Saturday, March 31, 2007

I'm actually kind of scared...

And so, as swiftly as he was introduced to the Internet, he's gone.

The Boy I spoke of last week is no longer a Boy in my life. Which is good, really, because quite frankly with everything else going on right now, I don't really have the time, patience, or energy.

The thing about dating that gets to me is how much I absolutely detest it. Joomy chides me by times, and says that I don't really mean that I hate it. And perhaps that's true. Everyone likes for the phone to ring, and for it to be someone looking to talk. Everyone likes cuddling up in front of a movie with someone to lean on. Everyone likes having someone strong enough to carry you home from the bar when you've had one too many.

But in reality, the rest of it makes my heart stop and my stomach turn. I'm not sure what this says about me as a person: Does it mean I'm a commitment phobe? Does it mean that I'm the ice queen? Does it mean that I just haven't met someone I want to be in a relationship with?

The thought of getting in-depth with someone, of having to explain my insanity and my Other Life, and having to explain -- or better yet, get someone to understand -- why I came all the way to the Big City to get a degree when all I really want to do is grow things: well, all of it is kind of overwhelming. And slightly nauseating. And completely hives-inducing.

I'm a young and single blogger, and like so many other bloggers, I have this vision that some prince charming will come in and sweep me off my feet, and then suddenly I'll be an engaged blogger and then a married blogger and then a mommy blogger.

And really, that sounds nice. It sounds quaint and attainable.

But at the same time, the very thought makes me want to take my single-ness in my arms and run screaming from the room, grasping it up close to me, holding it like a lifeline to something that I don't understand.

I'm not sure if it's possible that I've been burned one too many times. I'm not sure if it's the fear of having everything I've ever wanted thrown back in my face one more time. That seems to be the way it happens for me.

On a deeper level, though, I think it has to do with wanting to be me. I want to take on this world as me, and no one else but me. I want to prove to myself that I am the most important person in my existence. I want to take this life and make it my own without having to hope that someone else's plans mesh with that. I also don't want to compromise my goals, trading off one thing for a few hours of being cuddled up on a couch.

The thing that scares me is, does this mean I want to be single for the rest of my life? Does this mean that rather than having the traditional marriage and family that I really want to live with my parents until I can find a small home to live in, and adopt needy children from foster care, and then retire with a bunch of cats who don't like me?

I don't know what these feelings mean for the rest of my life. And that scares me.

For now, however, I'm still one hundred percent satisfied being me, and only me, and that just makes me happy.

Toonses

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Friday, March 30, 2007

Wild eyed and hair akimbo....

I've had a rather exhausting week, looking back, and I was also running short on hours of sleep obtained. It was my own fault, really, as I waited until ten o'clock the night before a paper was due to actually start the paper. My bad. Then I spent a night at Mal's, helping her write two papers she had due. I've also been dealing with some family issues, and I've had some minor, yet incredibly irritating, health thingies of my own going on.

So, last night after I got home from work, I was exhausted. I slept from five until eleven, at which point I woke up and ate some chicken. Oh, chicken, how I love thee.

Then I decided to take a prescription sedative and head on back to dreamland.

I need to stop and note here that I haven't had contact with sedatives since the doctor in the city tried to kill me last fall, and I guess I had forgotten just how powerful these bad boys are. You wouldn't think that they would knock you on your ass, being that they are small and they look inoccuous enough. They are a cheery shade of orange, and almost remind you of a setting sun.

Well, that was all one big joke from the pharmaceutical company because MY GOD those things really do set your sun. For a full twenty four hours.

I was unconscious (in a nice way, at least) from eleven thirty until ten a.m. this morning, and then when I woke up, I could hardly walk to the bathroom.

And while now I feel rejuvinated, and at around five this afternoon my sedative-hangover had worn off enough for me to walk at the pace of a normal human being again, I have to say HOLY MOTHER OF GOD I MUST HAVE BEEN ZONKED LAST FALL.

At any rate, I did manage to catch up on some much needed rest and while I'm happy for that, I don't think that needing physical support to stand up in the morning is really a good thing. So, it is with a shout of glee and a skip in my step that I say "Fare thee well, Sedatives!" I'll miss the little beggars, because they were awful helpful in my darkest hours. But now that I'm in a bright and sunny place, I tend to think of them as over rated and slightly dangerous.

Toonses

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Telling Cancer to Fuck Right Off...

I’ve been hesitant to post this most recent development in my life for a variety of reasons. In fact, Dear Internet, I’ve been hiding a secret from you for months now.

Part of blogging that is difficult for me is the privacy issues. It’s hard to know what family idiosyncrasies you really want to post for all the world to see (And in my case, for all my family to see, because I think they make up most of my readership). I mean, I have no problem telling the world that my mother obsesses over her kitchen table like some kind of crazy person; or that my father has a vein in his head that nears explosion every time I tell him that I think I might just take up organic veganism as a way of life.

I’ve told some other more personal things here about my own life as they don’t pertain to anyone else.

This thing that I’ve been hiding affects my life; but in a much greater way, it affects the most important woman in my life.

This past January, my mother, referred to here as SuperNan, was diagnosed with breast cancer. From what I understand, this particular cancer is the best one to get of many subtypes. Breast cancer in and of itself is a very, very large umbrella and underneath that umbrella lays a whole host of information that I can hardly begin to understand.

Being newly diagnosed with cancer is a scary, scary thing. The sheer volume of information takes over your brain the same way opening my closet door takes over everything in sight: you will weep, you will stare in horror, you will lose small children, and your cat might just end up with a broken leg.

The thing about this avalanche is that eventually, Google can help you decipher it and turn it into manageable heaps that you can put in neat little categories: Toss This, Forget That, Pretend I Never Saw That, Bookmark This Handy Little Tidbit, and For God’s Sake Get Rid of That Picture Before My Eyes Fall Right Out Of My Head.

I’m graduating very soon and as a result, my job search will be put off because this year I’ll be accompanying my mother to radiation treatments in the City for five weeks. As far as timing goes, she couldn’t have picked better to have cancer: I’ll be done AND I’ll have a free place to live. Unfortunately for my mother, she not only faces cancer treatment in the next months, she also faces me and my hoards of hair barrettes, pens, and conditioning hair treatments moving back under her roof.

Oh, and she gets saddled with a foul-tempered cat who yowls. All the time.

As far as spirits go, ours couldn’t be better. Our family has a sense of humor that, to some, may border on perverse. However, having experienced the things we’ve already experienced in this life, we know that you get nowhere without laughing first

SuperNan is facing her upcoming treatments with an iron will and a near-constant demand for French Vanilla coffee from Tim Horton’s. She’s already had a lumpectomy earlier in February, and made it through with flying colors and a well-healed scar.

I think a part of me is glad that I kept this information quiet on the Internet until now. I’m calm about it, I have my wits about me (as much as the few wits I have can actually be about), and I’ve seen my mother looking this disease in the face and giving it her most serious “Fuck You.”

For now, Internet, I want to assure you that all members of my family are doing well. SuperNan has recovered from her first surgery and is ready to take on the next step in the process.

And because that’s the type of team we are, we’ll be doing it together.

If you'd like to do something for our family right now, here is what I would appreciate the most: Please go to your mom, your aunt, your older sister, an older cousin, and any female family member in your life. Tell her to run out, this minute, and book a mammogram as soon as possible. Then, tell all your friends, male and female to do the same.

We caught my mother's cancer (And by we, I really mean the wonderous Dr. Chuck and his team of experts. God bless having a wonderful doctor.) at it's earliest possible stage. We are very, very fortunate to have done so, and as a result, my mother's prognosis for the future is good.

Which is ever so relieving to me, because how would I ever buy shoes again without my trusty sidekick SuperNan?

Toonses

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Laughing...

My dearest Joomy wrote a post last night about being Joomy. One thing that she mentioned was her laugh, and how it is rather... distinctive.

I laugh in such a manner that I've made small infants cry, dogs run from the room, my cat hide under the bed, and entire herds of cattle stop and stare in horror. (And I'm not even making that up! The cows totally used to stop and stare when I would laugh. I bet PETA's all up in arms about it right now!)

My father has a bit of a hearing impairment. We're not sure if this is due to having spent so much time shooting without hearing protection or from a concussion he got when he was younger. At any rate, his hearing is not exactly the best hearing, and so years ago he was fitted for hearing aids.

Big Brother the oldest is a pretty funny guy. He can make me laugh like no other with his impersonations of me. I'm pretty fun to impersonate, what with all my insanities and the lunacy my life has become.

If you're wondering where this is going, bear with me.

The first day my father had his hearing aids was like a whole new world to him. Really. You miss out on lots of sounds when you can't hear (Really? Like, you actually miss out on sounds when you can't hear???) like the dog drinking from her dish, the fridge motor whirring, and your daughter's obnoxious, ear piercing, coma-inducing, high pitched cackle.

Well, on that fateful day, Big Brother got on a role. I have no idea what it was that he was going on about, but the giggling commenced. My dad was drinking coffee and reading.

Then I started laughing. My sides began to hurt, and I knew it was coming, but Big Brother wouldn't stop making fun of whatever it was he was making fun of.

You see where this is going?

So, Big Brother maxes out his hilarity, I grasp my sides, and let out my final guffaw. It's a cross between a shriek, a snort, and the sound that an Olympic figure skater emits upon breaking her ankle after messing up a particularly tricky jump. It sounds like I'm in pain, and by the time I'm making this.... sound I might actually be in pain from laughing so hard.

Well, I made this sound and my father jumped up, dropped his book, and started emitting expletives along with the words "WHAT IN HELL WAS THAT?" Upon seeing his reaction to my heinous hyena-like fit, he induced another fit in which I repeated the same noise. At this point, my father was cupping his ears and taking the Lord's name in vain left, right and centre.

The dog was barking, looking curiously around the room and avoiding coming into my proximity for fear that my laughter would render her incapable of running straight lines come next deer season. There was a cat peering cautiously into the kitchen door, and my mother was roused from the couch. Between my laughing and my Dad's cussing, I suppose it was kind of hard to sleep that day.

It was at this point I was rendered incapable of breathing, and so silience reigned in the kitchen once more as I tried desperately to regain myself. My father was staring at me in horror and Big Brother piped in "Yeah, Dad. That's what you've been missing out on for the last twenty years."

My Dad continued to stare at his daughter, concerned that she still hadn't drawn breath and looked like she was having a mild seizure with her contorted muscles and face turning all red and scary. "Good God," he said. "That's enough of that shit."

And from then on, my Dad only wore his hearing aids at important social functions or when he has the television so loud that Dixie's ears breeze loftily in the wind that the sound creates as she walks by the living room. He doesn't notice this, of course, but when my mother finally gets his attention away from whatever war story he's watching on History, and he realizes that if we lived any closer to other people that he'd be breaking fifteen different noise by-laws, he'll generally get out the hearing aids.

But only if I'm not in the house.

And so, I think it's safe to say that I have the worst laugh around. I am capable, after all, of making the hearing impaired give up their hearing aids.

If I accomplish nothing else in this life, I can die a proud and happy woman.

Toonses

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I knew my hoarding tendencies would come in handy...

What's that? You need a week's worth of hair barrettes?

Pffft. Ask the girl who, upon moving last spring, found five packages of forty barrettes hidden about her tiny one room apartment in Hell.

You need to borrow some razor blades and shave gel?

Sweetheart, I could shave the entire state of Texas.

You want some comfy clothes to wear?

Fortunately, I've been stealing from your closet since 1998, and I have an entire wardrobe of comfy clothes that already belong to you!

Deodorant? You smell??

No, no, Honey. I smell. Which is specifically why I occasionally go to the grocery store and buy a new kind of deodorant just to see if there is one out there that works. I can provide you with a whole variety of different deodorants! Gel? Unscented? Solid?

You need some shampoo?

Fortunately, I buy at Price Club! I have gallons of it to spare! Why, I could shampoo the entire population of every homeless shelter that's on my street, and still have some to spare!

Hurray for hoarders!

Toonses

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How to have a sucessful Weekend Away...

First, you have to greet the day in your Ottawa Senators Jammies by blowing big, hearty kisses at your Auntie, who insists upon spending the whole weekend following you around with her camera. And really, Princess, I am sorry that I barged in on you and Mommy and Daddy whileyou were having quiet family time in bed, but I totally think that the shots I got of you cuddling up between them are too priceless to have missed out on.



Then, you haul out a bottle of Denmark's finest Akvavit and get ready to eat some scary Danish
Delicacies in the company of all your favorite people. At any rate, once the bottle is opened, a grand time is sure to be had by all who partake. It's Danish Potato Liquor, after all, and who wouldn't have a grand time ingesting that?





Then, you pose beside your mother with a look on your face that says "What? Me? Drinking all the Akvavit? Nevah!" This is possibly the first photo my mother and I have seen where we resemble each other. As SuperNan likes to say "Well, I thought you always looked like his side of the family." (With an accusatory finger pointed at SuperDad, of course).



Before The Princess is torn out of your arms by her mother, who is now desperately fleeing the crazy Auntie --WHO WILL NOT STOP TAKING PICTURES MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER --you capture one last precious photo of her giving you a perfunctory handshake. Can you imagine that one day, she might inherit my family's gene for having abnormally oversized manhands? But for right now, she just has pudgy little digits that you could eat right up without even dipping in sauce first?

And then, you have to be gazed at mournfully by a beagle who will do anything -- except learn a
cool trick like how to roll over -- to just keep her place on the couch she's been banned from. And when this beagle-y little face looks up at you from the cushions, how could you bear to tear her away? I mean, really, look at those eyes. My little Muppy, who I love!




Of course, once you've run out of other subjects to photograph, anywhere a six year old boy exists, you'll find a subject. Typically, subjects that come in the form of six year old boys are more than willing to make a funny face for the camera, but only if you let them giggle incessantly while they observe their wit and charm on the screen immediately thereafter.
And then, once you're done menacing everyone you can think of with your camera, you return to the city after a successful day of bra shopping to sit down for eight consecutive hours to write an essay.
And that, Dear Internet, is how you have a successful weekend away.
Toonses

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Sometimes it just hits me...

Like, I'll be sitting here writing an essay about some mundane topic, and then, all of a sudden, BANG.

It just comes over me like a tidal wave and I'm thinking, Day-um...

I'm almost done?

How can this be? How can the last three years of stress, worry, money problems, an inability to function without the prospect of beer in the near future... the distance from home and knowing that I'm missing out on so much... the fact that Big Brother has spent three out of my four years in post-secondary overseas... the knowledge that when I left home, the Precious Boy was a baby in diapers and now he's six and can floss his own teeth... that my parents are letting me make some renovations to the barn and move in some living things of my own, that I'm going to learn how to carve chickens and collect eggs and some day, grow fruit?

How in Hell did I become this person, with goals and ideas and opinions and a readiness to take on the world? When did I lose my shell of the insecure girl who would cry over her fat legs in a bathing suit, and become this woman who says "To Hell with anyone who dislikes thighs that jiggle!"

What gets me the most has to be that I'm not pining for my past. I'm not asking myself where the time went, or thinking that I wasted the last years. Without these years, I wouldn't know that my heart belongs in the country or that my passion lies in creating things, be it fruit or livestock or chickens or fencing....

Wow. It's just hit me that I'M DONE and I'm soon going to be free.

My mother suggested I celebrate by trying to attend a class or two before my final exams.

I just may do that.

Toonses

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And then there was a case of beer, some akvavit....

And a very successful Danish New Year's.

This year Big Brother was in Afghanistan at new year's, so we postponed our annual celebration until now so that we could all be together. It was, as usual, a wild success although we did get yelled at for finishing off a case of my Dad's beer in a single evening. Apparently when your kids are little, they suck the life out of you through being energetic whiny brats. Then when they get older, they suck the funds out of you by stealing all your beer and cigarettes.

It's hard to be a parent these days.

I said good bye to the Precious Boy this morning, before I went to take my perfuntory hangover nap. I told him that I wouldn't see him for one full month, but you know what happens in one month?

Auntie comes back to The Ranch!

He seemed to think that this was a good idea, but asked if perhaps I could go and live in my brother's house with him and my brother. I gave him a flat refusal at that. If I stay here with my parents, there are far more cool things to mooch than at my brother's. Like my Dad's beer.

We've made some plans for the summer so far: A garden, to the chagrin of my father, who detests my manner of gardening and the fact that I lazily toss some seeds around and come back in two months. He is one of these wacky people who thinks that a garden needs tending. I'm the type to sputter, Why, What is this 'tending' you speak of?

And then my Dad's face turns all red and that vein in his forehead starts to stick out and pulsate, and he has to go and tend to the garden before the vein explodes all over my mother's clean kitchen.

I also got a hold of the poultry catalogue. So, of course, I had to start daydreaming about the barn and all the stuff I'm going to put in it.

But then reality sinks in and I realize that I have so many plans for this summer: Berry Season; going to a faraway city to visit a certain individual who has blue eyes and does things like splurge for the pizza WITH CHICKEN ON IT; going to Mal's family's house; going back and forth to the Big City to visit friends; possibly even find a job.

And the sad fact is that thus far, my life is simply too disorganized to bring livestock into.

Hopefully I can have the barn worked up this summer, fixed and built (I get to custom build my own barn! How cool is that?) and next spring possibly bring some animals into it.

Sometimes I think about it and it seems so far away to wait one more year, but looking back, I suppose I've waited this long. What's a few more months?

After I've placated myself with that, though, I tend to think that a few more months might just kill me. Decisions, Decisions.

Toonses

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Friday, March 23, 2007

A Few Hours Away...

This weekend I'm going to The Ranch where the fam intends to gather about and drink copious amounts of Akvavit. Included in this drinking is the plan to munch on some appetizing delights such as pickled herring, red cabbage, smoked eel, head cheese, liver pate and inordinate amounts of carbohydrates in the form of rye bread.

This custom is otherwise known as Danish New Year's. In a sane person's life, New Year's is celebrated ... well, ON New Year's. However, because this year has been so hectic, we didn't get around to celebrating. Big Brother was in Afghanistan and we didn't feel quite right having one of his favorite parties without him.

Before I get to celebrating the New Year and all, though, I'm going to be spending the day at my other Big Brother's house writing essays. Ooooh, I can tell you these are some damn thrilling essays, too. I'm sure that I will absolutely NOT sit on the couch, gaze lovingly into the screen of my laptop, and stumble fast into unconsciousness.

Pause for a moment while I contemplate the removal of that NOT up there.

So, as most polite houseguests do, I decided to inform my brother that I'm coming to his house to infringe upon his property, ingest anything appetizing that may be in his refrigerator, and fog up the house with an impermeable haze of second hand smoke while I toil.

His response?

"Sweet! Hey, while you're here, can you steal some Pledge from Mom, and dust the wood stuff that's in the living room?"

Nothing screams homecoming like family members asking you to polish articles of furniture that don't belong to you.

Of course, me being the wonderful person that I am, I will lovingly abolish every last fleck of dust from the house, polish the wood structures with all my might, and then I will gaze lovingly into the screen of my laptop....

If I had any mints handy, I'd make up the beds and leave some on the pillows.

Toonses

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

My WORD, it's gotten livable in this country...

The temperature.

Oh, God, the temperature.

I went to work today wearing only one shirt and one pair of pants as opposed to my usual three shirts and two pairs of pants and I WAS ABLE TO FUNCTION LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

Someone tell God that the weather system he's got going on today is really rocking my socks.

Toonses

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The epitome of class....

Spring is in the air, which mean it's high time the LumberJack Jacket resurfaced.

It's also that essay time of year. Read: I need beverages, gumballs, cigarettes, and comfy clothes.

So picture, if you will, my lovely self, hair without product and tied up, proudly displaying the LumberJack Jacket, beneath which is donned my favorite duff beer hoodie, listening to Toby Kieth and toting with me a twelve pack of buck-a-beer.

This is gonna be one fine essay, I can tell you this much.

Toonses

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Dating, yet never going on a date....

As some of you are now aware, there is A Boy in my life. He is a very nice boy, with blue eyes and a penchant for figuring out computer problems. I went to visit him a few weeks ago and he even splurged on the pizza WITH CHICKEN ON IT. If that doesn't scream devotion to my iron levels, I don't know what does.

As some of you may also be aware, I am in the midst of dealing with one of the worst years of my life. (Let's re-cap: My grandfather died of a terrible disease, my brother was sent off to war for a third time, I had a nervous breakdown, a doctor tried to kill me, I had to be sedated for a month, and the person I love most in the world is dealing with an incredibly tricky medical condition that impacts my life directly. Oh, and my landlord wants to sue me.) I no more want to date someone than I want to have my uterus extracted with salad tongs.

To complicate matters, he doesn't really want to date someone either. Oh, and he lives four hours away.

The thing about this Boy is that we have some pretty soul-sharing things in common, things that I don't feel comfortable sharing with the Internet. He is probably the first person I've come across who I can describe my insanity to and not have to try and explain because he just knows. It's not like we both share a love for bad television and movies about gay sheep-herders, because we don't. But there is a connection there that I don't quite understand myself.

When I was visiting him last, The Boy and I were discussing what we are and how we should define this thing that we have. We both hate dating and we both hate relationships. But we do care for each other, as was exhibited when I asked him where I should sleep at his house and without missing a beat, he said that I could have his king-size bed to myself while he would sleep on the fold-out couch. He also rubs my back before I doze into slumber and kisses my forehead when I say something he thinks is funny. These are the things in life that mean the most to me, unless of course you wanted to bring beer into the picture. In that case, beer wins hands down, exery time.

The problem, and one of this things' greatest advantages, is the distance. I'd love nothing more than to have my forehead kissed more frequently than once a month; at the same time, the fact that he is so far away completely removes a large amount of the pressure involved in dating someone.

We aren't officially dating. We have agreed, at this point, to not kiss anyone else, exclusively. It's the commitment-phobe way of saying "I want to date you but if you fuck my shit up by being an ass, I don't want to have to deal with a breakup."

As it stands now, both of us are in the throes of final papers, exam prep, projects and presentations and as a result, our time online together or even on the phone together is minimal at best. We've both become accustomed to leaving each other offline messages with lame little kissy icons in them at all hours of the day and night. And while circumstance could be better, I can't exactly say that I dislike this system we have of short emails, three minute phone calls, and away messages. It's a new way of doing things for me, entirely, but new isn't necessarily bad. In this case, it's interesting and while I'm not pressured to spend every waking second of my time becoming a person in a relationship, it is nice to know that at three thirty in the morning while I doze away, someone is thinking of me enough to send me a message that says good night.

Toonses

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Making my mother's heart burst with pride....

I cleaned my bedroom today. I decided that it was a necessary task, based on the fact that I could no longer get from any point in it to any other point in it without risk of injury. I'm sure any number of readers are right now thinking 'Tee hee, how she exaggerates.' But no. I jest not. My room is that bad.


Generally I like to post gross people out with the pictures of the before and after of my room-cleaning adventures. But I just couldn't make myself capture the nast on film. That's how bad it was. I did, however, manage to capture this little gem, and if you can tell me what it is, I will gladly bestow upon you my firstborn child. Because I haven't the foggiest clue as to what this might be.




I found this little tidbit under my bed. It appears to have some sparkly things that resemble a Christmas ornament spouting from it. The red part is sponge-like, as though I put a pink sponge and a Christmas under my bed and the two began decomposing and consecutively morphing into this unidentifiable object.


Here we have Coperni-Kitty's belongings all packed up for the big move. She has taken up residence at The Ranch once more until I get home. I love my little kitty, and her life of late has become something that borders on abusive. I feel so much guilt about having gotten this cat when in reality, my life is no more equipped to deal with feline needs than it is to fly to the moon. As a result, my mother has opted to take care of her until I get home, when my life will be more settled and suitable for cat care. I miss her and when I see all her things packed up I sort of want to cry, except that only the most pathetic people cry over their cats' packed belongings.



And finally, here we have the ultimate 'Make your mother proud photo'. My beer bottles lined up in the window. While on my mission to cleanliness, I also happened to find two (two!) fresh beers and if you look closely, you can see them between the panes of the window. Who needs a beer fridge in the bedroom when you live in Canada and it's minus twenty?


Not I!


Toonses

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I can't stop eating crackers....

When I was seventeen, I had mono. Not only did I lose the entirety of my C-cup boobs, but I began a habit that wouldn't be easily stopped: I was eating Cheez Whiz by the jar, on everything I could think to put Cheez Whiz on, in quantities so vast that I'm surprised my skin hasn't tured the color orange.

I'm not sure if it's part of being a crazy person, but for lengths of time I go without eating anything outside the range of certain food products. At seventeen I simply could not stop eating Cheez Whiz on Texas Toast. Alternately, I ate it on vegetables, croissants, regular bread if I was forced, and occasionally straight from the jar.

In my first year of college, and after that, my first year of university, I could not stop eating Kraft Easy Mac. I ate it every day for those two years, never able to escape its Cheesy Goodness. If you leave a bowl that you've cooked Easy Mac in by the sink over night, it turns a radioactive shade of orange and screams "This is a picture of your intestines. Stop eating me now."

Last fall it was mints, and over the winter it was crossants and salami.

More recently, it has become crackers. I have developed a love and affinity for crackers that words can not begin to describe. Their salty blandness, their crunch, their ability to absorb the beer that is wafting nimbly about my stomach: crackers simply make my heart smile and my stomach happy.

There would generally be a point to a blog entry like this one. Like, the life lesson I've learned from ingesting large quantities of a single food product for months on end is?

There isn't one.

I just felt the need to share with the world my currently undying love for crackers. Salted top ones, no name or Premium Plus brand. Either or, crackers are really rocking my socks right now.

All hail the mighty crackers.

Toonses

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Sunday, March 18, 2007

In which I apologize for being sucky...

Dear Copernicus,

This weekend has been kind of tough on you. Not only did I rip you from your home in the Big City and stick you in the back of a minivan for an hour with a squalling baby, but when we were done in the van with the squalling baby? I stuck you in a house inhabited by three other cats and six children.

Once we got there, you were reunited with Phinnaeus, who I still love more than you, and who had absolutely no interest in hanging out with you. His brother Spike, on the other hand, couldn't have been more interested if I had rolled you around in steak juice and given you a hat made of chicken breast. I think, my little kitty, that someone has a crush on you. And if you even think about running away with the product of a teenage cat union, who's mother had a name like Chaos and whose original owner was NOT a member of the Catholic Church, you are grounded.

(I'm practicing in case I ever have children. And if you ever want to have a romantic rendezvous in this lifetime, the cat with whom you have this rendezvous MUST have a mother with an original owner who is a member of the Catholic Church. My mother had a rule where we weren't allowed to chew gum, and I'm taking that out on you. Suck it up.)

Not only were you hit on by an overgrown kitten, but there was no food. At first you didn't notice, as you were avoiding the wily advances of Spike. As the night wore on, you seemed to be exploring the house, searching out something. It never occurred to me that you might be searching out food because I just assumed that, well, there would be food about.

But no. It seems that the owners of the house we were staying at didn't think to stock up on cat food before we came over. And because the other cats in the house all have their claws intact and aren't ridiculous city-living cats who depend on neurotic owners to cater to their every whim? They manage to maintain a level of obesity that is absolutely incomprehensible on a diet of field mice and innocent birds. You can't even begin to attain a healthy body weight with an abundance of kitten chow mixed with finicky cat cat food at your disposal. I blame you, Kitty, and no one else but you.

The following day, you seemed to have settled in a little bit more, but by late afternoon, it was time for you to be crammed into your kennel once more and toted all the way back to CowTown in the back of a Saturn Vue. You yowled your discontent and I have to say: I really wish you'd shut up about it when you're unhappy.

Coperni-Kitty, usually when I write to you there is some point about how your existence has made me grow as a person, or how because you are here, my life has been altered in a manner that borders on religious.

There is no such point to this letter. I'm just writing to say that I'm sorry you got saddled with an original owner who not only is not even Catholic, but who insists upon dragging you all over the face of the Earth to be hit on by obnoxious boy cats, to be sniffed and kissed by obnoxious Chocolate Labs, and driven around in a haze of second hand smoke.

Toonses

P.S. I tried to feed you some chicken. And all I have to say is, what the Hell kind of cat doesn't scarf down a chicken breast upon being presented with one? This letter is partly about my deficiency as a cat owner, but I have to point out your deficiency as a cat here. YOU DIDN'T EVEN TASTE IT. Good Grief.

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Saturday, March 17, 2007

I'll take two of those.....

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a night at BerryLand on Thursday. I was feeling slightly overwhelmed when I got there, perhaps because we had to spend an hour in the car with Berry Baby the Fifth who was wailing her little Berry Baby heart out for a large portion of the ride.

The mixed feelings I have towards domestic life in general tend to freak me out fairly often. There are times when I'm at the Ranch, or in BerryLand, surrounded by children and animals and noise and excitement when I think, Dear Heavens, why would anybody do this to themselves? And during those times, I picture my life as a quiet, serene existence surrounded by nothing but my guitar and my cat. No Man to argue with, no children to chase around, no boo-boos to kiss better, no bottles to prepare, no yelling to be heard or done for miles. Usually at this point I make a mental note to call the doctor and have a tubal ligation done within the next three weeks, and then I plan my savings account with which I will purchase large quantities of tequila and Canadian Lager, and envision my beer fridge as overwhelmingly large and devoid of baby bottles and left over strained peaches.

I was feeling this way when I got to bed in the early hours of Friday morning, having discussed all my life's issues with the Berry Queen and consumed the better part of a 2-4 of Miller Genuine Draught. I was especially feeling this way while I was trying to check my email and nurs a hangover and above me was a herd of six year olds thundering about, making no less noise than a herd of hippos.

As the day wore on, I spent my time in charge of children: changing the baby, wandering around with her, making her bottles, yelling at the other kids, and feeding her baby food. You'll have to excuse me for one moment now, while I gush about the joys of feeding a six month old her baby food because OH MY WORD. How cute is that? You put the food on her little spoon and she shrieks with joy and leans in and eats it all up and gets her little face covered with fruit-flavored cereal-y goodness and COULDN'T YOU JUST EAT HER UP? And then, after she's finished her cereal, you can sit down on the couch with her, curl yourself and her into a little ball of Johnson's baby shampoo smelling wonderfulness, and watch her drift off into sleep whiles she puts back all four ounces and you know what? When she outgrows this wonderful stage of smelling good and laughing when you kiss her little neck, I'm sure she will be a champion beer chugger.

And it's times like these when I'm thinking SIGN ME UP FOR THIS SHIZ-NIT because how could there be a better way to spend your life? If not surrounded by diapers with little teddy bear patterns on them, and soft flannel blankies that smell like fabric softener, and toys and the wonders of catching a baby learning how to roll over in video on your camera; if not spending your days helping children get their breakfast and buttoning buttons and tying shoes; if not tidying bedrooms and making beds and tripping over doll clothes and choosing an outfit for the day where the shirt matches the socks because DEAR GOD THE SHIRT HAS TO MATCH THE SOCKS... Well, what else would you ever do with your life?

And while I sometimes laze about and fantasize about not doing anything but staying awake until the early hours with an unGodly amount of beer coursing through my veins, I really have to say that even though there was some vomit, some screaming, a giant booger that got shot from the nose of a six month old at me, and a few diapers.... well, the glee on the little one's faces while I played my guitar and the children all pretended to be drummers and the baby bounced in her exersaucer seems to make it all worthwhile.

Toonses

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Covert mission.....

I think the very best thing that a person can possibly do, besides pluck their eyebrows and bring me beer as a thoughtful hostess gift, is to be given a covert mission involving great expense. This type of mission is the type that one hides from one's husband and begins under the watchful eyes of many Ikea employees. And then, in order to complete this mission, said person has to go home and try their damndest to assemble the fobidden Ikea wares. And then, because one may not know entirely what one is doing at this point, the best thing to do is call one's all-time favorite, neighborhood friendly field manager and say DEAR GOD COME AND HELP ME GET THIS DAMN THING TOGETHER BEFORE MY HUSBAND GETS HOME.

And you know what?

When you're trying to complete a covert mission like this one, you can rest assured that your all-time favorite, neighborhood friendly field manager will instantly go and publish all the details of your mission ON THE INTERNET so that no one is kept in the dark.

See you at six, BQ. *Smoochies*

Toonses

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Gentle Reminders....

On Monday I had to make one of my infamous calls home to my mother, screeching incoherently into the phone while she gave comforting advice like "You need to breathe. Are you breathing? I can't hear you. I've no idea what you're saying." All the while I was doing my best to continue breathing but sometimes hysteria takes me over and beyond that, there isn't too much I can do but wait for the panic and terror to subside.

Towards the end of our conversation my trusty mom asked me "Have you been sleeping? Have you been taking your medication?"

If there are ever two questions you should never ask me they are 1) Have you been taking your medication? and 2) Are you having your period?

Both infuriate me beyond belief because A) I don't believe in the whole menstrually-related crankiness thing and 2) It's none of your damn business as to whether or not I'm fully medicated.

I think part of my defensiveness relating to being a medicated person goes back to the fact that I want to live forever in denial. I would love to one day be able to wake up and function like a normal person without relying on hundreds of milligrams of drugs.

I have to stop here and say that for the last month or so, I have felt more overwhelmingly normal than I have in a long, long time. People ask me why I didn't seek help for my illness sooner than I did: I waited until late October to seek help when really, I probably should have gone in June or July.

My brain doesn't work properly. I don't have a circadian rhythm that measures what my body is to do and when. My body doesn't know enough to go to sleep when it should, and my brain occasionally takes me over completely, releasing the wrong amounts of chemicals to the wrong places, rendering me useless and incapable of normal function.

I suppose what's been going on lately is that I'm just so damn happy to be normal again, to be able to get out of bed, pick out appropriate underwear for the day, bathe and floss my teeth, and do what needs to be done. Last fall months went by where I was incapable of doing any of those things and so rather than being at all productive, I sat on the balcony staring at Orion's belt and chain smoking until I found myself in a hospital. It was a very dark and scary time in my life and when I think of what may have happened had I not gotten help when I did, I sometimes want to cry.

So here I am. I'm not elated all the time, I'm not going through a crazy manic phase right now: I'm just so damn normal that I want to celebrate it all the time. I want to make up for lost time with friends, giggle and put on clothes and look pretty, wear nice underpants and actual blue jeans, and yet this illness is still controlling some parts of my life.

And so every now and then, you do need your mother to give you a gentle reminder that just because you feel good for now doesn't mean that you can neglect your health. This illness I have is one that could come back at any moment, wash over myself and those closest to me like a hurricane, and leave me shivering and shaking on the floor for a month like it did last fall.

I guess I know what the answers are: Exercise, good diet, appropriate social interaction, and most of all, sleep, are all pertinent to keeping my little old self up and running, functioning like a normal person.

And weeks on end of being out partying, drinking to excess on trains, not sleeping because HEY! There's cool stuff to do at five a.m.! are not good ideas.

I suppose that I have to take my inability to breathe or speak on Monday as a gentle reminder that even though I'm at my best right now? Doesn't mean that I get to forget that I'm a lunatic deep down.

And that's all fine and good: I've been dealing with the knowledge that I have this thing since I was a teen.

I just wish that sometimes, just for a brief period, I can forget about horse pills and circadian rhythms and brain waves and seratonin and endorphins and just live my life.

And generally, when I wish those things, its a good reminder in and of itself that I need to suck it up, ButterCup, because it's really not the end of the world to have an illness that forces you to take decent care of yourself to avoid having another fall like last one.

It's time to settle down, focus on term papers and the joys that come with them, and keep myself on track for the rest of my life.

Berry fields do await me in the future, you know.

Toonses

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Some people are just kinda dumb....

Everyone knows the story of Dooce. I don't think it bears repeating, but essentially, she wrote on her blog about some people and then she got fired. (And now she's rich and famous. Damn her.)

Generally, I'm pretty careful about what I post here. I imagine that because I'm so careful about posting with regards to my place of work or my friends, I should be equally careful about posting with regards to the dumbass who runs my building. Legal troubles shouldn't be laundry aired in public, after all.

I could go on and on and try to explain the problem here. But it would make you want to pick up your monitos, break it over your knee, and gouge brain matter out of your ears with the shards of glass and plastic because THAT IS HOW STUPID THE SITUATION IS. So I'm not going to explain it. You all like your monitor where it is and such, I'm sure.

I'm pretty steamed for a variety of reasons relating back to my living situation. The first has got to be that my mother was right once more, dammit, and if this happens ever again, I'm going to hang myself upside down from a willow tree and allow birds to pluck out my eyes with their beaks because I HATE IT WHEN SHE DOES THAT. She's always so damn right, and signing anything other than a mortgage or your soul to the devil is not a good idea. The next time the Devil waltzes into my living room? I'll be signing away. However, creepy men who run offices out of creepy basements demanding wads of cash instead of checks? These are never men you should go about signing things over to. DUH.

This numbnut who runs my building is now threatening legal action. I picture us getting to court, and I can see the judge (someone like Judge Judy, I hope, because even if she does yell at me? I can say that I've been yelled at by someone like Judge Judy) and explain that I signed a lease and that I paid all the rent on time and that now I'm leaving because the lease is up, and yes, I did in fact give all the notice I'm required to give by law. And then the building owner guy will turn to the judge and say that I've signed the lease and paid the lease and given my full sixty days notice and that I left after that.

And then I imagine that the judge will stare blankly into the room, pick up her gavel, beat herself senseless with it, and send us all to jail for wasting her precious time. I hope the court officer Dude who picks her up off the floor and sweeps her into her chambers for some cool water and Xanax is really, really HOT. She deserves taht much, at least.

I understand where she's coming from, though. This imaginary judge of mine (Do rental issues even go to court? I have no idea.) will have every right to be pissed off at the absurdity of the situation.

I'll just sneak in some heavy duty sedatives and enjoy my time at the slammer. If nothing else, it'll make for a good story to regail people with while camping later in the summer.

Toonses

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

I've been gone for a month, I've been drunk since I left....

I am proud to report back from the wedding we went to in Cambridge with this: I did not find myself nearly as intoxicated as the Maid of Honor, who at one point ended up doing a face plant behind the head table and then proceeding to vomit profusely upon the groomsmen, who were kind enough to carry her puking ass away from the public eye.

I have nothing but good things to say about toonie bars, which are now one of my most favorite things: I'm thinking of getting married once a month from now until liver failure hits simply so I can celebrate the wonders of toonie bars.

One of my (And everybody's, I think) favorite bar songs came on while we were at the wedding and while I was singing along I thought to myself, Wow. I have been doing random things for the last month, and I think I've been partially, or wildly, intoxicated since Spring Break. The good news is that Mal and I have officially become immune to the effects of sleep deprivation and alcohol, and so we trundle on.

We should be back home on Tuesday. I'd love to call my mother and have a chat, rather than having her read terrifying things about my behavior on the internet, but it seems that every time I call, someone is tying up the phone. Sigh.

Toonses

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

Drunken training.....

"Dude, what's that smell?"

"Huh? Pass me the Jack."

"No, Dude, there is totally a bad smell coming from this train. The Jack is gone."

"You drank all the Jack?!"

"I've no idea if I drank it all. I think you drank it all. You can't smell that smell?"

"We need pizza."

"Were in comfort class. They don't have pizza in comfort class."

"Next time we do this, we go first class or go home. I can't believe these people don't have pizza."

"The odor is driving me insane. When we stop in Toronto, let's grab a pitcher for lunch."

"Oh, God, a pitcher. Dude. That sounds so, so sweet."

"I can't believe you haven't noticed that smell yet. It's like a hideous mixture of ass, unwashed feet, stale cigarettes...."

"And day old Jack and diet no-name cola!"

"Dude...."

"That smell is totally us."

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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

A Toy For Toonses....

I got a new toy today! I bought myself an RCA 1Gig MP3 player! And I love it! I haven't had portable music since I was fourteen or fifteen, and I guess you never really know what you have until it's gone because man, how much did I miss having music on me at all times?

The shopping experience was had with a dear friend from class who happens to be a Dane as well. We are a great bunch, us Danish Chicas.

We tried five stores before we found one that was A) Incredibly cheap and B) Looks sturdy enough for me to drop in the snow and then stomp on. Because we all know that is exactly what I'm going to d oto it.

The service at The Source by Circuit City was terrible. I was wandering around the store trying to find something I liked, and finally a Dude came over to me to ask what I wanted. I told him I wanted to look at MP3 players, and he directed me to a locked cabinet and walked away.

I was fairly taken aback because A) I'm incompetent in the way of all matters technological and B) I was wearing my very best push-up bra! I mean, come on. The ladies may not be that noticeable under fifteen layers of cloth meant to stave off the -40 degree weather, but they were there! What does it take for a pair of boobs to get some attention these days? Hell, I don't even want the boobs to get the attention. I was looking for the owner of the boobs to have a little help picking out a technological device that I haven't a clue as to how I should use it.

At any rate, my friend and I raced home after our shopping excursion and managed to put an entire playlist onto the player and I now have PORTABLE music. The thing is so tiny that it fits into all my pockets.

I suspect it will be lost in approximately seventeen days, but at least it will get me through the eight hour train ride to Mal's hometown this Friday.

Hurrah for new technology!

Toonses

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Monday, March 05, 2007

I'm HOME!!

My weekend trip was so much fun I can hardly contain myself. I didn't get near enough pictures of things like the train and the things in the city; I'm disappointed in myself because at the time, I didn't want everyone around to be like, Look, that girl is taking pictures of a train. But now that I'm back, I'm thinking 1) Why would I care and 2)I'm a tourist, that's what I'm supposed to do! Sheesh.

The individual pictured above and I had a wonderful time: He showed me around the city and was incredibly patient with my unexplained and totally irrational fear of being sucked into an escalator by my shoe laces. We also went shopping and I managed to buy a new suitcase and a new winter coat. One weekend in the Big Big City, and suddenly I switch from a lumberjack-jacket wearing, duffel bag carrying farm girl to a suitcase-owning, classy wool coat wearing chika from the city.

I felt a little bit sad about my new coat because I know that it's beautiful. It was on sale from a ridiculously high price to a moderately nice price (Actually, sane and rational people probably would think that the coat was a fantastic deal; I, on the other hand, tend to weep at the thought of money being taken from my bank account over such frivolous matters as staying warm in the winter. Clearly I'm better suited to living in Texas.) The problem is that I was wearing it and I just looked like this person who knew what she was doing, who is capable of transporting herself from one point to another on a train, and after a while, I began to feel like it was a big facade. This is what I hate the most about being fashionable. Other people pick out clothes for me and nine times out of ten, they look incredibly hot and up to speed with modern style. The thing is that I am not the type of girl to be up to speed with modern style and quite frankly, I have to suck it in less when I wear the lumberjack jacket. This whole 'deciding who you are and what you want' business is tricky sometimes, but at the very least, I do have an incredibly beautiful addition to my outerwear wardrobe that will be appropriate to wear to different functions. The lumberjack jacket, however, will still be the one that I hold close to my heart.

Hopefully later tonight I'll have pictures uploaded to my other site that you can peruse through. There are only a few, but next weekend Mal and I will be going back to the same city on our way to her hometown for a wedding. So, hopefully then I'll be able to capture some neat shots that I can upload. I'll try harder next week to look like a real tourist.

Toonses

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Friday, March 02, 2007

I'm going to bed now... I swear....

I was just sitting here, not sleeping, and thinking about stupid people. They exist in many forms. And I was sitting here thinking about how my back is kind of achey (Probably the 106 year old bed); I was thinking about how my sinuses are congested, my throat is scratchy, and I'm awake. So I was sitting here thinking about my ailments and about stupid people (Especially stupid people in the form of customers. They really get my goat) and suddenly, it struck me: I am one of the stupid people.

I've been sitting in my bed suffering for hours now, with my sinuses and my back and my throat, and my wakefulness and it took me until three in the morning to realize that I have mass quantities of drugs to solve each and every one of these problems right here in my bedroom!

I have sinus pills! No name ones! My mom buys me Tylenol and Motrin in family packs. I'm not a family: I'm one person! But by God, this one person will never have to suffer the consequences of another headache or backache again in this life! And my throat is scratchy, but Hel-lo? I have cough sysrup and Halls lozenges in the bathroom which is all of ten feet away from me.

AND I have heavy duty sedatives or heavy duty sleeping pills to choose from if I want to sleep.

And this leads me to wonder: How many people can lay in their bed at three in the morning and know with one hundred per cent certainty that they have all the solutions to life's problems within ten feet of where they lay?

I sure as Hell can!

And now I'm wondering, who am I to be lazing in bed, suffering from all kinds of ailments, thinking about other stupid people in the world when it took me three hours to come up with a plan to combat these ailments?

And now, Dear Internet, I can sleep. And my family's motto will reign on through the quiet of the night. (That motto, in case you were wondering, is: Take the damn drugs! To which I reply: Take them! Hell, take two!)

Good night, Internet. My sinuses should be fine in 3... 2.... 1....

Toonses

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You know that nothing remotely productive will get done...

I'm very surprised at myself at having kept my blog posts about my big trip to a Big City this week to a minimum. I feel that enough people I know have explained to me the process of getting from my house to the bus, and from the bus to the train. I have to bring exactly three dollars to give to the nice man on the bus, and I have to get off the bus at the place that has a sign that says "Train."

I've packed my bag and made sure that I've got every possible article of clothing I could ever need in the suitcase I borrowed from Mal. I also have thirteen pairs of emergency socks and enough Clonapin to put out a horse; and if not a horse, then certainly a small mule.

I've carefully planned every aspect of the trip from leaving my house with my perfectly applied makeup and wonderfully styled hair. I will smell fresh and clean from the shower, my teeth will be brushed, and I will have applied a fine mist of The Body Shop's Vanilla Eau de Parfume. The ridiculous curl I have at my temple will be nicely woven in with the rest of my hair, and it will not stick out like a devilish horn just waiting to cast evil on the first person it encounters.

I will get on the train and be poised and perfect, not at all like some kind of country bumpkin idiot who's never done this before in her life. I will take out my laptop and sit with perfect posture, typing away as though I have a very, very important spreadsheet to work on because management is expecting this document by five o'clock tomorrow morning or someone's balls are going to be placed directly into a frying pan full of splattering oil.

The spreadsheet that I'm working on will be before me on the screen of my laptop, and everyone on the train will think: Look at that important girl, working on that important spreadsheet. I bet she even knows a code or something to make the little boxes fill with little numbers that she didn't have to type or calculate, because the little code calculates and types them for her! She must be brilliant!

In all reality, I expect that I will actually arrive at the train station, heart racing, wild eyed and hair akimbo, with boots half laced and ridiculous curl overtaking everything within it's path. In all reality, I will whip out my laptop and probably spill the coffee that belongs to the person next to me all over that person's laptop, and then I'll start mindlessly wandering the internet. I'll read up on my TMZ, my People, my Perez. I'll peruse some message boards and break into a debate about the horrors of infant circumcision just as the now coffee-less person next to me peers onto the screen. I'll probably cough and make a lot of gross sounds because the sickness has turned into a wierd cough-like thing accompanied by congestion and a mild fever, and then I'll probably pass out and drool on his shoulder for the rest of the trip.

This will all happen, more than likely, because I'm just so damned excited to be going on a train, like a grown-up girl who knows what she's doing, that there is no way in Hell that I'll be able to sleep tonight. The only solution to a sleepless night is going to be to wire myself up on Orange Juice and Diet Gigner Ale before I leave, and then, once the sugar rush leaves my veins, I'll collapse into unconsciousness and grind my teeth until my seatmate turns to me and kills me.

I feel like a small child on the night before her birthday and if nothing else, this trip will be a testament to the fact that not only have I learned how to sign my own checks -- with my own name, even --but I can also maneuvre myself from one city to another without actually breaking out in an acute case of hives.

However, there is no guarantee about the whole no hives thing until the trip is finished, and I hate to say it? But as soon as I wrote that out, my legs started itching.

Toonses

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Thursday, March 01, 2007

Uh-Oh....

I just wrote a check, went downstairs, and dropped of my very last month's rent and my sixty day's notice with my Super.

Did you know that three years ago when I moved to this city, I didn't even know how to write a check and I had to have my mom stand over my shoulder to write my first rent check? And now I'v successfully done it for three years (Minus that one time my trusty parents had to pay it and yes I remember that I owe you that money I just don't have any to spare right now [And i won't until approximately 2011]).

THREE years?!?

What all has happened in these three years? The crying, the laughing, the morons who run my school! Those non-English speaking bastards who reduced me to hysterics on about thirteen diffferent occasions!

The broken hearts, the drunken sobbing into my pillows, the cat that I got who didn't like me but now does like me, the friendships made, the others lost... Dear God.... The fleeing home, the returning back the sedatives... DO YOU PEOPLE REMEMBER THE SEDATIVES?!?! The mass quantities of alcohol and cigarettes, that one year in the middle where I went without smoking, the dating.... The guy who broke up with me, the one who drove the '91 Camry and said how he was all 'in' to foreign cars? With a '91 Camry? And that other guy, who after we broke up, I wasn't even sure if the whole time we were dating I even knew his real name! Seriously! And the guy wih the no steak that's not on sale rule, and of course Dubai Guy...

And the Berry Queen has had another baby, the Precious Boy has learned how to read and write, my brother became a Daddy, Oddysseus died and Copernicus joined me, I learned that there isn't a professor in the free WORLD who agrees with another professor on how to appropriately cite a paper AND... get this? I actually went on a date with someone who thought it would be appropriate to bring his knitting on a date with him. And no, I will never tire of telling that story. It was the highlight of my university experience.

And I just wrote the check that signifies the end of it all?

I'm not sure if I should bound through the apartment in joy and glee, or if I should cry quietly, looking mournfully over my collection of beer cans, and feel nostalgic over memories made.

I think I'll have a ciggie, pack for my train trip tomorrow, and focus on getting through this semester without failing any courses. (Read: I'm going to actually go and do some school work.)

Toonses

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Success! (Almost)

Yesterday I went shopping with the lovely Mal. I was in search of something appropriate to wear on one of my outings in the Real Big City. I don't know why I'm surprised that I returned home virtually empty-handed because I think I must be the worst shopper in the history of bad shoppers.

We happened along a fancy underwear store and when we found a fantastic sale on undies, we had to stop in. There's just something about nice underpants that young girls can't walk away from. I managed to get a major deal on a mass quantity of underwear and I have to say that no person in this world can own too many of two items: Socks and underwear. There is just no such thing as too many.

While in the store, I decided to splurge and buy myself a new set of boobs. Most women my age go bra shopping; not me. I go boob-shopping because for some reason the God of Bra Design decided that anyone requiring a bra in such a small size as mine automatically needs all the help she can get. This help generaly comes in the form of aqua-padding, foam padding, and air lift padding. I must say that my favorite is the air-lift padding, but sadly, my last two air lift bras got deflated when my mom stuck them in the dryer. Let this be a warning to all those who are fans of air-lift padding: Don't leave your good bras within the reach of well-meaning family members who insist that your life will not be complete until every last article you own is full clean.

Unfortunately, my body hates me and because of my odd shape this particular store didn't carry any in my unique size. It seems that my ribcage is abnormally large, and my chest is abnormally small, and as a result? There are very few stores in the world where I can buy bras.

Disheartened, but not ready to give up, Mal and I headed to Shopper's Drug Mart to pick up a curling iron. It seems that now that I've reached the age of twenty two and a half, people think it's time for me to learn how to style my own hair. This way, every time I need to go anywhere, I won't first have to go either to the salon or Mal's place to have my hair fixed. Once there, I was faced with choices between hundreds of curling irons and I must say that it is quite overwhelming to be faced with such choices when you haven't the foggiest clue as to what you're going to do with this new piece of equipment. Feeling frustrated, I grabbed the first one that I saw and I bought it. It has twenty five heat settings and each on is for a different type of hair. Now, pray tell, how do you know if you have thick, hard to curl hair versus thinner, takes well to curls hair? Clearly the solution is to put it on the hottest setting possible, spray the hell out of it while it's curling, and then spray the hell out of it again once you're done. Hopefully this works out. But don't be surprised if the next picture you see of me shows a half-bald me with hair singed off left, right, and centre.

After the hair products fiasco, and without any well-fitting bras, with a slew of new underwear in tow, we decided that it was time to look for an outfit. Oh. My. Lord. I hate buying clothes at the best of times, and I had assumed that because I've lost some weight recently, it would be exciting and thrilling to try on clothes and look slinky and sexy.

Unfortunately, no one even slightly larger than a size three should ever try on any of the clothes stores have on hand for clubbing, because even though my back fat has shrunk down considerably, I still look like someone sporting enough blubber to insulate a beluga when I put on certain outfits. I decided to just buy a pair of pants, for now, and Mal and I were finished our excursion, feeling slightly deflated and exhausted after a particularly bad day.

Of course, one thing that can make even the worst of days better was on our minds: Beer. So we headed to the beer store and picked ourselves up four 950mL cans of beer, and I have to say that this investment improved our moods considerably. We decided to take it one step further and we bought bacon, cheese, and bread and had bacon-cheese bakes that Mal invented long ago.

And even though I'm oddly shaped and no bras out there fit me; even though I have a twenty-five tempurature settings curling iron that I haven't a clue how to use; even though every outfit I tried on made me look like a beached whale; well, I have to say this.

Nothing beats a good night of hard drinking and face-stuffing with one of the best friends a girl could ask for. Mal, Hunny, I'm sorry you had a rotten day: If nothing else, we've got each other and we've got beer. While it may not always be the most comforting thing in the world, please know that whenever you need someone to help hang up your new shower curtain with yarn? You've got a friend in me.

Toonses