Gosh, I don’t know where to start ……. Pinch ……. ow ……. squirt ……. great …… again???? Geez, why don’t we start there. So, I’ve been lactating. Now I do realize that I am a woman and we tend to do that, but we usually do that when we’re pregnant or nursing. Well, I’m neither. My son is almost 15 and I had a hysterectomy 11 years ago so the old milkers should be dried up pretty good by now. No clue why it’s happening. I’ll just suddenly feel this awful pinch in one or both of my nipples then the front of my shirt gets a special wet spot. Lucky me! I considered going to my doctor about it but since I think my doc is kind of hot I don’t really want to be lopping the girls out for him to poke and inspect. Hell, I might get turned on or something. My nipples getting hard would be bad enough but with the way things are going these days I may explode and end up spraying him in the eyes with a double shot of milk if he dared touch one of them. What if I temporarily blinded him? The poor guy would be fumbling around and may even stumble forward and accidentally grab onto the girls for support, I might get that much more excited and end up turning my chest in the newest Spray Park squirting intermittent shots of frothy fun all over the place. Like that wouldn’t be embarrassing.

Maybe I should start looking for either a female doctor or some nasty ass ugly male doc who can take a look at them. I’m thinking this should really be looked into. I mean, it’s pretty bad when I’m at Tim Horton’s and I order an extra large double double, drop my debit card and accidentally bump my boob on the counter on my way down to pick it up, feel the pinch then the ever so familiar cool damp feeling on my shirt. I look down and see the growing dark stain on my shirt and then end up informing the clerk that I’m changing my coffee to just a double sugar, no cream, because I have recently starting lactating again and now have lots of extra dairy on board that I don’t want to go to waste. The poor guy just stared at my wet spot, went all kinds of shades of red and mumbled something about not knowing much about these kinds of things.

At one point last week I was thinking maybe I could go to a third world country and work as a milk maid for the starving babies or something. Or they could send me to the local school so they wouldn’t need to dig that extra water well since I alone could be their first ever lunch milk program provider!! Do you think this is maybe weighing a little heavy on my mind these days? Now that I’m thinking about it again, I’ve decided it’s really not fair that my creative juices dried up by my boobs are just juicier than ever! Good gawd, so not cool.

Now if spontaneous lactation isn’t bad enough, I’ve had a little run in with the police thanks to my lovely neighbors Freaky Fred and Kirk the Jerk. They’re a couple of bumbling idiots who make living on our block bloody miserable at times. So “Dumb and Dumber” decide to stir up a little bit of shit on a Saturday morning telling my husband Merlin that I walk around the house in front of the living room windows naked. Are you kidding me?? After stewing about this bullshit story for about half an hour I see the two butt heads standing on the sidewalk yapping about who knows what, no doubt something stupid, and go outside to give them a pice of my mind. Well, who knew that telling them I hoped the roads got real icy this winter and one day hopefully my brakes would decide to not work and they would happen to be standing on the road and if I was lucky enough hopefully I would run them both over and kill them, would constitute uttering a death threat?!?!? Next thing I know a gargantuan sized cop is at my door telling me Fred wants to charge me because he feels really frightened now. REALLY?!?!?!?! He stalks us, intimidates us, yells and swears at us, makes numerous hand and icky sexual gestures at us for the past 11 years and HE’S scared?!?! I kinda lost it on that big hunky cop. By the time I was done bitching, crying, slobbering while running off at the mouth recounting all Freaky Fred’s BS from the past decade, making huge gestures with my hands, flailing my arms around wildly, stomping my feet, ranting and raving I’m pretty sure big sexy, ahem, I mean the officer was reconsidering his initial instinct of letting me off with writing an apology letter. I may have inadvertently made myself appear to be slightly off balance. Oooops! It probably didn’t look too good for me either when the hunk in a uniform said, “Now Ma’am, we both know you wouldn’t really want to kill them” and I cut him off with, “Hell yes I meant it! Given the opportunity …….” He then suggested I not repeat that, especially to any other officers.

The real kicker that day was Mr. Uniform telling me that after checking things out he discovered that the local police already have a file started on me thanks to Freaky Fred!!!! What the?!?!?!?!?! I don’t know what kind of intel they have on me and I’m not so sure I really want to find out. Oh yah, and the funniest thing officer muscles said to me that day was, “Look Mrs. Anderson …….. it’s really none of their business or even mine if you like to walk around your house naked. It’s your house and they don’t need to be looking in your windows anyways.” News flash – I DON’T WALK AROUND MY HOUSE NAKED!!!! I was a little concerned though because it was early enough that I was still in my nighty with a house coat over top. The scandalous issue was that I wasn’t wearing any panties. I was so worried I might trip and fall, ass over tea kettle, my legs would split wide open, my house coat and nighty would go up over my head and Mr. Copper would see a full moon rising! Shit, he probably would’ve ripped up my letter, slapped the cuffs on me and hauled my ass (my bare ass) to jail for indecent exposure. I made sure to walk slowly and carefully. Thank goodness I had a double layer of clothing on because after the hottie cop left, apology letter (that a bullshitted my way through) in hand, I discovered I had lactated!

Some days have just been plain f$%#ed up. I had a little um, what would you call it? A little …….. incident …….. the other day. I was heading to the mall to pick my son and his friend up from a movie and was turning left at a “T” intersection. Some spazmatic dude on a bike ignores the fact that if he’s on his bike he’s to behave like a vehicle and turn left with me or he needs to get off his bike and behave like a pedestrian who would then have the “Don’t Walk” signal to obey. He instead goes straight through, riding right in front of me and I miss him by mere inches. As he whips in front of me he reaches out and bangs my car and starts yelling at me. I slam on my brakes, he gets off his bike, throws it down and continues to scream at me and is waving his arms around like a raving lunatic. I roll my window down and politely apologize to him. NOT!! I start to bitch his ass out about how he didn’t have the right of way. He then says, “Come out HERE and say that you fat, nasty C#%@!” Oh yes, he used the “C” word. Now, number one, I know I’m fat, he doesn’t need to tell me that. Number two, how would he know whether or not I’m nasty? Don’t be throwing around insults you can’t back up with evidence jerk wad, ass face, loser-ville. But most importantly, number three, DO NOT USE THE “C” WORD AROUND ME AND ESPECIALLY AT ME!!! So I throw the car into park, jump out and make a bee-line for him. He then KICKS my car!! Oh no he did not just kick my car!!! Oh yes he did. That was it, I lost it. I storm over to him, pick his bike up and chuck it over this guard rail down a small hill, jump into some kind of ninja / kick boxer / ready for a bar fight / who do you think you are messing with me you be-otch pose, punch my fists in the air and yell, “Bring it!!” I really don’t have any idea what the hell I was thinking at this point, it wasn’t really smart and it definitely wasn’t my most shining moment as a Mom or a good citizen of this fine city, but it’s what happened. I’m thinking I may have been slightly fueled by the extended cab truck full of young guys who had rolled their windows down and were hanging out of them yelling things like, “Go Mama! Give him shit! You show him! Woot woot woot woot! Yah baby!!” I may have been a little caught up in the moment and got a little over zealous in my rapid fire fist jabs and mean mama facial expressions or something because he took one look at me squeaked out an “Eeeeek”, hopped over the guard rail and ran after his bike. When I finally regained my composure and calmly walked back to my car to continue on my way like nothing happened I looked down and noticed I had once again spontaneously lactated. Yippee for me!!!

At about five months pregnant I started craving steak big time.  I would actually feel sick to my stomach until I got me some steak in it.  I was told that I was lacking certain vitamins and nutrients and it was beef that I needed.  Anyways, it only took us two weeks to figure out which restaurants had their steak sandwich special on what day of the week and we became regulars there until the steak craving phase was gone around the middle of the eighth month.  Mmmmm …… steak ……..  Merlin was fine with the steak craving because he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy and could eat beef every day for supper. 

The craving that just about drove him to insanity was virgin strawberry daiquiris.  One night it hit me at about 10:00 pm.  I had been keeping this frozen mix stuff on hand but on this unfortunate night I didn’t have any.  (Read the next three words in a dark and sinister sounding way) Dun dun duuunnn ……  This was NOT good.  Merlin being the sweetheart and awesome husband that he is accepted the mission of trying to find me a virgin strawberry daiquiri at 10:00 pm on a Wednesday night.  He discovered that Safeway and IGA were already closed so he checked out all the 7-11 stores, Macs, a locally owned convenience store and a small grocery store that stays open late.  At this time we didn’t have a cell phone yet so Merlin was periodically calling me from pay phones checking to see if he needed to keep on the hunt or if my craving miraculously went away.  The last time he called it was almost 11:30 pm, he was out of stores to check and I was still at home craving my strawberry daiquiri.  Merlin had left the pay phone at the last 7-11 store, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand I’m sure, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.  He said he looked ahead to the other side of the parking lot and an oasis appeared, glowing in the night sky, beckoning him to enter and seek the holy grail he was on a quest for.  It was ……. a bar.  Scandalous!  Apparently the glow he saw was the flashing “Open” and “Budweiser Beer” signs.  Now, I realize I was pregnant and a bar may not seem like the answer to Merlin’s prayers, but he said that desperate times called for desperate measures.  He moseyed on up to the bar and very casually asked for a virgin strawberry daiquiri to go.  He said that the bar tender just started to laugh and walked away.  Merlin followed him to the other end of the bar and asked for it again.  The guy leaned over the bar and said, “Look buddy.  We’re a bar.  We don’t do take out on drinks.  Food, yes, but not drinks.”  After begging a little and getting nowhere Merlin grabbed the guy’s shirt and yanked him within a mere couple of inches of his face.  He looked him square in the eye and said in a slow, even, yet slightly threatening voice, “Look buddy.  My wife is almost nine months pregnant, she’s craving a virgin strawberry daiquiri and I have spent the last hour and a half driving all over this f-ing city trying to find one.  I’ve been everywhere and I’m desperate!  Have you ever dealt with the wrath of a pregnant woman who says she feels like she’s a big as a house, her boobs are so sore you can’t even look at them without her feeling the pain, her feet are so swollen she can’t walk, she can’t lay down for a much needed nap when I’m not home because she can’t stand up again without an army of people to help heave-ho her back up, she has heartburn so bad she eats a bottle of Tums every couple days, the baby kicks her until she throws up, she’s dying of heat in our house that does not have AC so it’s about 100 degrees while carrying around a little space heater in her belly and all she wants is one gawd damned fucking virgin strawberry daiquiri to cool down!  She’s been ready to push this kid out for the last month and let me tell, she’s getting mean I tell ya.  Mean!  Ten times worse than PMS mean.  Let me ask you something.  Do you really want to be known as the dumb ass who stood in between a pregnant woman and her desperate need for her drink and ended up being bludgeoned to death with a breast pump by said pregnant woman?  I’m not making threats, I’m just telling you what WILL happen!  Trust me!!”  Apparently the bar tender was shaking his head no wildly by this time, had broken out into a sweat and somehow managed to squeak out a barely audible, “N-n-n-no!  No pump beating.  P-p-p-p-please, no angry prego lady.  I understand man, I really do feel your pain.  When my wife was pregnant she just had to have lemon butter tarts and they were hard, sometimes impossible, to find in the middle of the night.  She got really nasty about.  I even have the scars to prove it.”  Merlin let his shirt go, smoothed it down for him and thanked him for understanding his delicate and desperate situation.  The bar tender said he didn’t have anything to send the drink home in so Merlin would have to figure that part out.  Merlin sprinted back across the parking lot to the 7-11, had to pay full price for a large slurpee cup even though it was empty and made a mad dash back to the bar where he found the bar tender standing with a half a dozen other men, a mixture of both staff and customers.  As he approached them the guys were putting there hands out to shake his, they were giving him pats on the back and offering words of support and understanding.  They had all dealt with their own personal hell with a pregnant wife and her cravings.  After all that running around Merlin came home to find me sprawled out on the bed and fast asleep.  It was now 12:30 am.  Being the awesome husband that he is he turned on the ceiling fan, placed my head gently on the pillow and put the strawberry daiquiri in the freezer for later or tomorrow.  Aaaawww!!!  How sweet is that?  According to Merlin it was a whole “F” of a lot sweeter than that gawd damned f-ing virgin strawberry daiquiri he hunted down for me.  FYI, being the smart husband that he is, he didn’t actually say that to me until a very loooooooong time after Brandt was born and my hormones were safely under control again.

I normally don’t crave chocolate but I do admit that sometimes it is medically necessary for me to have some chocolate in order for me to continue my day in the same temperament I started it in.  Not all that long ago I was having one of those days and felt the need for something chocolate.  We didn’t have any in the house, it was late, Merlin was asleep and earlier I had me some Spumante and thought it best if I didn’t drive myself to the store for a fix.  I was starting to get the shakes!  I’ve never needed chocolate this bad and it was scaring me.  Then it hit me, I knew where there was something chocolaty flavoured.  I made a mad dash to the bathroom and furiously began to rifle through my medicine cabinet.  Boo-yah baby!  I hit the mother load.  A bottle of Cocoa and Crème Tums.  Have you ever tried them?  The have brown chocolate flavoured ones and white crème flavoured ones.  The way I looked at this I was just being smart and thrifty.  I was tweaking and needed to have a chocolate fix and I had a little bit of heart burn going on right then and that is what Tums are meant to be used for.  Don’t judge me people!  I did what I had to do and I’m fine with it.  It was better than my second option for a chocolate fix.  I was considering mixing up a bit of hot chocolate powder mix with just enough milk that it becomes the consistency of raw cake batter.  I looooooove cake and cookie batter.  The Tums were quicker, made less mess and like I said before, it helped with my heartburn issue.  It was also better than looting my Lush bath stuff stash and picking the chocolate chip eyes off one of my “Gnome Name” bubble bars I got for Christmas.  That would have been just wrong.

Speaking of Lush and Christmas, I got the most wonderful bath goodies from Santa this past year.  I love how cute and festive the Christmas bath bombs and bubble bars are.  One of my favourites (for it’s cuteness factor) was the “Frothy the Snowman” bubble bar.  Mmmmm ….. bubble bars.  When I have a Lush bubble bar bubble bath (say that ten times fast) I get bubbles like the ones in the scene of “Pretty Woman” when Julia Roberts is in the jacuzzi tub.  I feel just like her except that we don’t have a jacuzzi tub, I don’t have long or red-ish hair (but mine is curly like hers), I don’t own a walkman anymore, I’m not built like Julia Roberts, oh, and most importantly I’m not a high priced hooker.  Other than that, it’s just like a “Pretty Woman” bath.  Anyways, cute little Frothy is round and flat, he’s an off white colour and is covered in coconut.  Yup, real coconut.  Lush uses real food and stuff in some of their products.  I think it’s kind of cool.  Just as long as they don’t ever use stuff like meat or onions or ketchup and mustard.  Eeeeewwww!  I just had a bad thought …. relish!!  Can you imagine a bath bomb with relish in it?  Think of all the places that little bits of relish can creep into and get stuck to.  Yuck!!  It would be horrid if I got some relish stuck under my ear and didn’t notice and then went out.  It would look like snot!  A big old nasty ass green gloppy booger stuck to me.  How awful that would be.  Eeew eeew eeew!  I just had an even worse thought.  What if while having a bath getting ready for date with my hubby I splashed water on my face washing it and accidentally breathed in (like I do regularly) and ended up getting a big old snout full of relish bath water.  Then later while sitting at a fancy restaurant the tanginess of the relish starts to tickle my nostrils and I let out a huge sneeze and the globs of green relish get sprayed all over the fancy white table cloth looking like snot!  Can you imagine the tip I would have to leave for that little incident?  Don’t laugh, food can find it’s way up your nose and stay there for hours!  Trust me, I know this.  Years ago when I had my day home I was in the kitchen cleaning up the lunch dishes and I got that little itch in my nose alerting me to an oncoming sneeze and grabbed a kleenex .  I sneezed so hard my head spun for a couple of seconds and I had little black dots floating in front of my eyes  To this day I will never know what possessed me to look at the kleenex and check it out, but I did.  I saw this brownish red blob and thought to myself that it was kind of big to just be a booger.  Leaving it in the kleenex I rubbed it between my fingers and was grossed out by the rubbery feeling of it.  I almost passed out when I realized ……. it was a chunk of my brain!!  No wonder I felt dizzy and saw the spots, the piece of brain that came out must have hit the back of my eyes on it’s way out of my nose!  I was freaking out and trying to dial the phone to call Merlin and tell him he better get home to be with me in what might be my final hours of life.  My son Brandt comes strolling into the kitchen, sees the kleenex laying there on the counter and sees my piece of brain matter and says, “Gross Mom!  Did that raisin come out of your nose?”  Say what??  Raisin?  Was that just a raisin?  That’s right, I remembered that we did have oatmeal raisin cookies for snack that morning.  I’m not too sure if the raisin actually came out of my nose or possibly my mouth and I’m not exactly sure where it was hanging out in my body between morning snack time and my big sneeze.  One thing I was sure of though was that I was glad I wasn’t losing chunks of brain matter.  Whew!  That was such a relief.

What was I talking about?  That’s right, Frothy, my bubble bar.  So cute little Frothy was covered in real shredded coconut.  His eyes were black Nibs, he had a black Nib on the top of his head for a little hat and his nose was one of those Goodies candies, the black licorice covered in coloured candy coating.  Aaaaaaawwwwww!  So adorable!!  One snowy Saturday afternoon I decided to share my bath with my sweet little Frothy.  I started to fill the tub with hot water and broke off a piece of Frothy, leaving all his licorice bits still on him, and crumbled it under the running water.  Bubbles!!  Yay!  Oooooohhhhh, it smelled so yummy in the bathroom.  Kind of a vanilla, slightly coconut and sweet smell that made my stomach growl.  By the time the tub was full and I was amidst all the fluffy bubbles I was craving a sweet snack.  More specifically, licorice.  Dang it!  I hate it when that happens.  I’m in the bath tub, no one else is home and I’m wanting a treat.  It’s a bathroom so of course I don’t have any goodies within reach.  At least nothing licorice that is.  Well, actually, that’s a lie.  I did have one goodie.  Frothy’s nose!  A green Goodie to be exact.  You only need to use part of a bubble bar per bath, I can usually get two or three baths out of each bar.  Since I only used a third of Frothy the rest of him was sitting on the side of the tub with all his little licorice body parts still intact.  For a couple of fleeting seconds I was looking at those little licorice body parts in a whole new light.  I had a pang of guilt hit me because I was afraid that me thinking Frothy’s body bits looked yummy made me a cannibal.  My common sense came back and I realized that he was just a bubble bar and his body bits were just licorice so it wasn’t cannibalism.  Like hellooooo!!!  I was now craving some licorice, big time.  Huge!  I had eaten a lot of black licorice when I was pregnant because it helped with my heart burn and I was still very fond of it. 

At that moment I was feeling a little bit of separation anxiety from my good friend, black licorice, and decided it would be in my best interest if I reached out and made contact with the licorice.  If I didn’t it might cause some anxiety therefore making my relaxing bath not so relaxing and nothing but a total waste of time, hot water and a good bubble bar.  I couldn’t let all that happen.  So ….. I grabbed what was left of Frothy and picked off his cute little licorice hat.  Relax people, I’m not that disgusting and desperate that I would take the piece of licorice off the bubble bar and just eat it.  Yuck!  It would be all soapy.  That’s just wrong.  I held it under the running water to wash any possible soap off it first.  THEN I popped that sucker in my mouth.  I gave a quick little suck on it and ….. wait for it ….. wait for it ….. wait for it …..  Boo-yah baby!  It tasted like licorice and nothing but!  I was green lighted to perform a face-ectomy on good old Frothy.  I didn’t feel bad for eating his face because the way I looked at it he was lucky to be getting plastic surgery for free!  Do you know what people pay for plastic surgery?  A lot!  I decided that Frothy’s left eye looked a little gimped so I thought it should be eaten next.  I cleaned it, ate it, liked it and moved onto the right eye.  Gave it a good rinse, popped it in my mouth and savored the lovely licorice taste.  Deeee-lish!  What a nice way to spend my afternoon, soaking in a nice hot bubble bath and having a tasty little snack.  I looked over to my right and caught a glimpse of what was left of Frothy.  Poor little guy looked all messed up with no eyes or hat and only his green nose sticking out.  I couldn’t leave him like that, it just felt wrong.  Besides, I love the green Goodies!  They’re my favourite flavour.  I snatched up his little nose and held it under the tap washing off any possible trace of bubble bar soapiness while salivating profusely.  I just knew it was going to tickle my taste buds and make me smile.  Come to Mama my sweet little treat!!  In my mouth it went ….. and ….. OH HELL NO!!!  That little sum-bitch came flying out of my mouth just as fast as it went in.  I spit it out with such force it hit the tiles just above the faucet and it made a bloody u-turn right back at me and pinged me in the eye.  Talk about adding insult to injury.  You would have thought that since it was covered in a candy coating it would keep the soap taste out but oh, how wrong I was.  I guess the moral of this story is that candy coating is NOT bullet proof!  Next time I should only eat the nibs.  Yahuhn!!  At least I learned something from this whole experience.  Now if only I could convince Lush to make a Spumante bath oil that’s maybe not so much oil as it is just Spumante.  Huhn, I’m not too sure I would want to waste Spumante by bathing in it then just letting it flush down the drain.  I know!  I just need a tub full of Spumante and one big ass straw!  By the time the tub was drained I would be so shit faced I wouldn’t even give a rat’s ass that I had been sitting in it for the past half hour and drank it.  And hey, if after awhile the Spumante starts to go flat all that I would need to do is let out a little rooty-toot-toot and froth that stuff back up!  I’m so smart!!

When we had decided to go to the movie I had already changed out of my work clothes and was in my nightie because I had decided to wash a load of dark clothes and everything I wore to work was dark and needed to go in the washer.  Not like it really matters but yes, even my undies are dark.  They’re black, all of them.  Why black?  Like duh!!  Black is a slimming colour and as I’ve said before, if I’m ever in an accident and the medics have to cut my clothes off I’m hoping the black ginch will work in my favour.  I would hope that one medic would point out to the other, “Yo!  Check it out Bob.  For a plus size gal she sure has a nice slim looking butt.”  Even if I was missing a limb and was bleeding to death hearing that would really make my day.  I also like to wear just plain black butt covers because the so called “cute” plus size undies aren’t actually cute, they’re pretty scary to tell you the truth.  The regular size “cute” ones might have a sweet, silly looking cow with crossed eyes and knock knees.  Awwww, how adorable!  But, when the geniuses at the clothing company make the same underwear in plus sizes they can’t stick to just one charming little cow.  Oh no, they have to instead plaster about 30 goofy looking cows with crossed eyes and knock knees all over the front and the ass of the underwear.  So instead of being a “cute” pair of undies you now have a big ass pair of drawers with what looks like a feedlot for dim-witted, out of commission, “special” cows.  Yeesh!!  Neon skivvies are definitely out of the question too.  In a petite little size 3 they are “fun”!  But in a plus size they’re a bloody lighthouse beacon.  It would be horrible if again, I was in an accident and the medics cut my clothes off and got blinded by all that neon fabric.  Who would drive me to the hospital?  I suppose a passer-by could plant me on the top of their vehicle, big ass side up, and the glow from my ass tarp would definitely let people know we were a comin’ and should get the hell out of the way.  Don’t even get me started on the topic of thongs.  My ass cheeks would absolutely devour that little string.  I would have to send in a search party to dig that sucker back out.

I see I’ve gotten off topic a little.  I do realize that I have unresolved underwear issues and therefore talk about them more than what is considered to be normal.  Sigh ….. I’ve tried to find a support group or 12 step program to help me with my undie issues, but apparently no one else needs help in this area, just me.  Uhuhn, how about if I get back to the story now.  Once we had decided that we were going to go to the movie we realized that we had to leave in 15 minutes if we were going to make it in time.  It was then that I realized that all my panties were still in the washer.  I started to panic, this was not a good thing.  I needed my undies!!  Merlin’s brainwave idea was to just go bronco style (bare assed).  Um …… let me think about it for a minute …….. OH HELL NO!!  There was no way I was going to go to the movie letting my girly bits be only one layer of cloth away from the theatre seats.  Like hellooooooo, common sense would tell you that the seats cannot be cleaned daily, I understand that.  I also understand that numerous different people have sat in the seats and I can only imagine how many of those people have farted on said seats!!  Gag.  Excuse me, my gut doesn’t feel so good thinking about all those week old, two week old, who knows how many week old fart germs that are lingering in the seats.  Gag gag gag.  Pardon me for a minute please while I stick my head between knees and do some deep breathing to regain my composure.

Okay, I think I’m good now.  I called downstairs and asked Merlin what the status of the wash machine was.  I swear he said it was almost done on the spin cycle but he claims he said it was still on the rinse cycle.  When he asked me if he should put a pair in the dryer I said yes thinking that they had already been spinning and it wouldn’t be that far of a stretch to have them dried in ten minutes.  I continued getting ready to go out and ten minutes later I asked Merlin the ETA on my ginch-a-roonies.  Apparently mine and Merlin’s idea of what a tiny bit damp is are two very different things.  I figured that if they were close to being done I could just iron them dry.  I’ve done that with clothes before and it’s worked very well I might say.  I learned a long time ago that wearing jeans that aren’t 100% dry can cause some very uncomfortable chaffing around the waist and in areas I would prefer not to discuss at this moment thank you very much.  So I bounced down the stairs all excited to be going to the movie and skipped over to Merlin to retrieve my supposedly close to being dry underwear.  Yah ………… a tiny bit damp ……… NOT!!  I had to wring the s.o.b.’s out!!  If that wasn’t enough of a set back I found out that the material my panties were made of was not iron friendly.  As I was peeling my skivvies off the iron the wheels were a turning in my head trying to come up with a new game plan.  I had to think like McGyver, he can always get himself out of sticky situations under pressure (and no, my undies weren’t sticky, they were just wet).  Then it hit me.  The microwave!!  That wonderful little appliance that speeds up cooking and defrosting.  If it can cook and defrost quicker I figured it could evaporate water quicker too.  Drying clothes is just evaporating the water out of the garment.  Boo-yah baby, how smart am I?  I grabbed a dish towel, folded it to fit the glass plate thingy in the microwave and laid out my damp dainties on it and punched in three minutes.  I needed to put the dish towel down first because I could see a little bit of chili had been spilled when Brandt heated up his lunch the day before and I didn’t think it would be much fun to have chili scented drawers.  What if I ran into a pack of hungry dogs and they could smell the chili and came fast and furious at my ass looking for lunch in all the wrong places!!  I would have a bloody stroke and would end up missing the movie.  However, on the upside, chili smelling undies might come in handy to mask the smell of any farts I might let escape.  How cool would that be?  I could rip one off and the heat of it would warm up my panties bringing the chili smell to life again (just like those hot pads that you can buy with cloves and cinnamon in them that smell nice when a hot casserole is put on them).  The worst that would happen is people around me would find themselves hungry and craving chili and that’s not really a bad thing people.  Most excellent!!  In the end I did decide to go with the unscented underwear option for this night.

Sadly, the microwave didn’t work.  It just made them freakin’ hot!  When I grabbed them out of the microwave after the three minutes, I burned my fingers and my natural reaction was to throw them.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see Merlin standing just a few feet away from me and they thwacked him in the face.  I was doubled over laughing and trying to blow on my burning fingers and Merlin just stood there shaking his head muttering, “That’s wrong.  Just wrong.  So so so very wrong.  It’s just wrong!”  He later told me that he was slightly disturbed at the sight of my skivvies being nuked and was afraid he might have nightmares.  Or at the very least he may lose a few pounds because he won’t be able to heat up leftovers or make microwave popcorn for a long time, a very long time.  Me, I couldn’t wait to tell Brandt where my undies had been leaving him traumatized and in need of even more therapy.  Mwah ah ah ah ah!!!  Anyways, with my ginch still being wet I was smacking myself on the forehead saying, “think McGyver, think!”  As I was smacking my forehead I felt that my hair was still just a smidge wet and needed to be dried.  Ha!  I should have made Merlin touch my hair so he could see just what exactly a “tiny bit damp” really feels like!!  I was heading back upstairs to dry my hair and it hit me.  My blow dryer!!  I could blow dry my undies along with my hair.  Nothing like killing two birds with one stone.  I was moving the blow dryer back and forth between my hair and my ginch when Merlin came and told me that we HAD to leave right now because we needed to make a quick stop before getting to the theatre and he didn’t want to be late.  My panties weren’t quite dry but were very, very close.  I once again put my brain in McGyver mode and came up with yet another fantabulous plan.  I put my pants on and headed out the door with my undies in hand.

I had at first considered rolling the window down and letting my skivvies blow in the breeze to dry while cruising but I had visions of them getting snagged on the side mirror of someone driving beside us.  How do you pull up beside someone and politely say without totally humiliating yourself, “I hate to bother you, but would you mind terribly if I retrieved my undergarment from your mirror?  Pardon me?  No!!  It’s not a bloody horse blanket, it’s my underwear!!  How rude, my ass ain’t THAT big.”  Worse yet, what if I accidentally let go of them and they flew in someone’s open window and ended up spread out across their face, covering their eyes and causing a horrible accident.  What would I be charged with?  Driving without underwear care and attention?  I would be so embarrassed especially if the police needed to take my undies as evidence.  For years to come there would be that one evidence envelope that many an officer will find an excuse to look in just so they can tell their grandkids one day that they actually touched the underwear that caused the first undergarment related automobile accident that set the precedent in Canadian law.  In my attempt to avoid any kind of incidents I just closed all of the vents except for the one right in front of me, cranked the heat up and held my panties in front of it.  Damn spanky!  It worked like a charm.  I told you I was smart. 

They had dried just in time as we pulled into the Dollarama parking lot.  We always pick up a package of licorice and some kind of chocolate for Merlin at Dollarama because it’s like a third the price that you pay at the theatre.  I decided to stick my now perfectly dry and wonderfully warm drawers in my purse before heading into the store.  I didn’t want to leave them on the seat of the car just in case someone was to break in and steal them.  I’ve heard there are perverts out there who like to take women’s panties and with mine being plus sized I could see some Merv the perv thinking he hit the mother load with mine.  After reporting the break-in and theft try explaining to the police why there was a pair of underwear left on the seat of the car.  Question, would I have to claim their theft through our vehicle or home owner’s insurance?  Huhn ……. I wonder …… I should look into that just in case it ever happens.  Hey, knowledge is power people.  Another question, if they ever caught the pantie pincher what would he be charged with?  Possession with intent to smell?  Eeeewwww …….  Anywhooooo ….. it was a close call when I went to pay the cashier for the treats and my ginch got caught on my wallet and almost came flying out of my purse.  It’s one thing to have them go soaring through the air and land on Merlin’s face but there could be legal issues if they got deposited onto the face of a stranger in public.  Lucky for me I was able to pull my wallet out with nothing attached!!  Incident avoided, yahoo!

Once we got back in the car and I had the treats stuffed down into my purse I asked Merlin just how I was supposed to gracefully and inconspicuously slip into my delightfully dry dainties while he was driving.  I would hate to accidentally moon someone.  I got one of those, “Are you seriously that dense?” looks.  He suggested that I wait until we got to the theatre and hit the bathroom right away and put them on.  Oh, he’s so smart!!  Why didn’t I think of that?  Probably because I was still remembering my panties being planted on his face back at home, it was too funny to forget any time soon.  My thoughts soon drifted to what would happen if we were in an accident and the medics discover that not only was I not wearing clean underwear but I wasn’t wearing any at all!  They might wonder what kind of upbringing I had and get all concerned about what’s happening to society when parents are no longer schooling their children in the importance of clean underwear at all times.  I would be just horrified!  When discussing this with a friend at a later date she did make a very good point.  The medics would have to go into my purse to find my ID so they would know who I was and would end up finding my clean panties and even though my ass was as bare as a babies on the day it’s born I had made the effort to have clean underwear somewhere on my person.  Phew!  That made me feel so much better.  What a brilliant friend she is!

At the end of the night I could report that we made it to the theatre with a few minutes to spare.  I got my drawers on with no “incidents”, the movie was funny, the popcorn was just yummy and my date was a real hottie!!  Merrrrrrr-rrroooowwwww!  Most importantly, I was able to enjoy the evening because I knew there were two layers of cloth between my wazoo and the fart fume filled seat!!  Life just can’t get much better than that folks!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love for pens.  People have tried to tell me that it’s a real “issue” but as far as I’m concerned it’s not an issue.  I’m fine with it, it’s just those who don’t understand the beauty of these fine writing instruments cannot truly appreciate how special they are and therefore can’t love them like I do and decide that it’s now an issue.  If only people would open their minds and let the beauty and exquisiteness of pens flow into their hearts like I have.  It truly is a gift to have so many pens in my life.  They’re with me when I’m writing happy stories, they’re with me when I’m pouring out my heart and soul when I’m writing sad things in my journal and they’re with me to offer support when I have to write a cheque and part with money.  They’re always here for me.

Okay, so here’s the thing, I have this reoccurring nightmare that I let my family talk me into signing up for a 12 step program for my supposed pen addiction, but it doesn’t go so well.  The first step is admitting you have a problem and frankly, I don’t!  It’s not a problem, it’s a passion/love.  There’s a big difference between the two.  Anyways, once I get to the meeting I can see things are doomed right from the start.  There’s this nerdly little I have a facial tick, my pants are way too short, I wear SAAN store velcro runners,  I still live with my Mommy at 38 years old (I’m assuming) loser in charge and he asks us to take out whatever we brought for taking notes.  What?  No one told me we were going to take notes!!  I was told to show up at 7:00 pm, bring my own artificial sweetener for coffee if I wanted it, bring Kleenex because it’s not in their budget to supply it and come with an open mind.  No mention of note taking.  The rat bastards!!  See why this is a nightmare and not a dream??  Ggggrrrr……… thank goodness I carry a pen in my purse at all times.  Phew!  However, I will need to borrow some paper.  As I am walking towards nerd boy to ask for paper I start riffling around in my purse for my pen.  Panic sets in as I realize it isn’t anywhere to be found!  What the heck?  I ALWAYS have a pen on me.  I must have been robbed.  Yah, that’s the only explanation.  I was probably a victim to one of them pick-pocket people.  I remember that I had my pen out when I was jotting down our next coffee date in my little calendar while at Starbuck’s with a friend.  I bet someone sitting close by saw my pen, fell in love with it and then snarfed it when I wasn’t looking.  Damn them!  I’m crushed, absolutely crushed.  Again, see why it’s a total nightmare?  Pen-napping is a serious offense and it often leaves the victim all torn up inside, a mere shadow of their former self.  It’s very a tragic and traumatic event and it’s now happened to me.  (Don’t feel the need to send a sympathy card or flowers, this didn’t happen in real life, it was just in my nightmare.)

I start taking some deep breaths and keep telling myself to be brave, that everything will be okay.  I’m half hyperventilating when I ask the goober in charge if I could borrow some paper and a pen.  He hands me half a dozen sheets of loose leaf paper from his stack first and I’m of course thinking that he would pull out a box of new pens from his briefcase, let me select one and tell me I could keep it in case I need it next week.  Oh landy sakes, how wrong I was.  He fishes around in his front right shit brown corduroy pant pocket and brings out three pens that are all missing their lids, have lint loitering around the tip and …… oh no.  Oh HELL no!  Are those seriously teeth marks on the ends of them?  It is.  Dun dun dun (it’s supposed to sound all evil and dramatic when you say it).  I start to feel faint and throw up in my mouth a little bit as he hands me one.  Who knows how many people have touched it before me.  And how am I supposed to know if the person who chewed on it was in a 12 step program for constantly scratching his ass crack with foreign objects then chewing on them???  Hey, it could happen.  There are some real freaks and geeks out there these days.  Eeeewwww!  Another thought pops into my head.  Well, it’s was more of a mental picture than a thought.  And let me tell you, it’s not a pretty picture at all.  It’s uglier than Marilyn Manson and Jocelyn Wildenstein’s love child (if they ever had one) and it’s scarier than Child’s Play, the Exorcist and Psycho combined.  Ha ha, I bet you just Googled to see who Jocelyn Wildenstein is.  Didn’t you?  Anywhoooo, I envision good old drip-o-lot-amus using the pen in his pocket to scratch his nasty junk.  What if he has a hole in his pocket, the pen pokes through when he’s relieving his itch and the lint stuck on the end is “junk lint”?  Aaack ack ack.  Pardon me for a minute, thinking about it is making me gag ………………..Okay, I’m good again, I think.  Back to the nightmare.  I didn’t want to make a scene so I very quietly sit on the floor, lower my head between my knees and do some deep breathing.  Once the lightheaded feeling goes away I rummage in my purse and pull out a handful of anti-bacterial wet wipes and two band-aids.  I proceed to scrub the bloody hell out of the pen then wrap the band-aids around the end to cover where the pen had been gnawed on.  I figure this is something McGyver would do, he’s smart.  And the thing is, I just can’t stomach looking at the tooth marks for the next two hours.  I’m a strong woman people, but not that strong.  I then grab my little bottle of Bath & Body Works anti-bacterial hand gel I carry with me at all times and empty the entire 1oz bottle onto my hands and scrub vigorously like I’m trying to start fire between two sticks muttering to myself about needing to feel cleansed and being free of foreign spit, ass crack and junk lint germs.  Good old Mr. Junk Scratcher comes over to me and asks if I was aware that this was not the support group for germaphobes, they meet at the hospital on Wednesday nights.  I shoot him a less than friendly look and snap back, “I’m WELL aware of that thank you.”  Smartass.

I somehow manage to make it through the next two hours without puking (except for the few times I did a little bit in my mouth) and not hitting someone.  I feel that is a huge success!  I give the dweeb his pen back and head home with my homework assignment.  We have to list 16 ways that our “addiction” affects our life.  This was not a very easy task I tell ya because it’s not an addiction!  How many times do I have to say it??  I decide to humour everyone and do the assignment but, there’s another problem.  I have no idea what colour of pen I should use!  I want to use a colour that looks less looney tunes.  You know what I mean?  See, black might come across as a very sadistic/satanic colour, red looks like blood and could be construed as a murderess colour, gold might look a little too flashy, but silver might look like I would settle for second best when competing for a medal, pink might look way too girlie foo-foo, yellow makes me think of people eating yellow snow (ack ack), green looks like snot and brown might make it appear that I’m giving a “shitty” effort.  Oh the agony of decision making.  Just as I start to really panic I notice something.  Huhn ……. I have 16 different colours of pens.  Dark blue, light blue, black, red, pink, dark purple, light mauve, yellow, orange, light green, dark green, brown, grey, gold, silver and bronze.  Oh snap!  A different colour for each different way my life is affected.  I wouldn’t look looney at all, I would look all bright and cheery!  And that’s a good thing.  Oh sugar nuggets.  New problem.  I can’t decide what order I should use the pens in.  Should I use them according to the rainbow or alphabetically?  Should I use the girl colours first because I’m a girl or use the boy colours first because I don’t want to look sexist?  And what should I do if one of the 16 points was five lines long and the next one is only two lines? Would it look like I’m favouring one colour over the other because I used it for more writing?  I wake up thinking about how I’m going to need a new support group, one that deals with equality issues.  Sigh …………. that’s my reoccurring nightmare.

I do have dreams, good dreams.  They usually involve me frolicking through fields of corn stalks but instead of having ears of corn on them they have pens!  All different brands and colours of pens.  I tend to wake up weeping with pure joy after one of these dreams, but then my tears of joy turn to tears of sadness when I realize it really was just a dream.  Sigh ………..  I know, I sigh a lot.  But hey, it’s better than always saying “F$&% ……….”.  Right?  Anyways, let me tell you about a dream that did come true for me involving my love for Zebra brand pens.  This is the email I sent to the company:

About a year ago I found the Frisha pens at the Dollarama store here in Lethbridge, Alberta.  They had the blue and green ones and I snatched up a good supply of them.  I was so sad last week when I realized I was on my last one of each colour.  It was very upsetting, I was afraid I might end up in the ER requiring strong tranquilizers to help ease the panic I was feeling.  I somehow managed to deal with my grief and made it through the week without requiring too much medication and booze.  Then today I went into the new Dollarama store here in town and guess what I found?  More Frisha pens!!!  I grabbed a handful of packages, dropped to my knees in the middle of the aisle kissing them ferociously and struggled to keep the tears of pure joy from flowing out of my eyes like a faucet.  My 12 year old son was just slightly mortified at my display.  Poor kid!  I’m sure he’ll get over it and if not he can always go for therapy.  I grabbed black ones, the pink with the red ink and the teal with the blue ink.  A year ago I had no idea the black, pink and teal barreled pens even existed.  It was like Christmas in February for me.  However, I was terribly dismayed to discover there were no packages of green ones.  It felt as if someone had sucker punched me in the gut.  No green?!?!?!?!  I should mention that I’m a little bit obsessive compulsive and having full sets of things bring me great joy and relief.  So no green pens was very unsettling.  I came home and googled the Frisha pens and have come up completely empty handed.  I can’t find any information on them, only the mechanical pencils.  Are they not being made any longer?  Please ……. say it ain’t so!!

FYI, I almost peed my pants when I saw the Z-Grip Daisies and the Max Bold in the fashion colours on the website.  I do have the Z-Grips in the different colours, I have two complete sets at work,  a set of minis in my purse, a set in my kitchen, a set in my den at home and just in case something happens unexpectedly I have a complete set still in the package in my filing cabinet.  I know, that’s a lot of pens, but I love them!  I do have a half dozen of both the blue and black in the Z-Grip Max ones.  And the Ola pens, again, I have multiple sets of them in all my necessary spots.  The only thing that’s missing in my neurotic little mind are the green Frishas, the Daisies and the Max Bolds.  After googling them I am left feeling crushed because I can’t find them in any stores in Canada and I can’t find any websites that I can order them from.  It’s like someone took my heart out of my chest, threw in on the floor and stomped on and told me I can’t have the pens I NEED in order to keep me out of the looney bin.

So, I’m begging you …… please help me!!  Please please please!!!  I need these pens.  I will give you my first born (and only) child if you help me.  I do admit that my son may be slightly damaged goods as he may require that therapy I was telling you about earlier.  But he’s a really good looking kid and he’s really smart too!!  Ha ha ha, I’m just kidding.  He’s not that smart!!  Ha ha, just kidding again.  You can’t really have my son but hey, it’s the thought that counts.  Right?

Honestly, I’m not sending this via the internet in the Psych Ward, I do roam the streets of Lethbridge freely scouring the stores in search of my much desired pens.  I hope to hear from you soon!! And I really hope you can steer me in the right direction.

So, a couple of days later I see that the company has emailed me back.  Wahoo!  It’s an email that I will never forget for as long as I live.  I found myself trembling with excitement as I opened the message.  I just kept thinking in my head, “Please please please!  Tell me where I can order these pens from.  Please!”  It turns out that it was a good new bad news kind of email.  Sadly, my Frisha pens are not being made any longer and they don’t even have any in their warehouse.  Sniffle sniffle ……. pardon me a minute while I mourn this loss yet again.  It tears me up inside and leaves me feeling verklempt every time I think about it.  But, like I said, there was good news too!!  I’m getting goose bumps all over remembering the rush I felt when I first read those beautiful words that were sent to me.  The very nice lady, Veronica, told me all about the new pens that are available in Canada.  I was wondering how long I would have to wait until they made it here to Lethbridge or at least come available on line for me to order.  Then she typed the words that I never thought I would read in my lifetime.  This is right out of her email: Let me know if you would like some samples of this new product to hold you over until you can purchase them yourself.  If you are interested, please provide an address of where you would like them to be sent.  If I am interested?  IF I AM INTERESTED??  Hell, not only was I interested but my friggin’ nipples got hard just thinking about it!!  How cool is that eh? 

She did just as she said, she sent me one of every new Zebra pen!  Actually, that’s a lie.  I got two each of the purple and green Sarasa pens.  When the package came in the mail it was now Christmas in March for me, I seem to be having a lot of extra Christmas days and they all involve Zebra pens!!  When I checked the mail and saw the package I almost peed my pants, I was THAT excited.  I ripped the package open savagely like a hungry lion would rip open the carcass of his kill after not eating for a week.  Yup, it was pretty intense.  I think I might have even let out a lioness roar at one point.  Then the water works started.  The tears of joy and happiness.  I wanted to get as close as possible to my new pretties so I laid on my bed naked, held the pens up high above myself and let them drop on me one by one, slowly caressing my body as they slid off me and onto the bed.  It seemed like a great idea at the time, but in hindsight it wasn’t too smart.  The large Expandz pen (which is a heavy-ish metal pen) came straight down and pierced my nipple!  That hurt like a son-of-a-gun, yowzas!  Even though the pen almost punctured my boob I still love it to pieces!  The big Expandz is pink and the mini one, oh yah I said mini one, is black.  Anything mini is just so cute!!  Like my mini Tupperware Shape-o-ball and mixing bowl key chains, they’re just freakin’ adorable.  Back to the pens, they are the coolest pens EVER.  You have to gently pull at the two ends to make it full size and the writing part of it comes out.  They have a kind of mysteriousness to them, you can’t decide what exactly they are.  Are they big or are they little?  Big or little?  Big or little?  They kind of have a bit of a split personality thing going on.  One minute they want to be big, the next thing you know they decide to be little.  Personally I don’t care if they have mental issues, I do too, we get along great.  When I’m bored or have writer’s block I can play peek-a-boo with them!!  It’s great fun I tell ya.  “Where’s the inky ink?”  Pull out ….. “Oh!  There it is!  Peek-a-boo!”  Push it in ….. “Where did my little inky go?”  Pull out …… “Peek!  You’re such a big pen aren’t you.  Goochy goochy goo.”  Aaaahhhh … such good memories of my first days with them. 

My multi coloured Floral Z-Grips are such a mood lifter.  They’re just so bright and cheery and I love being able to write in different colours.  Even though the pens themselves were free it still ended up costing me a bit of cash.  See, they are so pretty they make the perfect accessory for any stylin’ kind of gal like me, providing you have the shirts and eyeshadows to match the pens to.  Unfortunately, I didn’t.  I ended up working kind of ass backwards and had to go and buy some new clothes and make-up to match the pens.  About $210 later I look just fab-u-lous writing with my floral pens.  Helloooooo!!!  Who’s the hot housewife now?  Oh yah, you know it, it’s me.

Okay, so Veronica also sent me a package of these animal print pens.  They are way beyond cool!  The different prints they come in are cow, giraffe, tiger, leopard and zebra.  I decided I wouldn’t try to match them up with outfits because if I donned a zebra print outfit that would be one big ass zebra people!  What I decided instead was that I could buy a whole whack load of the pens and take them with me on an African safari.  I could clip a whole bunch of the tiger ones on myself and could be nicely camouflaged out in the wild.  Pretty smart thinking eh?  And I would have a nearly endless supply of ink for writing about my African safari adventure in my vacation journal.  Damn spanky, what a great idea folks.  I would however have to be on my toes in case there are hunters out and about and they mistake me for the wildlife.  It might not feel so good getting shot.  Huhn …… I wonder though if the metal on the clip part would be strong enough to deflect the bullets?  How awesome would that be?  I would blend in with the wildlife well enough I could avoid getting eaten alive and have bullet proof armour to protect me from the hunters all at the same time.  Wow, I am SOOOOOOO friggin’ smart!  Some days I even manage to amaze myself.

The other day, a month after I got my pens in the mail, I was in Wal-Mart and saw the Floral Z-Grips.  I was so excited because now I can buy some for work too.  There was this chick standing beside me and she saw them too.  She went all squirly begging her Mom to buy them for her, she said she just HAD to have them.  Aaaaawwwwww…….. a mini me!!  I looked at her and gave her a once over, gave my head a little flip and said, “Yah, cute eh?  I’ve had mine for awhile now.  See, I got the inside track on them babies.”  Her Mom gave me a weird look, grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her away from me.  How rude!!  We were bonding!!  Yup, Zebra pens, bridging the generation gap two people at a time.

The story behind the ad is that this family’s Christmas presents last year from the Grandparents was burial plots for them and their spouses, current or future.  The young lady I wrote this for had made a comment to her Mom, after visiting with her Grandparents to assign the plots to each person, about putting an ad in the paper announcing what a catch she was with her burial plots.  I have changed the 16 year old girl’s name and where she lives to protect her secret desire for senior citizens! 

FYI, the family I wrote this ad for is the same people I wrote the banker’s letter for.  You gotta love repeat business.  I’m glad they find me funny and creative and not looney tunes and psychotic.  Or maybe they do but they don’t want to have me put away in the pink satin padded room just yet because they have more stuff they want me to write first.  Hhhhmmmm ….  Come to think of it, every time I’ve been served food by them I’ve only been allowed to use a spoon, never a fork or a knife.  Let me tell you, eating steak with a spoon is a little difficult.  I’ve also noticed that when I enter a room they all scurry to the centre of the room far away from the corners and not one of them has ever turned their back on me.  Whenever I’ve been introduced to someone new in their family I’ve noticed that they whisper the same thing.  I think it may be Pig Latin they are speaking but I’m not sure and I’m not fluent in it so I don’t know for sure what they’re saying.  If anyone can figure this out please let me know.  “Eshay isay uckedfay inay ethay eadhay.  Eshay isay otnay ablestay.  Ebay arefulcay.”  A beautiful sounding language whatever it is, but I’m clueless as to the meaning.  Oh well, it’s probably just my imagination running wild on me.  I’m sure it’s nothing but good stuff.

 Anyways, here’s how the ad reads:

HAVE BURIAL PLOTS, NO NEED TO TRAVEL FAR FOR LOVE 

I’m a young, vibrant sexy single 16 year old gal living the good life in southern Alberta who is not getting any younger.  I’m looking for a geriatric gentleman who is aged well, but isn’t senile.  I’m wanting to hook up with an oldish man who is just barely past his prime that  isn’t afraid to party himself to death, literally, and is in need of a burial plot.

I like reading large print books, watching reruns of the Andy Griffith show, snacking on apple sauce, collecting stamps, playing bingo and cribbage, having scooter races and taking naps.  My idea of a dream date is sharing a romantic evening with an over the hill hunk snuggled under the electric blanket on my Sears-O-Pedic bed, sipping prune juice and rubbing liniment on each other.

I prefer vintage gents that still have all their teeth or at least a decent set of dentures.  Having a generous bank account would be a bonus as the price of liniment is on the rise these days.  I’m not into head rugs, but there’s no need to have a full head of grey hair because bald is fine by me!  It would be preferable if you have your own walker and scooter with a side car.  Speaking of transportation, having a higher end car to transport you around with would be a plus as I do have my driver’s license.

I am interested in a speedy marriage.  However, I will require the lucky elderly fellow to sign a pre-nup to ensure, if need be, that I inherit his cash in exchange for the burial plot.  The burial plots were a Christmas present every young teenager wants to get from their Grandparents and they are near and dear to my heart so I would like to keep them in the family (or at least be paid out for one).  If you’re not sold yet on my personality, the location of the plots and the fabulous view from them should be enough to seal the deal.  I would not be willing to move as my burial plots are here in High River and are non-transferable to other cemeteries.

If you’re a gentleman who is advanced in age living in High River and is willing to get a little randy with this young whipper-snapper, give me a call.  Would hook up with twins as I have an older sister who has her own set of plots!

Ancient Adult Loving Amanda      403-696-7568 (OWN-PLOT)

 Now I didn’t have anything to do with my time!!  I spent about a week trying to figure out what I should do now while taking my brain holiday.  Then it hit me.  I decided that I hadn’t familiarized myself with every inch of our bed.  Have you ever thought about that?  You usually sleep in pretty much the same general area on your bed but you don’t usually seem to park your butt at the head of your bed.  It took a little bit of stretching first to limber up but I did manage it.  It did prove to be a little uncomfortable and that caused me to have an aching back so I decided I should sleep it off.  The next day I decided I should flip the mattress and see what it was like at the foot of the bed on the under side.  That was time consuming and took a lot of energy so I decided that I should maybe sleep it off.  A couple of days into this I had a bloody ingenious idea.  I decided to be a rebel and I took the mattress cover OFF!!  I put the sheets back on, protective cover off, and had a nap.  Woah dudes…………… that was really living on the wild side for me.  Granted, I did have a teansy bit of a nightmare during that nap that involved bed bugs, old fart germs and a light dusting of dead skin cell dust.  The important thing to note here is that when waking up in a cold sweat from the nightmare and needing to launder the sweaty bedding I was already ahead of the game since the mattress cover was already off!! 

 That whole exploring every inch of the bed thing got old and I sat down today and decided to share what was on my mind.  I have a friend that lives about three and a half hours away that I don’t get to see much at all.  She was here in late spring visiting family and we were able to sneak in a quick visit at a park close to my house.  Before that we hadn’t seen each other for almost five and a half years!!  And before that it had been probably close to ten years!  She’s a very busy stay at home Mom with three children that she home schools,  she’s always running around to their numerous extra curricular activities, she has two dogs, and a husband.  Truthfully, I think her husband is the biggest handful.  I’ve known him and have been influenced by him since grade eight and I have had plenty of therapy sessions to back that up.  Ha ha, just kidding.  Or not.

 So, anyways, I decided that my friend needs to be cloned.  Yup.  Cloned.  That way she can be at home taking care of her family and be visiting me as well, all at the same time!  I would hate to take her away from her family but I DO want to see her, so by cloning her I wouldn’t have to be a selfish friend and demand that she spends time with me and ditch her family.  I’m so smart!!  Right?

 I suppose I would be somewhat selfish and insist on the real  person showing up and not some knock off clone.  I wonder if I could tell the difference between the real one and a clone?  I would have to have a trick question that only the real friend would know and a clone couldn’t have figured out the answer even with all the research in the world.  Huhn, I’ll have to think about that.  I had better get on that tonight just in case her cloning happens over night and in the morning I open my door and find my friend, or possibly her clone, standing at my front door begging to come in and I need to figure out if it’s the real deal I’m looking at or the fake.  How thorough do you think a clone maker would be?  Do you think they would teach them to have the real person’s same hobbies and interests or would they just make them half assed, just enough to carry out the every day regular stuff?  If not, that could be something I could use to determine who’s in front of me.  If it’s really my friend I could expect her to play some Mozart on the flute and if it’s her clone I might only get a few little tweets on a kazoo.  Not the same, trust me.  I do wonder how well a clone would be programmed before leave the cloning factory.  I wonder if her husband and the kids would be able to tell the real person from a clone?  Hhhmmmm….  I personally think that as long as a clone feeds the family and pets, changes diapers when needed, gives out the daily quota of hugs and nags the husband as per usual they could go undetected for at least five days.  If you however have a well, um, how can I put this nicely?  Forget it, I can’t be nice.  If you’re family appears to have left a village wondering where their idiots went then you might be safe for up to two weeks!  If you have a smart bunch and want to dumb them up enough to get away with the whole clone thing you could pump glue fumes through the vents in your house when you’re out getting groceries, every day for three weeks, and then you should be good to go!!  Gosh, I’m such a good problem solver!

Uh oh, new issue.  What if I open my door and find my friend, or what looks like my friend, standing there and once I have quizzed her I find out that it’s actually the clone?  I can’t exactly call the real person and tell her that her clone is at my house just in case she doesn’t know that I’ve ordered the clone.  She may think I stepped over the line in this friendship.  And even if she does know about the clone and I call and get the answering machine I can’t exactly leave a message in case her husband or her kids hear it.  “Hi!  It’s me.  Ummmm …. You’re there and not here and what I have here is you but not you and I want to know how to get the you that’s not you to you and get the you that really is you to me and leave the you that isn’t you with your family without them noticing that the you that is you has left and the you that isn’t you is there.”  I’m not sure, but I think that may sound just a little suspicious.  I guess I might have to do a little prep work for this and get a disposable cell phone for my friend, the real one and not the clone, just in case such an incident should arise.  Yah, that just might work.

 I really think I can make this whole cloning thing happen.  I’m just too darn brilliant for my own good.  Wow!  I’m so relieved to know that there isn’t a village somewhere around the world wondering where this idiot is!  Hey, did I just insult myself?

I live for jokes.  I have so many good jokes but most of them are either too, um, how should I say this?  ‘R’ rated.  But I do have a couple favourite clean ones.  When a serial killer is walking through the park what path does he take?  The psycho path!  Ha ha ha ha.  I love that one.  I have another.  How do you make a hormone?  Don’t pay her!!  Okay, one more.  What do you call Mexican cheese that isn’t yours?    Nacho cheese!!  Ha ha ha ha ha.  Go back and read it again if you have to.  Read it with a ghetto accent, it’ll help.  Mentioning nacho cheese makes me think about nachos.  Mmmmmmm, yum yum yummy!  I love nachos.

There are some things in life I take very seriously like putting the toilet seat down when you flush so there won’t be any airborne poop spores floating around the bathroom only to land on a toothbrush.  My books need to be organized on the book shelf so that the tallest one is to the left end of the shelf and they gradually get shorter as they get to the right end.  I don’t have them arranged alphabetically by name or author (even though that does eat at my conscience and has kept me up many a night with worry) because they wouldn’t have a natural and gradual slope across the tops of the books.  They would look all jaggedy and sloppy.  It’s a huge sacrifice I make daily leaving them all out of alphabetical order but on most days the meds keep me from having anxiety attacks about it.  Most days …….  I also make sure that all my make-up compacts get cleaned about once a month so that there isn’t a build up of loose eye shadow or blush just hanging around in them.  That mess drives me mental!  I also have to keep them organized a certain way in my make-up box/case thingamajiggy.  The single eye shadow shades are together (arranged by size like the books), the duos are in their own spot, the blush are in their own corner and so on.  What if I had a make-up emergency and needed to find a certain blush and eye shadow and didn’t have the extra 14 seconds it could take to rifle through everything to find them?  It could be the difference between good self esteem from an excellent make-up day or complete depression brought on by wearing pink eye shadow with a peach coloured blush.  For shame!  Wearing colours together that aren’t in the same colouring grouping.  I could be sent to cosmetic hell for that!!  Can you see why having a system is necessary even with my make-up?  When I get into bed the blankets all have to be pulled up straight with the same amount of material hanging over on each side and they need to be folded over at the top about 4 inches.  I cannot stand having the blankets just being flopped around all willy-nilly and uneven.  I would not be able to sleep one single wink in that kind of chaos!!  I’ve had nightmares in the past about messy blankets and I’ve been woken up to my own shrill screams, covered in sweat and shaking so violently the windows are rattling.  After two and a half years of intense therapy and a cocktail of experimental drugs I can finally sleep again without the fear of raggedy blankets.  It should be illegal to let your blankets be all messed up, it’s just not natural people.  

Mmmmm, I’m still thinking about nachos.  They are so tasty and just happen to be another one of the things I’m very anal and particular about.  They need to be prepared properly and that may take time but it’s so very worth it.  Dumping the toppings on a heap of taco chips and calling it nachos is just wrong!!  Do you hear me?  It’s wrong with a capital “W”.  I’m starting to break out into a nervous sweat just thinking about the miscarriage of justice that is carried out numerous times a day all over the world with these half-assed prepared plates of so called nachos.  For all of you horribly uneducated people out there that don’t know how to make nachos the proper way, grab a pen and paper and take notes.  It is very important that we ensure the nachos of the world are being prepared correctly.  You never know, it may just be the difference between war and peace.  I wouldn’t doubt it if the cause of the Twin Tower attacks was all over a plate of ill prepared nachos.  Maybe Bush and Bin Laden were having a little get together one night at Bin Laden’s pad, just play along and try to picture this people.  And maybe Bush likes his nachos made like I do and Bin Laden didn’t have the culinary skills to pull it off and that pissed Bush off and he told Bin Laden just how he felt.  And maybe Bin Laden can’t handle criticism and it really hurt his feelings and he went into a bit of a depression and slightly psychotic state.  And maybe he doesn’t have a good enough health plan to have therapy sessions covered and he couldn’t afford them out of pocket so instead he just sat in his underground hiding place and let his anger and anxiety over Bush’s nacho comment build up inside him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he decided he had to let Bush know how he felt before this depression consumed his entire life.  Now since he doesn’t go to therapy he wouldn’t have the social skills to just sit down with good old Bush and talk things out so he let out his emotions via the airplane crashes.  A little drastic?  Yes.  But he is crazy you know and who knows how crazy people justify things in their evil little minds.  You might think I’m WAY out in left field on this but hey, it’s nacho theory!  Ha ha ha.  Get it?  Na-cho theory!  I crack myself up sometimes.

Anyways, let me tell you how you should make nachos properly.  It doesn’t matter if you use a plate or a glass baking dish, use whatever you have handy.  You need to lay the tacos in such a way that they aren’t overlapping at all.  I mean it, not at all!!  You can root around in the taco bag and find broken pieces that you can fit into the gaps between the full sized chips.  It’s kind of like making a mosaic pattern with stained glass only you’re using taco chips and it’s something you will be eating.  I suppose some people might eat glass but I’m going to pretend I don’t know that it actually happens because that is just icky.  Yeesh!  Freaks! 

Once you have the tacos laid out nicely it’s time to prepare the toppings.  It’s all about the toppings.  Use sliced black olives, chopped green onions and diced tomatoes.  When dicing these things it’s ubber important to keep them all close to the same size.  If it wasn’t for the fact that actually measuring each little piece with a ruler would take a couple of hours I would most likely do just that.  I just estimate with a very critical, well trained eye.  Why is size important you ask?  I can tell you why, at least in regards to nachos that is.  When putting the diced toppings on the tacos it’s important to have one piece of each one on every taco and if they’re almost identical in size then you won’t have one flavour taking over and being a taste attention piggy.  You just cannot ever mess with the nacho taste bud mojo thingy that goes on.  I’m pretty sure that doing so can actually put a hex on you and from that point on every single nacho you put in your mouth will go directly to your ass!!  Yup, you heard me.  Your ass.  My ass is proof of all the wrongfully prepared nachos I have ingested over the years.  Tsk tsk, it’s a bloody crying shame I tell you.  It’s the dang nasty nachos that have made my rear a wide load.  And now my ass end hydraulic system is all seized up and I can’t dump my dang fat ass load!!  It’s bigness is here to stay.  Sigh ……….

Back to the nachos …… once you have very carefully placed your toppings on your tacos it’s time for the cheese.  Oh yum, I love cheese!  Shred it and sprinkle it on top.  Not a lot of pressure here in this stage of the preparations, except that you must make sure that every single chip has cheese on it!  They must ALL be covered with cheese.  You must remember this, definitely write this tid bit down.  A nacho without cheese on it is not really a nacho, it’s just a warmed up taco chip!!  Like helloooooooo!

When eating nachos prepared by others that haven’t been done the right way (my way) it takes all the energy I have to not have a visible stroke right then and there.  Of course, I would never turn down a plate of nachos, no matter how haphazardly they have been thrown together, because I wouldn’t want to risk hurting someone’s feelings.  I mean, how would that sound, “Oh …. thank you, but no thanks.  I simply cannot nosh on this pile of messed up bullshit you’ve placed in front of me.  I may need to be medicated to prevent me from going into some sort of OCD freak attack seizure just from the mere thought of touching that dreadful crap to my lips.  But thanks anyways for the offer.”  Instead I will take a quick moment before ingestion and speak to my taste buds silently inside my head and will say something like, “I’m SOOOO sorry the mojo is all amiss with these nachos I’m about to eat.  I promise that I will make it up to you by preparing the perfect, expertly assembled nachos soon my sweethearts.  Please, forgive me for this atrocious snack I’m about to consume.”  As my mouth starts to get moist I know that this is not my mouth salivating, it’s actually my taste buds weeping over the injustice they are suffering.  Sniffle sniffle sniffle.  It just tears me up inside that they have to suffer like this.

 I just realized that I haven’t even touched on the topic of the condiment cross contamination possibilities.  Oh man, just give me a minute here.  I’m starting to break out into a sweat just thinking about it.  Oh geez, my heart is beating way too fast and the room is spinning a little.  I’m just going to take a moment here to regroup ……………  Okay, I think I can continue now.  Cross contamination with condiments is just so beyond wrong, it’s iniquitous!  (My big word for the day, google it if you have to)  Okay, so if you’re serving salsa, sour cream and guacamole with your nachos please, I beg of you, PLEASE have three separate bowls (not a lame ass divided dish doo-hickey) and you must have a different spoon for each condiment.  And if you’re going to put some salsa on your nacho first then some sour cream for example you MUST plop the sour cream on top of the nacho and you must NEVER scrape it off the spoon.  That’s how the sneakiest kind of cross contamination happens people.  Some of the salsa on the nacho can get onto the sour cream spoon and when the sour cream spoon is put back into the sour cream bowl there is now salsa in the sour cream.  Oh boy, here come the shakes now.  This whole topic is really upsetting me.  I need to take a few deep breaths for a minute.  Inhale …… exhale ……. inhale …….. exhale ……..  Phew.  I’m good, really, I’m okay.

 You just don’t ever want to lie to your taste buds and tell them that you’re going to be having a nacho with just a smidge of sour cream on it then all of sudden you pop it in your mouth and your taste buds immediately pick up on the unwelcome intruder, a droplet of salsa.  Naturally they will assume that you lied to them, they just don’t understand the world of accidental condiment cross contamination.  Have you ever seen a taste bud all jacked up from what they assume to be a nasty food lie?  It ain’t pretty people, and I know this from past experience.  My taste buds have done some horrendous things to me when they’re mad at me.  They’ve made Tequila and even Spumante taste bad to me!  Gasp, I know.  How awful is that?  It’s madness I tell you, right bloody madness.  Those are some of the darker moments in my life, moments I would much rather forget.  I’m sorry, I’m getting all choked up now.  So are my taste buds, I can feel them weeping.  I need to console them with maybe just a little drinky-poo or two of Spumante.  It’s a treat they just love and since I’ve obliviously upset them dredging up these abominable memories of some nasty nachos of days past, it’s the least I can do for them.

 I have had some very good things come out of my days of being a Cub Scout groupy.  I can tie one hell of a reef knot!  Right over left and under, left over right and under.  It could come in real handy if I do ever change careers and become the dominatrix Lady Lichtenstein.  I also learned to be prepared.  That totally explains the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet at work and my purse.  My purse has a mini can of Lysol spray, Oxy Clean stain remover, perfume, Brush-Ups (cloth tooth brushes), pills for constipation, pills for the shits, headache pills, anti-nausea pills, a minimum of six kinds of lip gloss and lip balm, a notepad and pen, gum and mints, anti-bacterial hand wipes and gel, tooth picks, hand cream, and the list goes on.  My filing cabinet drawer has all of that plus mouth wash, goo-gone, tea, packets of raw sugar, tweezers, scented candles, a moose shaped lighter (for my candles), Q-tips, eye glass cleaner, a lint roller, dusting cloths, deodorant, Fruit To Go bars, band-aids, safety pins, Tupperware Midgets with pre-measured amounts of iced tea mix, inserts for my Starbuck’s Create A Mug, and that list goes on and on too.  I’m sure you get the picture, I’m very prepared.  The other cool thing I got out of Cubs was knowing Ben. The dude who decided I needed to have a blog to put my stories on, who designed my web page and who got me doing something I had dreamt about for many years and really enjoy doing.  Thanks again Ben.  You rock!

 Anyways, I actually have a story to tell you.  Brandt decided a few years ago to join Beavers.  I remember all the fun Kent and Dad had (and I sometimes had) and thought it was a great idea.  I remember the guys in Cubs and Scouts in High River all being so cool and cute and thought Brandt would fit right in.  Well, uuuuummmm …… this was REAL different.  This was no cute Cub pack, it was a whole whack load of little nerds!  That first night 90% of the Beaver Colony were wearing floods, at least 75% had the social skills of a stick, 88% of them had some sort of weird facial tick and the rest were just goobers.  I had a good inkling that most of these kids were here because they very closely resembled an actual beaver.  You should have seen the chompers on these little freaks.  It was a dentist’s wet dream in that room.  And trust me, the parents weren’t any better.  I’ve never seen so many pocket protectors in one room at the same time.  And the tan elastic waisted, polyester rugby pants were EVERYWHERE!!  On both men and women!!  It was like a polyester factory blew up or something, there was polyester galore.  Very scary stuff indeed.

 There was this one family that to this day can still make us shudder just thinking about them.  There was the Mom, Dad, a boy and a girl.  We figure they must have been to Disneyland at some point because all four of them had these Disneyland jackets.  They were these 1980 style special hum dingers that they always wore, all four of them.  ALWAYS!!  The body part of the jackets were a light denim, the back had these huge embroidered Disney crests on them and I’m pretty sure the fronts of their jackets were embroidered with Geek 1, Geek 2, Geek 3 and Geek 4.  The sleeves were my favourite part.  They were this awesome white pleather!  They were always so …. white …. and shiny.  We figure they must have spent their Sunday evenings polishing the pleather for the upcoming week.  You want to talk about real talent?  Well, these people had talent coming out their ying-yangs.  They somehow managed to find identical pairs of acid washed jeans for all four of them!  Wow!  That’s an amazing talent.  Finding matching jeans when the sizes range from Dad’s beer belly accommodating and extra long legged men’s, to Mom’s bubble butt hike them way up over the post baby gut to give you a sexy crammed up the ass crack style, to junior’s husky boy fit that nicely wrap around his “one too many Oreo cookies” waist and the pair small enough to fit little sis and her one leg that was shorter than the other.  Even more talented was their family hairdresser.  All four of them had matching mullets.  They were perfectly coiffed at the back to give that stand out ‘ledge’ at the base of their heads before the long hair began cascading down their necks and shoulders.  I do however sometimes wonder, maybe it wasn’t a hairdresser’s magic, they may have used a Flowbee at home to get those special frayed ends to their hair.  That’s a very 80’s thing to do.  Now that I think about it I guess their mullets weren’t exactly the same because Mom had a wonderful perm added to hers.  Gotta love that Ogilvie home perm look!  Sadly, this family seemed to be looked upon as the cool dudes by the others in the group.  FYI, Brandt’s BRIEF encounter with Beavers was over six years ago and about a year ago we saw Wonder Family out and they were still wearing their ‘Disneyland/I want my mullet back’ uniforms.  And the pleather was still just as shiny as ever and Mom’s perm was just as lovely as ever.  I turned to Merlin, wiggled my eyebrows at him, glanced at Wonder Mom and back at him and said, “You know you waaaaaant it!”  He said he threw up in his mouth just a little bit at that point.

 About five weeks into Beavers there was a special evening with a ceremony welcoming the boys into the group.  The evening was being ran by one of the female leaders.  She was a real peach I tell ya.  She was sporting these awesome skin tight, two sizes too small men’s jeans that gave her this nasty, angry looking camel toe that commanded attention from anyone within 20 feet of “IT”.  Ack ack!!  Sorry, I was gagging at the memory of it.  Ack.  She was walking around with a large furry, stuffed beaver puppet on her one hand.  For some reason I find it necessary to note at this point that her lip was hairier than the beaver.  Apparently she’s never heard of lip waxing.  The boys were in a semi-circle waiting for the leader to come to them so they could put 50¢, their weekly dues, in the beaver’s mouth.  So there she is, prancing up to each boy one by one making these weird beaver-ish big chomper teeth sucking sounds (while making her own buck teeth whap up and down on her lower lip) asking, “Who wants to feed my beeeeeeeeeaver?” (really dragging out the word beaver) all the while making the beaver puppet fiercely gnaw away at the boy’s fingers as they very hesitantly stuck their quarters in it’s mouth.

 If that wasn’t disturbing enough she was instructing the boys to, “Feel how soft my beaver is.”  Good gawd woman!  She would continue to interrogate them with, “Do you want to pet it?  Do you want to pet my beeeeeeaver?  It’s sooooooo soft.”  All the other parents are oohing and aawing at the beaver stroking and feeding, taking pictures and wiping away tears of pride while Merlin and I are crying because we’re in physical pain trying not to burst out laughing.  Yes, we do have warped minds, but you have to admit that this was WAAAAAY beyond normal.  I swear, it got to a point where her voice started getting all smokey and sexy when she approached the parents, both the Dads AND the Moms, asking them if they wanted to pet her beaver.  She was stroking that beaver in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of our necks.  It was verging on soft porn rape the way she was groping the poor thing!  We were expecting to see a pole sprout up from the floor, a disco ball to drop from the ceiling, the lights to dim and the song “Let’s Get It On” start playing in the background so “Bushy Beaver Betsy” could show us her performance she had prepared for amateur night at the Top Hat (the local strip club here in Lethbridge).  When the evening’s festivities were winding down we grabbed Brandt and escaped as quickly as we could.  Two seconds out the door and Brandt says to us, “That lady and the beaver really creeped me out.  I don’t want to pet the beaver again.  Do I have to?”  Merlin replied with, “I wouldn’t want to touch her beaver either.”  Thank goodness Brandt was young and innocent and had no clue what Merlin was referring to.  At this point we couldn’t hold it in any longer and we both busted a gut laughing like we’ve never laughed before.  Picture us stumbling through the parking lot holding our sides as we laughed and made the chomping beaver sounds asking each other, “Who wants to feed my beeeeeeeaver?”

 We were going to find another not so freaky Beaver Colony for Brandt to join but the evening kind of traumatized him.  As per his choice, that was Brandt’s last night as a Beaver.

We went to East Side Mario’s for supper, “Eh Budda Boom Budda Bing”!  It was delicious.  Until a few hours later when my innerds were doing their own version of the “Budda Boom Budda Bing”.  Not fun I tell ya.  Anyways, that’s not what this story is about.  We had planned to go to a movie as well but it didn’t start for a bit so we decided to kill time at Wal-Mart, we shop “high class” all the way!!  When we left Wally-World we still had time to waste so Merlin came up with two options, have sex in the car behind an abandoned barn just outside of town or go to a local thrift store.  Thrift stores give me the heebie-jeebies big time and sex in our car could be a little cramped.  It was a real tough decision.  NOT!  Off to Thrift Village we went!  Merlin said that they had recently painted inside and really cleaned it up so it didn’t smell like half dead mouldy old people anymore.  I was a tad sceptical but decided I would give him the benefit of the doubt since I really wasn’t too keen on getting the gear shift shoved up my ass while getting our freak on in our car.

As we drove into the parking lot I started to get a little nervous.  My right eye started to twitch, I broke out into a mild sweat, me left leg was bouncing up and down and my mouth got a little dry.  Do you know what a typical thrift store is?  I’ll tell you.  It’s nothing more than an orphanage for homeless germs and bacteria just waiting to be picked up and taken to a warm and loving home.  Do you know what happens when germs and bacteria go into a warm environment?  They multiply rapidly!  Eeekkkk!!  I was really hoping Merlin was right and this place was going to be different from the norm and be clean as a whistle.  I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to be “adopting” anything.  Even though I was trying to be cool about this endeavour I still panicked a little as we headed for the door.  At the last minute I asked Merlin if we could maybe find something else to do.  I looked at him and he was doing his best attempt to look sexy, raising his eyebrows up and down and licking his lips and he said, “Well, we could go for a little honk honk toot toot in the car.  Cause you know I’m always in the mood to drive …… you!”  Alrighty then, Thrift Village it is!

Two seconds inside and one quick whiff and I knew it was germ fest 2009 greeting me.  Lovely!  I thought Merlin said it smelled nice in there now.  Bastard!!  I stood frozen at the door trying to come to grips with the fact that my own husband lied to me!  Sadly, it’s not the first time a dude has lied to me just to get what he wants.  Sigh ….. Back to my story.  When I finally snapped out of my daze I realized Merlin was already off checking stuff out so I couldn’t just grab him and run, I was in now.  So I decided I would be a trooper and try to blend in and act like this not a big deal.  I mean, people shop in thrift stores everyday and they live to talk about it so I just needed to suck it up.  All I had to do was breath through my mouth and then I wouldn’t have to smell the nastiness.  I always end up crouched over in a corner dry heaving when I inhale the aroma of other people’s body stink, mouth breathing prevents that.  I headed over to the women’s clothes to take a look.  You never know, maybe I might actually find something worth looking at.

I got to the first rack and started to flip through the hangers and instantly wished I had a pair of latex gloves in my purse.  One of the black shirts had what appeared to be dandruff on the shoulder of it.  Ack ack ack!  I gagged at the thought of touching someone else’s dead dried out scalp skin.  As I gagged I gulped in air and I swear, I could actually TASTE the germs.  God give me strength!  It took me a couple of minutes to regain composure and I forged on with my big adventure in germsville.  I didn’t want Merlin to be disappointed in me and think of me as a total snob so I ended up grabbing three shirts (dandruff free) and a pair of capris to SHOW him.  He looked so impressed and proud of me for getting past my fear of other people’s germs and unknown sources of bodily stink.  He flashed me a huge smile, I could see the admiration in his eyes, then he said, “Let me see them on you before you take them off.”  Whoa nelly!  Let’s back up here a minute.  He wanted me to actually put these garments containing copious amounts of germs, bacteria (most likely flesh eating disease) and bearing this aroma of fecal matter and moth balls next to my bare skin??  Lord have mercy!  I was trying to be a good sport and grab something to LOOK at.  I hadn’t planned on actually trying stuff on.  I was about to tell Merlin where he could stick this stuff but he cut me off by giving me a little squeeze on my arm and said, “I’m so proud of you!  This is a big step.”  Aw f$%k!  As I slowly trudged over to the change rooms dragging my feet as if they weighed 100 pounds each, I was begging God to strike me down with lightening, cause me to have a heart attack or even send me to the ground suffering a massive brain aneurism.  That lasted for about four seconds because I wised up and realized that if any of those things happened I would end up on the floor …… the dirty, sticky, grayish hued floor.  What if I fell forward and my lips grazed that nasty floor!  Holy crap, that WOULD be the death of me for sure.  See, if my lips grazed the floor and then I licked them I’ve now ingested all the nasty germs and “ick” and I would have it all running through my veins.  Do you realize how hard it is to get rid of shit like that once it’s coursing through your entire body??  Putting the clothes on to humour Merlin didn’t seem too bad now. 

When I got in the change room I had turned sideways to hang the clothes on the hook with my left hand and without looking I pulled the door shut with my right hand.  As I slid the latch closed I felt something with my thumb, something that just didn’t feel right.  I had a really bad feeling about this.  I very cautiously looked over at my hand and I almost fainted.  Oh sweet Jesus!  My thumb had touched four, yup I said FOUR pieces of gum that had been chewed by god knows who with who knows what kinds of diseases and germs and then they stuck it under the latch for some reason.  Why?  Please, tell me why!  The insanity of it all!!!  My stomach flipped a couple times, then the change room suddenly got really hot and small and I could see bright lights flashing in front of me.  I braced myself against the sides of the stall, closed my eyes and thought about my happy place …… Crazy Cakes.  Mmmmmm …. it smells yummy there.  It’s clean there.  I feel happy when I’m there.  Mmmmmm.  It took me a couple of minutes but I was eventually able to pull myself back together and somehow managed to muster up the strength to keep going.

I pulled on the pair of capris and zipped them up and thought to myself that this wasn’t all that bad.  I COULD do this.  It even crossed my mind for a fleeting few seconds that these pants were very cute, all they needed was to be washed, about 20 times, and I could see myself possibly wearing them, maybe.  I looked in the mirror and noticed that there was a little dust or something on the upper and inner thigh on the right side, probably from when I dropped them before I put them on.  No biggy, I just needed to give them a quick brush off.  Wipe wipe.  I was good to g……. uh oh.  My spidey senses were telling me something wasn’t right.  Oh hell no!  I felt some pilling of the material.  My morbid curiosity took hold and I started running my hands up and down the inner thighs of the pants to see just how bad the pilling was.  It was bad …… it was REAL BAD!!!

Do you know what causes pilling on the inner thighs of pants?  Chaffing!  Thighs rubbing together as you walk.  These capris were made of 97% polyester and 3% spandex.  Do you know what happens when thighs rub together rapidly enough to cause pilling on polyester?  Things get warm.  Do you know what happens when things get warm in the inner upper thigh region?  You sweat!!  Oh lord have mercy!  I was just rubbing someone else’s sweaty thigh germs with my bare hands and was rubbing and grinding them into my own skin.  Ack ack ack!  I could picture some toothless, bra-less stinky, unbathed, sweaty trailer trash scuz bucket running around wildly in her trailer court with her head tossed back and cackling at a full moon working up a big old nasty sweat in her capris knowing full well that she intended to send them to a thrift store unwashed for some unsuspecting poor sap like me to come along and try them on.  See, trailer trash folk are like warewolves in a way.  If a warewolf bites you, you become one.  In the same kind of way, if you get trailer trash crotch sweat ground into your skin you become trailer trash too!  It was at that point that I threw up in my mouth.  It was not good at all!  I couldn’t get those capris off quick enough.  I whipped my skirt back on and went barrelling out of the change room, touching the used gum sculpture again in my haste causing me to throw up in my mouth again and making everything around me spin out of control.  I grabbed Merlin by his shirt collar and said to him in a voice resembling the chick in the Exorcist, “GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW!!!!”

Once we got outside I dropped to my knees and gasped wildly at the fresh outdoor air.  I rummaged through my purse (with a Kleenex on my fingers) looking for my anti-bacterial hand gel.  I emptied the whole bottle onto my hands and scrubbed up to my elbows first then I hiked up my skirt and slathered the remaining gel on my inner thighs in the hopes of sparing myself from dying from someone else’s stinky thigh and crotch sweat germs and bacteria taking over my body.

Once I finally calmed down and regained my composure Merlin asked if we could head to the theatre early so he could check out the new movies coming out.  Um …… yah …. that would be a big fat nasty NO!!  The theatre shares the same parking lot as the thrift store and even though it’s less than a city block away and the movie was starting in 40 minutes I insisted we head back home first.  I used the excuse that it was too hot out to leave our supper leftovers in the car especially since the movie was 2 hours and 16 minutes long.  Luckily, Merlin bought it.  Phew!  In reality, as far as I was concerned the leftovers were nothing more than a pain in the ass that we didn’t really need to have packed up and could rot and spoil in the back seat of the car.  My real concern was that there wasn’t enough anti-bacterial gel in the world to clean off these germs, I needed soap and hot water … and a whole hell of a lot of it!!

When we got home I made a mad dash for the bathroom, cranked on the hot water, grabbed my anti-bacterial soap, a face cloth, rubbing alcohol, Lysol spray, my netti put and a bottle of vodka.  I scrubbed my arms up to my arm pits with the anti-bacterial soap, I scrubbed my neck and chest, then I hiked my skirt up once again and gave my legs a good hearty wipe down.  I doused my hands in rubbing alcohol just to be extra cautious since I would be eating popcorn at the theatre later.  I filled my nettie pot and gave my sinuses a good cleansing because I had breathed in through my nose when we first walked in the store and got a fairly good dose of germs and stink and you just can’t ever be too careful.  I took a nice healthy swig of vodka and swished it around my mouth to kill off anything I breathed in and spit it out.  Naturally, I took a second swig and swallowed it.  In the old days they always gave you booze when you were in shock and I was at this point.  I was shocked that I hadn’t hurled my supper up completely after being traumatized this horrifically.  I had grabbed the Lysol so I could spray my shoes and my purse (they touched that oocky floor) and after doing just that I had another thought.  I wanted to be sure that my clothes weren’t harbouring any stow away germs and bacteria so I put a few spritzes of Lysol in the air and walked through the mist then I did it again so I could walk backwards through the mist to make sure I got the back of my clothes too.  I felt MUCH better.  When I went downstairs Merlin asked what smelled like apples (I had Green Apple Lysol), I told him it was a new body spray I had that was made by a company called Laysole, I said it was French, he bought that story too.

As we headed back out to go to our movie my head started to spin again thinking about the theatre.  Do you KNOW what a theatre REALLY is?  It’s just another orphanage for abandoned germs and bacteria!  Oh dear God, give me strength.

I’m just kidding.  Truthfully, I’ve been really busy at work and haven’t been drinking like a fish.  That was a lie, but it sounded like fun didn’t it?  Things are back to normal at work again, I’ve taken a few days to unwind and relax and now here I sit feeling all refreshed and ready to write!!  Wahoo!  I WAS telling the truth about buying lots of beer however.  And it really was for a good reason, honestly!

A family friend (who is all grown up and moved out on her own now) was having her wedding shower back in the beginning of May.  When shopping for a shower gift Merlin came with me to check out the happy couple’s registry at the Bay and we noticed that they had wanted this set of four acrylic patio beer steins.  Well, we like beer, so we thought that was some kind of a sign and we decided to buy them.  But they only wanted four and that didn’t seem like much.  We then decided to get these cute little bowls that match and bought some peanuts to put in them to nibble on when drinking the beer out of their new steins.  Always thinking, that’s me!  We noticed that there just wasn’t any “pizzazz” to the gift still and figured that maybe it needed some beer to perk things up a little!!  As per the norm, the gift is typically for the bride and the groom might get to enjoy it once he proves to his new bride that he can touch whatever it is without wrecking it.  That being said, we decided that we would pick up beer for the groom to enjoy since the steins themselves might be out of his reach for the first few months at least.  We didn’t want him to feel left out or unloved.  Aren’t we kind?  The problem was that we didn’t know what he would drink.  I told Merlin that we should buy a case of Bud because they are life long, best buds!  Aaaaawwwww ……… how sweet is that?  But then I thought maybe we should pick up some Big Rock because it was the Big Rock he put on her finger that brought about this wedding and bridal shower.  How witty of me!

Once I get started on the “sassy train” I can’t stop.  I kept coming up with ways to use beer in quirky sentences, then that gave me an idea.  Have you ever seen those stories people write using names of chocolate bars or laundry soap throughout?  If you haven’t, trust me, they’re cute.  I decided that I should write a story using names of beer and thought it would be cool to round as much of the beer as possible that I used in the story because everyone knows that a story is always so much better with props.  As a bonus they would have lots of different beer to try out in their new steins.  I didn’t get this brain wave until the night before the shower at about 9:00 p.m. so we found ourselves bombing around Lethbridge hitting almost every liquor store looking for beer.  I’m sure we looked like total redneck, trailer park reject trash dragging our kid into the liquor store after his bedtime asking if we could buy ONE beer of a particular brand.  Some store clerks looked at us like we had just rolled off the turnip truck, one dude got a little nervous as if we were going to shoot him if he didn’t cough up the single and some just laughed and said why not!  Unfortunately we didn’t get all the beer we needed but instead we were able to get an empty tray or case and cut out the logo to have on hand and I only had to print pictures of three beer of the internet to ensure their presence at the shower.  We actually manage to get just over half of the actual beers and I thought that was pretty good.  In our search for the much needed beer I had to exercise my control over Merlin when he grabbed a Busch and a Thirsty Beaver beer and said he had a “great” idea.  Um ……. I gave him a big fat nasty NO to that one.  Sheesh! 

After doing our little “presentation” at the shower (Merlin came and handed me the beer, a logo or a picture as I mentioned it) we were asked to do it again at the wedding since everyone seemed to get such a kick out of it.  At that point we now had about a month and a half to collect the rest of the beer to present to them with the story.  That’s when things got really fun because some beer we just couldn’t buy a single so darn it, we were forced to buy a six pack or a case.  Shucks, sucks to be us, our fridge was getting SO full we had to drink the remaining beer in order to clear some room for food.  It was just awful having to drink all that beer.  Just awful!  But we did have a little help gathering our props.  We were at the bank one day meeting with our Financial Advisor Gail and we got to talking about our little plan.  She thought it sounded pretty cool and offered to help us out.  Apparently her daughter likes drinking different kinds of beer, especially the imported or not so run of the mill ones.  As we were leaving the bank Gail needed to let us out because it was after hours.  We’re standing in the entrance area saying our good byes and I asked Gail what she would like for the beer and she said nothing.  She said it was just a few beer, nothing major and said that she would drop it off in our mail box one day that week so we should check our mailbox regularly.  I thanked her and gave her a hug.  I looked over Merlin’s shoulder and noticed this couple at ATM.  The husband was looking at us with his mouth hanging open, I assumed her heard Gail telling us that she was going to give us free beer.  I looked at him and said, “Yah …. if your banker doesn’t give you free beer …… you need to get a new banker!”  The guy elbowed his wife and mumbled something that I would like to think went something like this, “What the hell!  We don’t get beer from our banker, we’re switching banks tomorrow!!!”  She just turned slightly and gave me a little glare/scowl out of the corner of her eye.  Huhn, bite me!  I can’t help it if your bank people are sticks in the mud and our lady is fun.

Low and behold, just a few days before the wedding we found a Big Rock, a Steam Whistle and an Alexander Keith’s beer in our mail box after work.  Jackpot!  Thanks Gail, you rock!  We put all the beer in a big liquor box in order and put a sticky note with a number on it just to make sure we kept them in order and we were good to go.  Now talk about looking like rednecks, we walked into the reception carrying an Axe Head beer box full of single beers.  I’m sure it looked like we were not only too cheap to buy a beer at the bar but maybe retrieved these beer by a five finger discount and ended up with only one of each because it’s easier to smuggle out one in Merlin’s pants rather than six.  One beer in the jeans looks like I’m a lucky wife (wink wink) but six would look like Merlin maybe has a medical issue that needs to be tended to or else he ate a whole box of Viagra and was proud to be strutting around past that “four hour mark”.   

Here is the story I came up with, it’s my own little fairytale about young love.  Aaaaawwww!!!!  Don’t you just love fairy tales?  I’ve changed the names of the innocent in order to protect their reputations.  They are upstanding citizens in this community and having everyone know that they have befriended us might have them in a less than favourable light with some people.  Ha ha ha, just kidding.  I seriously did change their names so if you’re reading this and know who they are, I’m not on crack!!  I changed the names on purpose.  What I did was put each beer name in all caps and bolded it for those who are not beer drinkers and wouldn’t know one beer name from another.  Sheesh, I went to all that work for probably only about five people.  Doesn’t everyone drink beer?  And yes, for all of you who don’t believe me, I’m not kidding when I tell you that I wrote this the night before the shower in about an hour.  My brain is just naturally warped and whacked and this is the kind of stuff that floats around in there all time.

Once upon a time, there was a handsome young man named Jackson.  One day when Jackson was hanging out with his friend SAMUEL ADAMS at the local BREWHOUSE he asked him if he knew where he should go to meet a nice young lady.  Sam said he should head to OLD MILWAUKEE, so he hopped in his car and took a little road trip.  But, Jackson thought the girls there didn’t really look like the kind he could take home to Mom so he came back home and told his friend that he had decided he needed to find himself a nice CANADIAN instead.

A few days later Jackson decided to head to BC and spend some time at his friend ALEXANDER KEITH’S cabin in the mountains and do a little fishing for KOKANEE.  While on the riverbank one day Jackson looked up and saw this vision coming his way over the MOUNTAIN CREST.  This beauty before him was Hailey.  Well, one look at her and Jackson let out a slow STEAM WHISTLE and all he could manage to say was, “Aye CORONA!”

After hanging out for awhile Jackson decided he wanted Hailey to be more than just his BUD so he took her out on a real date.  When he brought her home that night Hailey grabbed Jackson and snuck a little kiss behind the Henderson’s BUSCH.  Jackson couldn’t believe what a little WILD CAT Hailey was.  That date was followed by many more as the young couple fell in love.  One day Jackson surprised his sweetheart Hailey and placed a BIG ROCK on her finger and asked her to be his wife.  Hailey was so happy, she loved Jackson very much, so she said to him, “Oh my BIG BEAR, of COORS I will!” 

When Hailey and Jackson announced their engagement to Hailey’s parents, Kathy and Terry, they were overjoyed.  Kathy hugged Hailey and said, “We are so LUCKY to be getting such a wonderful son-in-law.”  Terry shook Jackson’s hand and said, “Don’t forget young man that if you leave my little girl at the alter I’ll come after you with my COLT 45!”  Oh my ……

Now Hailey and Jackson, this little fairy tale is far from over.  It’s a love story that will surely last for many years to come and will be enjoyed by all of your family and friends that love you both.

We have one little piece of advice we would like to share with you about marriage.  When you are first married it’s important to spend some time together, just the two of you, as husband and wife so you can discover many more new and wonderful things about each other.  And to ensure it stays just the two of you for a little while at least, Hailey, don’t forget to take your PIL!!!!

Have you ever seen those Ab-Shocker things on TV?  The infomercial says that all you have to do is attach these little sticky pads to your abs, turn the doo-hickey on, little shocks are “gently delivered” to your abs while you go about your everyday life and in a few short weeks you have the abs of a Greek God or Goddess.  Well, that sounded pretty darn brilliant to us since we have such busy lives and don’t have time to do a few sit ups in the morning.  So at 2:43 a.m. on a summer Sunday morning we whipped out our credit card and ordered ourselves an Ab-Shocker.  Wahoo!  We were on our way to firm, sexy abs in just a few short weeks.  So a couple weeks later our new life changing purchase arrived in the mail and we couldn’t wait to give it a whirl.  We poured over the instructions, right up to the point where it told us how to stick on the little patch thingys.  It was at that point that we realized that we were geniuses and didn’t actually need to waste the next eight minutes reading the rest of the instructions.  Boo-yah!! 

I grabbed the Ab-Shocker machine, plugged in the wires, attached the four sticky pads to the ends of the wires, peeled off the backing on the pads and slapped them bad boys on my abs.  I could already see those bitchin’ abs coming my way, I was psyched!  In all my excitement I accidently turned the little knobby up to full blast, which was a total of 10 notches.  Son of a beach nut!!  Not only did that little jolt scare the livin’ crap out of me, but it was just a tad, um, well, harsher that I had expected.  Did you ever have one of those weird little toys where there’s a character standing on a little box thing and when you push the bottom of it the character flops over all slackish and then snaps back up all rigid?  That was me!  Shlop flop (me buckling over) then zip (me boinging upright all rigid), then shlop flop, zip, shlop flop, zip.  Yup, I lasted through three shocks of the Ab-Shocker and I had to shut the damn thing off.  The hair on my arms was standing straight up and was all whacky, I had goose bumps all over me from head to toe and my heart was racing out of control.  I told Merlin the piece of crap we just spent four easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping and handling on was possessed and was going back immediately.  What did my dear sweet loving husband say to me by way of support?  “You’re a panty waist!  Give it to me and I’ll show you how it’s done.”  Nice, I wasn’t really feeling the love at this point.  What I was feeling was after-shocks and an odd tingling feeling throughout my entire body.  Well, except for my right boob, it was completely numb for some reason.

Merlin ripped his shirt off, threw it on the floor and grunted and growled like he was some sort of a cave-man.  Whatever.  He stuck the little sticky pads on his squishy, oh yah, I said it, squishy abdomen.  He turned it on, only to the first notch I might point out, and said, “Sheesh, this is a breeze!  You’re just a wimp.  A wimpy girl!  Not only do you throw like a girl, but you can’t handle a teeny tiny little shock, just like a GIRL!”  Oh no he di’nt!!!  That little rat bastard!  I grabbed the controller and I cranked that sucker not only to the highest voltage notch but also to the fastest pulse rate.  Mwah ah ah ah ahhhh!  Merlin started flopping around flailing his arms, his legs were going all wonky on him and he sort of resembled a drunk rubber chicken on crack having seizures while trying to dance like Michael Jackson on a hot tin roof covered in cooking oil.  It was quite a sight I tell ya.  With his eyeballs bulging out, his nose running, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth Merlin begged me to shut the Ab-Shocker off.  I felt just awful!  NOT!!!  He called me a panty waist and made fun of me being a girl!  I did what any other normal woman would do.  I cranked that sucker up and down wildly laughing hysterically while shrieking with sinister school girl delight, “Dance white boy!  Dance!!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”  I noticed that Merlin was starting to sweat profusely as he was vibrating out of control.  It was at that point that the Ab-Shocker started making this weird buzzing noise, and then there was a zapping sound that somewhat resembled the sound of a small kitchen appliance shorting out, it made a loud “POP” then it powered itself off.  Oooops!  Did I do that?

Merlin was somewhat disoriented, he was bouncing back and forth between the kitchen counters and he kept wailing, “Get it off me!  Get it off!  Get it off!  Aaaahhhh!  Get it off!  Aaaaahhhhh!  Get it off!!”  After I quit laughing my friggin’ head off I corned Merlin by the sink and grabbed a hold of one of the wires and gave a gentle little tug.  Well, the wire came out of the sticky pad and the sticky pad remained stuck to Merlin.  Huhn.  Who would’ve thought that those little sticky pads would stick to body hair so well.  We later discovered that the instructions strongly recommended shaving any body hair before apply the sticky pads to your abdomen.  I suppose that extra eight minutes of reading the instructions might not have been a total waste of time after all.  As Merlin zig-zagged his way into the living room with rubbery legs he would do this odd little hop on his right foot every few steps while his left arm kept vibrating and slapping his side making this loud thwap at which time Merlin would let out a girlish sounding, “Eeep!  Me hurts!”  Again, I laughed like no person on the face of this Earth has ever laughed before.  Merlin somehow made his way to the couch, laid down, had a massive twitch that registered about 8.7 on the Richter scale, rolled off the couch and flopped on the floor like a salmon out of water.  Being the kind, loving, caring wife that I am I knelt beside my husband, leaned over, placed my hand gently on his abdomen, and whispered in his ear, “Who’s the panty waste now be-otch?” while I recklessly ripped all four of the sticky pads off him taking bushels of his body hair with them.  Revenge is “sa-weeeeet”!

After laying on the living room floor for about an hour while twitching/shivering/vibrating off and on I tried to convince Merlin to go to the ER.  But for some reason he wouldn’t go.  I suppose that was a wise decision.  Imagine trying to convince the ER doc that I didn’t actually tazer him in some sort of domestic dispute or weird married couple sex fantasy.  Although, I might be able to convince the doc that I was just trying to shock life back into “little Merlin”.  Nah, it’s just not nice to insult your husband’s man hood.  But shock the shit out of him with an Ab-Shocker, that’s just, um, nothing!  Yah, nothing to even think twice about.

We ended up sending the Ab-Shocker back for a full refund, minus the shipping and handling, claiming it “did not meet our expectations”.  But I found that it was the experience as a whole that was a gift that kept on giving so to speak.  For months afterwards I could totally freak Merlin out by sneaking up behind him and going, “Zzzzzzzzttttt!”  He would jump and scream like, oh yah, you know it, A GIRL!!!!  One time when he really ticked me off I shuffled around the house building as much static as I could and I came up behind him, reached under his legs and up in his shorts and zapped “little Merlin”!  It sent him to the floor in the fetal position crying, sucking his thumb and begging for his Mommy.  Who’s the panty waist now bitch!!!!  Zzzzzzzzzttttt!!!!!!

A co-worker of mine came to me one day and asked me to do a favour for her.  Her brother, who is a very straight laced old school banker, had just turned 50 and he was here in Lethbridge visiting.  She asked if I could come up with some kind of a little “act” to perform at his birthday brunch to try and enlighten him on the ways of the world in the new millennium. I’m not sure why but for some reason when she thought of someone putting on leather wielding a whip and talking dirty to her brother she thought of me.  Weird eh?  I put together a few good lines, I was able to find someone with a “sex whip” they were willing to lend me but I couldn’t find any plus sized leather dominatrix outfits I could be sporting for the event.  So sadly, Bruce (the banker) did not get a live show from Lady Lichtenstein.  Sorry Bruce!

FYI, I’m Lady Lichtenstein.  A few years ago I was chatting with a friend I’ve known since junior high school and I told him how Merlin and I had been invited to a special event at City Hall here in Lethbridge where we had the honour of meeting the Emperor of China’s daughter and her husband and the Prince and Princess of the country Lichtenstein (as well as some other dignitaries).  I commented that I had never even heard of Lichtenstein.  Next thing I know I get this email from my friend with all this info on this little country I had never heard of.  How cool!  So then at some point down the road I had said something about wanting to secretly be a dominatrix.  Yup, I do.  There’s something about being able to yell at a man to get on his knees, bark like a dog, lick the dirt off my feet, whip the shit out of him, make him say, “Yes mistress, your feet taste delicious” and all the while getting paid big bucks for it!  Sounds like good times to me!!  Merlin is fine with all this because it’s not him that I want to whip the crap out of and it’s not a sexual thing for me, it’s all about the violence.  Mwah ah ah ah ah!!!  Anyways, Merlin and I decided that being called Mistress just didn’t cut it, it didn’t sound very, well, um, “Dominatrixy”.  Now, being the witty fellow that this friend is, he came up with the idea to call myself “Lady Lichtenstein”.  I loved it!!  It just kind of rolls off your tongue.  Say it with me people, “LADY LICHTENSTEIN”.  It’s got a nice sound to it doesn’t it?  I think it should be able to grab me at least $200.00 an hour.

What was I originally talking about?  Oh yah, the banker.  Since there wasn’t going to be a personal performance from Lady Lichtenstein I sat down and wrote my big, bad little banker boy a letter, put some bright red smooches on it and doused it in some trampy smelling perfume.  This is what I wrote (including the pictures):

To My Sweet Bruce,

Rumour has it that you turned 50 and you’re a little NSF.  Insufficient fun!!  I wish I could be there to help stimulate your limp wallet, but unfortunately for you, there’s a broker who has a bigger bank roll than you that requires my titillating teller attention.

I had so many plans for us baby, I was really looking forward to doing a little role playing with you.  I would have dressed you up in red, called you Mackenzie King, and you could have been the Canadian dollar, you could have gone up and down and up and down and I would have been every Canadian citizen and just laid there blindfolded and got screwed by my banker.

You know what else is fun to play?  “Bad Boy at the ATM”.  You would sneak up on me and slip your bank card in and out of my ATM slot just for fun.  If you plan on leaving a huge deposit just make sure you put your wad in an envelope first.  Oooohhh!  You wouldn’t believe what the thought of this is doing to my pin numbers.

Word around the water cooler at BMO head quarters (I assume that stands for “Banker’s Multiple Orgasms”) is that you have a mighty huge ledger.  If I got to see you in person I was afraid I might not be able to wrap my hands around it.  It doesn’t sound like I could tuck it in my cute little change purse.  Is it really that thick?

Are you the shy type or would you show me your bank spread sweetheart?  I bet there’s a huge chunk of change there I could roll around in my hands.  If you were a naughty enough little banker I would have considered letting you finger through my big bills and maybe even nose around in my huge assets.  I love it when you money men dabble with my assets while I check out your cute little cheque stubs.

I bet you didn’t know much we have in common do you?  You’re into bonds and I’m into bondage.  I would love to tie up your funds, tattoo a $100 bill on it and pucker up because I just LOVE to blow money baby!  Although, with there being a recession and all, I suppose I could just settle for pinching your pennies and you could nibble on my nickels.

You and me banker boy!!!  It looks like your interest has sky rocketed once laying eyes on my bottom line.  He he he.

Ever yours my little dime diddler,

Lady Lichtenstein

So, 15 minutes later, there I was, oh snap!  My hair was so straight, so flat, I actually gained about 1.5 inches in length!  I was liking this, it was good, and it was so silky soft.  I even got a little misty eyed, it was that good.  I picked my flat iron up, stared lovingly at it and broke out into song …. “Did you ever know that you’re my heeeerrrooooo….”, I closed my eyes and leaned in for a kiss, I felt that heat between us like all true lovers feel, then luckily I snapped back to reality and stopped about 2mm away from burning the shit out of my lips on the smokin’ hot ceramic plates of the iron.  Whew, that was close.  Sometimes I get a little caught up in the moment and unfortunate things happen to me.  Try explaining that to the ER doc.  “Welw, you thee…” (I would probably talk funny with all the blisters on my lips) …. “I wath fwat iwoning my haiwr, my iwon made my haiwr wook so pwetty I fewl madwy in wuv wiff my fwat iwon, and twyd to make fweet wuuuuuv to it.  Wewl, wet me tewl you, it wath thucking hot!!!  Thit, it welly hewt!!  Wuv buwned me onth agaiwn.  When wiwl I wern my wethon?”  Yeah, um, I’m sure glad that didn’t happen.  I might have looked like an idiot.  So anyways, off to work I went, flat, shiny, silky soft hair and all. 

Driving to work I rolled my window down on Lula (my car is named Lula).  I rolled it down so I could feel the cool, crisp winter air blowing through my straight, soft and silky new hair do.  It was so ….. liberating!  I felt so sexy.  I was a total sex machine and I knew it!!  Even with that minor little, um, …… mishap.  A big nasty work van went whipping past me and sent a lovely spray of slushy snow flying at me through my open window that sent my head flying back due to the shock of the cold wetness on my face and when my head bounced off my head rest it boinged forward a little unexpectedly and my bangs came flopping down over my eyes, dropped behind my glasses and got caught on my eyelashes which then brought forth a knee jerk reaction to whip my head to the side in an attempt to flip my hair away from eyes, but with the window being open a gust of wind blew the hair right back at my face and my hair came flying back at me and the ends of it got stuck in my lip gloss and hey, all us gals know that there is NO classy way to get hair unstuck from your lip gloss when your hands are currently tied up so all I could do was spit repeatedly until it let loose, ppppththth, ppppththth, ppppththth, ppppththth.  But hey, what can I say?  I was still hot and sexy and I knew it!!

Did I happen to mention that my hair was ubber straight which made it much longer and it was just SOOOOOO silky and soft?  I was obsessed with it!  I bet you couldn’t tell though because I’m a little shy and tend to keep my thoughts to myself.  Anyways, for the whole rest of the day I couldn’t keep my hands off my hair.  I had to touch it.  Over and over.  It was just so gall dang soft!!!  Every chance I got, when no one was looking, I would sneak in a few good strokes.  Oh yah …… it felt soooooo nice.  Wowzers!  This was amazing.  I even drank lots of extra tea so that I had to pee lots and make frequent potty breaks so I could stand there in the bathroom checking out my sexy new straight, silky, soft hair.  Since I was behind a closed door where no one could see me I would steal as many vain, naughty little strokes as I could.  Stroke, stroke, sigh …… stroke, sigh …….. stroke.  You get the idea I’m sure.  Have you ever been that obsessed with some new discovery about yourself?  I imagine what I was feeling must be much like a young pre-pubescent lad who has just discovered masturbation and the pleasure he can feel while stealing some naughty little “strokes” when no one is looking.  News flash people, teenage boys don’t have weak bladders, HELLOOOOOO!  Think about it.  I believe it was ‘Right Said Fred’ who has sung about this issue …… this issue of Strokin’.

Enough about that, back to me and my sexy hair.  The sheer fascination of how straight I was actually able to get my hair was just mind blowing.  I had no idea that I could actually have THIS hair.  When I was a teenager I had my hair down to my shoulders but it wasn’t ever this straight and silky.  I didn’t get my big time natural curl until I got pregnant with Brandt, but back then I did have a little bit of a wave to it, but not in a good way.  In the middle of the back of my head my hair had this weird little kink to it.  It was so bloody annoying.  We didn’t have flat irons back then, it sucked, I had to try to straighten my hair with a curling iron.  Huhn, that’s a bit of an oxymoron.  “I straightened my hair with a curling iron”.  That’s actually a pretty good oxymoron.  Ha ha!  I did actually learn something in English class.  Anywhoooo ……. I could only dream of hair this straight and silky.  And now, my dreams had finally come true!  Yes, this soft, silky, fascinating obsession of mine was actually a dream of mine realized!  I just kept touching it, all day, all night, and every day and night since.  I just can’t stop feeling it, it’s so surreal that this hair is actually a part of ME!  I wonder if this is how a guy that gets a sex change feels when he finally gets his breast implants.  I’ve often wondered if they just sit there day and night feeling their new boobies, absolutely fascinated that they are a part of them!  Before you ask, I’ve never thought the same thing about a woman who gets a sex change and gets themselves a handy dandy little penis of their own because frankly, penises are, well, icky!  Have you ever looked at one?  They’re ugly.  Why in the hell would anyone choose to have one ATTACHED to you?  That’s just insane.  There’s a reason why they shrink up you know, it’s because they KNOW they’re ugly and they’re trying to hide so that people won’t laugh, or puke, at the sight of them.  They aren’t anything like my new soft, silky, beautiful hair.  The only thing my new ubber straight, luxurious hair has in common with a penis is that NEITHER ONE is welcome to grace the inside of my mouth!!  Yuckous!!!  Ppppththth, ppppththth, ppppththth.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and run my fingers through my soft, silky, straight hair.  I just got it cut today so I need to familiarize myself with the new lengths and angles of my beautifully coiffed locks.

I love post-it-notes so much, I think that when I die my casket should be lined with them instead of satin!  Lined ones, mini ones, recycled paper ones, sassy shaped ones, seasonal cute ones, long notepad ones.  Being surrounded by my lovelies would really help me rest in peace.  Huhn, you know what would be ubber cool?  If my funeral cards could be printed on post-it-notes and put into one of those dispensers where the paper pops up alternating back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  Have you seen those?  I have a fancy one that my boys (Merlin and Brandt) bought me for my desk at work.  It has pretty purple flowers on a nice greenish background.  Lilies maybe?  Can lilies be purple, or just white? I really don’t know that.  I should maybe check that out.  Anyways, the paper it came with even alternated in colour!  Purple then green then purple then green then purple then green, you get the point.  That was SO cool.  I wonder if my pop up post-it-note funeral cards could alternate in colour too.  The splash of colour might perk things up a little bit on such a sad day.

I should explain why I think post-it-note funeral cards would not only be cool and an interesting conversation piece, but practical too.  See, first of all, I was at a funeral and needed to grab a kleenex and have set my funeral card on my lap and it knocked it on the floor by accident.  There I was rooting around under the pew in front of me trying to find it, and somehow ended up knocking my purse over and had stuff rolling every which way.  Good grief!  I was SO relieved that no one found some of my purse contents under foot when we stood for Hymn.  I would have felt like a total shmuck if some granny had’ve got my tube of lipstick caught up under her heel and went down hard.  I would have had to be digging around under the pew for not only my funeral card, my lipstick and my purse size Lysol disinfecting spray (it goes everywhere I go), but I would have had to be grabbing for granny and risk getting whacked on the wrist with either her old granny cane or her 50 pound granny purse they always seem to carry, and I most certainly would have been yelping in pain and possibly swearing at the friggin’ old bat to take another Geritol.  That might have drawn a little attention to myself and frankly people, the day was not about me.  But, if the funeral card had’ve been on a post-it-note I could have stuck it to the back of the pew in front of me while I was diving into my purse finding a kleenex and it never would have hit the floor.

The other totally advantageous reason for having my funeral cards on post-it notes is for the “after funeral fridge display”.  There are so many times that I’ve wanted to put a funeral card on the fridge so I can look at it whenever I feel the need in the first few days following a funeral but there was typically nary a magnet in sight!  Scandalous I tell you, scandalous.  How convenient it would have been to have had them printed on post-it-notes so I could just stick it the fridge and not have to go on a scavenger hunt trying to scare up a magnet.  And you know, once I’m gone it would be nice to know that people at my funeral were saying, “How thoughtful of Kimberley to have her funeral cards on post-it-notes for our convenience.  They’re a great conversation piece to help break the ice with a fellow griever we don’t yet know.  What a smart, savvy woman she was.”

You know what else would be handy to have on post-it notes?  Speeding and photo radar tickets.  You know it!!  Merlin, yes Merlin, not me, got a photo radar ticket in early summer this year.  Our vehicles are registered in my name (because I REALLY DO wear the pants in this house) so the ticket came to me, but we figure out that it was Merlin’s ticket because he got it a couple of blocks away from the Country Club on a day he had left work early to hit the links.  Ha ha!  Just another reason why I shouldn’t golf!  Golfing can land you with a photo radar ticket.  And those suckers aren’t cheap, especially when Merlin’s behind the wheel with golf on his brain.  Our bank statement, paired up with a receipt I had in my wallet confirmed that I was purchasing some post-it-notes at the time the photo radar picture was taken, so I most definitely had a solid alibi.  Anyways, tickets aren’t sticky so they need to be hung on the fridge with a magnet so you can be reminded to pay them.  The day the ticket came we didn’t have any spare magnets so Merlin put it on the counter and said he would take care of it.  Well, apparently that didn’t happen, the ticket got misplaced.  A handful of weeks later I ended up getting a “Letter of Conviction” in the mail telling me I was in doo-doo if the ticket wasn’t paid immediately.  I freaked!  I was stressed out big time.  What if they came and arrested me and threw me in the clink and took away all my post-it-notes?  Just thinking about a life without post-it-notes, and being in the hoose cow, stressed me out even more!!!!

Do you know what I do when I’m stressed out?  I buy pens and, you guessed it, post-it-notes!  I definitely needed a fix after getting this news.  I opted not to call my 12 step post-it-note sponsor, instead I took off like a bat out of hell to Staples!!  The whole way there and walking up and down the aisles I twitched like a bloody freak until I finally laid my hands on a package of adorable green butterfly shaped post-it-notes.  I held them ever so carefully and carressed my cheek with them, I told them that I loved them more than anything in the world, and I reassured them and myself that I was going to be okay.  Sniffle sniffle, I was really going to be okay!!  Once the shakes had finally stopped my fingers were a little more nimble and I was able to snatch up the orange flower shaped ones, a block of summer  sorbet coloured mini-notes and four packages of these cute monkey ones.  Not all the same.  The monkey ones that is.  They were four different colours with a different monkey on each pad and a clever monkey related little ditty on them.  My favourite one is purple and it says, “Monkey See Monkey Do”.  That’s Brandt.  Anything Merlin does he has to do too.  I really don’t believe boys are born needing to scratch their monkey lumps, they see their Dads do it (who saw their Dads do it).  And, Monkey See Monkey Do just goes on and on and on, for eternity!  That’s why every generation we get a whole new batch of junk jugglers and we don’t ever seem to get a break from them.  But, on the positive side of things, at least the saying, “You scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours” doesn’t apply here, thankfully.  He he he.

Anywhoo …..  Had the ticket been printed on a post-it-note and got stuck to the fridge it wouldn’t have been lost, I wouldn’t have got “the letter” in the mail, I wouldn’t have had a conniption fit, and wouldn’t have needed to spend Merlin’s morning “coffee on the way to work” money for the week on more crack-notes, I mean, post-it-notes.  I sometimes call them my crack-notes because they really have taken over my life just like crack can do.  I NEED my post-it-notes and know I wouldn’t survive without them, I would go into serious, uncontrollable convulsions and would start foaming at the mouth if they were taken away from me for life, cold turkey.  The voices in my head tell me that my post-it-notes love me and want to marry me and I believe them!  I admit it, I would have no reservations about mutilating anyone who dared to take even just ONE little post-it-note from me.  I’m much the same as a crack whore who can’t survive without her crack.  The voices in her head tell her the crack loves her and wants to “be all up in that” and she’s really digging that because she thinks crack is cool.  If a crack whore had to go off crack cold turkey she would convulse and foam at the mouth too.  Have you ever seen someone try to come between a crack whore and her shutzpah?  Not only would she be known as a crack whore but she would be able to officially add murderer to her repertoire. 

So now, not only was Merlin having to make his own coffee at home rather than picking it up at Fas Gas (he swears it’s awesome coffee), but I was leaving him cute little notes on my new post-it-notes stuck on his forehead in the morning to remind him that his coffee money had been re-allocated in our budget and it was his own fault for not petitioning City Council to have all traffic tickets printed on post-it-notes!!!

Mentioning City Council makes me think about politics, which I DO NOT enjoy, and that brings to the forefront of my mind the current political “issue” we’re having here in Canada.  I think I could have actually prevented this whole big hoop-la that’s going on.  Really!!!  I’m thinking that if the results of the election we just had were put on post-it-notes and delivered to all the members of the opposition parties they could have stuck the notes to the walls in their offices and they wouldn’t have forgotten that the Conservative Party actually DID win the freakin’ election!!!!

FYI – four hours after writing this – I’ve broken out into a rash, I’ve been dry heaving and my right eye won’t stop twitching ever since I typed out the political …… stuff!  I don’t just loathe politics, I think I might actually be allergic to them!!!!  I need find my Reactine!  Ah …..  screw the Reactine people, I’m heading to Staples!!!

Boy, was I ever wrong.  Don’t get me wrong, the kids are behaving themselves, but it might not necessarily be by choice.  It turns out that they’re holding on for dear life, sitting down so they don’t get thrown around in the aisles, and I assume they’re so serious because they know they need to be alert, on their “A Game”, and concentrating on staying alive, and I swear, the look in their eyes was the look of fear!

The other day the bus driver ran the red light and I was the first vehicle on the turn signal, so I pulled in behind the bus.  The side street the driver turns down is a couple before I turn, personal preference really.  We cover the same distance, just a different route.  I thought Brandt would get a kick out of it if I beat the bus to their bus stop so I laid a little rubber down and really boogied.  When I got to the corner where I turn onto 6th Avenue, the street the bus stop is on, I got held up as the bus went whipping past me!  Talk about laying a little rubber down.  Apparently I wasn’t seeing things when I thought I saw the bus take that first corner with only the tires from one of the bus actually touching the pavement.  Holy shit!!

So I’m right behind the bus, bombing down 6th Ave and I check out my speedometer.  I almost had a bloody coronary!  We were going about 68-69 kms/hour, in a residential area no less!  Un-freakin’-believable!  Now, I have a little piece of advice for you if you happen to find yourself in this same situation.  If you’re tailing a school bus that is speeding and you think your child is sitting in one of the back seats, DO NOT wave at them.  Especially when the road has a bump or two in it.  See, any child who is white knuckling their way home from school on a speed demon school bus will most definitely respond to any kind of human contact outside their tomb on wheels.  I think they feel that desperate need to be in contact with the outside world, no matter who it’s coming from, for fear that it may very well be the last time they have that contact.  Oh, those poor children.

See, on this particular day, I was trying to make out the faces of the children in the rear of the school rocket, I mean bus, but couldn’t focus properly due to the blurriness caused by the extreme speed both the bus and I were traveling at.  I wasn’t sure if one of the victims, ahem, children, was Brandt.  Just in case he was there I waved a cute little “how’s my sunshine” kind of wave.  I wanted to make sure he knew I was coming to rescue him that I wasn’t going to let old Mario Andretti at the wheel hurt my baby!  The child waved back, and it wasn’t a good thing.  I say ‘the child’ because it ended up not being Brandt.  I do apologize to this child and their parents for the harm I inadvertently caused.

Just as the poor thing waved back at me the bus went “fa womp womp” over this dip, then bump in the road.  Oh dear God!  What have I done?  Have you ever witnessed first hand what happens to a child who is sitting in the last row of a speeding school bus and lets go of their death grip on one of the seats to wave back at you because they were looking for that human contact with someone who may be able to save their life or perhaps they waved just because their parents raised them to always be polite to people and return their friendly gesture because you never know if the person may be an integral part of your life in the future and you don’t want them to look at you and say, “Hey, you’re that rude little child I waved at who didn’t wave back.”  You never know …. Anyways, I got a little side tracked, as per usual with me.  The polite child who waved at me just at the time the bus had it’s date with the pothole from hell very sadly took a header into the laps of the poor, oblivious, unsuspecting children in the seat across from them. 

I had a bird’s eye view of the horrid scene.  I saw the hand raise up, give a quick little flicker, then the “fa womp womp” of the bus, the child came up off the seat eyes bigger than man hole covers, mouth forming the word “shit” (I believe it would be excusable in a moment like this), the rag doll of a body went soaring over to the seat opposite of it, legs flailing about wildly, then the drop.  The drop of death.  Right onto the laps of two fellow bus mates.  Then it was pendemonium!  The two children that got an unwanted, non-sexual lap dance, let go of their seats with their arms flapping about wildly in shear panic.  Then the bus did a “farump” over a big bump in the road, bigger than any speed bump I’ve ever encountered.  I could see the back tires of the bus come up off the road and slam back down, I couldn’t believe it!  How fast do you have to be going in order to have that happen?  A flash of colour pulled my eyes away from the tires and up to the back windows.  Holy shit!  Have you ever seen three children bounce off the seat of a school bus going speeds the cars of the Indy 500 travel at and go into a crumpled heat in the aisle?  It’s not a pretty sight, it made my stomach do flip flops.  It was awful!!

The three beaten and battered children made eye contact with me, I thought they looked so fearful.  I used my hand to make the gesture “stay down” and then clasped my two hands together trying to say “hold on”.  I figured they would be safest if they just laid low and held on to the legs of the seats next to them.  The oldest child understood what I was saying, nodded in acknowledgement and immediately gave instructions to the other two.  There they lay, in the aisle of the bus, holding on for dear life, with just a flicker of hope flashing in their eyes.  Hope that they would make it home alive just one more day.  Such little troopers!!  It brought tears to my eyes to see how brave they were being.  God bless their little souls.

As we approached the bus stop I started to slow down, just over half a block away as I am a safe and careful driver and noticed that the bus just kept on a truckin’.  About 20 feet from the spot the bus stops the driver slammed on the brakes.  I heard the “errrrrrrrrrch” of the tires leaving half their treads on the pavement, I saw the smoke from the burned rubber coming off said tires, and I had to dodge the pieces of the underneath parts of the bus that came flying off.  Once again, “Holy shit”!  What was wrong with this guy?  How in the hell did he ever get a license to drive?  Especially a school bus?  Were we that desperate to find new bus drivers in Lethbridge?  As I approached the stopped bus I noticed the three children that had laid in shear fear in the aisle were tumbling toward the front of the bus.  When would their hellish nightmare end?  Hadn’t they suffered enough? 

Brandt got off the bus and saw me sitting in Lula, our car, and came dashing towards me.  His eyes had a wild look about them.  He must have been so scared seeing that horrible display.  I saw the three little victims coming behind him, calling out to Brandt.  Probably asking him if they could come to me for support and maybe a ride home.  I jumped out of my car to go to the children to embrace them and reassure them they were safe now.  They were going to be okay.  As the four of them approached me, Brandt said in a breathless flurry of words, “Mom!  Did you see that?  I told you he drives like a crazy man!”  I grabbed him and held him as close to me as I could and said with a tear trickling down my cheek, “Yes sunshine.  I sure did.  It was awful!!  I’m so sorry you poor little darlings have to go through this everyday.  But not anymore.  I’ll take care of this.”  The oldest of the three aisle dwellers stopped abruptly, flashed me a look of total confusion and said, “Awful?  That was totally bitchin’ Ma’am!”  Huhn ……….. Who knew kids would like that?  Weird.

When you’re here to take a look, be a dear and sign my Guestbook!  (top right of the page)

I know it’s been about a month since I’ve written anything on here, but I do have a really good excuse.  Honestly!!  What have I been up to this past month?  Standing in line to get my passport!!  It really did feel like we waited in line for the whole month, it was very traumatic for me and it’s taken me a couple of weeks to regroup and move on.  This was worse than the long line at the DMV, the line for the log ride at Callaway Park, even worse than my root canal!!  Well, the last one was a given.  My root canal was fine, really.  My dentist is easy on the eyes so sitting in the chair for a couple of hours staring at him ain’t so bad!

Before I get to my story, I must say something to my cousin Clarke.  Yes Clarke, I too find it disturbing that my blog shows up at the top of a search page when some of those crazy phrases are sought out.  But, on the other hand, you’ve been to our family reunions, is it really all that strange considering our genealogy?  Hello, I have four Uncle Daves!!  I’m destined to have “odd” things happen.  Sigh …………..

We don’t have a REAL passport office here in Lethbridge, all we have is a place where they take your information and send it away for you.  A couple of weeks ago we had a temporary full service passport office set up here for only two days and I swear 90% of Lethbridge showed up.  It was brutal!

We thought we were safe by having Merlin head over to the mall and stand in line while Brandt and I got our mug shots, I mean passport photos, taken.  That same day I took Brandt to get his Social Insurance Number.  He thought that was too cool because he could go around telling people, “I’m now officially a SINner!”  By the time Brandt and I did our stuff, stopped at Tim’s for sandwiches, and coffee, and got to the mall Merlin had already been in line for an hour.  I checked out the line ahead of us and figured that we might be there for two or three more hours.  Boy, was I ever wrong. 

When you’re standing in line for great lengths of time you get to know the people around you whether you want to or not.  Some people you spend hours talking to them before you “figure them out”, but the guy right behind us was easy to peg.  I would say that his Canada Post uniform was a dead giveaway as to what he does for a living.  I knew right away not to piss him off, I wouldn’t want him going all postal on me.  I couldn’t decide what would be worse, being in front of him or behind.  See, being in front of him might be dangerous if he gets impatient and stressed out and decides to take me out to get to the front of the line faster.  However, being behind him could have it’s downside too.  What if he gets denied, goes postal and blows up everyone behind him.  It would really piss me off if I stood there in line for six hours only to have good old Postal Pete take me out.  Not only would I be dead but I couldn’t be shipped to the Bahamas to be buried next to Anna Nicole because I didn’t get my freakin’ passport and wouldn’t be able to travel internationally! 

An hour and half in things were still okay with old Postal Pete, he seemed to be calm, he wasn’t sweating profusely, there were no apparent nervous ticks and it didn’t look like he was checking out the nearest exits.  Better yet, his wife showed up with supper for him, a Wendy’s burger, his favourite.  Well played move wifey, well played.  She seemed nice enough.  That is, until she started sneezing everywhere!  Good lord woman!  I have no idea what was all up in her nose, maybe she took the salt packet out of the Wendy’s bag and was sniffing it trying to get a cheap high so she could make it through the long boring hours in line.  Who knows for sure.  I’ve been told that some women orgasm from a good sneeze.  If that’s true then that day Mrs. Postal Pete had more orgasms than the John’s at the Studio Royale on a busy Saturday night.  Sheesh!  After about the 20^th sneeze I could actually smell the germs, I swear I could even taste them.  They were everywhere I tell ya, EVERYWHERE!  I started to gag, I felt itchy and dirty all over and my right eye started to twitch.  I was inadvertently blinking out a Morse code message with my right eye: GERMS CAN KILL  GERMS CAN KILL  GERMS CAN KILL.  Just as I was thinking about how tragic it was that I was going to die in the passport line from icky sneezy snot germs I remembered something, something ever so important.  I’m anal and have germ issues which means ……. hello!  I have a bottle of purse sized Lysol spray with me at all times!  Wahoo!  As I was rummaging through my suitecase sized purse I started to weep.  I was going to be okay, I was really going to be okay.  I had Lysol and I could sterilize myself, Sneezy VonSneeze-a-lot and the air around me!  Merlin was amazed at how I didn’t even notice the people around us staring at me in utter disbelief as I pranced around spraying Lysol and singing my little song to the tune of Frere Jacques, “Kill those germs, kill those germs.  Yes I can, yes I can.  With my can of Lysol, handy dandy Lysol.  Sterilize, sterilize.”  I guess I’m just used to the gawkers.

Behind Postal Pete and Sneezy VonSneeze-a-lot was a young couple with an adorable little baby.  What a good baby she was, so I thought.  Merlin and Brandt cried and fussed more than she did!  She kept them quiet every now and then by sticking her tongue out at them, it amused the guys to no end.  She was ever so helpful, it’s like she understood how hard it is to be a single Mom with boys aged 11 and 44.  I wondered if she was actually a woman in her mid thirties stuck in the body of a nine month old.  Hey, it could happen.  I wasn’t sure if this little girl was a true Canadian through and through that recognized a real iconic Canadian staple or what her scoop was.  I had a Tim Horton’s cup in my hand, Postal Pete was talking to his hamburger about his delivery route for the next day, Merlin was picking things out of his hair and smelling them and Brandt was throwing paper airplanes all over and yet she never took her eyes off my Tim’s cup.  I was starting to get a little paranoid trying to drink my coffee though because she wouldn’t stop staring at the cup.  What if she was some kind of a fire starter baby and her plan was to set me and my cup on fire sending me to the hospital with the guys at my side in order to get her parents closer to the front of the line.  Sneaky little fire freak!!  I knew I had to keep my eye on her and chug the rest of my coffee and ditch the cup.  Take that you little fire starter.  Who ha!  Yah baby!

A couple of hours after chugging my cup o’ joe I had to visit the loo.  This used to be a booming mall so the bathrooms are a decent enough size.  There must be about 15 stalls in the place, a few to choose from.  I wandered back and forth trying to get a good vibe from one of the porcelain pots then one seemed to just call out to me.  “Kimberley.  Please come sit on me.  Please come sit on me.”  So I did.  I was so happy to be sitting down I hadn’t even noticed there was one major problem with this particular stall.  It had no TP.  It wasn’t that the roll was just empty there was no blinkin’ toilet paper dispenser period!!  Are you kidding me??  Even an empty roll would be better.  One time on McGyver he found himself in a similar situation and he took the empty roll, peeled the cardboard apart into small pieces, chewed them until they were mushy, spit them out on the floor, mashed them with his foot until they were a thin layer, carefully picked up the new creation, held it in front of his face and blew on it gently until it was dry and was left with a nice soft, recycled piece of TP.  I could have done this.  Huhn, now that I think about it that might have been Martha Stewart who did that when she did her stretch in the huscow.  Doesn’t matter, I didn’t have the resources to do it anyways.  I left my purse with Merlin so I couldn’t use the Kleenexes I always have with me either.  I got desperate and considered using one of my socks and drying it under the hand dryer thingy but started gagging at the thought.  So, I opted to just sit and drip/air dry.  I had time to kill.

As we got closer and closer to the doors that lead into the meeting room where the passport people were we were all cheering each other on trying to keep morale up.  Each time someone entered the sacred doors we would get a little misty eyed.  All I could think about was, “You made it.  You had a goal in mind and you achieved it.  Good for you passport line friend, good for you.”  It was all very moving.  Then as someone came out victorious we would clap and wish them well in their travels.  The exiters didn’t seem to really pay much attention to us though, how rude.  But, we still did it for everyone anyways, that’s just how we roll baby.

At about 5 hours and 15 minutes in Merlin gets a phone call for work.  A trucker has 90 cattle he needs to drop off at the Station in about 20 minutes!  Oh crap!  Merlin’s bright idea was that he would go and get the cattle in and Brandt and I would stay behind and if he made it back in time, good.  If not he would come back the next day and do this all over again.  Well, that was a big fat nasty NO from me.  They weren’t taking cheques, cash or debit.  Credit cards or money orders only so I had a money order made out for all three of us.  If he didn’t get back in time it wasn’t like they could give us change!!  Merlin made his way to the front of the line (outside the doors) to see if they could give him an idea as to how much longer they thought we would be there, hoping he could sneak away and put the cattle in and be back in time.  When he came back he says to me, “Quick, come with me.  The guy said he would sneak us in now so I can get out to work.  Hurry up, let’s go!”  I couldn’t have moved even if my life depended on it.  I was frozen on the spot.  Not frozen by my doing, it was all the icy glares of our line friends.  Wow.  If looks could kill ………….  All I could say was, “Um, ah, um, no, um, I don’t think so, um, geez.”  Then he laughs and says, “Just kidding.  As if!!!”  Funny, no one laughed with him.  I wonder why.

In those long hours we stood in line, slowly inching our way to the doors of the what was believed to be the happiest place on earth, at the time, we really bonded with our line buddies.  We laughed, we cried, we shared, we even held someone’s place in line so they could grab a bite to eat or a have a pee break.  It was really a very special time in our lives.  But once we got through those doors and into the room where all the magic was to happen it was every person for themselves.  It was like we didn’t know each other.  It didn’t seem all that long ago that we were discussing Postal Pete’s fear of stamps that needed to be licked, the singed eyebrows on fire baby’s Mom, and the steps to creating your own hand made TP.  We were suddenly dead to each other.  Basically it was five years of JR/SR high school condensed into six hours.  Once in you found a chair to plop down into until your number was called and you just sat there being quiet as a church mouse not making any eye contact and that was the end of the new friendships.  When we first came in the doors to the happy room you had to check in with one of two people at a table and they would quickly look over your info and make sure it was all in order and send you to the chairs.  I handed the dude our money order and he says, “I don’t think that’s right.  Who told you this amount?”  I shot Merlin one nasty ass look and said to the guy between gritted teeth, “Heeeeee did.”  He looks at Merlin and says, “Buddy, you better get running!”  Merlin leans forward and puts his hands on the table, looks the guy in the eyes and says in a slow, even tone, “I’m not leaving until I have my passport.  I’ll need it if I plan to run far enough away to be safe.”  The guy looked at Merlin’s stuff, it was fine, Brandt’s stuff was fine, then he looked at mine.  He noted that my Birth Certificate had been double laminated.  It used to be okay to laminate your Birth Certificate at one time so my Mom did just that.  My Mom liked to make sure she did everything properly so if it meant dong it twice, so be it.  It looks like my Birth Certificate was not exempt from her obsessive compulsive behaviours.  Apparently that is a big no-no these days.  Great!  Then as he’s looking at my driver’s license and my forms he points out that my signatures are DIFFERENT!  It’s not like I signed one a little more slanted than the other or something simple like that, but I had changed the “A” in Anderson from a cursive “A” to a normal “A”.  He looks at me and says, with a whole hell of a lot of balls, “Uh oh.  You have big problems.  I’m not sure you will be okay to get your passport.”  Oh no he di’nt!  After six bloody hours, millions of germs, air/drip drying after peeing and an encounter with a fire baby he’s going to tell me I might not be getting a passport!!!  Wow.  He’s one brave man. 

There was an older couple sitting in front of us and when the lady’s number was called she got up but the man stayed behind.  They were told they could go together but he spoke up and said they weren’t together, they had just met in line.  He ended up getting his stuff done first and he came and sat back down.  He explained to the couple beside him that the lady had asked him if he would mind walking her to her car after as it was dark out now.  Aaaaawwwww, how cute is that?  What wasn’t cute was that she looked about 98 years old and she was still driving!!  Did she really think that her 86 year old new boyfriend was going to be able to protect her from some young hooligans?  And yes, she was older than him.  She was a cougar.  However, this cougar looked like it should have been shot, stuffed and mounted about 15 years ago.  Yeesh.  When she was finally done the cougar hunter stood up, took her arm at the elbow and as he was guiding her out the door the dirty old bird turned to all of us in the chairs and said, “Now don’t you be going and telling anyone we left together.”  And he actually gave a couple of winks!  What did he think was going to happen?  Did he figure they were going to go and make out in the back seat of her car?  I wonder if he was just after her because she had wheels and maybe he didn’t. 

Finally we made it to one of the tables, our final destination.  Thank goodness!!    By the time we got to the lady who would be processing our stuff I was freaking out just a little bit.  When we sat down I told her to do Merlin and Brandt’s stuff first because my application had “issues”.  As she’s going through the guy’s stuff she asked me what kind of issues I had.  I was fully prepared to offer her Merlin, he was going to have to “take one for the team” but she snorted out a weird kind of laugh and said, “It’s late, I’m tired and I want to go to bed.  At this point your idea of “issues” and my idea of “issues” are two completely different things.  You’ll be just fine.”  I wanted to crawl across the table and kiss her!  I told her she was my favourite person in the whole world and that I loved her. 

Everything was all good and sunshiny in our world, we knew our passports were on their way, we survived the line, my issues were non-issues and I miraculously didn’t contract some fatal air borne sneezy snot germ illness.  Then we got a message on our machine last week.  Merlin needed to call the Passport office in Calgary.  There was a problem with his application!  I almost passed out.  All the old memories of the horrid night came flooding back to me, I didn’t think I could handle it.  Thank goodness, all they needed was some serial number off the back of his birth certificate.  Phew!  So now, all is good and sunshiney in our world again.

Oh, by the way, I have a question for all of you.  How can you tell when the Post Office is hiring?  Their flag is at half mast!!  (Brandt’s joke, honestly!)            Don’t forget to sign my Guestbook!

I have this really cool “feature” on my blog that allows me to see how many visits have been made to my page in the last 24 hours, week, month and year.  I can also see if it was a direct hit or if someone has found me via a search engine.  You wouldn’t believe some of the searches people have made that lands them on my page.  Some of them are hilarious, some are fairly run of the mill and some are down right disturbing.  I decided to share some of these interesting little ditties with ya’ll.  If you happen to recognize one of the rather disturbing searches as one of yours, shame on you!  You need professional help.  Also, I would LOVE to meet you!!  Ha ha ha.  If anyone knows how to be “disturbing”, it’s me!

By the way, I’m leaving all the searches just as they appear to me, but they are in italics and bold and my comments aren’t so you can tell what’s what, I’m not correcting spelling or capitalizing where it should be.  And you should know that it’s hard for me to do that, VERY hard.  Especially since I’ve stopped taking my medication to help me keep my obsessive personality under control.  Ha ha!  Crap, it’s always THREE ha’s.  I have to do it again and make it right.  Ha ha ha!

Here are the some of the normal searches that actually make sense to me: housewife Kimberly – that’s me!; ramblings of a working housewife; neurotichousewiferamblings – hopefully someone actually looking for my blog; jennifer aniston; matthew mcconaughey; Spumante Bambino – what a great thing to look up!; callaway golf sweepstakes sports illustrated – Merlin is still choked about that; pretty – well that’s only natural that they would be directed to me; Kimberley Zuehlke – I can’t believe someone knew how to spell my maiden name, good on ya for getting it right!; be a sexy housewife – I do my best; dave zuehlke – that’s my favourite Uncle Dave (I have four Uncle Daves), he’s a realtor in BC, you should buy a house from him; “dee greenwood” sexy – you go girl you sexy diva, Dee is my biggest fan, she rocks;  And the list goes on ……. there were a ton  more but I want to move on to the good stuff.

I do believe there are many other Kimberley Anderson’s out there somewhere, there have been a few searches with my name that definitely aren’t me: kimberley feelgood – it could possibly be me after some cupcakes and spumante; what happened to kimberley anderson from snapped; kimberley anderson in porn – hey, that was college and I swear no one made a video of it; Kimberley licked cupcake – that can’t be me because I don’t waste my time licking them; kimberly anderson naked; and the one Merlin likes, real world Kimberley nipples.  Uh huhn, okay, whatever.

Some Lethbridge lovers checked these out: Crazy Cakes Lethbridge – the best damn cupcakes in the world; Mark Campbell Lethbridge – our local Global News weather dude; sexy kitty + Lethbridge – um …….. it’s a shop just for adults, so I’ve heard.

Some people’s searches just didn’t make any sense at all:  brats bertha – what the heck does that mean?; housewife feeling stuck – in what?; riddance deep freeze; housewife anties – type-o maybe; dailing neurotic ramblings – more bad spelling?;  “can * my pinky toe” – can it what?; how know neurotic – to that I say ‘how no grammar?’; deep peed freeze – are they trying to freeze their pee and if they are, WHY???; surgery happy juice;  my suitcase in holiday; seal bark cough wav – not a clue!!; and the best weird one is: handoff penis knob trailer.  Wow, and people say I’m a few books short of a library.  I can maybe see how some of the searches would land someone on my page but the seal one and the penis knob thing have me absolutely stumped.

A few of the searches were just odd: shemar moore bare feet – I’d like to see his bare chest, but his bare feet?; deep freeze for hairs; deep freeze fingers of frost; butt washer in the bathroom – that sounds like a punch line for joke; Anderson merlins sticker; david boreanez armpits – yuck; what is pig shit googly gum – yeah, what is it?; looking for chain smoking lady coughing – why?; anderson front doors; merlin huhn – I do actually say that about him lots; how cold freeze snot; can snot freeze in your nose – I might write about my snot freezing in cold temperatures but I at least don’t look up stuff about freezing snot!!

There seem to be a fair number of searches to do with panties.  Yup, you read that right, panties: pretty pink panties; rip off my panties; black panties; housewife in panties; housewife no panties; stories women walking dogs no panties – freak; housewifes smell my panties – now that’s just one very sick son of a bitch there.

Then there are the whack load of ones that refer to house wives in one way or another: house wife vixens; nasty housewife – I know her, she lives on our block; housewife fat boobs; fatass housewife – hey now, that’s not very nice; a housewife named candy; old housewife payback – is she doing the payback or receiving it?; housewife in bra; housewife open legs; housewife gag gifts – yah, I call that a husband!; handcuff housewife – kinky; older shaved real housewife – gross; and last but not least, BETWEEN THE LEGS OF HOUSEWIFE.

I could tell that some people were looking for porn and ended up finding me instead, the first one is very oblivious: Kimberley anderson in porn; his hands between her legs – or maybe they were looking for a good gynecologist; orgasm; “boobs grew”; stroked her breast bud; her gown popped open sneeze – I get the gown popping open but why throw in the sneeze?; nasty dark hair vixen;  Scratching over her G-Spot – if you’re scratching over it dude she might have crabs; negligee moan wife – whatever turns your crank; muscular vixens – are vixens a turn on or something?; sexy Merlin – back off bitch, he’s mine!!!

Finally, the down right disturbing individuals: neurotic serial killers – looking for family members possibly?; Alberta + serial killers – what’s with the serial killers, are they cool now and I just didn’t get the memo?; “pee dance” bladder; shave fish net lady; misshapen nipples – eeewwww; spiral perm – I had one, back in the 80’s and it was very disturbing; “he he he ha ha ha” – what in the hell would you be looking up that for?; 400 pounds leggings – that’s a lot of cloth people; “I peeked” sister pee – what in the hell????; and the most disturbing one of all, moist folds smelly – no comment.

Who knew so many freaks and geeks out in cyber space would find themselves on my page after some totally unrelated search?  I don’t mind really because it’s just more traffic for me and possibly some new fans.  The one person who found me by accident that I really wish didn’t is the ‘moist folds smelly’ dude.  That guy is just beyond disturbing and weird.  Who knows, maybe as a child he was dropped on his head or he didn’t get the love from his Mommy like Riley does.  Aaaaaawwww …………………….  But the one search that I can totally relate to: “I am slowly going crazy. 6,5,4,3,2,1 switch” – my theme song.

Please sign my Guestbook at the top right side of the page.  I’m curious as to who all checks out my stuff.  Cheers!  Kimberley

I’m sure that this little heart warming, or more accurately this little butt warming story has you asking a few questions and I will be more than happy to answer them for you.  Where is my family as I’m walking around in my skivvies filling the house with toxic fumes?  The boys went to Edmonton for a few days so I have the house to myself.  I very much enjoy walking around with next to nothing on and I can’t do that with an 11 year old boy in the house.  Well, I could but then we would have to take Brandt to therapy daily and an optical specialist since he would most likely attempt to gouge his eyeballs out upon seeing his mother scantily clothed.

Why do I wear black panties and not something adorable like pink panties with little bunnies on them?  First of all, black is slimming and I’m hopeful that if I get in an accident and the paramedics have to cut my pants off me they’ll think to themselves, “Wow.  For being a big gal she sure has a nice small butt.”  Hey, it could happen.  Also, just in case I have the shit scared out of me in the accident the black will hide the bum gravy that comes out in such a situation.  Third, and most importantly, when a size one cute little sweetheart wears pink panties with bunnies on them guys see maybe four or five cute fluffy little bunnies.  They fantasize about the chick being a Playboy Bunny and he’s the farmer feeding his carrot to her cute little pet bunnies.  Now, when a size 18 woman wears pink panties with little bunnies on them guys see about 83 fat nasty bunnies!  It’s not cute or sexy it’s a freakin’ wild rabbit farm on that big fat ass.  This ain’t no Playboy Bunny folks, this here is a bunch of angry, fat, hungry rabbits and they all want a piece of that carrot.  The last thing a big gal in pink bunny panties would see is the farmer running away fast shielding his carrot, afraid of it getting savagely gnawed off by the psycho rabbits.  Hence, the black panties.  It’s a lot less traumatic for all parties involved.

If you’re wondering why I’m carpet sweeping while talking on the phone, that’s easy.  First, I like to multi task, it frees up more time for me to sit and sip on some Spumante.  Second, moving around helps get the gas moving and the carpet sweeper makes just enough noise to cover up the noise of my bodily functions but not so loud that I can’t carry on a conversation.  Merlin has no issues with talking on the phone to his sisters or his Mom while “going to see a man about a horse” and he thinks they can’t hear him.  I would think the dead give away is when he FLUSHES!!  Hello!  He could at least try to mask the noise by running the bathroom tap and saying he’s doing the dishes.  Sheesh!

In case you’re wondering if there was a particular reason for me sharing this with you, there is.  As per usual for me, there was an “incident”.  When I had decided to shed some layers of clothing I first made sure all the blinds were closed.  I figured I was doing a service to our neighbours with this thoughtful act.  I know, I’m always thinking of others.  At some point in the next couple hours I had heard some activity outside and assumed the cops were visiting across the street as they usually do about once a week.  I opened one of the blinds and took a lookey-loo to see what the scoop was.  I didn’t see any uniformed beef cakes, just some boisterous kids walking by laughing and joking around so I focused my attention back on my phone call.  Apparently I forgot to close the blind.  Oooops.  I hate it when I do that. 

After the second passing of wind (it is pretty windy here in Lethbridge) and trying the old match trick without much luck I had the feeling I was being watched.  A sickening feeling came over me.  I broke out into a sweat, my mouth went dry, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my legs went all rubbery on me.  I slowly turned around, being careful so my failing legs wouldn’t totally give out on me and send me crashing to the floor.  I let out a gasp, and another little tooter I think, and dropped the phone.  There on our sidewalk were an older couple and their dog staring at me through one of our large front windows with their mouths hanging wide open.  Apparently these poor folks saw more than the meteor shower we had on this particular evening.  GREAT!  If having been seen at my dazzling best wasn’t bad enough, I realized they were the couple that moved into the house three doors down about two weeks ago!  I’m thinking that taking a coffee cake to them may have been a nicer way to welcome them to the neighbourhood.  I can’t imagine them inviting me into their home to snack on cake and chat after what they’ve seen.  I am curious though if they happened to notice if my black panties slimmed down the look of my fanny.  I’ll give it a month or two before I casually bring it up in conversation.  Smart thinking on my part.

One day last week when I got home from work there was a notice stuck to our front door from FedEx saying that they had tried to deliver a package but no one was home.  I hate it when that happens because I happen to be just a tad bit impatient and it will drive me totally crazy not knowing what the package is.  Yesterday was no different.  I called up FedEx and asked if I could pick it up somewhere in Lethbridge so they wouldn’t have to come back the next day.  That was a big fat no.  Apparently, after they try to deliver a package to you it gets taken back to Calgary at the end of the day and is brought back to Lethbridge the next day.  Sheesh!  That’s just dumb.  Anywhooooo, I asked her if I could find out who it was for and what the return address was.  Turns out that was an easy question.  She said it was for Mr. Brandt Anderson and it came from Ventura Associates Inc out of New York.  What the heck?  I had to idea who that was but they sounded important.  I asked her if there was any indication as to what the company was and what they may be sending to my 11 year old.  All she could tell me was that it was an envelope that contained legal documents.  Again, what the heck??  It kind of freaked me out that someone in New York was sending Brandt legal documents.

I asked Brandt if he had been on-line and filled out any kind of forms recently and he first said no, then changed his story.  He admitted that when we had found these Pokemon Spinners that he was looking for on some US web site he “accidentally” filled out the order form but he didn’t mean to.  Now, as every good parent knows, you never pass up the opportunity to scare the living shit out of your child, I mean teach your child a life lesson.  Since such an occasion arose I decided to run with it.  I told Brandt that we’ve asked him not to fill out any type of form on the internet not only for safety and privacy reasons but to avoid getting into a predicament like this.  As Brandt’s lower lip started quivering and his eyes started to look a little moist he asked me exactly what kind of a predicament was he in.  With the intentions of teaching my child a lesson about disobeying our rule concerning the computer I lied like a bloody sidewalk to him!  I told him that the toy store would have checked out his “information” after they processed the order and would have discovered that he didn’t actually have the money to pay for the toys.  As the tears started to well up in his eyes he asked what kind of papers would they be sending him.  I had to try very hard to not crack a smile as I came up with this humdinger, I said that I really hoped they weren’t papers from the FBI informing us that Brandt has been caught committing internet fraud.  He he he he.  Just as the tears were about to spill out of his scared little eyes the phone rang, it was Merlin.  I told him what was going on and asked him if he had any idea what all of this was about.  He pondered this for a bit then something clicked, he remembered entering Brandt in a draw and he wondered if this was possibly connected.  Brandt was relieved that he was possibly off the hook but the fear was still there.  GOOD!  Mission accomplished.

Brandt has a subscription to Sports Illustrated (a Christmas present from family members) and on the cover of one of the magazines there was an entry form for a Callaway Golf Sweepstakes.  Merlin took it upon himself to fill out the form and since the subscription was in Brandt’s name he figured his name should be on the form.  How thoughtful, what a good Dad.  Actually, the truth is Merlin is in need of new clubs and figured that since Brandt seems to have such good luck his name on the form might be a lucky charm.  Whatever the reason, Brandt was entered.  I decided to do a little investigating and checked out this Ventura Associates Inc on line to see if they were affiliated with Sports Illustrated somehow.  Turns out they are, kind of.  They’re a company that will run/manage contests and sweepstakes for other companies, one of those companies being Time Inc which appears to be the parent company for SI.  Interesting ……..  I read through the list of company names that they do business with and nothing else rang a bell with us so it was looking like there was a good chance the mysterious legal documents coming to Brandt had something to do with this draw.  It was all figured out within minutes.  Merlin would get the new clubs, sell his old clubs and Brandt would get the money from the sale.  They were pretty pumped about it, until I came along and burst their bubble ………..  I can be such a downer sometimes, they need to get used to that.

While the guys were drawing up their contract, ensuring they both would get what they wanted and were signing it in blood, I had been reading over the sweepstakes rules and regulations small print.  Funny thing about small print it actually is filled with very important, useful information.  Huhn ……… who knew?  I KNEW!  Did Merlin know?  No, Merlin did not know about the small print.  According to him he does NOT DO small print.  What a shame.  Tsk tsk tsk.  One very important detail in the small print noted that the person submitting the entry form must be 21 years of age in order for the entry to be valid.  Merlin is over 21.  Brandt is 11.  Unfortunately, Brandt’s name was on the entry form and not Merlin’s.  That might be a problem, ya think?  After moping around for about an hour Merlin then came up with the bright idea that he could say he’s Brandt or that Brandt is his middle name and he goes by that.  I had a sneaky feeling that wasn’t going to work.  And why did I have that feeling?  Because it says in the “small print” that you will have to give proof that you are who you say you are and that you are 21 or over before being able to collect your prize.  Again, Merlin doesn’t do small print.  Tsk tsk tsk.  Armed with that information he was still sure that he would be getting those clubs one way or another, ever the optimist.

When I got home from work today the envelope from FedEx had arrived (I signed a thing saying they could leave it without a signature) and Brandt and I couldn’t get into it fast enough.  Drumrolldrumrolldrumrolldrumrolldrumroll (I didn’t know how to type the sound of a drum roll so that will have to do and you’ll have to use your imagination).  Sure enough Brandt was a winner!!!  They don’t specify at this point whether you were one of the ten grand prize winners that get a Callaway driver and two hybrids or if you are one of the ten second place winners that gets a set of Callaway irons.  After everyone who was drawn has filled out and returned their acknowledgment/proof of identity form they draw for the ten first and ten second place prizes.  After reading the first paragraph that states he was drawn as a winner I asked Brandt if he was excited yet.  He looked at me over the top of his glasses, folded his arms across his chest and said that he had learned that when it comes to his Dad and anything concerning small print he shouldn’t waste his energy getting excited.  Smarty pants.  Turns out Brandt did the right thing and stayed aloof because the next two pages were filled with the rules and regulations and they basically said that the only way someone else could claim your prize was if you were dead and they were your beneficiary or  surviving spouse!!!  When Merlin got home and read up to this point he was still certain that he could “schmooze” his way into taking over this prize.  But Brandt and I knew what the third page was all about.  The third page has a section where you fill out certain personal information about yourself including your social insurance number.  I was pretty sure that this company would be using the social insurance numbers of the winners to look up their LEGAL name and their ACTUAL age!!!  As the twinkle in Merlin’s eye was starting to fade a tad I noticed that there was still a slight glimmer of hope in there.  Then he too read the third page.  Not only do you have to fill out the section with your date of birth, SIN, your employer’s name and address, your family tree that goes back three generations, your first grade report card, a lock of your hair and a smear of your blood but then you have to take the page and have a Notary Public sign it!!  I’m not joking.  I think it might be pretty hard to fudge all that info but then to try and use it to snow over a Notary Public would require a miracle.  I could be wrong, but that would be the first time EVER!!!  Ya-huhn.

A grand prize of $875.00 and a second prize of $880.00.  That’s not an error, the second prize is worth $5.00 more than the grand prize, that makes no sense to me, but then again, nothing about golf makes sense to me.  New Callaway Clubs …… so close, yet so far.  So far away it’s like the SMALL PRINT on the last line of the eye test chart at the optometrist’s office.  Ha ha ha.  Merlin’s getting a little pouty because Brandt and I keep ribbing him about this and he says we’re making him feel dumb.  I suppose he’s right.  How very SMALL of us!  Gosh, I couldn’t resist that one.  But, I have to give the guy credit, he’s still holding out a smidgen of optimism that he will prevail and he will collect those clubs.  I told him to give it up, the dream is over.  He said that it’s not over till the fat lady sings.  Well sunshine, ahem ahem, “La la la la la la la la!”

The end of March 2006 I got a phone call on a Friday morning and was offered the job that I currently have.  That was awesome news!  In order to start my new job I needed to get a Criminal Record check done.  And no, that is NOT a problem, I have a spotless record I’m very proud to say.  Brandt had been home from school all week pretty sick and was finally starting to feel a little more normal by Friday, thank goodness.  It had been a busy and stressful week with my little Sunshine under the weather and I was dog tired so when I got up that day I decided to just hang out in my comfy clothes all day.  After I got the call about the job Brandt and I decided a little fresh air would do him some good so I slapped on my hat from Disneyland, stuck my wedding ring on and we headed down to the cop shop for the Crim Check. 

We got to the station and this officer handed me the paper work and said to start filling it out while he finishes up with this other couple.  Oakaly doakaly!  Mr. Po-lice man came back to me just as I was finishing up, he scaned the form and said it looked fine to him so he now needed to get some ID from me.  I smiled at him and said, “No problemo dude!”  As I fished around in my purse (Merlin calls it a feed sack because of it’s size) looking for my wallet I said to him, “Ha ha, wouldn’t that be funny if I didn’t have my driver’s license on me?”  He gave a little chuckle and grinned, then like Jekyll and Hyde he flipped his mood and got all serious and said, “No, it wouldn’t be ma’am.”  Lighten up Francis!  Sheesh.  I finally found my wallet and I started thumbing through my cards looking for my driver’s license.  I gave him my Alberta Health Care card which was fine, but he said he needed to see some picture ID, like my license.  After going through all my cards and not finding it I let out a little nervous titter, shrugged my shoulders  and started over again.  I must just be blind.  After going through my cards about seven times I decided it wasn’t there.  Wow, what a coinky-dink, a bad coinky-dink.  I went outside and checked the floor of my vehicle and turned up nothing.  Huhn …….  So I went back in and then the stuffed uniform asked me, “Ma’am, did you drive here?”  I said yes.  He then said to me in a sort of quiet, serious tone of voice, “I hate to have to say this but since I do know you are driving yourself around I need you to produce your license within 24 hours or I will have to fine you for driving without it.”  Oh no he di-nt!!  Sadly, yes he di-id.  That’s how a bad day can turn on ya people.

Brandt and I headed home and we ransacked the house.  NOTHING!  This was not looking good for me.  I called off the search and rescue mission and called the licensing place closest to us and asked if I would need to have a new picture taken or was my last one recent enough.  The chick asked what my license looked like, I told her, and she determined that I wouldn’t need a new mug shot.  Wahoo!  At least that was good news.  I gave Brandt some sort of sugary crappy treat before heading back out the door in the hopes that it would give him a boost of energy to keep him going as he was still a little run down from being sick.  And we were off once again …….  When we got to the licensing place things looked a little grim.  I totally forgot that it was the last Friday of the month so naturally there was a line up just about out the door.  Pardon my language, but, “Oh shit!”  I tried to whisper to Brandt that if he started hacking, sneezing and wiping his snot on his hand then ran around touching stuff people might want to get us out of there quick and skootch us to the front of the line.  Before I got the whole idea out he was gone.  Great.  They have bowls of candy on the front counter and from where I was standing all I could see was this little hand reaching up between people and snarfing a couple candies out of each bowl.  I have to give the little bugger credit where credit is due, he’s quick and oddly, very discreet.  Brandt found his way back to me and gave me a nice big hug around my waist, how sweet.  I looked down at him to give him an appreciative motherly smile and I let out a little squawk.  His cheeks were huge and all bumpy!  As I was freaking out thinking that Brandt had the mumps everyone around me was staring at me and they all had that ‘great, a psycho woman’ look on their faces.  Admittedly, they weren’t wrong.  A bit of green spittle trickled out of the corner of Brandt’s mouth and he slurped it back in and I realized that it was not the mumps, it was just a few too many candies stuffed in his mouth.  Awesome.

38 minutes later we got to the front and I started the paper work.  Yup, more paper work.  Isn’t it funny how I absolutely hate filling out paper work and yet I work in an office.  I’m my own oxymoron in a way I suppose.  Now, if you’re going to quote me on that please don’t leave out the ‘oxy’ part, it kind of changes the meaning.  Anyways, the gal was just about to swipe my debit card when she kind of froze, got a little flushed and said to me, “Ooops.  I guess I was wrong when I talked to you earlier.  You DO need to have a new picture taken.  Sorry.”  What????  Good gravy!  There I was wearing my “Let’s Monkey Around” t-shirt with the horny little monkey on it, I didn’t have a stitch of make-up on so the bags under my eyes were visible from 10 feet away and my huge zit/goiter was standing out like a $2 hooker at a convent convention and I was wearing my ball cap with my hair sticking out from the sides looking like it was trying to escape the darkness under the cap.  Oh crap.  I had a feeling this was going to be an awesome picture, I decided I would have to ask for extra copies so I could make Christmas cards out of them.  When I got around to the mug shot area the lady manning the camera told me that I would have to take my hat off.  Um, I don’t think so.  She insisted.  So I yanked it off and stuck my face in hers all bug eyed and said, “Are you sure about that?”  I happened to know for a fact that when I take my hat off what by standers see is very disturbing.  When my hat is on it’s like my hair rebels for being stuck in there and decides to have a party that gets out of hand and there is way too much drinking going on that leads to wrestling and puking and the mess that is left at the end of the day is the rats nest I call my hair.  Old shutter bug suggests that I go home, get cleaned up and come back.  Wow!  Isn’t she smart.  She belongs at the head of the class!!!

So we went back home.  All the way home I could hear Brandt sitting in the back seat crunching away on the pound of candies he mooched.  I was thinking that there just might be a sugar rush on the way.  Fun!  Once I was finally cleaned up and looking half way decent we mad a mad dash for the door, again!  We now had to really hurry because the licensing place was only open for another 45 minutes.  Just before we left I noticed that Brandt’s one eye was drooping a little and I assumed he was getting tired so I grabbed some cookies for him for more energy and we were off again.  FYI, I assumed wrong.  It turned out he was just pretending to be a Pirate.  On our way back to the licensing place Brandt started to sing, “I am slowly going crazy, 1 2 3 4 5 6 switch.  Crazy going slowly am I, 6 5 4 3 2 1 switch.”  Funny thing is, this song doesn’t have an actual ending!!!!!  Imagine an eight year old all hopped up on cookies, candies chock full of food dye, Dimetapp (it makes Brandt hyper, not sleepy) and apple juice singing at the top of his lungs and progressively going faster and faster.  This is just another one of the reasons I drink by the way.

We got back there and luckily the line was almost non-existent but we had to start the paper work all over again.  Sigh ……  There are nice benches on either side of the door to sit on and I assumed Brandt had parked himself on one of them.  Again, I assumed wrong.  I should really stop doing that.  While I was doing paper work and getting my pic taken, for the cover of Vogue naturally, my little angel was pilfering through the candy dishes again.  By the time we were heading back to the cop shop Brandt’s eyes were darting from side to side like a cat on catnip and he was pretty much vibrating from head to toe from the sugar and the food dye and he was now singing his adorable little song just like Alvin and the Chipmunks!  Fast and very high pitched.  My right eye started to twitch.  This was not good.  Oh, before I forget, you don’t actually get your driver’s license immediately, oh no, you have to wait to get it in the mail in about 7 to 10 business days.  I was instead handed a little piece of paper that I was told would be my temporary license.  Uh huhn.  Great.

Back at the O-K Corral (the police station) a bit of a line up had formed.  This was not turning out to be much fun at all.  I was feeling all stressed out by now and I do not handle stress well at all.  Not only was my eye twitching but now my right shoulder was jumping up and down and after every second shoulder jump I would make these odd Pigmy sounding series of “clicks, ticks and pops” out of the left side of my mouth and all the while Brandt was spinning in circles taking out anyone who got in his way and he was still SINGING!  “I am slowly going crazy, 1 2 3 4 5 6 switch.  Crazy going slowly am I, 6 5 4 3 2 1 switch.”  I decided that this would be my theme song if I ever needed one.  The stress was mounting   I got to the desk eventually looking like I was either having a seizure or I was totally tweaking from my last Meth fix.  For some reason all the coppers behind the counter were keeping an eye on me and they had their hands ever so casually resting on their stun guns or pepper spray or whatever they had on their belts.  I really didn’t know why.  My officer friend was staring at me very intensely, probably checking to see how dilated my pupils were, and he asked, “Did you find your license?”  As I slid my temporary paper document to him and I grunted out, “That would …  click click pop tick click ….. be a big ….. click pop click click …… fat no.”  He backed up slightly and quickly scanned the area behind himself most likely checking for back up and said, “We actually require PICTURE ID for a Criminal Record check.”  Okay, now I was pretty sure I didn’t hear him correctly, I can’t have, because it sounded like he said I needed PICTURE ID.  I asked him, “What ….. click tick tick pop?”  As he broke out into a sweat he whispered, “Picture ID.”  By now both of my shoulders were jumping around, my nose was twitching like a bunny on crack and Brandt had successfully knocked over two chairs, one large plant and a very cute, young, stunned looking recruit.  Rookies.  I looked the nice policeman in the eye (through wildly flapping lashes) and said, “I don’t …… pop click pop pop tick …. think that …… click click click ……. is going to ……. tick pop click click ….. happen today sir.”

He must have been in a very good mood because he decided that he would make an exception just this one time.  Of course his decision had nothing to do with the fact that I was looking and behaving slightly ‘odd-ish’.  It was all about the mood, yup, that’s it.  After that whole episode I’m pretty sure they were expecting to get an 8 page document on me with my Crim Check but they would be sadly disappointed.  Sorry coppers!  I’m clean.

Just to let you know, I did find my license a couple of months later, at a long weekend Check Stop!  Turns out that when I had my accident in Medicine Hat in January when we were there for Brandt’s hockey tournament the cop there had stuck my license BEHIND my registration in my little insurance plastic folder thing in my glove box.  When I had gotten out of my vehicle I had slipped on the ice, bonked my head pretty good on the ice and ended up with a moderate concussion.  In all the hoop-la and brain jiggling I guess I didn’t even notice that he didn’t actually hand it right back to me.  I almost crapped my pants when I ended up inadvertently handing the officer TWO driver’s licenses!  Apparently it’s not legal to have two in your possession.  Who knew?  Actually, for once, I did know.  That’s why I almost crapped my pants.  Luckily this guy was very nice, he listened to the whole story, felt bad for me, noted that my eye was starting to twitch, said he would let it go this time, took my old license and snapped it in half and said he would get rid of it for me.

Naturally I do blame this whole schmozzle on that cop in Medicine Hat.  Click tick click pop click.  But I’m good now.  Click click pop.  Really!  Tick pop click.

When something really crappy happens to someone they say, “That’s Murphey’s Law for ya.”  Hey, I even say that on occasion.  Sadly, I won the talent search for the poster child for Murphey’s Law.  I believe that the picture they used for the poster was my grade eight school picture.  I was wearing a dorky pink sweater I bought for $8.00 at the SAAN store, I had on these pink and gold tear drop earrings (they were the tears of the fashion police I believe), and I had this beautiful, um, mullet going on.  I parted my hair off to the one side, feathered it back and the back was long and curly from my recent spiral perm.  I was so cool, you know it people.  I was a peach!  Anyways, back to the Murphey issue.  If Murphey’s Law is so horrible then why won’t Prime Minister Harper get rid of Murphey’s Law and save Canadians from it’s wrath?  Like duh!!!!  Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?  Am I the only smart person who could figure this out?  Sheesh ………..

This actually happened to me a few years ago.  I was looking for a nice outfit for Merlin’s work Christmas party and went into Sears and found a really nice one.  I noticed that the price between the XL and the 1X increased by $15.00.  Well, this didn’t sit well with me.  I asked the closest sales lady why that was the case.  She said, and I quote, “Well, it takes more material to make the outfit to cover you because you’re bigger.”  Oh no she di’nt!!!  Inside I was trying to decide if I was going to cry or bitch slap her.  Instead, without missing a beat, I looked at her and said, “Oh …… I get it.  It’s just like how your make-up costs much more than mine because you’re so ugly it takes way more to cover up your nasty face.  Right?”  And with that logic being shared with the old hag bag I turned around, grabbed Merlin by the elbow, stuck my nose (and big fat ass) in the air and walked right out the door.  Boo yah baby!

I had a roommate one time that was a pretty good guy, just a little, well, different.  One day I’m in my room getting changed and he just walks on in and ends up getting a good look at me in my adorable little white lace bra and panties with cute little bows on them (this was when I was actually thin and had a good body and wouldn’t burn your eye balls if you laid eyes on me in my skivvies).  I froze for a few seconds, as did he, then screamed.  I screamed, he didn’t, he just kept staring.  I must confess that before I freaked out I had actually taken this as a compliment, but then I came to my senses.  For a couple of days I couldn’t look him in the eye and felt so horridly uncomfortable around him I pretty much avoided him.  Being the sweetheart that he was he decided that he had to make things right and put me at ease around him again.  A normal guy would have bought flowers and apologized while going beet red and would promise to never let it happen again and maybe even offer to install a door handle that locks on my bedroom door.  This guy however was not normal in any way, shape or form.  Unfortunately for me he had his own logic.  I was in my room, fully dressed thank goodness, and he knocks and asks if he can come in and talk to me.  I’m a nice kind of gal so I tell him to come on in.  He walks in and I get a big old eye full of him in nothing but his little bikini briefs yanked up over his hips, wedgy style, and crammed so high up his butt crack I’m pretty sure he was flossing his internal organs.  I happen to know about the flossing because he very proudly did a little twirl around and shook what his Mama gave him.  As I’m beginning to dry heave he says to me, “Okay!  Now we’re even!  I’ve seen yours and you’ve seen mine.  Life’s good now right?”  No, life was NOT good now.  The next day was my first day of therapy …………..

A couple of weeks ago I had woken up earlier than usual so I had some spare time before work and decided it could best be utilized by going to Starbucks.  We have a fairly new Starbucks near our house so I decided to head there.  As I was backing out of our driveway I saw our neighbour, Freaky Fred, standing on his lawn glaring at me and I thought to myself, “I wonder if he gets up every day and decides to be an asshole.  Is it the first thought on his mind or does that attitude develop over breakfast.”  I decided it was probably something that was a knee jerk reaction when his eyes opened.  Just seeing his ugly mug turns my stomach every time.   And since my stomach was turned before I had a chance to have my Lattè I was feeling the urge to be a bitch.  That urge turned into a desire which then turned into a life or death need.  Yup, it was decided, I needed to be a bitch at some point this day.

It had been raining like crazy for awhile so there were puddles everywhere.  When you drive past Henderson Lake by the campground and Exhibition grounds there are these mini lakes running along the sides of the road.  Brandt loves it if I hit them at full speed with the wipers whipping back and forth mega fast like they are on Speed, Crack and Red Bull, all at once.  As the muddy puddle water sprays in a wall higher than our vehicle on both sides Brandt bounces up and down in his seat yelling, “Motor boat!  Motor boat!  Motor boat!”  I’m gripping the wheel with both hands and leaning forward so far my nose is almost hitting the windshield so I can see where I’m going and try to keep control of Franny (my vehicle for those of you who don’t know that) and I always let out a loud, boisterous, “Wwwwwaaaaahhhhhhoooooooo!!!”  I get such a high from it, I swear I have even had an orgasm a time or two when I’ve been able to feel good old Franny hydro- plaining a bit.  Boo-yah baby!!  On this particular day the little lakes were orgasmically full.  Just looking at them gave me a little flutter in my nether regions.  Uh huhn, you know it.  Then I saw my opportunity to be a total be-otch.  This was just too good to be true.

There’s this total loser, freak of nature, nasty ass ugly weirdo that runs around the lake.  He drives Merlin and I crazy.  Picture this …….. a guy in his mid fifties maybe, he fake n’ bakes year round and has this radio active looking glow to him.  It ain’t pretty people, it just ain’t pretty.  He dyes his hair trying to make it look naturally strawberry blond but he isn’t fooling anyone.  Next to his overly toasted skin his hair looks like dried out straw scattered haphazardly around his chrome dome which, by the way, looks freakishly small for his body.  Now, this is the new millennium, it is not the 80’s.  Correct?  I know that, you know that but freakazoid doesn’t apparently.  He wears these shiny shorty short shorts like Richard Simmons wears (he’s still stuck in the 80’s too) and for some horridly disturbing reason he has cut the liner out!  Oh yes, you read that right.  There is no liner in his shorts so when he runs and you make the mistake of checking out his shorts and the sides flap open where the slit is up the side you unfortunately will see his sorry excuse for a penis.  And with the way he runs those shorts flap open an awful lot.  He runs scootching his butt from side to side as if he’s trying to get the biggest wedgie out of his butt crack without actually picking at it.  Ack …..  sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little just thinking about that horrible sight.  I saw it over two years ago and I STILL have nightmares.  It’s awful.  On the up side my eyes have stopped burning finally.  Phew.  Be forewarned, if you ever see this guy running, try to look away as quickly as possible so you won’t scar yourself for life. 

His tank top, like his shorts, is way too loose and shows more of him than one would like to see.  He doesn’t wear a muscle shirt, that insinuates that there are actually muscles present under the shirt, so it’s definitely just a tank top.  I wouldn’t even call it a wife beater because I have the feeling he doesn’t have a wife.  When he runs and his tank top is flying free in the breeze you get another lovely sight.  His flabby beer gutt sloshes around like an over sized water balloon, very different from Santa’s belly shaking like a bowl full of jelly, trust me.  The sides of his shirt are open almost right down to his waist and if the wind catches it the right, or should I say the wrong, way you get a full view of his chesticles.  Ack ………. gagging again.  Shiver.  Not only do I still have nightmares about his chesticles, I don’t think I will EVER get over seeing them.  They’re nasty!  If you don’t know what chesticles are they are man boobs.  His are so big I think he needs to get a bra for them.  And not just any old bra, but probably an 18 hour bra with titanium reinforced side panels, double under wires, and a band across that back that is wide enough to accommodate at least 8 hook and eyes.  They’re THAT big!  They sag something fierce.  Ack ………. I should really stop talking about him so I can stop envisioning him.  He’s just plumb icky!!!

Anywhoo ………………. back to my original story about being in the right place at the right time to be the biggest be-otch possible!   As I’m checking out the mini mud filled lakes beside me I see “IT” (him) in the distance.  I knew right away it was chesticle man, no one runs quite like him, it’s a very distinctive swish he has with his behind and unfortunately for me I could see that his left chesticle kept popping out of the side of his tank top and was flopping up and down in the breeze.  Shiver …………… ack ack ack ………. shiver.  It’s very traumatizing to bring that visual back to my mind.  Give me a minute, I need to put my head between my knees, take some deep breaths and regroup.

Thanks, I’m better now.  Like I was saying, Chesticle Chuck was shimmying towards me and towards one of the biggest lakes between the road and the path he was running on right at the end of the parking area.  This was too good to be true.  All I had to do was slow down just a smidgen so I could time this perfectly.  Slowly creeping along, slowly, biding my time, being patient (that’s VERY hard for me to do), waiting for the perfect moment.  Three, two, one, ACCELERATE!!!!  Go Franny go!  Wwwwwaaaaahhhhhhhoooooooo!!!!!!!  Oh hell yah!  That was wicked!  I soaked Chesticle Chuck from head to toe with muddy, cold, stinky, bug infested rain water.  That was more than orgasmic, that was multi-orgasmic!  I think I actually felt a little twinge in my nipples, it was THAT good.  I checked out my review mirror and was more than satisfied with what I saw.  He was standing there with his voodoo shrunken head in his bright construction vest orange hands and he was shaking worse than the coin operated bed in that sleazy motel Merlin took me to the night he got me drunk and took advantage of me.  Ha ha ha, just kidding.  I wasn’t drunk.  It looked like he was crying!  Bah ha ha ha ha!  Payback for the unwanted peep shows on his nasty nipples and puny peeny.  Boo yah!  What a fabulous way to start my day. 

Sigh …………. Sometimes, it just feels good to be a total bitch.

I got to work today and found a half naked, buff, sexy man on my desk.  Sadly, he’s only about 5 3/4” high and he’s plastic.  On the upside, I spent a whole day with him and he kept his mouth shut, he didn’t look at any other women and he didn’t fart or burp!  He’s a definite keeper.  Can he get any better than that?  Actually, yes he can.  He has thick looking wavy brown hair, no hair on his chest or back, he has chocolatey brown mysterious eyes, his arms are a mass of bulging muscles, you could wash your clothes on his six pack and he fills out his jeans very nicely.  He’s standing there in his bare feet with the button of his jeans popped open, his left hand casually slid into his pocket and he has a tear in the left knee of his pants which gives him a boyish innocence.  I’ve saved the best for last ……. he holds your beer can for you!  My life is now complete!  Boo-yah!  It didn’t take me long to snap a pop in his hand, I didn’t think I should be cracking a beer open at 9:00 a.m. at work so I decided a diet cola would have to suffice.  I did find that I had to be careful when I grabbed him to have a sip of whatever he’s holding because I end up grasping him in his naughty spot.  “Ooops, I’m sorry, I thought that my beer was on tap and I was flipping the lever.  Innocent mistake.”  He he he!

After I had already groped my new little boy toy, danced him all around my desk and showed him off to my co-workers I decided that I should take the time and actually get to know him.  We sat down at my desk, he couldn’t stop staring at me.  Gosh, he made me blush.  I felt like he was trying to read my soul through my eyes.  Sigh …. how dreamy.  I just love it when a guy gives you his undivided attention, what a novel idea!  I just sat there with my elbow on my desk, my chin resting in my hand staring right back at him.  Funny though, I couldn’t get a very good “read” on him.  I felt like he was a total mystery to me, hence the mysterious eyes I suppose.  I decided to break the ice first and introduced myself, he just kept smiling.  What a sweetie.  I waited for him to tell me his name, but he just kept smiling.  He’s definitely the strong, silent type.  Those are good qualities in a man by the way.

After about an hour of silence I realized that my little hunkster was a mute!  No wonder he couldn’t tell me his name.  Poor baby!  How insensitive of me for not clueing in sooner.  I should have figured it out because every time I would take a sip of my pop with him holding steady and firm to the can he would graze my ear but didn’t whisper sweet nothings to me.  I thought he was just a little shy.  How was I to know he was a mute?  Since he couldn’t talk and tell me his name I decided to give him one myself.  It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.  There are so many cool names I had to choose from and I didn’t know where to start at first, so I sat down and started making a list.

At first I came up with some normal names like Jackson Matheson, Michael Steward, Christopher Bowden and so on.  They did nothing for me, they sucked.  Then I started going through the names of guys I went to school with but decided that my new little man looked nothing like any of them.  Also, a good percentage of the guys I went to school with are ‘handsome challenged’ and my gut flops at the thought of them being half naked in front of me.  It would be a complete tragedy if every time I looked at my cute little beef cake I felt the urge to purge.  Yeesh, not good.  So then I entertained the idea of naming him after a celebrity.  Not a bad idea.

There are some famous cute guys out there I wouldn’t mind seeing half naked in front of me serving me booze.  Like David Boreanaz, Shemar Moore (humina humina), George Eads, Nick Lechay, LL Cool J, Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson, and did I happen to mention Shemar Moore?  That boy must be the hottest piece of chocolately sexiness that has EVER walked this Earth.  He truly IS God’s gift to women (neurotic housewives mostly).  And no, I didn’t accidentally forget Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey.  See, I don’t like Brad Pitt because he ditched Jennifer Aniston and she’s so dang sweet.  I still think he and Angelina were doing the coochy coochy on the set of their movie while he was still married to Jen even though he denies it.  And Matthew McConaughey …. yes I think he’s gorgeous, but if he was half naked in front of me he would have his shirt off and if he had his shirt off his bare armpits would be “out there” and the boy does not wear deodorant!!  Ack!  Just thinking about how he must smell makes me … ack ack … gag.  I would HATE to be around him when he’s hot and … ack ack ack … bothered and sweating and everything. Ack!  Okay, moving on … ack … before I hurl all over … ack … my computer.  Ack!

After the thought of Mr. Stinky BO Bod being my new play thing made me so sick I was kind of turned off of celebrity names.  So I decided that it would be better to go back to the idea of making up a name myself.  I had already tried the normal names and that wasn’t working for me so I went out on a limb and decided to come up with some, well, different names.  He he he.  First I thought of Eric.  Sounds normal enough, until you add his last name of Shun.  Eric Shun.  Tee hee hee.  Not good enough.  Peter, Peter Draggen.  Nope.  He fills out his jeans but not enough to live up to that name.  Next!  Dougie Style.  Yuck, I’m allergic to dogs.  Moving on ….. Colin.  What a lovely name.  Colin Forsecks.  Ew, I don’t want to think of him as the kind of man who would think he could call women up for sex.  Kind of trampy.  How about Barry?  Makes me think of Barry White and I love his voice (no, I don’t want to see him half naked, ew).  Barry McCokiner.  That sounds a little presumptuous that he would have enough junk in his shed to actually have to bury it.  He looks capable of maybe tamping the dirt down a couple of inches but that’s hardly burying something.  I do remember a co-worker mentioning the name Skip Foreplay and I kind of like that one but I was afraid I would look at my sweet booze holder and think of my co-worker.  Eck.  Sorry, that can’t happen, I work with him.  This was proving to be much harder than I thought.  Ha ha ha!  I just said harder and I’m talking about a buff guy and sex.  Funny ha ha!  Get it?  Get it?  Hard.  Ha ha ha.

I took another approach and dipped into the pool of more exotic names hoping I could come up with something more fitting.  Eaton.  That sounds very European.  How about Eaton Beever.  Um, that would be a big old fat nasty no.  Houlden.  Tres chic.  I think that name needs a last name with a French zest to it.  I got it!  Houlden Appaire.  Good one.  However, Appaire makes me think of Au Pair, a french nanny, and I wouldn’t want to think of him holding the nanny’s pair.  Icky, especially if she isn’t even legal.  I bet I could go to jail for being connected to a pedophile and I don’t think I would like that very much.  Nope, don’t think I would.  Hhhhmmm …… Craven.  Craven has a bit of a Native appeal to it, I like it.  Now I just need a last name that would compliment it well.  Moorehead!  Craven Moorehead!  Hey, I kind of like that one.  But, my beer stud doesn’t really look like a Craven, weren’t Craven A’s cigarettes?  I don’t like guys who smoke so Craven is done like dinner.

Then it happened.  A total epiphany.  It was like I went from Mallory Keaton (my ‘nickname’ sake) to Alex P. Keaton in 0.002 seconds.  For those of you who are Mallory’s like me, that’s pretty darn fast.  For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about at all, check out ‘Family Ties’ on the net.  One of my favourite shows of all time.  I used to want to marry Michael J. Fox.  He was SO cute.  I somehow managed to live up the nickname of Mallory over the years.  Basically because Mallory was a stereotypical blond in a brunette’s colouring.  But she wasn’t dumb really.  Actually, not at all now that I think about it.  She just had a few brain farts over the years.  Well, maybe a few times a day.  Okay, so that’s not exactly true either, it was more like a few times an hour.  Sigh ………… Sadly, that is me.  I’ve had so many brain farts/Mallory moments in my life the producers of ‘Family Ties’ are in contract negotiations with me to be Mallory in their made for TV movie.  The best part is that I wouldn’t need to rehearse because I’m a natural, a total shoe-in.  How cool would that be?  I would get paid to be on TV and act just as flaky and absent minded as usual.  Wicked!!  I have a feeling that I’ve been side tracked or something while typing.  Yup, definitely off track here.  I need a few minutes to go back and read what I’ve written so I can get back to what I was saying.  Hold on ……………  Oh yah!  I remember now.  My moment of complete and total genius!  I found a name for my rock hard bodied little booze can holding piece of plastic meat.  Are you ready for this?  Sit down and take a deep breath and let it out slowly ………  Here it is.  Doo do do doooooooooooo (my trumpet attention getting thingy) ……… his first name is Ryder.  Are you excited?  Are you prepared for the climactic announcement?  Alright, you don’t have to swear and get nasty, I’m going to tell you, just relax.  Thank you.  His name is Ryder, Ryder Tilldon.  Brilliant, I know.  Sheer genius.  Oh please, that’s enough, you’re applause and standing ovation are embarrassing me.  Thank you, thank you so much.  (Bowing, curtseying, waving, bowing, blowing kisses, waving, bowing, walking away waving……)  I can see my work here is done …………

Okay, so it was a couple of weeks before Christmas and I was a little down in the dumps.  It was a Thursday night which means Merlin has hockey.  The tradition I’ve had for a few years now is that on Thursday nights I get a bottle of Spumante to drink while I’m doing laundry and watching the good Thursday shows.  The first load of laundry is folded with expert precision and it’s set carefully into my laundry basket.  By the time I get to my fourth load of laundry and the bottom of the Spumante bottle the clothes come out of the dryer and are chucked over handed into my laundry basket, stomped on if I need to squish them down to keep them in and I leave the basket on the floor in the middle of the playroom for Merlin to bring up in the morning.  It’s a great routine I tell ya, it’s been working well for me.

Anyways, this particular Thursday I had decided that a 750 ml bottle of Spumante wasn’t going to be enough therapy so I bought myself a magnum, 1500 mls.  Yum.  I also decided that I could perk myself up and feel better if I stopped and bought some Crazy Cakes to take home to share with the guys.  When I got there I decided that I should buy a dozen of the mini cupcakes so we could each have four little pieces of pure, edible bliss.  As I stood there and told the lady which ones I wanted I kept getting distracted by the sight of the big ‘Tickled Pink’ cupcakes.  You can have them with either vanilla or chocolate cake and they have this big fluffy swirl of soft pink butter cream frosting.  Mmmmmmm ….. This might sound crazy, but I swear I heard one of the chocolate ‘Tickled Pink’ cupcakes begging me to take it home.  “Kimberley, please, take me home.  I want to see what the inside of your stomach looks like.  I bet it’s warm and cozy.  It’s been a life long dream of mine to get a personal tour of your gastrointestinal areas.  Please, please, buy me!”  I’m not one to crush the dreams of others so I purchased the poor cupcake so I could full fill it’s dreams.  I know, I’m such a good person.  I have a big heart.  Please, no need to applaud, I do these things out of the kindness of my heart.

When I got home Brandt was cranky and talking back and Merlin was in a hurry to get going so he could pick up a new stick and hockey tape so I decided that the cupcakes could be shared the next day.  Once I had my Spumante chilled and Brandt was in bed I popped open the bottle, grabbed a glass and the cupcakes and headed upstairs to my room.  I figured I could pour myself a glass of Spumante and decide upstairs which cupcakes I would get and which ones I would give to the guys.  Everyone knows that I think much clearer when under the influence of Spumante.  Helloooooo.

The ‘Lil Lemon’ is one of my favourites.  There really isn’t anything in the world that can satisfy my sweet tooth like a cupcake slathered in lemon butter cream frosting.  It’s practically orgasmic.  Trust me.  I decided that just one little cupcake would be okay to have and the next day I would only get three of them.  I popped that little gem in my mouth, swished it around to savor the taste and swallowed with my eyes closed so that I could envision it sliding down my throat in all it’s sweet lemony-ness.  I washed it down with a few gulps of Spumante.  Since I had just cleansed my palateI decided I could treat myself to just one more little piece of pleasure and only have two the next day.  The guys would probably assume I was dieting or something.  I decided that the ‘C Cup’, the coconut one, would be a great choice because I knew the guys don’t do coconut.  It wouldn’t be very nice of me to give them a cupcake they wouldn’t want, that would be rude.  Down the hatch it went, followed by a splash, a generous splash, of Spumante.  I stood up from the bed to take my pants off and got all tangled up in them and stumbled a bit then stubbed my big toe on my dresser.  That hurt!  It throbbed and even bled a bit.  Ouch!  I was going to take some Ibuprofen for the pain but decided I shouldn’t mix booze and drugs.  I’m smart.  As I was wondering what could make my toe feel better and possibly help lift my spirits the cupcakes came into my peripheral vision.  I thought another little cupcake just might be the answer.  I would be down to nine but that would be okay because we could each have three, it would still be equal.  I decided on the ‘Fairy Cake’ one.  Vanilla cake with coloured sparkles in it with mint green coloured butter cream frosting laced with more coloured sprinkles.  I know it’s green, a boy colour, but I know how Merlin and Brandt’s minds think.  They most likely wouldn’t want to eat something called “Fairy’.  That’s just so not macho.  I was really doing them a favour by getting rid of it.  I felt a little guilty for eating three of the cupcakes before they even knew I had bought them, however, the guilt didn’t last long though, I washed it down with Spumante.  I cleansed my palate and I cleansed my conscience.

I figured that I should eat something healthy to balance out the sweet cupcakes and the Spumante but decided that I probably wouldn’t make it down the stairs as my toe was still very sore.  I didn’t want to fall and break my leg or something or even bleed on the stairs.  Blood is hard to get out of carpet so by staying upstairs I was saving us money on carpet cleaning.  How thoughtful of me.  There is one cupcake called ‘Full Carat’.  It’s rich, like the people who buy diamonds, and it’s healthy because it’s made with carrots and it’s frosting is made of cream cheese.  Well what do you know, I can hit two healthy food groups in one little bite sized cupcake.  Both carrots and cheese are in the Canada Food Guide so it was a wise choice.  I’ve heard that you should drink lots of fluids when eating to help with digestion so I had me a little more Spumante to aid in my digestion.  How smart I am.  I also noticed the ‘Monkey Business’ cupcake sitting there, it’s made with bananas, it even has a dried banana slice on the top.  Again, a healthy choice.  Ooh, the peanut butter one, “Oh Nuts” would also be beneficial as peanut butter has protein.  Wow, I’ve never ate so healthy in all my life.  I didn’t want the peanut from the top to get caught in my throat so I chased it with some Spumante.  It would be awful if it got stuck in my throat and I choked to death.  How awful that would be.  All this healthy eating and drinking gave me a little gas and gas makes me bloat in my chest and that makes my bra feel tight and uncomfortable so I stripped off the rest of my clothes and laid on my bed to recover.  I felt like what I needed was a good crap to help lesson the gas and bloating, and one thing that gets my bowels moving every time is a nice latte or mocha.  And what do you know, there just happened to be a ‘Mocha Meltdown’ cupcake with a coffee bean on the top.  Lattes and mochas are better for me than a laxative so I figured it was a wise choice.  Just to make sure I flushed the coffee bean through my system I had a little sippy poo of water.  Yah right!  As if.  It was Spumante.

I checked out the box and realized that I now had five cupcakes left and there are three of us.  I didn’t want to give someone only one cupcake while two of us had two each, that wouldn’t be nice.  The only logical thing to do was eat two more cupcakes.  “Sir Crave A Lot’, a chocolate cake and chocolate butter cream frosting piece of heaven and the ‘Peppo Mint Patty’, a chocolate cake with peppermint frosting and crushed candy canes on top, were the two I chose.  I must say, they went down pretty easily.  I noticed that I was starting to feel a little tipsy from the Spumante and figured that it would help sober me up if I absorbed it with food.  Since cake is a very porous food I decided that I should eat some more cupcakes.  There were only three left and I first thought I should save them for the next day but rationalized that one teeny, tiny little bite sized cupcake would appear to be pretty chintzy and I didn’t want the guys to think that I was a cheapskate so to keep their opinion of me pure and angelic I ate the last three to get rid of the evidence.  The three remaing cupcakes were ‘Ebony and Ivory’, a vanilla and chocolate swirl, the little ‘Tickled Pink’ with chocolate cake and another “Tickled Pink” that had white cake.  Lip smacking good.

Apparently the cupcakes didn’t help absorb the booze and I became a teeny little bit tipsy.  I don’t remember how things progressed from this point on, I was pretty tired and I forget things when I get tired.  Yup, that’s what must have happened, the Spumante was definitely not a factor in my memory loss at all.  The next morning I awoke to a slightly disturbing scene around me and I was ice cold (probably due to the fact that I was still naked and laying on top of the blankets).  Merlin was just about to leave for work and came into the room to give me a kiss and tell me that he loves me, like he has done every morning since we met.  Awwwww, how sweet.  But not as sweet as Crazy Cakes.  Sorry Hon!  Merlin had this huge grin on his face and asked how I was feeling.  Honestly, I felt just fine.  He said he was kind of surprised all things considered.  He suggested that I take a look in the mirror because I had a little schmootz on my face.  I very hesitantly glanced in the mirror and was horrified at what I saw.  My hair was standing up all over the place and the right side was glued to my head a little.  I touched it and it was crunchy.  I smelled my fingers and discovered it was butter cream frosting and it looked pink.  Nice.  I had a mini cupcake wrapper stuck to my neck and I saw that I had chocolate cake smeared from the corner of my mouth all the way back to my ear, leading up to the lovely ‘gel’ I had styled my hair with.  That was a lot of chocolate cake, which lead me to believe that I had eaten the big ‘Tickled Pink’ cupcake at some point.  I saw the wrapper, with a bite out of it, laying on the bed which confirmed my suspicions.  Huhn, so I ate some paper with my cupcake, I’m fine with that, it’s added fiber and fiber is good for the bowels.  I also took note that I had all different colours of frosting and crumbs “accessorizing” my boobs.  Sexy.  Merlin said that this was nothing compared to what he came home to last night.  I was afraid to find out what that meant, but my curiosity was stronger than my pride so I told Merlin to spill the beans.

When Merlin came up to the bedroom the night before he said the light and the TV were still on and he came in to find me sprawled out across the bed butt naked, laced with frosting and crumbs, cuddling my empty Spumante bottle and there were cupcake wrappers strewn all around me.  He came over to the bed and gently tapped me and called my name to wake me up so he could get me settled into bed properly.  I didn’t budge.  He shook my shoulder a little, again no reaction from me.  He said he shook me a little harder and called my name a few more times and this time he succeeded in getting me to act somewhat alive.  However, it wasn’t exactly the response he had hoped for.  I let out a huge, window shaking, tooth rattling burp, licked my lips, pulled my Spumante bottle closer to my chest, rolled over, lifted my behind up a bit towards the ceiling and let out a big earth shattering, butt cheek flapping fart.  It’s a good thing he promised to love me in good times and bad because I had a feeling this might be considered one of those “bad times”.  When Merlin tried to pull the blankets out from under me to cover me up I kicked at him and muttered something about him staying away from my Spumante and my cupcakes.  He was a little disturbed by the whole scene and slowly backed out of the room leaving me to lay in my own cupcake wrapper filth. 

The up side of all of this is that I was so consumed with my shame of my behaviour and pig-ish-ness that I totally forgot about what was bumming me out the day before.  What is the morale of this story you ask?  It’s oblivious.  Spumante and Crazy Cake cupcakes are good therapy for me, they clear my mind and redirect me to other things.  I would say that this is a very successful method of treatment for me.

Yes, I am a princess and I’m damn proud of it!

On Wednesday I got a little side tracked doing my make-up, I wanted it to be a good make-up day.  After I had reached sheer perfection I checked the clock and noticed that if I didn’t get my behind in gear I was going to be late for work.  I had my arms full with my purse, my bag with my lunch, day planner and other stuff in it, my go-cup in one hand and my bowl of cereal in the other.  Yes, I sometimes do eat my breakfast on the way to work.  I have these great Tupperware cereal bowls that have lids on them so I can toss it in my bag when I’m done and there’s no mess.  Thank goodness I had put the lid on the bowl before leaving, I normally don’t put it on until after I’m done eating.  As I hopped down off the last step on our deck all hell broke loose.  The strap on my bag came unbuckled, as it had a few times before.  I now know why they had the bags on sale for $5.00.  Nice!!  I’m not exactly sure why but when my bag hit the ground my hands decided to give out and everything went flying.  I had papers from by bag blowing around the yard, my ceramic work mug rolled one way, my go-cup rolled through the gate and down the driveway, my cereal bowl landed upside down (good thing Tupperware seals nice and tight), everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, tumbled out of my purse including all eleven of my lip glosses and lip sticks I carry daily.  Before you say it, eleven is not too many.  That’s only one eighth of what I have!!

Now, I have my priorities set straight.  I collected all my lip stuff, then my pens, my other purse contents, my papers, my breakfast, my ceramic mug and then my go-cup, in that exact order.  Great!  That took ten minutes of my precious time and I was freaking out that I was going to be late!!  Dang bag!!  I would like to say that this was the last bag I would ever buy on sale but that would be a bold face lie.  I can’t ever resist a good purse or bag sale.  Some things are just sacred to me.

Normally I turn west on to Crowsnest Trail (no, I didn’t know the direction, I had to ask Merlin) to go to work and that route only takes three and a half to four minutes depending on whether or not I hit a red light.  I know it sounds lame that I drive to work and it only takes me a couple of minutes but the problem with walking is that I would have to cross Crowsnest Trail, which is like a highway, and then I would have to walk along it as well.  That freaks both Merlin and I out.  Anyways, I was sitting at the light and decided that I could take this great short cut Merlin discovered that would save me about two minutes.  Two minutes is a lot of time for me, really.  The short cut is to cross Crowsnest Trail and cut through the ‘yard’ of the grain terminal place and I come out just down the street from work.

I had gunned it so I could get up the bit of incline.  As I hit the first set of tracks I caught a bit of air and sailed through to the second set of tracks and hit them with a ‘fa-rump-fump’.  I must confess, I let out a, “Waaaa hoooo!”  I had a little bit of fish tailing happenin’ due to the speed, the air born-ness and the fact that I was on gravel, it was very liberating.  As I cranked good old Franny (my vehicle) around the corner onto the asphalt I was seeing stars and shiny things all around me.  It was a good day to be alive people, the crappy bag incident was so far behind me now.  I figured I left it in my spew of flying gravel between the two sets of train tracks.  Oh yah, you know it.

Something caught my eye and I was wondering why the shiny things around me weren’t going away.  I checked my review mirror and noticed that the shiny things happened to be red and blue.  And they weren’t exactly shiny, they were flashing things actually.  Lovely!  My first thought was, “That’s going to wreck my morning adrenaline rush.”  As I pulled over my guts started to flip flop and I remembered that I hadn’t ate breakfast yet and I knew if I didn’t get a little something in me I would most likely get the dry heaves from the empty stomach nerves.  Since the cop seemed to be taking his sweet old time getting out of his car I decided to crack open the old cereal bowl and help myself to a bit of Wheatabix.  As the cop gets up to my window I had my wallet in one hand and my cereal bowl in the other and I was smiling like a bloody moron.  I’m sure I was looking just lovely.  I DID have a good make-up and hair day.  The gloss I had on was the bomb!!  Very flattering.

Mr. Uniform said to me, “License and registration please ma’am.”  I said, “Soytn’ly”.  Just like the Three Stooges.  He he he.  I set my cereal on the dash, got my license out and grabbed my insurance and registration out of my glove compartment.  He looked at my bowl, looked at me, looked back at the bowl and said, “Are you eating your breakfast?”  He didn’t sound impressed.  Ooops.  I just smiled sweetly and giggled, “Teee heee heee.”  For some reason he didn’t “Teee heee heee” back.  Grump.  As he was checking out my info he asked me, “Ma’am, did you happen to notice the sign way back there that says that was Private Property and the one that says you are not to cross the rail tracks?”  I smiled, shrugged my left shoulder up in a cutesy way and said, “Yes I did officer.”  He hadn’t looked up until I said yes.  The look on his face said, “Say what?”  I just smiled again, I was getting pretty good at that with Mr. Officer-man.  I thought we were building quite a rapport between us.  Him talking, me smiling, it was going pretty good so far.

My new friend then asked me, “Um, is there any specific reason why you feel you can  blatantly ignore posted traffic laws?”  Now, most other people would just answer the simple question with a simple, boring answer.  They would most likely reply with, “No officer.  I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”  Blah blah blah blah blah!!  Booorrrriiinnnggg.  B-O-R-I-N-G!!!  I decideed that I will handle this in a more interesting manner.  A fun manner.  A light, cheerful, ‘happy morning’ manner.  In a manner like only I can deliver.  I looked him square in the eye, smiled one more time and sweetly said, “Well, my Daddy and my husband tell me all the time that I’m a princess”, then I crossed my arms and gave a little nod of my head.  When I looked up at Mr. Law Man he was just standing there with his mouth hanging open.  He kind of looked like he was a cop shaped bird house with a big hole waiting for a flock of birds to fly into their new home.  I did happen to notice that he needed a little bit of paint added here and there to make him look a little more welcoming.  I didn’t share that with him though, probably a good idea.

After he was finally able to pick his jaw up off the ground and slam his mouth back shut he went and opened his dang yap trap up again!  Sheesh!  He kind of stammered out, “Ar, ar, are you k k kidding me?”  I couldn’t understand why he looked so perplexed.  It wasn’t like I used big words or anything.  So I said very slowly, “I … am … a … princess!”  He said, “Pardon me?”  I assumed he wasn’t hard of hearing, therefore he must just need me to explain this to him.  I smiled, yet another time, and said to him once again, “My Daddy and my husband tell me all the time that I’m a princess!”  And once again, he said, “Are you kidding me?”  What was that, his favourite saying or something?  Since I was already well practiced with flashing big shiny grins at him I smiled one more time!  The look on his face was one of absolute astonishment.  I’m not sure what he was more surprised about, the fact that I believed I was a princess, the fact that I said it to him or the fact that I said it with a straight face.  I took advantage of his silence.  I looked up at him from under my batting eyelashes, put a little bit of a pout on my innocent looking face and said in my best sulky little princess voice, “Everyone knows that a princess can do whatever she wants.”  Once he had finally ‘regrouped’ and started to breathe again, he gave his head a shake to make sure he wasn’t dreaming or something.  He kept shaking his head for what seemed like forever and he asked me for my home phone number.  I gave it to him with, yes, you know it, a smile.  He then asked me for my husband’s name and work phone number.  I thought this was a little odd but I wasn’t about to question this as he was the one with the badge and the handcuffs.  Oooh, handcuffs!  That might not exactly be a deterrent for me.  Wouldn’t that be awesome if I asked him for his cuffs and he let me take them!!  You know, Merlin does have that paramedic jumpsuit in the basement.  A uniform AND cuffs, that could spice up our Friday night ………   It’s not the right uniform for handcuffs but beggars can’t be choosers, right?  I know what Merlin and I can this Friday night …………  Hey!  Listen up people!!!  We need Brandt to have a sleep over Friday night.  Any takers???

Where was I?  Oh yah, I’m a princess and the cop is getting phone numbers from me.  After I dish out Merlin’s info he then asked me for my Dad’s name and home phone number.  I had to give that one a second thought.  That didn’t seem appropriate to me so I questioned it.  I asked him what the heck he would need my Dad’s info for.  With a straight face he looked at me and said, “I’m going to phone them both and tell them that you are NOT a princess, they need to stop telling you that and should instead be telling you that you have to obey all posted traffic signs like everyone else!”  Well, the nerve of him.  How DARE he tell me I’m not a princess!!  I had considered telling him that he needed to get on his knees and apologize to me as I was royalty, but reconsidered it once he told me that this was my first and last warning and he better not see me breaking the law again or he would ‘dethrone’ me himself.

It was about a secret love affair between Steel and Vixen, his brother Armando’s wife.  Typical.  So Steel and Vixen had been sneaking around on their lunch hours hooking up for a little rendezvous whenever they could or lying to their spouses about out of town seminars when they could no longer be away from each other.  Armando and Steel’s wife Desiree never suspected a thing.  Of course.  By the fourth page Steel and Vixen were already “getting it on” in Armando and Vixens quaint little romantic getaway cottage in Banff.  They don’t waste much time in these “romance” novels. 

If I remember correctly Steel had popped open a bottle of  champagne and started a fire in the hand laid stone fireplace while Vixen changed into her sheer, figure flattering white negligee.  When Steel stood up from lighting the fire he turned around and was taken aback by the glowing vision of beauty that was gazing seductively at him through her beautiful long lashes.  Gag, gag.  This is hard to type, I can feel my stomach starting to turn.  Give me a minute while I take a couple of deep breaths.  Phew …….. phew ….. phew.  That’s better.  I think I can keep going.

Steel sauntered over to Vixen, peeling his cloths off and letting them drop to the floor.  When he got to Vixen he couldn’t resist touching her porcelain, dewy, soft skin.  He placed his hands on her hips, and slowly let them slide over her taut body up to her bosom.  Her breasts were firm and warm beneath his eager hands.  He felt her arousal as he brushed his fingers lightly over her nipples, her delicate little rose buds of pleasure.  Her arousal ignited a flame of hunger and lust that went searing through every fiber of his sexy, muscular body.  Vixen could feel his manhood enlarging and pressing into her abdomen.  His musky alluring scent was the sweetest scent she had ever had to pleasure to smell.  The two lovers stared longingly into each other’s eyes, sharing every thought, every emotion, and every feeling they had for each other without having to utter a single word.  Aaaaawwwww, how romantic ……… NOT!!!  This is, well, CRAP!

Sorry, I’ll continue.  If I can muster up the strength.  Okay, so where was I?  Steel, yes, Steel brushed his hand lightly up Vixen’s thigh and gently stroked her warm and moist folds between her legs, exploring with his fingers feeling her dainty little tufts of hair that blanket her passage to ecstasy while nuzzling her neck ……….. Okay, I can’t do this anymore.  The book went on about their passionate love making, him finding her “G” spot and taking her to love making heaven while she moaned and groaned or some dumb crap like that.  Whatever.  It was at this point that I finally hurled.  I didn’t know it was humanly possible to blow that amount of chunks.  But I felt better.  I’m thinking I’ll keep the book around in case I ever need to purge again.

I live in the real world people.  So please let me tell you how this same scenario would go down when it’s not in a Harlequin Romance novel.

Floyd and Bertha had been married for like 20 damn long years living in the same crappy mobile home the whole time.  The kids had moved out into their own trailers, it was Friday night and they didn’t have any plans.  Floyd decided to put Bertha in “the mood” so he cracked her open a Black Label beer and even licked the side of the can to get the mystery shmootz off it that had globbed on in the Coleman Cooler beside his shit green recliner he rescued from the dump a few years back.  After Bertha chugged her second brewsky Floyd knew he was good to go.  He finished his beer, belched, scratched his ass and said to Bertha, “Woman!  Git necked, git in the bed and assume yer position.  This semi is gearin’ up to dump it’s load.”

Lets keep in mind that Bertha has had six babies and that can really mess up a womanly figure.  Her breasts were neither firm nor did she have delicate buds for nipples.  Her breasts were more like the mounds of leftover dirt that gets piled in the corner of the garden.  All misshapen, lumpy and sloping slightly to one side.  Yum yum yummy!  Bertha did not have gentle folds between her legs curtained in delicate tufts of hair.  After squeezing out six brats Bertha had these sloppy mud flaps betwixed her legs that flailed in the breeze of her nasty ass farts if she was standing up in her flannel night gown without undies on.  Now that’s a sexy sound I bet.  There definitely aren’t any delicate tufts of hair to be found anywhere on old Bertha either.  However, she does have a ring of dark long hairs growing rapidly around her dried up old nipples and what Bertha has between her legs is more like that greenery you plant to “fill in” your flower beds.  That crap ends up spreading out everywhere all thick and nasty in your yard no matter how hard you try to keep it trimmed and under control.  Yup, that sounds like Bertha’s pubes.    Floyd does not “nuzzle” Bertha’s neck, he’s just scratching his nose or he’s trying to wipe off his beer-stache.  And he does not smell all musky and sexy, he’s more, well, musty smelling.  I like to call it plain old poor friggin’ hygiene!  Yuck.  Gag. 

The only time Bertha gets warm and moist between her legs is when she sneezes and pees her pants.  Six babies turn your bladder into a water balloon that can let loose faster than you can say, “Depends.”  All romance is not lost between Bertha and Floyd.  They do still visit the “G” spot at least once every two weeks.  Aaaawwww!  It does involve a long firm hose, the man does a lot of pumping and they both will end the experience screaming, moaning and groaning.  It’s called a “Gas” station.  Dr. Ruth is right, it’s not that hard to find a “G” spot.  They’re everywhere!  Ha ha ha.  And they do still stare into each other’s eyes.  Sigh…… how sweet.  They stare long and hard at each other trying to remember why the hell they “settled” and actually got married.

Some other truths about Floyd and Bertha.  When Floyd asks Bertha to handle his stick shift it’s because the cheap bugger wouldn’t spring for an automatic and now he has arthritis and really can’t shift.  It’s no longer fun to play naked Twister with each other.  It always ends the same.  Floyd rubs his back on Bertha’s hairy stubble covered legs trying to scrape off the dead skin on his back.  And when Floyd and Bertha approach their neighbour Ethel about the three of them hooking up it’s not for a ménage a trois, they’re car pooling.

I promise, I will never ever again go to the “Bad Place”, romance novels.  Unless you find yourself needing to rid your gut of something vile.  Now go and have yourself some Floyd and Bertha lovin’!!!  You know you waaaaaaant it!

The first time I bought alcohol just for the “bonus gift” was when I bought wine a couple of years ago because it had a Christmas tree ornament bell thingy that looked like a bunch of grapes hanging around the neck.  Of course I had to buy three bottles of wine so I could get all three colours of the grapes.  Gold, silver and burgundy.  I couldn’t have just one ornament and break up the set, that would just be wrong, just like my different coloured wine glasses.  I can’t have just one, I need to have the whole set.  It was such an inconvenience to have to drink all that wine.  It was a real struggle, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Merlin had to hold me down and pour the wine in my mouth forcing me to drink it so it wouldn’t go to waste.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha, okay, I couldn’t even TYPE that with a straight face.

Another time I bought wine to get a funky plastic stopper thing, to seal a bottle that wasn’t finished, it was really cool looking.  Much to my surprise I actually had an unfinished bottle of wine once.  I repeat, only ONCE.  It was an experience that was so odd I know I won’t ever forget it.  That was a crappy purchase though, the wine sucked and the stopper got stuck in a bottle and I couldn’t get it back out and eventually had to throw out 1/3 of a bottle of wine.  I was VERY choked.  There’s nothing worse than wasting good alcohol.  Heck, it sucks to have to waste bad alcohol even.  Alcohol is alcohol and it shouldn’t be wasted.  One time (no Merlin, not at band camp) I made this Orange Cream Liquor that was to die for!  It’s SO good I’ve actually had dreams about it.  It has vodka, orange juice, condensed milk, water, sugar and vanilla in it.  As I was pouring the final product into the empty vodka bottle I had a little oops.  I’m not sure if I was high on the vodka fumes or if I was possibly a little tipsy from all the quality control tests but I accidentally knocked a whole measuring cup full of my happy juice on the kitchen floor.  I was frozen for a couple of minutes, I was in a state of shock.  I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of alcohol actually being on the floor instead of in my belly, it just didn’t look good or normal at all.  It was a terribly disturbing sight.  I spent many months in therapy trying to stop the nightmares that followed that horrific event.  I had a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder thing going on.  Post Traumatic Booze-loss Disorder.  It was a dark time in my life.  Sigh……  But it’s all in the past now, I’m doing much better now, thanks for asking.  I can finally talk about it without falling to the ground and rocking back and forth in the fetal position and wetting myself.

 Anyways, back to my story.  Where was I?  Oh yes, I was traumatized over the sight of the booze on the floor.  I’m not sure what happened but suddenly my survival instinct kicked in.  I knew I could not let this booze go to waste.  My floors are usually very clean, clean enough that you could eat off them.  I confess, I don’t clean them, Merlin does and he does a mighty fine job I must say.  I asked myself, “What would McGyver do?”  He would treat it just like a toxic spill, he would get it cleaned up before it caused any kind of world altering epidemic.  I grabbed a straw, dropped on my knees and proceeded to suck like I’ve never sucked before.  My cheeks were caving in and it felt like my head was going to flip itself inside out.  It was taking a long time trying to get all the booze slurped up because it was everywhere.  The light bulb flicked on in my head, I needed to make a useful tool out of a most unsuspecting item, just like McGyver.  I grabbed this baking squeegee thing from the Pampered Chef that you use to scrape your counter tops or cutting board clean and squeegeed all the spilled booze into a puddle and resumed my wet clean up on aisle one.  It wasn’t an easy job, but someone had to do it.Now, as any good, and nearly broke, college or university graduate knows, you can get drunk REALLY fast if you drink your booze through a straw.  I discovered something very mind blowing about myself in the kitchen that night.  I found out that somewhere between age 19 and 30 I became a real cheap drunk.  Apparently I had let out a horrific shriek.  Merlin came running with the cordless phone in hand ready to call 911.  He was freaking out because there I was face first down on the floor.  Once it finally registered that I wasn’t hurt Merlin grabbed the camera and snapped my pic.  He got a lovely picture of me on my knees in my night gown sucking up the booze off our kitchen floor through one of those bendy straws like they have in the hospital.  I destroyed the only two pictures that existed  but rumor has it there is a negative out there somewhere that I’ve yet to find.  I took a picture of Merlin and have it’s negative under lock and key that I plan to hold onto in case I ever have the need to blackmail him.  He’s aware of this so I have a funny feeling he’s keeping my compromising photo’s negative for that very same reason.  Nice try sweetheart, my picture of you is way better and I know it can give me more leverage than your picture of me.

See, one day I decided to see what it was like to be a little shit disturber.  It was a new angle of my personality that I was exploring.  Something I had never been able to successfully pull off thus far in life.  Ha ha ha he he he ha ha ha!  Once again, I couldn’t type that without busting a gut.  I’ve always been a shit disturber, just ask my English 20 teacher, he’ll vouch for me.   We had just come home from shopping for bras and I came in the house, slumped down on the couch and grumbled about how much I hate wearing bras and how uncomfortable I find them.  Merlin said I was being a wimp and it couldn’t be THAT bad.  So  I threw my new white lace bra at him and told him to try it on and see what it felt like, so he did.  Oh yah, I’m not kidding, he put it on.  First it was the maxi pad and now the bra, I was starting to wonder about this man I married.  There he was in his boxers and my lacey white bra with his chest hairs sticking out over the top looking ever so masculine.  I told him to come out of the bathroom and give me a sexy pose in the hallway, so he did!  It’s amazing what you can get your husband to do when you promise to make his best buddy stand at attention later.  Merlin struck a pose and I snapped a picture.  He he he ha ha ha he he he!!  If I remember correctly we didn’t plan adult hide-and-seek later because I couldn’t stop laughing at him every time I laid eyes on him not only that day but for at least three days after as well.  Who knew that men don’t find themselves “in the mood” when a woman is pointing at them and crying from the side splitting hysterical laughter.

The picture Merlin has of me may portray me as a pathetic alcoholic housewife but my picture of him can be sold to The Sexy Kitty (an adult entertainment store here in Lethbridge) for advertising.  And, unfortunately for Merlin the picture could also end up getting him cut from his hockey team because it would most definitely make his buddies think twice about showering with him again after a game.  Now, you tell me, who has better leverage?

Now, before you go any further I must warn you that there will be a few “F-bombs” being dropped a little later on in this story.  I can’t leave them out as they are a direct quote from someone, and , frankly, I don’t think you can REALLY grasp the intensity of the situation if I replace them with “Fudge”.  Don’t get me wrong, I love fudge!  It’s yummy and I could eat it everyday but fudge has no business being in my story.  Fudge is for snack time, not story time.  If you don’t like the “F-bombs” you can be like a friend of mine from college and pronounce them a “PH” instead of an “F”.  Get it?  It’s like physics, pharmacy, phone, phlegm, phantasm (that’s phantasm not orgasm), phase, photophosphorylations.  Long story short, imagine it being spelled and pronounced “Phuck”.

Friday, good Friday, we were going to High River to spend Easter with my Dad and Step-Mom Linda.  When we got to High River and were driving through town Merlin decided to be a total door knob.  He thinks it’s funny to drive past total strangers, honk the horn and wave like crazy.  They wave back and if we check out the rearview mirror we can see them turned around with this baffled look on their faces trying to figure out who the hell it was.  He gets a big kick out of this but I’m afraid that one day someone will see us later and will recognize us as the freaky, strange honker wavers then we have to fess up that we really don’t know them and we are actually just total losers with nothing better to do to amuse ourselves.  Merlin was honking and waving at so many people for a while there I thought we were in a parade and sadly, we were the only float, a float without decorations, and we were cheap buggers that didn’t have any candy to throw to the kids.  At least we didn’t have to dodge horse shit like in a real parade.  Unfortunately we did have a big pile of bull shit INSIDE our vehicle.

We’re coming down Dad and Linda’s block and we see Dad’s truck parked on the other side of the driveway.  They live in a “detached condo” unit.  That’s pretty much the same as a duplex except it’s on the golf course, it’s a bungalow, it’s pretty darn big and it’s gorgeous.  This ain’t yo’ Mama’s duplex baby!  It’s, well, it’s a condo!  So, as I said, we saw Dad’s truck parked on the opposite side of the driveway.  We figured that the neighbour’s were probably away for Easter so Dad parked on their side of the driveway to leave room for us so we didn’t have to park on the street.  Aw!  How nice of him.  We pull up on the driveway and it’s instant chaos.  All three of us are hooting and hollering at each other trying to figure out who’s to grab what to take in, this isn’t new, this happens everywhere we go.  It’s nothing bad, we’re just a loud and unorganized trio.  Kind of like the Three Stooges, only we’re in colour, not black and white.  And one of us is a woman.  And one of us is a kid.  And we’re not all that funny.

I had my pillow with me because I’m still sleeping with four pillows since my sinus surgery and I also thought I may want to have a nap on the way up or back so it would be handy to have and I kidnapped one of Brandt’s Bo Yos from him.  Bo Yo is a stuffed elephant that Brandt was given while he was still in my uterus!  Bo Yo is mint green on his head, pastel coloured plaid on his body and limbs, the insides of his ears and his paws have white satin on them and his feet have yellow satin with rubber bumps on the bottoms of them.  He got so attached to Bo Yo he couldn’t sleep or do ANYTHING without him so we had to buy six of them just in case one went missing.  And hey, that was a great idea since we’re down to four.  Actually, he has a fifth one at Popa and Nana’s (my Dad and Linda) just in case he forgets them at home.  It happened once.  He cried from about Stavely until about Cayley when he finally passed out.  That day I threatened the testicles of a young Calgary Wal-Mart toy department personnel if he did not put this stuffed elephant, their last one, away for me until I could make to Calgary to pick it up.  Apparently it wasn’t their policy to “hold” items.  I made it very clear to him that if he didn’t “hold” this toy for me he would no longer have any testicles to “hold”.  As I was threatening his ability to ever father a child my little ray of sunshine was screaming his head off in the back seat, “Bo Yo!  Waaaahhhhhh waaaaahhhhhhh!  Bo Yo!  Waaaahhhh waaahhhh!”  I did also happen to mention that he would have to calm my precious little child down and try to put him to sleep without his Bo Yo if it wasn’t waiting for me when I got to the store.  It was at this time that the little twit said, “Please, no Ma’am.  It will be at the sporting goods counter.  I’ll take it there RIGHT NOW!”  I very politely thanked him and told him to have a nice day.

Anywhoo, I’m off track a bit here.  Brandt, even at 10 years old, had to bring two Bo Yos with him to High River and I grabbed one from him so I could put him in Dad’s face when he answered the door.  Bo Yo is a pretty nosy and obnoxious elephant and he loves to be the center of attention and I was just enabling him to be like that.  Hanging on my right arm I have my big red leather purse that just screams “look at my big ass red purse people”, I don’t have a stitch of make-up on and look pretty dang special I’m sure, I have my Starbuck’s oversized bright sunshiny red, orange and yellow go-cup that is covered in flowers and other spring time crap in my right hand, one of Brandt’s Bo-Yos in my left hand and my pillow with it’s faux denim look pillow case tucked under my left arm.  Special, I know.  I was going for a whole different look.  I’m not sure what exactly that look was, but it was a look.

We get to the door and we can hear the TV blaring, it sounded like some sort of an action movie, lots of screeching vehicles and gun shots.  Hhhhmmmm ………….. we didn’t think that was really their type of movie, but maybe we were wrong.  I rang the bell and we waited patiently.  No response.  I rang it again and we waited …….  again.  The TV was pretty loud so we figured they probably couldn’t hear us so we sent Brandt around to the other side of the house to knock on their patio doors.  The house is on a slope so the front door opens in to the main floor then you go downstairs and it’s a walk out basement.  The TV is downstairs, so it was pretty dang loud if we could hear it upstairs.  We figured Brandt might be able to get their attention better if he’s jumping around and banging in the patio door.  Whenever there was a lull in the noise from the TV I would nail the door bell a few more times.  Still nothing!!!  What the heck was going on???

I decided that this was ridiculous so I grabbed my cell phone and called the house.  Dad answered and I said to him, “Would you like to maybe answer your door?  We’re here!”  Dad replies in his best sappy, you silly little girl voice with, “I would if you would ring the bell.”  Oh no you di-nt!!!  I yap back, “I did ring it.  Like six times.  Helloooooo!!!  Are you deaf?  We’re at the door old man, come let us in.”  Then we hung up.  I could not believe the nerve of him giving me heck when he’s the one that’s hard of hearing.  Sheesh!  As I’m flipping my phone closed with my best snotty little be-otch attitude Brandt comes around the corner of the house with his arms up in the air and says, “I don’t know what’s up.  Maybe they’re just too old and slow.”   He he he, I have no idea where he gets that saucy attitude from.  It’s DEFINITELY not from his Mother.  It must be from his Father.  Of course.

Okay, this is just craziness people.  What the heck is going on in there.  There is another lull in the noise from inside and we assume someone is finally coming upstairs to open the door.  Wrong.  Now I’m getting really ticked.  My arms are getting tired and I have to pee like crazy.  I start doing the pee-pee dance and attack the door bell.  Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong.  That’s not an  exaggeration either people, I really just kept ringing it and ringing it.  While I’m tapping out a morse code message, NEED TO PEE …. NEED TO PEE, on the doorbell with my right hand I knock on the door with my left hand and Bo Yo and Merlin starts knocking on the front window.  I now have Bo Yo doing a little mid air dance (looks more like he’s having an epileptic seizure) and suddenly the door flies open and without thinking I step forward with Bo Yo straight out in front of me so he and I can be the first ones in the door and I can be the first one to the upstairs toilet.  I REALLY had to pee bad.

Huhn, well, who the heck is this?  In the next few seconds my mind goes crazy with these thoughts: Who is this dude?  Do they have other company than us?  Why does their company look so angry?  Are they playing a joke on us?  Why is the furniture a different colour?  Where is the china cabinet?  The dude in the doorway is one big dude.  He had to be at least 6’4” tall and his shoulders were about the same, give or take a foot or two.  He had short, almost Drew Carey looking, nasty ass dirty blondish grayish hair and dark rimmed glasses.  He was wearing a gray t-shirt and shorts and let me tell you, it took a whole heck of a lot of gray material to cover this guy.  Wow.  Did I mention that he was big?  He filled the whole dang doorway like a big gray whale would.  That big!  I still have my little thoughts bouncing around in my head and I kind of get slapped back into the here and now when the whale opens his head and starts to spew whatever the hell he had been hoarding from the depths within deep, deep down in his freakishly large mass of a body.  What he spewed wasn’t too pleasant.  My poor virgin ears!!!  “What the fuck are you doing?  You people are fucking crazy!!!  Get the fuck off my fucking property!!!”  Well, I wasn’t positive, but I kind of got the feeling he wasn’t exactly expecting company and most likely wouldn’t invite us in for cookies and milk.  How rude.

As Moby Dick slams the door in my face (Brandt was on the lawn and Merlin was cowering behind me) Dad comes around the garage and scares the crap out of us and says, “Do you want to maybe come to OUR house?”  Holy crap!  We could’ve been pounded into the ground by this freak of nature mammoth man just because we went to the wrong flippin’ house!  It took us less than 2.3 seconds to vacate the property.  We rounded the front of big angry man’s house at such a good clip we caused enough of a breeze to bend the trees on the block.  We couldn’t move fast enough.  The upside to this was that I no longer had to rush for a bathroom because I had unintentionally relieved my bladder of it’s contents on the mean elephant man’s front door step.  I don’t think I left an actual pool of pee, I was moving pretty fast so I’m sure I left more of a “spray” of liquid all the way down his sidewalk.  Where was he three months ago when I was constipated?  Apparently, when Dad opened the door to let us in and we weren’t there he could hear us talking and went in search of us.  Thank goodness he did because I thought this was all some kind of a prank and had intentions of barging in demanding to know where Dad and Linda were.  That would not have been a smooth move people.  Not at all.

Now, in hind sight, there were clues that if we had’ve paid attention to them we would have realized we were at the wrong house and we wouldn’t have had to have this brush with death.  There was no wagon wheel leaning against the house between the two garages.  There were a couple of holes and cracks in the siding on the garage that weren’t there just a few months ago (and Dad would never leave huge missing chunks of siding unfixed).  There was no screen door on the front door.  The stone Golf plaque that was screwed on the house below the front window was not there.  I thought maybe they took it off for the winter but didn’t bother to notice that there was no screw hole.  Their, “I golf, therefore I am not here” mat was missing from the door step.  The mail box was a different colour.  The pretty yard stakes the neighbours have by their front door were not there.  And most importantly, not only were the house numbers the wrong colour but they were the wrong NUMBERS!!!!!!  One would think that would be an important detail, one that would be SO oblivious to everyone else, but apparently wasn’t for us.

I blame this 33% on Merlin, 33% on Dad, 33% on whoever designed the housing scheme and 1% on Brandt.  Brandt gets 1% of the blame because he’s a kid.  Part of the royalties of being a Mom is that you can blame anything and everything on your children.  If you’ve given painful birth to them they can suck up some of your pains the rest of their lives.  The golf course housing people’s share of the blame ….. Why the hell do they all have to look the same???  Dad’s share of the blame ……. Don’t be thoughtful towards us and park on your own damn driveway!!!!  Merlin’s share of the blame ……….  I told him not to do the honk and wave at the strangers thing, I said it was bad karma.  He laughed and said there is not such thing.  Hhhhmmmmm ……….. Would you care to reconsider that sweetheart?  The bad karma doesn’t end there either.  We still can’t get the shit stains out of all of our undies!!!

By the way, in case you’re wondering, I don’t have to take any of the blame because I have ovaries.  Helloooooooo …….. Everyone knows that.

The way my day started off I should have known the experience would be “eventful”.  Merlin woke me up and asked if I could drive myself to the hospital and park four blocks away at his sister’s house and walk (parking at the hospital is only two hour parking) because he wanted to get to work early.  I said no.  Hello!!!  He did end up driving me to the hospital but he didn’t actually come to a complete stop, he just gave me a shove out the door on his way through the parking lot (going the wrong way) and he was outta there.  It’s a good thing I had the hots for MacGyver  all those years ago and watched his show religiously because I learned the technique of safely dropping and rolling when exiting a moving vehicle with minimal injuries.  The tricky part is throwing your bag in the air high enough so that when you finally stop rolling your bag is just coming down right into your hands and not a second sooner.

I was getting myself checked in first thing in the morning and the girl doing my paper work drooled over my overnight bag.  Ew, germs.  My bag is VERY cute.  It was a birthday present from my Dad and Step-Mom.  I love it!  It’s black with pink polka dots, and it has pink bows with white polka dots on them on the front pockets of the bag.  The company it’s from is Luscious Bags out of Calgary.  Check out their web-site, it’s cute stuff.  Anyhoo, off I went to the third floor to get into my classy, beautiful, sexy snot green itchy surgery lingerie.  The nurse that took me to my room, gushed over my bag and asked if I wanted to sell it.  Um, no.  The nurse told me that I was to remove all my clothing and undergarments before putting on the gown with the lovely ass view.  Hhhmmm, why did I have to take my undies off?  I was under the understanding that only my sinuses were being irrigated, my naked butt is a long way from my nose.  It sounded a little shady to me but I did as I was told.  When the next nurse came to take my vitals she oohed and awed over my bag too.  I had an endless parade of nurses coming to check it out, I was starting to worry it would go missing.  Turns out I had good reason to worry.  I was given a purple plastic bag to put my coat and shoes into and it was tagged so it would find me later wherever I ended up.  I checked and they did put a tag on my cute bag but the nurse said to me, “After surgery if you happen to find ALL of your stuff in this purple plastic bag good luck trying to figure out who had the sticky fingers.”  I was wondering if I should have lo-jacked my bag to be safe.

A couple of hours later it was finally time for me to proceed to the next stop on my wonderful hospital tour.  The room I was now in reminded me of a holding cell at the cop shop.  Everyone gets stuck in a bed up against the one wall.  You get attached to your bed by the IV in your arm with the bag hanging off the pole on the head of your bed and nurse hatchet paces up down in front of her prisoners keeping everyone in her sight making sure no one tries to bolt.  Just in case you need reminding she waggles her finger at everyone and says, “No nervous talking and no crying!  Be a noisy wimp and you won’t get your Ativan!  Do you understand me soldiers?”  Being a regular at the hospital I knew the drill so I saluted her and said, “Ma’am yes Ma’am Nurse Hatchet!”  Hatchet took away my glasses, took off my paper slippers and stuck a lovely disposable hair cap thing on me.  They are such a fashion statement I tell you, I often think of stealing a case of the hair caps and changing my name to Lola the Lunch Lady.  If I ever need to go in the witness protection program I have the perfect alias figured out.  Lola the Lunch lady.  I actually know of a lady here in Lethbridge whose name is Lola.  She isn’t a lunch lady though, she worked at the little grocery store on 43^rd street until it closed down.  I don’t know where Lola works now though.  Back to my story.  I was sitting in my bed nervous as all heck waiting for my turn to have my IV rammed in my hand and I could feel a tear coming on.  I bit my lip and struggled to hold it back, I wouldn’t let them break me down because I couldn’t do this without the happy juice, the Ativan.  A nice nurse, not hatchet, came to put in my IV.  I liked her.  She smelled like cookies.  She said that she would be kind and would freeze my hand before sticking the IV in, how sweet of her.  I had my other hand on the side rail of my bed gripping it like it was a matter of life and death and I’m pretty sure I bent it a tad.  I hate needles with a passion.  Nurse Cookie smell had a firm hold on my hand the needle was going into and she said, “Just a quick poke love, it won’t hurt much.”  Bitch!  She lied!!!  She slipped or something and the dang thing rammed into me and hurt like hell!  I jumped and flung my free hand haphazardly into the air and accidentally whapped the rear end of the young cute anesthesiologist who was talking to the lady in the bed beside me.  He turned around, gave me a million dollar smile and said, “My, aren’t we a little fresh this morning.”  I just smiled and said, “It was good for me, was it good for you?” and I giggled like a little school girl.  Touching his butt was so awesome it made me giddy and forget about my impending doom, my surgery.  Oops, nope.  I was wrong.  It wasn’t his butt that brought on my little splash of sunshine, it was the Ativan.  My anesthesiologist had arrived and gave me one heck of a dang good shot of Ativan, my happy juice.  I wonder if I can get that stuff in a nasal spray or a breath strip type of deal.  That would be real handy to have in my purse.  One never knows when you might need a little something to get you through your day, or the line up at Wal-Mart, or rush hour traffic, or a boring conversation about some topic you don’t give a rat’s ass about with some idiot at Tim Horton’s, or the trauma of discovering a hang nail.

About ten minutes before my surgery I felt the urge to pee.  Great.  It was that dang IV, it ALWAYS makes me pee.  I made eye contact with Nurse Hatchet, which is a very risky maneuver, and I asked her, “Permission to speak Ma’am.”  She nodded, I continued, “This soldier feels like she is in the navy, her teeth are floating.  May she please utilize the facilities Ma’am?”  Okay, so that’s not what really happened, but wouldn’t that be cool if it did?  Truthfully, I asked politely if I could use the bathroom and Cookie nurse said yes.  She draped a sheet over my shoulders so there wouldn’t be a full moon in the room and she put my IV bag on a portable pole.  I got into the bathroom, fumbled to find the light, and somehow got myself and the pole wedged into the tiny space.  While trying to get the sheet off my shoulders I had an incident.  Surprised?  My sheet got one corner dipped in the toilet and the rest of it got tangled up in my IV tube and somehow I managed to get all of this stuff wrapped around the IV pole and my gown got all mixed up in this and was now only covering my shoulders and one boob.  Lovely!  After struggling for a few minutes I gave up and yanked on the cord to summons a nurse for help.  And of course, I got that cord woven into the mess as well.  When the new nurse opened the door she took one look and said, and I quote, “What the hell happened in here?”  I just smiled and said, “I just wanted to pee.”  It took two nurses a couple of minutes to free me, not because it was that bad of a mess but because they couldn’t stop laughing.  Nice!  I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if they hadn’t given me such a big wonderful shot of the happy juice, it kind of messed me up a tad.

When I finally got out of the can and was settled in my bed again this porter came swooping in holding his long surgical coat/gown out at the sides trying to look like Superman flying around.  He said, “I do declare people.  Super Porter is here!”  This was the first surgery I’ve had without him being my escort along the journey.  We go way back him and I.  He looked at me and said, “Again?  Do you even have any organs left for them to take?”  Ha ha.  Merlin knows this guy somehow, but I can’t remember how for sure.  When it was finally my turn to head to the surgical suite Mr Super Porter-man did the sign of the cross and bowed his head as I went by.  Ass!  If I wasn’t so hopped up on Ativan I might have actually been able to reach out and smack him.  I was once again reunited with my favorite person of the day, the man with the drugs.  I smiled and giggled and asked him if he had some smack ready for me.  He said, “Yup I do!  This stuff is pure I tell you.  It’s psychedelic ………..”  The next thing I knew, I was somewhat awake and in the recovery area.  Wow, that really was some solid drugs man.  Knocked me right out.  Dude!!  It’s always such a good sleep when you get put out.

It took me a little while to really wake up.  I didn’t have a lot of pain, yet, but I did have a horribly dry mouth.  That is the worst feeling ever.  A nice nurse kept bringing me ice chips and would feed them to me so I wouldn’t have to try and coordinate my hand and mouth while still slightly high on Ativan and the stuff that knocked me out.  It was a real pain in the butt when she wasn’t paying 100% attention to me because ice chips were being stuck in my ear, up my nose, close to my eye, but nowhere near my mouth.  It was a real bitch when they started to melt and got my sheet wet, it looked like I had peed myself and was lactating out of boobs that dried up years ago.  Other than that she was a pretty sweet nurse.  She told me her name was Bunny.  I thought that was cool since it was almost Easter, and she would wiggle her nose a little when she talked.  After two and a half hours in recovery they finally found a bed for me in a room.  Yahoo!  Recovery doesn’t offer much privacy and the worst part is having to lay there and try to get your bearings again and people who had abdominal surgery are releasing all that air that had been pumped into them.  Some people can really let them rip I tell you.  Yuck.  Bunny asked Patrice, a male nurse, to help her wheel me to my room, he was a pretty nice guy too.  I told Bunny that they were all so nice in recovery and she said, “Nah, it’s the drugs.”  As we headed to the wing where I was going to be stuck we picked up two hitch hikers along the way.  They claimed they were my husband and son but without my glasses I wasn’t so sure.  Then they started yapping at each other and I knew it could only be them.  Patrice asked Brandt why he wasn’t in school as it was about 2:30 p.m. and Brandt told him that it was an early dismissal day.  Patrice asked him what school he went to and Brandt said it was Ecole St. Mary and that he was in the English program.  Patrice said, “Oh I see.  Your English is very good.”  Weirdo, it must be an inside French joke.

After I got all nice and settled into my room, a private room, a nurse came and said that they needed to move me.  Great.  I was shipped off to the other end of the hallway to a semi-private room.  It wasn’t really that big of a deal, I just thought a private room would be nice so I could get a decent sleep.  A little while later I had to ask a nurse for some pain medication.  This nurse was, um, different.  He looked like he was a skate boarder kind of guy.  When he talked he would flip his long bangs back out of his face and would say, “Dude” a lot.  When I asked for the meds I said, “Do you think you can score me some drugs?  I need to escape the pain man.”  I got the feeling he would understand that kind of lingo better than, “Excuse me sir.  May I please get some medication for the pain and discomfort?”  I was afraid the proper grammar would confuse him.  He flung his hair out of his eye, nodded and said, “Dude.”  About ten minutes later he returned and kind of slinked his way into the room.  He kept looking over his shoulder and checked up and down the hallway a couple of times, then came over to me and I noticed he was palming something.  He casually slid a little cup of pills over to me and whispered, “Pssst, we need to keep this on the down low.”  I nodded, checked out the cup and asked what it was.  He said, “Two codeine and a gravol.  You’ll be flying in no time.”  I asked him how he got them and he said, “Alzheimer’s patient down the hall.  I told him he took his meds and he bought it, then I scooped them up for you.  We’ll square up later.  Don’t tell anyone I was here!” and he bolted.  A very strange guy, but great comic relief.  Just before Merlin and Brandt had to leave for the night we noticed that the gauze taped at the end of my nose was soaked with blood so we nabbed nurse Nutso (the skater dude) and brought it to his attention.  He said, “Yup.  It looks like it should be changed.”  He just stood there with his hands on his hips nodding his head for a noticeably awkward length of time.  I asked him, “Do you think you could managed to change it?”  We saw the light come on in his head and he said, “Whoa.  Good idea.”  Ya think????  About twenty minutes later he finally reappeared with a couple packages of gauze and a roll of medical tape.  When he pulled the old tape off I could feel it pulling on the facial hair that you can’t actually see.  I commented on it and he said, “Wow, now you won’t have to shave or wax this month.”  Nice!  He opened the gauze package and ditched the wrapper on me, folded  the gauze in half (very unevenly), slapped some tape on it and stuck it on quickly not taking the time to do it nice.  The right side was up so high it covered my eye and the left side was so low it covered my mouth and the tape on the left side was so long it was in my hair!  He stood back, put his hands on his hips again, and said, “Beauty!”  Then he turned around and left!!  We sat there stunned.  I looked at Merlin, through the eye that wasn’t covered, and said, “Is he for real?”  We all know that I’m anal, very anal, so this experience was very traumatic for me.  Crooked and unevenly applied bandages were worse than the actual surgery.  Naturally, I pulled it off and redid it, nicely.  After a few minutes of deep breathing I had calmed down again.  Phew, that was a close one, I could have easily gone off the deep end over that.

While all of this had gone on the “person” in the bed next to me had been causing a lot of commotion.  We could hear this growling, incoherent voice babbling on and on.  We couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman for sure.  I hoped I wasn’t stuck in a room with a man but it didn’t sound like a woman really.  Something kept beeping over and over and it was very annoying.  Finally a nurse came in and said, “Phyllis, straighten your arm.”  Okay, so it was a woman.  Yeesh!  Obliviously Phyllis was deaf because the nurse was not using her inside voice.  After nurse noisy would leave Phyllis would bend her arm again and the beeping would resume.  Let me tell you, after an hour and a half of this I was ready to rip Phyllis’ arm off and beat the damn machine  until it stopped the blinkin’ beeping!!!  We were a little concerned when one time the nurse actually said to her, “Phyllis, straighten your arm.  Phyllis, Phyllis!  Don’t forget to breathe honey!  Breathe Phyllis.”  Oh crap!  I didn’t need Phyllis checking out in the middle of the night right next to me.  That would be a little freaky.  I still haven’t forgotten the time we were stuck in the ER next to a dead guy for a couple hours until the family came to see him.  Phyllis snored pretty loud when she was actually off in la-la land and at first I thought that would drive me to drinking if I had to put up with it all night, but after the last visit from the nurse I figured it would be the only way I could be sure she was still alive.  As long as Phyllis was sawing logs they wouldn’t be needing said logs for a pine box for her.  I had a feeling it was going to be a fun night.

At about 9:45 p.m. Nurse Nutso came back into my room, stood at the end of my bed and said, “Did you hear the news?  The Conservatives won.  Therefore we will still continue to have a lack of funding in the Health Care Field.  So, that being said, we have a shortage of beds here so once again we need to move you.”  Are you kidding me?  It was like speed dating only I was moving around hospital areas trying to find one I felt comfortable with.  So far I was striking out.  I could hear the hospital areas all saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”  Ya right, whatever.  Nurse Nutso put my bags on my legs and told me to grab my other stuff.  I put my book in my lap and grabbed my cup of ice chips and water in one hand and my Fruitopia from Brandt in my other hand.  And there I sat, for fifteen minutes.  In comes a real life Barbie doll.  She was blonde, had a body every man and woman dreams about, was drop dead gorgeous but when she opened her mouth I swear, all that came out was, “Duh!!  Duh duh duh.”  Wow, that poor girl must have took one hell of a beating with the stupid stick.  It took her almost ten minutes to figure out how to release the brakes on my bed, and when all was said and done she said she couldn’t figure which one was still on but since the bed could move not too bad she would leave it.  Holy crap!  When a bed has one break still on it will shift to one side when you try to move it.  We hit the door trying to leave the room about five times.  I had started to get motion sickness, it was awful.  I could tell you about the ride to my next pit stop but that would take too long.  Long story short, it took us thirty three minutes from the time she showed up to my room until I was “safely” parked in my new room.  It should have taken us about seven minutes!!!  There was only one casualty on the journey, besides myself.  It was an old guy that she pinned between a bed stashed in the hallway and my bed.  I felt the bed go clunk over his slipper as we passed by.  He didn’t yelp out in pain so I figure that was a good sign but he did flop backwards and luckily, landed on the other bed.  Once Bimbo Barbie and this older than dirt bag lady nurse had me in the room they turned the lights out, pulled the curtain closed around me and left.  I was four feet away from the wall, my nightstand and my nifty little tray on wheels, my IV pole was on the opposite site of my bed and I still had my stuff on my legs and my hands full with the Fruitopia and cup of ice chips and water.  Oh, did I mention that the button to call the nurse was out of my reach as well?  I was hooped!!  And I had to pee, real bad!  Just as I had been contemplating dumping out my water cup and peeing in it a nurse came in to take my vitals and rescued me.  Sadly, she admitted that I had caught them in the middle of a shift change and had been forgotten.  Nice!!  She was very sweet and apologized for that and got me all settled in for the night.  Pee break included.  Phew!

I had been moved to the Maternity ward so I had to lay there and listen to babies cry every now and then throughout the night.  I didn’t mind, it wasn’t annoying, it just reminded me how badly I wanted to have another baby.  I had considered finding one, sticking it in my spacious and cute overnight bag and making a break for the door but figured my IV would slow me down and I wasn’t too keen on ripping the IV out myself.  Again, it’s the needles and blood issues I have.  Yuck!  The girl in the bed next to me was, um, interesting.  As I was being wheeled past her to my spot her privacy curtain flapped open enough for me to take a peek in at her.  Do you remember the movie Bettlejuice?  Winona Ryder played the very dark, depressive, Goth chick Lydia.  The freak next to me looked just as pale, bitchy and psychotic as Lydia.  I did a quick mental note not to fall into a deep sleep that night for fear of her offing me for my meds.  She was supposed to be sick but instead it looked like she was at some kind of spa on vacation.  She had her lap top in front of her and was typing madly, I heard the tell tale series of blips that told me she was on MSN.  While chatting on MSN she had also been texting someone on her cell phone.  As if that wasn’t enough, she had her little hospital TV going with her head phones on.  Her little tray had a Tim Horton’s cup and a McDonald’s bag on it and a full bottle of Raspberry Iced Tea.  That didn’t look like sick person stuff.  In that split second that we made eye contact she gave me a look that made ice run through my veins, like it was my fault that I had invaded her space.  Scary chick I tell ya!  I wasn’t sure who would be worse spending the night next to, Lydia the loco lunatic or 200 year old Phyllis.

When I woke up in the morning I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  But I had to wait for the doc to come check me out, have a nurse come and remove the packing from my nose, which was the grossest thing I have ever had to go through by the way, and then wait for Merlin to come get me.  I had no idea someone could have that much gauze shoved up their nose!  It was no wonder my nose was twice it’s normal size when I looked at it.  Removing the packing was like a magic act where the Magician pulls the endless strand of scarves out of his hand and everyone is baffled as to how it all fit in that one little spot.  Same thing, only it was blood soaked gauze being yanked out of my FACE!!  I had two young nurses, two senior nurses and a student nurse all standing around while this was done and I was kind of disappointed that after having gone through that horrific experience they didn’t applaud for me.  How rude!  I did so well too.  I didn’t pass out or puke, I didn’t swear and I didn’t hit anyone.  Don’t you think that I should have been rewarded for my bravery?  What did I get instead?  A sheet of instructions for post surgery care.  Big whoop-di-do-da day.  When the doc came in he said, “Wow, you look pretty good.”  What a liar.  My nose was swollen, I had blood crusted on it and on my upper lip from the removal of the packing, I had wicked bed head, the lack of sleep had me looking like an 80 year old woman, and I had blood dripped all down the front of my gown.  It looked like I had just been in a street fight and I didn’t come out of it a winner.  I wanted to whack him up side the head and ask him to take another look and form a revised opinion on how I appeared to be.  Normally I like to be told that I look good, but when I look like regurgitated crap I want the person that made me look like that to take responsibility for it, especially when it’s a man.  It’s very rewarding for me to be able to imagine ripping a man’s testicles off for making me look and feel like a swamp beast while taking full responsibility for it and begging for my forgiveness.  I think it might be a woman thing, I don’t know.  He commented that he was surprised that I didn’t show signs of major bruising.  I asked if that was what he had aimed for and he just laughed at me.  That wasn’t exactly a “no”.  Hhhhmm…. 

Here it is, almost a week later and I’m on the mend.  All things considered, it wasn’t such a bad experience after all.  Ya right!  I’m not having that done EVER again!  Hey, I sneezed yesterday and sadly, I don’t sneeze “gently”.  I blew out some of the stitches up my nose with that grand event.  Great!  I’m freaked out thinking that I might have a huge gaping hole up my left nostril leading into my brain where all my boogers and stuff can leak in.  Or, what if my brains leak out?  I could go to sleep one night smart and wake up dumber than a stick!  I wonder if that’s maybe what happened to Bimbo Barbie!  I’m thinking I might want to get it checked out tomorrow just to be on the safe side, but if I’m told I need a few more stitches put back in I’m going to make run for it!  Off to find someone to drive the get away car!!!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Yesterday I had to drop off a document for work at the PDD office in the Lethbridge Centre Tower.  For those of you who don’t know this, PDD stands for Persons With Developmental Disabilities.  On my way there I had popped in a piece of gum.  It was this new stuff Merlin bought for me that is made with natural stuff of some sort, the package says that it’s made the way gum was originally made.  Alrighty then!!  It’s actually pretty tasty stuff.  Mine was cinnamon, Merlin had the peppermint.  So there I was, cruising down third avenue chomping away on my all natural cinnamon gum, rocking out to the beat of Ozzy’s new song, minding my own business heading to PDD.  Life was good at that point.  Not for long though, of course, it’s me, something has to go wrong.  I wasn’t bothering anyone, I was being good!!  But suddenly, there was pain in my one upper molar.  We’re not talking the kind of pain you feel when a mosquito takes a nibble on you, it was, “Holy crap!  I think I’m going to die!  I think this is what you feel like when you get shot in the head with an acid soaked bullet that has mini razor blades on it and is on fire!!”  That kind of pain.  Now, being that I’m a little slow-ish at times, I kept chewing the dang gum.  That wasn’t exactly the brightest thing to do.  I was sitting there trying to drive while I’m going – chew, pain, “Oh crap!”, chew, pain, “Oh crap!”  I only had to do that about another five times until I realized it was the gum chewing that was causing the pain and for some reason my gum had gotten REALLY hard.  Hhhhmmmm……………

I pulled over into the nearest parking lot to investigate the situation.  I should have taken a look at where exactly I was because I ended up parking right in front of the ‘Adult Source Video Store’.  I hope no one I knew drove by and saw me, that would be a little embarrassing.  Anywhoo, I spit my gum into my hand and saw that this wonderful, all natural, no preservatives or additives gum had yanked out my filling!  What’s natural about that?  FYI, the gum doesn’t taste THAT good.  Not rip out your dental work good.  Trust me.  As I’m sitting in my vehicle out front of the porn movie shop I discover that every time air hits my tooth it feels like someone is taking a jack hammer to my face.  And no all you perves, I mean an actual jack hammer that is used to break up cement not “the Jack Hammer” that you could probably purchase at this particular video store.  Get your minds out of the gutter.  Back to my tooth issue.  I thought I would be smart and stick my gum in the hole of my tooth to keep the air out but that just hurt like a son of a bitch!!  Apparently all natural gum isn’t meant to be stuck in a hollow tooth.  Who knew?  I knew I would have to go see my dentist but it would have to wait because I had to get this document dropped off ASAP.  I put my filling in my coat pocket and spit my eco friendly crap gum out the window.  I found that sticking my tongue in the hole helped immensely.  I quickly called my dentist and was told that I could pop in quick and he could cement it in temporarily then I would have to come back for a crown most likely next week.  It’s not the first time this tooth has given me grief and he had told me last time that I really needed to fix it properly and it was looking like that would be fairly soon.  Great!!  It’s a good thing that I just happen to have $800 laying around to blow on a crown.  NOT!!!

I continue on to PDD with the tip of my tongue stuck in my hollow tooth and life is not too bad again.  By the time I got to Lethbridge Centre I had almost forgot about my filling that escaped from my mouth.  I couldn’t complain too much because I could still hum even with my tongue wedged into my tooth.  I hopped on the elevator, okay, I lied.  I didn’t hop.  I kind of galloped!  Don’t laugh, I had to hurry before the door closed.  It was touch and go, I almost didn’t make it.  The door started to close on me, it grazed my junk in my trunk and flew back open again.  I started to think, “Oh crap, what floor is it on?”  I was having a total brain fart!  I should know this, I write and type their address at least a dozen times a week.  I wasn’t really paying attention to my surroundings and so it didn’t register that there was someone on the elevator with me.  Of course.  I was looking at the buttons hoping one would start flashing with a little neon sign above it saying, “Push me push me!” and I said out loud, “Gweat.  I fowgot whewe I need to go.”  No, that wasn’t bad spelling, I spelled it the way it sounded when I said it with my tongue in my tooth hole.  I jumped and went, “Aaaaahhhhh” when the lady behind me touched my shoulder and asked if I needed help.  When I jumped I bit down on my tongue and it made my eyes water, that hurt a LOT!  I looked at the lady and said, “No.  I’m good.  I jus can’t wemember what flowr I hafa go shu.”  She titled her head a little to the side, gently stroke my upper arm and said, “It’s okay sweetie, I’ll help you.”

She placed her hand under my elbow and slowly guided me out of the elevator and asked me if I knew what office I had to go to.  I nodded, wiped my tears from my tongue bite and said, “Yaw.  Pee Gee Gee.”  She gave me a baffled look and said she didn’t understand me.  So I said it again, slower and a little louder, “Pee Gee Gee!”  She shook her head and said she still couldn’t understand me but suggested we could look at the directory on the wall outside the elevator.  I smiled, nodded my head and tripped on a piece of lint and stumbled like big old Clydesdale.  It wasn’t very graceful at all.  I took a peek at the directory and pointed to “Persons With Developmental Disabilities”.  I saw the light go on in this kind lady’s head and she gave me a big smile and a little squeeze on my elbow and said, “Ohhhhhhh.  I get it.  PDD.”  I don’t know why but the next time she opened her mouth she was talking five times louder and ten times slower pronouncing every syllable of every word separately.  She said to me, “You know what sweetie?  Why don’t we go to the PDD office together.”  My tooth started to hurt a little more and it was distracting me so I didn’t realize at first what was going on.  Duh!  Sometimes I even shock myself with how dense and slow I can be.  I smiled at her thinking she was so nice and wondered what kind of business she had with PDD.

We both got back on the elevator, she pushed the button for the seventh floor and said to me, “Okay, we’re on our way up.  Everything is okay now.”  I was thinking that she sure was talkative and nice for being a stranger.  It was better than her being a bitch I suppose.  When we got to the seventh floor my new friend held the door for me and motioned for me to go ahead of her.  I stepped out, turned back around and said to her, “Than ku.  Yowr so nice.”  She followed me out of the elevator with her hand on my elbow again, led me to the PDD office and said, “There you go, we found the office.  Are you okay on your own now?”  I started to wonder if she was ‘all there’.  I nodded my head and walked in the office.  It wasn’t until I was actually stepping foot into the office that I realized what had just happened.  I’m SO dense!!  She wasn’t just a friendly woman, she thought she was aiding a disabled person!  Sigh …………………

Comments from the Peanut Gallery referring to my “abilities” or “disabilities” will not be received too well.  Keep them to yourself.

We were waiting for our luggage to come down on the luggage belt thingy-ma-jiggy.  I must say, it’s a very stressful event to have to endure.  You’re standing there with about 100 other travelers all gathered in nice and close to the carousel like a colony of ants all over a plate of fried chicken at a summer picnic.  Everyone is scurrying back and forth all amuck shoving their way through the group trying to get as close to the front as possible as if being at the front will make your baggage come out faster.  Everyone has their eyes glued to the rubber curtain anticipating the arrival of their precious luggage.  The groups of suitcases are heard before they’re seen.  As soon as everyone hears that whir of the belt on the other side announcing it’s offering of a load of luggage the group falls silent, everyone is holding their breath, breaking out into a nervous sweat, grabbing the hand of their loved one beside them because they are just too nervous to go through this alone and they’re saying a silent prayer in their head, “Please please PLEASE God, let my suitcase be next and be safe.  If it arrives safe I swear I won’t ever curse again.  Please God, my favourite pants are in there, they make my butt look so good!   Please please please God.”  Down comes the first bag, it’s not yours, the second, nope, the third and so on.  Twenty pieces have been spit out from the belly of the luggage carousel, not a single one is yours and then the carousel stops dead, it has been silenced.  There is a collective groan of disappointment from the group and a barely audible sob of disappointment escapes from you.  As you look around at your fellow travelers you’re thinking, “Oh, for f@&#’s sake!!  What the hell did this damn piece of shit airline do with my f-ing luggage?  I’m never flying with these assholes again!!”  As you’re planning your revenge on the airline and their inept, dumber than a stick baggage handlers that involves half a dozen machines guns, a handful of grenades, gallons of battery acid and a dozen PMS-ing women you are snapped back into reality by the sound of the belts starting up again.  There is hope once again.  Wahoo, there is a God!!  Everyone who is still waiting for their luggage has the same look on their faces, the look that you’ve seen on the face of a loser back in grade school who was always picked last for a team but was too much of a dork to realize that there was a snowball’s chance in hell that their luck might change today.  So eager, such anticipation, such a dumb ass!!  Anywhoooo, as the new offerings of baggage are ditched out onto the belt you pray yet again, “God, please send my luggage to me safe and sound.  I know, I cussed in my head, I’m sorry, please forgive me.  But you didn’t exactly hold up your end of the deal.  This time I REALLY mean it when I say I won’t ever curse again.  Please please please.  Again God, it’s all about them pants that hide the junk in my trunk!”  And so begins the baggage ritual once again.  Three quarters of an hour later you’re still standing there with tears in your eyes that you’re trying to fight back, looking enviously at the travelers who have retrieved their precious cargo and are happily on their way to begin their holiday.  Look at little miss thing over there with her prissy little bright pink Roxy three piece luggage set in her little mini skirt wiggling her little tooshy at you, mocking you in your frumpy old housewife stretch jeans with the elastic waist from Sears waiting for you ugly crap brown single piece of hand me down luggage.  Hhhhmmm, only one thing on your mind right now.  “Bitch!!”

Once again, you hear the belt start up with a clunk and a stressed out sounding whir, it’s tired of playing the baggage game, and so are you!!  It’s now to the point that there are only maybe a dozen other people left milling around the carousel with blank, empty looks in their glazed over eyes.  It’s been too long, the chances of getting your suitcase is slim and none, slim just left town and everyone knows it.  As you’re gathering up your carry on bag, your spouse and your deflated dreams of seeing your “good looking butt” pants you hear a strange noise.  It sounds like a, um, mechanical regurgitation of sorts.  You turn around and JACKPOT!!  Your suitcase!  It’s here!  Everyone else is looking at you longingly and resentfully.  You feel the urge to talk to the group, to say something after you’ve spent this time together holding each other up while waiting for the baggage that didn’t come, for them that is.  “I would like to thank everyone who made this retrieval possible.  The completely competent and hard working baggage handlers, this wonderful airline that has treated me so well, oh, my husband!  He hasn’t left my side once during this ordeal.  He’s so supportive and positive, and …..”

Wait a minute.  There’s something wrong with those last two sentences.  If I remember correctly, things didn’t happen quite like that on our Disney trip.  It was all true up to the point where my luggage came.  We had waited for about three quarters of an hour and the belt did start up, stop and start again over and over.  There really was a little miss priss in her band aid sized skirt with a bright pink Roxy suitcase set.  All of that is true.  But I didn’t get to yell, “Jackpot!”  Dad, Merlin and Brandt had all found their suitcases but mine was still MIA and Merlin says, “Ha!  Wouldn’t it be funny if the thing stops and your suitcase doesn’t come?”  I shot him a squinty eyed cranky wife look and guess what.  Before my face could spring back into it’s normal, happy, smiling ray of sunshine the belt stops!  It made this horrible sound, “Ka klunk.”  It didn’t sound good at all.  I turned and grabbed Merlin by his shirt collar and said in a voice much like the girl’s voice in the Exorcist, “Why did you jinx me?  Are you trying to drive me to drinking?”  He starts laughing as I slowly loosen my grip on his shirt.  I don’t see the humour in this, at all.  Just as the daggers are about to come flying out of my eyes I could hear the familiar sound of the whirring belt.  There was hope once again!!  We stood there with more anticipation of my suitcase’s arrival than we had with the arrival of Brandt.  Like I said, they were REALLY awesome pants!  Two more bags are spit out and both are in the wrong airport.  I believe the tags said their destination was Mexico.  After another fifteen minutes of waiting I threw in the towel, and threw Merlin into oncoming traffic.  Just kidding.  He did jinx me but I love him.  I wasn’t about to stand there and suck face with him but I also wasn’t going to hurt him, too much.  It only took three months for him to stop limping.  However, he’s still a little nervous and twitchy around me, I don’t know why!

We left the airport and boarded the Disney Vacation bus headed for our hotel.  It was so hard to leave without my suitcase in my hand.  It felt so wrong and left such an empty feeling, in my hand.  It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  Do I need to remind you that those pants really did amazing things for my behind?  If you can compare my butt to the trunk of a car I would say my butt at the time looked like it had three large suitcases in it.  Those pants took my trunk down to having one large suitcase and one small one in it.  How awesome is that?

My traumatic story does not end here, but my energy does.  I need to find my bed NOW!!  I will have to continue my tragic story at another time.  Check back in a few days to hear how things progressed.  I could have my own Soap Opera, I could call it “As the Carousel Turns” or, “These Are the Bags Of My Life”, maybe “Airport Thrills 9021Oh-No” or possibly, “General Hostility”.  Or I can just call it, “Part Two”.  I’ll have to think about that, I’ll keep you posted!!

What was I going to talk about?  I’ve lost track again.  Hhhhhmmmmm, oh, I remember.  My surgery.  I have to go in two and half weeks and have my sinuses drained, blockages removed and have my Deviated Septum fixed.  I didn’t know my nose had such big issues that it needed to be “fixed”.  I wish I was going to have my nose “repaired” by a Plastic Surgeon instead of the Ear, Nose and Throat guy.  If I had a Plastic Surgeon I might be able to convince him to give me a BOGO type deal on some stuff.  How awesome would that be?  Have a nose job and we’ll throw in a boob lift for free!  Wahoo!  Ooh, ooh, ooh, I have an even better idea.  Pay for one Plastic Surgery at $1,000 and the rest are 5 bucks, 5 bucks, 5 bucks!!  I could have my nose done, get a boob lift to keep them from dragging on the floor, do a little lypo on my fat ass, lypo the crap out of my thunder thighs, have a weensy bit of a face lift (I don’t have wrinkles, I just want tighter cheeks), and get a tummy tuck that would make Joan Rivers salivate all for one low price of $1,025.00!!  That would be awesome!  All just because I have a little problem with my nose.  I wonder if they would go for that?  I mean, he’s there anyways, what’s the big deal?  It’s like when you’re out shopping and you decide to be polite and hold the door for your crotchety old Dad then an old granny comes along so you hold the door for her and her fossilized husband, then for the pregnant lady with the twins in the double stroller dragging her other two kids behind her that can’t seem to keep her legs together, and the sweet little girl with her cute little blonde pig tales and her Dad, wow, back up, her kinda cute Dad.  Uh huhn, you get to watch his butt as he walks out the door past you, ‘boomba chuck a lucka boom boom boom’.  And yes, I did get that from MailBox on Blues Clues.  When you’re at home all day, everyday, for eight years, with a handful of children that like to watch Blues Clues you tend to pick up a few of their ‘catch phrases’.  You Moms can relate, right?  I’m sure I’m not the only stay at home Mom who would sit by the window waiting for the mail man to come so I could jump up and sing, “Here’s the mail it never fails, it makes me wanna wag my tail, and when it comes I wanna wail MAIL!!!!!!” with my hands flapping at my sides just like Steve does, Blues friend in the green striped shirt.  He was nerdy cute, wasn’t he?  Oh, just a minute, where was I going with that?  Let me think ….. oh right, it’s the same as the Plastic Surgeon doing extra surgery for next to nothing because in both scenarios you’re there all ready, you might as well put in a little extra effort!!  It doesn’t cost you more, it just takes up a little extra time.  And like the song says, “Time time time is on your side, yes it is.”  It’s a win win situation for everyone!!!

Hey Dad, guess what?  All those years when I was a sweet, angelic, pure, innocent teenager (hey, stop laughing) and would pout when my friends got something I wanted and you said I couldn’t have and you would say to me that I shouldn’t have my nose out of joint, well, it turns out I couldn’t help it!  I was born with my nose out of joint!!!!!  Ha ha!  It really WAS just genetics.  Who knew??

 Saturday Brandt and I just about drove Merlin to drinking with our coughing and barking.  Merlin likes to call us Cyrus and Iris the Virus when we get sick, he thinks it’s cute.  Yah, uh huhn, not funny.  By 8:30 p.m. Merlin had enough and called the Health Link line because Brandt’s cough now evolved into a bark with phlegm being hacked up.  45 minutes later Merlin was finally done “chatting” with the Health Link nurse and said we were going to take Brandt to the ER.  He decided that I may as well be looked at too, he said it would be like a two for one deal.  We’re people, not happy meals mister!!  We spent four hours at the hospital and in that time we saw way too many weird things.  If we could have gathered all these people together we could have a circus that would put the Ring Ling Brothers to shame.  Seriously, it was a wild night.  All the freaks and geeks were out in full force last night.

 As I was standing in line waiting to get Brandt and I registered I see this guy with no shirt on, jeans hanging below his butt crack and hand cuffed take a dive face first.  He somehow slipped out of the grip of the cop that was leading him out.  The cop dropped to the floor himself in a move that would make any Hollywood stunt man jealous.  He managed to catch the guys head in the palm of his hand about two inches above the floor.  Wow!  Nice move man.  The guy in cuffs started swearing with a heavy accent, I think the accent was from the land of Shit Faced.  He was pretty pickled.  The cop says to him, “Hey, at least I saved your melon from splattering all over the floor.”  It took two cops and two of the Commissionaires to get the guy up and out the door so he could be escorted to the Crow Bar Hotel for the night.  Nice.  As they were heading out the door in comes a guy in bike gear hobbling along cussing about his foot.  The nurse at the desk says to an EMT beside her, “Between the drunks and the Motor Cross casualties we’re THE place to be tonight.”  I turned around to see if Merlin saw the guy go down and I almost crapped my pants.  I was face to face with a woman with a huge swollen eye that stuck out like the Hunch Back of Notre Dam’s, she had just the one nasty yellow fuzzy looking snaggle tooth sticking out from her top gum, her hair looked like she styled it with a blender and she smelled like she was about 90% proof.  She was a beauty.  Just then her ride arrived, I think he was the Crypt Keeper.  They were such a lovely couple.

 I was giving our information to the next nurse I had to see and Merlin jumps up to go talk to someone but I couldn’t see who from where I was sitting.  He comes back around the corner with our new family doctor in tow.  I’m such an idiot, I said to him, “Geez, what are YOU doing here?”  He said, “Well, you know, I AM a doctor and this IS a hospital.”  I felt like such a door knob.  So we sit and chat with him for a bit and after hearing Brandt cough and me talk like a chain smoking hooker with a sand coated throat he said he figured we were in the right place.  Merlin said to him, “Do you have any kind of pull around here?  Do you think you could get us in faster?” and gives him a little wink.  What a dork.  The doc laughs and says no.  I pointed out that I did give him a farting finger pen, he laughs again and said that it was a GREAT pen, but he couldn’t help us out.

 I couldn’t believe my eyes.  There was Jabba the Hut’s sister sitting there in the ER.  This, um, woman (I use the term lightly), had greasy gray hair sticking in every direction, she had horn rimmed glasses that were the original 1970’s ones, she must weight at least 400 pounds, her shirt was about a foot and a half too short and way too tight, she had white old lady stockings on, her shoes were these diarrhea brown scuffed up Mary Jane’s, and her leggings, yes I said leggings, only came to about mid calf.  Now, when your stomach hangs down to your knees, literally, and has the big butt crack up the front look to it leggings might not be the best style to try and pull off.  She was crocheting this afghan that was just a nasty burnt orange vomit colour and told anyone that was within ear shot that she needed to have it finished before the baby came.  Her personality was just as disturbing as her appearance.  She was talking away as if she was Queen Shit of Turd Mountain and we were her loyal subjects that actually cared about what she had to say.  She was loud, obnoxious, had nothing intelligent to say and smelled like seaweed and the dump.  She would try to engage people in conversation and when we ignored her she just kept talking anyways!!  A little bit later her son came out of the back and said that he was being sent home and was to take Tylenol for his fever.  He looked fine to us, well, health wise that is, he was just as weird as his mother.  Great, now we had two obnoxious freaks blabbing on about nonsense thinking that they were the coolest people that ever walked the streets of Lethbridge.  What a treat.  Jabba-ette got up and sloshed her way to the phone announcing to everyone around her that she was going to call her husband to come and pick them up.  There was more of them?

 There was a guy with his arm in a sling that kept milling around the place, he couldn’t seem to sit still.  He had gone to the bathroom and when he came out I noticed that he had issues peeing.  The proof was dribbled down the front of his pants.  Yuck.  When the nurse called his name we thought she said, “David and Goliath.  Is David and Goliath here?”   We’re still not sure what his name really is.  Next in comes another inebriated guy with a cut on his arm that went from the palm of his hand up to his elbow.  His escorts appeared to be his sisters who were so not impressed with him at all.  One of them commented that she didn’t know how she got roped into being there and she then proceeded to call half of the city on her cell phone to tell them how she felt.  The guy kept trying to put his arm on the counter so the nurse could see the blood oozing from his arm.  Yuck!  Can we say tainted blood scandal.  He apparently only knows one word, “Dude”.  When asked what happened he said, “Dude”.  When asked it if hurt, “Dude”.  How much did you have to drink, “Dude”.  He seemed to be very well spoken …………. DUDE!!  As he’s being ushered to the sucher room in stumbles four more drunks with the cops in tow.  I wondered where the party was at and why we weren’t invited.

 The next visitor was a woman wearing a clear plastic glove that showed off her index finger sitting in a pool of blood.  It looked sore yet she was calm as could be.  Jabba-ette was up in search of a pen so she could do the word game in the Reader’s Digest, who knew she could read, and she stops to ask the lady what happened.  Duh, her finger was cut.  The lady said that she cut off the tip of her finger and Jabba-ette asks if she was cutting vegetables or fruit or meat or cheese or pie or tin or something else.  Personally, I thought she could have named at least four more things the lady could have been cutting.  As more and more blood kept pooling in the finger of the glove I was getting closer and closer to passing out.  I don’t DO blood.  Finally Jabba-ette’s husband comes in.  There was a collective shiver throughout the waiting room.  He was only about 5’3”, I didn’t see any teeth, his eyes were googly and all over the place like Cookie Monster’s, he must have his hair styled at the same place as the lady with the blender hair only his was greasier and had a yellow ting to the gray because he apparently bathes in cigarette smoke (he smelled bad, real bad), he was dirtier than Pig Pen from Charlie Brown, and he twitched around as if he was currently undergoing electro shock therapy right then and there.  That’s a sight that will give me nightmares for years to come.  Seeing him next to Jabba-ette totally explained the son.  The son seems to have his father’s twitch and googly eye and his mother’s charm and charisma.

The next three acts that came through the door were elderly people in wheelchairs being ushered in by paramedics .  This one paramedic wasn’t a very good driver, he missed hitting the lady’s head on the corner of the counter by about 2 inches.  Of course she started ragging on him about being more careful and how she didn’t need any more reasons to be in the ER.  He did not look amused but she just kept prattling on and on about how she deserved to be treated like a lady.  He barely had her wheelchair parked and he sprinted out of there seemingly happy to ditch granny.  I was a little choked that there were paramedics galore and not one of them was good looking.  There was a short fat one, a tall gangly one, a couple female ones, a young guy with zits all over his face (hasn’t he heard of Proactive?), there was a nerd with an 80’s porn stash happening, and a few other not so lovely specimens.  Then boo-yah!  I saw a hottie.  Finally, a little eye candy for Mom!!  Ooh ooh ooh, who’s that behind him?  Oh yah, an adorable little police man.  Jackpot!!  Something to look at besides Jabba-ete and her freak of nature son.  I was so busy gawking at the paramedics butt while he bending over I didn’t even notice the next side show act that came in.  Merlin was nudging me back into reality trying hard not to laugh out loud.  This woman was standing in line rubbing her gut like she was pregnant but wasn’t.  She would bend over so her head was almost to her knees and she would bend her knees doing a goofy looking bobbing thing.  She would stand up again and rub her gut making these weird noises that sounded like a pig being tortured.  “Wheee, whee, whee, whee.”  She did her weird little yoga-ish looking act for about another five minutes and the whole time Merlin and I were trying to decide which end she was going to explode out of.  It could have gone either way.  Thankfully when she walked past us to sit down everything stayed in her, nothing leaked out and we were taken back to a room before the volcano spewed it’s nastiness.

The next person to make their grand entrance was this super tall guy wearing a really stupid looking gray beret, bright olive green pants, a blue shirt, a brown tweed jacket and was carrying two pizza’s.  Yup, someone had pizza delivered to the ER at 11:20 p.m.  It took awhile to track down the idiots who ordered it, when they came out to the waiting room to get it we recognized them as the group that were with the Motor Cross guy.  The guy had long hair, a beard, was wearing a hippie hemp shirt and sandals.  He said to the pizza guy, “Wow, like we kinda got the munchies man.  Ya know what I’m sayin’?”  I think we all knew what he was saying, “man”.  That pizza sure smelled good.  Five more minutes and I’m pretty sure everyone in the waiting room would have started bidding on it. “Let’s start the bidding at 25 25 25, over here we have 25 how about 30 30 30 anyone have 30, the lady on the left has 30.  How about 35 35 35, do we have a 35, yes we have 35, 40 40 40…… you get the idea.  After the pizza guy in comes an elderly man and his wife.  She plunks him in a wheel chair and sticks him over by me.  I glanced over at him and saw that he had the toe of his right shoe cut out.  The sole was still completely in tacked, but the top of the shoe had been cut off just up to the laces.  I was thinking it was to let the foot breathe, but then I noticed that there was no foot.  At least no toes to speak of.  I wasn’t about to look any closer to see if there was any part of a foot farther back or not.  Some things are just better left unknown.

Finally we get called to go to the back.  Whew!  Out of the circus.  Oh, NO WAY!!  They stick us in the “baby room”.  Every time we’ve had Brandt at the hospital we get stuck in the baby room.  The bed is a hospital version of a crib that is just a little too small for Brandt now.  The one wall has a mural painted on it.  If you can call it that.  It’s supposed to be a jungle scene.  Uh huhn, sure it is.  The hippo has buck teeth and has flowers in it’s mouth like some sleazy Rico Suavay trying to hustle women with his sexy tango.  One of the monkeys looks like she just had botox injected in her lips and slathered them in hooker red lipstick and the other monkey is holding a banana in a very suggestive manner.  The giraffe is all bent funny and it looks like he has scoliosis, the lion has a mane that looks like Maggie Simpson’s hair, the blue bird looks like a jelly bean with wings and one of the wings is bigger than it’s body so he’s flying kind of cockeyed.  I bet he doesn’t get south for the winter, not with him flying in circles and all.  The elephant has an abnormally large truck stuck right under it’s eyes and is spraying water all over herself, probably because she can’t see over that gargantuan truck of hers.  The tiger is half hidden behind a bush and has this odd look on it’s face that makes you wonder who else is behind that bush doing something to the tiger.  I take a seat in the rocking chair, I love rocking chairs.  Merlin hates this particular one.  It makes noises as you rock. Eeee, eeee, clunk clunk, eeee eeee, clunk clunk.  It drives him nuts.  Oh well, suck it up princess, I’m sick, I can rock if I want to rock.  Merlin flips on the TV and presses play on the VCR.  In unison all three of us cry out, “Oh no!!!”  Apparently all the video tape cases are empty and are there just for show and their one and only movie is in the VCR.  It’s Little Bear.  It’s the same, and only, Little Bear movie that has been there since Brandt was born!  We’ve seen it enough times we know the words, by heart, all three of us.  We couldn’t get that thing shut off quick enough.  About 45 minutes later a nurse comes and moves us because someone has just brought a small baby in and they need that room for them.  We were more than happy to leave the Pet Cemetery mural behind.

When the doctor finally gets to us we were punch drunk with fatigue, not Merlin actually, he had been sleeping as usual.  He even slept standing up in our final resting spot in our little cubicle behind the plaid privacy curtain.  I’m still not positive this guy was a real doctor.  He comes in wearing black jeans, Birkenstocks, a red Hawaiian shirt hanging out with a band of yellow/orange flowers and pineapples around the bottom of it.  He had his ear pierced with a little silver hoop, he was very tanned, his hair was salt and pepper-ish and was feathered back and on his ID tag he had a sticker of Lilo (from the Disney cartoon Lilo and Stitch for those of you who don’t do Disney movies) and Lilo had a yellow surfboard in her hand.  We have now been in the ER for almost four hours and the doc spends about three minutes with us, prescribes an oral steroid for Brandt, Otrivin nasal spray for me and T3’s for both of us to help calm the cough and sends us on our way.  I felt kind of ripped off!  We wait four hours to have Walt Disney’s illegitimate cousin from Hawaii spend a mere three minutes with us!!  And they call that “Health Care”?  It made us wonder if he only spends three minutes with each patient then why did we have to wait four hours?  Maybe he was sneaking out to the Ramada in between patients so he could practice his surfing in their wave pool.  And why couldn’t this Disney cartoon dude score the ER some new movies for the baby room?  There was no point in hanging around so we decided to make like a baby and head out (I love that line).  We notice that in the trauma area there is one of our city’s finest sitting in front of one of cubicles guarding a patient.  It must have been a long night for him because his head was doing the bob and weave.  Nice!!  I feel safe.  NOT!!

Our fun doesn’t end there.  We’re heading home and it’s now 1:40 a.m.  I’m looking out my side window and saw an interesting sight in a house.  I told Merlin to stop, flip a u-turn and go back because he has to check this out.  Merlin creeps up slowly in front of this house and there is this guy in a skin tight white muscle shirt (with no muscles to speak of), he has a long blond wig on, he has some sort of a weird flat top big brimmed black hat on and he is playing a guitar and people are sitting all around clapping for him.  Right in front of the window for the world to see.  Merlin figures they were playing Guitar Hero.  I sure hope so, otherwise that would be really weird.  I’m wondering if that was the party where all the drunks from emergency were at.  Of course we have to go back and look one more time.  It gave us a good laugh.  Sadly, that’s not the strangest thing we’ve witnessed in someone’s living room window.  We once saw this guy sitting naked at his computer with his curtains open and not a care in the world.  That was disturbing, all four times that went back to check it out.  We were only about six blocks from home and this taxi comes barreling up to the intersection and it doesn’t look like he’s planning on stopping!  We had the green light, he didn’t.  There wasn’t anything Merlin could do really but step on the gas and blare the horn, we were too far into the intersection to stop.  Somehow the guy managed to stop, probably leaving his transmission behind.  It scared the crap out of us.  Had he not stopped either Brandt or I would be dead as he was heading towards the passenger side of Franny (our vehicle, I named it).  Brandt piped up from the back seat, “Well, if he did end up hitting us I bet we wouldn’t have to wait another four hours to see a doctor.  We would be bumped to the front of the line I bet.”  Just like me, Brandt always finds the silver lining in every situation. 

Here it is, Sunday afternoon.  Brandt is coughing a lot less because of the oral steroid and seems to be well on his way back to normal, I’m still hacking a lot but I don’t really seem to care because I’m slightly high on T3’s and Merlin is snoozing in front of the TV waiting for his football game to come on.  Just a typical day in the Anderson household.  Nothing exciting ever happens to us.

I have to admit that I love winter.  I love the snow and I actually enjoy the cold weather, as long as I’m inside curled up under a quilt wearing my fuzzy jammies, my thick, heavy Eyore socks, I have a good book in one hand and a mug of Bailey’s with a hint of hot chocolate in my other hand.  Sigh………… that’s livin’ the good life I tell ya.

However, today I experienced a life altering experience.  It’s one that will probably haunt my dreams for a long time to come.  Sniffle sniffle, give me a moment while I regroup.  I’ll be fine.  I think I can muster up the courage to tell you about my horrific incident ………………..  okay, I think I can get through this, I’ve stopped shaking now.  Phew …. I’m good.

This morning Merlin couldn’t get his truck to start no matter what he tried.  He had to call one of the guys he works with to come and pick him up.  When Stud Muffin (not his real name, I’m respecting his privacy by using an alias) showed up they gave it a couple more tries but “the Beast” (as I like to call the truck) wouldn’t go.  Merlin said something must have frozen up over night even though he had it plugged in.  I was sure that with Stud Muffin standing there the truck would thaw out for sure.  Lord only knows I was melting and there was a wall of our house between us.

When I got home from work I decided to see if I could get the truck to go, it had been plugged in all day and it had warmed up a degree or two so that should have made a difference.  Now, with the cold weather comes a runny nose for me.  It’s not too pleasant when your nose is running in these temperatures because snot can freeze in mere seconds.  So when I sniffle my nose freezes shut!  Have you ever had snot-sicles hanging off your nose hairs?  I have.  It’s not exactly the best look I’ve ever tried to pull off.  I have had snot-sicles that were long enough I could have had someone make beautiful ice sculptures out of them but oddly enough, I couldn’t find anyone who was interested in doing the carvings.  Hhhhmmm, strange, I thought people would jump at the chance to start a new “trend” in the art scene here in Lethbridge.  I have always pictured having these beautiful ice snot carvings of music notes and clarinets hanging so elegantly from my nostrils.  And no Merlin, I didn’t get that idea at band camp.  I did NOT EVER go to band camp!!! 

Oh yah, the truck.  Sometimes I get a little distracted.  My parents thought I was maybe a little ADD but the doctor said  …hey!  Would you look at that!  There’s actually a fly still alive buzzing around in our  … Whoa!  You should see this,  I can’t believe that my pinky toe can .. Yes, it’s really cold here.  Did I mention Merlin’s truck wouldn’t start?  When I got home I peeked in the window of his truck and noticed that Merlin left the keys in it, in the  ignition!  What a door knob!  I suppose he figured that if he couldn’t start it a thief couldn’t either.  And if they did get it going I’m sure Merlin would wish the truck good riddance.  It has issues, but shhhhhhh, don’t say it out loud.  The Beast is a little sensitive.  Hell, it’s a dang friggin’ princess.  Isn’t that obvious?  Oooh, it’s cold out, I don’t want to run.  I don’t feel good.  I don’t want to turn over for you.  Wah wah wah.  Get over it truck, there’s only room for one princess in this house and I don’t have any intentions of giving up my tiara anytime soon.

The truck, right.  My mind is wandering today, that’s SO unusual for me.  I see the keys in the ignition and I decide to give it a try.  I come around the back of the truck and my nose starts to drip.   My mittens were in my purse because I warmed up my vehicle before I left work so I didn’t need them.  I look around, no one is looking, so I give my nose a discrete little wipe with my index finger on my right hand.  No biggy, everyone has done it before.  Right?  I hop in the truck and grab the key and give it a good crank.  Nothing.  Another crank, again, nothing.  I try about five more times and decide to give up.  I go to pull my hand off the ignition switch and I feel pain.  What the heck?  My finger is KILLING me!!  I look, and holy crap!  My finger has FROZE to the ignition switch!!  Yes, it’s true, snot will bond your finger to a metal ignition switch in under 60 seconds when it is below -40° with a wind chill.  Frozen!  Stuck!  Cold snot can make a more secure bond than Super Glue!!  Who knew?

I panic.  My finger has pain shooting up it, there are no neighbours outside to call out to, probably because they are all smart enough to stay inside where it’s warm and there is plenty of Kleenex handy!!  I start to really freak out.  What if I can’t get it off?  Will I lose my whole hand to frost bite?  Would I just lose the one finger?  Would I only lose the finger tip?  Why me?  Why why why???  If I lose even just the finger tip I won’t be able to type properly.  Just would end up being “ ust”, joker would be “ oker”.  No wait, if I can’t get the “J” key, I won’t be able to reach the “U” key so just would be “  st”, and I wouldn’t be able to reach the “M” and “N” keys either so jamming would be “ a  i g”.  My career would be over!  How can I type if I can’t reach all the keys?  That’s my phone dialing finger too so I couldn’t even dial a phone anymore and it’s also my page flipping finger so I couldn’t flip through documents anymore.  Oh crap!  If I lose my page flipping finger how am I supposed to read a book?  I would be stuck on the same page forever!!

I calm myself down and try to think.  What would McGyver do?  Yes, I had the hots for McGyver back in the day.  I hung on his every word and watched his brilliant, handsome, sexy mind get him out of many a predicament.  Ah ha!  I know what McGyver would do, I saw this in an episode once.  He would pour a warm liquid on the area where the skin is frozen to the metal.  That’s easy!  Hhhhmmmm, except for when you don’t have any hot liquids handy.  What would McGyver do now?  Ah ha!  When it was a life and death matter he had to have someone pee on the bonded area.  That was a different episode I think.  Anyways, I can do that, I know how to pee.  Problem, I can’t get my pee to shoot a foot and half away to reach my finger.  This is probably the one and only time in my life I wish I was a man.  Oh, to have a penis!  It’s the only thing that is standing between me walking away with all my digits still attached to me.  Oh curse these dang ovaries!!! Think woman, THINK!!!  Spit!  Yes siree, spit is warm!  I start spitting.  It turns out that it isn’t so easy to hit a target when you’re spitting.  Sorry Merlin, you now have globs of frozen spit on your steering wheel and your dashboard.  Hey, be happy, it could be worse.  It could be snot or pee.

Finally, I hit the right spot.  I can feel my skin starting to loosen so I give it a darn good yank.  Holy mother humper!!!  That hurt!!!  A lot!  My finger is no longer attached to the ignition switch, good thing, but the pad of my finger IS still attached, bad thing.  Great!  Now some serial killer could come along and hop in the truck to steal it but finds out it won’t start and happens to notice a chunk of my finger still frozen to the ignition switch.  Now we all know that almost all serial killers are men right?  So this guy would have the right body “attachments” to aim warm bodily fluids better than a woman.  So the guy could pee on the ignition switch and get my finger’s pad off and use it to plant my finger prints at his next crime scene and frame me!!  Oh no!!  I’ll have to live a life on the run.  I’ll have to change my hair colour, get contacts and change my eye colour, I’ll have to leave Merlin and Brandt behind, I’ll have to assume a new identity!  By the way, I already have a name in mind that I could use for an alias.  Wilma.  Wilma Handue!  Ha ha ha!  I love that name.  If you didn’t get it, go back and read it again.  If you still don’t get it, get a dirtier mind!!  Think like I do!!  Back to me and my life on the lam.  My life as I know it could be over all because Merlin’s truck wouldn’t start!!!  I would have to live in some little red neck town in Montana serving greasy burgers to nasty ass ugly, one toothed red neck yahoos named Billy Bob and Jimmy Jake and I would be stuck living in an old Shasta trailer from the 1970’s that smells like stale farts and old man moth ball smell.  I wasn’t about to let that happen so I started spitting on my chunk of frozen finger skin like a woman possessed.  I was scraping the bottom of the barrel in my gut to come up with every last ounce of spit I had to spare.  Just as I was about to pass out from dehydration the chunk of skin came loose.  Hallelujah!    Thank you God!  I have my chunk of finger and my life back!  I don’t have to be Wilma Handue, well, except for Friday night if Merlin so wishes.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to give that hunk of junk on our driveway a good talking to.  It has to shape up or ship out, because like I’ve already said, there’s only room for one princess in this family.

The second time I went to see him he was also seeing Brandt.  He made quite the entrance.  He comes “sliding” into the room on one foot with the other crossed behind, like Kramer on Seinfeld, and says, “Hellooooooooooooooooooooooo!” and wiggling his eyebrows at us.  Brandt looks at him and says, “Are you for real?”  He chuckled at Brandt and said, “Yup!  I am!  I’m the real deal kid.”  Brandt sized him up for a minute, and decided I was safe to be alone with him so he announces that he had to pee and he left the room.

I was having major sinus pain and he wanted to take an x-ray of my head but said it was important to take the inflammation down first, and the quickest, easiest way would be to have a steroid shot.  No problem, quick and easy is what I like!!  It would be a one shot deal so it wasn’t a big concern about it being a steroid.  The doc writes up the prescription and sent me to the pharmacy to have it filled so I could get the shot that day.  In the meantime he was going to see another patient and come back to us.  He was done before me so he popped into the pharmacy and asked if he could start talking with Brandt while waiting for me.  I said it was fine.

When I came back we finished up with Brandt then I sent him to the pharmacy for a treat so I could talk to the doc about myself without “big ears” sitting there.  We got the other issue out of the way and had moved on to the shot just as Brandt came back into the room.  I sat on the table and he gives me the shot and tells me that it might be a little uncomfortable for a day or two and then sends us on our way.

When we got home Merlin was waiting for us.  I was heading upstairs for a bathroom break and I hear Merlin asking Brandt about the new doctor and what he thinks of him.  Brandt said, “Well, he’s nice and all, but I do question his morals and values.”  Merlin asked him why.  Brandt replies, “Well, I know that Mom is trying to get into shape and all, but I don’t like his solution.”  Merlin asked what that was.  Brandt says, “He put Mom on the juice!”  Of course, Merlin laughed and said, “You must be confused.”  At this point my bathroom break was put on hold so I could hear this.  Brandt says in a very upset and concerned tone, “Honest Dad.  I heard him talking about it.  He said that a steroid shot would be the best thing and I actually saw him stick it in her arm!!!  I’m kind of worried about Mom.  The juice ain’t good for you!”  I almost peed myself!  We had to sit Brandt down and explain what was going on and but he didn’t really believe us 100% until we looked it up on the internet and showed him that this was safe and legal and it would help my out with my sinuses.

The next time I went to this doctor it was for really bad headaches.  He thought it might be due to tension and asked if he could feel the back of my neck and shoulders for knots.  I had no problem with that.  As I was taking my coat off he scooted over on his little stool on wheels and got to me much quicker than I expected.  Just as he got up I was swinging my arm around getting my coat off and I, well, unintentionally “bagged” him (as we used to say back in the 80’s and 90’s).  Ooops!  He sat down awfully abruptly, went beet red in the face and made this grotesque, odd noise, “Ewffffffffaaaaaa.”  I apologized like crazy and asked if he was going to be okay.  He just nodded at first and when he could finally speak he squeaked out, “I think I’ll make it.”  I felt just horrid!

The next time I went to see him it was a follow up from the bagging incident.  He had this hot little resident with him.  My doc says hi and I said, “Hey!  How are things?”  He says, “Well, they’ve both dropped finally.”  We laughed, I apologized again and there stands little Hottie McHottie Pants (the resident) looking confused.  The doc fills him by saying, “We reviewed her file earlier.  You know…..” and he makes the gesture of bagging the resident.  The light goes on and the resident chuckles.  Nice, he can’t remember my name or what he reviewed in my file but he can remember that I almost kept my doctor from having another child!  Not exactly how I want to be remembered.

I saw him again just before Christmas and he had this cool pen.  It was a rubber chicken!  I loved it, I want one.  If anyone sees one please buy it for me.  I HAVE to have one.  I proceed to tell him about my new pen that is a finger.  When you pull on the finger it farts.  It has five different farts.  It’s hilarious!  I had to paint the nail on mine and add nail stickers because too many people thought it looked like something else.  Flesh coloured, a few wrinkles here and there, four inches long, you get the idea.  A really cool pen though I must say.  He said he needed one too.

I had to see the doc again last Friday.  I asked him where his rubber chicken pen went and he lowered his head, put on a big pouty face, sniffled a couple times and wiped his eye and said, “He died.  No warning, he just died in my hands.  I’m very sad.”  I told him I was sorry for his loss and said that I had something that might cheer him up.  I gave him his own farting finger pen.  He loved it and got quite a kick out of it.  In retrospect, I think I should have given it to him AFTER my appointment was complete though.  He would ask me something and as I was talking he would let one rip!  With the pen that is, not for real.  He would say something along the lines of, “Oh, pardon me, that one snuck out.  Carry on.”  Or, “Ooopsy daisy, I guess I’m a little gaseous today.  Sorry, go ahead.”  Then he would laugh and smack his leg.  Uh huhn.  Cute.  It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t dying of a heart attack while he was farting away on his little stool.  He ordered a prescription for me.  As he types it into my file on the computer the prescription prints off at the nurse’s desk and she’ll come and slide it under the door.  In it comes and he jumps up and as he bends over to grab it off the floor he lets the pen rip a good one.  He stands up, fans the air behind himself and says, “Phew!  That was a wet one!  Did I get any on ya?”  Can you imagine what he would’ve done if I was there for gastro-intestinal problems???  That could have been REALLY interesting.

I think this doctor is perfect for us!  For once, we’ll have a doctor that can’t call me “weird” in comparison to himself.  However, according to Brandt, we do need to watch out for his morals and values.

Any-hoo….. I would like to wish everyone a happy and wondrous first weekend of 2008.  I decided to pencil in one for myself.  How nice of me!  I only penciled it in because putting things in ink is so……….. permanent!  Once you have something in ink you can’t not do it.  Using white out is against the rules.  I’m not a fan of white out because you can always tell it’s there and you aren’t fooling anyone that you’ve covered something up.  I don’t like how the white out never actually matches the paper 100% and it messes up the lines and when you write over it the white out gets all lumpy and flaky and stuff.  Whoever invented white out should be shot, they’ve really messed with the secretarial karma I have going on.

Apparently I’m a little obsessive compulsive.  Who knew?  If I was to write it in ink in my day planner that I’m going to have a grand and wondrous weekend I can’t back out and have a piss poor one.  I wonder, what exactly “piss poor” is?  Is that when you have a weak (poor output) urine stream?  Or maybe your urine sample you handed in at the lab was contaminated somehow and wasn’t able to be used for your tests, that would be like, “Oh, poor me.  I have to go back and give another sample to the lab tech”.  Or, maybe it’s when you are so poor you don’t have indoor plumbing and you have to pee in the bushes.  I wonder if “piss poor” would be in the dictionary?  I should go to the library and look it up.

Where was I?  Oh right, I couldn’t in good conscience have a piss poor weekend after writing in ink that I’m going to have a grand and wondrous one.  It would bother me to no end.  It would make me twitch uncontrollably, I would break out into a sweat, my hair would start to fall out (mainly because I would be yanking it out), I would develop heart burn that could eat through steel pipe, and it would most likely give me torturous nightmares!  That would be just awful.  I can just imagine how horrid the nightmares would be.  There would be this creepy tattoo dude that rides with the Hells Angels (a real bad ass named Fluffy) and he would strap me to a chair and cover me in tattoos that read “Liar!!” and there would be lots of pictures of pens all over my body.  Ball point pens, gel pens, felt pens, even old fashioned feather pens with the little ink jars.  It just couldn’t be good in any way, shape or form to not make good on my “inked in” action.  Speaking of form, I would most likely have to be removed from my house in a form fitted straight jacket because my OCD would take over and it would put me right over the edge, the edge of the paper with the “inked in” item that I didn’t follow through on!!  Ack, the insanity of it all!!!

It’s funny how I don’t like to put my plans in ink when I have this obsession with pens.  I have more pens than Staples.  I think I’m on speed dial at Staples so they can call me when they are low in stock and try to strong arm me into handing over the goods.  But I don’t!  No way!  They sell white out, my arch enemy in the secretarial world.  Grrrr, white out bad!!!  Grrrrr.  They dispose of the white out ………………. and we can maybe talk about the pens.  I said maybe people, maybe.  I am rather fond of my pens.  I’m not sure if I could really give even one up.  They’re like family to me.  I remember when and where I got each of the little duffers.  I’ve made a promise to always take care of them and hold them close to my heart.  And even though they can put me in a bind when I put something in ink and I’m expected to follow through and have a hard time making it happen I still love them.  It’s like when Brandt tells me he has a huge project due the next day and had a month to work on it but he hasn’t even started it and I stay up until 2:00 a.m. putting it all together so he doesn’t fail grade three and I could just scream and rip all my hair out but I still love him anyways.  It’s the same thing, trust me.

Huhn, I just thought of something.  If I happen to put it in ink in my day planner that I’m going to have a grand and wondrous weekend but then I skip out and have that piss poor weekend I could save myself all the stress and agony and just go buy a new day planner and burn the old one to get rid of the evidence!  Damn I’m good!!!

Anyways, one day I was heading home for my lunch break and I was in a rush because I treasured each and every second that I was able to spend away from my hell on earth.  I was at a red light and was the first vehicle in the turning lane.  I was slowly inching forward as I was watching the countdown on the walk light.  I was so anxious to get home and sit on the couch I was actually twitching and giggling.  As the numbers were finally in the single digits I looked to my right and my heart sank.  Coming down off the curb was a man in a wheelchair.  Hhhhmmm, could he make it across six lanes on the road in eight seconds?  He had better hope so because I really cherish my home time.

Sadly, he did not have the arms of a WWF wrestler.  They were more like the arms of Gonzo from the Muppets.  Sigh…….. He would grab his wheels from behind and you could see him really struggle as he would bring the wheels forward.  After each revolution you could see him panting and gasping for a quick breath in.  I’m sitting there in my vehicle with my right foot hovering over the gas pedal just itching to gun it.  If Mr twiggy arms would try a little harder it might only cut into my lunch hour by about 20 seconds.  20 isn’t TOO bad, but still…..

Ug, roll, gasp.  Ug, roll, gasp.  Cough cough cough.  Ug, roll, gasp.  This was killing me!  I’ve now officially had the green turning arrow flashing for about 10 seconds and yet there I was, still sitting there about two millimeters from the cross walk ready to fly around the corner and get on that last stretch of the road to home and freedom.  Hurry up buddy, I don’t have all freaking day!  Then, he did it.  Damn it!  He looked right at me, and for a brief three seconds, we made eye contact.  In that mere three seconds I could see the frustration in his eyes.  I felt that he was begging my forgiveness for holding me up.  He was tugging at my heart strings and my inner string instrument was now playing a new tune, ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ by Cher.  Because if I could turn back time I wouldn’t have gotten so impatient with Wheelchair Willy.

Ug, roll, gasp.  Ug, roll gasp.  My flashing turn arrow was gone now and there was just the straight green light for all of us, and no one was moving.  But that was okay, I would give up 42 seconds of my lunch break out of compassion for Willy the wheelchair dude.  Go Willy go!!  He kept looking over at me and he would smile, a genuine smile of thanks.  No problem Willy, I’m here for you.  Damn!  This was the one time I wish I was a smoker and had a lighter handy so I could hold it over my head, waving it back and forth to show my support for Willy.  Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t have a lighter, the roof of my vehicle is cloth and it might catch on fire.  I suppose I could have opened the sun roof and waved it out there.  No lighter, so I grabbed my cell phone and flipped it open and let the light off the screen be my flame for Willy.

I broke out into song, well, not exactly song, it’s more like I broke out into da da-ing.  It was a little ditty that went something like this: da da da da daa daaaa, da da da da daaaa, da da da da da daaa, da da da da daaaaa.  Perfect song, Chariot’s of Fire.  Yes, go back and go through the da’s again and you’ll see how good I am.  Wheelchair Willy was such an inspiration to me, he deserved nothing less than Chariot’s of Fire, he was a champion!

So Willy finally reaches the curb and by now the light is yellow, just about red.  No one had budged an inch.  I guess we all decided to show our respect for good old Wheelchair Willy and let him roll away without rushing the poor man.  The light turned red just as Willy rolled up onto the curb.  He made it!!  Way to go Willy.  I was so proud of him I had a tear trickle down my cheek.

Then the son-of-a-bitch stood up, folded up his wheelchair, hoisted it over his shoulder, turned and waved at all of us with a huge smile on his face and walked away.  The rat bastard cut into my lunch hour by one minute and 22 seconds!  Time I’ll never get back.

The only thing that concerns me is that the peanut butter may melt from the warmth of my body and will drip on the kitchen floor and I might slip in it, bang my head on the kitchen counter and knock myself out.  Then with my luck the Postal Carrier (who I know) would come a callin’ with my latest book order from the Mystery Guild and would look in my front room window and see me laying there unconscious on the floor covered in peanut butter.  He would naturally be kind and call 911 and when the Paramedics, one of them being an ex-boyfriend from college, got here they would have to bust open the door which would call attention to my house and the neighbours would all gather with their coffee cups in hand and linger around the sidewalk looking on at my naked, peanut butter coated body being wheeled out still wearing the snorkel as it has been partially embedded into my face from the fall and will have to be removed surgically and they are pumping oxygen to me down the tube of the snorkel.  It could prove to be a little embarrassing.  Other than that, it sounds like it could be fun times.  I think the important question we need to have answered is, “Why was the Postal Dude looking in my window in the first place?”  That’s the only hokey thing about that story.

Once I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for a friend to show up and I was in a funky mood and the cute, bubbly little waitress walked by and asked me like five different times if she could help me.  I so desperately wanted to ask her if she could make all the voices in my head stop singing the nursery rhymes over and over and over until it drove me so crazy all I could think about was killing a cute, perky little waitress who wouldn’t stop asking if she could help me!!!  Sigh…….. I thought it might come across as just a tiny bit loopy so I opted to ask for a diet Coke.  I did however ask her for exactly four ice cubes, three cherries, two straws and one slice of lime.  I wanted to add that if she got it wrong I would crawl under the table, go into the fetal position, rock back and forth and sing Sesame Street songs and randomly throw cutlery at other diners until she got it right.  But instead I just added, “Please and thank you”.  Still, she looked at me funny.  I think it’s safe to assume she looked at me like that because I didn’t have my ear plugs in and she too could hear the nursery rhymes being sung in my head by my own private choir.

When I was a teenager I used to beg the Boob Fairy to give me something other than my lip gloss to fill my bra.  Yup, I carried my lip gloss in my bra if I didn’t have pockets on my pants and didn’t want to carry a purse.  When I was younger it always looked like I had one long, firm nipple jutting out from the side of my right boob.  As I got older and got bigger boobs they would squish all around the lip gloss and you couldn’t tell it was there.  I would put my ID on the side of my left boob and my money in the middle. Change was an issue so I would leave it as a tip.  Who needs a purse when you have a bra?  Anyways, back to the Boob Fairy.  I used to have my little weekly Boob Fairy Ritual where I would burn kleenexes (bra filler) in my garbage can, dance around the can naked while sprinkling Chia pet fertilizer on my little, barely there bumps chanting, “Boob Fairy, Boob Fairy, fill my bra and make me merry!  I want to have a set of jugs that fill a shirt until it tugs.”  I wanted to look like those Victoria’s Secret models who are lusty and busty and look all sexy in their pretty, pink or purple lacey bras with their cute little bows and frills.

Then I got pregnant.  Hhhhmmmm, I went from like a 34 AA to a 42 DDD.  Damn that Boob Fairy!  The Be-otch ignored me for 14 years then she decides to lay a couple of sand bags on me.  I have neck pain, back pain, grooves in my shoulders from the straps, nothing fits right, I have to buy bras with Titanium side panels, five hooks (not one anymore) in the back, no lace, no bows, no cute colours, no frills, just ugly, plain old ordinary buff, black or white yards of nylon unattractiveness.  There’s nothing SEXY about my bras, not one single thing.  I have a new weekly ritual where I take one of my industrial strength, firm hold, steel beam enforced bras and I take my body pillow, put a on Fairy costume on it and pretend it’s the Boob Fairy and wrap my bra around her neck choke the living shit out of the little bitch!!  I shake her and smack her around and strangle the hag.  My new chant is, “Die bitch die!”  Not very creative, but still very effective in helping me vent my anger.  I hate her!!!  Not funny Boob Fairy, SOOOOOO not funny.  Aging, along with gravity, has not helped with the boobs at all.  They do start to sag, and when they sag they sag REAL bad people.

A couple years ago I went to the doctor and asked him if he could remove the warts I had, one on each knee.  He asked me to put on one of those attractive medical gowns so he could get a better look.  He lifted the gown slightly and started to chuckle.  Nice, just what every woman wants to hear, a man laughing at her nudity.  It does WONDERS for a frumpy, chunky housewife’s self esteem.  Oh hell, I was already in therapy so it just gave me some new material to “share” with the shrink.  Oh yah, back to the doctor and the warts.  He says he has good news and he has bad news.  I ask for the good news first.  He says the good news is that they are not warts and it’s easy to fix.  The bad news?  It was actually my nipples and I just needed a bra with more support!!

Since my boobs grew so fast over such a short period of time I was blessed with dark pink and purple stretch marks on them.  The upside to that is if you stand back a few feet the stretch marks appear to make a pattern and can pass for a “lacey” pattern!  That’s kind of sexy, right?  And hey, I have the stretch marks on my thighs and abdomen to match the boobs so it looks like a nice matched set.  I may not be all firm and perky like the Victoria’s Secret models but I do have pink and purple lacy-ish-ness happening too.  Now all I need is the bows and I’ll be just like them!!  See, you always have to look for that silver lining to everything my friends.  Or in my case, the pink and purple lining.

Well, Wal-Mart is open to Mid-night for Christmas shopping so I think I’m going to throw all caution to the wind (there’s a Chinook going on so it is windy) and pick me up a snorkel and see where it takes me.

Good night!! 

A few years ago, back in my college days, I had a little mishap.  A shaving mishap.  I bled like a stuck pig and it wasn’t purdy.  I landed myself in the ER one Friday, not exactly fun times for a college girl on the prowl.  Well, unless the doctor is cute, that might not be too bad.  Depending on what you’re in for.  You wouldn’t want to be sitting there batting your eyes at some young hot doctor telling him about your explosive diarrhoea.  That might not be too helpful in getting yourself a date.

So anyways, I’m sitting there in my little curtained off area staring at the pastel, plaid curtain wondering if the hospital people really think one skimpy little curtain can really offer you peace of mind that you have total privacy.  We were in the hospital with Brandt last Christmas and the lady beside us had wicked gas and the runs and we could hear and smell everything!  It was nasty.  We tried to breath through our mouths but then we could taste the smell of poop and we would gag and almost puke.  Then there was the time Merlin was having a spinal tap done in the trauma area and the guy on the other side of the curtain had died and we sat there next to him for three hours!  Six feet away from him with only the little plaid curtain hanging between us, I swear we could smell death germs.  Another time a guy beside us was moaning and groaning and said he felt like his penis was going to explode.  The doc said he couldn’t give him any more morphine legally and he would have to pass the stones as is.  I wanted to tell him to suck it up because I had given birth recently and I survived.  I’ve always wanted to be sitting there and here the doc ask, “Exactly how did you two manage this?”  And you hear someone say, “Well, we were trying to spice up our sex life……”  I would HAVE to peek.

Oh yah, back to the shaving incident.  I was sitting there hoping someone would come see me soon because I was bleeding like crazy and I was pretty sure I was going to need a blood transfusion any time now.  They didn’t seem too concerned that I had sliced myself open with a sharp razor blade and could die!!  What if I bled to death?  How horrid!  I wondered what my Obituary would say.  “It is with great sadness that Kimberley Dawn Nina Zuehlke has passed away at the tender age of 20 after losing a long, courageous, uphill battle with body hair removal.  She was such a trooper and she never gave up but nearing the end of her struggle it was becoming too hard for her to keep the appropriate body areas hair free and it was starting to show.  Kimberley had the beginnings of a uni-brow forming, she had a five o’clock shadow on her upper lip, you could sand wood with her legs, and very tragically, she had to resort to braiding her arm pit hair.”  Ooh ooh, look at that.  I can envision the fancy font used for the obit and it looks like they used a real swell picture of me.  How thoughtful and touching, it brings tears to my eyes.  I’ll have to remember to send thank you cards to everyone involved with my obit.  Sniffle, sniffle.

I’m yanked back into reality by this vision standing in front of me.  Who knew they could stuff that much sexy into a doctor’s coat?  I don’t recall catching his name, I was a little too preoccupied drooling.  The doctor, the young, hot, sexy, buff, yummy doctor smiles at me and I melt like an ice cube in hell.  He says, “And you would be?”  All I could come up with was, “I’m is fla fla fla floo.”  I think I even spit on him.  Way to make a great first impression.  Doctor Hunk-a-lot-a-muss smiled at me again and winked.  I do believe that was the first time I had a spontaneous orgasm.  He asked me what brought me to the ER.  What?  Where was I?  I thought I was in Heaven and Dr. Sexy was my guardian angel welcoming me in.  Then I remember where I really was and why.

Oh crap!!!  I can’t tell him what happened, this is too embarrassing!  I have to get out of here!  I hop off the bed and was just about to dive into a summersault under the curtain MacGyver style to escape but Dr. Hot Pants grabs my arm and yanks me into him and he kisses me long and passionately.  No wait, that’s not what happened.  That was wishful thinking.  He gently grabs my arm, I almost jump him but I restrain myself,  and he says, “There is blood on that bed, I think you need to stay and let me take a look.”  See, it leaked through, I was losing a lot of blood, a transfusion was inevitable!  Dr. Sizzle smiles and says, “The sooner you tell me what’s going on the sooner I can help you.”  Little does he know I don’t think even a team of 30 Psychiatrists could help me.  I panic and blurt out, “I’m bleeding down there” and I point to my nether regions.  He smiles and chuckles a little then says, “Uh sweetheart, at your age you’re supposed to bleed down there.  This can’t be your first time?”  I start to think that if I don’t bleed to death I just may die of embarrassment.  I can’t believe I just said that!  The guy on the other side of the curtain is now laughing at me.  Privacy curtain my ass!!

It doesn’t look like Dr. Humina Humina is going to let me leave until he either takes a look at what’s bleeding or calls me a psych consult, so I spill the beans.  I was watching Jenny Jones and they were talking about what’s hot and trendy and since I was pretty much a dork I figured I could use all the help I could get.  Jenny’s guest said that if you want to spice up your sex life you could shave your “hair down there” in a heart shape or other cute designs.  She also said you could buy fish net stockings and a bustier but of course I had to go with the suggestion that involves a sharp piece of metal being scraped against my flesh.  I should have made a better choice.  Growing up in High River I was pretty sheltered and had never heard of such crazy things but I decided to be a rebel and step outside the box but I may have stepped a little too far out.

An hour later I’m in the bathroom and I have my razor and my shaving cream and I’m all pumped and ready to shave.  Wahoo!  Livin’ on the edge baby!  I decided to do this standing up, I still can’t figure out why, but I did and I had one foot up on the toilet seat.  I shake the shaving cream and go to squirt it but I had the can backwards and it sprays all over the toilet.  Duh!  I get it right the second time and I start trimming things up all fancy like I have my own little Bonsai tree between my legs.  Huhn, I notice that the shaving cream smells a little funky and it starts to tickle my nose a little but I have a mission so I ignore it.  La ta dee, la ta da, shaving me shaving…… ah ……. ah ……. ah……. atchoo!!  For those of you who don’t know me real well I have to tell you that I do not sneeze very lady like at all.  I sneeze and the trees bend INTO the wind even here in Lethbridge.  As I sneezed my foot on the toilet seat slips in the spilled shaving cream and I go down.  One minute I’m shaving up a storm and the next thing I know I’m laying on the floor and my head is hurting.  I take a minute to focus and I sit up and see a glob of shaving cream laced with blood.  Apparently when I went down I slice myself open in all the hub bub.  I don’t do well with the site of blood, especially my own.  One, two, three and she’s down again! 

The second time I come around I regain consciousness to the sound of someone banging on the bathroom door.  It’s my roommate and she’s concerned because she heard a loud thump.  I throw my towel over myself and let her in.  I was expecting her to freak out at the sight of my spilled blood and go running to call 911.  I had high hopes.  She laughed.  She laughed until she cried.  She was not very sympathetic.  Bitch!  Ooops, did I say that?  She gets me a wash cloth and soaks it in cold water and I apply it in the hopes of  stopping the blood flow.  No such luck, I was still bleeding.  One of our other roommates is on the basketball team and always comes home and ices her knees so we had ice packs in the freezer so I get one and wrap it in a towel and slap it on for a bit.  It was cold.  REALLY cold.  I swear I could feel my eggs freezing.  Cold enough to freeze eggs but not cold enough to stop the bleeding.  After an hour of bleeding my roomy says I need to go to the ER and see if they could do something for me.

Imagine having to tell this to the hottest doctor you’ve ever seen in your life, even hotter than Dr. Carter on ER and Dr. McDreamy on Gray’s Anatomy.  Oh yah, that hot.  It was SO embarrassing!  After “assessing the injury” Dr. Do Me says, “First I’ll use a little crazy glue to hold the wound together then I’ll apply some butterfly strips as well as back up.”  I’m such an obnoxious loser I actually ask him to be careful not to glue EVERYTHING shut.  Gawd, I should really learn to keep my mouth shut.  He laughs and replies, “I’ll be careful, not to worry.  Now, normally, I would ask a nurse to shave you before applying the butterfly strips but you seem to have cleared the area more than enough for me.  I could use duct tape and not get a single hair stuck in it.”  Bite me!

 Lesson for the day ……… if you cut yourself shaving in an embarrassing spot, stay home and bleed to death and save yourself the face to face humiliation.

Merlin has, um, “issues” when it comes to… how should I say this ………  wiping his butt!  Yup, I said it, he has TP problems.  I’m buzzing around getting all purdy for supper and Merlin comes out of the bathroom buck naked and says to me, “You got any Vaseline?”  My first reaction was, “Oh gawd Merlin!  We don’t have time for sex, we have to leave in ten minutes.”  Merlin has this little poem that goes, “long or short, thick or thin, Vaseline will get ‘er in.”  So naturally, I assumed he was propositioning me.  It turns out he wasn’t.  He says to me, “I have a butt crack rash.  I didn’t get a good wipe before work and walking around all day with the ‘will nots’ gave me a raw arse hole.”  ‘Will nots’ are the clumps of shit that stick to his ass crack hair and WILL NOT come off.  Quit gagging people, it’s a fact of life.  FYI, if anyone needs a Christmas idea for Merlin a bidet (butt washer thing) would be nice.I dig through the medicine cabinet and come up with a tube of Vaseline lip stuff.  Close enough, Vaseline is Vaseline right?  Merlin heads back to the bathroom to grease up ye ol’ butt crack.  Just as we’re about the leave Merlin says, I wonder if the stuff will soak through my pants and leave a greasy stain?”  (He was wearing nice tan golf pants.)  What, did he use the whole tube??  Mental note, if there is any gunk still in the tube chuck it!!  Do NOT put it anywhere near my lips.Before I tell anymore of this fabulous, hilarious, true tale I must tell you that Merlin has given me his permission to post this story.  Like me, he has no shame.  That’s why we get along so well.  We’re soul mates in every way, shape and form.  We have no problem with being the “butt” end of jokes.  He he he, I couldn’t resist.Back to the butt story.  Merlin asks me if he could use one of my panty liners to ensure nothing ‘leaks’ through.  Oh yah, he really did ask for one!  After I picked myself up off the floor where I was rolling around laughing my ‘butt’ off, I wipe away the tears, go to the bathroom and grab him one.  He drops his drawers and stands there staring at the thing looking completely stumped.  I ask him what the problem is and he says, “What the hell are these extra pieces on the sides for?”  I explain that they are wings, you fold them under and stick them on the outside of your undies.  I see the light go on in his head, then it goes out again.  “Now what?”  I ask.  He says, “Um, what do I do with them?  I have boxers on.”  Again, I’m on the floor busting a gut.  He waddles to the bathroom with his pants and boxers around his ankles pouting and he snaps back, “I’ll figure it out myself.”  Turns out he decided to stick them to the inside leg part somehow.  I didn’t ask questions.  I didn’t want to upset him because he was, after all, on the rag!  Ha ha ha.

We’re heading down the highway and Merlin admits that he’s feeling very conflicted.  On one hand he says he feels like he could go horseback riding, play tennis or ride a bike and no one would know his secret about his oozing crack.  On the other hand, he says that he can’t get comfortable because his pad was riding up on him.  Try wearing them for seven days every 28 days for 40 years of your life!!!

We get to Vulcan, what a long ride watching him squirm around and bitch constantly for the entire hour.  Good gawd, suck it up princess.  I put up with that awkwardness while also cramping, bloating, dealing with swollen and painfully tender breasts, have a week long head ache and break out with zits and my world doesn’t come to a screeching halt.  Men are such babies!!  As we’re walking across the parking lot he’s still twitching.  Years of experience with these things has taught me that trying to skooch around in your ginch as you walk does not make the pad sit better.  It usually creeps up more on you.  I don’t share this tid bit with Merlin because I’m humoured by his skoochy walk.  I look over at Merlin and he’s now trying to pick his pad out of his butt crack and he says just a little too loud, “Geez, now I know why they call it mattress ass.  These pads are brutal!  I think my wings are stuck to some of my pubes!”  I look over Merlin’s shoulder and see this semi parked beside us, the window is down and sitting there is this big ass redneck trucker.  He must’ve heard Merlin because his eyes are the size of dinner plates, his lower jaw is down to his knees and he looks like he could either puke or beat the crap out of Merlin.  It appeared that he was very disturbed by what he just heard.  I decide I love Merlin very much and want to keep him around so I grab him by the arm and drag him inside quick before he gets his butt kicked.  He was making the red neck uncomfortable.  That would just be adding insult to injury since his butt crack was already not up to par.

We sit down and Sponge Bob Squirmy Pants still can’t sit still.  He excuses himself to the bathroom and is gone long enough that I start to wonder if our trucker friend snuck in the back and was teaching him a lesson about being a man.  Merlin finally emerges and he’s a little red faced.  He leans over and whispers in my ear, “I had to ditch the first pad, it was all bunched up funny and I couldn’t get it to lay straight again.  Do you have another one on you?”  My family is giving me “the look” for whispering in public.  It’s always been a big issue in our family that we don’t whisper or tell secrets in front of others.  I avert their glares and dig around in my purse and come up with a new panty liner for Merlin.  I palm it and try to casually slip it into Merlin’s hand.  Unfortunately for Merlin, my family is very observant and nosy.  As Merlin heads back to the Lady’s, I mean Men’s bathroom I’m told to dish the dirt.  Oh, twist my rubber arm people!  I fill them in.  All three of them are laughing so hard they’re crying.  They were attracting a lot of attention from the other diners.Merlin finally rejoins us after about ten minutes.  Gee whiz, how long does it take to put another liner in your ginch?  My family is still busting a gut and they can’t look Merlin in the face without crying again.  Merlin looks at me and says, “I assume you told them.  NICE!!”  Kent is leaning back in his chair, the front legs are off the ground.  He always sits like that.  He really shouldn’t, it’s dangerous, especially when someone is about to make you laugh.  Merlin pipes up and says, “I don’t tell MY family when YOU’RE riding the cotton pony!”  It was at that point that Kent hit the floor, he lost his balance when he burst out laughing at that last comment.  I’m not too sure if we’re welcome back to that restaurant anymore, we apparently caused a bit of a stir and interrupted everyone else’s meals.  It did however give us something to talk about for years to come.  11 years later and it still brings tears to our eyes.

UPDATE: Since I had my hysterectomy I don’t needs pads or liners anymore so we now buy better quality butt wipe and keep moist towelletes handy just in case Merlin needs extra help with his ‘will nots’. 

Once again, I have found myself having another “Mallory” moment.  My one Uncle Dave (I have four Uncle Daves, really I do) decided to call me Mallory because of Mallory Keaton on Family Ties.  She was a brunette that had too many blonde moments.  Just like me!!

So the other day I had yet another Mallory moment.  I was sitting at my desk at work and could smell something funky.  I was sniffing my garbage can, not there, it wasn’t under my desk, not in my filing cabinet, not in the bathroom, I couldn’t figure it out.  I’m sitting there and this spider comes down on a web right in front of my face and I start swatting at it and it’s at that moment that I realize the smell was coming from my own dang armpits!!  I was mortified!  My shirt was clean, right out of the dryer, I had a bath before work and I had put deodorant on.  I was dumbfounded.  So I sit there for about ten minutes smelling my armpits one then the other making sure it really was ME!  In my little filing cabinet I keep anything and everything.  I go fishing around in there and find my spare deodorant and slap some on, it’s supposed to smell like orchard pears or some dumb thing.  Well, five minutes later I can now smell sweaty BO pears!!!  What the heck is going on????  I decided that it must be the shirt.  It’s 100% Polyester (and no, it wasn’t powder blue polyester) and sometimes Polyester can carry smells for awhile.  That explains it.  However, I apparently had BO the last time I wore the shirt and didn’t notice it.  GREAT!!!

By now it’s only 9:20 a.m. and I work until 2:00 p.m.  Yes I know, I have great hours.  Five hour work days are great!!  Anywhoooo, I was panicky thinking that people were going to be able to smell me all day.  I go fishing around in my “Tickle Trunk” of a filing cabinet looking for perfume, baby powder, possibly nose plugs for everyone around me, and come up with this nice green apple, non aerosol, industrial grade room spray.  Again with the damned orchard fruits!!!  I spray some on my shirt under each armpit.  I waited about ten minutes and found that I still just smelled sweaty green apples and pears.  Lovely, I now smell like a big nasty fruit salad with BO sauce, heavy on the sauce.  Crap.  I decide that maybe just a couple of more squirts per pit should do the trick  Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt.  Ahhhhhh, no more BO, just fresh green apples.  All is well in the world of Kimberley. 

Turns out that I ended up having a bit of a busier day than I thought I was going to have.  After a bit of buzzing around I start getting a little warm.  No problemo dude, all is well in the world of Kimberley, I’m going to be okay because I have yummy green apple armpits!!  If I sweat it’ll just “revive” the smell of the spray.  At about 1:20 I felt a little, um, warmness in my right pit.  Hhhhmmmm, that feels REALLY warm.  I think that I must just be sweating a bit or something.  Then I felt a burning sensation.  Ouch.  That isn’t too swell of a feeling.  Within about ten more minutes both pits feel like they are on fire!  I’ve now gone from light and fresh smelling green apples to freaking oven hot baked apples in my armpits!  Let me tell you, that was one of the most unpleasant feelings I’ve ever had.  It was right up there with the wretched pain of passing my kidney stones and giving birth to an 8lb 4oz baby.  Yup, that bad.  I couldn’t get out of there quick enough when 2:00 came.

I get into my vehicle and take a look and my armpits are flaming red with this weird looking rash that has these tiny little blisters intermingled with the red spots!  Lovely.  Wonder what in the world could have caused that?  So I take off to Shopper’s Drug Mart and head to the back to talk to the Pharmacist.  I told him that I had an “odd” rash that was kind of burning and had little blistery things and I was wondering what I could do for it.  He asks what caused it, and I said I didn’t have a clue!  It must be some kind of freak of nature sort of thing.  I did mention that it was in my armpits, I thought might be important information, I didn’t want him to use his imagination as to where else I could have a mystery, burning rash.  He asked if I changed deodorant lately and I said no (room spray isn’t exactly deodorant it is?).  He asks if I changed laundry soap and I said no again.  He asks if he can take a look as that might help him figure it out.  So I yank up a sleeve and show him.  His eyes bulge out and he says, and I quote, “That is a chemical burn!  What did you do?  Spray room deodorizer on instead of deodorant?”  I went about 30 shades of red and tried to look innocent.  He looks at me and says, “Are you flippin kidding me?”  I just smiled and said, “Tee hee hee”.  He takes the heel of his hand and biffs me in the forehead, not hard, just enough to get my attention.  I get that a lot.   He calls over the other pharmacist and the pharmacy assistant just to show them what a dumb ass I am.  He said it was a learning opportunity for them but I know from experience he is really looking for witnesses so that when he tells this story people can’t call him a liar.  They always do that to me.  Sigh………….  So he gives me this ointment crap and tells me that I should really see a doctor to make sure that I haven’t done more damage than what he thinks.  Oh oh.  What if I burned the skin all off and needed to have skin grafts?  Where would they get the skin from?  My behind?  I know my butt is big enough to be like a COSTCO wholesale skin graft market, every plastic surgeons dream come true, but eeeeww!!  If I thought my pits stunk before what would they smell like after a butt graft???

It takes me about half an hour to calm myself down and put the butt graft out of my mind and I go to the walk-in clinic.  I  see this doctor who I have been to before and go through the whole story and show him the burns and the ointment.  He just sat there with his mouth hanging open and shaking his head.  He decides that as it is a chemical burn I should have the area cleaned and dressed properly!  Are you kidding me?  It’s just a little rash, with a few blisters is all!!  It’ll be gone soon enough, no worries.  (Hey, that’s the line I used in college when I wasn’t interested in a guy.  “I have this, um, rash, it should be gone in a week or so.”  Ha ha, got rid of them every time)  Anyways, so he uses this crap to clean the skin and it doesn’t feel to lovely.  He then puts on some other ointment, covers it with gauze and tapes it down and sends me on my way, after he gave me a lovely lecture about what goes in my arm pits and what gets sprayed in a room.  He felt he needed to remind me that Febreeze should also not be used as a body spray, it’s for furniture and while he was at it he told me that swishing with bleach will not make my teeth white.  Duh!!!  I knew that already.  Sheesh!  I learned my lesson after the first time.  I’m not that dumb to do it twice!

The bandaging is a little stiff so I can’t exactly hold my arms down at my sides normally, but I get used to the feeling.  Try having boobs the size of a child’s head, stuff ‘em into a bra with Titanium support side beams and under wires long enough to use as a jump rope and you get used to “uncomfortable” feelings under your arms.  Besides, things were pretty much numb by now.  It was all the dang ointments, not the spray.  I had feeling before the ointment.  I had things to do so I head to the mall.  I walked around there for about an hour, I walk around Chapters for another hour, I wandered through Pier 1 and bought some candles, then stop at the liquor store on my way home to grab a bottle of wine.  I noticed that people kept looking at me.  I figured it was because my hair stylist just gave me this smokin’ new hair cut and I had a really cute top on.  I also felt I had a great make-up day so that had to be what people were looking at.  Simple explanation.  It’s been awhile since I had been given a second glance by that many people, like 17 years, so I was strutting around like a proud pea-hen smiling away at the world like I owned it!!  A song came to mind, “I’m too sexy for this shirt too sexy for this skirt so sexy it hurts”.  But it didn’t hurt, the pits were still numb.

I get home and decide to go and change into my bumming around the house clothes.  I go to stand in front of the mirror to take my jewellery off and I see my reflection.  I almost had a bloody stroke!  What a sight!!!  First of all, I had a small, but still noticeable, booger stuck just under my left nostril, I’ve had this sinus/cold thing lately.  The wind had blown my hair so I had the old Alfalfa hair goin’ on with this nasty little rooster tail standing up in the back.  My mascara ran a tad on the left eye (from the wind, it bothers my eyes).  Somehow I managed to get something white smeared on my right boob and it looked like I was lactating all over the place!  I did have yoghurt for lunch, I think maybe I dribbled a bit.  Had I noticed the stain earlier I have a Tide To Go pen tucked in my Tickle Trunk filing cabinet.  And if things couldn’t be any worse, the bandages were about two inches longer than my short sleeved shirt!!!  And the flame red rash was spreading past the bandages and I was holding my arms out like a freakin’ robot so it was pretty damn noticeable!!!  I looked like some kind of trailer trash who decided to shave her armpits with a weed whacker, left her baby at home with it’s possible three different Dad’s and didn’t nurse it before leaving so I lactacted everywhere, couldn’t afford kleenex so I just plugged one nostril and blew the other one and had cut my hair with the flow-bee!  Remember that thing?  You hooked it up to a vacuum and it would suck your hair in and cut it.  A very trailer trashy home shopping channel kind of thing.  What a sight.  I guess that kind of explains all the looks I was getting.  So much for me making Canada’s Next Top Model. 

Sometimes I wonder how I’ve made it this far in life with fairly minimal damage to myself.  Sigh…………. laugh if you must.  Lesson learned!  Room spray is NOT intended for personal hygiene.

Last week I was in Pier 1 Imports and saw these totally cool wine glasses.  I love fun stem ware.  Not sure why, I just like them.  The glasses are clear but on the base of the glass it’s coloured and the belly/underside of the glass has colour too (to match the base).  I got very excited when I saw them.  I decided the green one would match my Sanctuary room so I picked one up and walked around for a bit.   I put it back and went and sniffed some candles (sniffed to see how they smelled, not to get high) and I went back and picked it up again.  Did I want one for sure?  I tried sitting down holding it to see how cool it looked in my hand.  Looked good, felt good, nice size, pretty colour, but I wasn’t sure yet.  Then I noticed they were 50% off!  Wahoo!  It’s against my religion to pass up a sale so I bought one.  I was such a happy camper.

After thinking about the glasses for about a week I decided to go back and maybe grab a few more.  I thought they would be so awesome for so many reasons.  First, they are so cool.  They make me feel like one of those sexy, chic, cool up-ity ups on the soap operas.  Oooh, ooh, prime time soap operas, not day time ones.  The day time soaps are so fake.  I felt like I could totally hang with Sue-Ellen Ewing!  That kind of cool, but 2007 cool, not 1985 cool.  Second reason they were a must have is because everyone has to have “those” sets of glasses and dishes.  You know, the ones that you bring out when you have company that you don’t trust using your really expensive stuff.  Or maybe you just don’t like them enough to want to go through the hassle of pulling out the good stuff for these schleps.  Admit it, you have people like that in your life too. We ALL do.  And if you don’t, maybe you should consider what people might be thinking about you.  Hint hint…..

I got off track, that usually never happens to me.  He he he!  When I got to Pier 1 today everything went totally bezerk.  It was nasty!  The glasses come in five colours, red, blue, green, black and amber.  All very nice looking.  Here’s my issues.  I have this little problem see, I don’t like to play favourites with one colour over another.  It all stems back to my youth when I used to buy Smarties and would dump the box out and divide the colours into groups.  I would put one of each colour back into the box.  If I could put a second one of each colour in the box I would.  When I could no longer have “full sets” of Smartie colours I would set the box aside.  I would then make my groups over and over until I was down to just one of a certain colour left.  I would then start eating the Smarties with the smallest “group number” first.  I would eat the full set of Smarties (one of each colour) last and I would put the whole set in at once so I wouldn’t have to play favourites with one colour over another.  I would really hate to discriminate against a colour.  I’m an equal opportunity Smartie eater people!!!  Aren’t we all?   And no, when I eat my Smarties I DO NOT eat the red ones last, that’s being racist.  Sheesh!!

Okay, I regress.  Back on track………. Yes, glasses.  So I can’t pick just one colour so I suppose I’ll have to take one of each colour.  Simple right?  Nope, guess again. I also have the slightest little problem with numbers.  I like things to be even-steven.  Equal numbers and amounts work best for me.  It’s like getting ready in the morning, everything has to be equal.  If I brush my teeth on the right side of my mouth 20 brushes, I have to do 20 brushes on the left, twenty on the front of my teeth and 20 on the back of my teeth.  What if I didn’t brush equal amounts everywhere and one day I find out I have a cavity in a tooth that didn’t get equal brushing time?  How shameful!!  It could have been prevented if only I had offered all my teeth the same amount of brush to tooth contact time.  So here I sit with five different coloured glasses.  Not six, not four.  Five people.  Do you hear me?  FIVE!!  What to do???  But then I remember that to achieve good Feng Shui you should use odd numbers because it softens things.  No sharp edges to designs.  I think I may be able to work with this.  Maybe………..  What to do what to do????I decide the only logical thing to do is imagine me having some friends over and I can see if I can match the colours to suit these different people.  I have to be sure the glasses can go with their personalities and compliment their outfit!  That is SO important.  Okay, so the blue one would be Lisa’s because it’s her favourite colour and she looks amazing in blue.  The amber one would be for Ang, she has that nice olive skin tone that suits the warm earthy colours, very smashing on her.  I picture Carolyn using the black one because I think she would look very “sleek” in black.  I see the red one in Barb’s hand, I think a blonde bombshell in red is hot.  Me, I’ll take the green one.  Just like Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green.  My eyes are hazel so it really brings out the colour in them.  Yup, I think I can maybe make this work.

It’s very rare I can make multi coloured items work, especially when they come in an odd number.  I decide to grab the other four colours and as I’m heading to the till I start to sweat and shake.  I’m all of a sudden not too sure about the decision I just made.  What if the colours I picked don’t work for my friends?  What if someone breaks one of the colours and I can’t replace it because they’re discontinued?  I would have to ditch the whole set!  I can’t have an even number of something when they are different colours!!!  Even numbers have to be the same colour.  It’s a law, I swear!  Or is it a commandment?  Thou shalt not mix mutli colours with even numbers.  That just wouldn’t sit well in my gut.  It could cause acid reflux, headaches, eye twitches, nightmares, loss of appetite……… Hey………. Loss of appetite.  Hhhhhmmmm, I do need to lose some weight.  That might not be a bad idea.  Just the thought of what COULD happen down the road may cause enough upset in my appetite that I just might lose a good five pounds!  Well, that just puts everything into a whole new perspective for me.  It’s a done deal.  One of each colour, with the hopes that someone will come over and get totally shit-faced and drop one of the glasses and smash it and that’ll send me into a tizzy and I could lose another five pounds on top of the five I lost just worrying about this inevitability.  Ten pounds for $25 dollars!  That sounds like a hell of a deal to me.  Who needs Jenny Craig?

So here I sit enjoying a glass of my cheap Spumante Bambino out of the …………RED glass!!  Yup, you heard me, the RED glass.  I threw all caution to the wind and switched up the colour coding for the night!  I’m such a rebel……. 

I think the event that started it all was way back when I was in grade eight.  It was lunch time and I was hanging out with my friends enjoying the day.  Yes, I did have friends!!!  I was sitting on one of those old wooden bike racks that looks like a big long triangle.  This boy in my class, Quinton, was talking to me and I don’t remember what we were talking about but he gave my shoulder a little innocent shove and had said, “No Way!” to whatever I had said.  I gave him a shove back and said, “Yes Way!”  This went on and on and the shoves got a little harder each time.  We were just joking around, we weren’t fighting, I think back then we called that flirting.  Anyways, he leaned in to give me another nudge and I lifted my feet and let go with my hands at the same time and I just rolled backwards over the bike rack.  Now, with everyone else they would probably have gone flying and landed on their head, or more than likely they would have been on the ball and would have grabbed hold of the rack to steady themselves.  But of course it didn’t happen that way for me.  I had to be different, that’s just the way I roll baby.  Literally.  As I rolled I was kind of “drawn” to the rack, I didn’t actually ever lose contact with it.  Sigh……………….. can you guess what happened?  No?  Can’t picture it and figure it out?  Let me share……….. See, someone at some point and time had broken two of the rungs off of the bike rack and it hadn’t ever been fixed.  It left a bit of a “hole”.  My head went straight through the hole.  Yup, my head went in the  bike rack.  Easy in, easy out, right?  WRONG!  I ended up being like one of those metal anchors you can use for hanging heavy pictures.  You know the type that goes in nice and slick but won’t come out because little prongs stick out behind the drywall to anchor it.  Well, my ears acted like the little prongy things and I couldn’t get my head to come back out.  I was trying frantically to yank my head out, but no such luck.  My friends are all killing themselves laughing and I’m stuck in a freakin’ bike rack!  The teacher on patrol came over to see what the racket was all about.  I couldn’t really look up at him as I was down on my knees, my head was wedged between the rungs and my arms were flailing around wildly.  He says, “Miss Zuehlke!  What are you doing down there?”  What the heck?  Did he really think I was doing this on purpose?  I most certainly wasn’t down there trying to get the boys to notice me, hello!!!  I tried to shrug my shoulders but there wasn’t a lot of room between my body and the bike rack.  I told him that Quinton did it, but it was only an accident.  Mr. Goble (the teacher) told everyone to stop laughing because it wasn’t funny, he said I could be really hurt.  He then says to Quinton, “Quinton, you did this, you need to go get Mr. Neilson”, he was the shop teacher, “tell him to bring a hand saw and hurry.”  He barely got that last part out then he doubled over with laughter.  It’s one thing to be laughed at by your peers, but to have an adult who is supposed to be setting a good example for us killing himself with his big guffaws is really humiliating.  Not to mention that it’s another thing to be stuck there like a criminal with your head in one of those old wooden restraint things for all the “towns people” to gawk at you.  All I needed now was to have people start throwing rocks at me, piling the kindling at my feet and chanting, “Witch witch witch!”  I’m sure somewhere in my family history I must have a relative who was put on display in some old one horse town being accused of being a witch.  I guess the apple doesn’t fall to far from the family tree.  It’s sure a dang good thing they didn’t do that anymore because the way things always happen to me even I’M starting to wonder about myself.

Back to my story.  As Mr. Goble is busting a gut with my class mates and soon to be EX friends I bent my ears forward as much as possible and with a couple of good yanks I was free.  FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST!!!!

Just then the bell rings and I scoot into class with these big woops of laughter following me.  Mr. Goble comes over to me to apologize for laughing at me and asks to take a look.  He said I should probably go to the office………………………. and have the slivers removed from the backs of my ears and my head!  Good lord, slivers??  By the time I get to the office the secretaries are wiping their tears and trying hard to not laugh out loud.  Great!  Mr. Goble filled them in.  I curse that intercom system.  So they start plucking out the slivers, I have to admit, that wasn’t so bad, but it sure took awhile.  I guess I had a lot of slivers.  What REALLY hurt was the half dozen teachers who just happened to saunter into the office all casual trying to look innocent and knowing very well that they just had to see this for themselves.  Nice people!  They were gathering to check out the bike rack babe.  It’s amazing how fast word can get around in a school.

After the slivers were out they doused me in that brownish/orange iodine crap and slapped on a few band aids.  Can you believe that they actually asked me if I wanted Snoopy band aids???  Yah, those will just blend right in with my hair!!!  Normal , skin toned band aids were my choice thank you very much.  They assured me that you couldn’t hardly tell anything was amiss.  I thanked them and started heading back to class and just as I was out of eyesight I hear this roar of laughter coming from the office.  That’s just great!  Like I wasn’t going to need therapy now.

It might not have been so bad if I sat at the back of the classroom, but sadly, I sat in the middle.  Everyone behind me could see the band aids and the iodine oozing through.  When I say that the classroom was filled with snickers I don’t mean the chocolate bar.  It was amazing just how many of my class mates needed to sharpen their pencils that afternoon using the pencil sharpener at the BACK OF THE ROOM!!!  I do recall thinking to myself that this would probably go down in history as the worst, most humiliating day of my life.  Boy, was I ever wrong!!!  It was only just the beginning………

I happen to come across this great AC/DC song that describes me PERFECTLY (Merlin has told me this before) and I tried to purchase it for him.  It wouldn’t work.  I pressed buy on the web-site and it said it was sent successfully and I should receive a text message shortly and I could then forward it to Merlin’s phone.  Again, sounds pretty easy, but it wasn’t.  I’ve had this issue before and when I’ve called Telus Mobility about it they assured me that it would be fixed and I could download ring tones again soon.  They never did fix it obliviously.

So, I called Telus once again and talked to yet another customer service agent to see if they could fix the problem for me once and for all.  I got this kind of young sounding guy on the line, he was super nice and was being very helpful, it was going great.  Until he asked me, “What was the ring tone you were attempting to download?”  I asked if he really needed to know the exact one, why did it matter.  He said, “It may be an issue with that particular ring tone so we need to rule that out first.”  Oh crap!  I said, “Okay, before I tell you what it is, promise you won’t laugh.”  He said he wouldn’t.  So I quickly explained that I was trying to send this ring tone as a gift to my husband for when I called him.  He said that was so sweet and romantic and he thought that was just plain nice.  Uh huhn………….. I sat there silent for a few minutes hoping he would forget what he asked me.  Sadly, he remembered.  He once again asked me for the ring tone.  I said, “Um, okay, well, uh, you see it’s, um you know, well, uh………AC/DC She’s Got Balls.”  I said it as quickly and quietly as possible hoping we could just move on.  Crap.  Dead silence on the line.  Well now, this is kind of awkward.  I hear a cough and an “ahem”, then, “Pardon, I’m not sure I got that Ma’am.  Can you say it again?”  My face is beet red and I’m sweating and Merlin is standing in the kitchen bent over laughing at me.  I say again, “AC/DC She’s Got Balls.”  He says, “Wow!!  So I did hear you correctly.  Righteous!”  Yah, not really righteous from my end.

So he types in the song title and says that nothing comes up.  He asked if I was sure I saw that exact song on their web-page and said yes so he tried it again.  Nothing.  I’m pretty sure he’s typing in something wrong but I was too embarrassed to spell out the words to him.  How would you do that?  “S as in sex, H as in hormone, E as in erogenous, S as in scrotum, G as in gonads, O as in orgasm, T as in tickler, B as in boobies, A as in anal, L as in lick, L as in lust, S as in sperm.”  I think not!  So I just politely waited while he tried again and again.  He finally says he’s going to search for all the AC/DC ringtones and maybe he can find it that way.  Fine, let’s do that!  He’s so young he has to ask me if it is ACDC or AC DC.  I have to tell him to put in the back slash, are you kidding me?  He says to me that he doesn’t really listen to “OLD” rock!!!  Oh gawd, can this get any better?

He starts reading out the song titles to me and makes a comment, “Gosh, I don’t see She’s Got Balls, but I do see Got Me By The Balls, Ballbreaker, Big Balls, Snowballed, Hells Balls” (he read that wrong, it’s Hells Bells).  Then he says, “Geez, those guys sure like to sing about their balls!  Yup, that’s a LOT of balls they’re talking about.  Balls, balls and more balls.  But I can’t find She’s Got Balls, isn’t that a kicker.  Are you sure you’re thinking about the right song about balls, because they sure do have enough of them.”  As he’s talking I can hear him snickering and trying not to laugh out loud at me.  I’m slowly dying inside and I’m thinking of hiding under the table, as if it would really help.  I could just hang up the phone but he knows who I am and he has my number.  He suggested we try a different song by AC/DC so we try Back in Black.  He says to me, “Good thing it’s not called Back In Blue or it could still be about someone’s balls, right?”  Good gawd man, get over it!!  Move on!!  I asked him if this phone call was going to stay out of the coffee room and he said he couldn’t make any promises because it was pretty good.  He said it’s not everyday you can learn that balls are sung about so much by one band.  This isn’t exactly how I planned on becoming famous.

So, after we fiddle around with the phone for another fifteen minutes or so we end up discovering that it’s a problem with the phone itself, not the service.  Telus can’t help me.  Had I known that before I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment.  I thanked him for his time and he thanked me for the education and the laughs!  He also added, “Most women enjoy taking their husbands balls away from them, this is the first time one has wanted desperately to GIVE her husband balls.”  Then he laughed again and told me to have a good night and he was on his way to the coffee room to share this!!!  Perfect!  Just flippin’ perfect……….

Sigh………….. a day in the life of me.  Why couldn’t I have tried to send him a love song instead??

Have a good night!!  Kimberley