The Village Idiom

Yahoo! News tells me 2,000 new words and phrases have been added to the Oxford Dictionary this year, including such modern classics as 'staycation', 'chillax' (retch) and 'vuvuzela'. Whatever the hell that is.

And frankly, I'm a little pissed. I have coined some excellent terms in the past year and a half, and I didn't even get an honourable mention. Freakundity; jam bong; the Force of Grabbity; and, perhaps most disappointingly, Casual Hump Day. I mean, everyone likes Casual Hump Day, but suggesting that someone chillax is enough to warrant a punch in the head. Come on, people. Vuvuzela?! I just barely got used to calling it a va jay jay!

Damn lexicographers.

Well, one of the many joys of the interweb is that I can start my own dictionary if I darn well please. Ladies and gentlemen, in addition to the super sweet words and phrases listed above, I take great pleasure in presenting the following meritorious additions to the English language:

Frecklicious (fre-ku-LISH-us) (adj.): no definition required - my profile pic says it all.

Pantanglement (pan-TAN-gul-mint) (n.): the inextricable knot of g-strings formed in the delicates bag in the laundry.

Fox Creek (FUX-kreek) (interj.): a family-friendly version of some popular profanity. E.g., "For Fox Creek!" Coined after visiting the eponymous shit town in central Alberta.

Oblication (ob-li-CAY-shun) (n.): "vacation time" spent visiting relatives, or nursing your family through the flu because you ran out of sick days for the year back in March, and even though you are also dying your spouse has entered the Ninth Circle of Helplessness and you have to take care of him too.

Bonus entry! Ninth Circle of Helplessness: where men go when they are ill. Located directly adjacent to the better-known Ninth Circle of Hell, which is where women go when their men are ill.

If March is the Hungry Month...

Then August is the Tired Month.

Work is busy in August. Life is busy in August. I'm Augxhausted. If I sat down to type all that would come out is incoherent whining. So don't fret, I'm still here, I'm just on a little blogging hiatus.

Talk soon,

FP

Cheese With That?

DH and I just spent our first day alone (like, together, and without kids) in approximately two and a half years. That's like, a seriously long time. Long enough that at first, I think we sortof both looked at each other and thought, 'Who are you?' But we ended up having a super-duper awesome time. DH even humoured me enough to go on several winery tours and endure wine tasting after wine tasting. How sweet is that? I mean, he doesn't even like wine!

is it time? is it time?

Or at least, he never did before. But on our little getaway, between the swishings and the gurglings, DH arrived at something of an epiphany: it's not that he doesn't like wine. It's that he only likes really good wine. Any wines he happened to have tasted earlier on in life simply didn't live up to his - heretofore undiscovered - exacting standards. 

it's time?! don't worry sweetie, you're going to be amazing

I almost couldn't believe my luck. I dropped hundreds of dollars on wine, and he didn't even bat an eye.

come on, you can do it honey

At first I thought - alright! Something we'll have in common, aside from a mortgage and, you know, some offspring. We can drink wine together. It'll be fun!

just a little more, you're doing great

And then this transpired:

DH: *gasp!* You can't drink pinot noir out of a mug!
Me: But it holds more than a glass.
DH: Oh. My. God. Is that all it's about for you? What about the colour? The clarity? The viscosity?! It's like I don't even know you anymore. (flounces off)
Me: Jeez, relax, it's not like I was going to dunk cookies in it or anything.

push! puuuuuuush!
Omigod omigod, you did it, it's here, it's a...

Which probably should have set off some alarm bells for me, but as mentioned there was a mug of wine involved at the time. So it took me a few more incidences of a similar nature before I really cottoned on to the fact there might be a problem:

"You can't open that yet, it needs to be cellared!"
"No no, dear, that doesn't really pair with taco salad. I'll just tuck it safely back in the fridge and pour you a nice glass of water instead."
"Why don't we have a proper decanter in this godforsaken house?"
"You're holding your glass incorrectly - grasp it by the stem. The stem!"

... it's a wine snob?

Now in a case like this, the natural response would be to throw the hubby out with the bathwater. Instead, I just held his head under it for a few moments while I collected my thoughts. Because, in the grand scheme of marital issues, this was nothing a good old-fashioned heart-to-heart couldn't fix.

Me: Darling, you know how, after all these years together, we're comfortable enough that we are truly free to be ourselves with one another?
DH: Like how you laugh at me all the time?
Me: With, dear. Laugh with.
DH: Okay...
Me: Well, that's what it's like with me and wine. Wine and I are tight. Wine doesn't mind if I drink it through a straw, or pair it with a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast - that's just how our relationship works. I respect that you're not at that place yet, but you have to understand that I am, and all your rules are seriously cork-blocking things for me.
DH: I'm sorry, dear. This is just all so new to me.
Me: I know, but with time you'll get there. Until then, I'm here to help. Merlot?

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Strumpet in Aisle Seven

Camping isn't quite the same experience as it was back in the days B.C. (Before Children). Don't get me wrong, it's still tarploads of fun, but I spent much of our most recent camping weekend making sure everyone had enough sunscreen, bug spray, fluids, fruits and vegetables, potty breaks, clean socks, etc. etc., and these tasks, while very important!, left little time for camping activities of old, namely:

- binge drinking;

- and associated activities.

One thing that has stayed the same A.D. (After Delivery) is camping food. Camping food is by definition of low nutritional value, which everyone knows gives you free reign to eat lots of it.

But a funny thing happened while I was doing the camping grocery run: so I walked past this couple in the 'natural foods' aisle (don't fret, just passing through on my way to the 'unnatural foods' aisle). The woman appeared to be comparing fourteen brands of organic quinoa; her hubby, however, was staring at me. Ogling me, really. Longingly.

Guess I haven't gotten much in the way of openly lustful gazes lately, because I actually stopped and checked behind me to see who he was looking at. Nope - no one around but me and this heaping cart of red meat and potato chips. And marshmallows and hot dogs and...

Ooohhhh. The cart.

Well, damn.

This actually happened more than once during the same shopping trip. I felt like the pied piper! In all my years of grocery shopping, four-litre jugs of milk and family-sized bags of apples have never had that kind of effect. If I ever find myself single again, pushing a cart full of macho foods seems like a surefire tactic for meeting men. I'll sprinkle liberally with boxes of condoms to make myself appear hungry and horny. What man could resist!

Slightly modified, this could work equally well for single men**: simply stuff a cart with kittens and babies, and just watch the chicks roll in!

** You might want to skip the, er, garnish on this one - it could be interpreted as giving the wrong idea.

Menu of Pain

I recently signed up for a fitcamp. You know, one of those bootcamp-style fitness programs that makes people cry publicly and sweat blood and stuff like that. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking several things:

1. Look at that lard ass! I seriously need to do something about it. Hey, here's an ad for a fitness camp. I'll try that.

2a. That sounds like a poor idea.
2b. How bad can it be?
2c. It's probably going to be pretty bad.
2d. Well, a little public humiliation never hurt anyone.
2e. It hurts me.
2f. You're such a whiner.
2g. Piss off.

3. Face it, no matter how pathetic I am, there's always someone worse. No excuses. I'll just stick close to That Person, and no one will notice me.

So I signed up for fitcamp.

Apparently all the other That People stayed home this week, because it was painfully and repeatedly (and sweatingly-wheezingly-jigglingly) brought to my attention that I am That Person: I am the person who makes all the other people look good.

Like, really good.

I would have thought it would bother me to be so patently lousy at something, but you know what? I hardly even minded. I'm not even all that zen about the world, it's just that, if I was hoping for a That Person, then other fitcampers probably were too. (In fact, a few looked like they may have gotten de facto promotions out of the role when I joined up.) Those people are probably pretty grateful for my presence - possibly a little repulsed, too, but still grateful - and it's always nice to be appreciated.

So every day the trainer has a whole new set of exercises for us to do. It must be a lot like menu planning, just with muscle groups instead of food groups. I can tell he's really working that food pyramid, because my everything hurts - a lot. I couldn't wash the top of my hair on Monday morning because my arms hurt too much to lift them to my head. I sortof lathered up the bottom and hoped for some form of soapmosis to trickle up to my scalp.

And then I had DH do up my bra hooks for me.

(2h. Told you so.)

'Cause You're Really Smart!

When Medium Fry was little, I developed a crush on the Blue's Clues guy. (Steve, not Joe. Nobody likes Joe.) I was just so lonely, and he kept telling me how smart I was... I am pretty smart, you know. I know that. Now you know that (or at least you read it on the interweb, which makes it totally legit). The trouble was, at the time only Steve was letting me know he knew, and that meant a lot to me.

So thanks for that, Steve. I know it didn't work out between us. But it's me, not you - I just found a better fix.

It's called Work. At Work, they don't necessarily sing or play, or even have fun, but they do provide me with tangible reminder that I am valuable, and that comes in the form of a paycheque every two weeks. I know, Steve, you used to tell me several times a day how smart I was, and do a jazzy little hand dance to boot, but at Work they tell me exactly how many thousands of dollars worth of smart I am. Quality, not quantity. Or quantity, doled out in bi-weekly increments... oh, hell, who cares. It pays the bills.

But no matter how many dollars worth of smart Work tells you you are, you can't be in love with Work. Or else you'll turn into one of those people who other people want to punch in their obsequious goddam teeth. I recommend accepting the paycheque as proof of your smartitude and general wonderfulization, then projecting your cringing gratitude onto coworkers. It wouldn't do to direct it all at one person - that's just asking for a restraining order - so be sure to spread your admiration around. Change targets frequently, you know - keep it fresh.

And the criteria? I can only speak for myself here, but as with most things in life, it fluctuates with my estrogen levels. Sometimes a pleasant 'good morning' is enough to make me nearly weep with joy. Clean and presentable every day is also nice, though I'm fully aware this is not a sustainable illusion - Exhibit A:

Me and DH, slobbed out and stinky in our yard work clothes, three nights running. Yes, same clothes. Yet when we go to our respective workplaces tomorrow morning, we'll look nothing less than our squeaky clean best. We'll probably fart less and use better table manners, too.

(Not that I fart or anything.)

Really, workplace crushes aren't far along the spectrum from celebrity crushes. I mean, how well do you really know the people you work with? Chances are it's on a resume level, or at best a "resume plus" level (i.e., resume, plus some highly edited extra stuff that they've elected to disclose, farting habits likely not being one of those items) - either way, only marginally more information than you have when you decide you're madly in love with, say, Rick Mercer.

(Who probably doesn't fart either. Or if he does, it's so goddam funny that I don't even mind.)

I'm aware that most of the attraction inherent in a superficial crush is in the not really knowing, and have long used my superpower of Too Much Information to counteract my other superpower of Ultimate Freckled Adorableness to deter potential workplace devotees.

I'd gleefully employ my TMI on DH's behalf, too, but I can't figure out how to get his students and coworkers to read my blog.