Phone rings. I see dentist’s number on call display.
Me: Hello?
Dentist’s office: Hi, Cheesefairy?
Me: Hi! Cheesefairy – yes
Dentist’s office: This is Dr. X’s, I mean, sorry, Y’s Office
Me: That’s OK!
Dentist’s office: 2 o clock?
Me: No problem!
Dentist’s office: (laughing) OK, see you tomorrow
Me: (laughing) Thanks, bye
I’m getting Trombone to answer the phone for reals from now on. He’s practised on the remote control long enough. I think he’s ready.
I’m used to feeling completely worn out and lazy in the throes of rainy wintertime. But in May? Gay, glad, sunny, funny May? WTF, dudes. Today, Trombone and I watched a bulldozer rip up part of the parking lot of the Safeway near our house. I drank bitter Starbucks coffee and Trombone ate circular oat cereal. That’s some stimulating action, no? We did this because I could think of nothing better to do.
Ever have those days where you feel 13 years old? Everything sucks; everyone is stupid; you hate that you’re acting like an idiot but you can’t stop?
Possible culprits include:
BULLET: The PMS, which, based on my past two periods seems to be 85 bagrillion times worse than ever before in my life; enough so that I am actually blaming it for things, as though it were an evil sidekick.
BULLET: That this is my last month of maternity leave and I spend 50% of my time wishing I was enjoying it more because the part of our lives we call “NO PICNIC AT ALL” is rapidly approaching and then I’ll be regretful I didn’t take the baby to pet more animals while I had the chance but when my day starts at 5 and ends at 7 like it did today I kind of wish parenthood was unionized.
BULLET: That I am only just today again starting to try to get Trombone to nap in his crib which means that up until just today again I have had no time except evening time to sit and think and write and read and guess which of those takes precedence? That’s right, TV.
BULLET: That because I am only just today again starting to try to get Trombone to nap in his crib, I had to listen to him cry for 30 minutes this afternoon before he passed out, then woke up 30 minutes later, still crying and spent the next 30 minutes crying and clinging to me. Awesome. I don’t know what I like better: the first 30 minutes of crying where I have to plug my ears and hum lalalalala, the second 30 minutes, where he finally sleeps and I waste time wondering how long he’ll sleep instead of doing something I couldn’t do while he was awake, like talk on the phone or write in my journal or watch the goddamn season finale of ER already, or the rest of the fucking day when I try to manage his shaky mood and he acts like I left him in a dumpster without even a cannister of circular oat cereal to snack on.
BULLET: Useless guilt about all of it.
BULLET: Oh – but don’t forget the anger about the guilt. Because I don’t need to feel guilty! Right?
BULLET: And once we know the day is almost over, there is hysterical laughter about the anger about the guilt.
Yup. I’m blaming the PMS. And the full moon; the second one this month, apparently.
BUT. I stopped at the drugstore on our walk this afternoon and I picked out some chocolate and then took a stroll down the lipgloss isle where I found a Covergirl display and a sign that read Limited Time Lipgloss and Nail Polish! Buy Us! and it was a lipgloss I owned and loved many, many years ago. The Perfect Lipgloss. You know when you love and use a lipgloss till you’re carving the last bits out with your pinky nail and then you go to buy a new one and they’ve stopped making it and you curse CURSE the sky and COVERGIRL and Tyra and everybody who says it’s easy breezy beautiful, it’s NOT, NOT if you don’t have the right lipgloss.
It was THAT lipgloss. They’ve brought it back for a limited time! I am – well, I am not ecstatic or anything. But I am pretty pleased.
You win some, you lose some. And since the face of feminism has had a facelift, I feel safe in admitting that I am a feminist who likes lipgloss. Maybe I’ll get a t-shirt made. “This is what a feminist in lipgloss looks like.” Hmm?
I’ll get right on that, after I try to wriggle into my wedding dress.
This morning as we drove to SUPERSTORE!!! I switched the radio to CBC Radio One just in time to hear Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada interviewing some women about no-knead bread. SHELAGH ARE YOU READING THIS? I WOULD LIKE A JOB. THANK YOU!
Gratuitious all-caps weekend starts NOW!
I just dropped in to mention that Twisty, everyone’s favourite spinster aunt, well, MY favourite spinster aunt, recently recommended two sites that I cannot believe I have never heard of. First, the gallery of unneccessary quotation marks and second, the gallery of passive-aggressive notes.
Off to drink tetrapak wine now. HEAR THAT, SHELAGH?
I was going to post this yesterday and then I got wrapped up in the last 3 episodes of Gilmore Girls, like, EVER and then it was 10:30 so I went to bed.
I only really got into Gilmore Girls a couple of years ago and it became one of those guilty pleasures that really pays off when you have a sick day and there are 22 episodes on various channels and you haven’t seen any of them because you just started watching, thereby excusing you from Dr. Phil duty, hoorah!
This past year has been pretty excruciating, writing-wise, on the Gilmore Girls. A lot of the snap and vigor disappeared and the plot turned sour. The conversations just went on too long. I realized at some point this year that I had Gilmore Girls on and was also emailing someone and was also reading two different blogs, all at the same time.
But I had several episodes saved on the MythTV box and I knew the series was ending so I cued up the first episode and it wasn’t great but then I thought – well, I have to watch the finale so I watched the next one but it wasn’t the finale at all, there was one last episode to watch and I thought about just leaving it till today but by then I had more time invested in it than not so I stayed up and watched as Rory dumped Logan and got a plum job after graduation and Luke and Lorelei got back together finally hallelujah can we all go do something else now.
Before we went to Ontario, SA’s dad said is there anything you want to do while you’re in Ontario and I said yes I would like to eat real poutine because I have heard that on the west coast the poutine is not real. So he said OK I will find poutine for you and he went to a foodie website called chowhound and posted a plea for poutine recommendations in the Ottawa area and someone suggested the Elgin Street Diner so that’s where we went. Man, it was delicious. I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t actually eat “real” poutine after all that because I was swayed by the “Chili Poutine” on the menu and garsh it was tasty. But SA and his mom both had real poutine and they said it was delicious.
I was at Chowhound just poking around in the threads and I came across one about favourite recipes. And within this thread I found a link to a recipe for bread. And I forwarded the link to SA and said checkitout this looks tasty. So he made some and it was. And then he made some more on the weekend, but added cheese and sundried tomatoes and OH it was. (although it was a great deal more dense with the added ingredients. Jury is out as to why; possibly too much salt in the cheese & tomatoes, which made the yeast die? Or possibly just weighted down with too much yum?) And it was so good that I decided to try making it and again, it was.
You basically mix the ingredients half-heartedly and then let it sit for 18 hours (I waited 24), then fold it over on itself and let it sit another 2 hours, then turn it upside down into a cast-iron pot for 45 minutes and walla! fantastic bread comes out of your oven.
I mean come on. You like bread, don’t you? You’re not a bread-hater?
And thanks to the bread and my own inability to finish this blog entry, now I know where to go when I need wine paired with my music. I will sleep soundly tonight.
I am going to be America’s Next Top Model. The gas station attendant said so.
We stopped for gasoline on our way home from picking up the catt on Sunday afternoon. He had been hiding at my parents’ place while we were away. It was one of those old gas stations where you have to take your money inside and give it to someone at a desk. Confusing. I kept shoving my credit card at the pump and the pump kept rebuffing me.
Actually it’s the same gas station my friends and I used to pass on our walk home from high school. We would stop and buy candy or chips or pop or all three. Slushies. Wait for the boys we liked to catch up and then – oops! – leave the store just as they were passing by.
I went in with my money to pay for my gasoline and the attendant said hello. “Hello,” I said. “I am at pump number 9.” Number 9. Number 9.
I forget how he started but suddenly he was telling me how I was beautiful enough to be a model. I had picked up a bag of assorted sour candy that was right at the till and I started eating it. “Thanks,” I said, laughing, waiting for my change. “No, because,” he said, giving me a once-over and gesturing at my boobs with his hands, “you have a good body. And a nice smile. You’re not all covered in makeup. Not like those girls, you wake up next to them in the morning and you’re like, where’d her face go!”
“Uh-huh,” I said around a mouthful of sour soother, still thinking he was just chatting up a customer the way you chat up a customer. The kind of customer with a husband and baby out in her car. Not that he knew that. “Well, models don’t eat candy.”
“It’s fine!” he said. He handed me my change. “I would rather see you win America’s Next Top Model.”
“Well thanks,” I said, “have a good day.”
“I’m here every Saturday and Sunday,” he called after me, “I hope I see you again!”
Oh.
The gas station attendant is hitting on me.
HA! Whoo! I still GOT IT! In your FACE, Jaslene! Your big, chinny face!
In other news, after much intensive training, Trombone will now “MOOOO” when prompted with “What does a cow say.” Seriously you people have no idea how many cows there are in Ontario and how many iterations of “MOOOOOOOO!” “MOOOOOOOOOO!” took place in our rental van.
(For those of you keeping track, he will also meow like a catt and is obsessed with talking on the telephone. The telephone doesn’t have to be a real telephone; it can be his hand, your hand, a block or a piece of cheese. But it goes to the ear and then he says “HAAAAA.” We think this means “hi.” Then if you “answer the phone” by putting a piece of cheese up to your own ear or whatever, he will babble a bit and then hang up on you. The kid is hilarious.)
Today I took him to the park across the street from our house. The petting zoo just opened yesterday so all the animals are fresh. There’s a lamb and a bunch of goats and a few pigs and a calf and a lot of freaky looking fancy chickens. We moo’d at the calf but it hasn’t had as much training as Trombone so it just stared at us with its gigantic brown eyes. The lamb’s mama gave an almighty bleat, though, and Trombone and I nearly had heart attacks.
Then we came home and worked on “quack,” “oink” and “may I take a message.” By the time I go back to work, I hope to have him trained to do my job so I can sleep under my desk for a few months straight.
Just in case the top model thing doesn’t work out.
