Oh, Vacation-y Goodness...

I just returned from a week away with some family members, visiting the SuperBabies and generally having a good time. Not as good of a time as our neighbors at the condo had, though, because they are the ones who left a pile of vomit on our stairs one night. I almost slipped in it the following morning and felt like leaving a strongly worded letter on their doorstep, but decided against it.

The week flew by in a haze of cigarette smoke, empty beer bottles, and heat so thick you could have sailed a ship three feet off the floor of our building. No joke, it was so hot in our room that it was STEAMY, and the windows were frozen shut. I'm typically the coldest person in the free world, and at one point I was bemoaning the fact that I hadn't brought shorts while sweat soaked my entire body. (Ok, so I didn't bring shorts. I was vacationing in ONTARIO in JANUARY. Call me crazy, but before I left, I didn't really think that tropical weather attire would be necessary.)

I also managed to do something that I don't typically do: I immersed my body in a pool of water. I hate swimming and being in water in general, but this week my twin niece and nephew were there and I just couldn't pass up splashing around the pool with them. So twice I overcame my distaste of being wet and cold and actually went swimming. Well, I went doggy-paddling, which is sort of the same thing.

Overall I have to say that I feel like a new person, having been away from work for seven straight days for the first time in two years. I took a week off last June, but that was to work at The Berry Farm, so even those vacation days weren't very vacation-y. (Unless you count sixteen hour days supervising snotty twelve year olds picking fruit as a vacation. Personally, I don't think that counts.)

And now here I am, back to the grind and getting ready to face the workforce once more. Sigh.

Back at the Ranch...

After eight hours in a car on a highway full of truckers, I made it safely home to The Ranch early this evening. Mal was hungry so I made her forage for herself in the garden. Mmm, peas. Organic ones. Because organics are all that matter to beer drinking, chain smokers like me.

Zydo was happy to see me this evening. So happy, in fact, that he took his disgusting, snotty nose and swiped it all over my favorite capri pants. Mmm, horse snot.

Anxiety levels are high for me here on The Ranch tonight, as the vet comes to treat Zydo for whatever it is that ails him. So far I'm guessing that its either a grasshopper, a piece of plant material, a small rodent, a hair barret, or a piece of Tia's hoof from all the times she's tried to kick him in the teeth that is stuck up there in his nasal cavity. I'm thinking of starting a betting pool, but I suppose that offering a gambling service online would be against the law.

Whatever we find stuck up his nose, I promise to document it photographically. Hey, if its a mummified caterpillar, I may even keep it in a jar of formaldehyde. I bet that would be an excellent artifact to whip out on my next date.

Coperni-Kitty was somewhat less happy to see me. I tried to bribe her into letting me pet and cuddle her with the promise of yummy treats, but she ate and ran.

If I'd gotten the horse first? The damn cat would have never entered my mind.

Back to the Land of the Living...

I head back to CowTown today, an eight hour drive with Mal that is sure to bring much backache and irritability. I get to spend one night at home and then I have to head off again to my best friend's bachelorette weekend. We're going camping and the cam site we're going to DOESN'T EVEN HAVE HIGH SPEED INTERNET ACCESS. A travesty, I know.

Awaiting me at home is a sick pony, and if there are any young people reading this now I must say SAY NO TO DRUGS. It seems that the ever-curious Zydo has something stuck up his nose. See what happens when you go around mindlessly sniffing whatever comes your way?

They say that curiosity killed the cat, and now here I am dying of curiosity. I mean, what could he have sniffed up his nose? A stray sock from the clothesline? A piece of a toy? A tennis ball? A small rodent? I wasn't there for the initial vet check, but apparently she chuckled and said "Oh, you wouldn't believe what I've found in horses' noses!" Honey, I've been raised in a house full of boys and spent a lifetime with small children. I have no doubt that when it comes to finding mysterious things in noses, the possibilities are endless.

At any rate, Zydo now has to have a procedure whereby he is sedated and we go in and get whatever might be up there. It could just be a run-of-the mill infection, in which case he's going to need a needle in his butt every day for a week or so. If we do, however, dig something out of his nose, I'll be sure to get some photographic evidence.

Hell, for the amount this is going to cost in vet bills, I might as well frame the damn thing.

Napping...

I napped all day long today. Literally, the WHOLE DAY WAS SPENT NAPPING.

My parents called me at one point and I seem to recall something being said about new eyeglasses, but beyond that? No clue. This is the problem with trying to converse with a chronic napper: We're hard to make sense of once we've reached a pleasant state of unconsciousness.

This is not to say that I begrudge myself the occasional state of unconcsciousness; rather, I embrace it with every fibre of my being. I love that I can lay down and sleep and have dogs bounding atop my head, small children playing video games on my shoulders, and crazed mothers vacuuming around my form on the living room floor.

I just wish people would spend less time trying to interact with me while I'm trying to be unconcscious.

Amanda's Status is Currently Set to Away...

My time in the middle of nowhere has thus far been well spent. I slept in until eleven o'clock this morning, a feat that is nearly impossible with sixty pounds of six year old leaping on your bed and the combined forces of your parents knocking on your bedroom door. And while I have a great appreciation for Zelda, and really, my parent are wonderful people, I find sleeping at The Ranch AN IMPOSSIBLE THING TO DO.

I've also bought a week's worth of really trashy, poorly written novels to laze on my little cot with because -- Oh, never mind, they SET UP A COT FOR ME. If that doesn't scream we love that crazy chick from CowTown, then I really don't know what does.

Checklist...

Makeup? Check.

Dress for dressy occasions? Check.

Shoes to go with the dress? Check.

Shoes that Mal doesn't hate to go with the dress? Check.

Ticket? Check.

CrazyMeds? All three varieties, Check, Check, Check.

Beer money? Check.

Extra ciggies? Check.

Mindless novels? Check.

Tampax in case of emergency? Oh, please. No one is that prepared.

Away!

I'm not at The Ranch tonight. SuperNan and I decided to make a last-minute trip to visit Big Brother and Family, and we arrived this afternoon in perfect time for me to break into their spare-bedroom closet and take the down duvet out, curl up on the floor and have a luxurious nap. Nothing in this life is better than down duvets -- except of course clean socks -- and naps burried deep within their fluffy goodness make my days sweeter and my nights dreamier.

The Princess is growing up, really and truly, because now that she is nineteen months old she can actually say 'Auntie'. It is very priceless but the problem is she knows the word but not who it blongs to. All afternoon she was pointing at me and saying Nanny and pointing at SuperNan and saying Auntie. So she has a little bit of relative confusion going on but hey! She said my name!

She showed me the art of coloring today, and made us all a picture while she was strapped into her high chair after she ate her dinner. I was given the pleasure of feeding her and unlike the Precious Boy used to, she didn't bother to strawberry-kiss any of it into my hair in the five minutes before I leave for a job interview. Already, the Boy has competition over what, exactly, he gets left in my will because not having crusty hair is high on my list of priorities.

After hte Princess went to bed, I spent a fair amount of time outside playing fetch with the dog, the insane, oversized mass of hyperactivity who lived in my parents' house for six months and who is the reason I do not have ethical issues with spoon-feeding animals large quantities of sedatives. Wrapped in Steak. And dipped in gravy.

I have to say that nothing beats playing fetch with a well-trained dog because this dog fetches every single time, repeatedly, for as long as you have a desire to toss her retrieving dummy. Not only does she fetch, but she sits absolutely still while you take aim and throw and then? You have to TELL her to go and get the dummy. Then she brings it directly back to you, drops it at your feet, and waits for you to repeat the process. She repeats this process with such joie de vie and exhuberance that you begin to think for a second, wait. Maybe this dog isn't really, really smart. Perhaps she is really, really stupid because she just performed the same action thirty-seven times in a row and she's still acting like it is a very important job to be done. As though God is depending on her to retrieve all of the world's dummies, because if she doesn't retrieve them and drop them at my feet, MY WORD, WHO WILL? I suppose that the retreival of dummies is not something that can be taken lightly, and Big Brother's dog is well aware of her obligation to safely-- without ripping, slobbering on, or defacing-- bring back every dummy that is ever thrown her way.

Rock on, Calypso.

I'm HOME!

Yesterday was moving day and I have to say that it went off without a hitch. My parents and Big Brother showed up early in the morning to begin the long and arduous task of taking all my belongings and putting them into the back of a U-haul.

My last night in the city was spent in a hotel with Mal and her parents, tucked peacefully into those crisp sheets that all hotels seem to have. I really didn't sleep a wink at all: I had too much on my mind. I was scared to be changing my life so drastically, and thrilled to be getting what I wanted after all this time.

We packed up Mal on Saturday and loaded all of her things into the giant van her parents rented. It was a sad day as I watched all of Mal's belongings get carted into a van. Her couches were the hardest to watch go because over the months, I have developed a relationship that is far above and beyond any relationship that a sane and rational human being should have with couches.

I had to shed a tear or two when I left my roommate and my apartment: The place I sat all those months ago looking around me in horror at the madness that is my mess. I shed tears again when I hugged Mal good bye because she has become incredibly important to me over the last months. She is someone I can be sedate and lazy with, someone I've spent the last several months laughing hysterically late into the night with. If I said the words "Ass Tumble" to Mal, she would burst out into fits of laughter. If I said those words to anyone else, they would stare blankly and look confused. I suppose that's what good friendship is all about, the inside jokes and the things that only the two of you think are funny.

My mother and I spent the day wileding tools and unpacking my things into my nephew's old bedroom. At first I was concerned for him, worried that he would feel as though I came back and kicked him out of his space. When I brought him up to show him the changes, though, his only concern was that since we took his stuff out, why hadn't we thought to take his lamp out? MOVE THE DAMN LAMP, LADY!

The day was long and frustrating at several points, including that point at which my mother and I gave up all hope of transporting my bed to my new room and sat on the hall floor upstairs, glaring at the pieces of my beloved bed and wondering how badly things would turn out if we just got out the hack saw.

I suppose that there is not much to say upon being greeted by a slightly hung over 22 year old Sociology student with messy hair who is wielding large, sharp objects than "Oh, Lordy. She's home."

Yes. I am home.

Toonses

Riding on the Bus...

I went on the city bus this weekend, a pursuit that, for me, is never without much anxiety and fear that I'll doze off and awaken in a faraway land where no one speaks my language, like Quebec.

I was sitting on the bus, being my usual neurotic self with my leg-shaking and my hand-chewing and I suppose that this alone would deter people from sitting near me. You know, because us neurotics typically fly off the handle on city buses and decapitate those near us with the cords from our MP3 players.

At first I thought it was just me, that perhaps I was letting off an offensive odor, or that I had cracker crumbs in my hair. I sat there on the bus, wondering what it could be about me that would make it so that I was alone in a window seat, and people were standing in the aisles hanging onto the very, very germy hanger-on thingies they put in the aisles.

But then I looked around and I realized that I wasn't the only one sitting alone and there wasn't anything outwardly offensive about the other people sitting alone. A nice looking business lady, a girl who was obviously extending her walk of shame right on to a bus ride of shame, a Dude with a newspaper, and so forth. Regular, run of the mill people.

And these are the reasons that I'm so glad I'm going to be escaping the city within the next month, because I don't understand why people act the way they do when you stack them up by the millions within city limits. I don't understand why people can't sit down beside each other and give a simple nod to acknowledge each other's presence. We could all go one step furth and extend a smile, or a simply "Gloomy day out, huh?"

I'm not saying that I'm any better here, because clearly I didn't extend any smiles or casual remarks about the weather. I didn't mostly because when you do that in the city, people think you're insane.

And it really makes me wonder, why is it that we've become so scared of one another that we can't exchange eye contact, facial expressions, simple words now and then? Have we all become so that we feel we're risking our safety or breaking some huge social norm by looking in the direction of another person?

And you know, I don't really wonder any more why psychiatry, depression, and the like have all become so commonplace these days: All we want is someone to connect with. We've become so desperate for some sort of interaction with others, but at the same time we're all too scared to take the first step. We're surrounded by millions of people, but we're quite literally totally alone much of the time.

And so, one more reason for me to look forward to moving home: Where the guy at the store never charges me late fees on my movies because he likes me so damn much; where the pharmacist asks me how my grandmother's doing; where my old bus driver's wife will stop and ask me how my nephew is making out in the first grade or how Big Brother made out on his last tour.

Toonses

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

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."

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

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