Pain and Cake

Monday, January 3rd, 2011 - Eek cold! Giant gimpy hand, coffee, urge-to-kill threat warning: negligible

So 2011 is underway properly now and I'm in Canada the next couple of months which means we’re back to the harsh reality of January – the greyest, most depressing month there is, unless you live in Australia or have a nice Mexican vacation or a birthday or a lottery win ahead, to warm it up for you.

Personally I think January in the northern hemisphere ought to be a “nap three times a day” month and this should be compulsory with possibly a complimentary cabana boy/girl to serve you cocktails or hot chocolate, depending on your state of mind. It should not be    –26 degrees and sudden asthma when you try to take out the garbage.

I welcomed 2011 by baking possibly the best chocolate cake ever produced by a human. It was from an old basic recipe that I’ve tweaked over time and changed to make it my own and although it’s fairly basic, I now have the quantities and ingredients so correct that even NASA would be impressed at my scientific abilities in the kitchen and probably have me work on the next generation of space shuttle technology. It’s moist, chocolatey as all fuck and has a delicate light-chocolate buttercream filling. My cake I mean, not the space shuttle, although granted, that does sound like a step in the right direction.

Screw starting the year with a lettuce eating binge! Start with cake and work your way down, that’s what I say. I like to keep my resolutions real. “Eat cake but eat slightly less cake!” is one of them and “Don’t make resolutions” is my other one, which has the mysterious smell of irony about it.

I also started the year by managing to injure myself in Walmart yesterday. Now I don’t know about you, but almost every time I’m in Walmart I think about hurting myself just to make the experience end, but this time was purely accidental.

You know how they have their exercise equipment on a little platform thing at the back of the store? Well I was in the middle of doing some very scientific research into the resistance level of a stationary bike by pushing the pedals around with my hand, when it (my hand) somehow got wedged between the moving pedal and the body of the bike, crushing the living shit out of it. I don’t even know how this happened, it was like a mystery force just sucked it right in there like it was a 747 engine or something.

The pedal kept trying to turn and my hand kept getting more and more crushed while I tried to summon for help in a ladylike manner, by delicately exclaiming things like “Holy mother of fuck it’s trying to kill me, it’s trying to kill me! I’m very injured and important, please help me, AAAAARGGGGGH!”

Once I managed to finally get free, my hand looked like a Christmas ham after it’s been stomped on by a pissed off Kirstie Alley. There’s a quite impressive black bruise all over the knuckles and some lovely swelling. It looks almost like I’ve been punching the shit out of Snookie for an hour, which coincidentally, is a fantasy of mine.

No guitar or uke playing for me this week. At least I can type, aren’t YOU lucky?

I hope 2011 is starting off in a pleasing manner for you?

Happy 011111011011!

Saturday, January 1st, 2011 - that's a lot of ones, I'm cold, are there no good movies on TV anymore?

Happy new year my little party monkeys! I hope your New Year’s Eve was a hoot and a blast and didn’t involve too much tucking your dress into your panties (especially you boys), dropping burrito crumbs in your cleavage, or bending over random gutters watching your dinner reappear in liquid form. Not that I wish to suggest any of MY celebrations have ever ended this way…

Well, they don’t allow such behaviour at the nunnery.

Me? I was spending New Year’s here in cold-assed Canada, having cramps of the lady variety and feeling grouchy, uncomfortable and like I possibly had some small, rabidly violent, martial-arts-practicing ninjas living inside my boobs. This resulted in my welcoming 2011 by sitting on the couch, scowling and ingesting Kraft cheese slices while watching Toronto and NYC basking in most unseasonal, balmy sweatiness, causing Dick Clark to almost have another stroke.

For those of you wondering why I didn’t go and take my succubus-like sexy talents out on the town to mesmerize the local male population (you can call me “Lost Girl”), it was –24 degrees C. here (minus 11F), thanks for asking. Minus twenty four. Even if you wanted to go out and bounce around festively in the snow, you couldn’t, unless you actually wanted hypothermia and frostbite, in which case, it would have been your lucky night.

I lit some candles and sat there in my pajamas making lame fun of Ryan Seacrest and the vast plethora of boy-bands trying to entertain at new year’s TV extravaganzas. Particularly New Kids on the Block, who are yet to learn the delicious definition of irony. Maybe they should just suck it up and change their name.

“Slightly Creased Kids on the Block” or “40 Year Old Bankers On The Block” are my suggestions.

I didn’t even have a drink. Yes, you heard me correctly. No alcohol passed my lips. No wonder I was grouchy, right? Cramps, Ryan Seacrest, aging boy bands, no cake, copious slobbery close ups of delirious couples kissing and no alcohol. What is this fresh hell?

Today though things are looking up. I had some good coffee and I cooked up this savoury French toast sandwich with fried onions, peppers, spicy tomatoes and melted cheese sandwiched in the middle in a big, sticky, delicious goo. Yeah. It was sexy good.

Other than that, it feels like Sunday. And Lord knows, I hate Sundays. Happy MMXI people!

Obligatory Christmas Post

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010 – drinking coffee in my new mug, still wearing PJs, dry skin, upbeat

Yesterday, I was just sitting here in my PJs and an old t-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Saskatchewan: Hard to spell, Easy to Draw” (Saskatchewan is shaped like a rectangle, get it?), contemplating coffee and life and realizing that holy shitting hell, it would be Christmas in three days and I hadn’t even checked to see if there was food in the cupboard or more importantly, booze. 

This was clearly unacceptable.

It also meant braving the supermarket three days before a holiday, which I grudgingly did last night with all the good cheer of a homeless guy whose cart-full-o-cans has been stolen.

As we all know, the supermarket before a holiday is a joyous event to beat all the joyous events that came before it. It’s a bit like trying to get tasks accomplished while being pursued by flesh eating zombies who intend to obstruct you at every aisle. I like to grab my grocery items in a flash, toss them in my cart, then run like my pants are on fire, on to the next one, then unload, pay and get the merry hell out.

I do not like to have to crawl at the pace of a turtle, while weaving in and out of people and trying to avoid launching small, mad, over-excited human spawn who think they’re the only person in the whole store, into orbit with my cart. Grrrrr it brings out my Hulk. My mellow has been sliced into tiny, blood-dripping shards of rage.

On the upside, I scored some good cheeses and lots of veggies and stuffing mixes and enough Pepsi products to successfully make them rulers of the free world. And ingredients to make a big fuck-off sized trifle. Mmmm trifle… I also have some pear liqueur, some vodka and of course Advocaat, which might be a bit of a pussy drink but it tastes delightful and you can’t be European and not have Advocaat at Christmas, even when you’re not in Europe anymore. Eggnog just doesn’t cut it, frankly. Snowballs. Snowballs cut it.


Apart from Snowballs and trifle, my Christmas traditions are few and far between. Cooking something that involves roasted potatoes, wrapping gifts badly, eating cake for breakfast and watching a popcorn movie like “E.T.” or “The Wizard of Oz”. It’s Christmas. You’re allowed these sinfully gleeful moments.

Mainly because I say so. Did I mention I have so much Christmas spirit that I was playing “White Christmas” on the ukulele last night? Well I was. Don’t be calling me Scrooge.

Anyway, I have noticed this entry isn’t saying much of anything, so I’ll just wish you all a merry whatthehellever holiday/Christmas and get back to my coffee, in my funky-ass new, retro-striped coffee mug. (It makes it taste better you know). Have a fun and safe weekend and don’t go getting shit-faced and doing anything stupid, okay? However if you do get shitfaced and do something stupid, have the good manners to at least film it for us, please?

One More Reason To Stay Home This Weekend

Thursday, December 16th, 2010 - coffee, serial killer hair, possible pink eye

I’m going away tomorrow, for the weekend, to indulge in some subzero sporting activities with friends, on a snowmobile. I'm sort of sad as it's the last time I'll get a chance to tear around like a maniac in the snow for a while.

I’m a big fan of snow mobiling but much less a fan of actual snow, which is quite the conundrum. I mean snow is cold and wet, who likes that? No one with any logic at all. However, so long as you stay on the vehicle and don’t wind up some hot mess, face down in a snow embankment with your ass in the air, snow mobiling is fun.

Not that it’s as easy as it sounds when you’re hurtling through uneven fields and embankments at a billion miles an hour on a 500lb hunk of metal that doesn’t have anything resembling power steering. Inevitably you will misjudge a turn somewhere, and the time it takes to make it and you will end up flying through the air like Superman - only substantially less gracefully and yelling much less elegant words - and landing tits down in a snow drift searching for your dignity. 

It’s all part of the fun, really.

It is hard to stay warm in minus thirty degree temperatures though, especially when ripping through the countryside at fifty miles an hour. You need to wear lots of little thermal layers and leggings under your pants and other flattering attire like ear flap hats, wedged under your helmet, scarves, plural, around your face and neck, enormous, butch snow-boots over your knee socks and a big fuck-off coat.

I actually got a new coat a few months back for this winter. It’s ideal for skidooing in that it’s long, the zippers unlock from both ends (good for sitting on things) and it could withstand a nuclear blast.   It’s really sort of like a sleeping bag with arms, a waist, a hidden cuff and a hood with fur trim. It’s not beautiful but it’s functional. You don’t do beautiful when it’s minus thirty out and you’re more concerned with whether you’ll get home without hyperthermia or frostbite and with the correct number of intact toes. Beautiful can kiss my ass. I love my coat!

So while you’re sitting home in your warm house, drinking something delightful and warming, think of me zipping around the countryside yelling “I’m James Bond, bitches!” with my “I just did three lines of coke!” eyes and bad attitude, scaring coyotes and humans alike with my impressive sweary vocabulary, while trying not to die.

All being well I’ll see you next week. Hopefully with all limbs intact. Have a fun pre-Christmas weekend peoples!

I'm sleepy. I have coffee in a gigantic plus-sized cup trying its utmost to shake me awake but some days you just...I don't know. You just need to be comatose. But I'm fighting hard. I am fighting. I've been fighting ALL DAY.

I'm still hobbling around on my mutant hell toe now I have some flip flops that don't aggravate it or touch it in any way and it's like looking down and seeing a big pink slug on the end of my foot.

I'm sorry, were you eating then?

Anyway, I'm still getting around okay is what I'm saying. The world hasn't ended. I'm not yet an invalid confined to a chair, waving a bell around when I need coffee or cheese or a commode.

Seriously, I just pee my pants.

All Your Dignity Are Belong To Us

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 - coffee. Mmmmmm coffee...
The other day, I was sitting there, fresh from the shower, in an old grey t-shirt, legs of my hot pink plaid pajama pants rolled up above the knee because I’d just moisturized the living shit out of my freshly shaved legs, furry old lady slippers on my feet, dishevelled, wet, not yet combed birds nest perched on my head and shoulders and an inch of Olay spread on my face, smelling like an explosion in a Bath and Body Works factory mixed with toothpaste and coffee, when the postman knocked on the door.

This is fairly typical. I used to ardently believe the postman and I were at war. I was convinced he sat outside in his van with a scanning device and waited for the moment I was at my most ridiculously undignified, before coming in and demanding my attention, but now I’m not so sure. I mean, he seems sort of skittish. I don’t know how much they pay postmen, but that guy needs a raise, purely for the number of horrific versions of me he gets to see on a regular basis. Me in my paint splattered overalls with feral hair and a manic grin on my face, wielding some giant scissors? Check. Me in my sweatpants and a hoodie covered in pancake mix wielding a wooden spoon and a scowl? Check. Me, in my crusty old Radiohead t-shirt and my underpants? Check, check, check!

I can almost feel his trepidation seeping under the door as he approaches. That blind terror emanating from every pore as he weighs up the option of just dropping the package and running, rather than face whatever fresh hell awaits this time when the door swings open. Why do people only knock on your door when you’re in a state that no one should have to see you? It’s perplexing.

Although, let’s be brutally honest here for a moment, there are actually things way more perplexing than that, like how you can have the unlikely good fortune to get Sarah Palin and Kate Gosselin in the same place at the same time and not use this momentous occasion to test out some military grade weapon in the area? That was a golden opportunity, people! It may never come again.

In totally unrelated news, I’ve been crocheting myself a thick, winter blanket and I’m only a quarter of the way done and my wrists feel like they’ve been fed through a wood chipper. The typing. It hurts.

The Lost Art of Conversation

Monday, December 6th, 2010 – Already sick of snow, full of coffee and devious intent
It’s Christmas party season and after an admittedly rather pleasant party on Saturday night, filled with quite lovely geek people and good food, I’ve decided there are certain things that I used to excel at that I no longer have any talent for.

Things like small talk, for example. There used to be a day where I would talk to a table leg if the opportunity came up, just because I could and would talk to anyone/anything. And let’s be honest here, usually it helped that I was so full of pints of cider/lager hybrid goodness, I made David Hasselhoff’s cheeseburger incident seem like a nun at a tea party.

The point is, I always had something to say, even if it was nonsense.
And my ability to shoot the shit with just about anyone, wasn’t ONLY because I had a penchant for attracting the people no one else wanted to talk to. Although, truthfully, back in the day, I was notorious among my friends for being the one in the group who would inevitably end up debating life’s great mysteries with some passing, unwashed hobo because I was too trashed or too polite to shoo them away. Come 11pm you could usually find me in a dive bar discussing life with some resident, random, aged, long haired hippy who smelled like patchouli and cigar smoke and who still thought it was 1972. Sadly he usually also considered it entirely possible that some 20 year old chick would like to give him their phone number and even sadder than that, sometimes I was drunk enough to actually give it to them which usually meant spending the next two weeks refusing to answer the phone.

Nowadays though, not so much. I’ve lost any desire to make small talk with random undesirables or even regular people. Truth is, for the most part I don’t care what you do for a living or about your kids’ school activities or where you went on vacation last year, because I’m too busy plotting how I can sneak a second portion of hors d’oeuvres and a pint of sangria from the snack bar without anyone thinking I’m a pig.

However, if you want to talk about hilarious ways to embarrass yourself in the snow, or inappropriate underwear, or zombie apocalypse scenarios, or liquor, or that one epic fart you did that one time after a burrito, that scared the neighbours and triggered the fire alarm, I’m probably fine with it.

I’m complicated, what can I tell you?