More updates!

OH MY GUTNESS FRIENDS! SO MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED SINCE WE LAST SPOKE!

For one thing, we moved out of the palace with the wireless intarnets, and have been relegated to checking our email in a small, musty room at the missionary base. Alas.


We left the pastor's house to move into the Taylors' house, and our tour of their house was punctuated by the phrase 'That doesn't work.' 'Here's the kitchen. The oven doesn't work but the stove top does. Oh, but the kettle doesn't work. And if you're going to poop, do it in the main bathroom because the one in the bedroom can't handle it.' And yet, even though they have no carpet and the door to their bedroom doesn't shut and the 'dryer' is a clothesline in the backyard and the kitchen is full of flies, we're a million times more comfortable there. Because we can spill things, and no one minds. And there's no elaborate locking-up process (there is, in fact, no locking up process at all, since Carol couldn't find the key to the front door to leave for us), and people just come and go as they please and everyone just stops by on Friday evening to play games in the living room (which I keep referring to as 'the basement' because it's all concrete and basementy-looking).





Mostly, I'm happier here because of the books. I've been borrowing books from Gord and Carol's library since we got here, but now I LIVE IN THEIR HOUSE, so I'm really not borrowing at all. They have piles and piles of books, and not just any books, but all the books I've been wanting to read for AGES. Also, they have kittens. Remember how I hate cats, everyone at home? So much do I hate cats! Except that I don't, I love them, and I love these kittens and behold them as they embrace each other, caught in the act!




All they want is loving and petting and to drink the milk out of my cereal bowl, for which they get smacked on the nose. The other morning, I had let them out of the bathroom where they spend the night and they came into the bedroom to snuggle with us while we read and drank our coffee, and then they went off to catch some beetles, and then they snuck under the bed for a nice little pooping. And Joel and I are there, trying to figure out if we smell poop or not, because sometimes it's just the goats across the road, you know? And then, if it's poop, where is it coming from? And who should have to clean it up?

The poo-scapade was relieved nicely by a trip to the 'good' beach, by which we mean not the close beach but the one far away. Like, twenty minutes.


It has flatter beaches and smaller waves and outhouses that smell like the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth and a sign on the way out that says 'Thank you for preferring us.' You are welcome, Flat Beach. If you weren't so far away, we'd prefer you much more often.

Fun and games!!

I remember what I was going to tell you! So the other day we were helping out the fabulous lady named Elia who teaches upwards of a hundred small children in her home so that they don't grow up to be low-life nothings (because school here is expensive, and also because their mothers work and can't look after them). H'anyvays, her son is deaf, and we were all sitting around chatting over lunch and he was telling us all about his life, only he's deaf, so it was all in sign language. None of us speak sign language, so it devolved into a fairly complicated game of charades. I mean, I can finger-spell things, but then there's the whole problem of I DON'T SPEAK SPANISH!! So if I spelled things, they'd be in English, and then he'd spell things back at me in Spanish, and then we'd both shake our heads and he'd try some more obvious signs. He's a surprisingly good communicator, and so he was able to charade things like how Joel was going to go surfing and get eaten by a shark and then I would be all alone and sad because Joel was dead (I know. Kind of all of our conversation was weird like this). It was actually super fun, except that he kept giving me his American Sign Language book and gesturing for me to flip through it. I don't know if he wanted me to learn all sign language immediately, or to just sort of browse through, or if he thought I was looking for something in particular (it wasn't arranged in alphabetical order or anything, so trying to find the sign for one particular word would have been impossible), so I mostly just flipped some pages and then changed the subject. Hilariousment and awkward.

Updatery

So, we've continued to do our exercise/contortions but we've moved them up to the unholy hour of seven in the am. So I'm leaving our endeavors this morning, and THERE ARE GOATS! BEING HERDED! THROUGH THE STREETS! Have I mentioned that there are goats? There are goats living right across from Greg and Alyson, so we would hear them bleating throughout the day, and books always talk about the gentle bleating of the goats or the lowing of the cows or all the other soothings sounds of the barnyard, but NONE OF THE SOUNDS ANIMALS MAKE ARE SOOTHING! They always sound pissed.

Also, there are dogs. Everyone in Mexico has, like, eight dogs, and they aren't as mangy as Thailand dogs because these dogs all belong to someone, but that doesn't make them any less free-range and gross. The other day Joel and I were walking to a friend's house and suddenly behind us, on stealthy feet of death, is a giant St Bernard. Like, a giant one. Dogs are everywhere.

The house we're sitting for now (the lucious one) has a short-legged, long-bodied hilarious dog whom I love, even though she refuses to eat anything but canned cat food and table scraps. This is the only house I can think of where that would fly (see: yesterday's references to four-poster bed and massage chairs). It's bizarre living here, because, even though the owners had to leave all of a sudden and their fridge is full of food, there's nothing to eat. Unless I want to stir-fry myself up some tofu and stone-milled barley. And grapefruit.

We went to the Dulceria (sweet shop) the other day, which is, like, a mighty fortress of treats, and bought ourselves a massive bag of Mexican candy (for $7). We've been mostly living off of that and trying to ignore the 100 Immunity Boosters and What Would Jesus Eat cookbooks lying hither and thither. Because I doubt that they encourage downing handfuls of MuBons, which are the poor man's Ferrero Rocher.

It is time for le church now (Thursday AND Sunday nights, with prayer on Tuesdays and Fridays), so I'll have to leave off. We've been hanging out with obscenely cute Mexican children, but I forgot my camera, so no doe-eyed faces for you.

In Kubla Khan, in Xanadu

Salaam and good morning, friends! I write to you this morning from the lap of luxury. Our pastor and his wife have had to make a sudden trip to the States because their son's citizenship has come up, so they're going to swear him in as a real 'Merican. Meanwhile, Joel and I are babysitting their rather opulant house. I'm up early, partially because we got into the habit at Greg and Alyson's, and partially because it seems like such a waste to be sleeping in this house (even if it is in a decadent four-poster bed) when I could be sitting in the massage chair or working out in the gym or swimming in the pool. Or trolling the wireless internet.

We're only here for a handful of days, but for now it's fun being Lady of the Manor (and taking care of our pastor's hilariously bi-polar dog, Banana).

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go eat some of the giant bag of exotic fruits I bought yesterday for THREE DOLLARS!!

Mexico = hunting things

So, this morning I went to get my water bottle so I could brush my teeth, and THERE WAS A GIANT CRICKET!!! UNDER THE BED!!! So Joel went to get the vacuum (just now I had to spellcheck because I wasn't sure on 'vacuum' but blogger is currently en espanol, so ALL of my words were spelled wrong) so we could suck it up, but it ran further under the bed, and we had to pull the whole bed apart before we could catch it and trap it. Also, we caught three spiders.

Later today, while Greg and Alyson are out and Joel is sleeping, I hear this high-pitched skee-ing coming from the yard. Also, one of the cats is REALLY INTERESTED in the woodpile. So I go outside to see if I can rescue the wee birdie I assume is trapped in there, BUT NO! It is no birdie. It is a perversely stupid squirrel, and it's stuck behind the woodpile, and it keeps skee-skee-ing and there's nowhere I can go on the property where I can't hear it, and I want it gone.

But this was before I was angry at it, and still wanted to lend it a hand. So I start Jenga-ing pieces of wood out of the pile where I think the squirrel is, and I clear a little path to him and stand back, holding the cats, so that he can leave. But he doesn't.

So I Jenga out another hole, and start poking him from that hole in the hopes he'll run out the first hole. He stumbles and scrambles and tangles himself further into the woodpile.

This goes on for a while, me making holes for him to escape, and him not escaping, and the cats hissing and trying to get at him, and me making more holes, and Babs standing around being cute but useless.

Finally, I get fed up with him not escaping, and start threading the cats into the holes so that they can bat at him or eat him or something. Anything, really, because this squirrel is too stupid to live, and also the sound he is making is shredding my pancreas. I think about pushing the entire woodpile up against the wall and crushing him, because I am that angry, but the woodpile is fifteen feet wide and I haven't got enough arms and also, there are spiders.

Finally I make a little hole wide enough for him so I can see his ratty little face and his fat, stupid body, and I round up the cats and drag them inside, and ten minutes later the skee-skee stops.

I take back every nice thing I've ever said about squirrels.

house builds

Ok, so, house-builds. The way it works is people fill out an application talking about how poor they are and how many kids they have, and then a group comes down from California (for example) and then the poorest family on the list gets a house built!

So, near as I can tell, people on house-building teams come in three types. There's the teenage girls (and me) who are cheerful and willing, but who are only really useful for swinging hammers and paint brushes. Also, we can tar roofs. Joel refers to us as 'worker bees.' Then there's the teenage boys who know a thing or two about squaring a frame and finding the on-switch on our one power tool. And then there's the middle-aged men who know what they're doing, which either makes it easier or much MUCH harder.

So this one fellow had bought a comically over-sized hat at the globos, more as a joke than anything else, and then he lent it to me to wear on the first day of the house-build. Considering the burn I got in the hour before I borrowed the hat (avec SPF 45, no less!), I'm pretty sure the hat saved my life, and also, it is awesome, so I've been wearing it ever since. Serious, it's like I'm walking around with my own personal palm tree. I have all kinds of love for this hat, and when this man and his group and his hat leave on Friday, I'll have to go and buy my own.

Joel also bought himself a hat, but last weekend instead of next weekend, because he is prescient.

Besides a deep and abiding fondness for hats, I've also learned in the past week to swing a hammer. There's two other skinny, useless girls (bless their hearts), and we're all swearing under our breath because the nails keep bending, or getting stuck in knots, or people keep trying to teach us how to hammer properly (see: middle-aged men who know what they're doing). I have a blister on my thumb and my forearm is sore, but, as Joel kindly pointed out, I have to take many more swings at a nail than most people do.

So, at the end of the first day, we pretty much just had the walls and roof bits assembled and sitting in a pile.

By the end of the second day, we'd knocked those walls together and slapped a roof on top, and also, I did some tarring, and I really just wanted to post this picture because I AM THE BRIGHTEST THING IN THE WORLD! Look at me! I look like ice cream!

We spent the third day mostly inside, putting up some center walls to make rooms (plural) and slapping together some bunk beds and a kitchen table and some shelving.

The last day we wired up the place so that it had lights, knocked out a couple of windows, and painted the thing PINK OHMYGOODNESSITISPINK! And she chose this color.

So the she for whom we were building the house (along with her many childrens) cooked lunch for us every day, and on the first day there were bologna sandwiches *dry heave*. And then on the second day there were tamales, and then on the third day there was pasole, and then on the fourth day there were floutas and also one less chicken running around the yard.

So. I am painty and sore, and have tar on my pinkitypink shorts (and also on your painting sunglasses, boo, which I borrow-stole and still have), but I can hammer mostly without hurting myself and I can cut things with a saw. Look out, world.

It SEEMS like a great idea

So, you think you want to head to the beach after a long day of building, because you've been tarring and hammering in the sun all day and you're sweaty and covered in sunscreen and sawdust, but after poking around in the house for twenty minutes and driving for five, by the time you get to the beach you aren't all mucky-sweaty and besides, it's evening. So while you think you're going to charge into the surf and shriek with delight, all you will really do is stand in the waves up to your waist and make high-pitched humming noises.

I return!!

You see, my friendlings? This is the dilemma. When I have all kinds of internets time, I just sit here wondering whether I should blog about how I only pooped once in my first week here (but I threw up twice!!). When I'm busy doing interesting things, then I have not internets time.

Ok, firstly, I would love mucho to throw a bunch of pictures up here, but I've spent the last twenty minutes just trying to get online and get blogger up, so you'll just have to check my facebook later (if it ever loads). Many sorrows.

Now. Friends, there were dolphins. There's a beach just by here that we like to drive the truck up onto after a long day of house-building (read: today and yesterday) or on a sunny weekend (read: three days ago), and Joel and Greg boogy-board while Alyson and I sleep in the sand. So Joel and Greg are out the other day, frolicking in the waves, and all of a sudden THERE ARE DOLPHINS! There were seriously maybe fifty feet back of the boys, and they were splashing and cavorting like dolphins do. I wanted to swim out and hug one, but supposedly dophins hate that. Who knew?

Alyson's hilarious aunt and uncle were out last week, and so we joined their group on Friday night for dinner at Gaston's, a little restaurant ON THE BEACH! And there were ribs and I had ribs and the ribs, people. Ribs. Joel had something fish-like, and I had ribs. Also, Gaston's has cats in order that Gaston's will not have rats, and so we're eating and we're watching the sun set over the water and there are cats and baby kittens frolicking just outside. Smooches.

We had tacos at a little stand by the road and Joel tried covertly to get a picture of this little Mexican girl in pigtails and a purple dress. We got one, but she looks daft, so I won't post it.

Also, you know what is fun? Dance Dance Revolution. You know what is exhausting, and will also make me feel foolish? It is the eye-feet coordination that is hard. And sweaty. And hilariously exerting. And a poor post-ribs activity.

I had many stories, but they are gone. Joel and I have been building a house for the last two days, so amusing updates are on their way. But the office is shutting down, so I'm out.

Did you know that...

...cocker spaniels are prone to epilepsy? Like German Shepherds are with...that hip thing. You know what I mean.

So Greg and Alyson's aggressively friendly cocker spaniel is sitting on the back of the chair yesterday like she does, because all the cats around have her kind of thinking she's feline, and suddenly she tumbles off and is twitching on the floor. And this was, like, a good six-minute seizure, and all we could do was stroke her and gaze soulfully into her eyes and try to communicate osmotically that it was going to be ok. Because dogs don't speak English or Spanish, and they come out of seizures all confused.

Is this not bizarre? Epilepsy is a people disease, no? The things you learn.

The weather remains cloudy and Joel and I remain slightly lazy and mostly unoccupied. Joel helped put up a fence yesterday, and I made a strawberry-and-cream tart.

Of note:

The faucets don't shut off when you crank them all the way to one side or the other. You have to find somewhere happily in the middle where the water stops running. This is difficult when you have the hot and cold taps both on. You can stand there for hours fiddling with them, trying to silence the drip.

The plastic thing that attaches the chain to the flusher in the toilet broke, so now we have to lift the back lid and reach into the water (which, I know, is clean...but toilet water!!) and pull the little chain to flush.

I ate a piece of cactus fruit. There were seeds, but no spines.

A chihuahua nipped the skin at the back of my upper arm...you know the skin. Very sensitive. I guess he doesn't realize that I could toss him.

Buenos dias, kids!

Clearly, since we flew out a whole three days ago and I am only just now logging on, my intarnets here in the Mexico will be slim to nada. Blogger was talking to me in Spanish, and I tried to get on but it was all, Que? Who the hell are you? And then it logged me off for no good reason. But then it switched to English and here I am.

The weather thus far has been moderate, by which I mean cold. We're quite close to the water (the other day we drove the truck up ONTO THE BEACH and then grumbled because there were, like, ten other people on the beach...they left right away) which keeps things cool. Unfortunately, I was thinking that August + Mexico = hotness and shorts. My one zip-up's looking a little ratty.

Greg and Alyson (the couple that's letting us live in their spare room and tag along with them) have four cats and a rather earnest half-cocker-spaniel which, apart from my total loathing of cats, is kind of awesome. At any given point there's something else breathing and sleeping a foot from your face.

We've been doing a lot of sitting the past few days - we sat in the car/plane/van all day Saturday, on the beach all day Sunday, and then jaunting from errand to errand yesterday. Apparently, things will get really busy next week, but for right now we're mostly eating tacos and doing aerobics in someone's basement.

Cirque du shebang!

Well, after staying unexpectedly at our landlords' house with no changes of underwear because we can't be bothered to plan ahead, we are now staying at my parents' house with no changes of underwear and NO TOOTHBRUSHES because we hadn't thought that, since we had to be in Vancouver today anyways, it might be prudent to sleep over here after we went to CIRQUE DU SOLEIL last night!!! Squeeeeeeeee!!

Cirque was everything I wanted it to be and so much more. Women draped from chandeliers, people hanging from improbable parts of other people's bodies, people in flowing robes, people with feet like hands and fingers like biceps. My mind, people. She is blown.

Cirque is 100% worth the money, even though you may have to sell your firstborn child (or, use Joel's grad-present-money) to get in. Everything is so finely tuned and sharply honed and how do you put that much faith in someone's flexed foot? There are no nets!!!! No nets.

Speaking of no nets (in a roundabout fashion), I need to go finish packing my bags because we are flying out tomorrow! Adios, amigos. See you in Mexico...or in August.

Rent-free and loving it

Greets, ones and alls, from my in-laws' guest room. Let the living-from-suitcases commence! Except that, as we have not yet left the Lower Mainland, there is still the danger of rain and the necessity to stomp around in the attic swearing and trying to figure out where we stored our jackets.

Part of what took us so long the other day to clean our suite was the several-hour break we took to go to the zoo. For free. Where I petted a giraffe. And a donkey. And the hippo came out to play. And also the baby lemurs. And I was quite aggressively ignored by some sort of ram.

Yesterday, I fell into the no-deadline-sleep-trap. It was mid-afternoon and, for the first time in ages, I had nothing that urgently needed completing. So I napped. And then this morning, I slept until 9. Oh, my purposeless, sleep-filled life.

At least I'm not picking nits out of anyone's ass.

total parasites

Ok, so we moved all our junk out yesterday, and MAN it took ages. You've moved, you know. Last night we slept over in our suite (on the floor with our sleeping bags, like we've been doing for days now) because it's WAY cooler than my in-laws place, where we'll be living until we fly to Mexico.

Today we scoured the suite from top to bottom, and I can't tell you the pain I'm in just typing this because my fingertips are shredded raw from all the bleach. Anyhoo, we rented a carpet cleaner that the person who rented it (Joel) and no other has to bring back to the Superstore he rented it from (in Abbotsford) and nowhere else, and with one thing and another (i.e. burgers and wine) we ended up here until after Superstore was closed. Hwoops.

Our options, then, were to drive to Chilliwack, sleep there, and drive the cleaner back in the morning OR SLEEP OVER AT OUR LANDLORDS'! So we've moved out, except that we're still here. Also, as of tonight, we sleep here rent-free. And in their guestroom instead of on our floor.

My fingers feel like bee stings.

Goodbye, reliable wireless internets.

So, my father-in-law has been stopping by after work with his truck for the past week to pick up those things that are a Pain In The Ass To Move. You know the things. Beds. Couches. Kitchen tables. Also file under: Things That Are Useful For Living.

Early last week he came and took our couch, our kitchen table (which we never eat at, but which I often use as an extra surface when I'm cooking), half my books, and whatever I could haul out of the crawl space that was already in boxes.

In the middle of last week, he came and took our bed and desk. We've been camping out in the middle of our bedroom, which is suddenly much larger, ever since.

On Saturday, he came and took my bookshelves *sniffle*, all our pots and pans, and the footstool for my big red chair. Now we have nothing to cook with, nothing to sleep on, no surfaces to let useless papers built up on, and nowhere to put our feet when we're sitting in the big red chair. My life is so hard.

Fortunately, due to the inconveniences of the past week and my father-in-law's willingness to haul heavy things, our 'big move' today will be much less of a hassle.

Let the living out of suitcases commence!

Class act

It has only been eleven days since my last post, so I don't know what you're raging about, but I love that you're doing it in Spanish, September.

Joel and I are moving out soon, and while it feels like we're just jaunting off to Mexico and coming back, we're coming back SOMEWHERE ELSE! I've lived in Abbotsford for five of the last six years. All my friends are here. It's *sniffle* the end of an era.

With that in mind, I've been trying to let school take care of itself, and Joel and I have been socializing hard. This doesn't make for terribly interesting blogging, because we spend a lot of time sitting on patios and watching this hilarious video over and over. And then we come home and Joel watches hours of Lost and I remember that I have to learn five thousand Spanish irregular verbs by tomorrow. Such is life.

Yesterday, after I wrote my Spanish final, we took a break from our patio slumming and classed up with a little wine and cheese. Dave, our resident oinologist, taught us how to swirl and sniff our wine. He also taught us what happens when you leave a bottle too long that wasn't properly corked (the wine soaks into the cork, the cork crumbles when you try to open the bottle, and you have to strain the wine into a nalgene and give everyone cancer).

There was, of course, dealcoholized wine for the obviously or potentially pregnant among us.

It tasted like watered-down grape juice left in the sun.

There was also some suspicious home-brewed mead. It tasted medieval, and not a little gross.

I'd make a big deal out of what-all kinds of wines and cheeses we had, because it was all very exciting, but I'm going to just have to go with 'lots.'

Needless to say, the end of the evening gets a little hazy. I remember having several strong opinions about things, and also that Joel was my designated getter-down-stairser.

When good snacks go bad

Ok, FIRST of all, what douche-wipe gave this the go-ahead?

For what do we need chocolate-flavored Skittles? We have M&M's! Also Smarties, for if you are an idiot and have bad taste. Chocolate-flavored Skittles, that is just the gross. Think-tanks, learn this lesson: things that are chocolate-flavored but are not actual chocolate invariably taste like Tootsie-Rolls (which, again, we already have) or ass.

Case-in-point this can of nast:

Accidentally purchased due to its strong resemblance to Diet Cherry Dr Pepper, this is Diet Cherry-Chocolate Dr Pepper. Throw a Tootsie-Roll into a can of Dr Pepper, you will have this product. You will also have diabeetus. And a strong urge to vomit.

What doing?

For those of you whom I don't see on a day-to-day basis (Hi, September! Hi, Alan!) and haven't told you all about our exciting plans, welcome to: The Year We Were Nomads.

At the end of June, Joel and I will be packing up our earthly goods and moving them into his parents' attic, where we will also be living for 5 days.

In early July, we'll be flying out to Mexico for 6 weeks to work with friends of ours doing...I dunno. Mexican things. Remember how, when I was in Thailand, I would blog, like, every day? This might end up being like that. Contrary-wise, we might have no readily-accesable intarwebs there, or we might just be right well busy, so I might not blog at all. How exciting!

We get back in the middle of August, and will be moving in with my parents while we try to find a place to live in Vancouver for 4 months.

Come September, we'll have hopefully found a squalid hole to store our mattress and microwave and selves that will let us pay month-to-month. All UBC med school students need to have the same basic whatever bla bla bla so Joel has to attend the Vancouver campus for a semester. Don't ask what I'll be doing school-wise because....I'll let you know in October how that's going.

In January, we'll be moving to Victoria so Joel can attend the Victoria campus of UBC med and I can finally settle into a program at UVic and estimate when I might graduate (HOO-ah!) and we can find a decent place to live and settle in there for several years. YEARS, people. Do you know how long it's been since I spent a full year in one spot? Seven years.

Meanwhiles, I'm entering in the last week of classes (read: tearing my hair out and throwing things) and trying to pack up all our junk into Victoria/Vancouver/Mexico boxes.

So...sorry for the silence all this while. Things is busy.

I'm famous.

Googling my own name just got a lot more interesting.

The end of an era

The summer that I met Joel was the summer of the Nalgenes, and while this sounds like the opening to a bad Young Adult novel, I promise that this post will be less about Joel and more about Nalgenes.

That summer at camp (2002, and you won't believe the math I had to do to get there), Nalgenes were ubiquitous. They'd been advertised as unbreakable, and the rumor was that if you broke yours, you could mail it to them and they'd mail you a new one. For free.

(That rumor later proved true, but it ended up costing almost as much to mail your Nalgene in as it did to go buy a new one, and you had to wait the 6-8 weeks for shipping.)

Needless to say, if you tell a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds that something can't be broken, they will spend their spare time trying to break it. We would throw our Nalgenes off of cabins, run over them with cars, and kick them everywhere we went, as though they were a loose stone. If your Nalgene was new, you had to throw it into a pile of gravel and stomp on it for a bit, so that it looked like you'd had one since before they were cool.

By the end of the summer, no one had managed to break their Nalgene. Joel and I were walking to lunch one day discussing this fact, and he asked if he could have a jump on mine. When a guy who looks like Joel asks if he can jump on your Nalgene, you don't say no.

It cracked.

It didn't break, and it still held water. I just couldn't toss it into my backpack or let it lie on its side for too long, and when I drank I had to drink from right above the 'e' or water would dribble out of the cracks and down my shirt, making me look like I didn't know how to drink. I hung onto it until camp ended, and then bought this one:

This bottle has been with me through thick and thin for six years. I brought it back for one more summer of camp (that summer we made rings out of toothbrush handles and belay rope). It came with me to Thailand. It comes with me to the gym and to class, and when I forget it, I'm thirsty and angry.

However, as I'm sure you've all heard by now, Nalgenes give you cancer. And I know, the results are sketchy, and I also know that everything gives you cancer. It's just that...my genetics are giving me cancer, and my inability to stay out of the sun is giving me cancer, and Joel insists that my one-a-day cup of coffee is giving me cancer (to the point where he tells me he's going to the kitchen, and do I want him to bring me my cancer-juice - he's such an enabler) and the thing is, I'd like to get cancer later rather than sooner.

So...alas. Farewell, faithful Nalgene. You have made water attractive and portable well past your time. Greetings and salud, generic stainless steel water bottle that surprisingly doesn't taste like a tin can. I guess you'll have to do.

Inconsiderate shits

Having lived in Abbotsford (Buttsford, to the locals) for almost five years, I can now distinguish between the various types of shits people spread on their farms. Cow shits smell, oddly enough, like dairy farms. Also like petting zoos. This is the most preferable of the shits. Chicken shits are dry, and the smell of them gets into your mouth and down your throat. These are unfortunate shits. Pig shits are the worst, and will have you shoving sharp things into your nostrils just to make it stop.

There's this farm about 3 blocks from our house (quick aside: that is a broccoli farm and that refuses, after harvesting, to plow all their broccoli stems under like everyone else, so that for a month or so after harvesting season all the air in a 4-block radius smells like rotting broccoli stems) that has just spread their fields with pig shits. Again, these are the worst of the shits.

So the other morning, I'm going for a run, and the path that I take runs alongside this field. A truck full of shits pulls just ahead of me, presumably bringing fresh shits to the field. I'm running about as fast as this truck is driving, so for about a block I'm running alongside these travelling shits. I'm trying not to breathe, but the body needs air to run.

We're moving in less than a month. To the city. Where the only shits are from the dogs and the vagrants.

How many times do I have to tell you?

So I says to the guy, I says, 'If you leave the house in the next two minutes, don't lock me out. I'm just running upstairs and I haven't got my keys.'

'Hrablweg?' he says, through a mouthful of toothpaste.

'I said, I'm leaving for a minute, don't lock me out. I'm just going upstairs.'

Hwwwwwwack-pat! 'Sorry, what?'

'I'm running upstairs to bring them a book. I'll only be gone a minute. If you leave while I'm gone, don't lock me out.'

'K.'

I run upstairs. I drop off the book that my book club is passing around because we're all too scattered to buy our own copy. I run downstairs just in time to wave goodbye to Joel as he drives away.

Having locked me out.

You wish you had

Apologies, friends. I've been dying to tell you all about how we Eat(ed)! Vancouver! but I've been distracted and busy and generally a jerk. So.

Last year Joel and I went to Eat! Vancouver! with our landlords and ate many things and came home with edible loot.

This year, Joel and I went to Eat! Vancouver! with our landlords and their tiny baby and about six other friends, and ate many things and came home with edible loot. People, I cannot recommend this enough.

Serious, you're going to pay $12 anyways for a meal out, so why not have several dozen tiny meals out, and get a bit of exercise, and bring home free bags of baby potatoes? Behold!

Yes, that is a cheese-shaped pad of paper. Yes, that is a tiny bottle of tabasco sauce. Yes, that is a pedometer over on the right. Yes, those are cow-shaped corn-ear-prongy-holders. Yes, that is a razor and, as such, completely unrelated to food. I ask no questions when its free.

Behold also the cheese-tasting (one of three rounds).

The smeary cheese tasted of udder.

Behold also the man making the...thing.

Behold also the man pouring the chai.

Behold him again.

Behold also the tiny kiwi slushies.

Behold also...*snicker*...I know. I'm sorry.

Next summer we won't be around, so you'll have to go in our place.

I just want to be left alone.

So, I was all set to come on here and tell you about my whirlwind weekend in which we drove into Vancouver! Twice! We live such exciting lives.

But then today, I'm out on the town running some errands, and I'm crossing the crosswalk and this guy hollers out his window, Hey! You're hot!

I keep walking.

He honks.

I keep walking.

He honks again.

I keep walking.

He hollers out his window, Hey! Don't be a stuck-up bitch!

Which puts me in mind of the time boo and I were walking through the *shudder* mall to pick up tomatoes or catch the bus or something else practical and uninteresting, and we hear (in the way that you 'hear' rain for four hours, and all of a sudden you look up and hey! It's raining!), Hey ladies.

Obviously, this guy is trolling for mall ass, in which case we obviously aren't his target, so we keep walking, and then closer and louder and less ignorable, Hey ladies!

We turn and there's this guy...what would you say, boo, early 30's? Anyways, he's all, What's going on, ladies? Boo says to him, cool as you please, Can we help you? Goodbye, suave Dr Jekyll with his hey-ladieses. HelLO Mr Hyde.

What the hell is your PROBlem, he says. I'm just trying to be FRIENDly. What, you think you're too GOOD for me? What the HELL!

Dear menfolk - you are trying to give us something we do not want. Do not get angry because we do not want it. There are hundreds of tiny teens in tight pants who are desperately seeking your...affirmation. They are not subtle. You should be able to spot them. They will give you giggles or blushes or whatever it is you're looking for. I'm not even sure what that is.

Victory is ours (as though I did anything)

Ladies and other ladies (I am under no delusions - there are no dudes that read my blog), may I present to you my husband, the med-school applicant:






and *obligatory fanfare* his acceptance papers.




My baby's going to med school.

Two posts in one day!

It is a feast of posts! Except that this one is to bitch about summer.

It is now 30 degrees, and that is awesome. I have a basement suite, and it's cool and fabulous. It is, tragically, also in a family-friendly neighborhood, which means that my air is full of shrieking kids. And not 5-year-olds who've just discovered sprinklers and trampolines shrieking. This is 14-year-old girls who think that the murder-shriek will convince their mom to come outside and tell their little brother to leave them alone, except that by now, mom is well inured to the murder-shriek, and I want to go out and tell these girls the little story about the boy who cried 'wolf.' Because one day, if one of them falls down a well, say, they will be shrieking for help and no one will come. We will all be sitting in our living rooms and shaking our fists.

Damn kids.

Vous etes mon soleil

Today is the first day of summer, because it is 26 degrees. Yesterday it got up to 30, and the day before was a balmy 27, but I was in class for most of both of those days, so they don't count. Today is Saturday and 26 degrees and that means it is time to wear sunscreen instead of make-up and my shortest of shorts and to run around sweating unabashedly. Vive l'ete!

It also means the end of this:

- What are you doing?

- Documenting.

- Documenting h'why?

- So that when our kids ask, 'Was mommy always this cold?' I can pull out this photo and wave it in their faces.

How's this gonna look when you're 60?

Ok, yes, we've all been drunk or up too late or among the right friends, and been all, Wouldn't it be funny if I got a tattoo of a cat so that it's butthole was my belly-button? And what we mean is, Wouldn't it be funny IN THEORY if I did this hilarious-sounding theoretical thing? In theory?

And then there's the guy eavesdropping who's all, YEAH man, that would be awesome.

Weekends are fun.

Hey Jane, remember how you were always telling me how awesome House is and how I should watch it, and I was always all, No, it's not my thing, I won't like it, etc. etc. etc.? DUDE! House is awesome. It's like CSI, but with doctors. And more funny jokes and less lame jokes. Guess what I've been doing for the past two days. Differential diagnosis, people!

Also, Joel's gone for the weekend, and we're out of groceries, and the buses don't run on Sundays (long aside: one time when CBC was hosting a high school basketball tournament and there were all these high school boys running around campus and I asked one of them what they did in the long stretches of time between games, and he was all, Oh, you know, walk around, check out the Big City. And he wasn't joking) so I couldn't go pick up more groceries, so I ate Joel' pizza pops instead, and burned my damn lip. Karma is a bitch.

Also, Happy Mothers Day to all of you with children and wombs.

We have a winner

I am all about winning things online. I am what you call a contest-whore. Sadly, most contests are only open to US residents (if we ever move south of the border, oh the things I will win) but THIS ONE has a few that are open to les canadiens as well.

You should go there and win stuff, and thank me later.

Hola senoras y senors

My Spanish class is full of nutters.

There's this guy who totally speaks fluent Spanish, but can't spell a word of it.

There's this cute little Asian girl who wears one silver hoop earring, like a pirate.

There's this brother-sister combo who come dressed in slacks and a tie, skirt and a sweater. School is serious business.

There's this guy who comes in twenty minutes late, using a cane to walk and with a bandaged right hand. His face is covered in wounds maybe a day old, and he is sweating profusely. WTF?

What happened to other people, normal people, people who put their pants on two legs at a time?

In other, unrelated news, my birthday present from Joel finally came in the mail. It includes, among other things, this hilariously pessemistic mug.

The prodigal returns, and with no good excuses

Where have I been.

Sorry again for the radio silence. Somehow when I'm on vacation and I have all this free time, I can't convince myself to do anything productive, or even anything useless-but-interesting (i.e. post here). Fortunately for you, dear stalkers (by which I mean boo and September), I start school again tomorrow which means I'll be back on some sort of regular schedule, AND means I'll be doing things, and doing things = blogging about them.

After two weeks of rolling around on the floor singing 'Jingle Bells,' my free time was brought to a swift, brutal halt with a very busy weekend. Friday morning I did registration for the Heart and Stroke Big Bike, which (if you don't know) is a giant, 30(ish)-person bike. People ride it. The proceeds go to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, I presume. I really just did a lot of writing numbers down.

Friday evening, we visited my parents to check out my mom's new hot-car, and then I teased up my bangs and put on my best green eyeshadow, and Joel and I went out on the town. To a friend's house. Where we watched an episode of Jem and an episode of He-Man interspersed with commercials for Glow-Worms and the Brooke Sheilds doll, and then watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off on a BETA player. Not even VHS, people. Beta. There was a great deal of crimped hair, and more neon than I'm really comfortable with. I wore spandex in public.

Saturday we had a massive-assed garage sale.

People came and carted away our junk, and gave us money for the privalege of doing so. This guy tried to talk me down to $15 from $20 for a boxful of 40 books, but my books are my children and 50 cents/book is a steal. I made him cough up the 20, but I sense that he's going to turn around and re-sell all those books for $5, in which case he's making a killing and I don't feel bad at all.

Saturday night we went upstairs to eat Chinese food and speak English with our landlord while fifty of her Chinese in-laws ate and drank and gambled and spoke Chinese. It was both exhausting and delicious.

Sunday we visited my in-laws to celebrate all the birthdays that fall in April and May, as well as anniversaries and Mother's Days, and I murdered at bocce ball. And I know that bocce ball is probably one of the least athletic pasttimes that still involves moving, but all these people do is sports, so I'm pretty damned proud of myself.

Today I cleaned the house head-to-toe and did all the laundry so I don't have to think about it once school starts, and then I made enchiladas for supper (which is something I hated as a child because I had terrible taste in food, but seriously people, enchiladas are effing amazing).

Consider yourselves updated.

In which I link you to my own blog.

Best berfday present ever.

The beast emerges from its lair

So, all I do during finals is bitch about how busy I am, and how I can't write you a proper post because I'm studying and writing papers and whatall, and then as soon as finals are done I promptly drop offline for a week. What gives?

What gives is that I've been lying around in my robe reading fantasy novels and drinking wine straight from the bottle, and I didn't think you cared.

I did get out of the house yesterday, though, to celebrate the 26th anniversary of my birth. This shall henceforth be known as the Birthday In Which People Bought Me Flowers and I Consumed Too Many Calories. Serious, I don't think I've ever gotten flowers for my birthday, and then this year, blam!

That is THREE sets of flowers. Also, Joel made me breakfast and my landlord and favorite baby took me out for lunch and my parents made me wings and potatoes and caesar salad and pie for dinner. I am a lard.

Speaking of lards, now that finals are over (for me), I've started cooking again, so that we can eat more like this:

and less like this

Ok, maybe kind of both.

Also speaking of lards, rather round-a-boutedly speaking, Facebook has been running this ad for some diet or other, along with this picture:

Does this woman's abdomen not look vaguely androidal to you? Sort of yellowish and plastic? Come on, now. If I'm going to be shamed about my body, I want it to be by another REAL (albeit photoshopped) body. At least grant me that.

Ok, that's it. Maintain radio silence until I do something else interesting.

How do you get here?

The hilarious Karen over at Verbatim has been filling her readers in on what sort of Google keywords have led people to her site, so I thought I'd scootch her idea and give you a little taste of how people are finding their way unwittingly to these very cyberpages.

Google search terms that have led here:
- cursing symbols (it's called 'the finger')
- difficult to undo pee (I suppose it is)
- balance my karma (that is not one of the services I perform here at The Buoyancy)
- city of abbotsford bylaw chickens (I am an expert on these)
- handless maiden and incest (durrrrrrrrrrr, what?)
- what's in my lunchbox (citruses?)

So now you know! If you ever forget how to get here, you can just Google in 'handless maiden incest,' and I will be on the bottom of the second page. I checked.

Because I clearly have something else I should be doing.

Wicked. Blogger lets me write in secret code now. That was in Telugu, my last post, although I'm not sure it'll have stuck after I turned off the 'transliteration' button. They should make it like 'italics,' so that I can make certain words in...Hindu, or something. To emphasize them.

తోటల్లి హిలరిఔస్ నాన్-ఇంగ్లీష్ experiment

అవేసోమే. ఐ స్పెఅక్ ...ఐ ఫోర్గేట్. బట్ సోమేతింగ్ ఇండియన్. బ్లాగర్ లెట్స్ మే టైపు ఇన్ నాట్-ఇంగ్లీష్ నౌ. ఐ వండర్ ఈఫ్ ఇట్'ల్ల్ స్టిక్ తో థిస్ అఫ్టర్ ఐ చంగే ఇట్ బ్యాక్ తో ఇంగ్లీష్. గుఎస్స్ వే'ల్ల్ ఫింద్ ఔట్.

The Swami speaks

Joel and I went 'grocery shopping' because we were out of milk, and pretty much the only thing we eat these days that isn't giving us cancer is cereal. Since it was the day before my first of three finals, I also bought four varieties of exotic cracker. As I am now a cracker swami, I will fill you in on my learns.

Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits

Peppery and good. Ok, maybe you aren't like me, and don't like your tastebuds seared off with flavah flavah flavah, but I like all of my crackers to taste like the salt that's left on the bottom. So these = deliciousness. Also, they have that Triscuit-y way of tasting vaguely good for you, like they're made out of hay, or something.

Walmart-brand tiny Ritz-like cracker/cheese-like-substance sandwiches
These are just as disgustingly good as I wanted them to be. They taste like those little cheese-and-cracker snack paks you can get at Superstore, 5 for 78 cents, or whatever. Except without that little red stick that always breaks, and without all that bothersome spreading.

Incidentally, I also bought the Walmart-brand fig newtons, because I wanted something semi-sweetish to be putting in my mouth...Nyet. Do not do this thing. They are cakey and disgusting. They will lure you in with their low cost and high bulk, but spring for the extra 7 cents and get the chewy deliciousness you want. You do not want these.

Crispers - Nacho flavor

Firstly, when things say 'nacho' flavor what they mean is 'artifical cheese' flavor, which I'm totally fine with because I'm not sure how well all the jalapeno-and-ground-beef-and-cooked-tomotoes would transfer to cracker, but at least be honest. Secondly, you are not a cracker, Crisper, no matter how hard you try. Who do you think you are fooling with your 'Baked, not fried' business? We know what you're not saying. Yeah, 'baked in a vat of oil' is right. Still, you are very high on the deliciousness scale, and you come in a re-sealable bag. We are friends.

Walmart-brand Jalepeno-Cheese Ritz-like crackers

These had the potential to be the biggest let-down, if only because I looked at them and thought, Jalepeno-cheese crackers, that HAS to be good. I will slit my wrists if these are not good. So, you see, quite a bit was riding on them being good. The first one, though, tasted just like a regular old Ritz. So, damn. But turns out they are whatayacall, cumulative-flavor. Four or five crackers later, and my lips were zinging nicely. Looks like I will live another day.

I was not built for daytime sleep

I took a little nappy mcnapnap after my final this morning, and have spent the last half hour playing scramble and trying to drag myself back into the land of the living.

One down, two to go (finals, I mean).

How much do I suck at stuff?

Ok, have I seriously not told you about my freakishly low blood pressure? So, one day in bio lab we were measuring our blood pressure for...something. And healthy is 115/80, and mine is 96/64. Which essentially means that my blood isn't moving. Also that I should eat more salt (p.s., I made both those things up. Probably I should drink more water).

So today, I went to give blood, because it's IN YOU TO GIVE, people. And every time, I think, 'Should I tell them that I have the lowest blood pressure in the world, and also that I'm a fainter?' But then what if they don't let me give blood? Also, you think someone would have written on my chart by now 'Lowest blood pressure in the world. Also, fainter.' But apparently no one has.

So they do the whole prickety-prick thing with the finger to test for anemia, and I have loads of iron, and this time I make it all the way over to the little cubicle where you fill out all those awkward questions about who you've had sex with in the last 3 months/6 months/30 years, and then I have to look around and catch a nurse's eye and wave her over because whoops! There goes the world.

So they laid me down and gave me juice, and the worse thing about coming out of a faint is that they wont let you sleep, and you're confused and pissed because they keep telling you to keep your eyes open, but your eyelids are so heavy.

So, damn. I still have all my blood. But hey, it's sunny out today!

Babies are everywhere.

Ok, I just held my first ever less-than-a-day-old baby (except for my sister, but I was 2, so it hardly counts) and she is everything tiny and perfect and her fingernails are sesame seeds.

And now this woman is blogging through her labor! I mean, ok, you're on your 12th child and it's probably not that big a deal anymore. But YES IT IS!!

The world is a crazy place.

Silver lining?

Our landlords went off yesterday to have themselves a bitty baby girl. Squeeee! While they are busy increasing the population, Joel and I are looking after their bitty dog.

Now, me, I like me a big dog. I like them all huggable and thick, kind of like this:

See? 'Durrrrrrrrrrrr.'

On the other hand, bitty dogs are great in that A., they make Joel look comically oversized,

and B., when they shit on the carpet (twice, even though the second time you were gone for less than twenty minutes) they have tiny, marble-like shits that you can practically flick across the room at each other. Not that we did. For reals, that's gross.

I fixed it.

Turns out the whole not-eating thing was directly related to the whole not-moving thing. Proof? I walked up to the school today to hand a paper in, and then I went to the gym and half-assedly pedaled a bike for a while. By the time I got home I was so hungry I could hardly stand. I ate supper, and then, like, 2 hours later I was playing scramble on Facebook (I know), and suddenly realized that my stomach was eating itself AGAIN, and I almost passed out on the way to the microwave.

I AM TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD! I should know how to feed myself.

In other news, in one week I will be done all my finals, and in two weeks I will be twenty-six. And probably still not able to gauge how hungry I am and how much food I should eat to keep myself from dying, but that's beside the point. The POINT is that as soon as finals are done, I'm going to polish off that bottle of wine that I'm currently abstaining from in order to retain my few brain cells, and I'm going to read the stacks of fantasy novels my aunt bought me. I know. But I want to spend my last week in my mid-twenties (26 is late-mid-twenties) half-drunk and immersed in wraiths. Or something.

In complete other news, have you ever seen the music video for the Dave Matthews song 'Everday'? Clickety-click, friends. This video makes me happier than just about anything I've seen in a while.

What? What do you want? You want to read the paper I wrote today? You want to read my awful philosophy final project? Trust, you don't. Be glad that I'm rambling about nothing and making you watch awesome videos, and not forcing you to read that pile. You OWE me for this one.

My stomach is broke

Something is wrong with my body. I used to be able to eat a bag of chips without batting an eyelash. Remember that, former roommates? Remember when I would make cookies, and then I would eat half the dough before it was cooked, and then I would eat half the cookies that came out, because they are only hot-and-fresh once, and so each batch would end up being only, like, six cookies?

And maybe it's because the only exercise I get these days is my furtive typing, and all the hilariously intense games of Dynomite I play when I just can't take it anymore, and so my body has decided to fight its own battle by refusing to take in any more calories (read: digest any food) because I eat half a box of Ritz Crisps, or whatever, and I'm nauseous. Serious, I feel like I could last for DAYS on a single bowl of cereal, which would be awesome if A. I lived in a third-world country, or B. I was too busy to eat, or C. my house wasn't full of study-friendly snacks in anticipation of impending finals, or D. I hated eating.

None of these things is true.

All I want to do is snack myself into oblivion, and then make nachos, but I can hardly manage half a bagel. WebMD was no help - there was no 'is never hungry and is in fact often over-full' on the symptom checker.

Maybe I should get up of my damn chair and go for a brisk walk.

Because nothing else of import is going on in my world

Our landlords are now five days overdue. Shari has a FIVE DAY OLD CHILD living inside of her. Acks!

In other baby-related news, Jared fell asleep in my lap today. My ovaries sighed in unison.

Everything is relative

Joel went to bed at 7 because he wasn't feeling well, and it's now 11, which is 4 hours later, but he usually goes to bed at midnight, so 4 hours later would be 4 in the morning, which is why I feel exhausted and deranged, like I've been up all night drinking wine from the bottle.

We should conduct an experiment

- Do you think busty girls are always getting food down in their shirts?

- I think that question has scientific merit.

- Because I'm not bosomy at all, and I'm always getting food down in my shirt.

-...I think that has less to do with breast size, and more to do with eating habits.

Because sometimes the muse gets drunk

I would just like to take this moment to discuss the inarguable nuttiness that is Dave Matthews' 'The Warehouse.' You just know that they'd come up with a hatful of awesome song fragments, but couldn't figure out how to extend any of them into full-length songs, so they just sort of stitched them together into this long, rambly, beautiful mess. From its coma-inducingly-long intro to its Dr Seuss lyrics to its...wait, is that a cowbell? Of course it is. Because if there's one thing this world needs, it's more cowbell.

Bless you and your zany brain, Dave Matthews. Bless you.

Because I love.

I know. I neglect you. But I have nothing to say!

Erm...today I was talking to Joel on the phone, and if the other person hangs up and I keep talking (it happens), the phone just echos what I said back to me. So Joel and I are all, 'Ok, see you in a bit,' and then he hangs up and I say 'Bye' and the phone echos back 'Bye' and I think, 'Man, Joel sounds just like me!'

Arrum...I was looking after Jared again, and he was fussy so I was pulling things out of my purse for him to handle and wave around and bang against each other, and when Dan came through the door Jared was sitting the middle of a pile of pursephenalia - my hand lotion, my glittery lip gloss, my chunky blue bracelet, my compact mirror (not the one with the make-up in it). He's going to grow up a bit of a fem-bot.

Our landlords are going to pop a baby any minute now.

I kick ass at Scramble. Also, I totally suck at it and certain people (named Anna) are killing me.

Easter candy is half-off, except at Zellers where it's only 30% off. Effing Zellers.

I got my first box-o-books from Curled Up With A Good Book, who is going to pay me in books to read those books and review them. It's win-win. There's one called Freefall with a rather, shall we say, ripped gentleman in nothing but jeans and dog tags on the cover, and the whole cover is done up in reddish orange. Joel holds it up, saying 'This'll be a winner.' I'm sure it will.

I've been over-zealous with the inter-library loans, and I feel compelled to read things when the library has them brought in specially because I asked, and final papers are coming up due this week and next and final exams are the week after, so I don't know where I'm going to squeeze in all that reading.

I ate too much pizza.

H'okay, time to settle in. Papers to write and all that. If you want to challenge me to a game of Scramble, I promise I'll be online.

Breakfast cereal of my heart!

Dear Cereal Flakes,

Why do you hate me when I show you nothing but love? You are my favorite cereal shape! Even more than hearts and stars and alpha-bits, or whatever.

I even went back to eating you after that disastrous summer when Shadow had that awful skin condition where her skin was flaking off in sheets, and someone (it may have been Matt) commented on how much her skin-flakes looked like Frosted Flakes. I moved on from that!

How come, then, when all I want to do is drown you in milk to better enjoy your crunchy flakiness, you insist on throwing that milk back at me? It gets all over the counter, and on the bottom of the bowl! It gets on my bathrobe, which I just washed and which is kind of getting ratty from all the washings. Why can't you just accept the milk? It's a part of your heritage!

In conclusion, please accept the milk with dignity and grace, or I will have to begin eating various O's.

Your BFF,

Raych

Panic!

Does anyone ever sit there, frantically typing and re-typing your password, all 'No! No! The email address and password I have entered do match!'

Effing caps lock key.

Bebes

Ok, I know, right? I had five days off school. I had SO much time to sit on here and blather about what I was doing. But I haven't been doing anything. I mean, I've been reading (check out ye olde book blog for proof), and I've been writing papers, but literally two whole days went by when I didn't stir my ass from my big red chair, except to go to the kitchen and to go to sleep.

P.S. - How awful is it trying to go to sleep when you've only burned, like 60 calories all damn day? And then you get into bed and try to turn off your brain, but your body is lying there all 'How is this different from what I've been FOR THE LAST 12 HOURS?'

H'anyvays, yesterday I did stuff. I went to look after my friends' kid, Jared, who totally thinks I'm the best non-relative adult-person he's ever had (which means that he likes everyone he's related to, everyone baby, and everyone non-person, i.e. our landlords' dog, Keisha, better than me. But I'm next). And I'm thinking that this'll cure my baby-craving, but Jared is awesome. He's sitting there laughing his little baby ass off because I'm making noises, and then he reaches up and pats my cheek softly the way that just-about-toddlers do, because they've just realized that you're a separate person from them. And then we chatter over his butternut squash, and it doesn't matter that I speak only English while he speaks only Martian, because we think we're so funny, and I'm thinking to myself, I've got to get me one of these.

And then I come home, and I'm reading We Need to Talk About Kevin (editorial aside: just about the worst book ever) and this woman has this child and it's this little monster, and it squalls and mewls and pukes and shrieks, and refuses to be comforted, and then when her husband comes home the baby's all snuggly and lets itself be soothed, but over his shoulder it's looking at her all, 'That's right, bitch. Who's he going to believe? Crabby, milk-leaking, unshowered you? Or helpless, soft, bitty me.' And it's horrifying. It's actually the reason I might keep reading this awful, pretentious book, because I'm so terrified and outraged by the way this infant is intentionally coming between this woman and her husband. It's chilling. And I feel like I've read a book like this before, where the innocent little child would be all hell-spawny except when other people were around, and everyone thought this lady was crazy. Anyone? Help me out?

So, I guess I don't need to be smooching fat little almost-toddler babies to get my fix. I just need to re-read this last chapter, over and over. Because shit, what if that happens to me?

Eeks.

Catching up on my correspondence

Dear Spring,
I know, technically, you don't get here until Friday, but I just wanted to say thanks so much for sticking your head in a bit early, just to say 'hello.' I plan on wearing a skirt to school today, and flip flops, unless that awful bitch Winter comes back.

Dear UCFV Weight Room Maintenance Guy
Please stop waiting until another cardio machine breaks before you fix the one that is currently broken. As I'm sure you're aware, spring is in the offing, and short pants are returning, and bikini season is only a blink away. By which I mean, everyone with back-fat is in the gym, all the time, and we need two functioning treadmills.

Dear Earthworm,
I know that spring is nearly here, and that you are, in many ways, a symbol of spring (largely in that the returning robin red-breasts eat you) but please get out of my living room. You do not belong here. You do not pay rent.

Dear Spider in the Bathroom,
Ditto Earthworm, but with more screaming.

Dear Papers,
Please write yourselves. I need to go sit in the sun for a while.

Things to pass your day

Try the Great Lyrics Quiz. I sucked at it.

Come-uppance

If I've talked to you on the phone or seen you in person in the last week, I've already told you this story, but I'm throwing it out here because it needs to be told. And heard. And choked on a little bit.

So, a friend of mine's brother's friend's parents were on vacation in...Whistler, I think. Irrelevant. They were gone for a few weeks, so they hired a girl to look after their house and their really, really old dog.

The dog dies.

The girl phones the couple up, and she's feeling terrible, but the couple's all, It's alright, we figured that might happen, she was old, and all that. But we don't really want her hanging around and rotting, so would you mind taking her to the vet and having her...disposed of? I'm not really sure what vets do with dead dogs. Maybe they stuff them and take them home for their kids. Who knows.

H'anyvays, the girl feels so bad that she agrees, no problem, except that there is a problem. She doesn't have a car. And you can't exactly take a dead dog on public transit.

So she packs the dog into a suitcase, brilliant fix, and heads off to ye olde vet. She's sitting on the bus with the suitcase next to her, but it's creeping her out, so at the next stop she stands up to put the suitcase in the overhead compartment.

But there's a dead dog in it, so it's heavy and awkward. This guy sees that she's having trouble, so he gets up and offers to help. He also notices that the suitcase is heavy and awkward, and says something along the lines of, This is pretty heavy and awkward. What's in it?

She doesn't know what to say, so she says, Um...a set of computer speakers.

So the guy grabs the suitcase and runs off the bus.

!!!!!!!!!

Hilariousment.

The ass-less cleaning elf

Giving the house a full, deep-down clean is so cathartic, and you find so many great pairs of earrings that you'd forgotten you had, that I wonder why I don't do it more often, and then I remember that, oh yes, it's work. And I'm lazy.

But every once in a while, a girl gets a jonesin' to clean things. I dusted today, people. I got on my HANDS AND KNEES and scrubbed the kitchen floor! Ok, for reals though, our kitchen floor is about four feet by four feet. So we're talking thirty seconds work, here. But on my HANDS AND KNEES! I vacuumed! The last time Joel vacuumed, a piece fell out of the vacuum and we didn't know where to put it back. Today I found out that, fortunately, that was the piece that had kept the head from pivoting up and down, which in turn was what had kept me from vacuuming more often because how irritating is that. Unfortunately, that was also the piece that kept the top plastic bit ON the head, so it kept popping off and then the brush would jump out and I would scream a little.

In related news, I think I'm losing my ass. I used to do lunges around my section at Red Robin on slow nights, and Sabrina would tell me that I was really just melting off what little ass I had, but I'm sure it worked because all my pants stayed up in those days. I have this great pair of dark jeans that I love, but whenever I sat down they would creep their way south and my little bum crack would peek out. So I bought a belt. The other day, I was rushing to the bathroom and, realizing that I didn't have time to undo my belt AND pants, just slipped the whole deal down over my no-hips. I didn't used to be able to do this. There was a point when I had sufficient ass to hold up my pants. Today, as I bustled around cleaning, my LuLu Lemon pants (which are TOtally supposed to be a brassiere for your behind) were hanging on for dear life.

I asked Joel when he got home if he thought my ass was disappearing. He pulled his head out of the fridge long enough to reply, 'You didn't know?' and then to ask if we had chips. This is the kind of man I married, the kind who wouldn't tell me if a vital part of my body had vanished. I could lose an eye next, and he wouldn't speak up.

Mind you, this is the same man who called me his little elf the other day, and then when I stared at him blankly, said it was because of my ears, and when I stared at him some more, said it was because if he put little points on my ears, I'd look like an elf.

???

Of course.

I made a baby

...out of cake.

Riddle me this

I have a..uh...whaddayacallit...a conundrum for you guys.

I'm heading to the bathroom at school the other day, and I always always always take the handicapped stall if it's free, because I like to set my backpack down as far away as possible from where I'm about to pee, and where others have peed before me, and where they might have spritzered a little on the floor. I figure that if one of the three people at UCFV who are actually in wheelchairs comes in while I'm peeing, that they can jolly well wait. It'll be character-building.

So I drop my bag on the floor and hang my purse on the little hook and lift the lid, and LO! There is a giant log floating languidly in the bowl. With no accompanying toilet paper.

?????

This is not just a poop-it-and-forget-it. This is not the case of someone taking a giant dump and then not all of it making it down the chute and some of it backwashing into the bowl, because those always return a shadow of their former selves and THIS, my friends, was no shadow. Joel says that maybe it was a clean break, but I say nay. No one assumes a clean break. You always check, and you check with toilet paper, which you then toss in with your...uh...leavings.

HOW does this happen? I am beyond puzzled.