Epiphany 2: Now with More Goat!

Posted on 7/22/2007 by cheesefairy

This morning Trombone was being a little crankpot. Saint Aardvark made a grand gesture and took him out for a walk in the rain and I stayed home to make bacon and egg sandwiches.

After I shut the door after them, I felt wistful and sad. It sucks, I thought, yes, rather petulantly, that I wait all week to spend the day with my kid and then he’s cranky.

But of course, I realized, I am the one who has attributed greater significance to this time. It’s just a day, like any other day, except I have higher expectations of it and thus am being more disappointed when those expectations are not met.

It’s like when you work in retail and people say “Have a good weekend!” to you on Friday and you scowl at them and say, “Yeah, I work all weekend; this is my Wednesday,” and they say, “Oh. Sorry,” and run off guiltily.

I’m all, “Hey, it’s Sunday! We’re all together as a family for ONE DAY ONLY – let’s have fun and sing songs! Why are you crying? There is no crying on Sunday!”

Yeah, actually, there’s crying every day when you’re 12.5 months old. Everyday is like everyday. I’m home. I’m not home. It’s not so special.

So I ate some more bacon and did me some thinking.

This time, OUR time, is going to be good, bad, indifferent and wonderful. (This is also exactly the same as it has been all year but in a two-day instead of seven-day dose.) And I can either hate each moment and then regret it or just live each moment and at least know I’m living fully, not waiting for a future moment that will never – can never – arrive.

Yes, I am now helping Bon Jovi write songs. Why do you ask?

To honour my new mindset, I scrubbed the bathtub. As I watched the Tilex eat great swathes of clean through the grime, I realized that subconsciously I had been postponing cleaning the bathtub for some mythical day when I wasn’t
a) at work or
b) enjoying not being at work.

And that, in fact, no perfect, right day or time ever comes. For cleaning or living or anything.

Plus yesterday? At the petting zoo? One of the goats BIT ME. It didn’t break the skin but it left a little goat-tooth-shaped bruise. I came THAT CLOSE to dying of goat poisoning. Carpe diem, for tomorrow a goat may kill you.

The troublesome goat is the one in the background. The one in the foreground was delightful.

Posted in more about me!, trombone | 7 Comments

Strategy

Posted on 7/21/2007 by cheesefairy

I’ve always prided myself as a moderate in the office; you know, if you get close enough to me, you realize I’m a little off but from a distance I maintain myself professionally enough to “pass” as normal. I’m pretty good at office drag. I’m done with it, though. I am done with diplomacy. Done with maintaining appearances. Everyone else lets her crazy out: why do I have to hide mine?

In my three weeks back at work I have found myself almost constantly at the mercy of The Crazy. I have been expending far too much energy overcompensating for The Crazy. I have been heard to exclaim, “Holy shit! I forgot about all The Crazy in this office!” It is, in fact, crazy-making.

Here’s an example. I have better ones but they’re not for the Internet.

Co-worker A and I got on the elevator the other day. There was a sheet of plywood on the floor and padding hanging on the walls.
“I like what they’ve done with the elevator,” I commented.
“It’s for the clog-dancing,” said Co-worker A.
“No!” said Crazy A, “it’s for MOVING. So the floor doesn’t get all scratched up.”
“Ha!” I said, “I think it would be GREAT for clog-dancing.” And then I demonstrated some clog-dancing for the group. In doing this, I lost my grip on my lunch, a plastic container filled with lukewarm pasta. The lid popped off, the fork and a bunch of food flew out and across the elevator, scattered across the floor.
“Eek!” said Crazy A.
“Oook,” said Crazy B.
“Hahahahahaha! said I as I crouched to pick up the food.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” said Crazy B, “that’s not your job!”
Co-worker A and I looked at each other incredulously.

And the elevator went ding and off we all wandered.

It was Co-worker A who took the time to point out to me that while I was busy thinking of them as crazy, they were actually formulating a new vision of ME as crazy because I’d tossed pasta at them and laughed hysterically. And this made me so incredibly happy I decided to run with it.

In aid of this, I am watching a fabulous movie called Orca. It’s about a killer whale who swears revenge against the fisherman who kills his (the whale’s) wife and baby. The fisherman harpoons the whale. Then the whale finishes herself off on the propeller. Then the fishermen hoist her up so that she’s dangling from her tail over the deck and she gives birth, right there, to a small baby whale, which drops THUD on the deck and is subsequently washed off into the ocean by the skeeved-out fisherman, all while the male orca wails and bares his many teeth at the sky.

Hey. It’s important research. I am going to talk about Orca all week long. I figure after a week my reputation as “desperately unhinged” will be solid enough that the volume of people who feel comfortable coming to my desk and asking me questions will be significantly decreased.

And then I will be left to drink far too much coffee and surf the Internet in peace.

Posted in movies, outside | 5 Comments

I Know I Shouldn’t Encourage the Spuummers

Posted on 7/17/2007 by cheesefairy

But this, I thought, was quite a nice spuumm comment:

To a lot of people lotto winners and those who find themselves face to face with Bigfoot have a few things in common. First of all both are completely random events. The formula for finding Sasquatch is not unlike the way one wins a lottery. First, stake out an arbitrary piece of ground (in lotto terms your “ground” will be the numbers you pick instead of some out of the way section of the Pacific Northwest). Once you have chosen your territory, wait for the monster to lumber across your path and hope he doesn’t eat you.

Posted in bloggity! | 4 Comments

Midi Friday: Boy, Do Chicks Ever Smell Bad

Posted on 7/14/2007 by cheesefairy

Yesterday, after a lazy, sunny lunch, Co-worker A said, “Is it time for midi Friday?”
And I said, “Hell yes!”

Midi Fridays started last year. I’d be at work, times would be a little slow around the office and I would get a song craving. “I need to hear ‘Oh Sherrie,'” I would sigh. But because I was at work and downloading music used to be not cool there (and now is impossible), I would find midis, play them, satisfy the craving and move on. Oh, and one time I blogged about it. Now I can only blog from home so we’ll do Midi Fridays on the blog after hours. Partay.

Midi quality (and google’s awareness of midi sites) has greatly improved since last year. “When Doves Cry,” was Co-worker A’s request and I found a spectacular rendition. SpecTACular. They really committed, you know? The big fun is playing all the other midis and singing along. Especially if it’s “Welcome to the Jungle” or “In the Summertime.”

I think people in the office are probably very glad I’m back. Ha ha ha. No. Not really.

So here, from Joann’s site, is When Doves Cry and for those of you who actually LIKE Prince so much that you couldn’t listen to a midi version because blood would spurt out of your ears, I offer, from Bennie’s site, (Bennie, apparently, inspired Joann to make her own midi site) a kickass version of Don’t Fear the Reaper. There is plenty of midi cowbell, don’t you fret.

Now that it’s Saturday afternoon, I have been watching a fabulous show called “The Model Life.” A supermodel decides to help one young hopeful become the next supermodel. Wait, wait! It’s not Tyra! It’s another supermodel named Petra. And there are only 6 hopefuls AND they’re from all over the world AND they look like women who might actually be able to make a living from their looks.

It’s on The Learning Channel. You know, for learning.

Speaking of, I saw a commercial during “The Model Life” for Vagisil, the anti-itch cream for your genitals. There’s a woman looking at herself in the mirror. She is dressed neatly and is applying lipstick, but her reflection tells a different story. Her reflection has unwashed hair, is wearing no makeup and in fact has pulled over her head the hood of a dirty, grey sweatshirt. The Voice informs us that our (women’s) lives can really be challenged by vaginal odour. We can look as great as great can be, but if we smell, we don’t FEEL great. To quote directly, “It’s the itch you just can’t scratch.” (not in public, anyway)

But it’s OK! There’s a solution! Anti-itch cream that makes the odour go away too!

Where I come from, if your crotch itches and smells, those are two clues that you might want to get to a doctor. But then I thought – maybe this is a chronic condition common with today’s modern woman and I am just lucky it hasn’t happened to me?

So I went to Vagisil’s site and sure enough, it seems that everyone except me is plagued by a perfect storm of vaginal wetness, odour and itching. From pre-teen on! Vagisil offers a variety of solutions, including foaming wash to soap your bits between showers and anti-wetness powder to Absorb Odour Before it Starts! They also will sell you a self-assessment kit to help you determine whether your itching, odour, etc is due to normal woman-funk or whether you need to see a doctor.

Here, this is free. Go here and check your symptoms. Alternately, here are some tips I’ve accumulated over the years: pee after sex, never douche, stay away from too-tight knickers made of polyester, have safe sex, get treated for STDs immediately, wipe front to back and if you’re on antibiotics, take acidophilus (or eat yogurt – blech) to keep your healthy bacteria flourishing.

If it’s not an infection and you itch, stop getting Brazilian waxes.

If you smell like fish, see a doctor.

If you smell like you, give yourself a hug.

If you smell toast, it might be a stroke.

Posted in idiots, music, sex, television | 7 Comments

I’m Hot Because I’m Fly!

Posted on 7/10/2007 by cheesefairy

Remember a ways-ago when I realized I didn’t care what I looked like anymore?

That passed.

Now I am leaving the house every day and going through several countries (okay, transit zones) only to end up smack in the middle of downtown, where the chic are. It didn’t occur to me that this would present a problem, but because I am also attempting to reason with a body doesn’t have the same features as my old, pre-baby body, (there’s no CD player, for example. The CD player was standard on my old body) it kind of does.

In 5 days of work – and work-clothes and work-clothes-commuting – this is what I’ve learned:

1. If the pants fit great at the beginning of the day, don’t wear them. By the end of the day they will be too tight.
2. Despite the 40 lb weight gain with pregnancy and subsequent loss after baby, I still have no butt. Only now, my waist and hips are almost the same circumference so really not those pants that make my butt look like the sheer rock face in Mission: Impossible.
3. I HAVE NO PANTS THAT FIT. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
4. No matter how many times I dig through my drawer in the morning (or the night before) I will only have one shirt that goes with all the airy summer skirts I own. One shirt. The other 45 shirts? Do not go. Maybe they are the wrong colour. Maybe they shrank in the wash (arrrrhhhhghghghghghggh). Maybe they make me look like Topsy McBoobs. I have airy summer skirts – which are my preferred bottom dressing in Hot Summer Weather – that I cannot wear.

I can only assume that it was my other personality who went shopping, tried things on and came home with bags; or that my body shape is changing again, as we speak, as I write this, and if so I should really be staring at it to catch it in the act instead of writing this but

but.

It’s not really that I have no clothes that fit. It’s that I have no clothes that fit where clothes that fit = Hot Summer AND Office. I have clothes for each of those events individually. How was I to know that the moment I went back to work, the weather would get 10 degrees hotter?

Yeah, I should really have known that. I know.

Also, I need a haircut.

Grumble. Tuesday. Bah.

Posted in more about me!, outside | 4 Comments