Dis and Dat and Back Again

I have nothing to say. Really, I don't. I am so scattered this week. Thus, I might as well make this a free-flowing point form post:

-- I took my first venture into the backyard today. I kept saying all winter that gee, it sure will be nice this spring, because the snow was so deep, the dogs didn't venture onto the lawn at all to do their business, and thus the lawn won't be dead until July like usual. It really DID look like they were doing their business at the sides of the house. However, this might have been the case from like February on, when the snow got ridiculous, but I guess I must have forgotten that the snow WASN'T surmountable from November to February. Holy sheepshit, Batman, the whole frigging yard is a shit pile. It looks like an outhouse threw up all over the place. There are wet turds everywhere, and while I would say about 75% of the yard is melted, it's still supersaturated (I remember something from grade 11 Chemistry). Thus, I used a hoe to gather up piles of wet turds and then used a shovel to throw them into an empty Tide box. I was out there an hour and it looks like i maybe did 4 square inches. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Last year? We had no snow really, so by this time, it was dry as dust and I used a rake and my lawnmower. I swear, until we get a few good rains, we are all in danger of catching cholera from the backyard. St. Jude, pray for us.

-- I've diagnosed myself with about 27 different illnesses this week, all due to a sore spot on my stomach. i have this tender spot on my abdomen, so I did my usual googling, and then all hell broke loose. You see, last weekend, I had some wine and ate some spicy food. So I woke up Sunday morning and had this tender belly spot, and thought "great, my liver is failing" from the wine. However, as I haven't turned yellow, as a failing liver is want to do, I then figured it was pancreatitis, but my poop isn't discoloured, nor is my urine dark, so then it became about 400 different things. I am guessing it's a pulled muscle or a place that the kids are susceptible to kick, but if it's not better in a few days, I'll get it checked out. However, even I am picking up my 6th sense vibes telling me to shut up and live. But gotta love Google.

-- In honour of poop scooping today, I ended up singing a tune about poop to the tune of "Seasons of Love" from RENT. It went "525,600 turds, 525600 poops...." I share too much, don't I?

-- My fucking cat is running around like a fucking crazy person: she is doing the same frigging circuit. We have what I believe are called "pony walls" (not Sugar Walls, like Sheena Easton has, sadly, but this shelf thing around the perimeter of our rumpus room -I much prefer sugar walls) and she runs to one window, where she's wrecked the blinds, then darts out, runs down the pony wall, jumps onto the end table, makes the lamp shake, jumps to the floor, turns around and does the hokey pokey, and repeats the same thing. I am really to throw her outside to the possum/weasel/cat/goose/boogieman she thinks she sees and calling it a night.

-- Tonight we went to our friends Liza and Sebastian's for pizza. I ate 4 pieces and had 2 glasses of wine. I only ate a bowl of really fibre-filled cereal and a spoon of peanut butter today, but I still feel guilty, even though I ran for 32 minutes on the treadmill and went for a 4 KM walk. So I might as well have another glass of wine, right? RIGHT. LOL, we have wine from last weekend just sitting there. I have no sense of moderation. If I lived in a place where I could pick up the phone and order a roasted turkey right now, this bitch would be eating out every last breadcrumb out of that bird's hootch in some nasty 9 1/2 Weeks fashion. Yes, I am vulgar tonight. It's my blog, so goonie-goo-goo, bitch. If I wanna eat out a turkey, it's none of your beeswax!

-- What in the hell is WRONG with these Survivor contestants?!? GET RID OF ROB. I am not just saying that because I think he's evil. Really, let the one who's been there 14 times before get the upper hand? Bitches, you deserve to go home. And then that poor bastard who got put back on the island - Matt. Yes, I know you love the Lord. And I know you think you are doing the Lord's work on the island, although I haven't figured out quite what that might be. However, as someone who has read a whole bunch of the Old Testament, the Lord isn't asking you to be loyal to the people who voted your sorry ass out the first chance they got. Really - He lead the Jews out of Egypt!! He parted the Red Sea! He SMOTE their enemies!!!! So, brotha, SMOTE those enemies!!

-- And I know I've complained about how Rob always gets to come back until he wins. Same goes for these NFL people. That grey haired bastard (Steve?) and Grant. Your claim to fame is that you played football for millions of dollars. First off, football players are usually of a sub-par IQ, are usually assholes, have probably been involved in a drunken, post-game gang-bang or four with their team mates and a dumb-ass girl they got drunk, and then have the audacity to bitch when they hit 40 and have to retire because they didn't spend their millions in a smart manner. So when they throw these losers on Survivor instead of some fat-ass greeter from Walmart who lives for the show, well, I get angry. I don't want any more NFL players. I want REAL people. And white dudes with dreadlocks?!? Bob Marley is rolling over in his ganj-filled grave, MON.

-- It's election time again in Canada. I am so not happy with this. Really, I never thought I would say this, but I WANTED things to stay the same. You see, I am NOT a Stephen Harper fan. I distrust all Conservatives. I was fine with them having a minority government, because they couldn't do most things they wanted to do. Thus, they immediately gave up on repealing gay marriage - it's been a non-issue (I know people who got married hastily when the Cons came in power just in case it was repealed). They hesitantly gave up the abortion fight (although, as Robo-Dad, abortion makes me sadder and sadder the older I get), and I take great glee in the fact that they can't repeal the long-gun registry (I know some of you are gun folks, but in my perfect world, NOBODY but the cops or the military need a gun. Sorry. Even you, LRF ;) ). And, there are some Conservative things that I *get*. I was really in love with their "give every family $100 a month per child for childcare instead of a national daycare strategy" (even though it turned out to be TAXABLE INCOME), instead of the Liberal's National Day Care Strategy. Until I had kids, I was all "oh sure, let's get a cheap or free national day care thing going!" Then I had kids. And realized that kids are only young once, and what shapes you as an adult is what you experience as a child, and thought that if the govt wants to throw all kids into a national program, rather than giving us choice for caregivers, well, that shit doesn't fly. Especially when you have SHY kids like all 4 of mine, who want to be with us every second of the day. So yeah, I don't want some uniform system. Give me some $$ to off-set daycare costs, and I will be the one who decides who should care for my kids.

Anyway, those kooks aren't all bad. But, you see, I can't stand Michael Ignatieff. He will NEVER be Prime Minister, just because of the fact that he obviously is fighting a unibrow problem. That shit is tweezed. It makes him look shifty. Anyway, the good people of the Heartland won't vote for him. Until they get rid of him, the west will be a conservative sweep. So, I am worried those conservatives will finally get their majority. It scares me, though, of how wishy-washy I get as I get older. 20 years ago I would have told you without hesitation that my vote is completely NDP. For you Americans, NDP would be, for you guys, pretty much a declaration that the communists are beautiful. They are the ones who founded Medicare. My province has the biggest NDP history, since medicare was founded here. Our people vote Conservative federally, but NDP provincially, at least until a few years ago. Anyway, i DO see some of the Conservative rhetoric making sense - if they were open to different religions, different sexualities, equality for gender, etc., I would be with them. We are light-years above our American neighbours, who still seem t have trouble with many things, but yet I am hesitant for the Cons to get in power with a Majority. Sigh. I remember back in grade 8, when the only politics I had to deal with were Reflex's "The Politics of Dancing".

-- Anyhooo, I suppose I should get to bed. Suzanne Wang is talking about some retreat on House Hunters International, and I always feel like some guilty loser when I can't quite figure out how these people can find a way to buy a 1/2 million dollar house in Central America, but yet they just get this big frigging house with high ceilings and can sit on the beach and work for 12 minutes a day with their laptops, while their mistresses are BBQing shrimp on the Barbie...

Peace out, you sexy MFs.

fray pipty two and other things whispered in the night

Just a quick note. I had to post because I am still completely breaking out in gales of laughter over Chunks' recent post (www.heartinhand.wordpress.com). I admit I didn't finish the entire post, as I read it on my Blackberry. My sister in law babysat our kids today whilst me and the Mrs. did our frigging weekend job, and went to pick them up and while we were sitting there waiting for the kids to get it together and go, I played with the phone and saw the post and I was laughing so hard I was trying to read it aloud, but I couldn't get the words out - there was something so funny about the "fray pipty-too" and I can just see her sitting there repeating it quickly to herself to try and figure it out. It reminded me of this one time when we had a family reunion in Williston, North Dakota for our family and my mom's sister's family. Why would we have a family reunion in a small, North Dakota town, you ask? Well, that's how we do things.

Anyway, one morning, me, Rachel, my sister, her now-deceased husband, and their two young kids were sitting in a Perkins or something and ordering breakfast. My sister orders something and the waitress looks at her and says "what kind of fooot do you want with it?" and of course my sister replies "pardon me"? and she again says "what kind of fooot do you want with it?" and immediately me, Rachel and my brother in law all bury our heads back in our menus and I am almost wetting myself, and my sister is getting redder and redder and stammering, and finally she says "isn't it supposed to come with it?" which of course makes absolutely no sense, and the waitress then says "I dunno, I'll check." You had to be there, but holy moly, it was funny. My sister bitched us out all day - well, she does every time she tells the story, even 20 years later.

I love those stories. Another time, me and my old coworker Sharon went across the street to this Chinese cafe for lunch. Sharon went through this bizarre, traumatic morning due to a crazy coworker, so I took her for lunch to try and calm her down. Big mistake. You see, Sharon would always panic when we went there, because the Chinese woman who runs the place is too hard to understand, and since she coincidentally knows Sharon's parents, she always would babble on and on, and Sharon would get all red and blotchy and panicked because fuck if any of us knew what Su was saying. So anyway, we place our orders and Sharon gets some kind of hot hamburger dealie - well, Su brings the food and then she realizes she forgot Sharon's gravy or something and comes up to her and asks "you want gravy on that or it's awwwrighht?" and waved her hand over her entire plate. Sharon suddenly gets this horrid panicked look goes "umm, whaat? and Su repeats the thing, complete with the hand wave over the entire plate, and I can clearly tell Sharon has no clue at all what any word was, except the "s'allright". So finally I step in and say "it's s'allright" and then bark at her "I hope you didn't want gravy on everything because you can't go back now". Again, you had to be there. So why am I telling you this shit? Because I can. Goonie-goo-goo, bitch.

This is for you.

Wow, I didn't realize that it has been over a month since I last posted, but what do you know - I completely skipped March. Sorry, I am so sporadic, I know. I rarely have late nights like I used to, which is when I blog. I've been preoccupying myself with "healthy living" - I can't remember what I've all posted, so I might recap some stuff. Anyway, I have been dieting since November and have gotten back into exercise, and as of this morning, I've lost 42 lbs. I am watching calories and carbs and have taken up exercise again. We bought a family membership to the local Fieldhouse and began by walking 3 mile stretches, and that has graduated to intermittent jogging and I am back on the treadmill. I feel great. However, tonight is a "cheat night." A cheat night of epic proportions. It was a crazy, gong-show type of day, and I was still pretty good about my eating, but tonight? Well, we had a couple over tonight right after supper to discuss this huge entity we are embarking on (I can't explain now, but it is for our kids), and since they were coming over, and since we were still out and about running errands until 5:30, we ordered pizza for supper. I ate 5 pieces - not slices, but pieces - it was an XL pizza so it was sliced in squares - but STILL. And then when the company was here, I munched on chips and salsa and we had wine. Now, here I sit, with a handful of Tostitos and a big honkin' glass of wine - my rationale is that we have to use up the wine. We have a bottle of fizzy shit opened, and it will be flat by morning, and a bottle of red opened, and it will be... well , it will be fine in the morning, but might as well make it a cheat day in epic proportions.

Anyway, I am already thinking of how guilty I will feel in the morning for the calories, as well as wondering if the red vino will give me a migraine which sometimes happens, so all my cheating isn't exactly enjoyable. However, man cannot live on bread alone - isn't that in the Bible or something?

Oh man, remind me to blog about my "infection" following my vasectomy and my freaky allergic reaction to Sulpha drugs, in case I didn't bore you with that story already. As I said, I am too lazy to reread my old posts.

Oh FUCK, my cat is howling like someone slipped a jalapeno pepper up her arse - I am just waiting for the kids to wake up. SHUT THE FUCK UP, PRINCESS!

Sorry for the outburst. Anyway, my life has been preoccupied lately.

One thing I am preoccupied with right now is my friend Margo. Long time readers (and I know there are a few of you, according the site meter, you silent fuckers!) will know that Margo is my second oldest, but closest, friend in the world. You know how with some people you can not talk or see each other for years at a time but when you do it's like you are finishing a conversation you started 5 minutes ago? Well, that's me and Margo. She's really special. We go through phases, me and her. One of our lives gets busy, and the other one gets put on the back burner, but like the yin and the yang, that will change, and we will connect again, and so on. we go through phases where we will talk daily, or email daily, and then go through phases where we hear from each other only every 6 months or so - whatever the situation, we still pick up like a moment hasn't passed. It's one of those really special things. I have some friends I keep in sporadic contact with, but at times with them I think "Oh fuck, I have nothing to say". Not with Margo. We could talk forever, at the drop of a dime, about anything and anything. Do you realize how special that is? Anyway, I haven't heard from her in quite some time, but I knew the reasons for that were rooted in her father. Her father has been quite ill for quite some time. He had a major heart attack a few years back, and from what I understood, he wasn't healthy enough for surgery, so basically, they were monitoring him. Fast forward to this fall/early winter - he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder and at the last minute refused surgery because they told him that if his heart stopped during the surgery, they couldn't revive him. Anyway, I was naturally concerned with that, even to the point that when I went to the City for my vasectomy, I almost asked the urologist who snipped me about him (he was also Margo's Dad's potential surgeon).

Well, I haven't heard much from her since Xmas, and Chunks and I sort of deduced that this was because of her Dad. Fast forward to Tuesday morning. I am on my way to the City for this training session at work, and I see this msg from her on FB saying she is coming my way today, so look out for bad weather - let me say, the bitch brings weather systems like you wouldn't believe). So I immediately wonder why, and then I see a msg that she's coming to my town for the last time and realize her dad is dying.

Now, since I have been through the dead parent thing already, I of course understand how horrible and epic and shitty and life changing it is. And of course, I am trying to figure out how to make it better and know I can't.

Long story short, her dad died Thursday afternoon, right before 5:00 PM, literally 20 minutes after I left the hospital. I've been thinking of him so much these past 2 days, and I really feel the need to talk about him right now.

Lorne (I am using his real name because I can't find a pseudonym more suited for him) was one in a million. I first met him back in about October 1985, at his house. He lived in this TINY little house straight in the 'Hood in our town - and by Hood, I mean it's like Little Detroit. And by tiny, I mean about 500 square feet. I am sure I mentioned here before how Margo and I met, in remedial Algebra class, and how I thought she was really old looking and how she was from Alberta but moved here to live with her Dad. Anyway, I first met Lorne one October night, when we were at Margo's house and he "pulled" for us - he bought each of us a bottle of apricot brandy, which I think were about 8 dollars each. We were drinking that on Margo's recommendation, and since I was a little nervous about drinking a bottle of a sweet liqueur, I took a Gravol beforehand. Anyway, Lorne comes home with the booze and we sit on the couch drinking from the bottle, and he is giving me this speech about buying the booze and I realize it's because my Dad is the grand Pooh-bah of the RCMP in our town AND of all the north of our province. I am all "yeah, don't worry about it" and I proceed to get completely pissed. I still remember wanting to just curl up and sleep on their couch. Anyway, he was so worried, and I thought it was.... well, sweet sounds gay, but, well, it was sweet.

You see, Margo lived in an Edmonton suburb with her mom, brother, sister, and stepfather. Her and the stepfather hated the fuck out of each other at that point, and she chose to move with in her dad, in the middle of grade 9 - a man who lived in a one bedroom house in the middle of the hood. And she did it. And he welcomed her with open arms. They were two peas in a pod. Lorne and Margo loved the same things. They loved coffee, cigarettes, cars, Labatt's Blue, a good off-coloured joke..... Margo always made it clear that her dad had a drinking problem. He loved to binge drink, which meant that he would get drunk and would stay drunk, for a while. I always admired her honesty. And yes, Lorne did like to binge drink. But in the grand scheme of things, I say big deal. No matter whatever shortcomings people thought he had, he was great dad to Margo. You know how some parents seem to just go through the motions? Not Lorne. He loved Margo with all his heart. He gave up his bedroom for 4 years so she could have privacy. He made sure she had a roof over her head. He taught her more about cars than most of those pimply dorks at the muffler shop could ever hope to know, and he taught her how to be self-sufficient. He always put her first. And he was always willing to lend a hand to whoever needed help. He didn't have much, but he'd share what he had. And he was so fiercely proud of his children. I am so glad Margo had a good relationship with him.

He always had a string of girlfriends. There was something infectious about him. SOme of the girlfriends were good, some were good when the finally dummied up and got out of the picture, but the point is, he was a catch. Margo always treated his romances with respect, and was never jealous. And she was a true daughter. It wasn't about "what can he help me with" but "what can I help him with?" Lorne was such a good man. It hurts my heart that perhaps his other children didn't see this - Almost all of my memories of him involve laughter. He was full of crazy sayings and phrases. He despised pretension and could mock a phoney baloney like nobody's business. He was a great man. Whether on a picnic or hanging out in the backyard, he was hospitable, and thought the sun rose and set around his daughter.

When Michelle came out as a gay woman, I wasn't sure how he'd take it, but Lorne didn't disappoint. He welcomed her partner into the family with open arms, even though he was "Traditional" in a sense. That made me love him even more. In short (I realize this supposed tribute will never measure up to what I want to say), Lorne was such an honourable man and such a great father to Margo, and always made me feel completely welcomed into their house and their family, and I feel honoured for having known him. I will never forget him, and I will forever see him through the actions of Margo, his child who has understood who he was and who has faithfully honoured him and loved him, and who has exemplified what a true daughter is and who had faithfully served her father honourably. My dear friend, I know what you are going through, but I want you to know that your actions throughout the years speak volumes. You have been a great daughter to Lorne, and no matter what your siblings think, he's been an awesome father. We have seriously been blessed for having known him.

Peace.