Monday, December 31, 2018

Dietary Delight

'Tis the season for Resolutions! You surely all know by now that I love Resolutions, and I'm pleased to say that I went through my 2018 Resolutions today and found that I achieved (or at least made good progress toward) most of the goals I set for the year. I'm also a big fan of lists, and since one of my best motivational tricks is to put something I've already completed on my lists so I have something to check off straight away, I also achieved several retroactive Resolutions that I didn't even know about until now. I am winning so hard this year!

Know what I didn't do? Again? Lose a shit-ton of excess weight. It's almost a recurring joke that I put it on the list each year, and it really is a recurring joke the mental efforts I take to avoid the actual efforts involved in attaining this particular Resolution. I've noticed a few fallacies I'm particularly prone to, and from that compiled the following fun list of diet personalities. (And by "fun" I mean uncomfortably close to home and possibly offensive. Per usual.)

* * * 

The Last Supper: "Might as well enjoy food while I still can." And by this you mean all the food, as if you are stockpiling calories for the end of days. Oh wait - due to a neat trick of biology, you can stockpile calories! Expect to gain 10lbs before you even get started on your diet.

The Spring Cleaner: "Get this shit out of here!" If it's not in the house you can't eat it, right? Ahh, now your cupboards look like the rejects aisle at the food bank - nice! Not necessarily a bad approach, unless of course you live with other people who are not on your diet. And who emphatically do not want tinned lentils for an afternoon snack. Expect to lose 2lbs off your rolls and 20 points in the polls.

The Conscientious Objector: "I can't let all this perfectly good food go to waste..." Of course you can't! Much better it goes to waist instead. Expect to gain 5lbs, and probably be on Hoarders one day.

The False Starter: "Okay, for really real this time!" Except you can't start on a Sunday - that's family dinner night! But Monday was just so hard this week, and what kind of monster starts things on a Tuesday? By Wednesday the whole week is basically a write-off... you'd better just start fresh next week. Expect to gain a rather perplexing* 5lbs** this month.
* I mean, all you ever think about is dieting, how can you be gaining weight?!
** If combined with a tendency to Last Supper-ing, gain 10lbs.

The Eclectic: "This one will work for sure!" You've been simply passionate about every fad diet and food trend that has ever existed. Like, ever. You own a bewildering number of oddly specific small appliances - juicers, blenders, fat-free fryers, grillers, shakers, makers, bakers, takers, and partitioned toddler plates for adults (?) - your pantry rivals Bulk Barn in its selection of obscure ingredients, and you could open a Museum of Modern Health Trends with the 30-year retrospective of home gym equipment languishing in your basement. Expect to lose 5lbs now, gain it back in a month when you lose interest, and have no friends because your constant proselytizing is freaking exhausting.

The Intellectual: "Ugh, paleolithic peoples would totally have eaten bananas if they were available!" You have acquiesced to the fact that you need - well, not 'help', exactly, more like 'inspiration' - to kick-start your diet, but you can't help but dwell upon the fallacies and flaws of each plan you look into. It's just that you're so much smarter than diets! Expect to lose the same 20lbs over and over until you either die of a heart attack or gain some humility, whichever comes first.

The Old Timer: "I'll just keep doing what works for me!" Would we be having this conversation if it were truly working? And are those ankle weights? Expect to lose 5lbs, but at the steep personal cost of consuming a lot of cottage cheese and Diet Coke.

The Perfectionist: "As soon as I'm not so stressed out..." Or maybe when the kids are all in school, or when your back doesn't hurt so much, or when Jupiter aligns with Mars. Whatever it is, it is clear that conditions must be absolutely perfect in order for you to ingest more fibre. Congratulations, here's your 5lbs.

The Princess and the Pea: "It's just so hard because of my [insert multiple conflicting conditions of varying credibility here]." Hey, have you ever heard of the Paralympics? Actually, y'know what, never mind. Just take your 5lbs and go. 

The Theist: "Please, baby Jeebus!" Remember kids, the Lord helps those who help themselves, and He did not mean to seconds. 5lbs, honey. Next!

The Optimist: "Welp, New Year and Orthodox New Year were busts. Good thing for Lunar New Year!" Expect to lose 2lbs, gain 5lbs back celebrating the latest flip of the calendar page, and start again - all with a smile, somehow.

The Pessimist: "Honestly, why even bother?" With that attitude, you're exactly right. Expect to gain 5lbs. Of course.

The Realist: "Honestly, why even bother?" OMG, so true! Here's your 5lbs. 

The Sailor: "Fuck it." Is this also Pessimistic, or perhaps Realistic? Either way, I totally agree. 5lbs.

The Polycephalist: Any or all of the above, in whatever combination suits your needs at the moment. Personally, I tend to run about 25% each Last Supper, Spring Cleaner and Old Timer (CICO my dudes!) with varying degrees of most of the others, depending on my mood. Let's not talk about the weight gain one might expect when employing this particular combination, k?

Finally, we have...   

The Metabolism: "I guess I'm just naturally thin!" Listen, this entire post was designed to be so profoundly unrelatable to you that you could not possibly read this far, so it is not my fault if you are offended by my saying what the other struggling 99% of humanity is thinking when you say shit like that in January: please fuck off.

* * *

Happy New Year to all my dear readers, and may all your Resolutions become realities this year.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Sunny Side Up

I have a friend who traveled extensively for sports in his youth and, later, for work, and he told me once that he regretted not getting out and enjoying the places he visited when he had the chance - as he told it, his experiences in all these far-flung places were largely limited to hotel rooms and event centres. This story really struck a nerve with me and I have since made a concerted effort to enjoy the hell out of every place I travel.

Of course, it's easy to enjoy places you travel to when you're on vacation, because you're on vacation - how bad could it even be? Given my job, however, I mostly travel to small towns in rural western Canada, and mostly during the hectic field season - basically the very antithesis of a state of vacation, in places that are on precisely no-one's bucket list. 

But you know what? I mostly do enjoy these places, or at least aspects of these places. There's nearly always a positive nugget in there somewhere. Worst case scenario, I come away with a ridiculous field story, which is in itself a positive thing in my books. As they say, Wherever you go, there you are, and I do believe the ability to find the sunny side in your travels has a lot to do with the attitude you're packing along. I always aspire to pack my very best attitude; failing that, I also pack an assortment of colourful field gotch to choose from when I need a mood boost in the morning. As they don't ever say, but maybe should, With colourful underpants and enough coffee, anything is possible.

(Honestly, that should be my company slogan, although I might have to classy it up a bit before I put it on letterhead - any of you folks know Latin?) 

He probably doesn't even remember the conversation, but I've had so many delightful experiences in so many little podunk places since embarking on my Positive Travel Attitude phase that my friend deserves a thank-you for the inspiration. Thanks, buddy! (He doesn't read this, but don't worry - I'll buy him a beer sometime and tell him in person.)

I was considering making an adventure map to share here, with a little pin at each oddball place and a cutesy little happy story to accompany each pin, but on consideration it just seemed too - how to put it delicately? - Instagrammy-bullshit for me to follow through with. It felt like I was sullying those magical moments, like staging a yoga pose in front of a beautiful mountain view and posting it for fake internet points. Gross.

Instead, I will stay firmly on-brand and tell you about a time when I embarrassed myself in the field. (I'd just like to point out that another friend of mine once suggested I rarely "put myself out there" - I contend that oversharing is indeed a form of putting oneself out there, and if anything I do it too much. But I digress. Also too much.)

Picture it: Chain hotel in a small town, the kind with the free popcorn in the lobby. I check in and have a nice chat with the young-ish, not-unattractive fellow at the front desk. He showed me something funny going down on one of the hallway security cameras and we had a laugh. I headed to my room, hopped in the shower, and realized two things: one, I forgot to give the guy my rewards card, and two, I forgot to get popcorn. I threw on some comfy clothes and a pair of Bama socks (too lazy to put on real shoes at this point in the day) and headed down to the lobby.

"Hi again," said front desk guy.

"Hey," I said, through a mouthful of popcorn, "I forgot to give you this when I checked in." And handed over my rewards card.

Except I didn't hand over my rewards card. I handed him my room key.

In my defense, they both have a little picture of a bag of popcorn on them - they honestly look very similar - and it had been a long day.

Front desk guy just stared at the card, with his jaw *literally* hanging open. We stood there like this for an uncomfortably long time - in retrospect, sortof an insultingly long time - me staring at him wondering why he wasn't giving me my reward points, and him staring at the room key this popcorn-munching old coug had just handed him.

I eventually realized I'd given him the wrong card and switched them out. He gave me my points; I shuffled off to my room. It wasn't until then that I realized the implication of what I'd done (seriously, it was a long day), and then the implication of him not taking the damn room card. I mean, did he really need to be quite so aghast about it? Was it really that hard a decision? Jeebus.

So yeah, I do put myself out there - way out there, apparently, and not necessarily intentionally, but still. It was a bit of a worst case scenario, but by employing my Positive Travel Attitude I was able to glean not only a ridiculous field story, but also an incredibly ballsy pickup technique to share with you. Feel free to give it a try the next time your self esteem needs to be taken down several notches.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Niche Market

Hello, my name is Frecklepelt. I'm here today because I'm forty years old and I still haven't figured out what to do with my hair.

(This is a support group, right? You guys are supporting me in my lack of hair awareness? Cool, thx.)

I feel about my hair like old people feel about technology: it's mysterious and confusing, and although I am somewhat envious of others' abilities to wrangle the technology, frankly I'm not terribly inclined to learn how to use it myself. I'm all like, Why isn't it working today? It worked yesterday and I didn't change a thing! Why does it hate me?! Screw it, I'm going to deal with this the old-fashioned way that I understand (i.e., ponytail).

This is not to say that I haven't gotten some solid mileage out of my hair over the years - there's always been a certain market for the red hair/green eyes thing. Often of the basement-dwelling variety (thanks, perhaps, to the fantasy genre?), but y'know, in a pinch, I figure I can always catch some D&D D. I'd also like to thank kids' shows for deeply ingraining in people that the redhead with glasses is the smart one - I got glasses at the ripe old age of 6 so I feel I've benefitted from that unconscious bias for most of my life.

So I don't hate my hair, it's just that our relationship is somewhat... adversarial. I wake up every day knowing there's going to be some kind of battle with it, and I approach the mirror with the same look of grim determination on my face that my Grandma Mabel got every time she had to use her cell phone. I can remember her mashing the absolute hell out of those tiny buttons (wise of her to pass on before the advent of the touch screen), then getting angry-scared something had gone wrong and starting over, over and over, until she finally rage quit and just put it in a fucking ponytail again.

Oh wait, sorry, got my analogy a little tangled there.

To give Grandma credit, she had her hair absolutely 100% figured out - you've never seen a more luxurious head of winter-white weekly-set curls than she had. Never a lock out of place. I suspect she was just as frustrated by my apparent inability to do anything with my hair as I was whenever she tried to make a cell phone call. "If you'd only..."

I'm starting to get a few grey hairs myself - or rather, winter-white hairs. I like to arrange them on top for business meetings to give myself some street cred. Because it seems as if it will turn white I've been envisioning my hair one day magically becoming just like Grandma's, but the reality is that she maintained a complex hair regimen that she guarded as closely as her molasses cookies recipe and it is unlikely I'll ever be able to recreate either in my lifetime. Probably my hair will be just as mental as ever, except white. 

I'd like to tell you that I'm at least keeping up on technology to make up for my hair-styling ineptitude, but that would be a lie. By this point, it's looking like I'm going to have to cultivate some other skill set for my grandkids to appreciate me for. I'll be sure to let you know when I figure out what that's going to be, in case anyone else in the support group is in a similar boat.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Proceed with Caution

Situations sometimes arise in a relationship where you realize things aren't going to go well unless you tread verrrry carefully. For instance, DH and I were admiring the lovely blue of a periwinkle's flowers one day and he asked me whether the colour had a name. He's right: it's such a good colour that it deserves its own name, and our experiences doing crosswords together indicate that I am the person in the relationship who is most likely to know the words for things like that. In that moment, however, I could not find a good way to say "periwinkle blue" without sounding like a sarcastic asshole. The proceed-with-caution alarm started going off in my head, and I'm reasonably certain I have a matching facial expression that goes with the alarm. It feels as if it might resemble a deer caught in headlights who also happens to be eating a lemon, but since I've never witnessed it personally I can't attest to how it translates externally.

On another occasion, I butt-dialed DH from the field. I had never experienced a butt-dial before that moment and since subsequent experiments with those field pants suggest a generally low ability to effect any dialing unless dampened, I believe it was literally my ass sweat that dialed him. I'm not much of a phone person so DH was pleased that I had (ostensibly) taken time out of my busy work day to call him. "It's so nice to hear from you! Why did you call?"

*Alarm sounds in head. Possible deer-lemon face. Long pause while considering my options.*

"... Um, because I miss you?"

This, by the way, was found to be The Correct Answer, and further proof IMHO that the exact truth is not always the exact best thing for a given situation. "Because it's 35 degrees and my ass sweat has increased the conductivity of my field pants such that they were able to work my smart phone" would surely not have gone over so well. Crisis averted.

Because I only get to live in my own brain, I'm only aware of when these situations come up from my own perspective. (Or some degree of aware, anyway: I've been told that I'm offensive frequently enough that I'm guessing my batting average isn't spectacular.) I've always wondered whether other people have similar alarm systems wired up, or if they just sail smoothly along with a minimum of anxiety involved in the telling of their lies (or truths, as befits the situation).

* * *

Have I ever mentioned that I've decided to do any future Mrs. Small Fry a solid and really normalize the heck out of weird woman-things, so she won't have to worry about him finding them weird? Don't fret about, say, shaving your ankles in the sink so you can wear cropped pants that day, future potential daughters-in-law - I have got that shit covered. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if DH received any such training so we have developed a workaround wherein basically neither of us acknowledges anything, ever. Frankly, it's exhausting, and becoming less and less feasible the older I get, so here's a huge "you're welcome" to the future Mrs. Small Fry.

* * *

I was making good use one evening of the wax left over from doing Medium Fry's brows when DH came into the room. As per our usual approach, I pretended to simply be casually standing around in the bathroom for no waxing-related reasons whatsoever, and he pretended not to notice my telltale hot pink reverse-'stache (et al.). He had an odd look on his face, sortof like he was afraid but had also recently eaten something sour?

"Um," he said, "I have a message for you from Small Fry, that is definitely not from me."

"Okaaay...?"

"He has asked me to ask you that when you are done waxing your knuckles, would you please go give him a goodnight hug?"

Ah. So that really is what the alarm face looks like in reality. Good to know.

Monday, September 17, 2018

Cake Pans

Not to boast, but people come to me for advice about things sometimes. It is of course possible that they come to me to find out the things they definitely shouldn't be doing - like when that one weirdo at the office with no eyebrows tells you they like your outfit - but I prefer to believe that I give the impression of knowing what I'm doing at least some of the time, so any requests for advice usually leave me feeling that happy little glow one feels when successfully faking one's way through life.

I got just such a call one day from my old buddy Cornelis; yes, even he of the annoyingly perfect family, teeth, career path, positive attitude, blah-fucking-blah, had come to seek my sage advice. Damn - I must be faking the hell out of life. Win!

He wanted to know... what dish to bake a cake in.

Okay, only slightly deflating, I could work with that: "Um, a cake pan?"

"We don't have cake pans. Can I use a casserole dish?"

"Wait, what? No cake pans?! What kind of... y'know what, never mind. Sure, you can use a casserole dish. You might have to change the baking time a little, though - what size have you got?"

"Umm..."

"It should say on the bottom."

"Oh. Uh... nine by thirteen inches."

"Hold up, what does this casserole dish look like?"

"You know, just a regular casserole dish - clear, says Pyrex on the bottom?"

Full disclosure, in my house, a 9x13" Pyrex is called a cake pan, because cake obviously trumps casserole. OBVIOUSLY. I send a brief prayer of apology to the cake gods if I'm ever forced to debase one of their sacred vessels with a lowly casserole. What the hell kind of heathen household must this guy live in if he thinks a cake pan is called a casserole dish? What do they call cookie sheets, "vegetable roasting platforms"? When was the last time he's even seen a dessert? My lawd, think of the children!

"Hey, wait a minute - why did you call me about this?"

"I dunno, I guess you just seem like someone who knows about cakes."

And there, implicit in his statement, was the answer to my question: he lives in a much thinner household than I do. This conversation took place several years ago and honestly, I've been trying to transmogrify it into a compliment ever since, but sometimes I'll look in a mirror and realize, Yeah. I definitely look like the sort of person who knows a thing or two about cakes. Like, maybe I'm BFFs with cake but it's gotten a little toxic over the years and we probably should consider seeing other people once in a while. (It's not you, it's me?)

Definitely not putting that one in my Feel-Good Folder. Maybe I'll tuck it away in a drawer for when I finally lose those last, stubborn eighty pounds; it's just the sort of thing that might fit more comfortably then.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Word Addict

When someone says they're so hungry they could eat a horse, is it the mass of the horse that they're referring to, or the fact that we don't typically eat companion animals? Like, are we talking a large volume of food amount of hungry or a violating societal norms amount of hungry? For comparison, if I said I was so hungry I could eat a therapy dog, would that convey less, more, or the same amount of hungriness as if I said I could eat a horse? Or if I went to a horse-eating sort of country and said I could eat a horse would they be like, Yeah - so?

In light of this confusion I've been trying to say more accurate things like, "I'm so hungry I could take a stab at this sad apple that's been living in my field vest for the past week," or, "I could really purchase a footlong sub then only finish half of it because I consistently overestimate how much food I can consume in one sitting."

The whole accurate communication business came about because I keep seeing people posting things online about these four (or sometimes five?) "Agreements", which I'm mostly cool with but the first one is about always being impeccable with my words and I am definitely sloppy as fuck with my words. Or as I prefer to think of it, I expend oodles of energy being precise and thorough with my words at my job, so I really like to let loose with my words in my free time.

I've been encountering some issues during my efforts to rein my words in to something closer to "impeccable". First off, it's obvious that I'm not just a casual or social user of non-impeccable words; I'm a full-blown addict. It feels indescribably dull to convey things without verbally BeDazzling them: having "several ripe tomatoes" in my garden is simply not as punchy as having a metric fuck-ton of them. Saying I'm "somewhat over capacity" at work lacks the exhilarating dramatic flair of being adrift in a choppy sea of needy projects. And honestly, if I'm so hungry I could eat a normal quantity of a socially-acceptable food item, why would I even bother mentioning it?

Ugh, I can barely get it up to say anything at all without at least a little hit of non-impeccableness.

Secondly, I guess after all this time as a non-impeccable-word-addict maybe I've gotten bad at regular words? Without the usual suite of weather-related topics to discuss during routine interactions with strangers (trouble being that I obviously can believe the smoke/heat/humidity/whatever because it's fricking August and BC is on fire, duh, so it doesn't seem very impeccable to claim that I can't), I'm out of tricks. I panicked a little at my blood draw appointment on Saturday and asked the phlebotomist whether she prefers her orange juice with pulp or without.

Which brings me to my third problem: weather is the ultimate neutral topic in Canada. Without fallbacks like how you just can't buhleeeve this weather we're having, you get risk entering uncomfortably intimate territory like orange juice or the pharmacist's nice eyebrows, where everything somehow sounds like a pickup line despite your most impeccable of intentions.

So I'm going to make you all a deal: you stop posting this "Agreements" bullshit and making me accidentally hit on my pharmacist, and I will carry on in my usual highly entertaining (to me) manner, with the mutual understanding that I'm employing a (to me) standard degree of artistic license in the telling.

Friday, July 27, 2018

The Hungryman Special

I'm roughly at the mid-point of my field season, which is about the time of year when I like to dive on down to the basement of Maslow's pyramid and become a sort of plaid-wearing lizard-brain person. In the summer, a field person's fancy turns to - well, mostly to food, to be honest. (Sorry, DH.) But there's also a pretty consistent refrain of Too hot. Too cold. Too tired. So much pee. Fuck mosquitoes. Extra double-fuck canola. Hate rubber boots. Etcetera. Basically, every thought in my head seems to revolve around my immediate physical state: I would cut a bitch for some dry socks. Fuck this hill, and the glacier it rode in on. If I see a bear I'm going to ride that fucker right out of this forest and never look back.

Oh yeah, parental warning: my lizard brain swears even more than my regular brain. I went with a documentary effect 'cause that's where I'm at today.

I like to think I mostly keep it together, most of the time, but down in the lizard basement you just never know what might happen - sometimes, a gal just snaps. One summer's day a little while ago I was standing in a wetland minding my own business (actually the wetland's business, I suppose) when I was completely overcome by the need for a burger. Like, my very soul needed a burger, and all I had in my field vest was a sad apple and a crushed granola bar. Lizard-me drove to the nearest town (population 382*) and clomped my sweaty, grimy arse into the lone cafe. (It was was basically a self-kidnapping - is that a thing?) I destroyed a burger named "The Hungryman Special", slapped down a twenty and clomped off into the sunset, never to be seen again. I figure the six old coffee-swilling farmers who (after un-subtly rearranging their chairs for a better view) watched me eat, plus the chef who came out of the kitchen to watch me eat, are still talking about that one time that mysterious, muddy New Human stopped by for lunch.

For this precise reason, even at my lizard-basement hungriest I sometimes lack the emotional fortitude to dine alone in small towns - it's the performance anxiety that gets me. Which makes me think how truly terrible it would be to be famous: you would never be able to eat a Hungryman Special in peace, no matter where you went or how self-actualized you were that day.

That's why I like being a regular not-famous field biologist. It's like being the world's crappiest rock star. You get all the glamour of being on the road - waking up in a different seedy motel each morning and not knowing where the hell you are, being openly gawked at by everyone in town anytime you try to eat a meal - without any of the fuss and bother of, say, heaps of money, or cushy tour buses, or groupies. In fact, the only action I get all summer is humping my way over endless logs in the forest. (Platonically, of course; it's just that I have short legs.)

But I think of myself as a crappy rock star in the best way possible, because at the end of the season I get to return to my regular, non-plaid-wearing self, and eat all the burgers I like in total, blissful anonymity.

* Statistics Canada, 2016 census data: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Lovin' It

There used to be a regular at the McDonald's I worked at in high school who would order a double Quarter Pounder with extra grease every time he came through the drive-thru. And he was deadly serious about that extra grease - serious like the heart attack I wonder if he's had yet when I remember him now, twenty-plus years later. If he saw you were new to the job or felt you weren't taking his request heart-attackily enough, he would describe the exact method for making his custom grease burger: Cook the patties fresh, and do not drain them when you take them off the grill (you're supposed to sortof shake them off otherwise), then use the spatula to scrape up all the extra grease sitting on the grill and pour it over the patties.

... Delicious??

There was also the gal who always ordered a Big Mac with no meat, a "lady of the evening" (or more realistically, of the streets) who used the ladies' washroom as her place of, ahem, business, and an older woman who would insist that you press the "extra" button no less than 10 times when ordering her cheeseburger with extra pickles. She would then whip the burger open right on the counter to check that there was at least a half-inch slab of pickles inside, and either silently nod her approval and stalk briskly off with her pickleburger, or slam the counter in anger and demand! more! pickles!

As you might have already suspected, we found everything from dirty diapers to drug paraphernalia in the PlayPlace. A certain elderly gentleman couldn't seem to pronounce "fajita" and thus shyly ordered up two chicken vaginas every time he came through (thru?). One time, a little kid got his head stuck between the rungs of a chair and we had to grease him with a block of fryer vat shortening to get him out. Another time, a kid went "missing" and was eventually found standing - uninvited - under some woman's privacy cover, watching a complete fricking stranger nurse her baby.

(Oh, wait. That last one was Medium Fry, age 4 or so, when I was no longer the disgruntled employee but rather the profoundly embarrassed patron. What is it with PlayPlaces that brings out the weird in people?!)  

In short, by the time I had been there a couple of years months, I had all the world-weary indifference of a hardened fast food veteran: nothing anyone could order, say or do could surprise me. (Okay, until it was my own kid.) So one day when a friend of the family came through and ordered his meal with extra salt, I simply drawled, "How much salt do you want?"

"Haha! I was being facetious! Did you really think that I wanted extra salt with my McDonald's?!"

I stored the word facetious for later research, and thought of Extra Grease Man. "Um... yeah. I did."

He drove off chuckling to himself. Maybe he left with the impression that I was a very literal or humourless person - who knows. It wasn't that I felt the request for extra salt at a fast food joint was a particularly sound life choice, but in comparison to certain life choices I had seen people make while in the safe haven of mother McDonald's golden bosoms, let's just say that it was pretty low on the crazy scale.

I worked at that job for three and a half years. It paid for my orthodontics, my first basement apartment with the orange shag carpet that resembled Barkley from Sesame Street, and a great many sweet, sweet employee-discounted meals. With meat, mind you, and only the standard allotment of grease. I actually referenced my McJob at a professional interview years later, as an illustration of my experience dealing with crazy/angry/aggressive people. DH poked fun of me a bit for this, and I have no idea what my interviewers thought of it, but I stand by the decision - honestly, I can't think of a better place of employment for experience interacting with a wide variety of nutjobs.

As Medium Fry searches ever more frantically for a summer job - and she seems to be angling for one of the anything-but-fast-food variety - I hold a secret small hope that she will end up spending at least a little time at a McJob one day. It's a great place to earn a bit of perspective along with your pocket money, plus I feel it would really bring her full-circle from being the weird kid, to dealing with them.

Saturday, May 12, 2018

The Pure Pumpkin Polka

I think we've established that I'm a bit of an over-sharer, but lately I've been thinking maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe it's not over-sharing so much as the right amount of sharing - in fact, I've been percolating a theory around the benefits of over-sharing, and was planning to one day flesh it out for y'all right here on my blog. Something to the tune of sharing your shit being a public service. If nothing else, I figure it can help other people feel less alone in dealing with their own personal steaming heaps, y'know?

So I was standing in the coffee aisle at the Co-op last night, deciding which beans looked most likely to get me through the coming week, and this middle-aged woman stopped to tell me what kind of coffee she thought was best. Awesome, right? Thanks, rando lady. But then she just... stayed. And started telling me about her dog. Who was sick. With - and I quote - "the green apple two-step." And needed canned pumpkin. But not pumpkin pie filling, just pure pumpkin, and Co-op is the only store that stocks it year-round, and the reason the dog needs pumpkin is because it's a bowel regulator (in case I missed out on what "the green apple two-step" might imply).

She acted all of this out for me while telling me about it, and let me just say: I had no idea pumpkin could be such powerful medicine. The very. forceful. hand gestures. she used to demonstrate what a "bowel regulator" might accomplish in the case of a green-apple-two-stepping dog led me to believe that if she's not careful with the dosage, she may be back again in a day or two buying her dog a bottle of remedial prune juice. I didn't think to ask what euphemism she preferred to use for that particular affliction, so let's call it the pure pumpkin polka and imagine her cornering some poor fellow and telling him all about it under the pretext of helping him select a nice brand of cereal.

It was right around "bowel regulator" that I realized I was seeing the future.

My future.

In addition to being a chronic over-sharer, I'm also an incorrigible over-explainer; a persistent hand-talker; an unrelenting user of euphemisms; and a habitual maker of unsolicited recommendations to confused-looking grocery shoppers. I helped a guy navigate curry pastes just last weekend! I'm like a ticking time bomb of over-sharing. It is only a matter of time before I literally transmogrify into that exact woman and start offering up vast amounts of unrelated personal information alongside my, say, cantaloupe selection expertise.

In light of this new evidence I must entertain the possibility that over-sharing may not be the public service I once thought it was, and if I can't feel bonded with you because of whatever natural reticence you happen to possess, that's my own problem.

I don't know if I can turn this thing around for myself, but it might not be too late for you, my friends: please know that you don't have to share your shit if you don't want to. And you really, really never have to share your dog's shit.

Thank you for your attention to this important public service announcement.

Monday, April 23, 2018

Don't Throw (Gall)Stones

I think it was some Michael Pollan book that talked about analyzing people's carbon molecules and finding that most everyone is mostly made of corn. This finding gave me pause: not because I have anything against corn, in fact I love corn and you can't stop me, Michael Pollan, but because I am reasonably sure my family is made of potatoes. Well, the kids might be made of peanut butter, and DH is possibly hops-based, but me? I am definitely made of potatoes.

I love potatoes. I literally wept with happiness the first year I dug potatoes up out of my own garden. I was also very ill and a bit delirious with fever at the time, which may have affected my emotional state somewhat, but there really is something special about seeing those precious little nuggets peeking out of freshly-turned soil. And then peeking out of a pot or roasting pan. And then peeking up from my dinner plate. Nomnomnom.

In fact, I have an entire friendship that is founded upon a mutual love of potatoes. There are other things, too, like parenting or native prairie conservation or whatever, but we are sure to include at least an honourary mention of potatoes in every conversation - praise be to them for bringing us together. On the other hand, I'm afraid I have had to cut some people out of my life entirely over their galling lack of respect for potatoes (they are so a real vegetable, Andrew). (Ugh, I'll bet that guy eats all the cauliflower.)

I like to imagine pie charts for things. Since I read whatever book that was about the corn, one of my ongoing mental pie charts is of where all my carbons have come from. Potatoes of course comprise a hefty slice, as does wheat (major sub-groups in descending order of occurrence: bread products, Triscuits, assorted baked goods, pie crust, pasta). Beef has been creeping steadily up the charts since we started buying freezers-full of it a few years ago (coincidentally, from my PFF - potato friend forever); and it seems to me that other fruits & vegetables (although potatoes are definitely vegetables, just worthy of their own category!); cheese; beans; oatmeal; sugar beets; and, yes, probably corn, make up a large majority of the rest.

That's not so bad, right? You can't judge me too harshly over my fondness for bread and potatoes - just think of all the dolphins I didn't eat! Y'know, for instance.

But what's this mystery slice over here, you say? Oh drat, you've found my mental list of Things I've Probably Eaten My Body Weight In, But Shouldn't Have. (Technically, sugar beets should be on this list, but it's my pie chart so I get to justify my behaviours slice it how I like.)

McDonald's is on this sub-list, as are butter, bacon, those tiny KitKats I steal from the kids at Halloween, and the surprise contender, cream cheese frosting. But before I draw your eye to perhaps the most shameful entry on this list - yes, more shameful than several lifetimes' worth of cream cheese frosting - perhaps I could interest you in compiling your own mental pie chart? I mean, I'm pretty sure we're all in glass houses to some extent here...

I, Frecklepelt, hold the legitimate concern that I have consumed my own bodyweight in Cool Whip over the course of my life.

What can I say? I'm from Saskatchewan. Cool Whip is basically its own food group there.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Venus of Sigma

Venus was a mathematician.

Unfortunately, she has been remembered primarily for her looks. "Seriously," she is wont to say at parties, "you do one life drawing session in college to make ends meet..." At this point she trails off meaningfully - the joke tells itself, really - but women in particular tend to read a slightly bitter undertone into the telling. Men, on the other hand, are unable to grasp how this could possibly be construed as a bad thing, and thus interpret the subtle whiff of sombreness as... humility, maybe? Whatever it is, it is just so hot - 10/10 would totally hit that. She usually takes the ensuing pause in the chatter, where everyone awkwardly sips their drink and avoids eye contact, to make a quick exit. It's basically her only good line, and anyway she hates events like these.  

Ugh, and that Goddess of Love business - speaking of jokes! She was appointed to the Ministry of Human Affairs in a cabinet shuffle hastily conducted after yet another illicit deity-mortal "interaction" scandal. Ironically, she was assigned the post because she was the most studiously disinterested in humans of them all, i.e., voted least likely to take the "Human Affairs" title as a personal challenge. She wasn't even qualified, yet had such unprecedented success in simply avoiding the types of scandalous behaviours that her predecessors had engaged in that she was never relieved from the position, and that ridiculous moniker stuck. Some a-hole reporter from a right-wing rag coined it - she's usually a stickler for ethics but she made the tiniest (and arguably well-deserved) exception for that guy, and pulled some strings over at the Ministry of Human Health. A pox upon his ass, indeed. Literally.

She had done some groundbreaking work in geometry and algebra before joining the Ministry, but the credit went to her male colleagues. Mortals at that! It soured her on academia for a while, hence the ill-advised foray into government.

Uninterested in managing the emotional needs of humans, yet unable to secure a transfer to a department better suited to her skill set - or even an assistant, for Pete's sake! - she set about automating the process. I mean, when you think of the overwhelming emotional needs of humans, multiplied by their incredible ability to, well, multiply, it was only logical. (Which, by the way, she had also dabbled in during her undergrad; you will note her name isn't associated with her advances in that field, either.)

You are, of course, familiar with her system, although you can be forgiven for not previously having recognized it as a system per se - it would be like, as they say, a fish describing water. Let me assure you it was revolutionary at the time, given both that the branch of mathematics governing it hadn't been invented yet, and that it represented a rather substantial departure from the water the fish had been swimming in up to that point: everything used to rest on the tedious approaches of endless praying and sacrificing and other forms of personal appeal, but even with only a few hundred thousand humans kicking around at the time it was obvious that the model was unsustainable. Especially without even a single assistant...

So, with the kind of political will that can only occur in someone utterly disinterested in politics, she developed and implemented a new system. One so ruthlessly equitable (even if not what one might call "fair", depending on one's experience of it) and so unsusceptible to divine meddling that its practical appeal was irresistible; it was eventually applied to all other departments as well. Well, all but the Ministry of Human Sporting Events; guess you didn't pray hard enough last season, folks.

In this manner dis-employed, the various and variously long-overworked deities all cashed in their vacation millennia to catch up on sleep and neglected hobbies. (They received generous retirement packages as well, in case you're concerned about their welfare over the long term - it is government, after all.)

Oh, people kept burning livestock and so on for a while, but most of them have caught on by now that no amount of charred sheep is going to help you find love, luck, health, wealth, a bumper potato crop, a particular gender of fetus or even your car keys, anymore: it's all up to chance.
         

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Pep Talk

My eyebrows have been slowly eroding as I've aged. I've pencilled my (pale blonde) brows in for ages to make them less-invisible, but at the rate they've been disappearing I'm going to be free-styling a pair of surprised granny arches by the time I'm 45. That's how it all starts, you know: from the time you first free your brows from the bounds of reality it's a dangerously short slope to a poodle perm and white orthopaedic sneakers. Or so I've heard.

I look terrible in purple, so I decided to give one of these new-fangled eyelash-growing potions a try. Not on my eyelashes - my glasses already have the permanent appearance of a patio door in a daycare - but on my brows. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure how I thought it was going to pan out - the stuff makes lashes longer, so what exactly did I think it was going to do with my brows? Offer tax incentives to lure them back from whatever more southerly climes they've migrated to?

I need longer eyebrows like I need more luxurious knuckle hair. What am I supposed to do with longer eyebrows, style them? Add brow trimming to the already exhaustive - and still sprouting anew! - list of personal grooming I'm expected to keep up with? There has got to be a better way to keep myself on this side of the support hose and Scotch mints crowd. If only there were administrative options one could pursue...

* * *

"Listen up, people: we don't need the same personnel stretched thinner over more ground. What we need is to take the learnings from our gap analysis and do some strategic recruitment. I would like to see each of these roles filled within this quarter. In the meantime, we need to develop our team-building approaches and better our management strategies to improve retention - I want our turnover rates down at least 50% over the next year.

Folks, BROW & Co. cut too deep in the 90s - no matter if it was right or wrong, those pencil-thin margins were just a sign of the times, everyone was doing it - but it is clear we never fully recovered from that. We have a lot of work ahead of us if we want to maintain the growth we're trying to achieve now. From here on our goal is sleek and streamlined, appropriate for a company of our vintage, and never again a slave to the whims of fashion.

Together, I'm convinced we will be able to keep this old gal out of velour tracksuits for a long while yet. Keep up the good work everyone."

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Naturally Delicious

Most of my neighbours seem pretty decent: they cut their grass, they rumble their bins to the curb at not-unreasonable times of day, and their free-roaming cats only occasionally sneak into my house and surprise me on my couch. Not that I'm watching or anything, but in my humble opinion every one of them leaves their vehicles to "warm up" for far longer than is strictly necessary, and I also can't help but notice that *some* of them seem to produce an astounding amount of garbage each week, yet suspiciously little blue or green bin fodder. Plus I accidentally couldn't help seeing that *someone* hired a tree-removal company to cut down a perfectly healthy pin cherry tree last year, yet left a dead spruce standing in their front yard...

Anyway, like I was saying, perfectly normal and environmentally-conscious people whom I am definitely not watching and judging from my nice big kitchen window, which happens to face out over the street.

But the "new" guy next door? I am absolutely judging that guy. I have never spoken with him, but having lived next door to him for around 3 years now I like to think I've gotten to know enough about him - through an as-yet undefined method of neighbourly osmosis - that I am able to pass judgement on him, and that judgement is not favourable. In addition to leaving his car running too long and not sorting recyclables or compostables, he has never - not once - mowed his lawn, shoveled his snow, or walked his dog. (I only know the dog exists because I can hear it howling all day long.) Plus he orders So. Much. Take-out. that we've had more delivery drivers mistakenly come to our door with his food in the past 3 years than we have had delivery drivers delivering our own food to our door in the entire 11 years we've lived here. Who needs that much take-out?! Really, he only has himself (and maybe Skip the Dishes) to blame for my poor opinion of him.

People always say that karma will take care of things. Although I too wish the world was a more fair and just place than it is, sadly I have seen no evidence suggesting this karma business is anything more than wishful thinking. However, even I must admit that every so often a natural consequence of impeccable timing and proportion occurs, and I think we would be remiss if we did not take a moment to relish those happy coincidences. You can even call them karma if that makes you feel better about the world.

For instance, while it seems like everyone would rather forget this long, snowy winter, I will forever remember it fondly as the winter my lazy-ass neighbour got his car high-centered on the snow at the end of his driveway. I was cooking supper so I had an excellent view of the entire "karmic" comedy playing out: no amount of pushing or revving would get his little car over the entire winter's accumulation of snow. And what kind of homeowner would think to invest $20 on a shovel in a measly 3 years of homeownership? Not this guy! So he very laboriously dug his car out and cleared his entire 21.5 metre driveway (I measured) with a wee trunk-sized half-shovel.

Delicious.

To be clear, I've helped other neighbours get their cars unstuck in the past, but this was such a profoundly satisfying win for natural consequences that I kept right on cooking supper while I enjoyed the show. Our kitchen window so beautifully frames the sunsets that we usually call it Tom Thomson, but that night it was nothing less than Norman Rockwell.

For the record, new neighbour guy since bought himself a real shovel and has been shoveling his driveway shortly after each snowfall ever since that fateful night. I think his parents would be proud of my work. Now if I could only figure out how to get his car high-centered on the waist-high grass in his backyard...

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Beware the Unguarded Heart

I think it's the uncertainty of social media feedback that makes it so compelling. And it's not only that you don't know whether you are going to get Likes or hearts or whatever, it's also that even when you do get them, you don't know what the hell they mean.

Let's say you post something one day about the whole household having the flu, and Aunt Melba gives it a heart. Ideally she'd drop off some of her famous chicken soup to help out in a quaintly old-fashioned (i.e., meaningful) way, but she's 105 and lives in another town so that e-heart is all you've got to work with. Is Aunt Melba sending love to help us get over the flu, or does she love that we all have the flu, or is she just 105 and confused about the Facebook?

Unless it is well established that Aunt Melba is a crusty old bitch, I'd tend to assume she is sending love. But not every Like is so straightforward, and not every person seems to subscribe to the same social media philosophy. I, for instance, only press the heart button when I truly heart something - like, I pause each time and carefully consider, Do I really love this? Is this worthy of my love? - but other people are out there throwing hearts around like Oprah throws out cars: YOU get a heart, and YOU get a heart, and EVERYBODY GETS A HEART! (Cut this shit out, people - it's causing heart inflation and devaluing all the other hearts out there.)

Further-further confounding things is that we - messy humans - view everything through a self-centric lens, whether it's incoming or outgoing. Aunt Melba can intend whatever she wants with that heart, but I am going to interpret it however I am inclined to interpret it. Conversely, I can hit Like or heart or angry face with whatever muddled and endlessly variable rationale driving me in that moment, but all anyone gets out of it is an opaque little icon. Am I angry along with you at the injustice detailed in the article you shared, or angry at you for posting something I disagree with, or just an angry person in general and why are you even friends with me anyway? You get to be the judge and the jury - and yes, even the victim, if you wish.

I propose a classic yet classically onerous solution: crosswalk tables. I suspect we're going to need to perfect the Vulcan mind-meld in order to get sufficiently detailed personal classification matrices in place and cross-correlated, and I predict a lot of hurt feelings coming out of that process, but it will all be worth it to have a perfect, icon-based communication system in place on social media platforms. I mean, we could try using our words and stuff, but that would take up so much valuable Facebook time plus potentially mean having to interact with other humans in person or - heaven forbid - over the phone. Ew!

In the meantime I guess we're 100% stuck communicating using only Likes and hearts. So be sure to leave me a Like. Or not. Your choice. Regardless, I will definitely be racking my brains wondering why.

Like mice to a food lever with a random interval reward schedule, these are the days of our lives.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

All-dressed

There's a fine line between ripped jeans, and jeans that are ripped. I am familiar with this line because I can't seem to stop jamming my feet through my ripped jeans when I'm putting them on, and thus I own several pairs of jeans that are ripped.

I used to feel trendy and stylish in my ripped jeans, but now I just feel the accusatory gaze of the pasty blobs of thigh that sortof bulge out of the rips a little as if to say, Why don't you get out your sewing machine and patch this up, you slob? (Shut up, thigh. What do you know about my busy life?) You can classy up ripped jeans because the rips are intentional, and thus cool, but jeans that are ripped just drag everything down to their level. With jeans that are ripped, you might as well slap on the same holey grey sweatshirt every day and accept that you are now a person who has given up on their appearance. Thankfully, I work from home, that proud bastion of folks who have given up on their appearances, so it matters not whether my jeans are ripped or ripped.

Actually, that particular bastion might be a little too proud: I notice DH has started to compliment me every time I get dressed. It doesn't even matter what I'm wearing, just that I'm not wearing my de facto basement-office uniform (holey grey sweatshirt, jeans-that-are-ripped, and "comfy" [i.e., saggy old] bra). If I so much as put on a t-shirt and comb my hair he's like, "Wow, you look nice today, dear." One day last week I went as far as to wash my hair and put on a cardigan and he accused me of dressing up: "Did you have a lunch date or something?" I did, actually, but the fact that a shower and a cardigan seemed to bump me up several rungs of dressiness in his estimation really opened my eyes to just how far my standards have fallen since I left my old office job.

He even seemed slightly envious that I had "dressed up" for someone else, although he also gets a little envious that I turn on the heat in the house for guests and not for him so I wouldn't put much stock in that reaction. (Interesting note: I recently learned that normal room temperature is actually 21C, not 20C as I believed, so the lucky recipients of my house-heating beneficence have probably all still been chilly. Being a perpetually-warm person has its advantages I guess.) I admit I got a little defensive about my cardigan - dressed is clearly not the same as dressed up! - until I realized that his argument cut both ways: "Waaaait a minute - by that logic you come home after work every day and dress down for me!"

"But I don't want my work clothes to smell like cooking supper!"

"I don't want my cardigans to smell like that either!"

"Hm... okay, fair enough. Anyway, you look really nice today, dear. Hey, is it cold in here?"

"No. Go put on another sweater, you wuss."
  

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Putting the Sham in Shampoo

Studies have shown that people who are told their placebo is more expensive experience greater placebo effects.

Like, let that sink in for a minute. It is literally mind-boggling. I think most people would read that and think, What?! Surely that would never work on me. I am way too smart/sensible/whatever I tell myself to get through the day to fall for a price tag, let alone on a placebo!

I know I definitely had that reaction. And it was an easy thing to tell myself, given that I have never participated in any clinical trials for Parkinson's disease (... for instance). But then one day in the shower I realized: if I actually believed what my shampoo was telling me, I would not in a million years use the leftover suds to wash the ol' pits & bits.

Just think about all the things your shampoo promises you: thicker... fuller... shinier... for the love of Pete, enhanced curls? This thought now consumes my every shower. It's antithetical to every grooming objective I enforce from my eyebrows on down, and still my shower is stocked with mega bottles of salon product so ridiculously expensive that I secretly sniff my kids' hair - under the pretext of "Give mommy a hug!" - to make sure they're not using it. (Don't judge me - it's way out of their pay grade.)

I swear that this shampoo makes my head hair better, while at the same time having no discernible effects on, say, my leg hair.  

The shampoo conundrum haunts me because it's such a blatant example of my own dissonant beliefs, all wrapped up in a tidy mint-green bottle**: I have to look at the bottle every day and be angry at myself for spending so much money on it, yet I still manage to feel good about putting it in my hair, yet somehow completely neutral about allowing the magical suds to trickle down my ass crack, purportedly enhancing volume and curls all the way. The whole situation completely defies logic.

**Actually, it's a pair of bottles: I have the conditioner, too. Heaven help me, I let that trickle down as well.

**Aaaaactually, it's a quartet: I also have two bottles of matching product, but since I don't apply those - actively or passively - to the rest of my body, I seem to experience less internal struggle over their mystical claims.

Oh shit - I just realized something truly terrible. *checks knuckle hair* Okay, nevermind. No worse than usual.

My brain has a little battle with itself over this issue basically every time I have a shower, and each time reaches only a strained detente thanks to one tiny, hopeful nugget: the products smell really good.

Tiny, niggling brain voice: Like... $300 good?

Louder brain voice: STFU, brain. I'm sick of justifying everything to you.

Nose: OH MAN THIS SHIT SMELLS AMAZING AMIRITE?

All the brains: Aaaaaahhhhh...

Nose (quietly): Until tomorrow, you crazy bastards.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

The Girlfriend Experience

I have this terrible habit of forgetting the joke that goes along with the punchline. Here's one of my favourite disembodied punchlines: "If I had known we had more time, darling, I would have taken off my pantyhose." It's a great punchline, right? Too bad I have no idea what the hell it's about.

I also experience this problem with advertisements. I'm probably an advertiser's worst nightmare, actually. For instance, there used to be this ad on TV with the tagline, "One is often enough." It was a long time ago and I can't actually remember the product being peddled - pain medication seems likely, or maybe an antacid? - but for years I have heard that fellow's voice in my head whenever I've experienced things that I'm not interested in experiencing ever again: "One is often enough."

Divorce is one of the things that I was convinced I'd had enough of after just a single try, and DH and I are not married for exactly this reason: can't get divorced if you were never married in the first place! He says I have a bad attitude, with the possible implication that I also have bad logic, but I contend I simply have a high degree of self-awareness around how many divorces I'm able to cope with in a given lifetime. "One is often enough." (Maybe it was an ad for a divorce lawyer...?)

I suspect DH is secretly a titch disappointed in this situation so I try to point out the positives to him as they occur to me, and I recently learned of a thing called "the girlfriend experience" which seemed very positive. I learned about it by reading Craigslist personal ads, which are utterly chock-a-block with fascinating insights into humanity. Plus some pretty disturbing insights... I've also learned to check Urban Dictionary first to find out whether I really want to Google a term/acronym/euphemism, as some things can't be unseen. (Silly me, I thought that poor M4M 52 was seeking some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy!)

The girlfriend experience of course means a certain thing, but for DH's benefit I've decided to ascribe my own meaning to it: since we aren't married you could feasibly call me his girlfriend, in which case everything I do qualifies as this much-sought-after Girlfriend Experience! Lucky him!

He couldn't sleep because I was snoring? Girlfriend experience! Long orange hairs clogging the drains? Couldn't get that experience without a girlfriend, could ya? Infuriatingly obtuse anti-logical arguments? People pay good money for that kind of thing, you know!

The possibility exists that I am a total pain in the ass to live with, but I contend that it's simply my way of ensuring DH never has the energy or inclination to pursue any "extracurriculars" on Craigslist or otherwise: The Girlfriend Experience - One is Often Enough.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

#whogivesashit

Judging by what I see on the internet, "meal prepping" is all the rage these days. In case you haven't heard of meal prepping, it goes like this: people cook food, then put the food into containers to eat later in the week. Oh yeah, then they take photos of the food-in-containers and post the photos on social media with a stupid hashtag, to much admiration and "Liking" from their peers.

I'm having one of those milestone sorts of birthdays this year so it pains me slightly to have to say this, but - social media aspect aside - back in my day we called that "leftovers." I think it's well understood that every generation believes they've invented sex, but it boggles the mind to think an entire generation seriously believes they invented leftovers. Even more so that anyone else would care to see your leftovers in their Instagram feed, or that you are somehow deserving of praise for the blindingly obvious time- and cost-saving measure of producing said leftovers. My foolish young friends: what do you think you were eating for lunch the next day your whole childhood?

Can you just envision our pioneer forebears, kneading up the week's bread and being all like, "Hashtag MealPrepMonday!" Then maybe getting out a sketchbook to draw each step from three different angles and write a smarmy blog a mile long before finally giving you the damn bread recipe. Hell, maybe some did, and so quickly succumbed to natural selection pressures that no one's heard of them...

I like to think about all the things that, in retrospect, will be understood to have been signs of the pending fall of modern civilisation. We've heard about the excess of the Romans and the environmental collapse of the Mayans; what will our downfall be? The more time I spend on Reddit et al. the more I think the pointless farming of Likes/upvotes/etc. by whatever ridiculous trendy means necessary is a serious contender for the honour - the only people left after the fall will be the ones who had been successfully eating meatloaf sandwiches for lunch the next day without ever having taken a photo or said a damn thing about it to anyone. Because #honestlywhowouldevencareaboutmyleftovers?

Saturday, January 13, 2018

What's for Supper?

A friend recently posted a Facebook status seeking someone who would like to rent a room from him. It was one of those everyday things that unexpectedly captures the imagination, and I've been thinking about the room ever since.

Realistically, the room is probably 8x10' with low-pile beige carpet and plastic blinds, but I prefer to envision it as a spa-like space: airy fabrics; delicious herbal teas that sell for like $36 dollars a box; soft nature-ish music with some sort of... panflute? softly tootling along with the birds. Or sometimes I see it more like Pinterest's idea of an opium den: rich brocades; moody lighting; a metric pantload of pillows. Regardless of the decor, someone is usually rubbing my feet in my imaginings of this room.

My favourite design feature, however, is that no one would ask me what's for supper in the room. I get asked about supper a lot. (Also breakfast, lunch, and multiple snacks every day - not that I'm counting.) If I had a secret room somewhere, no one could saunter into it and say, "What's for supper?" as if I was not presently working at my job and no one else in the house could possibly be capable of defrosting a pound of beef without my managerial involvement.

"What's for supper?" follows me on family vacation, too. I seem to be only person on vacation that is consistently assumed not to be on vacation - or not really, because obviously no one else in the house is capable of meal planning or preparation without my managerial involvement. They just stare at me with their mouths open all day, like hungry nestlings. "Hop to it, lady. We're not gonna feed ourselves."

I like to leverage my resentment at being the only person who has both paid for the vacation and is expected to continue to provide service to everyone else while on the vacation, into ostensible "couple's time." In fact, it accounts for several of my Top Ten Couple's Activities to Help Keep the Magic Alive During a Family Vacation:

10. Make a grocery list together. I have to use my brain on vacation? Well guess what, dear, now you bloody well do, too. Get your thinking cap on mofo, 'cause we all need to eat.

9. Go grocery shopping together. Oooh, we left the kids at home! Now it's like a real date! Isn't grocery shopping on vacation fun?

8. Cook breakfast together.

7. Cook lunch together.

6. Decide where to go out for supper together because you're both already sick of cooking while on vacation and it's only been two days.

5. Put the big one in charge of the little one out on the beach, and retreat inside to have a nice nap together.

4. Check how bad the weather is back home each morning, then enjoy the sunrise on the dock with a cup of coffee and bask in your mutual sense of having achieved excellent value-for-money.

3a. Sensually Liberally apply sunscreen to exposed areas, and you had better not miss any spots! Get under those straps! Did you rub it in?

3b. Sensually Gingerly apply Solarcaine to affected areas. (Optional: bring up how you told him he should have put on sunscreen, too.)

2. Offer to pee on your significant other's jellyfish stings. I say "offer" because apparently, it's not necessarily something your significant other will be interested in taking you up on. No, not even the one on his arm just to see if it really works, and not even for science, and definitely not the one on his face you fucking pervert what is wrong with you quit cackling like a maniac.

1. Check each other for sand infestations.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Peach Beach

Since it's mostly my friends and family who read these posts, you probably already know I got back from vacation a few days ago. It was a true beach vacation in the sense that there wasn't much to do besides find ourselves a new beach to hang out at each day, so that's what we did. Shout out to the Bahamian out-islands: each beach was more beautiful than the last, yet we hardly saw another person at any of them. Overall I would characterize the trip as "therapeutic", because I don't feel words like "relaxing" or "nice" really get at the experience: I slept well, I stressed zero, I didn't check my email for almost three full weeks. My blood pressure literally dropped ten points! 10/10 would recommend.

I've been on vacations where beaches were involved, but I've never had a truly beach-centric vacation like that before. One thing that occuurred to me as my thoughts swam dreamily past was that, in all the "summer reading"-type novels I have read - admit it, you know what I mean - I don't think the authors have been entirely honest about the invasive properties of sand.

There was, like, a lot of sand. Everywhere - sand. An infestation of sand, really. There was sand in the beds, sand in the furniture, sand somehow in the dinners I lovingly and (I swear!) hygienically prepared. I would peel off my swimsuit at the end of each day and find I was wearing a swimsuit-shaped garment of sand underneath. Sand was in places it shouldn't ever be and lemme tell you, it was reluctant to be evicted. We had been home three days when Small Fry found sand still in his ear. I'm not even going to tell you where I found some.

Maybe you've been reading different summer novels than I have so this was perfectly apparent to you, but I felt slightly deceived by all those romantic portrayals of beach houses and summer flings. Sand is not just not romantic, it is anti-romantic (some things don't need exfoliating!). And for a clean-floors afficionado like myself, it is also a little bit anti-sanity - if I had to live with it every day and couldn't simply remind myself that it was only a temporary situation, it would be a lot anti-sanity.

I'm convinced the whole reason behind that laid-back "island vibe" people talk about is that if you walk too quickly, you're going to get sand everywhere. Or maybe it already is everywhere and you're (rightly) concerned about chafing key anatomical regions... either way, sand is the driver. Conversely, the reason behind the brisk-and-stressed vibe back home is that if you walk too slowly, you're likely to freeze to death.

Which reminds me: I got a sand-load of feedback from y'all regarding my last post. For those of you who were offended by DH's desire for poor home weather while we were away, you should know that we came back to one of his least-favourite things in the world: shoveling snow. Our first morning home I gave him a cheery, "Morning, dear!" To which he replied, "Shoveling snow can kiss my ass," and slammed the door.

I hope that warms your heart, if not your toes.