Failings Of My Own.

Why I am not a mother: reason #23

Posted on Mar 29, 2012 | 0 comments

I would not contain these sort of costumes to Halloween or other allotted dress-up days.

Is that a peanut in your cheek or are you just glad to see me?

Posted on Mar 28, 2012 | 2 comments

It’s time for a new series of Real Housewives – this time set in Vancouver! It’s no secret that I love to watch the Housewives, but I really think the network has outdone themselves with this show. The ladies are all larger than life…especially in the face. I kid you not! It looks like doctors in Vancouver are resorting to facial inflation using the pumps down at the local tire shop.

You may think I am exaggerating, so let me show you a couple.

First we have Ronnie.

A few years and a few more fill ups and I would be surprised if she can see over those cheek implants.

Then we have Mary…

Tip: cheeks are not supposed to have hard angles.

But it gets worse! Here’s the youngest Housewife:

They say her doctor makes her come in through the back door so as not to frighten the other SUV pilots awaiting their thrice yearly facial pumping.

Facial pumping? Did I just say that?

But I kid! I love these ladies. Here’s a little preview – coming in April!

Let me make it up to you.

Posted on Mar 27, 2012 | 1 comment

Stepping back and taking a look at this blog, I see that of late there appears to be a fair bit of unwarranted nudity. I’ve considered many factors including the knowledge that my mother clearly does not approve of this, and decided that this is not a trend I wish to continue with.

Not right now, anyway.

So to cleanse the palette, let’s all take a moment and enjoy a seasonal Easter video: bunnies!

A primal absence in my childhood.

Posted on Mar 19, 2012 | 1 comment

I loved the Fair when I was a kid. I would stay there all day if allowed, riding every ride and spinning my brains and guts into utter madness, pausing only to fill my face with twenty different types of spun or hardened sugar. My favourite ride by far was the carousel. Boring, I know, but I was simply in love with the beautiful, stylized horses. You would study them as they glided by, carefully choosing the most beautiful one, and then race to get to that horse before any other child. Clearly, they were just picking horses at random. I had studied these beasts and made a considered decision. I had to get MY horse.

The lowest point of misery at a fair had to be the day that the carousel was packed, the lines were long, your mom’s nerves were shot from herding children who alternated between screaming in joy and vomiting on strangers, and you ended up having to sit on the carousel bench. This was no kind of carousel ride. No horse, no gentle up and down as we race around in circles, and forget the brass ring. You would sit there in misery, eyeing the horse you had chosen, once a revolution hearing your mother insist “See? You’re having fun!”

While most of the other rides represented fun tinged with fear, or often vice versa, the carousel represented fantasy. This could be my horse, from the stable at my magnificent house where I live, surrounded by servants and various diamond encrusted household items. The beautiful painted horses made all this seem possible, if only for a few minutes. I could be a princess. I COULD.

But I knew nothing of the monkey carousels.

Had I known about the monkey carousels, everything might have been different. Arriving at the fair and being presented with the option to ride a wild primate would have changed everything. The monkey carousel is a totally different ride. It takes you quickly through the childhood phase of fantasy and imagining castles and servants, and you arrive, still in the body of a small child, at the mental age of 17. The monkey carousel opens doors to the heady, exciting combination of imagined wisdom, feelings of immortality, idealism, newly discovered sources of booze and a not yet fully developed frontal lobe. YOU HAVE NOT LIVED UNTIL YOU HAVE RIDDEN THE BACK OF A FIBREGLASS MONKEY!

The monkey carousel would have brought me closer to who I am, who I needed to be so much faster.

I mourn the absence of the monkey carousel in my life.

The long and drunk of it.

Posted on Mar 11, 2012 | 0 comments

In these wide-open days of FaceBook and Twitter, few things are private least of all the shenanigans inspired by a few beverages. And if capturing all the gory details on film and having them posted by your friends isn’t enough to piece together the trail of stupidity, drunk tweeting and texting assist in fleshing out the picture of a lost evening. Or four.

But back in the day, we didn’t have the Internet to ensure every drunken insult and boob-flash were archived. (Relax Mom, boob-flashing was never my thing.) If we wanted to recall what had been said and done, someone would have to remain sober to document the evening on a stone tablet. Without your designated story teller, all was lost. Unless you were very determined. And very drunk. Never a good combination.

I take you back to the early nineties. My mash, as we called boyfriends back then, and I had imbibed a bit more than was smart and shortly before going to bed - but about 4 hours after we should have called it a night – we got into a heated argument about sweet fuck all. (What are those arguments ever about?) Tempers flared and I decided that I was going to write down every salient point I was making, and in the morning this idiot would see how very right I was. Am. Always will be. Indignant at my scribblings, he also began to document his points.

When we woke in the morning, eyes bleary and stomachs heaving, it was to a room covered in tiny little post-it notes. Everywhere. On the walls and furniture. So many notes. And scrawled on each one was I have no idea what. Absolutely incomprehensible. Words that in any other circumstance would have no business being in the same sentence were smashed together like a human centipede. All attempts to figure out even the general topic of disagreement failed.

But this is not to say that documenting your rightness (and righteousness) in such a situation is inadvisable. No, I would say that practice is all that’s needed. And who better to bring you the notes you will need than me? Trust me, these are far superior in size and design to the average post-it note.