Going to the gym with a single 17 year old girl on a regular basis is quite the experience. We have had boys follow us from machine to machine, run on the treadmills next to us even though the rest are free and one even asked my kid if she was double jointed?! WTF! But now it’s going both ways. Today we walked in and both started giggling like morons because a giant, muscle man, covered in tattoos was the first thing we saw. The gym is reducing me to a teenage girl and it’s not okay. I’m so self conscious about doing certain exercises, because I feel I’m being watched, that I avoid them. Or creepily find a dark corner to do my squats and eyeball everyone to make sure they are not seeing my unattractive sitting down on a pretend toilet move.

I convinced Hennie to go with me to the gym one day so I could see what his program is like. I felt very much like it was take your kid to work day. Tall, muscular Hennie lifting 100 lb weights next to me, trying to lift 10 lb weights was hilarious. I was the only girl in the free weight section too. Hennie was making all kinds of working hard noises while weight lifting while I dicked around with my soup can weights. The most comical of all of it was when Hennie asked me to help him put the 46lb weights onto the leg pushy machine thing. I grabbed one and started falling over. I couldn’t even lift it to the rod it needed to go on. Good times. I’m sure all the other gym dudes were snickering at the dude who has to deal with his weakling wifey at the gym… 

I watched a whole football match on the treadmill last weekend at the gym. I totally made stupid faces to myself and threw my hands up like a crazy fan when Chelsea scored! The game was shown with subtitles because there was no sound and I knew a Brit must be announcing because the description kept reading futbol. Yes, British futbol.

I was waiting for my kid at the TANNING SALON, not something I agree with but whatever. And I overheard the lady working there saying to someone else that a particular oil should not be used by white people. And she totally meant pale people. She was so dark she had forgot that she also was once a white person.  It was so Jersey Shore in there y’all. 

I met the new kid I will be working with on Monday. I said I would never look after a 6 year old boy again but here I am. I saw this kid and thought, wow, he looks familiar. I tried talking to him but I am NOT as exciting as Minecraft and I get that. But his mannerisms, his face, his jaw line all looked familiar. And then I thought, oh my god, he looks exactly like a guy I used to date. Oh my god, I only met the Mom. Omg, am I doing glorified babysitting respite for a child of a dude I used to date? Holy shit balls. I looked up the contact info, the Dad’s name was the same as the guy I used to date. OH GOD! I started looking all over the walls searching for family pictures. FINALLY I found a photo, whew not him. Close call. That would have been epic. 

I have been bored lately. I think this happens every year. I pump myself up with a new year, tons of new excitement, big changes and two weeks later, when nothing has happened, I am disappointed. I like brainstorming ways of making my life more exciting, perhaps doing a course, maybe learn something new, maybe becoming a kleptomaniac for a week just to see if the thrill is all that or maybe removing my public speaking filter and just swear openly, like the pirate I truly am all the time, at all my jobs. Or what about dabbling in some hardcore street drugs. Nothing says keeping up with our exciting youth then knowing what they are talking about when they speak of doing Molly on the weekend. I totally thought the first million times I heard about Molly that this was just some magical person that everyone knew. And a bit of a village bicycle because people kept doing her. But no, it’s more along the lines of Mary Jane btw in a lady name drug cover up. Eventually, I figured out what was missing from my life, high intensity drama. An intense tv show to sink my teeth into a la Sons of Anarchy. So to remedy by boring life I will not do cocaine benders or start stealing shit, I have started watching Homeland and renting a lot of action movies, weee life skills! 

So I decided, with much hesitation, that it would be ok for my friend Rob to borrow Tina, my car. I had some reservations but a friend was in need and I knew it was the right thing to do. The only time I had ever been driving with Rob previously, he had backed into a giant yellow post in a Tim Horton’s parking lot, so my reservations were not without merit. So I handed the keys over, told him all the funny character traits Tina had and then asked him to please, please, please not fuck up my car. I was feeling like a really good person and the best friend anyone could ever have when, about an hour later, I got a call from the cops. A man driving a car, registered to me, had just stolen some gas. The cop must have thought I was insane because I actually started laughing and told him how funny I thought that was. We agreed it must have been a misunderstanding, I said I would pay for the gas after I got off my shift. What actually had happened it Rob payed at the pump AFTER he pumped the gas which is not the correct sequence in which that occurs and therefore it didn’t actually go through. But getting a call from the cops an hour after lending someone my car for the first time was pretty darned amusing. 

I feel disgusted in myself. I feel dirty. I feel like I have let the world down and should just go have a picnic in traffic. It happened. I heard it. The new Avril Lavigne and Chad Kroeger single. The worst musically inclined couple to ever hook up. The couple that could, in theory, produce a child that could be Canada’s worst music nightmare, comparable to Celine even. A satanic offspring of catchy, angsty terrible pop tunes and dirty red neck rock. But more embarrassingly was that I heard the song….and didn’t hate it. I was mortified that after thirty seconds that I hadn’t projectile vomited, because in my head that was exactly how that was going to play out. I actually listened to half the song before deciding that it was my 100% duty to switch the station. What the hell? My world of everything I thought I ever knew is all upside down!
Well I just watched the music video and it’s all good everyone, I hate the song. Whew, thank god. My favourite part of the video is that they try to act, it’s golden. Anyhoo, everything in my world is back to normal. Carry on.

We decided to watch Thor yesterday. Ben and Hennie said it was a great movie. After about twenty minutes I decided I would list the reasons I was going to retire to the room to read my terrible smut book. I cannot watch a movie…

a) where people wear plastic horn helmets and I am supposed to take it seriously
b) where the lead character sounds a little Aussie when everyone else is British
c) where they would go out of their way to hide the face of Idris Elba, an obvious mistake
where Anthony Hopkins’ eye patch has no strings holding it in place! What the hell? So distracting…
I would have been more lenient on the ridiculousness if, say, Channing Tatum was the lead. But he wasn’t. Just saying.

I feel completely ripped off. I invested too much time into a series of smut romance books that have too much storyline and not enough smut. I swear to god. Do not put it in the erotic romance section if half the book the main character goes into hiding and then when the couple finally meet up again they decide to wait until marriage to have sex?! Honest to god…

I went shopping at Bayshore with the kid I work with. It’s these times, in public, that I practice my parenting skills and embarrass her as much as I possibly can. I grabbed a crop top and yelled to the sales lady that there was something wrong with it. Half of it was missing and I hoped this meant it was fifty percent off. I asked my kid why all the shirts were see through. I wasn’t planning a career as a stripper so I wasn’t sure why I was required to be so exposed. She said I need a bandeau underneath it. I yelled that I would never wear a banjo and that seemed ridiculous. I explained to her that it is quite a clever marketing trick though…selling overpriced see through t-shirts that REQUIRE you to buy a separate accessory just so you can wear it. Clever marketing capitalist whores.

I often wonder why I can’t keep up to date with the most recent news headlines. I think it’s because, online, I am bombarded with SO MUCH news that I prioritize and for me that generally means choosing the weirdest and most stupid things ever to read. I just scrolled through quite a bit a few headlines including upbeat and inspirational, but the only one that caught my attention was the piece on the Pastafarian. Yes, a politician in New York State was sworn into office wearing a colander on his because he is indeed a minister of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That, my friends, is fucking awesome. Religious freedom at it’s best…(and I know it’s wrong that most of my newsworthy headlines come from Gawker…)

So like every other human being in January I have started back to the gym. The second I am there it all comes rushing back to me why I don’t particularly love the gym. People you know watching you sweat, being ogled by old men while you sweat and my favourite, getting stuck in weight machines that look relatively easy but when you get in and then can’t get out, you look like a circus freak contorting yourself out of it not so gracefully, while you sweat. I also critically injured my pectorals by not wearing a sports bra while on the treadmill. Ouch.

I have realized lately that when I am alone I make faces to myself as if I was with another person. Like today at the gym I started a machine at a way too heavy weight, did the “woahhh” face to no one but myself and then gave myself a little self nudge and wink and put the weight at a lower number. I did this while walking through the parking lot too get to the gym too as I almost slipped on the ice. I again did the “woahhh” face, steadied myself and then laughed at myself out loud, vowing that on the next ice storm I would put a video camera on my head and record all my falls to laugh at for years to come. I have taken my dramatic inner monologue to a whole new level that requires me to facially act out what I’m thinking. Which probably, to the rest of the world, makes me look like I have a weird tick or many personalities, which may not be totally incorrect. So feel free to creep me at the gym now making stupid faces and lodging myself in machines, weeee!

Every time they are on, I say I am going to boycott the olympics for political reasons, especially when they are in places like China and Russia. But for some reason I always end up watching, it’s like tv crack. I feel like I have no control over it. Everyone makes such a big deal, the build up is intense, you get to cheer for your favourite countries just to hate on the countries you dislike for no particular reason. And there is always that amazing chance that something ridiculous will happen like epic wipe outs or major upsets from countries you have never heard of. These are the true reasons I tune in. Basically I want Cool Runnings to happen every time I watch.

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.

Aren’t points on credit cards bitter sweet? It’s like, holy shit we have $80 in PC Points! OMG what is the balance on our credit card if we have that many points?! Those points are not free! We suffer for them. Fucking credit cards.

I find my car has become depressing because of the music. Firstly, every time I heard Ike and Tina I would think domestic abuse. Then I shed a tear listening to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day because he had just died and now I’m sad about listening to INXS because Michael Hutchence offed himself many moons ago. It’s a sad sad car right now. But I have decided I have to turn it around. We shall overcome! Tina bounced back and made the most badass Buddhist comeback ever. Lou Reed had an amazing career and guess what society, people die of old age, it totally happens. And Michael, oh Michael. I like to think your death was accidental from some crazy autoerotic play that got out of hand. That you were not sad, but very very happy when it happened. This makes me feel better. Which is creepy….

Well I finally paid that fucking parking ticket I have previously ranted about. But I was badass, I paid it two days late. Take that authority!! I kind of wish the city of Ottawa would just remember my credit card the same way Amazon does. Like how they make it too easy to buy stupid things because you don’t have that step of manually putting in your credit card number which gives you that half a second longer to realize you don’t need an expensive, fancy grill pan, that you can just steal from your parents all the time. Yes, I wish it was that easy to pay off my bloody tickets so that I wouldn’t have that extra second to rage about paying the city for a ticket I may or may not deserve. Get it together city of Ottawa.

I am working so much and I guess obsessively washing my hands because of it that my hands looked diseased. There is skin flaking off everywhere, there are cuts and bruises all over them and quite often, just to be pretty, some dried blood. When I hand someone their latte I hope I am not adding some extra Angie sprinkles on the top. At least maybe there is some protein there. But every time I look down at my hands, this voice in my head yells “You will never be a hand model now. NEVER!” And then I realize it’s true, that is one job I can scratch off my wall of future job possibilities. So sad.

I told Hennie I thought we should get professional family Christmas portraits this year. But instead of having a family we would bring our computers and say “Greetings from Angie, Hennie, Lenova & Apple.” Because those are our babies right now. My sister suggested our cars. A family portrait of Hennie and I, the Honda & Yaris. I think it would be funny. Happy Holidays from Hennie, Angie, Peanut and Tina! (Tina is not the official name of my car yet, I am playing around with it)

I was telling Hennie the other day that there are people, possibly even people in our circle of friends, that believe we all have the right to bear arms. (Ok not our circle of friends, but more acquaintances). I new immediately that this is where he went because started laughing maniacally.

Somehow, miraculously, Hennie had some dental coverage from Algonquin and someone was kind enough to send us a cheque for $500!! Consequently, I decided this was the right time to tell Hennie, I was pretty sure I needed new shoes. And not cute, cheap shoes, like real, solid, expensive shoes for my very sad flat feet. Hurrah! New addition to the family, a red pair of Blundstones! I think Hennie thought I was kidding when I said they may be expensive but when he saw the bill he realized that for the first time in my life, ever, I was not exaggerating.

I know I should know what’s going on with computers, but seriously, I don’t get the hashtag thing at all. It’s even funnier when people say it because I think it makes them sound dumb, mainly because I don’t know what it is referring too. But the whole thing pisses me off. I’m on the toilet #peeing. What? I’m shopping #spending money I don’t have. I just don’t get it. Lot’s of snow!#wishIownedacarscraper. It is an internet mystery to me. For the next week I will try and use hashtag in a sentence just to sound like I know what I;m talking about and uber trendy. #willsoundsuperrelevant

Omg on the Charlie Hunnam International facebook group people are getting matching tattoos! I think I am part of a radical sect! The radical sect of the love for a blonde biker boy. It freaks me out. Matching tattoos! I thought I was hardcore super fan, but that shit is just crazy. I renounce my super fanness and pass it on to the tattooed crazies.

Have you ever noticed that the standard mug size is the perfect size for your phone to fit into. Like my mug on the floor is just waiting for me to perfectly drop my iphone right into it. I imagine this scenario happening every time I hold the mug and even remotely see my phone. The neurosis I live with is astounding.

Hennie and I again tried to pick something to watch on Netflix. It went horribly as usual. Hennie would flip through the titles too slowly, he would consider each one and read the description of the movie, which for me is totally unnecessary. I can tell by the first word of the description, the first second of the trailer or the movie poster what exactly is the reason I don’t need to watch it. So after about 20 minutes of me explaining every little reason why I didn’t want to watch each movie I started yelling out the one word reason why I wouldn’t be interested in watching that particular movie. Aliens! Surfing! Nicholas Cage with shoulder length hair! That girl! Tom Cruise! Robots!

I found the Best of Queen red album in my back of cassettes. Wow does that ever take me back! That was my first cd as a kid and listened to it all the time, sang it all the time and choreographed every song. I made up the words to many of the songs as a kid and today, just realized, I never did learn the proper words. “You’ve got to give me sights I’ve never seen, like the diaper that stinks every time.” Or “She keeps Moey and Chantelle in a pretty cabinet.” “She’s a killer queen, gutted with a lazer beam, dynamite with lace so green.” I actually have no idea what the actual words are (except for Moet & Chandon)but that does not stop me from singing them as loud as I can.

When my car is cold the tape plays quicker which makes an already pretty high up there Freddie Mercury sound like the chipmunks on crack.

One thing about house sitting in this house in the country is that I always assume we are isolated and alone on the property. Which is why, while I waited for my laundry to dry in the sun, I carried on with my naked Sunday, until it became a bit cold and then I downgraded to no-pants-Sunday. I was standing at the stove, cooking lunch when I noticed a car coming up the driveway and saw a hunter in the front seat (bright orange, can’t miss those “camo” dudes). I freaked out because this house is all windows. As I raced to find a pair of pants I saw two hunters in the back walking across the yard. Omg. I was surrounded. I felt like a deer with no pants on, caught in the headlights. The house we look after allows hunters to hunt here which, as a vegetarian kind of destroys me. Like when I am having my cup of coffee, looking out the back window at the family of deer munching away peacefully and then one of them gets shot. It kinda ruins my day. But now I have been a peep show, of pant-less fun to the people that are murdering big Bambi’s in the back. Good times.  

I also decided it was drink-as-much-coffee-as-humanely-possible-Sunday. I told Hennie at around 4pm that if I died of a heart attack he had full permission to tour the world and tell people the evils of caffeine. But if I didn’t die, I would probably do it all over again tomorrow.  

I am part of a Facebook group called ‘Charlie Hunnam International’ and it basically just fills my newsfeed with pictures of this actor. I wake up and I’m thinking, what’s the news on FB today, woah shirtless picture of Charlie, good news! Then at lunch when I check to see what’s happenening, more Charlie Hunnam photos or maybe even a collage that someone has creepily made in their spare time. It was getting a bit much until something really odd started happening, people started turning to the group for support for their problems. So now it’s shirtless pic of Charlie Hunnam, followed my, “I had a nervous breakdown this week but I know I have support from Charlie’s Angels so I am back up and running” and a ton of people like it and wish her well! It’s actually kind of hilarious. I was telling Hennie it should be called “Charlie Hunnam International Support group for women.” It’s endlessly amusing with a side of dirty, hot man pictures.  

I was in line a Starbucks drive through a little while ago and the car’s license plate was RAPN JP. I wonder who thought that was an okay license plate. Like there was no way one could look at it and go, wow, raping JP, that’s not okay. I remember Bumper Stumpers, I was pretty good at it and that plate, my friends, could go either way. Ontario disallows so many peoples license plates like HUGEBTCH, NICENUTS, GOFKRSLF, KOOOOGAR, FECALMTR and my favourite, GODSQWAD. but no, Raping JP is totally fine.  

My Dad saw a truck with the bumper sticker “Sons of Lanarky” on it. I must know who these people are. That. Is. Amazing. I wonder if they have a secret gang of big trucks out there in Lanark Highlands. They probably don’t shoot people but deer and they probably do get their guns from people who think they are Irish (but actually fifth generation, once removed). I wonder if they have like nerdy re-creations of the show like all the civil war nerd fans do. I have a Gemma costume!! 

I just sat in the Carlingwood food court for half an hour listening to a woman tell her friend about how she married her cousin…true story…then I watched two people trying to find the bathroom but without looking up from their phones. They were confused, couldn’t take the time to look at the signs, instead asked someone which was hilarious because they were literally standing inside the washrooms. Tip-Carlingwood is the best place to people watch ever. 

I’m so paranoid about all the hunters in our backyard. I nervously run to the car wondering if I will get shot. I look both ways and try to look as little like a deer as I can while sprinting to my car. I am especially nervous if I am wearing all brown. No fancy head bands for me, they could look like antlers. I was so stressed out one day my Mother told me to get a bright orange vest for walking the 10 feet to the car. 

Three ladies over the age of 70 each got out their cell phones and compared them with one another at the coffee shop today. One lady asked the other if her phone got the news? It did, the other lady replied. Then she asked if it had the photo on it? And the video? It did! It was so funny to see these old ladies comparing their smart phones! And then it made me ashamed of my 95 year old Grandma who could bake a lemon loaf while standing on her head, but does not own a cell phone. Get with the times Grandma! You would LOVE Facebook. Well for the first bit, then it would get annoying and your news feed would get clogged with shirtless pictures of hot actors all the time and it would just be a stupid, mind numbing distraction from your lemon loaf which is probably burnt by now.  

Ben and I just road tripped down to Peterborough to the Retirement home he used to work at, to help with their Christmas Bazaar. On the way down, we pass a giant fishing lodge and Ben yells out, “Do you know what anglers are??” I reply that yes, they are fisherman. He yells, “holy shit I just figured that out a couple days ago, how come no one ever told me?! I was trying to figure out what they are angling, or what angle they were talking about!” Classic.  

I just realized what the worst thing is about the Christmas season. It’s Michael Buble. He is everywhere! Completely unavoidable. He follows you around while you are shopping, he finds you at work, he is on the radio, tv and the internet. I would skip Christmas this year, build a yurt, wear permanent ear plugs and maybe, just maybe I could avoid the Buble Christmas trauma.  

Tip- cassette tape cases make excellent scrapers when stuck in a winter snow before you had any forethought to buy a real scraper for the car. Thanks Tina. Life skill. 

I have turned into a pyromaniac and I completely blame the wood stove in our house we are staying at. I want to burn everything. I look forward to finding non-glossy magazines so I can burn them. I have started hoarding newspapers from my work. I burn every receipt and piece of junk mail I ever get. I have even started removing things from their cardboard package so I can burn then. I wonder if Hennie realizes where his cereal boxes keep going. 

Um Carrie Underwood plays Maria on the NBC version of Sound of Music?? That is wrong. That is so wrong. NO ONE CAN PLAY MARIA LIKE JULIE ANDREWS. Except me of course and I am shocked they didn’t ask and instead went with a country singer?! Fuck that. Table flip. 

Uh hey The Voice. Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley? Umm I’m pretty sure that song is written by my good friend Leonard Cohen. Just sayin’

God bless you Janet, God bless you. You heeded my cry of Tina Turner torture and brought me the ultimate gift, a sack full of cassettes. And no, not just any cassettes, amazing ones, including the Trainspotting soundtrack!! Only my favourite movie of all time. I was greeted with the warm, floating, dream-like song and immediately placed it as Ewan swimming through the worst toilet is Scotland to retrieve his heroine he had had shoved up his arse earlier. I used to know the movie line for line. I once spit out so many lines from the movie, word for word, that a a young man from the Isle of Skye Scotland asked me to marry him. I questioned his level of commitment. I have been a super fan for a long time. When I lived in Scotland I even went to the shop where Ewan gives Spud a pep talk about trying hard to get the job he is about to be interviewed for but not trying too hard or else he might get it. It’s just the best movie ever. Back to Janet! Thank you for bringing a bit of heroine class to my auto Janet, you rock my world!  

I had an old moment yesterday. Like I am definitely getting old. I took the kid I work with to get winter boots at Bayshore. She chose these ankle high gangster carpenter boots that looked retarded to me. (Timberlands?) I sat there saying they were the most impractical winter boots I had ever seen! Was she new to Canada? Had she seen how deep the snow gets? Are these boot even waterproof? Were they even meant for cold weather? And at the last harassing question, I realized, not only was I making a scene in Foot Locker and embarrassing my kid, but I had just turned into my Dad. I had flashbacks to all the cute boots I ever wanted even though they were impractical, stupid and possibly not waterproof. The difference was, I lost those arguments. I went home with knee high, most chunky, practical, built-for-a-yeti lined boots that tended to match my neon purple coat *shakes head in shame*. Needless to say, I decided to back off my kid and let her learn her own lessons. Like when she loses both feet to hypothermia and she can no longer walk, she can’t tell me I didn’t warn her.  

On the way home I told my kid we were going to learn about local, successful women on our next outing. She needed to see independent women doing it for themselves. Ya feminism! She looked totally shocked to hear that word. She said she wasn’t a feminist. I looked at her and stole the lines from the Caitlin Moran book “How to be a Woman,” 

a) Do you have a vagina? and

b) Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you said ‘yes’ to both, then congratulations! You’re a feminist.” 

As soon as she got home, she announced to the house she was now a feminist. I felt like I changed the world that night. Let feminism no longer be a bad word with our youth! Lady power! We also decided instead of saying vagina we would change it to “bergina” a la Family Guy episode where Meg visits a discount gyno and that’s what he calls it. Good times! Bringing comedy to feminism! 

So, believe it or not, there seem to be some down sides to losing weight. I have spent years searching high and low finding amazing and outrageous big clothes and am pretty proud of my finds. The problem is, I can no longer wear them. They now look like bedsheets on me, which is not cool. Secondly, I caught myself in the mirror yesterday with the oddest shaped breasts I had ever seen. What the? And I realized my bra was imploding due to lack of boob. Now this is especially not cool. I specifically had a pep talk with my body before this all started, I said the chins can go, also the hips and ass, but please, for the love of god, Betty and Veronica can stay. I have grown quite attached to them and we are a happy family. Please let them stay. The only plus side to seeing Betty and Veronica shrink is that it just happened to coincide with the new Victoria Secret opening in Ottawa. Oh darn I guess I will have to check it out.  

Omg I found out what Victoria’s Secret it!! I went in because my bra was way to big for me and went up a cup size! Their secret is to make you think you have bigger boobs then you do! Well played Victoria, well played.

Is everyone excited? It’s almost the season!! The season to make jokes out of our credit card bills and fret over money…the reason for the season….debt! We are starting on a particularly precarious note this year, after buying an old car that needed some work, Hennie starting school and then having the audacity to have a tooth removed! Hennie, I think that was your Christmas present. Fentanol and Percocets are all you are getting for Xmas this year. You are not getting your two front teeth for Christmas this year, you lost an expensive, infected molar. Merry Christmas! I must reign in my spending this year!! I say that every year but for some reason I lose all control at Christmas. I go over our set family budgets, I buy multiple things for people even though I have finished their gifts, I then give it to other family members to give to those people because I have bought too much. I get commercialism amnesia, capitalism dependence issues, shopping impulse control problems. And on top of that, I stress out over all of that and then turn to my good old friend, retail therapy to get me through. I literally could write a whole DSM (Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders) based on what I deal with just around Christmas. Except I would make them all fun like when my Grandma says OCDC for OCD or FibroMalaysia for Fibromyalgia. Anyways, the point of this rant. This year, I must perma talk myself down from my spending ledge and stay focussed. I will constantly repeat to myself how I should not be supporting such a commercial holiday to the extreme, how I should not be a crazy capitalist consumer and how my family deserves cheap presents, ha ha just kidding on that last one. 

Back to the Trainspotting soundtrack, Lou Reed’s Perfect Day now feels like the saddest song ever. I mean it was always a bit surreal and dark but now it’s sad! RIP Lou. You are wonderful.

Underworld’s Born Slippy might just be the most fun song ever. It has been one of my fave songs for as long as I can remember. My favourite memory of it is when I lived in on the Cornish coast of England, in a trailer, surrounded by all my trailer living fellow travelers. A diverse mix of Aussies, South Africans, Canadian and Brits that ended up on the hippie coast of England and it was, by far, the most fun summer ever. Parties, drinking, shitty cars, living in trailers, debauchery (I’m just going to stop there)…it coincidentally coincided with going to the hospital for my alcohol poisoning debacle! Silly teenager. Anyways, we decided to do a field trip to the surfer, hippie town of New Quay to go out clubbing. We got to the club, waited for the inspiration to dance and mingle to take over and just as we entered the dance floor that song starts. It feels like a warm blanket of a techno enveloping me in a foreign country. It felt like all my time researching traveling to the UK was paying off at that exact moment. Like I was at the exact right spot to be at the time in my life. It was the craziest feeling ever, it may have been helped by the amount we had consumed, but it was still amazing. I have never had that feeling again. Anyways, we spent the rest of the night dancing like there was no tomorrow. Argh but there ended up being a tomorrow and it felt yucky! 

Hennie’s 5 year anniversary of being in Canada is today!! 5 years!! We got married, have not got divorced, have been to South Africa twice and have no kids….winning! And Hennie can apply for his Citizenship soon too! Hazaa!