Shopping Mission Impossible
I had the unfortunate task of trying to find both Hennie and I mittens after realizing that mine were inadequate for actual winter and Hennie had lost one of the two and to insure he didn’t look homeless, he would need a replacement pair. I thought this mission would be easy since it is still winter here but that was not the case. I thought I would start at the Bay. The Bay is a weird place to me, I am not sure who their target customer is at all. I can’t afford most of the items in that store and they don’t even seem that amazing. And I feel like I can find a sale section and be pretty content looking through it thinking, ya I may be able to afford like one of these 50% off sweaters maybe and then all of a sudden I am in a section where the sweaters are over $100 and I wonder where I took a wrong turn. While I was there I tried on a leather jacket that was on sale (I imagine it was not leather, but I would have given up my vegetarian card to wear it, to match my leather boots of course). I put it on and walked around the store leaving my coat and purse on a random rack, that I would later need a search party to find. I caught a glance in the mirror and thought, Hennie will shit his pants if I come home with a $90 leather jackets that makes me look and feel like Gemma from Sons of Anarchy. I feel like it will be his last straw in my ridiculousness for that show. (Oh god I regret not buying it!!). Anyways, this is how I get sidetracked on my main mission. I continue to have an incredibly hard time finding the gloves. I get sidetracked again to run to the toilet at warp speed as my bowels realize that my juice cleanse is over and that maybe they should start working again…violently. Anyways, I finally find the gloves and the cheapest pair I can find are $70 and I think, is everyone at the Bay high on crack? Are they shitting me? My husband is going to lose whatever mittens or gloves I buy today before the end of the winter, almost guaranteed. Why would I spend that much money? I look at the women’s too and think these are all fucking stupid, made of cashmere and unicorns which will not keep my fingers warm when I am shoveling the driveway at 10pm at night and they are also stupid expensive. Fuck off Bay. I highly doubt me, along with the residences of the new and improved Accora village can afford this stupid shit. I go back to mens and take one final look and there on the ground are a pair of mittens that say $20 on them huzzah! I take them to the cash and the lady looks at me and says she can’t ring them through as the tag has fallen off them. I tell her the price and assumes she will believe me. But she says she can’t ring them through, she is sorry and as I start to lose my shit I see there is a giant hole in them anyway and I literally throw my hands up, yell fuck it and leave. Conclusion to the story, I went in over 8 shops, none had men’s gloves or mittens except for one which was sports experts and the cheapest were $30 which I thought was insane but bought them anyway. The end. Hennie will leave one of those gloves at work or on the bus before the end of January, guaranteed.
While heading into my local LCBO just after Christmas I found a gift card in the snow. It was for RW & CO. which I had never heard of and assumed it was a maternity store or something useless like that. I also had no idea if there was money on it. During my above mentioned Bay visit I also had decided to buy another pair of Hue jeggings because I live in them and love them but the Bay only had suede leggings (wtf Bay, I can’t have pants where I touch my thighs all day wondering why they used this particular material on my pants). So I went for a wander and came across, you guessed it, the store I had found a gift card for. So I went in and immediately saw a pair of pants that I would have to own until I saw they were $70. So I went over and fondled them casually, like I could totally afford it. Then I went to the desk and asked if they could check how much was on this gift card as I had found it in a parking lot and it was obviously my Christmas gift from the Universe and Jeebus. She said there was $50 on the card and I knew right then, baby Jeebus wanted me to have those striking blue jeggings that are so tight I can’t bend over in them or crouch or kneel or breathe but whatever they are amazing. And I now own them with only having to pay $20 out of pocket, weeee!

TV Crack
So I am back on a tv show bandwagon. Seriously, with things like online streaming and netflix, tv show binge watching has become too easy! I am not addicted to crack or heroine, cigarettes or alcohol (debatable, talk amongst yourselves) but when I discover a new show, I become a house hermit. This is how it started…I spent a whole day off watching Broadchurch (which must be said in a slightly Northern British accent). It was 7 episodes or something and it was great, as I would watch an episode then go to gym, then come back and watch another then cook something, then sit and watch a few then do laundry, it was awesome. But when it ended and I realized there was no other season I was a bit depressed and needed to find a rebound show immediately. And when we find awesome shows in my family, we have a family tree texting chain that occurs that allows us to all become obsessed with tv shows at the same time. So after Broadchurch I texted Maggie saying I needed something to watch. She mentioned a few, I tried a couple but nothing was sticking and in passing she mentions she is into Friday Night Lights. I have seen it pop up on Netflix but had no interest in watching a show about high school football in Texas, not at all. Then Maggie tells me Mom and Dad are watching it. So I decide to take the plunge and see for myself, I trust the recommendations that come from the fam (not all of them, I hate Downtown Abbey and find it Dull McDullington). Four hours later I text Maggie and say I am totally into it, I am in love with Tim Riggins, I hate the teenage daughter and all of a sudden I like football. My mom who pretended to not be so into it at the beginning now sends me texts that say things like “…that Riggins is so hot!” Even over family breakfast later that week we all discuss how into it we are while Hennie rolls his eyes. After watching a few episodes I start speaking in a flawless Texan accent and refer to everyone as y’all. I think it freaks Hennie out but it’s just how I roll y’all. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!
But anyways, we are really into it. Even last night in a bar, a guy with shoulder length hair walked by wearing a baseball hat and I yelled Tim Riggins and Rachelle also yelled Riggins and then when he sat down we saw he was from Almonte and we hid our faces for the rest of the night. But I did notice in this Kanata bar, oddly populated by a lot of Almonte people (including my former High School French teacher who told my parents I was the worst kid she had ever taught!! Me!!? Ya maybe…) that there were a lot of parallels between Texan football culture and valley culture. Like all the Almonte boys were wearing baseball caps, some even backwards(!) at a table, inside a bar, in the middle of winter as if it was totally the pinnacle accessory to their outfit. Which is weird because there is no sun, it is not hot out, so I assume a toque would be more fitting and lastly, you are fucking indoors at a table so unless you are wearing a fancy hat and on your way to the Ascot, take your fucking hat off you valley knobs. I sound like my Dad because nothing pisses him off more than people wearing baseball caps inside and I see why. Anyways, I made a few other striking parallels between valley culture and Texan culture but then I drank more and forgot. The end. No but I definitely texted my Mom when I saw my ex-French teacher and mom asked if I said anything to her like hi from your worst student ever?! And I said no because I was into my third or fourth drink and I absolutely would have said something horrendous so I kept my mouth shut. Using good logic, while drinking, for the win! Then I drove home. Just kidding!

Basketball?
Speaking of football I realized, rather embarrassingly, that I know nothing about it, while having to propose how my team at work was going to celebrate it in our department. I was speaking to my boss and I told him that it was stupid to have the health section celebrating a beer drinking holiday and that I didn’t even like basketball anyways. He told me it was football actually. I said whatever, both kind of dumb. Then I told him my idea was to build a replica of the superbowl trophy with product. When I described it to him I realized I was describing the Stanley Cup and actually had no idea what the Superbowl trophy looked like at all. Was it a bowl? Did it resemble the Stanley cup at all? No idea. Then I told him that I had bought basketball decorations though and he said, you mean football? Yes, I mean football. I seriously do not even like football I repeated, unless young high school boys are playing it, then I like it. He looked at me like I had just called myself a pedophile or a Shawville cougar, which I technically just had. So I told him I wasn’t a pedophile but Tim Riggins in Friday Night Lights is hot! Then I ended the conversation, walked away and hoped he forgot all about it.

Gluten Roulette
It’s a terrible feeling when you can’t trust your body and it’s functions. I had been playing a little gluten Russian Roulette and getting away with the odd thing until all of a sudden I wasn’t. I spent a good 3-4 days measuring the distance between me and every toilet in sight while walking, driving, shopping and working. I would be talking my staff through our day plan and then my face would contort a little and I would say I would be right back as I started speed walking, cheeks clenched, to the closest can. I took my sister grocery shopping and as we entered I first scouted out the exact location of the toilets and then mid-sentence while checking out Joe clothing, left immediately. It’s a cruel and unusual world when you can’t trust a fart. I was also terrified about going to the hockey game with Hennie for fear of dealing with anal leakage in an arena that makes you stick your ass in everyones faces as you leave your seat. I thought if there was ever a time for adult diapers, this was it.

Bra Danger
It is now obvious to me that bras were invented by misogynistic men who were trying to stab their wives and make it look like they had nothing to do with it. Bras are benign and just a piece of underwear until you are at the gym lifting weights and the wire hangers holding up Betty and Veronica go rogue and stab you in the heart. I was literally impaled by Victoria’s Secret. It left a scar on my chest that looked like a had had open heart surgery (just like Gemma!). And because Victoria charges too much for her secret ridiculous killing machines, I will probably not buy a new one but use some skillfully placed duct tape to keep my bra from piercing my heart in the future. I should sue Victoria Secret because as my bra stabbed me I slammed a weight into my knee and had a severe gimpy limp for the rest of the day. Gawd.

Curl, God Dammit
I started getting jealous of the ability that Hennie has to do absolutely nothing on his day off. Like not leave the couch. It’s amazing. I want to do that. This is a very difficult task for me. I like to be maniacally busy all the time. Usually on days off I have them planned down to the minute and almost always in there is either cooking, gym, cleaning or laundry or all three. But I wanted to try to just do nothing. So hard! I would be like I should sweep over there, no wait! What would Hennie do? He would not do that, he would stay in this chair. Yes, that is what I must do. I made no plans even though I wanted to. I went to the gym and library and realized I had already failed at doing nothing. I thought, I am going to do something stupid like instead of laundry I am going to curl my hair to look like Connie Britton in Friday Night Lights while blasting Matt Good and singing at the top of my lungs. At the bottom of my cupboard I found a curling iron I think I borrowed from my friend Tamara a thousand years ago (and obviously kept). I couldn’t figure out how to place is as it heated up so I jimmy rigged it. Then when it was hot I realized I had no idea what I was doing so I youtubed a video of how to curl hair. The first sentence out of the host of this video was “like I know you guys are totally excited for my video on how to curl hair” and I felt sad and sickened that she was probably a youtube sensation making money off this nonsense. Then when I did what she said (although it hurt my heart to follow her instructions) my hair remained completely straight. No amount of heat hair torture would make a curl stay in my hair. My hair is too tame! It will never be wild. It would not curl at all. My hair is broken. Then I thought I should make a youtube video in response to her video about how her instructions were stupid and failed me but I decided. It also occurred to me I had stils tuck to the plan, I had done nothing, not even curled me hair. Yes!

Canuck
So it is OFFICIAL!! Hennie is a Canadian!! A true hockey hoser. A newly sworn in Canuck. Someone who now hails the mighty beaver! Well that sounds weird… I was a little nervous about him singing the national anthem because the previous week we had gone to a hockey game and I listened to what he was singing and he was definitely taking some liberties on what the words actually were. The ceremony was short and sweet. Like a Citizen factory. Where they parade you in, make you say the oath and then get your certificate and then you parade out so they can get ready for the next batch. The highlights were Hennie getting in trouble for not saying the oath in French even though they had just said you can do one or the other. And then at the end, we were given the opportunity to take pictures of the new citizens with the judge and I had my bloody phone on video so Hennie is posing and then his eyebrows go up like he is getting impatient and it is the best video ever. Then I swore, switched it to camera and took a couple ok photos. Hurrah! I was surprised there wasn’t more fun cultural indocrinating like doing doing shots or beer bongs of maple syrup or as my sister said, being baptized with it. Or having to explain a poutine while making maple taffy on snow or something. Discussing what makes a Nanaimo bar special. Or snowshoeing to the canal for a little skate. I dunno but the good news is they let him in and now he can apply for a Canadian passport!!! Eeee!!! One of the most coveted documents in the world, how awesome! We did celebrate with maple beer so we did something fantastically Canadian that day 🙂

Ya I love football, what of it…