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.

My big mouth

I used to say, loudly and to anyone who would listen, that Krispy Kremes were so delicious that I could eat a dozen of them. A DOZEN! Because they're all sugar and air, right?

WRONG!

Krispy Kremes are made entirely of trans fats and coated in a layer of arsonic.

One day a few years ago, Ben and Caleb took me up on my ridiculous boast, and because Alan's up for anything, the four of us hopped in a car and drove to Surrey, where we each bought a dozen donuts.

By the fourth donut, they had stopped tasting good. After six donuts, I surveyed my stomach and realized that, while it was rebelling, I was only half done, and that I would have to repeat myself. After nine donuts you have to just shut your brain off and keep putting things in your mouth. Your mouth will know what to do.

Ben plowed through his first nine in six minutes flat, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'd caught up to him by donut twelve. Watching him eat those last three was like watching someone eat a baby.

In the end, three of us succceeded (note our Hats of Victory),

And one of us failed horribly (he wanted to wear the Hat of Shame, but it looked suspiciously like our Hats of Victory so we made him take it off).

And that was the day I got diabetes. Not the real kind. The kind where you lie on the floor and moan 'Ohhhhh, my diabetes.' I think they call that Type III.

To balance out my karma

Alright, kids. It's been a five-day break from the haterade, and I hope you're all ready for a tsunami of luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv.

Things that I love:

- the note Joel left for me the other day informing me that if he was not home when I arrived, that he was somewhere else.

- the two Canadian geese that have taken over the UCFV campus, and the knowledge that spring and an onslaught of bunnies can't be far behind.

- all this fake-spring that's been going on, lulling me into the hope that it might segue into real-spring without backlashing into crappy winter

- Advil

- my book blog (you know it and I know it, regular-blog. You haven't been my favorite for months now. Let's just get it all out in the open like adults)

- that my brother found someone to marry him

- that my sister found someone to get old-person ailments with her (Darren has shingles, and boo has had, at various times, kidney stones and the gout)

- my aunt, who knows that I secretly love fantasy novels and I can't resist anything with lords and ladies and clashes of family honor, and that if she buys me the first book in a series, I'll have no choice but to tear through the entire thing. She is my gateway drug.

- string cheese

- my ratty old bathrobe

- my tiny four-cup coffee maker which makes just enough for me and a friend, or for me and for me.

- this girl in my bio class who keeps asking me how long ago things were for me (i.e. 'How long ago was Biology 12 for you?') and then cackling, because get it? I'm old.

- my care group

- my potluck group

- my writer's group

- my Alpha group

- that there are only three more biology labs left in the semester, and then I never have to touch fruit flies or try to figure out their sex under the microscope ever again (I have to explain this part, because it's creepy and hilarious. So, for reasons I don't yet understand, we have to sort our experimental fruit flies into males and females, but we have to knock them out first, which I'd love to tell you that we do with tiny clubs, but we use ether. H'anyvays, getting them from the jar where they live to the jar with the ether involves a certain amount of pinache that none of us seem to have, and the room is always swarming with escaped specimens. You finally get maybe half your flies into the ether and then you leave them in there until they pass out, but not until they die, because you need them to breed later, so you're hesitant to leave them in too long. Once they're under, you dump them onto a sheet of paper and look at them under the microscope, which, creepy, and then you have to sort them into males and females, except that you haven't left them in the ether long enough and so while you're poking them with your sorting stick and looking at them under 400x magnification, they wake up and start crawling!!!! Ack!! Hrack!! Euck!!! I can feel them on my skin).

- the fact that they installed a Tim Hortons on campus just in time for Roll Up The Rim

Hate/Like

Ok, there are tons more things that I hate, among them:

going grocery shopping late at night so that all that's left is the reject-produce,
people who walk slowly (particularly in tight areas such as hallways or anywhere if they're fat),
parents who give their children 'interesting' names,
people with interesting names who get upset when you mispronounce them,
poor tippers,
non-tippers,
dine-and-dashers,
everyone in my Phil 100 class except for the girl who sits on my left,
trans-fats,
light purple,
old coffee,
coming out of a Subway smelling like Subway,
A Million Little Pieces,
high-pitched voices that get even higher when they're upset/excited/talking,
and the Philadelphia Flyers.

I have to catch the greyhound now (which is filed under 'Things that stress me out a little' and gets moved over to 'Things I hate' pretty often), so I don't have time to reel you out of that hate-spiral myself. Instead, go check out this list of stuff that, because I'm white, I like. If you, too, are white, then you, too, will like them. I'm not even joking.