ignored by the Public Displays of Affection industry. sure, you can send a bouquet of flowers, you can send a bunch of cookies-on-a-stick, there are lollipop and candy arrangements and the aforementioned skewered fruit, but one thing we have not yet bouquetized, and i for one think it's high time, is meat. the sausage-o-gram would be an instant hit, i am certain of it. 

how about it? anyone in my audience (of 3) with the requisite business sense? i can be the ideas man: i am polish, i know my sausage (i may not eat it, but i know it).

who wouldn't want to receive a wurst ikebana to celebrate one's 6th wedding anniversary? a jerky garland for grandma? how about an engagement pork chop posy? maybe a lamb lei for your love? 

i think i may be on to something.

rawr...thunk!

as i was buying dessert in the save-on-food bakery, a very big, very bald, very gay man, who happened to be buying large quantities of sliced meat in the deli section, sidled over to me, leaned in and said, "you carry yourself beautifully!" now i may be polish,* but i know how to take a compliment which, let's be honest, was completely unexpected and incredibly sweet, so i thanked him prettily and sashayed out of there like a supermodel. so now it's official, my little poultries: i carry myself beautifully, and i shall try to keep that in mind as i wallop my hip into the wall or walk into the coffee table yet again, so i can do it beautifully as well.

*polish people, unlike north american people, are not raised on a diet of steady (and often undeserved) praise and thus have a hard time accepting compliments to the point of absurdity and sometimes rudeness. i am trying to break this trend by teaching the polish women i know that a smile and a thank you, even if painful to the complimentee, is much more pleasant to the complimentor, than a stream of awkward and vehement denials.

i fought the law and the law went away

i got pulled over yesterday! by a real honest to goodness edmonton city cop*! 

my first thought, whenever i see the Flashing Lights of Law, is "hide the crack!!!" before i realise that, as per usual, i do not have any crack, nor have i ever had any crack, nor have i ever even seen crack (which, by semi-logical extension means that i might have a trunk full and wouldn't even know it! which would be a LOT in terms of street value! early retirement, here i come! except i really don't think i have anything resembling crack in my trunk...damn!)

after the crack fear passed, i pasted my best bambi smile on and prepared to find out what the heck i had done wrong.

what i had done wrong was failing to renew my license (for a long long time, it turns out), apparently an offense punishable by a 230$ ticket, a towing, and a popsicle up the ass, all of which the officer kindly enumerated before announcing magnanimously that he must be having a good day, because he was going to let me go. (must be the bambi smile.)

"where are you going now?" quoth he. i almost opened my mouth to say, "superstore to buy cherries, why, you want some?" before i realised that what he wanted was for me to say, "to get my license renewed" so instead i said,  "straight to AMA, officer.**" "do not pass go, do not collect 200$," replied the Law. "do i get a 'get out of jail free' card?" fluttered moi. he smiled and walked back to his cruiser.

i drove to AMA pronto (my license had expired in april 2008!!! this is so unlike the typical anal moi and i have NO idea how this lapse occurred) and gave them lots of money for which i received a small blue sticker.

then i drove out of town to bury the body that was decomposing in my trunk, followed by a quick hit of crack which, it turns out, was in between the seat cushions all along. although, come to think of it,  it might have been petrified cheese since there didn't seem to be that much of a high. except, of course, for the joyful glee i always experience when burying bodies.

*does it make it less real if he had an aussie accent? it was all i could do to keep myself from saying "that's not a gun, THIS is a gun!" which, under the circumstances, might not have been in my best interest. also, i don't have a gun, big or little, in my car.

**it also took all my willpower not to say "ocifer," because that's just silly and most probably  counterproductive.

the royalty of cheese

one of the items we took along with us on our little trip, was mclaren's imperial cheese product. this is a european style processed cheese product (differing from north american style processed cheese product in that it actually contains cheese) which proclaims on its perky red package that it is "carefully aged." you have no idea how good this made us feel, so much better than the industry standard of just tossing it any-old-where and hoping for the best:

bob (cheese product aging manager): mabel, 'ave you seen the cheese? don't seem to recall where i put it. i think it might be done right about now.

mabel (executive assistant to cheese product aging manager): not rightly sure, bob. i think i might have seen it last month in the janitorial supplies closet...behind the mop bucket.

thank goodness for careful aging. far less hair and rat droppings that way.

tales from the great little tour of southern alberta

1. drumheller:

if you are interested in dinosaurs or have children who are, drumheller is great. the royal tyrrell museum is lovely and has the added bonus of air conditioning, which our enviro-car lacks. sadly, we discovered that we are not at all interested in dinosaurs. 

2. cypress hills:

highly highly highly recommend this little oasis in the middle of the prairies. got the last room in the only hotel around: jacuzzi tub, king size bed, the whole works. i discovered that after 37 seconds (give or take a second) of filling up the two person jacuzzi tub, i could not do it. the earth is short of good quality potable water and i simply could not waste a double tubful just to cool my mosquito bitten ass. 

3. waterton:

stunning park, gorgeous mountains, lovely lake and a town taken over by dumb tame deer who pee in the lake right before drinking the water. the most overpriced crappy hotel we have ever stayed in complete with drunken polish people (not us, oddly enough). i loved the stunning array of vegetation that both jasper and banff lack. expect to see loads of botanical porn when i upload the trip photos.

4. pincher creek area/crowsnest pass highway/hwy 22:

if you've never driven this particular stretch of alberta highway, get in your vehicle right now and go. that's all i'm saying. 

5. canmore:

oh how we love thee, canmore. too bad you've sold your body to the highest bidder. still, for a corporate whore, you is a hottie.

6. hwy 93:

one of the loveliest stretches of highway in the world. sadly, i've done this so many times i think i might be immune. still, we hiked up to see the pile of brown ice cubes that remains of the columbia icefield. and then a quick little jaunt to horseshoe lake which looked roughly like whyte avenue on saturday night: groups of loud tattooed young'uns (backwards baseball caps and goatees optional but encouraged) sprinkling cigarette butts, beer cans, muddy t-shirts and soggy towels all over one of the loveliest spots in the area. public decapitation for littering might solve the problem.

7. jasper:

when viewed back to back with canmore, jasper sadly suffers from a disturbing lack of trees and in-town body of water. still, it isn't the shiny little sell-out that canmore is (more of a sad skinny ho with missing front teeth.) went our for korean (sentimental reasons) and found that edmonton's korean restaurants deliver twice the goods at half the price: have you ever walked away hungry from bibimbap? i didn't think so.

and now we're home.

poetry on a monday evening

here i am

and there you are

here's a cow

and there's a car

definitions thus define

the cow is yours 

the car is mine

and then this thing happened followed by stuff: or yet another episode of my amazingly exciting life

a.m. exercise session followed by a light snack of cottage cheese and a final decimation of the small limp organic carrots from the farmers' market.

taste of edmonton (a.k.a. The Thirty Dollar Lunch Of Tiny Styrofoam Plates Filled With Delicate Dollops Of Food) with s: deeelicious padmanadi curry, decent sweet potato fries, godawful pad thai from krua wilai, not bad crab cakes and jostling for space in churchill square with various besuited men and women in high-waisted pencil skirts and stilettos which appears to be the businesswoman attire of choice for this season. s and i then walked back to my place carefully avoiding fallen trees and discussing the end of the world as we know it followed, one hopes, by the ushering of a new age of greater understanding and decreased assholism. 

spent the rest of the day sitting on my front steps, eating cherries, reading a book, drinking campari and tonic and giving the evil eye to the next door neighbour's electrician who came to check out the damage to his wiring following saturday's storm, and left his gigantic truck idling for a good 20 minutes. apparently the weather in tropical edmonton is so extreme, that to leave the truck off for 20 minutes in the excruciating 23C heat would have caused his polyester pants to melt right onto his fleshy buttocks and his man-bits to spontaneously combust.

sometimes i think that i am singlehandedly responsible for the delay in entering this coming age of greater spiritual awareness because i HATE some people THAT MUCH. and then i get over it and we move another step forward to the fulfillment of 21 december 2012 (when the mayan calendar ends...ooooooooOOOOO!!!).

lo, and there shall come down rains and torrents of fish and amphibians if ye persist in thy sinfulness

as much as i love storms (i love storms a lot) last night scared the bejesus out of me.

as i drove home, i found myself strangely confused. it took me several blocks to figure out that the source of my confusion was not the beer and a half i had consumed (by the way, heineken sucks) but the utter darkness enveloping the area. no lights. none at all. and then the branches. everywhere the branches, leaves, pieces of trees and finally a whole tree lying across my way.

driving along whyte ave on a saturday night is never a fun project, one must always concentrate on trying to avoid drunk backwards-baseball-cap-wearing yokels and their assorted shrieking push-up-bra'd trixies. doing it in the dark in gale force winds was extra lovely. 

inexplicably, i had my window open and was thus treated to a toonie-sized hailstone whacking me right on the crotch when the hail began. after cursing and rolling up the window, i silently offered up thanks for a) not being a man and b) not being a stripper 'cause truly? ouch.

this morning i had another reason to offer up thanks - the aphids that practically ate the tree next door caused it to be less wind resistant and thus still standing, unlike the tree in front of my house which is, even as i write this, sprawled across one lane plus sidewalk, and the next door neighbour's tree which broke his fence, pulled down some wiring and fell on his neighbour's house. 

oddly enough, our delicate swaying gap-toothed fence is still standing. go figure.

all night i did as i typically do and worried about things i had no control over, in this case, the things in my freezer. 9h later when the power came back on, even the ice was still frozen, so no worries.

but hey, to prevent lawsuits arising from the delicate north american constitution, planet organic and save-on-foods were throwing away massive quantities of organic yuppy foods that might have become horrifyingly toxic through several hours of slightly higher than recommended temperatures. good lord! no wonder we panic at every conceivable new flu bug to come around. you've gotta wonder how our ancestors lived - they of the root cellar and occasional ice block.

so to sum up - no lights, no refrigeration, hail in the crotch, trees in the streets and i lived to tell the tale. 

let us write down strange words and praise the lord of the heavens

you know that thingie that finishes your words on the phone? the same thingie that allows mad people to text as they drive? apparently my phone came with a mentally deficient (or psychotically creative) version.

in ottawa, i wanted to enter a friend's number. his name begins with POU, which my phone immediately took to mean POULTRIES. have you ever seen the word poultry pluralized? i know i haven't. even my macbook spellcheck is having trouble with it, but it works for my crazy little phone.

recently i began entering another friend's number. his name begins with FIS. what did i get, my little chickens (poultries?)? no, not fish. not fisher. i got FISCHERSPOONER. 'cause that's so immediately obvious.

i can't wait to enter new people into my phone just to see what the crazy little machine comes up with.

fash'n

re: the whole american apparel ad campaign and the inexplicable return of the 80's onesie and the high waisted dress: just because it's vintage, doesn't mean it's cool. sometimes we move on for a reason, a very good reason. can we please move on now? i mean, i know, i know, i am now a single speed bike owner so you'd think i'd just go with the look but something deep inside me rebels.

dirty girl

i like to think of myself as a reasonably clean person. ok, my floor will never be the type of floor you could eat off, but then again, who the hell wants to eat off a floor? when you can afford dishes, no less? so yeah, reasonably clean. i rarely smell, i tend to shower regularly and take pride in putting my garbage INSIDE the garbage can. 

so why is it that my laptop looks like it is the regular recipient of explosive expectorations of chunky spit? why is it always my wineglass that looks like its owner is a developmentally delayed hare-lipped 2 year old with a hypersalivation condition? 

meh, there are people living in mud hats where dusting the floor is not an issue on account of the goat getting in the way. i think i'll live. at least i know which wineglass belongs to me (hint: the empty one).

world, meet margaret, margaret, meet the world

last weekend mister monkey built me a bicycle. she is red and skinny and her name is margaret. she has yellow electrical tape for handlebars and she cost three dollars. that's right, i have a three dollar bike. 

at some point during the building process mister monkey asked me if i would be embarrassed to ride margaret and i must say, i was a little offended: after 10+ years he ought to know me well enough - this be the girl who boldly proclaims to the heavens that she is wearing a 5 dollar skirt to anyone who will listen. i'm no lover of designer duds, unless said designer duds are spectacularly cheap. so, no, i don't mind!

how did i get a three dollar bike, you ask? our next door neighbours accidentally moved to texas, or at least it seemed like a last minute accidental sort of thing because they left half their chattel in the driveway. my aunt got 4 chairs, various random strangers got baby buggies, tables, desks, vinyl LPs, lamps, plastic toys and anything else you could possibly imagine. i got a beautiful pottery bowl and mister monkey picked up a bike carcass, two wheels and several tires. all that was missing was some handlebars and we picked those up for, you guessed it, three dollars, at the edmonton bicycle commuters.

being a total bike ignoramus (all i know is which end goes first) i figured building a bike would be a convoluted and excruciatingly difficult process that involved welding, rolling out metal, sweating profusely and doing it all in some sort of factory setting. nope - margaret was built in a couple of hours in our back yard.

i took her for a ride and she rides fast and bony. mister monkey once told me that the sportier the vehicle the more you feel the ride. by extrapolation then, margaret rides like a testarossa. she kinda looks like a ferrari, too, but that's just me. 

one thing, though - she is a single speed, on account of the gear thingie being unusable, so i have joined the ranks of single speed riding emo kids, the very subculture i have been making fun of for months and months. i guess i'll have to get me some tight pants and an asymmetrical haircut now...oh well.

czech it out!

yesterday, ottawa issued a visa requirement for the czech republic. immediately, the czech ambassador was recalled from canada and new visa requirements for canadian citizens visiting the czech republic issued.

is it just me or does this sound like grade 6 oneupsmanship? "amanda didn't invite me to her birthday party, so no way am i inviting her to mine!"

politics, thy name is idiocy.

last night's supper:

4 portuguese custard tarts*

1/4 hunk of a chevre wheel

2 glasses of campari and tonic with lime

a book

* i am so used to craving these little flaky bits of charred custardy heaven and finding that the italian centre has none, that as usual i went to their bakery section, parked myself in front of the glass display, looked left, looked right, found them missing, and asked the young bakery wench if and when i could be sure to find these in store. she looked at me quizzically and pointed to the blind spot right beneath my gut - a whole tray full. riiight. hi!, quoth i, i'll have 4! i honestly thought they'd do me for a couple of days at least, but as i was in mourning for mister monkey's earlier-than-usual departure, i self-medicated with portuguese** custard tarts.

**for anyone who reads this with any regularity, it shall come as no surprise that i tend to look at myself as rather spectacularly spell-aware. apparently i have never had to spell portuguese before because that second u? it stumped me! who knew it was there? hello second u in portuguese! nice to make your acquaintance!

that sweet sweet ocean smell

while draping walls with poly*, in preparation for ceiling spraying

mr. monkey: this plastic smells like smoked mackerel. what the hell do they make it out of, sea creatures?

moi: it's made of 100% endangered dolphins...and their stomach contents.

*when i went to pick up the poly at home depot, there were many rolls and on every roll (and on every shelf price tag) was written "ultra thin" or "medium" or "extra thick heavy duty" but nowhere did it specify what it actually was that i was buying. not one single place. when i asked a passing staff member if this was indeed poly and not some bizarre single serving pack of whale condoms, she looked at me in a panic and told me it was her first day and she didn't know. oh. ok, then. it'd be like going to the grocery store and picking up a can or two of "extra spicy" and a box of "light and crisp." 

are we there yet?

i have spent the last several days draping plastic on furniture and floor and painting the crap out of stuff. ceiling? check! walls? check! windows? sure! door frames? why not?! 

i thought i would be done today but these old curvy houses are not particularly conducive to a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am school of painting. oh not, there are corners, there are festive curlicues, there are dainty bits of craved wood on the windows. 

the result is lightheadedness, sorebackedness and an intense desire to move. 

and we're not even done yet. the newly excavated fireplace needs to be (re)tiled and i'm not even going to mention the bathroom (oops, i just did!). 

tomorrow marks the grand return of mister monkey and my hopes of presenting him with a freshly painted home might fall flat, unless i scurry home right after work and finish the living room off.

it's amazing, though, that no matter how hard this work is, and it is, 8-9h every day, i still prefer it to the psychological torture of my occasional paid labour.

i'd rather paint a dozen old-timey windows than scrape any more mouths. there is a certain zen peace to the whole procedure - the radio plays, i move my step ladder from wall to wall, paint, sigh, swear at the plastic for shifting, snap at the paint for dripping, talk back to harper whenever he makes an inane remark on the news, and then paint some more. 

perhaps this is my new career...hmmm.

moi:1 brain:0

i am sitting here computerating and goddamn, something seems to be crawling up and down my right leg. i don't see nothin' but hot dawg, there it goes again! might be another brain melt-down symptom à la peripheral cat. 

speaking of brain, brain and i had a little falling out recently and i finally slapped the living shit out of it with little blue sleeping pills. take that, brain! i WILL sleep, even if i have to kill liver to do it. but it's ok. my doctor gave me these pills so they must be ok. i trust my doctor. i trust that she is absolutely not in cahoots with Big Drugs and is absolutely not trying to get me hooked on smack. my doctor is nice. she wears cool shoes, and if that's not an indication of a pure soul, i don't know what is...although my mom's evil realtor friend also wore cool shoes, so there goes that theory.

hey! i finally figured out what growing up is - it is the slow and sometimes painful process of pulling your head out of your ass and i think mine has finally reached daylight.

what do you think?

oh wait, i forgot, nobody reads this. 

p.s. my tenants' tendency to cook nice smelling meals makes me ashamed of my diet of tuna sandwiches and yogurt. 

ok, then

as usual, whenever i reread my older posts i sense a terrifying, dizzying downward slide towards mental decrepitude and, worse, excruciating dullness. why oh why does it seem like the moi of yesteryear was a funnier, wittier, edgier moi? could it be the drinking? could it?

perchance it is my life - the hilarity of my fort mcmurray exile provided ample fodder for the blogosphere. here, now, my quasi-monastic metropolitan existence leaves me with little to write about. 

oh sure, i just about killed my uncle on wednesday, and then spent most of yesterday peeling gigantic chunks of paint off my ceiling, but really, do you need to hear more about my renovations? i know i certainly don't. and my uncle? well, he says he is slightly bruised but very much alive, thank god.

my limbs are still attached to my trunk, though mysterious chartreuse bruises occasionally make an appearance (i blame the endlessly shifting furniture) but that doesn't bother me much, especially in light of my absolute love for chartreuse. and i am sporting two swanky cross-shaped stigmata where my mysterious growths used to live.

so there you have it - every night i read a book, drink one glass of wine, followed shortly by another (or two), every day i scrape/paint/sweep/sand and occasionally go to work. what is there to write about? no boss to engender a murderous rage, no co-workers to feature prominently in blood-soaked fantasies of revenge, not even a town filled with dodge ram driving escaped lobotomy patients. the problem is i live in a little island of sanity in alberta...except of course for that shouting twitching crazy man on the corner tonight. 

i'm just

testing...1,2,3...testing.

good night.

ok, people: reality check!

i just love it when bloggers in toronto or chicago complain about their short summer. riiight. y'all are already sniffing tulips when we are up to our armpits in snow. i know, because i follow your blogs: you write about magnolias; i write about late season snowstorms. you walk on grass; i slip on ice. you dress your children up in cute halloween costumes; my (entirely theoretical) children wear parkas over their fairy wings and furry hats over their tiaras. you talk about the beauty of the fall colours; all i see is white. 

don't talk to me about a short summer just because you don't live in california or hawaii. i've lived in both chicago and toronto, and y'all can suck it up and cope. you want real up-your-ass winter? this just might be the place for you. come on down.

brain's done it again

last night i had a sort of "brokeback twilight" dream. it began with much fear and trepidation, moved into the phase of shrieks, sighs and meaningful glances and in the end the vampire boy and the werewolf boy lived happily ever after. 

let the rainbow flag wave happily over both the undead and the trans-species communities. 

p.s. i still have all my arms and legs, but i am starting a massive home painting project so there's every likelihood you'll have a very entertaining post soon enough.

medicine man

last night mister monkey took out my stitches and did not pass out. the man is toughening up, being with me. all the bleeding fingers he has had to bandage, all the bits and pieces of me that he has had to stuff back in through the open wounds, all the past, present and future trauma is finally making a man of him.

he did well, too. told me not to look, snipped them off and pulled them right out. even i got a little queasy. of course the wounds opened up right away and all my arm guts started pouring out and had to be stopped up with handy circular 3M bandages. i'm ok now. i think i'll live. for a while at least. 

i apologize for the extreme boringness of my blog recently. i think maybe i should simply lay off the writing (i'm sure all 3 of my readers will forgive me) until i have something entertaining to say. i mean, sure, my medical trials and tribulations are hilarious and all, but you know, maybe i'll wait until something momentous happens and i actually lose an appendage.

zen cool - 0 dumb people - 100 000 000

lately i am losing the zen-cool that i've been cultivating* every time i see people trying to be smart** and failing spectacularly.

case(s) in point: 

"here here" ....aah, you mean "hear hear" perchance?

"persay"  perhaps you are referring to "per se"

"ex-patriot" riiiight, that will be "expatriate"

"bonnified" (this from an english honours grad like myself, the horror!) in all probability meaning "bona fide"

and then there are...all those...ellipses...which take...the place of...commas...for stupid people...trying to be...deep.

*make fun of my zen-cool and i shall kick you in a delicate spot. but i will smile beatifically while i do it.

** oh facebook, thy name is idiocy!

in which i do not die and live to tell about it

today we set off to remove the Grievous Sore Of 70's Decrepitude and Poor Taste that is our gas fireplace insert. our house was built in the 40's and the fireplace surround is gorgeous but, like a pustular throbbing carbuncle on the face of heidi klum, from its angular golden face arises a metallic beige and brown Thing that can only be described as an Abomination. it easily takes up more than a square meter of floor space and inspires fear and trepidation, not to mention mild chronic  gastrointestinal upset. 

the tile job that surrounds our fireplace does little to alter our attitude: in what was doubtlessly a charitable and selfless act, the previous owner commissioned it from the local chapter of Special Slow Blind Uncoordinated Amputees.

so on the agenda for today was 

1. attaching curtain rods in the kitchen and 

2. removing the Abomination. 

the curtain rods did eventually get attached, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth (on my part) and much running around and doing everything else but (on mister monkey's part). the removal of the Abomination got underway around 8pm. yeah, i know.

to add interest and a certain je ne sais quoi to today's proceedings, mister monkey decided to channel rainman on coke. there was twitching, there was random repetition, more twitching, running back and forth and organizing the garage (for fucksakes!), and then there was yet more twitching, followed by the doing of things that could easily be done some other time, or possibly never. 

the man spent the whole day in the garage, twitching his way through our entire collection of slightly used toilet tanks and random bits of Very Useful Wood, lengths of pipe, and lots and lots of wires. want some wires? we have lots! free for the taking!

around 8 o'clock, after some of the twitching had subsided, mister monkey opened his second beer and went at the gas installation, because the only thing better than messing with possibly lethal machinery, is doing it drunk. at least then if you get blown to kingdom come, you'll be all relaxed about it: yo, st. peter, how's it hangin' my man? 

don't get me wrong. i trust mister monkey's expertise in the home renovating department without reservations. there are few other people i'd trust to reno my house. it's just that today was a very trying day. good night.

wanna be my friend?

how many facebook "friends" do YOU have? for a while there i was playing the "friend" whore like everybody else. 365 friends! yay! except i don't even know that many people. i would be forced to ask strangers sitting next to me on the bus to become my "friends" to pad those numbers, and i have not fallen so low yet. 

and now, filled to the brim with the joy of purging (clothes! furniture! "friends"!) i have been systematically culling:

so you worked with me for a week last year before being dismissed for a bad attitude? gone! 

so we met once at last monday's award show and then talked (very) briefly in the bathroom? sorry!

so we worked together for a long time but now you ignore my every attempt at communication? b'bye! 

so you used to cut my hair but your monumental unreliability drove me to self medicate? see ya!

so i (allegedly) met you once at a party over a decade ago? too bad!

and now my facebook "friends" page is a little more reflective of actual friendships or at the very least a degree of acquaintanceship that allows me to look at your name and not feel like i'm selling out for the sake of some mythical e-popularity.

wanna see my ass? today, a lot of people did!

yes, it's true. the wind and my silk skirt developed just the right kind of synergy at the superstore parking lot that as i waddled towards my car, weighed down by kilograms of cherries,* both hands full i might add, my skirt kept flirtily floating up around my waist, showing off my underoos and their contents.**

it happened again and again. and it got to the point that i finally thought, fuck it, all of south edmonton has already seen my ass, they can deal with it. if marilyn can do it, so can i!

*yes, kittens, it's that time of the year again - cherry colon cleanse time!

**that would be my ass, wherein i elegantly refer to the title of this post, cause i'm all about the elegance (and ass flashing)(and cherry colonics)

the bit about the things that go on and on and get in the way of the other things that need to be done or why my living room remains unpainted

the last few weeks have been so maddeningly busy that my calendar is colour coded to ensure that i show up for work (as needed) and make it to family dinners and gatherings of like-minded individuals. yes, i even need to schedule in the spontaneity of gregarious wine quaffing et cetera. sigh.

some people (like my lovely sis-in-law) positively thrive on excessive business. not moi. moi, i like a nice blank slate of a calendar with the occasional work day (as needed) and a biannual concert thrown in for good measure. 

last night's sterling awards, following as they did on the heels of an entire weekend of daily chamber music concerts, pinned the proverbial feather to a camel's ass...or something: i need a breather. today, despite the beckoning cheshire grin of the improvaganza festival, i have decided to stay in, sort mister monkey's dress pants, shred important government documents (oops!) and eat rosemary cheese straws. 

tomorrow i have a morning egg run (not nearly as exciting as it sounds*), a lunch date with s, an early evening rendez-vous with a medical surgeon who will hack bits off my arm at my own request, followed by an ice cream date with the above mentioned charming sis-in-law. i am tired already, but want to check every single item off my agenda. i just wonder - when will the walls get painted? and who the hell is going to do it?

just imagine what it'd be like if i had a real job!

*under normal circumstances i'd comment "i need to get out more" but given the contents of this entire (rather dull) post, it might be more appropriate to say "i need to get out less"

this one, oddly enough, is about the stock market

the world bank predicts that the economic growth will be slower than previously thought. as a result of this, investor ambivalence turns to doubt and markets plummet. 

am i the only one here who thinks this is ridiculous? could the media shut the fuck up with the gloomy predictions, thereby preventing the idiocy of the chicken little trading strategy that immediately brings their predictions to fruition? 

i think this economic melt-down could have been handled with a little bit more delicacy by the world's media, but then again headlines trump any kind of social responsibility every time. 

sometimes i pine for a good old fashioned despot, enlightened or not.

awards night

so off i went with b into the night, be-girdled, be-coiffed, heels going all clickety clack on the vaguely sticky sidewalk. the night was my oyster.

we split a bottle of wine, i made several trips to the mayfield buffet (yes i did) and then we watched several hours of awards for shows i have never seen given to people i have (largely) never heard of and, lo, it was good, and funny and way more entertaining than the oscars. edmonton's got some wicked good talent and i think i need to rethink my anti-theatre stance. 

after the show, the dancing began. the band was ok if a little loud but the post-band dj was perfect. i haven't danced this much since...oh...years! my legs were sore but the inspired musical choices made sitting for long impossible. came home well after 2, washed my face and feet and fell face first into bed where of course i had to pay penance of 45 minutes of mental overdrive before falling into blissful oblivion.

a good night, overall. thanks, b.

p.s. oh, and i might have found me a new hairdresser! i'll keep you posted.

still kicking and out the door

so apparently i'm not dying anytime soon, but we'll wait until the blood tests come back to be sure. your concern (as evidenced by the swarm of well-wishing comments) is deeply appreciated.

one thing, though, what is it with humans these days? where does it say that it is okay to cough with your mouth wide open, tongue sticking out, in a room full of people, some of them elderly, some surely immunocompromised and some raging hypochondriacs who can still catch a swine flu virus with the best of them. 

later in the day i just about asphyxiated on hairspray while getting ready for tonight's sterling awards. my girdle is on, my hair is big - this chick is ready to rock'n roll. wish me luck, kittens!

mr. monkey doesn't read this blog so if i die you'll have to tell him about this post, ok? thanks.

dear mister monkey,

you have been the best mister monkey a monkey could ever hope to find. thank you. 

now for the funeral arrangements: please serve yummy cupcakes, you know i like the tart kind, and i know you do too, so go ahead, serve the tart kind. otherwise, seeing as i'm dead, feel free to disregard any part of these instructions that you find inconvenient or foolish. i can't do anything about it anyway - remember? i'm dead!

please burn my body, then put the leftover bits in a receptacle of your choice. a folgers can will be fine. take the ashes and do what you like with them: it's not really me, just dust. you can throw them out and i will not think it disrespectful. all i ask is that you don't bury me because it's a waste of space and all those chemicals are seriously disturbing. i do not want to contaminate the groundwater any more than i already have. if you want to stuff me and keep me in the hallway, or mummify me, that would be cool, too. 

please feel free to have a memorial thingie (with the cupcakes), but you really don't have to. if you do, please play that arvo pärt i like. my dad knows which one. it's on the ipod. you can also play that lisa gerard bit from black hawk down. or hey, if you like, play ac/dc or rage against the machine. that might piss me off so much that i come back. polish rap might also do the trick.

invite whom you want or nobody at all. it's your party cause, hey! i'm dead!

find yourself a good woman (after a  suitable period of mourning) and for god's sake, don't hold on to stuff! life's too short.

i love you, you have rocked my world.

seen the light

i have found jesus...irrelevant, largely. religion continues to baffle me. to loosely paraphrase another blogger, religion is believing in a specific fairy, and religious intolerance is believing that your fairy is better than all the other fairies. admit it, put that way, it does seem a little silly, no?

i'm going to see my doctor tomorrow on account of this mysterious exhaustion and the creepy cancer spots on my arm and leg, either one of which could turn out potentially lethal. watch me run to the fairies then.

if i do, feel free to point and laugh, provided you promise to come to the funeral. i'll ask that they serve cupcakes. 

so uncool

several years ago, before we got our ipod, i felt like that kid at school, you know: the one with the perpetually greasy hair and bad complexion, the one whose pants were always a little too short and whose shirt always sported some sort of mysterious stain. yeah, that kid. 

here was everyone walking around, white ear buds prominently displayed, sashaying to the inner beat of their sexy apple product. not me. remember, i was that kid. i even briefly considered getting white earbuds, taping their end inside my shirt pocket, and bopping around with all the cool kids, but i didn't. i figured if i was going to be uncool, i'd be uncool bravely, shouting it from the rooftops that i did not have an ipod! LOSER! yah.

then we got an ipod and everything was ok. for a while.

now everyone and their dog seems to have an iphone. and, again, i am that kid. except where i actually wanted an ipod, i have absolutely no desire to have an iphone, especially not with a perfectly functioning little motorola that doesn't scare the crap out of me with its multitudinous functions, an existing phone that actually works that i have no desire to retire to the landfill for its sin of not being au courant. 

see, i want a phone that i can use to phone people. the end. i don't want to use my phone to check my email (fingers too big!), facebook people, GPS my exact position, shop, record and mix music, cook a wicked souffle, watch a movie, walk the dog etc. i have things that do all that for me already. 

besides, i think this ability to constantly "communicate" is really cutting into our ability to actually communicate. you know, with words spoken out of our mouths while sitting down and facing each other. remember that? or am i just being that kid again?

this weather thing again

got rained on, which goes to show that just because environment canada predicts a grey cloudy rainy day, does not mean that the gorgeous sunshine won't turn into a shower around 9 pm.

also, buying a tiny, purse-friendly umbrella is a good idea. carrying it in said purse? priceless. i'll try that next time.

oof, the pms thing is starting again, and my reaction lately is to stay home, listen to music and see as little of other human beings as possible, on account of everyone pissing me off so much. more and more, i like alone time, almost as much as monkey time. don't call me.

overheard at the sugarbowl

what actually happened:

little boy: da-ad? what's the fastest BMW? is it the Z40*?

yuppie dad: (smiling indulgently) no, son, it's the MX6. it's the fastest car in the world. 

little boy: da-ad? what if you put a V12 engine in the Z40?

yuppie dad: (chuckling and messing kid's hair) it wouldn't fit.

little boy: but da-ad? what if it did?

yuppie dad: then sure, son, it would be very very fast.

it sure is heartwarming to see parents pass their values on to their young, even ridiculously shallow yuppie values...

what i wish had happened:

little boy: da-ad? who's got the baddest booty in hollywood? is it beyonce?

yuppie dad: (smiling indulgently) no, son, it's j-lo. she has the baddest booty in the world.

little boy: da-ad? but what if you fed beyonce a lot of pizza 73 and twelve-packs of donuts?

yuppie dad: (chuckling) son, you know beyonce would never eat that kind of stuff! she subsists on lemon juice and cayenne pepper and sometimes cristal.

little boy: but da-ad? what if she did?

yuppie dad: then, sure, son, her booty would shift into overdrive.

*all car terminology is completely made up on account of me a) not giving a shit and b) not knowing the difference between a V6 and a clamato juice.

ok, ok, mea culpa

ok, fine. 

while i bitch about my tenants' propensity to slam every slammable object in their home, i must admit that to them i am probably the stomping lady, who stomps everywhere what with all the stomping. stomp stomp here. oooh! shiny thing! stomp stomp stomp there! meh, i liked the old place better - stomp stomp stomp. oops, table in the way - stomp stomp trip STUB stomp #@%*! and on and on it goes, the music of our lives. 

slam! - stomp stomp stomp - SLAM! - stomp stomp stomp - slam slam! - STUB! - slam - STOMP!

and another thing...

as much as i love our new tenants (what with the distinct lack of asshole dog in the picture, plus they are very nice and lend me onions), i am sick to death of the slamming of things. 

the all-hours-of-the-night slamming of the toilet seat on the toilet, the slamming of doors in their apartment, the slamming of the garden gate, the absolutely needless slamming of the back door, all the time slamming with the slamming of things, and then there's the slamming. could we please ease off just a wee bit? this is an old house and i fear we are one slam away from total structural failure. and i just may be one slam away from a murderous rampage...but then who would lend me onions?

sigh...it's all good. i'm just a tad cranky on this lovely summer morn, and i am about to go pay a woman to make me hurt a lot up and down a hill. frankly, i am a little scared.

blarkarrark

well it's a good thing i had that 15 minute nap yesterday afternoon, cause i had another sleepless night. 

body - i am getting a little tired of this, and i am THIS close to medicating the crap out of you. got that? good. cause from here on in, it's war, you selfish, non-responsive, heart-pounding bastard!

i spent the morning portion of the night dreaming of what dress to wear to a wedding. the high stress dreams, too, can go piss right off.

i'll tell you what i want (what i really really want - she'll tell you what she wants, what she really really wants), i want to fall asleep easily, sleep deeply and wake up refreshed. at this age, a sleepless night makes me look like an old woman and there aren't enough miracle balms out there to make it better.

in which i gently ramble on about the things that piss me off this week:

that my nails grow so bloody fast. i cannot have a full time job, i'm too bloody busy filing my bloody nails all the bloody time. 

that i still get zits - hello! i'm 37! i have wrinkles! WHEN WILL THIS END?!!?!?!?

that although i am now more active than i have ever been in my entire adult life, the weight is not budging, and i am NOT talking about the numbers, i am talking about my secret skinny pants. the scale may be confused, but the pants, the pants do not lie. still, i seem to be enjoying this new running, boot camping, circuit training moi, so let's stick with it and give the bikini fantasies a rest. 

that mr. monkey is still stuck up in the siberian wastelands, while the summer it is a-passing. 

the...irresponsible...and incorrect...use...of...ellipses...when a...FUCKING COMMA...would do.

the one about the thing with the stuff on top and then it ended

hey! news flash! tuesday and today you know what i did on the couch? no, not that, you dirty minded little shit, i napped! yes! me! moi! i actually took two 15 minute catnaps of the kind regularly taken by normal people. 

now, is there anything worse than raisins? well, ok, hitler. or stalin. or any number of violent psychopaths with weapons of mass destruction, but you get my point, no? no? ok. moving right along...

we went to a summer solstice concert tonight put on by the edmonton chamber music society and i got my pants rocked by arvo pärt's fratres. goosebumps, big goofy grin, tears in the eyes, the works. and i'll get to hear it all over again on saturday. pärt rocks. you rock, pärt! rock on, you crazy estonian bastard, rock on!

tomorrow i will be getting my ass kicked on a hill, to make a bit of a change from the usual friday morning ass kicking on the playground. if you hear no more from me, it is likely that i am hospitalized in a full body cast from attempting to simultaneously fuck with mother nature, uncle gravity and cousin ground. send flowers, but please don't come and visit; it'll be pathetic.

so close...

last thursday at the airport:

mr. monkey: you know, i came up with the perfect job for you! perfect!

moi (very excited*): what is it?!

mr. monkey: i forgot.

bastard.

* because why make your own life decisions when you can have a perfectly useful boyfriend** or husband do it for you?

** the last 14 years of my life are brought to you courtesy of my crazy ex boyfriend terry who happened to have had lunch with a dental hygienist friend of his the day before we took a walk on the u of a campus, hence the brainwave, the application, the interview and the two years of hell followed by 14 years of some very lucrative bloodbaths.

behold: the flora and the fauna

if you have visited our home recently and have been greeted by a horrifying stench, you have our sincerest apologies. the culprit has been discovered and dealt with severely. 

as i lounged on the couch this weekend, my nostrils were repeatedly assaulted in a manner too noxious to even attempt to relate. i sniffed my various bits, mister monkey's various bits, i sniffed under the couch, i sniffed in the entryway where an embarrassing number of shoes have been proliferating stealthily, i even began thinking that a family of squirrels had taken up residence in our attic and, having fallen on hard economic times, ended badly in a rodent murder-suicide.

alas, it was the lucky bamboo. it has been slowly dying, bit by lucky bit, and the aroma of its decidedly unlucky demise had permeated its water and thereafter the entire living room.

since the culprit has been apprehended and placed in solitary confinement, pending execution, the living room air quality has been improving steadily, barring mister monkey's occasional gastric emissions.

how the other half lives

last night we went out for ethiopian with a lovely couple i met at an urban planning lecture. yes, adults can meet new people, talk to them, like them and make dinner plans. it's much tougher than the sandbox way, and fraught with far more disappointment (those individuals that are all "let's go for coffee!" and then, lo and behold, refuse to follow through and do NOT go for coffee, the mangy pusillanimous bastards!) but sometimes it happens and things do click and before you know it you've put away a bottle of wine and a bucket of sangria and you're sitting in your backyard, brushing inquisitive aphids off your ankles and discussing life and urban planning and literature. very nice.

(last time this happened, that i clicked with a new grown-up, i was cleaning her teeth and thank god her mouth was clean because for all the talking we did the cleaning fell by the wayside, and now she's moving away to vancouver and i shall miss her tremendously but, g, you know i'll be living in your spare room before you know it.)

so the point is (oh! oh! oh! what is the point?!!!) that after all that i went to bed and fell asleep RIGHT AWAY. yes, gentle readers, i fell asleep like normal people. then mister monkey soggily joined me, failing yet again to grasp the finer points of Drying Your Wet Body post shower, and i woke up, talked to him for a bit and FELL ALEEP AGAIN!!! shocking, no? if this is what life is like for you, all falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow - you lucky shit! cause mine is all about the agonizing stretches of time spent trying to talk myself off the ledge of awakefulness that somehow always morph into worrying about the state of the ionosphere, or albania's sociopolitical situation, or the disturbing lack of local produce on planet organic's swanky recycled ethically harvested wood shelves.

the end.

another day, another shoot-out

this is it. summer seems to be here. i survived my mother's visit, nay, enjoyed it even, and am now readying myself for the onslaught of Things I Need To Do Before I Can Do Other Things. confused? so am i. 

i have had a dawning realisation recently that life is a process. there is no point of resting on one's laurels (uncomfortable, no? spiky little things, them!) unless it be a little point here and there. all the rest is getting from point birth to point death, and various points in between (new job, nervous breakdown, lunch with mabel, getting drunk, moving provinces, pedicure, scrubbing the tub...you get the picture), and really, it's all about the journey. 

hmmm...would make a nice bumper sticker or coffee mug: "it's all about the journey."

what do you mean it's been done? bastards! 

so yes, 37 years old, finally hauled her ass off the damn couch of existence and suddenly all these truths are raining down on me. nice.

crazy is as crazy does 2

i spend uncomfortable amounts of time nixing facebook's friend suggestions. 

i keep hoping that eventually it'll run out of names to toss at me or will come up with someone who will be the crowning glory of my assorted nut collection of friends, random acquaintances and people with whom i worked for a week or so but barely communicated with. 

i need a hobby.

ouch

i could never be friends with someone named krystle because it would hurt my teeth that someone could hate their child THAT much or be THAT unaware of the rules of spelling and common human decency.

oh the humanity

i have a deep half moon shaped scar on my left hand from a crystal wineglass that decided to split in two in my hand.

two nights ago i was walking down the hallway, tripped on the laundry basket and careened into the doorframe where i did something extremely painful to my right ankle bone which is sore to this day.

three minutes ago i walked by the coffee table and stubbed not one but 4 toes.

i am now about to go to a boot camp work-out. if i die by running head first into a picnic table, i want to thank you for everything you have ever done for me. if you have never done anything for me, you're a jerk.

pain in the ass: the literal version

this morning i woke up with the firm intention to go for a run. no can do. i am in pain.

yesterday, my old old friend j invited me to a boot camp for moms, never mind the fact that i ain't got no babies. it was a beautiful day and the friendly tiny tough instructor kicked our lumpy asses all over the playground. most exercises made good use of picnic tables and skipping ropes...and pain. she was nice, but she wasn't that nice. ouch.

i'm totally going back next week. apparently the new me likes pain. just not enough to go for a run today.

my mom is coming for a visit for 10 days so if you don't hear from me, it's not you, it's me. 

the bluebird of happiness and other urban myths

there are very few times in my life when i hate being a woman, like that occasional week of migraines and endless, bottomless, unreasonable blues. this week, for instance.

for the most part i love my body, my way of thinking, my ability to multitask and have a deep conversation with other women. i don't even mind the whole bleeding thing, even though in my case it is simply wasting its time. but this, this deep pit of hormonal despair, when the sun is shining, when all is well, and there is no reason under the sun to feel like i do, this sucks.

seems like i am not alone. i had one friend cry to me over the phone today, and another tell me her partner is falling apart emotionally and she is having a really hard time with it. so, ladies, some yoga breathing for everyone?

crazy is as crazy does

i went in to temp at an office today (this one decorated in warm mediterranean yellows, complete with columns, frescoes and trompe d'oeil all over the place) and ran into an old classmate of mine from dental cleaning lady school, who pretended not to know me. odd. at first i didn't know the skulking creature to be her, but then i looked closely and BAM! sure, she changed her name somewhat (imagine annabel becoming anna and you get the idea) but she has a very distinct face* and it was all i could do not to smack her for being an idiot. and even if she seriously did not recognize me, well, my name is a dead give-away. not many of us practising the tooth cleaning arts with this name and this particular face. 

people: can't live with them, and waiting for climate change to finish them all off is gonna take an awful long time...

*is there such a thing as an indistinct face? i mean, outside of spy novels, which seem to teem with them? as a child i was always worried that my face was so average (on account of myself seeing it all the bloody time, i imagine) that if i got lost, my parents would not be able to find me again. 

stop making scents

nothing to report here, except the fact that the earth will shortly disintegrate and the world as we know it will collapse in a maelstrom of fish heads and random shiny things: i am taking my books out of the boxes wherein they have lived for the last 2 years, and i am placing them on my bookshelves NON-ALPHABETICALLY. no, i am not on drugs. yes, it hurts. 

what hurt more, was having boxes of books all over the house and while we wait for one more shelf to come in on back order, i decided to bite the bullet and see how the other side lives. frankly, the other side sucks, but whatever. 

also, my mom is coming to visit, the library is also a spare bedroom and i thought she might appreciate non alphabetically arranged books more than sleeping on top of boxes. 

the end.

mister and missus

in our household, i am the money man. i am the one who juggles it, tosses it from one account to another, and counts it while cackling gleefully. i am also the one who chooses the charities we support, and who writes the cheques for said charities. red cross was one such charity, and over the years they had gotten a fair bit of moola from the monkey household. unfortunately, a couple of years ago, the red cross was sucked into a space-time anomaly and reemerged in the 1950's, wherefrom it began addressing all our correspondence in the following format:

mr. and mrs. albert monkey (names have been changed to protect our privacy, duh!)

i wrote them once, very politely informing them of the current year and century, explaining that my name was not, in fact, albert, and never had been. it was my husband's name and while i had followed the quaint tradition of taking on his last name, i never gave up my first, along with my entire identity as an independent human being.

they persisted.

i then wrote a second letter, firmer than the last, and told them that they would not receive a red cent from the monkey household if they did not immediately start to acknowledge my existence, seeing as it was me (gasp! the woman!) who chose whether or not they got our support in the first place.

after a long period of silence wherein i stewed and fretted about having actually yelled at a charity, there followed a correctly addressed letter asking for money:

mr. albert and mrs. matilda monkey

i sent them money.

i thought it was over. i have just received a notepad addressed, you guessed it, to my husband and his nameless chattel, moi.

they will get no more money. 

enthusiastic housewifery, accidental exhibitionism and the need to keep one's frank in one's pants

you know what? i really enjoy doing all the housewifey things, like shopping, planning meals, cooking said meals, laundry etc. i could totally be a 50's housewife (complete with drinking problem, hurray!).

why, just today, after washing the dishes, shredding important government documents (oops!), folding and putting away the air-dried laundry (is there a better smell?), i decided to tackle the small pile of minor sewing that needed to be done. you know: tightening some button holes so that i would no longer flash my bosom at random strangers (at winners and the movie theatre - my apologies, gentlemen), fixing some small tears and, last but not least, sewing up two pairs of mister monkey's underoos which, brand new and deadly comfortable, had the small yet serious problem of...ahem...not containing him entirely. and really, what is the point of underoos if your little dude is blowing in the breeze?

so, two glasses of a new zealand sauvignon blanc later, i engaged in the deadly sport of drinking and sewing. good thing mister monkey wasn't present, or he might have found himself permanently fastened to his sexy new underoos. ouch.

mind changing

those who know me, know well that i have a matching set of fairly strong, well-formulated opinions on a number of issues.

those who know me well, know that i am open to discussion and having my mind changed with well supported arguments. i am not an ass (most of the time).

still, it isn't all that often that i find my mind fundamentally changed by a book. twice now, i have read a book of essays that has subtly but permanently altered my worldview. i am now reading a third book that is pushing me in a new direction once again.

all three books* were written by the same author, one of my all time favourites: barbara kingsolver -  biologist, author, farmer, crusader and, apparently, enemy of the state.

although i love her fiction, it was her books of essays that have snagged my attention, spun me around, and changed my mind. her latest, animal, vegetable, miracle is doing it again.

the book, beautifully written and well thought out, talks about what and how we eat, and the answers, though heartbreaking, are hardly surprising, given the well documented obesity and diabetes epidemic that is sweeping the continent. so although i have been trying to be more diligent about eating locally (do i take the organic apples from chile, or the non-organic from washington state?) and supporting my local farmers, i will now try harder (goodbye, pineapple!)

but that's not the sea change i am talking about (or, to be more precise, the possibility of sea change). so what am i talking about? i am talking about meat. while ms. kingsolver is dead set against feedlot operations (anyone with a fully functioning head and heart ought to be), she is also fairly firm in condemning vegetarianism or veganism based on "loving the little animals" and she makes a very good point.

choosing to eat ethically raised and harvested meat is more honest, says the author, than eating vegetarian only and turning a blind eye to the wholesale habitat destruction and animal "collateral damage" that is part and parcel of the growing of soy and grain in north america. 

since i have never been a big fan of the school of thought that preaches that all killing is wrong (i doubt the preachers have let a mosquito nosh on their blood unpunished, or left a bacterial infection untreated), and have personally been nauseated by the fluffy rainbow mentality of "no kill" animal shelters, i guess it is no far stretch for me to have my mind changed by her superbly argued point of view.

does this mean i will start to eat meat? probably not: i don't like it that much. but i will most certainly start to purchase mister monkey's meat from the local farmers, and if i ever find myself in some small italian town and get offered grilled homemade rosemary garlic sausage, i might just have a bite.

* high tide in tucson, small wonder and animal, vegetable, miracle

 

introvert! introvert!

although i like to go to bed early and get up early, i am not, under any circumstances, to be confused with a cheerful morning person. yes, i am up. yes, i'd rather be up and not waste my day sleeping, but no, i don't want to talk to you. in fact, chances are, the only person i am willing to talk to at this point is mr. m, and even that can be debatable.

now because my mom is always on the computer, and because she is 2h ahead on ontario time, she is always there to sweetly wish me good morning and have a wee little conversation about what i have planned for my day. all nice, this, but not for me, not in the morning, not when i have just gotten up and am resolutely misanthropically antisocial.

this has led to e-lurking. i will engage in a guerilla style email check - drop in, read emails, drop out. i leave my skype off the hook. i ignore chats. and i do feel guilty. i really really do. it's just that my aversion to early morning conversation trumps the guilt.

when i holidayed with my parents in arizona in april, my dad insisted on talking to me all morning. and talking. and talking. (this from a man who, at the best of times, is fairly monosyllabic (unless you get a political/religious discussion going but i refuse to delve into that here (or anywhere else, for that matter))) when i finally snapped, he wondered why i was so pissed off and, after actually thinking before answering for once, i realised that i am in no way shape or form angry in the morning, provided you shut the hell up. 

furthermore, i am being invited by family members to hang out with them, on account of my all alone monkeyless status, and as much as i appreciate the gesture and the genuine concern for my emotional well-being that informs it, i have to say i am loving being on my own. 

more and more evidence is cropping up that i may indeed have a very heavily disguised core of introvertedness.

the trek to the stars and other movies

hi. i just got back from a marathon movie day that started off with star trek and ended with state of play (was there a point in that movie that explained the title? did i miss it? do i care?).

the only thing better than a 2-for-1 movie deal (pay them twice? are you nuts?) is the spontaneous cooperation that occasionally makes me renew my faith in humanity (i am not talking about the star trek movie, i am talking about a completely random woman offering to hold the unlockable bathroom stall door for me while i went pee, and me returning the favour, while the rest of the sheep stood and stared, their little bladders distended  painfully but unable to cooperate in like fashion despite my rallying cry of "we need another tag team here!"). 

so, movies:

star trek 

first of all, you have to take into consideration my complete and abiding love for the series. i loved the original when i had just come to canada and was learning the language, and i loved the next generation, though it took me some time to get over the alarming non-styrofoamity of the rocks and the utter lack of sweating captain pectorals. 

i know i have fessed up to having had a significant teenage crush on mister spock (a harbinger of years to come spent dating emotionally unavailable men until i broke the mould and married mister monkey, the single most emotionally available man i know) and boy, was i ever proven right - the younger spock? yummy! utterly lickable, from pouty lip to pointy ears. 

you can totally see the young james tiberius kirk growing into the sweaty charmingly misogynistic shatner, scotty (shaun of the dead!) is utterly delectable, and bones? well, let's just say that karl urban is one of my few exceptions to not wanting to lick pretty men. and he nails mccoy. utterly nails him. (and speaking of nailing, that'd be a resounding "please and thank you" which in the original? no thanks: too much mascara.)

the villainous romulan ship was a gorgeous swiss army knife slicer and dicer extraordinaire and hey, if anyone wanted to destroy my race and shoot red antimatter gumballs at my planet, eric bana would be my man. delicious. i even forgive him his ears.

so, did i enjoy the movie? hell yeah! i realise i am the last person on the planet to see it (except for that masai shepherd who got suckered into watching the cow herd while the rest of the gang went on cheap tuesday) (oh, and except my husband who got suckered into being responsible for the whole project while the rest of the gang got drunk on molson canadian), but i loved it. i will go see it again with mister monkey when they let him out on good behaviour.

state of play

let's see, we have a fat russel crowe, a wooden ben affleck, a greasy jason bateman, an eternally classy helen mirren, an anorexically cute rachel mcadams, a tired but lovely robin wright penn, and a jeff daniels you just know is up to no good. there are ex-military bad guys, congressional hearings into the big business take over of the free america we all like to pretend was ever actually there, conflicted but honest reporters, good hard working cops, and a political story with a twist. and oh, what a twist. yawn.

it was ok. i'm glad i didn't actually actively pay for it.

the end.

things

things you won't find in my house:

• ketchup
  
• wire coat hangers (which i firmly believe are of infernal provenance)
  
• wonderbread
  
• danielle steele or dan brown books*
  
• stiletto heels (unless mister monkey is holding out on me)
  
• process cheese slices
  
• jack daniel's (temporary shortage due to denver airport brain fart which will be remedied as soon as i cross some border somewhere, and yes, yes, i know i can purchase jack daniel's right here in canada, but it's like this: because i have so much eminently quaffable booze in the house right now, i cannot for the life of me make a firm case for going out and buying it full price, ok? ok.)

things you will find in my house that you would not expect:

• a pink dress (that i actually wear)
• two pairs of white socks (let's be honest: socks formerly known as white socks)
• respectable quantities of white wine

*watch me exercise an unprecedented amount of benevolence, magnanimity and forbearance in using the term "books" at all, when what i really think is "craptastic drivel in book format"

edit. note: i actually do have a half-used half-forgotten little bottle of ketchup in my fridge - boy, am i surprised! it must have been left behind by a folk fest BBQ guest last year. my most profound apologies for misleading you.

satan in love

several nights ago night brain came up with an interesting bit of entertainment - a very frightening low-budget little dream in which satan fell in love with me and came around the house. a lot. 

the acting could maybe have been a wee more refined, the suspense was laid on a little thick, and the climactic scene where i smashed his hands with the door as he tried to get in left a lot to be desired. still, it scared the crap out of me, especially the part where satan actually became visible and looked a lot like jon lovitz. thanks, central casting! what, nathan fillion wasn't available? need i remind you of the fact that evil needs to look good in order to suck us into its vortex of...evil? evil that looks like jon lovitz simply sucks.

plaid polyester pants

same dentist (see previous post) mentioned today how horrible the 50's are and to enjoy your 30's and 40's. now this really pisses me off for the following reasons:

the first decade of life is pretty much a write-off on account of extreme ignorance and ingratitude. i mean, come on! someone is meeting your every need, feeding you pre-cut veggie chunks and animal crackers, wiping your ass for chrissakes, and all you do is cry. next comes school - waah, waah, grade two homework sucks. yeah kid, try the real world, where you're expected to actually pay for those dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

the second decade is wasted on worrying about the size of your breasts/kneecaps/balls/zits/video game scores and/or the presence or absence of secondary sexual characteristics/parties interested in exploring the wonderful world of "i'll show you mine if you show me yours"/parties interested in dating/kissing/fondling. you are never at ease but are busily hating your parents/life/teachers/skin. all very painful and deep. yawn.

the third decade rocks. a little less stress, a little more self respect and self awareness. granted, you look back on the second decade and miss the lithe physique you spent so much time hating, the metabolism-in-overdrive, and the parties characterized by wild abandon and genital herpes (just kidding), but overall life is good. except on the horizon looms the realisation that you are about to enter middle age, or the fourth decade.

the fourth decade (and this is all hearsay from here on in) is like the third but with more wrinkles, slower metabolism, divergent sexual needs along gender lines, and the subsequent emergence of the cougar phenomenon. more stuff has been acquired, younger spouses have been interviewed and purchased: you still have your vigour, which, coupled with a stable income, really brings the trixies running. 

the fifth decade is where it all begins to go wrong (according to today's boss - and, to be perfectly frank, my mom would back him up on some bits). the eyes, almost overnight, go. the knees begin cashing the cheques written by your youthful (read: stupid) exploits (see second decade). the male libido checks out of the hotel entirely and prostate problems move in. the breasts head south, the back aches can no longer be ignored, and the downward slide begins.

the sixth decade is more of the same, only worse. granted, my father just ran his 40th marathon in his 61st year, but i think we can all agree that this is hardly what you can hope for, especially given some people's predilection for yummy things in large quantities washed down with vats of liquor. mental faculties begin to flail and fail and you begin to drive like a frightened old person. the face seems to have become covered in slowly melting dough so it's a good thing the eye sight keeps getting worse.

you don't want me to go to the seventh and eighth decades because it's just too depressing, although there is the bonus of no longer giving a shit if you fart in public or if your pants are pulled up to your armpits.

then you die.

so basically out of all this time allotted to us, we get to enjoy and appreciate roughly 20 years. 20 years out of 80. harrumph.

not what i signed up for, let me tell you, not it at all.

i am the walrus

which is a song i have never understood, having taken too few drugs in my (admittedly somewhat soggy) life. let's drink to that. 

new year's resolution: take more drugs.

response: ok. could i bother you for some crack, please?

today i made up for having worked one day in april, and two days in may (so far). today i put in overtime. yes, i can see how you would have trouble imagining this, but it did happen. i was more of a passive recipient than an active participant, as i watched in growing horror as the dentist for whom i was working simply would not shut up. and because i am sure my temp agency charges him an arm and a leg for the privilege of working with the world's most likeable dental professional (yeah, me, bucko! wanna make something of it?), he will be deeply sorry when the bill comes for that last half hour which found me standing, eyes glazed, lips open, drool pooling on my non-iron scrub top while he regaled the patient with tales of his knee surgery and i periodically proved my alertness with cheerful non sequiturs and bon mots. my poorly simulated attention ain't cheap.

whence came this power, and whither will it lead me?

ottawa:

ottawa was great. 

it was a lovely walkable city demonstrating what spring can be like in more civilised places, where the people are nice and there is a startlingly high percentage of very attractive men (noted on previous visit, re-noted this visit, and no, it's not the suits, i'm not the suit type). there were trees with actual leaves, grass that was ferociously green, and packs of wild tulips were roaming around, harassing the populace at large, but in a nice, tulipy sort of way.

multiple friends were met, mostly of the highschool variety. spouses were introduced, babies were cooed over, bounced and taught to high five (yaaay!!!), and, in the case of one exceedingly charming young lady, penguin-making options were (very) briefly reconsidered.

our bed and breakfast spoiled us rotten, what with the comfy bed, candlelit breakfasts of mouthwatering variety and nutritional balance, and the lovely hosts. highly recommended.

the wedding was one of the nicest we ever attended. we loved the presence of actual airplanes, the shortness of speeches, and the japanese song about sea cucumbers. my nylons did not rip until the very end and nobody threw up, so the evening can be called an unqualified success.

large quantities of poutine were consumed, with the unspoken (and deeply flawed) understanding that calories consumed during holidays do not count. 

we walked, and walked, and walked, and then we walked some more. i did not develop a single blister (how odd!) but managed to walk myself to extreme tiredness (odder still!). 

overview:

good friends, good food, not unusually excessive amounts of alcohol, rekindling old friendships, enjoying the company of charming babies, and spring, lots and lots of spring.

and then we came home where on this mid-may morning the temperature was in the single digits. alberta, you have smote me once too often, and i am through with you.

celebrity fucker list

 i just confessed to mister monkey my lustful yearnings for a patient (because he looked like this guy) and his reaction was pure mister monkey: joyful laughter. he's the coolest husband EVER. 

so then i had to introduce him to the marriage loophole list of 5 celebrities (thanks, dooce) that every member of every marriage should have. 

mister monkey called out (with much alacrity, i might add)"franka potente!" then began the long drawn out process of coming up with more names. 

"vanessa paradis" quoth he, "though i don't know what she looks like these days."

"better google image her," quoth i, "you wouldn't want to embarrass yourself."

he then scoffed at my suggestion of angelina jolie (who, i'm pretty sure, makes my list), "she's very pretty, i guess, just...not my type."

"that's ok," quoth i, "brad pitt doesn't do anything for me either."

than he jumped in with the whole idea that franka potente sometimes looks like a man, but that's ok. "actually," quoth he, "i think we should do away with the whole genderfication thing altogether."

people, be reminded - i married a POLISH man, and THIS is what i got! how cool is that?

then we stopped quothing at each other because we both must go to bed. yes, boys and girls, i am working again tomorrow, looking for more young boys to lick. (provided, you know this part, they look like this guy.)

good night, my sweet little lemurs. 

micromanaging the crap out of crap

1.i  went for a second walk/jog today and it felt good except for the one part which felt bad.

2. the one part which felt bad involved waiting for the cars to pass in order to j-walk across the street and then, of course, some fool decided to stop for me, even though he was the last fool in a group of fools and i didn't actually need him to stop, but still, that sort of thing is nice, if a dying art, but my initial annoyance burst forth in a curled lip and the waving of various appendages (no fingers - i don't play that way) and then i finally did cross in front of him (he was stopped after all) and i saw his goofy grin fade into hurt, and then, after i rolled my eyes and got to the other side i suddenly realised that i might have been singlehandedly responsible for turning one nice guy into an asshole and i felt rather terrible. stomp on the baby bird, stomp, stomp!

3. i went to work today, in an office that has a pool table in the waiting room, industrial concrete floors, and art by an old roommate of mine. it was ok as far as work goes. it also marked my entrance into the world of cougarship (cougarity? cougarishness? cougarosity?) i mean, i know i am not technically a cougar what with the marriage thing still going strong but there was this young thing, all of 22 years old (which, to the slower members of the congregation means he was born when i was 15! so i could conceivably have been his mother (had i been having sex (i had not) at that particular time in my life))). 

the minute this boy took off his glasses, i realised that he was a younger version of this guy and i promptly had to focus very hard on not licking him. it is hard to work on someone that close and not lick him. but i did touch him very very tenderly. a lot. 

mothers! lock up your nubile sons! i will lick them! (provided they look like this guy).

them ribosomes

speaking of endoplasmic reticulum (yes, yes we were, look down...further down...see?) - i have forgotten much (most?) of what high school had to teach me, but i think i shall forever be able to draw mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum (with or without ribosomes). such is the power of cellular squiggles presented repeatedly to a helpless visual learner. 

also, i will forever remember the disappointment of learning that monarchy returned after the french revolution. it was the first time i realised the cyclical nature of history and the fact that bloodshed or not, the poor stay poor, the clergy stay corrupt, and the new order invariably becomes exactly like the old order, but with different people in the dungeons. they started us on cynicism very very young.

but hey! i can draw you a mitochondrion! 

spamtastic!

"A real man consists of manliness,stamina endurance,and strength"

(ability to punctuate properly apparently optional) 

and here i thought a real man consisted of bone, fleshy bits, hairy bits and butt cheeks. i also thought mitochondria might have come into play somewhere, possibly even endoplasmic reticulum (with or without ribosomes). and striated muscle tissue. and follicles. and testosterone. and pointless nipples. and the inability to ask for directions.

still, i think i shall have a t-shirt made for mister monkey: "a real man consists of manliness."

spring and cheezies

a friend recently recommended a "healthy" organic cheezie type product. the only problem with this product is that, unlike actual fluorescent orange cheezies, this stuff tastes like...cheese. you know, it tastes like actual cheese. i can taste* the cheddar and it's freaking me out.

craving cheezies, cheetos or other bright orange petroleum byproducts has little to do with craving actual cheese. i know - i have several wedges of spectacular and expensive italian cheese in my fridge. them, i didn't want. i wanted bright orange petroleum byproducts. instead i got organic cheez puffs that taste like cheddar. bastards.

good things:

people sitting on benches all along whyte avenue

that late afternoon light that makes me all giddy

having yummy homemade raspberry wine with my aunt and uncle in their lovely yard

weaving my way home after, in that delicious golden light

robins singing

organic cheez puffs - i admit, i am about to finish the whole damn bag, after all, they're organic! 

*they even say it right on the bag "real cheese you can taste in every bite." i guess i can't say they didn't warn me.

cubicle death

due to the high volume of calls, we have been forced to hire more unhelpful, rude, underqualified idiots. this has been harder to accomplish than one might think - to find all those qualities in someone who shows up to work on time and has grasped the fundamentals of good personal hygiene is nothing short of miraculous.  still, we keep trying:

we offer a semi-competitive salary and a benefits package plucked straight out of a dickens novel. we can, however, guarantee that the chair you will sit on has not had anyone die on it from a strange and possibly communicable disease...recently...for the most part.

our firm boasts a warm and friendly work environment (if your definition of friendly comprises sociopathic tendencies heavily marinated in alarming quantities of cheap liquor), however sex in the broom closet is actively discouraged, except on casual fridays and, of course, christmas parties.

please submit your resume online. yes, spelling counts. swear words are discouraged, especially when pertaining to your previous places of employment. nude pictures will not help you get hired but might get you laid.

peristalsis and pampers (this one is about pooping, feel free to skip it if you tend to be delicate about that kind of stuff)

first of all - i haven't blogged this much in a single month since i started this thing, and back then i was living in a dump in niagara falls, sitting around in my sweaty underoos, typing away to muffle the awareness of my greasy surroundings. take what you will from that.

second of all - i am beginning to fear old age. i am not even 40 yet (for a good bit and a bit) and already my innards are giving me grief. i have said before that we eat a lot of vegetables and thus have no...ahem...regularity issues at our house. you could say (and i distinctly recall having done so in this very blog) that at our house, pooping is fun. unfortunately for moi, my body is failing to give me much notice of the blessed event about to take place.

it is normal, for a normal person, to (normally) feel that twinge in the intestinal area, letting him know that peristalsis is taking place and that, given a wee bit of time, there will at some point in the near but not necessarily immediate future come  a need to void. soon. but no hurry. enough time to saunter home, pick up the paper on the way, put the kettle on, pet the dog, ask the spouse about her day and slowly make one's way to the bathroom.

not me, folks. it's wham, bam, NOW ma'am!

there were moments in chicago when i thought it'd be me, by the side of the (eternally busy) interstate, ass hanging out, devil may care in the face of the Need That Dare Not Be Denied. it never did come to this, but it was close. they don't have restrooms in gas stations there, we soon found out, on account of the possibility of crack deals and armed weaponry and such. poor poor moi.

pretty soon i had all of chicago mapped by accessible public restrooms. you want to take a leak on the gold coast? let me tell you where. old town? sure! magnificent mile? i know a place or three, just ask.

mister monkey has by necessity been lassoed into a position of official BM enabler. when i give the signal (usually the same area 3-5 blocks away from our house, funny that), he starts to run. by the time i waddle home (sphincters clenched, cold sweat on my brow, body wracked by feverish  spasms) he has the storm and main doors open, furniture moved out of the way, the light on, and our independent weekly placed conveniently by the side of the toilet,* so that i can shed shoes and coats on my frenzied dash inside. good man.

and i figure if it's this bad in my thirties, what will my sixties have in store for me? first it's short notice, then it's no notice, and before you know it i will have soiled myself before even becoming aware of the need to do so. adult incontinence products - here i come!

*this is really rather useless because by the time i open it to the page of my choice i am done. none of that lingering over a novel, cutting the circulation from my legs. nope - it