My brother is the absolute worst at keeping secrets, especially Christmas present secrets. One year he came home and told me he had got me a present that I was going to love! A metal water bottle! He just came right out and told me. Nothing has changed. This year I asked Ben for a bag of coffee for Christmas but it would still be a surprise because I didn’t know where it was from. He came home one day and said I wasn’t going to like the present I got him. I asked why. He said the line up at Starbucks was too long. I said as long as it wasn’t Tim Horton’s it would be fine. He tells me that it starts with Tim but doesn’t end in Horton’s. Ok, so you got me Timothy’s coffee? He couldn’t believe he had totally given it away…again. 

I just ate so much cheese I think I had an out of body cheese experience. I put myself into a delirious cheese coma and then hovered out of my body looking down at myself. I saw a sad bloated little lactose intolerant moron. Whose face is beginning to rupture into cheese induced acne volcanos. I am starting the annual journey of eating so much dairy and shit at Christmas that I will, as always, start the new year by looking like Crack-Methington, the post-Christmas crack elf. At this point if I could shoot up cheese, I probably would.  

Well we watching Sound of Music as a family this year. Ben and I on our makeshift couch/bed, Hennie on the lazyboy and Mom add-ing/multitasking with her iPad on the rocking chair. We have seen this movie so many times we could run through the lines in our sleep. The songs were mass sing alongs which is fun until someone starts doing harmony and then I die laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. When Ben and I watch movies together we tend to have a running comedic commentary of the movie. Like how tight Captain Von-Traps pants are and how his penis probably would have had an internet fan base just like Jon Hamm’s from Madmen if the inter-web had been around back then. Ben started discussing how being an empty page that men will want to write on was definitely referring to men sexually marking their territories. It wasn’t for the faint of heart, but it was incredibly hilarious. 

Well Christmas is over for another year. The only time of year that it acceptable to drink such a disgusting drink like egg nog is over. Don’t get me wrong, I do it, chalk full of rum of course. It’s just a weird ass drink. The time of year to push your gluten sensitivities aside and eat as much gluten laced Tofurkey as possible. To openly embrace cheese comas and champagne induced naps. To drink too much bubbly and openly swear at your family while playing board games, to scream at the top of your lungs when your team member obviously guessed George Bush as the character I was acting out before the other team. “I start wars, I’m a moron, Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice…uhhhh…GEORGE BUSH!!!” 

So did anyone know there is a restaurant called Skirt Steak in the Kanata Centrum? I thought at first that maybe skirt was a type of meat cut or something but judging by the adds, I feel that may not be the case. We already have Moxies for men to go eat at and ogle underage girls in mini skirts, now skirt steak? It’s like they aren’t even trying. They might as well just called it Vagina Steak or Va-J-J Sirloin. What about Ribs’n’Tits or Shank’n’Shag or Chuck’n’Fuck. Hey kids, let’s go eat out at Lady Clam & Tenderloin and sexually harass the underdressed 18 year olds.  Good times. 

We did it! We made it! We hovered exceedingly close to our credit card limits and emptied our line of credits for baby Jeebus! Weeee!!


Working retail, at Christmas, is tons of fun. People spend money, people kind of enjoy doing it and people are generally in a fun and festive mood…until Christmas eve. Then the people that have stubbornly tried to rebel and boycott Christmas have realized that this seasonal political statement will probably result in divorce and loss of family. So those Scrooges decide, at 2pm on Christmas eve, to have nervous breakdowns in all the shops while the sales people desperately try to find the perfect gift for that special someone they have never, ever met. Christmas eve shoppers are always men. The men that are shitting their pants and cutting it close. Come on dudes! How come you haven’t learned? Giving yourself 3 hours to find gifts for everyone on your life is a pretty intense challenge. But I do revel in your panic every year you silly boys.

I was in the shop the other day, behind a desk, doing computer work. The boss’ dog was at my feet and the boss had stepped out. A gentleman I have known for many years walked over to the desk for a wonderful discussion and catch up of both of our families. And that’s when I smelled it. From where the man was standing there was no way he could see the dog that was at my feet. The dog that had just let the most foul, satanic, dead fish smelling fart out. The smell started to become nauseating as it rose. I tried not to gag. I knew the gentleman must have totally thought this foul, fish fermented smell was coming from me. I didn’t want to bring attention to it just in case he hadn’t smelled it but if he had and I hadn’t mentioned anything, I definitely looked guilty. I left it and prayed that guy doesn’t think I regularly eat dead fish heads for lunch and then explode.

Grandma’s 95th birthday was a total success! That lady has more friends in town then I do and baked enough for HER OWN PARTY to give a small country cavities. After hours of setting up, talking, hugging, present opening, tea and coffee power drinking, eating and tearing down we were all totally exhausted. We walked Grandma up to her apartment and threw down all her loot on her table. We were fading fast. We asked Grandma if she was exhausted. She said she was fine and had another party to get to which she had already delivered the baking for the day before. Good christ lady, whatever she is on I would like some. WHO IN THIS TOWN IS DEALING MY GRANNY SPEED? Dad told everyone at the party that I didn’t know what Best Wishes meant when we were making the poster for the party. Every time I heard him laughing I knew he was telling the story AGAIN about how I didn’t think Best Wishes was necessary because I couldn’t foresee people in balaclavas coming in, stuffing some triangle sandwiches into their pants, smashing a fine china tea cup, calling my Grandma an old prune and then popping a balloon, angrily, on the way out. I sometimes am pretty sure my parents are most proud of my hysterical stupidity in life. I had tried baking gluten free muffins for the party the night before. I was in the kitchen mixing the ingredients when I needed a quick baking question answered. “Dad, I already know the answer, but just to confirm, 1/3 cup plus 1/3 cup is going to make 2/3 cup right?” He started laughing hysterically and I had my answer.

I feel the world is full of people that want to make fun of the math retards. And I know they do it on purpose. Like when someone has given you money they owe for a transaction, you punch in what they gave you and get the change and then they say “OH! I have .35 cents here” and they hand it to you. And you are thinking, FUCK you. Does it look like I get paid enough to do mental math for a living? Do you think they taught simple addition and subtraction in my arts degree program? Do you think my 8 years of private math tutoring and anxiety medication was worth re-hashing over your pocket full of change? Why can’t we just continue with what the cash register said and we can call it a day! And then those people, almost always, make fun of me for not being able to do the math. And I have to talk myself down from punching them in the face. I am always quick to say, sorry, I am rusty in mental math as my degree in Comparative Politics and Psychology definitely did not teach me any. And all that work I do with youth struggling with mental health isn’t exactly numbers heavy. But what I do know is that we probably do not vote the same way and you were probably a bullied in school because you were good at math. Take that. The end!

Omg! That Duck Dynasty guy said something bad against gay people, that being gay is a sin! Are we shocked?? A bunch of Christian, rednecks said this? Seriously? I haven’t even seen the show, nor do I think I have the mental capacity to care about watching the show. But even I wasn’t surprised about this news headline. This is what happens when you idolize rednecks that invented a fucking duck call people. Get a clue.

I don’t know how this happened, but it happens every year, for as long as I can remember. I am always and I mean always PMS-ing at Christmas. I don’t know how or when I synced up with baby Jeebus but it has happened and it’s unpleasant. So when everyone else is high anxiety, anxious, and freaking out, I have surpassed all that and am crying in the corner in the fetal position or being super nasty just for fun. The Christmas lights make me tear up, having to sit in church Christmas eve makes me tear up, seeing my family altogether makes me tear up, as does opening presents. It’s disgusting really. And then if someone crosses me the wrong way, WATCH OUT y’all. I actually had to make the executive decision at one point to pretend to not hear what a customer said in order to stop myself from replying with a snarky, smart ass comment.
Good times for me and all those around me. Merry Fucking Christmas everyone.

Hennie is the dish man in this house. I cook, fuck up the kitchen beyond belief, make it look like I got into a mixed martial art fight with the food ingredients, lost, freaked out in retaliation and possibly got hurt…and then he comes in and cleans up after me. It’s amazing. Which means Hennie knows where everything is. When my ball for my smoothie shaker goes rogue, I know I can always ask Dishman…na na na na na dishman! I am forever yelling at Hennie to tell me where my shaker testicle is.

I am concerned about the possibility of moving into town this summer. What will happen to my spontaneous dance parties by myself? Where I blast nineties music and do some amazing white girl moves. I sometimes get carried away and try to twerk but inevitably throw my hip out and hurt my back. What will the neighbours think…

Well I can’t believe the new reason for the season is Elf on the Shelf. People were insanely buying them, pleading for them, not even blinking an eye at spending $35 on them. I decided the elf moving around the house creepily keeping an eye on your children, like the festive Christmas pedophile midget, was really taking away from the real point of Christmas. I have decided, next year, I will be making Jesus on the Shelf. He will glide around your house on a floating cloud, keeping an eye on your children to make sure they are good, rather fearful and not on the path to hell. His eyes will follow you wherever they go as they tend to do. He will not report to Santa but God whether you have made the heaven or hell list. I think it will make the kids take being good way more seriously. Like if I am bad, Jesus can see me and then I may go to hell for all of eternity. This season kids will be terrified for their life 24/7. Merry Christmas! I think I am going to make millions…

A kid I work with shaved half of her hair off. I told her I really liked her Britney-during-her-meth-breakdown-haircut. I said it was like she was about to go Sinead but couldn’t fully commit. I asked if her if she would do her makeup different on one side of her face to look like the joker on Batman. Like have sad clown makeup on the side of her face that she shaved and regular make-up on the other side. I may be the worst youth worker ever. Thank god she has a sense of humour.

My Dad and I collectively spent close to an hour trying to make a poster to put up for my Grandma’s 95th birthday. It was like dumb and dumber. I kept saying I don’t know how to use Word Perfect (which Hennie tells me is not what I was using at all, I don’t even know if it still exists. Any program I have ever used that seems like it’s from a PC I call Word Perfect. No? Not right? Oh well). But it certainly wasn’t Pages and finally after humming and hawing, losing our minds I clicked a few things and deleted the whole thing altogether. Perfect. Dad decided to try his hand at the computer (which is a joke and pile of swear words in itself). I told Dad I liked his one finger typing skills and if I should come back in a few hours when he was done typing the sentence. We finally managed to put a picture on the poster and write a sentence. After we printed out three Dad noticed there was no date on the poster, only a time. Holy shit. We re-did it, with the adequate information and then Dad insisted we put it on fancy paper. So Grandma’s birthday poster has a pretty amazing Rainbow border, which makes it look a little bit like a gay pride parade but oh well. 95 y’all! There should be a bloody parade! Even if it’s muscly, vaselined, gyrating men in gold speedos…My Grandma may even enjoy it!

The last and final thing I will complain about in terms of losing weight, is that you realize what your face really looks like. For some reason I thought if I lost weight everywhere, that my giant, bulbous nose would also share in the action and shrink. But no. It just looks more giant on my smaller face. Well nose, looks like me and you are stuck together for life. Unless I become a celebrity and then I will fuck you up with surgery and come out looking like a demented cartoon pig nose.

I wonder how I can add “massaging raisins” to my resume. One of my jobs gives me the best/worst job of sitting in the back packing bulk food into containers. It’s the best because it’s a quite place, with no customers that allows me to focus 100% on the menial task at hand. Packing into perfect clean containers make me happy, gives me a good sense of satisfaction and is easy. Also I can make stupid faces and no one sees me. But it’s also the worst job, for two reasons. One is, it actually hurts my wrists to massage raisins (every time I write this I wonder which of you will immediately think old man testicles). You see, you must break up the raisins that have been vacuumed pack by satan into a tiny raisin cage of slavery. I get so frustrated. I pretend I am a scientist breaking up animal turds for science, because that happens in real life you know. Stirring peanut butter makes my sad, weak, dainty wrists turn into carpal tunnel joints from hell. It’s just the worst. Secondly, it’s bad because it gives me the quiet time I don’t usually afford myself, to think about my life. So as I am stirring the peanut butter, with my wrists killing, peanut butter everywhere (on my clothes, in my hair) I think of how I got to where I am now. I think about where I need to get myself to, in terms of having a career. How I need to make this happen. How hard it’s going to be. How I want to punch my degree into this peanut butter, let it get covered in oil then take it out and light it on fire for giving me false hope. No just kidding (not really). I have these same elitist fits of quiet rage all the time. When I am trying to serve someone a brownie at one of my jobs and it get’s stuck to the plate and I think, I am wrestling with a brownie. This is where my life is at. How did I get here? Did I drink too much in university? Did I choose political science because I thought it would make me sound smart at parties? Was I in political science because it was mainly boys in that subject and I wanted to get laid? Am I wrestling with a brownie because I HAVE MADE ACADEMIC DECISIONS WITH MY VAGINA? Well this explains everything.

I knew I hadn’t been out in awhile when I tried putting tights over socks and then had to stop and think about how this is really supposed to be done. Like I needed a moment to go over the logistics of wearing tights. After I finally got them on properly, I decided they were sucking my will to live and I remembered that is the reason I stopped wearing tights a million years ago. Wearing tights always remind me of being in Scotland, working as a waitress in a hotel. They were part of our mandatory, sexist, plaid skirt uniform. I permanently looked like a Scottish air hostess that summer. I would rip at least one pair of hose every day trying to put them on. Then on the way to work I would get mauled by midgies and once at work I would scratch so much that I would bleed, then rip the leggings and ruin yet another pair of hose. Tights will aways bring me back to the Scottish torture of cheap hose and midgies. I only call them hose if I am in my Minnesota accent. There are some words I can’t say without it. One summer, after Rob and I had watched Drop Dead Gorgeous a million times we decided to adopt the accent. I was working at a bar at the time and people starting asking me where I was from! It was hilarious! After awhile I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Accents make any situation just a little more fun. Especially when people ask you where you are from and you say Almonte.

This is my homage to Drop Dead Gorgeous…

My Grandma told me, that for her 95th birthday party, to please make sure it says Best Wishes Only on the poster. I looked at my Dad and explained that I didn’t get why that was necessary. He said that it meant no gifts. I was shocked. I completely thought it meant no dicks allowed. LIke it was a clear warning to assholes that they could not come and give out any of their bad wishes on this day. BEST WISHES ONLY! My Dad looked at me like he wondered how I had the brain function to get dressed in the morning. The more you know 🙂

Doesn’t scrolling through the bookmarks on your internet browser remind you just how scattered and weird you are? Mine look like…

Ottawa Motorcycle Safety Course
Flourless Cranberry muffins
Masters in Social Work – Carleton University
International House Sitting
Moist Chocolate Cake
Green and Natural Bath and Body Care Recipes
Dancing Ben – youtube
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Cleanse Recipes
Chocolate Buttercream frosting recipe

Like what the hell is that? It makes me look a little bipolar in the eating side of things.

Omg I just read a study that said if you think your partner is awesome, you will most likely have a successful marriage. Thanks tips. Hope that was not a government funded research initiative.