Who Lives on Drury Lane?

There exists in my mind - as I suspect there does in everyone's - a certain hierarchy of household chores. Face it, some chores just feel better than others. For instance, I don't mind folding laundry, but I despise putting the clean and folded product away. And vacuuming, total barf. Ooh, and making the bed - that seems more futile than just about anything in the world - I can cling to the faint delusional hope that no one will leave slime trails on my sparkly clean windows tomorrow, but I know for a fact someone is going to muss up the bed tonight.

If you're lucky, the person with whom you're sharing a home has a hierarchy that runs more or less opposite yours, so while s/he's picking dead gnats out of the light fixtures and you're degreasing the range hood, you're both able to be thinking, 'Hehehe, suck-ah'.

Fortunately for me, DH actually doesn't mind vacuuming, and he can't fathom how anyone could happily crawl into a tangled disaster of a bed every night, so things work out pretty well for us.

Except when it comes to baking.

In my mind, Little Red Hen fully held the moral high ground. I'm not exactly grinding the wheat here, but I did do the baking and damned if I am going to wash the muffin pans after all that work.

DH hates washing the muffin pans. His man-brains instinctually grasp the Little Red Hen-ness of his wanting to partake of the muffins, however, so he grudgingly upholds his end of the unspoken bargain.

If you want to know a little secret, I sometimes bake muffins when I'm pissed at DH just so I can enjoy his not enjoying washing the muffin pans. "M'mm, I made your favourite, honey! Too bad we were out of paper liners!" Admittedly it's a pretty elaborate sting operation, but it makes the relationship work, you know?

Things could be worse for him, though. My ex-husband adhered to no such moral standards as cleaning the muffin pans, so my options for revenge were never so subtle as, say, buttoning all his shirts to the top so he couldn't pull them off the hangers. So I cleaned the toilet with his toothbrush.

The divorce is finalized now, so I can tell you that much.

The rest you'll have to buy me a couple of drinks to hear.

Satisfy Your Epicuriosity

I like to cook. Perhaps more accurately, I like to eat, and cooking results in food for me to eat. Better still, I'm actually a pretty good cook, which means I get to eat delicious food. Everyone wins!

Now, if I could just massage my own back my life would be complete.

But I digress.

I also like to try new recipes. "Try new recipes" is a perennial fave of mine when it comes to making New Year's resolutions. (It's in direct conflict with the also-perennial "lose some weight", but I figure this gives me a 50:50 chance of living up to at least one of my resolutions.) So I like to surf recipe websites and magazines and cookbooks, always keeping an eye out for something new. I even snagged a few promising titles from the library a couple of weeks ago.

Have I ever mentioned that DH has a bit of a food fetish?

As soon as I got those suckers home from the library, he tucked them under his arm and scuttled off to his happy place. Was gone for hours. Practically needed a smoke afterward.

But what really tipped me off was his wholesale and rather gruff rejection of the ones without pictures. Cookbooks without pictures are frowned upon in my home.

He is not, I suspect, reading them for the articles.

But then, who can blame him? The glossy full-page spreads, artfully arranged, styled and airbrushed to perfection - just look at those incredible (chicken) breasts... ooh, baby, you can almost taste those (sticky) buns... m'mm, don't you just want to dip your meat in that special sauce...

Kneading. Greasing. Grinding. Pounding! Stuffing!

Hope they don't mind a few pages stuck together. You know, from all that cooking.

Even My Socks are Down

Spring is here, and I just can't help but pen a little ode for the season:

You've kept me snuggly and warm all winter, and I won't deny I like the way you riffle gently in the breeze, and even hold my socks up, but it is high time for me to move on. It is time to embrace the new season, and bid adieu to the old: it is time to wax my legs.

More accurately, to pay someone else to do it for me.

It must be some sort of perverse cosmic joke that every single aesthetician in Calgary is Vietnamese. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of having someone pour hot wax on my limbs and rip it off in the first place, but to have the tiniest, most hair-free and naturally flawless people on earth do it is just adding insult to injury.

'Oooh, you have so many stretch mark! What happen?' *rip*
'Um, thanks for noticing. I had two kids.'
'Oh. I gain fifty-two pound with my youngest baby and I have no stretch mark. Did doctor say what wrong with you?' *rip*
'Just my, uh, genetics I guess.'
'Oh.' *rip*

At this point she was kind enough to change the subject to lighten the mood a bit:

'Ha ha, look at this! So much hair on the strip! I have to use lots of strip for you.'

Ha. Ha ha ha. Yes, I suffer from a unique confluence of unfortunately hairy genetics, coupled with a rather large expanse of thigh. Lots of strip for me, thanks. My ancestors had to stay warm in the winter. Naturally I didn't say that, not because I didn't want to, but because Mary was already telling me how she doesn't grow leg hair - none at all. Or arm hair, or underarm hair, or facial hair. And she didn't mention it, but I'll bet you a nickel she doesn't grow the occasional obscenely long Scottish eyebrow hair, either.

And then I had to ask her to please wax my toe hair before she finished.

And at the end of it all, injury upon heaping frigging injury, I did not get to wish her a friendly 'fuck you!' as I walked out the door. Instead, I left Mary a huge tip. Because I am sincerely hopeful that silence can be bought.

Everybody's a Damn Artist

I've never been really big on conspiracy theories. Seems to me that there exist certain factions of the population who enjoy conspiracy theories just for the sake of feeling pissed off about something - damn hippies - but really, some of the theories are quite convincing, especially those where you can infer an obvious motive for conspiring. I'm most likely to feel there's some truth behind conspiracy theories where money is a motivator. Case in point: cigarettes are toxic after all, imagine that! Who'd'a thunk tobacco companies would have been lying all that time?

**insert cash register sound here**

Though I'm not totally certain that qualifies as a "conspiracy theory". Maybe it is better defined as, say, a "successful business model". Hey, corporations are people too, you know - think of it from their point of view: what good can come of a product that doesn't create a self-perpetuating market? Hence, disposable goods. Addictive substances. Toilet bowl cleaners.

Oh, yes, toilet bowl cleaners.

It's a well-known fact among the wifely set that the scent of Toilet Duck exerts a powerful laxative effect on those Y-chromosome types. Try it, you'll see - the damn instant you finish scrubbing the john someone will invariably be in there stinking the place up again. In fact, and this is where the conspiracy theory gets really dark and treacherous, I even suspect toilet bowl cleaners are somehow formulated to enhance creativity.

Because it's always a Picasso Dump.

Truthfully, I think old Pablo got the raw end of that particular bit of nomenclature, because "Pollock Plop" really is far more apt, not to mention catchier. But maybe that's a theory for another day.

Vector

Don't ask me how the conversation got started - I assure you it has nothing to do with anyone in this household getting the occasional cold sore... which incidentally, I feel is one of those things that should be included in some sort of pre-relationship disclosure form, because, not speaking from experience, it's a pretty rude thing to have sprung on you a few years in. Anyway, DH and I somehow got on the topic of communicable diseases. He thought scabies was an STD, while I was pretty sure it was some sort of skin disease. Naturally, we Googled it and - also natch - I was right.

In the event you ever find yourself in the midst of a similar debate with someone you love, scabies is an itchy, contagious skin disease caused by parasitic mites.

"Okay," conceeded DH, "but isn't there some sort of STD that sounds like scabies?"
Yes there is, DH:
Babies.
Babies are sexually transmitted. And I think that if everyone truly understood that concept, really got it in all its true, terrifying depth, there would be a lot less sex going on.

Ironically, reduced sexual activity is a common side effect of Babies - damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh? - though I suppose whether or not Babies conforms to the definition of disease is primarily a matter of semantics and/or one's mental condition after yet another Babies-induced sleepless night.

Other common symptoms/side effects of Babies:
- deep, abiding envy of species whose young reach maturity and leave home within weeks of birth;
- pervasive, vaguely diaperish odour about the home;
- poor feng shui (i.e., living room furniture arranged with the sole purpose of covering plus-ins);
- heating vents populated with Cheerios;
- persistent shar-pei-like entity affixed to abdomen.

Spread the word, man, this Babies stuff is deadly. And if you already count yourself among the afflicted, don't worry - I hear it clears up in 18-27 years.

Drinking Problem

Can't quite recall which number I'm on, but let's call this one #29: I have a coffee dependency.

#30: And also, a heavy falafel habit. They are not, as DH would have you believe, called that because they are "fulla awful". I actually fantasize a little about falafel sometimes, they're so fulla wonderful. Seriously, try them.

But back to #29. I began to notice I had a problem when anything less than four cups a day led to withdrawal symptoms - headaches, bitchiness, hives. The usual. But today... today. Today I am old in addition to addicted. I brewed myself a pot of coffee in the afternoon, and I drank it up, and I am experiencing no adverse effects of late-day coffee consumption.

Spare me! I'm too young to be my grandmother!

But the true horror of it is how utterly frigging awful the coffee at my workplace is. They say addiction kills, but seriously, that shit is brewed from armpits or something. And to buy four cups a day (minimum!) of decent coffee in downtown Calgary? My wallet hurts just thinking about it. But, addicts is as addicts does, sir, and:

#31. I'll miss you, left kidney, but I just really needed the cash.

The Shellfish Gene

I am biologically programmed to be the person who says that things are going to be okay. And behave as if things are okay - rosy, even - even if they aren't. If someone asks me if I am okay, or if things are okay, or if I think they, or a situation, or a menu item, or a sick kitten or flesh wound or atomic war or blind date is going to be okay, my answer will invariably be yes. This tends to result in a lot of nervous and generally inappropriately-timed laughter on my part, as a vital part of every rosy situation involves giggling in my warped worldview, and I also need to buy time to crank out a rationale for saying things are going to be okay when it is clear that they aren't. (Blind dates are never okay.) But I just can't help myself.

In a terrible twist of fate, I am secretly also biologically programmed with a) naturally elevated levels of anxiety, b) natually elevated levels of bitterness and distortion and c) a vivid imagination with a knack for defaulting to the worst-possible-case-scenario. In short, I am probably the least likely person to actually believe anything is going to be okay, ever, but my unfortunate tendency to blurt out sanguine snippets and laugh nervously when confronted with traumatic events causes people in distress to gravitate toward me like toddlers to potted plants, seeking elucidation on the silver lining that must surely be clear to me in all my ostensible optimism.

If only I were religious, I could just pass the buck to God. When people ask why I'm so convinced they/their kitten/their blind date will be okay, I could pat their hands and say something really... biblical. I can't think of any good biblical examples right now, most likely because I am not religious, but religious people always seem to have some sort of perky adage for troubled times. Like divine fortune cookies. Probably without the lucky lotto numbers on the back because most of the gods out there don't seem to be in favour of gambling.

Though they did let my ex-husband loose on the world with his vas deferens intact and his brain stem not so much... and if that isn't a gamble I don't know what is.

And hey, speak of the devil - congrats on yet more offspring, Colin! What's that you say? Unplanned, again?

Don't worry, I'm sure everything will work out okay.