It’s All Good

This past week, Ken and I went out to the East coast of Canada. Travelling within your own country is great—no worries about currency exchanges, border security, or paying exorbitant amounts for cell phone plans. We decided to rent a car, visit friends, and then drive the Cabot Trail. It’s the perfect time of year to do it because the fall colours are just stunning. And doing so much driving gave Ken and I a lot of opportunities to have very important conversations.

Me: The other day, I got an Amazon delivery and I was about to throw away the box, but I didn’t.

Ken: Because it was a good box?

Me: Obviously. We’ve officially reached the age where we keep empty cardboard boxes because they’re good boxes, not because we actually need them.

Ken: They always end up coming in handy—that’s a guarantee.

And we realized that it’s not just boxes…

Gift bags: You know the ones I mean—not too big, not too small, holiday-neutral but fancy enough for any occasion. Even better if the gift tag hasn’t been written on. If you know anything about me at all, you’ll know I have the gift wrapping skills of a five -year-old (actually most five-year-olds can wrap a present better than I can) so gift bags and tissue paper are my go to. And anytime I get a nice one, someone else in the family gets it back.

Wood: Ken does a lot of woodworking and wood can be expensive so we have no issue grabbing a piece of wood off the side of the road to use later.

Me: Ooh, stop! There’s a lovely pallet at the end of that driveway there!

Ken: Nice! I see a coffee table in our future!

We actually did make a coffee table out of a wood pallet once which I sold it for $75 bucks pure profit. The one thing I never nagged Ken about cleaning up is his woodpile. Even if Ken has no plan for any of it at the moment, it’s still all good wood and might come in handy later. And you can scoff, but he’s almost finished the new little cabin he’s building me and he did it all with his late dad’s “good wood” as well as our own finds and offcuts. The other day, we went by a dumpster and found several pieces of good wood that I might do something with—or not, but at least I have the wood.

Bubble Wrap: Who in their right mind ever throws away a piece of bubble wrap? That stuff is like gold. If you don’t use it, you can pop it. It’s multi-purpose.

Envelopes: I don’t do it often, but I have been known to keep a good envelope. They go with the loose Christmas cards I have stored in the dining room closet. And there’s nothing like the satisfaction of matching an envelope with a card…

I’m finding it really hard to concentrate because I’m in the airport waiting at our gate and there’s a woman talking very loudly on her cell phone to someone and apparently she has 120 oat cakes in her carry-on and just got a tattoo in Halifax with “the best line work she’s ever seen” but she can’t show it to the person she’s Face-Timing with because it’s on the inside of her thigh. But we’ll be home soon, so it’s all good. Also, Happy Thanksgiving!

Villainous Notions

Last week, I bought a footstool. It was dark cheap wood and had dark tapestry fabric on the top, but the lid lifted for storage and it was only 5 bucks, so I got to thinking that I would paint the wood grey and re-upholster the top. Which I did, and the paint looked lovely (aside from the transfer I may or may not have put on slightly off-centre—see picture at the end). The problem was that the fabric on the underside looked choppy and unprofessional no matter how much I tried to trim it, but then I had an idea. I rummaged through my basket of sewing notions—well, it’s not so much a basket as an empty Quality Street tin—and found something that just might resolve the issue:

Notice the name of the manufacturer? Obviously kismet.

Me: Do you think this would work?
Ken: What is it?
Me: According to the packet, it’s Rick Rack.
Ken: Maybe…
Me: No, you’re right. The colour is all wrong. However, RickRack would make a great name for a James Bond villain.

Cue naughty fantasy sequence (and if you’re a little prudish, you might want to skip this one)…

M: Double-Oh-Seven, we need you. Apparently, RickRack has abducted Pussy Galore!
Bond: Pussy Galore? Again?! Well, Pussy is delightful. I can see why he keeps coming back for more.
M: Intercept RickRack before he gets to the Upper Holstery Islands and deliver Pussy to us, James.
Bond: I’m shaken, not stirred by this turn of events.

Some time later, on a cargo ship off the coast of the Upper Holstery Islands…

RickRack: Ah, Mr. Bond, I’ve been expecting you.
Bond: Release Pussy Galore, RickRack! There’s nowhere you can run.
RickRack: I’m never gonna give her up. I’m never gonna let her down.
Bond: Did—did you just Rickroll me?
RickRack: No, I RickRACKED you, Mr. Bond. But you can have her. To be honest, I’m not particularly fond of Pussy. I only kidnapped her to lure you to the Upper Holsteries.
Bond: But why, RickRack?
RickRack: Because…because I’m in love with you, James. Is there a chance for us?
Bond: Have you actually SEEN any of my movies?
RickRack: Sigh. I’m never gonna give you up—
Bond: Just stop. Come on, Pussy.
Pussy Galore: Oh James, thank you for saving me!
Bond: Enough of the small talk. We need to hurry—I have a date with Holly Goodhead later and no one misses a date with Goodhead!

And all I can do at this point is apologize for my giggly thirteen-year-old imagination, but in my defense:
a) I was going to include a scene with Bond and Q discussing a missile launcher that was extremely euphemistic but even I know when enough is enough and b) I’m not the one who named the Bond girls things like Miss Goodthighs, Chew Me, Xenia Onatopp, Holly Goodhead, Plenty O’Toole, and Pussy Galore. That was a DIFFERENT giggly thirteen-year-old.

The Keys To Happiness

(Here’s a little throwback from a several years ago):

A few days ago, I was in the kitchen and I happened to look up at the really cute key holder on the wall that I’d made out of an old breadboard and antique keys to hold not-antique keys. My brow furrowed. “Ken!” I called. “Did you put all those keys on that lanyard and hang it on the key holder?”

Ken (yells back): Yes
Me: Well, what are they all for?
Ken: I don’t know.
Me: If you don’t know what they’re for, why did you put them all on the lanyard? Where did they all come from?
Ken: They were all just hanging on different hooks on the key board so I put them together.
Me: But you don’t know what they’re for.
Ken: Correct.
Me: So if you don’t know what they’re for, and we don’t use them, why didn’t you just throw them away?! What are you, some kind of key hoarder?
Ken: I am NOT a hoarder. They’re just nice keys and you never know when you might need one.

This is me holding the lanyard up to Ken and demanding to know what they’re for. In the picture, I have transformed into an angry elderly man and the lanyard is a two-dollar macrame plant holder, which is just about as useful as a multitude of mysterious keys.

There were 18 keys. We have 4 doors that require keys, so you’d think at least one of them would have fit at least one of the doors. You would, however, be incorrect. I took the systematic approach, and by that I mean at first, I carried all the keys around and tried them in the doors, but there were so many keys and doors that I lost track and couldn’t remember which ones I’d experimented with. So I took them all off the lanyard and lay them out on the counter in a straight line. Then Kate came in and identified three that were for the lab at her former university from several years ago (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, apparently), which left 15 keys. I tried each key in each door and you know what happened? Again, none of them fit any door in our house.

Me: This is f*cking bullsh*t.
Ken: You sound like that guy at the brewery the other day.

And here’s a fun tangent. The other day, Ken and I went on a roadtrip to our antiques booth, and on the way back, we decided to stop for lunch at a local brewery that had outside seating. There was a foursome at the next picnic table, and we couldn’t help but overhear their conversation, which was an absolute cornucopia of epithets (and for the purpose of this conversation, I will be transcribing the swearing verbatim so there will be no asterisks):

Sweary Dude: If you fucking go to Scotland, they don’t fucking say ‘yes’ there. They say fucking ‘aye’.
Woman: Really?
SD: Fucking right. So you better be fucking prepared because they say ‘aye’ a fucking lot. And I was fucking talking to Pete the other day, that fucking German guy…

So Ken and I discussed the use of the word f*ck and what parts of speech it could be substituted for: noun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition…

Ken: Can you use it as a pronoun?
Me: Only if you say f*cker. Like ‘F*cker ordered another beer.’ It can also be used as an interjection. Do you remember Schoolhouse Rocks?

And that led us down a rabbit hole of 1970s animated linguistic cartoons, culminating in Ken’s favourite, Mr. Morton, which is about predicates: “Mr. Morton talked to his cat (‘Hey Cat, you look good’), Mr. Morton talked.” Because Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says, he does. At the end of the song, Mr. Morton gets the girl, Pearl, and they get predicately married. It’s very sweet, and there is not a single use of the word f*ck in the entire cartoon, as one would hope.

At any rate, I myself was quite sweary after putting 15 keys into 4 separate locks and discovering that none of them opened any door in my house.

Ken: Maybe they were for other locks, like ones we’ve replaced.
Me: We’ve lived here for 21 years. We’ve replaced the locks on ALL the doors. Why do we have 21-year old keys??!!
Ken: We could make a craft with them.
Me: Or we could throw them away. The last craft we made with keys is still sitting in our antiques booth because no one wants NEW KEYS.

So I threw them all away. But you just know that next week, we’re going to find a padlock or something that we hadn’t even thought of, and now we won’t have a key for it, or one of you will be like “Here’s a cool thing you can do with new keys” but now they’re gone. F*ck! That’s an interjection.

Battle of the Build; Cover Reveal for Charybdis

As you may remember, last week I completed a miniature book nook, and I enjoyed it so much that I ordered another. It was a gothic-style library, and I was super-excited when it arrived. That excitement quickly faded to perplexity when I realized it was from a different company with VERY different expectations. Instead of stickers, it was just paper that I was supposed to glue to the little pieces of wood. Okay, I thought. I can buy some glue. Because the kit didn’t COME with glue. I went out the next day and bought white glue and a glue stick, just to be on the safe side. After I got home, I took everything else out of the box, and looked at the instructions more closely, and they were very weird. It was like if you asked a Roman General to create directions for assembly based on his life experience. Here’s the first example, on the cover page:

“The actual object will PREVAIL”? Am I in a battle to the death with this thing?!

The next set of instructions on the inside page was equally ominous:

Bad enough that this thing might STAB me, if I fight back, I lose my rights and interests? Do I need a lawyer watching me put it together, just in case? My brother, who has a PhD., is a lawyer—perhaps I should invite him over for wine and a quick skirmish

I finally started to assemble everything, beginning with several stacks of tiny books. It was starting to get minorly enjoyable, because they DID look like tiny books even if the covers were photocopies of bizarre books that made no sense in the context; for example, a cover with an electric guitar on it. But just as my stacks were almost complete, I was forced to get violent as per this instruction:

“Make it open”? You’re god*amn right Imma make it OPEN! I was really getting into the spirit of things now. The build progressed and things got infinitely more difficult as I had to glue tiny pieces of wood onto other tiny pieces of wood and then let them dry. And I’m not the most patient person in the world so I learned about letting things DRY COMPLETELY the hard way. But letting things dry completely was a double-edged sword, as I discovered:

Ken: *snickers*
Me: What are you laughing at?
Ken: Nothing. *snickers again*
Me: Seriously, what’s so funny?!
Ken: No, really…haha!
Me: WHAT?!!
Ken: See the world map that you glued to the wall?
Me: So?
Ken: You glued it on upside down.
Me: WHAT? Oh no! And it’s completely dry! Why did you have to tell me, dammit?
Ken: YOU MADE ME.

Okay, so we all know that geography isn’t my strong suit and you have to look REALLY hard to see the map. Finally though, I was nearing the end, covered in glue, clamps and elastic bands everywhere, and all I had to do was attach the lights to the ceiling and close it all up. Except that the instructions were wrong and it took me two tries, getting the light attached twice and realizing twice that they were the wrong way. And then:

I DID, you aggressive Praetorian. See, this is why the Roman Empire fell. Terrible instructions.

In other news, my new novel Charybdis will be coming out soon, thanks to my wonderful publisher Jane Cornwell and JC Studio Press. Here’s the cover reveal, and it’s amazing!

Synopsis: When Greta Randall stumbles across a rare volume of Victorian poetry in a local antique market, she could never have imagined that it would take her on a journey through time. The secrets she discovers along the way may shed light on the book’s mysterious young author, Louisa Duberger, but at what peril?

On The Rocks

When my brother and I were kids, we had a rock tumbler. It was a messy, noisy contraption and I don’t remember if we ever got any decent rocks from it—I just remember dirty water spilling everywhere, and then I never saw it again, which was fine by me. When Kate was little, she, like most small children, loved shiny rocks and would pick up ‘special’ ones from beaches, driveways, gravel pathways, literally anywhere rocks could be found (and when I say ‘most children’ I also mean adults because I’ve been known over the course of decades to randomly slip a pretty stone in my pocket). By the time she was in middle school, Kate had amassed quite a collection and we even had a special shelf for her to display her treasures on. So I bought another rock tumbler. It wasn’t a very expensive one and that soon became obvious, as it created a stunning wall of sound that could be heard all over the house. You may or may not know that I suffer from misophonia (another fun offshoot of OCD), and the racket and my anxiety were so bad that at the end of the first cycle, I gave up. “We’ll get a better rock tumbler,” I said, my ears still ringing.

I didn’t bother for a long time, almost as long as it takes a rock tumbler to actually create smooth, shiny gemstones, then a couple of years ago, I saw a very expensive National Geographic model on Facebook Marketplace but the person selling it was asking a very cheap price (I wonder why?) It came with all the rocks, extra grit, and all kind of accessories, and it promised that the rubberized barrel made it “very quiet”. That was a LIE. We set it up in our back family room, and while it wasn’t as loud as the previous model, I could still hear it rumbling and grumbling all day from anywhere on the main floor. I persevered though (mostly because Ken put a sound-dampening cardboard box over it), and eventually got some very nice rocks that I made into necklaces, and I gave them to people while quoting Jean Jaques Rousseau: The sacrifice which costs us nothing is worth nothing. And the people who received the necklaces looked at me the way you can imagine they looked when I said that, but I think they appreciated the gift.

At any rate, I put the rock tumbler away for a bit. Then Ken, who gets that I have a real issue with loud noises, promised that in the spring, we could put it outside in the new workshop he built for me where I wouldn’t have to listen to it, and that was a great plan except because the rock tumbler was in storage in his workshop, I forgot about it. Until 6 weeks ago, when I was going through my stuff outside and I found it in a corner. And I haven’t told you about this for over 6 weeks, because that’s almost the amount of time it takes to polish a bunch of damn rocks in the tumbler, and there’s only one more week left before I have pretty, shiny jewels! I’m on the last grit now, and they keep looking smoother and smoother, and the best part is that because it’s outside, I can only faintly hear the tumbler if I’m in the back yard, and it’s just background noise along with the birds and wind and whatnot. Everything’s going so well that I spent half an hour on Saturday browsing Amazon for more rock kits, and come Christmas time, everyone’s getting a necklace, and this time, all I have to say is, “I made this for you.”

In other news, I still suck at math. Last week at work, I rang through a customer’s purchases, entered the amount of cash he gave me, then proceeded to start gathering up his change:

Customer (holds out more money): Would it help if I gave you $1.10?
Me: (stares blankly, frozen in horror)
Customer: I said, would it help if I gave you $1.10?
Me: It won’t NOW!
My 27-Year-Old Boss: Suzanne, do you need me to do some math for you?
Me (whispers sadly): Yes.

I’m lucky I’m surrounded by people who understand me so well.

And 2 huge thank yous: First to D. Wallace Peach at Myths Of The Mirror for her terrific review of my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do and second to Paul Brookes at The Wombwell Rainbow for his lovely review of my newest short story collection At The End Of It All!

A Senior Moment

As you may recall, Ken and I recently set up a booth in the antique shop where I currently work part-time. The space I have now is twice as large as the booth I used to have, which means I have to do a lot more buying if I want to keep up with sales. Not that it’s a problem—I love to shop. But where do I buy things cheap enough that I can resell them? Thrift stores, of course (or what some of you would call charity shops). It’s amazing how many cool things you can find at second-hand places that can be refinished, refreshed, or refurbished. So I’ve been regularly haunting Goodwill, Value Village and a couple of other places where I’ve found some great stuff—well, great if you’re willing to put in a little elbow grease. For example, the other day, I got a couple of old sewing machine drawers for 6 bucks each—a little chalk paint and new knobs, and they’re ready for resale. Or check out below the coatrack that I made out of a single footboard, a couple of old shoe forms, and some fancy hooks.

But I have to keep my overhead low, which is why the other day, I had an experience that was both amazing and troubling.

I’d been at my hairdresser’s and she mentioned a thrift store in another town called Talize, which I’d never heard of, but apparently they have a ton of locations in Ontario. I needed to visit my Lancôme lady anyway, and this Talize store was just down the street. I had been astonished to discover that my tiny, perfect, and young-looking Lancôme lady Rosina had a twenty-seven-year-old son, since she looks about twenty-seven herself, but then I remembered that we’d known each other for over fifteen years, so she must be older than I thought. At any rate, she told ME that I didn’t look old enough to have a twenty-four-year-old daughter, and I know that’s just to keep me buying serum, but still, I walked away with a bit of a glow.

The glow continued on into Talize, where I discovered a fancy plate stand, a wicker suitcase, an old washboard, and a couple of wine goblets. Then I got to the cash register. “That’ll be 18.35,” the cashier said. “Unless you qualify for one of our discounts.”

“Which discount?” I asked.

“Well, we have a senior’s discount. You’d qualify for that.”

The glow faded. And even though their seniors’ discount was for 55 and up, I still felt a little betrayed by Rosina, who had assured me, prior to my purchase, that I didn’t look a day over 45, and the cashier had immediately clocked me as being at least my own goddamn age. But then, the cashier recalculated the sale. “16.50. You saved 10%.”

And I was so excited that I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken. “I’m a senior!” I said. “Do you know what that means?”

“That when you crouch down, it hurts to stand back up?”

“Also that. But it means that I get a discount at Talize. Ooh, I wonder what age you have to be to qualify for a discount at Chez VV? Let me look…what the hell? SIXTY? The nerve. How does Value Village expect us poor pensioners to afford their sh*t? Oh well, three more years to go.”

And I can’t wait.

Isn’t It Ironic, Don’tcha Think?

On Friday afternoon, Ken went to get the mail and then retired to his office to open any envelopes addressed exclusively to him, because I have dibs on everything else—his mail is mostly bills, so all other mail has that ‘potential of excitement’ aura about it, like “Ooh, postage PAID? Someone wants to connect with me really badly!” Of course, it’s usually just home decorating magazines begging me to re-subscribe, but sometimes it can be quite unexpected and lovely, like the retirement card that Cyranny of Cyranny’s Cove and our Skypy Fridays group sent me (and if you ever want to join us for a chat on Friday night, just go to her blog and ask for the link—it’s a fun group from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.).

Anyway, suddenly Ken reappeared, irate and waving a piece of paper at me:

Ken: Look at this! Every month when I get my new cheques, this is the first page of the chequebook and it drives me CRAZY!
Me: You get cheques every month? How many cheques do you write?!
Ken: A LOT. Not the point. Look at this thing!

He handed me a piece of paper that he had taken out of the chequebook, and which was causing such a strong reaction in a man who rarely gets upset about anything. The piece of paper said, “This page is intentionally left blank.”

Me: But…
Ken: I know, right?!
Me: I…
Ken: Because it’s NOT BLANK. Every. Single. Month.
Me: I really need to introduce you to online banking.

But we both agreed that if the bank really wanted to be accurate instead of extremely ironic (and definitely more ironic than rain on your wedding day), there would be TWO pieces of paper. One of them would be blank, and the next one would say, “The previous page has been intentionally left blank.” And I don’t even want to get into the grammatical issue of placing the adverb BEFORE the verb—suffice it to say that banks make enough money to hire their own damn grammaticians.

But it was a trying day overall, in the first place, so this was no surprise. Earlier, I had decided to go into town to get some fabric at the fabric store, and to exchange the large foam cushion I had purchased the week before for a slightly smaller one, as I’m currently restoring a Mission oak rocking chair for our neighbours, and, not being as good at math as I like to think, I mismeasured the seat.

Step One: Lug large 24×24” foam cushion into store.
Step Two: Stand in line at counter.
Step Three: Get told that I need to go to the cash register line for refunds and exchanges.
Step Four: Stand in very long line at cash register. Realize that I should have the cushion I want to exchange mine for to expedite matters.
Step Five: Get second 20X20” cushion and lug it and my original cushion back to long line-up.
Step Six: Finally reach the front of the line and see a sign taped to the cash register that says, “All foam sales are final”.
Step Seven: Entreat cashier to let me exchange cushions, a request she refuses.
Step Eight: Go to find fabric, whilst cashier holds both cushions at the front so I don’t have to lug them around the store.
Step Nine: Find fabric. Realize the roll it’s on is WAY too heavy to carry.
Step Ten: Get back in line at the counter to ask about fabric.
Step Eleven: Take the advice of the woman in front of me in line who suggests loading the roll into a shopping cart and bringing it to the counter.
Step Twelve: Go off to find a shopping cart.
Step Thirteen: Load fabric into cart and wheel it back into line at the counter.
Step Fourteen: Watch for fifteen minutes as every quilter in town ahead of me wants half a f*cking yard of 15 different fabrics and “Hallowe’en themed buttons”.
Step Fifteen: Finally get to counter. Get told that my fabric roll is too large to cut at THAT counter, and I need to go to a different counter at the back, exactly three feet away from where I originally got the fabric. Tell the clerk that I would have done that but there are only two people working in the entire store and none of them were at the back counter, which is hidden by bolts of quilt batting.
Step Sixteen: Line up at the back counter.
Step Seventeen: Get fabric cut. Take fabric, as instructed, back to the cash register line to pay for it.
Step Eighteen: Present fabric to different cashier and ask for my foam. Cashier hands me the 20×20” foam cushion and says “Is this the one?” I reply, “Do you need to see my receipt?”
Step Nineteen: Show cashier receipt for foam. Pay for fabric.
Step Twenty: Leave store with fabric, and the foam cushion in the size that I want. Isn’t it ironic, don’tcha think?

But then I felt terrible so I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Me: They wouldn’t let me exchange the foam cushion but then when I went to pay, they gave me the wrong one and I didn’t tell them.
Ken: Did you lie about it?
Me: No. When he asked if it was the right one, I didn’t say yes or no—I just showed him the receipt. I didn’t even SEE the other one. Maybe they reshelved it by accident.
Ken: Well, their foam exchange policy is stupid anyway. You touched both pieces of foam, which seems like the only criteria, so it’s fair.
Me: Yes, and the first piece of foam was more expensive than the one I just got, so I’m the one taking the loss here, especially considering the hour I spent in the store that I’m never getting back.
Ken: See? You’re a good person.

And just to prove that the universe agreed with Ken, right after I hung up, I saw a huge red and gold fox walking across the road up ahead, and it was beautiful. And even though I was alone in the car, I was so excited that I said out loud, “A fox! A fox!” and then I whispered, “A fox.” And the irony here is that this blog post was intentionally left unironic at the end.

Schrodinger’s Pants

On Friday morning, I was having a bit of a sleep in, because I’d taken the day off. Ken still had to work, but he’s retiring at the end of June and likes lording it over me a little with his plans to spend the summer building sheds while I’m slaving at the computer. He came out of our walk-in closet wearing a shirt and boxer shorts.

Ken: Should I wear light or dark coloured pants with this shirt?
Me: You work from home. Why are you even wearing pants?
Ken: I always do. But on my last day of work, I won’t. I’ll have my retirement party, then at the end, I’ll get up, diminish into the West and everyone will say, “Hey, he’s not wearing any pants.”
Me: That’s the best retirement gift you can give THEM— Schrodinger’s Pants. All they know is that at any given moment over the last year of your career, you were simultaneously half-dressed and fully-dressed.
Ken: I’m an enigma.

And speaking of enigmas, I saw this online on Friday afternoon.

The first three words I saw were Ranch Dressing, Poison, and Crabs and now I’m a little freaked out because a) I made Ken go to the corner store on Wednesday TO GET ME RANCH DRESSING so what’s next—I have a severe shellfish allergy so is anaphylaxis on the menu this weekend? Also b) if you look at all the words carefully, the majority of them are quite violent and the whole exercise just went from fun to mildly threatening:

Chainsaw
Danger
Sword
Clown
Shim
Poison
Nordebeaste
Crush
Pills
Secret
Quicksand
Demon
Rat
Apologies (which I assume is sarcastic)

The post was introduced with the sentence “It’s that time again” and the following emojis: a laughing face, a face gritting its teeth, a skull, and a demon. So did a serial killer design this list? And then there was this comment below the word jumble: “Chainsaw, unicorn, and music…a perfect trio!” and I will leave you to picture that person’s week all on your own.

In other news, I haven’t provided a quilt update for a couple of weeks because I’ve temporarily given up. I was halfway through row 9 when my 1936 Singer machine literally fell apart, so I borrowed my mother-in-law’s sewing machine and apparently it was built by NASA and I need to learn astrophysics to use it. “Why don’t you read the User Manual?” I hear you ask. Because it’s a generic User Manual for several different models and not a single instruction or picture is for the model I have. So now all I can do is wait for Ken to retire and learn to use it so he can sew more clothes for his marionette, and then he can make Youtube videos that I can follow. And when he does, he may or may not be wearing pants.

It’s Golden

So I was recently nominated for the Golden Bloggerz award (created by Chris Kosto) by my blogger pal Mark Bierman (thanks, Mark!), a great writer and supporter of other bloggers. Now, I know a lot of you don’t like the whole award thing, but I do, mostly because I always do it in my own way and it gives me something to write about in a week when all I did was work and get the AZ vaccine. The vaccine didn’t turn me into a zombie, nor did I sprout the coveted forklift arms I often fantasize about, but it did make me super-tired for a whole day and my arm still hurts like someone punched me several times. When I told people at work that I got it, someone joked, “Oh, they’re tracking you with that microchip now!” and I was like, “If Bill Gates wanted to track me, he could have been doing it for years through a little something called Windows. And if he really thought I was even interesting enough to track, I’d be incredibly flattered.” It’s honestly the most bizarre conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard. If you’re posting on social media about microchips and vaccines, the reason you’re getting ADS about microchips and vaccines is because social media already knows EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING, BOB. I’d be more worried about Zuckerberg than Gates, frankly. Oh, and Bob? 99.9% of us aren’t even worth bothering about, so put your ego back in your pocket.

Anyway, on to the award. First I’m supposed to tell you three things about myself. This is tough because I’ve been writing this blog for almost 7 years and what is there that I HAVEN’T told you? You know about my obsession with forklifts, my relationship with the elusive Shane, the fact that I aspire to have the nickname Player One—heck, I even told you about my hysterectomy…OK, here are three things you might not know:

1) I refer to every bird larger than a crow but smaller than a vulture as an owl. It saves time, although it drives Ken nuts.

Me: Look at the huge owl!
Ken: For the last time, that’s a hawk! Owls are nocturnal!

2) I have never seen the movie E.T. and I have no intention of doing so. I’ve managed to live almost 56 years without seeing it, and I’m okay with that.

3) I am very superstitious. I have a pair of lucky underwear (you all know THAT) but what you don’t know is that I wore them on Wednesday when I went for my vaccine so I wouldn’t get a blood clot. And I didn’t. Because the underwear is lucky. Also, I knock on wood and I believe that it works. Fight me.

Okay, now I have to answer Mark’s questions and they’re really hard.

Question 1: If you could speak to one person from history, who would that be?

Mark didn’t specify past or future history, so I’m going to say ‘a dude from the year 2121 so I can find out if we ever get flying cars, transporters, or robot butlers.’ Hopefully, the pandemic is over by then so I don’t have to wear a mask while I’m time traveling. And don’t @ me with “The future isn’t history, Player One.” The future isn’t history YET, but it will be, so it counts.

Question 2: Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

Sunsets because that means it’s almost time for bed, and as you all know, I enjoy being horizontal much more than I like being vertical.

Question 3: Have you ever done anything for the adrenaline rush?

Rollercoasters, I guess? That’s pretty much it, I mean, I have no interest in doing anything where I could easily die just for adrenaline. As the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios, I’ve literally spent my life actively AVOIDING things like falling out of a plane, being attacked by a bear, or drowning. I WAS almost bitten by a shark once, but it was a little one and very cute, and I was just trying to get a picture of it. I didn’t know it was dangerous.

Question 4: What’s your go-to comfort food?

White wine. It’s made from grapes and that’s a food.

Question 5: Do you have any pets?

Do I have any pets? Here’s a picture. Note that Atlas is wearing a cute little onesie because he just got neutered. He’s not impressed, but as I keep telling him, “It’s better than a cone.” As he keeps telling me, “If you hadn’t stolen my balls, the subject would be moot.”

And there you go. I don’t know about who to nominate because I’m aware that many of my followers don’t like awards, so I’m nominating these bloggers, since I have no idea how they feel about awards:

The 59 Club
Eastelmhurst.a.go.go
Scribblans
James Proclaims
Texas Writer
…and my good friend at Cyranny’s Cove

There are a bunch of rules as well, but I’ve provided a link to Mark’s blog at the top and he has them there.

Here are my five questions:

What’s your favourite photograph?

How long can you go without blinking?

On a scale of 1 to 5, how superstitious are YOU?

Flowers or chocolate?

Where’s the first place you’ll go once the pandemic is over?

I look forward to your responses. I hope that many of them are in the form of haikus.

Quilt Update: I have sewn the first two rows. 19 rows to go.

It’s Toxic

I’m currently being plagued by toxicity. No, I don’t mean I’m surrounded by toxic people—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’m particularly fortunate to have many incredible people in both my life and work. No, when I say toxic, I’m referring to the song. Yes, Toxic by Britney Spears. I’ve had that f*cking song in my head now for several days and it’s evolved from an ear worm into a serpent. At first it was amusing. “What’s that song playing in my head?” I asked myself last week. “Oh, Britney. Fun.” A couple of days later, I was like, “Toxic? Still? What the hell?” as it became more persistent and annoying. Yesterday, it ramped up to the point where I started getting worried. Every time I stop actively thinking, I realize it’s there, playing in the background, over and over again. And the worst part is that I don’t even know all the goddamn words so it’s mostly just Britney mumbling and then belting out the chorus. I actually woke up at 3 am yesterday and the first thing I heard was “With the taste of a sip I’m drinking rye/It’s toxic, I’m hearing thunder…” and it’s even more worrisome that my brain is filling in the lyrics like THAT.

Now, I’m no stranger to the ear worm. I get them pretty regularly, thanks to good old OCD, usually based on something I’ve just listened to, but after a couple of hours or a couple of glasses of wine, they disappear. And because I have a semi-eidetic memory, I usually know the lyrics and can sing along. The week before I began my battle with the Britney Army (slight tangent: I just googled ‘what are Britney Spears’ fans called?’ but first I misspelled ‘what’ and it autofilled ‘what are hemorrhoids?’. Then I misspelled ‘Britney’ and again it autofilled with ‘what are hemorrhoids?’ To be clear, I have never done any research on that topic and thus far in my life I haven’t needed to, but it concerns me that Google associates Britney Spears with butt ailments, so I investigated further and went down a rather terrifying hemorrhoidal rabbit hole and now I know more about the topic than I ever wanted to, and I still don’t know why I can’t get Toxic out of my head.), I had Shame by Foo Fighters playing on a loop, but that was okay because a) I love Foo Fighters and b) it’s an awesome song and c) I knew all the words so I just started merrily singing along.

But now? Is it an omen? Is it a warning? Is the universe trying to tell me something? Could it be related to the sudden upswing in my OCD due to all the adhesive rug grippers I bought suddenly letting go due to several rather vigorous games of boogedy boogedy with Atlas, resulting in my carefully symmetrized rugs being askew once again (I should have known there might be issues with the product when I saw the instruction that read “For renew the sticky, wipe with cloth”)? OR…hear me out: Is Britney in danger and needs my help to free her? Well, if that’s the case, she’s sh*t out of luck, because we’re under yet another stay at home order. Sorry, Brit. At this point, I’m just resigned to having the damn song in my head forever. And you know what they say—the next step after resignation is acceptance, so hit me baby, one more time.

Quilt Update: All patches are cut, and the design has been laid out. Ken figured out how to use the sewing machine because he made a wooden marionette out of some scrap wood and decided to sew it a little shirt and pair of pants. I’ve named the marionette Marty, and he’s adorable in a kind of grotesque way and definitely has Ken’s fashion sense, but at least now Ken can teach me how to sew. Also, just in case you think I haven’t been busy, I also made this cool bookcase out of a 1970s grandfather clock shell.