Welcome home my lovelies!

It took 15 years, but I have finally done it!  I have replenished the shoe cache that I had before Rissa was born.  Pre-Rissa I had a... I'm not going to call it a shoe fetish, 'cause it wasn't like I was humping them or anything...  instead I'll call it a shoe... fascination.

I had a good 75 pairs of shoes.  Every colour in the ROYGBIV spectrum, kitten heels, wedges, stillettos, boots, leather, suede, floral... I was a happily-shod girl.  Then, when I was dumb enough to gain 50 lbs while pregnant, my feet, the actual ligaments in my feet loosened and then SPREAD.  (Seriously, DON'T gain 50  lbs when you're pregnant - not even if your midwife says 'Some women need 15 lbs to grow a healthy baby and some women need 60." She is wrong - you don't need that much weight to grow a healthy baby - it will take you four years to lose it.)  All my lovely shoes no longer fit me.  There was no possible way that I could regain what was now lost to me.  After-pregnancy, I had to buy shoes at least a 1/2 size too large or specialty shoes in a D width.  The cost was going to be astronomical.  It could not be warranted. 

But now, after a decade and a half of shopping only when items were on sale, of scouring the Value Villages and thrift stores, I am finally back to where I have the perfect pair of shoes to go with those pants, or that skirt, or that dress.  I have the knee-high boots that make David salivate.  I have comfortable sneakers that fit the width of my post-pregnancy dew beaters.

These shoes will not bring about world peace, they will not help educate my daughter, they will not support my spirituality.  My plum, heeled Mary Janes have no greater purpose than making me happy when I see them and perhaps giving my stems a little shape.  I'm not saying it's the best $11.99 I've ever spent... but comes pretty close.   

Blackmailed into Good Health

WARNING: I USE BAD WORDS IN THIS POST

Fuck peri-menopause. FUCK IT!!!  I do my best, I really do, I try to find the silver fucking lining to pretty much everything, but COME ON!!!

I am sitting here drenched as I type.  Because why?  Because I had fucking Chinese food!  Apparently MSG can trigger hot flashes.  The same way that too much salt can trigger hot flashes. The same way that caffeine can trigger hot flashes.  The same way that alcohol can trigger hot flashes.

I have become a tea-fucking-totaler, a crunchy granola enthusiast, a purveyor of vegetables, not out of choice, not because it's the healthful thing to do, but rather because if I don't - IF I DON'T - I will spontaneously combust... sometimes several times in a night.  I feel like Fawkes, the fucking Phoenix!

"Just kill me," I beg Rissa and David

"Oh love, are you hot?" asks David.

"Am I hot?  AM I HOT?!?  Feel beneath my breasts!"  I lift up my tank top, exposing my unencumbered tatas.   "You could deep fry tempura under here!!!"

Rissa averts her gaze.  "Whoa!!  Boobs!!  Maternal boobs!!"

I do my best not to burst into tears.  I would punch at the air, but the ineffectual movement would just make me hotter.

"Would you like a cool drink?"

"I would love an ice-cold chocolate fucking martini, but I can't have one because if I do, my insides will turn molten and I will DIE!!!"

"How about an ice pack?" David suggests helpfully.

An ice pack!!!  Oh sweet Jesus, we have ice packs!!!  I stagger down the stairs to the deep freeze, David's voice calls out behind me "I would have gotten them for you love..."

An angels' chorus greets me as I open the deep freeze - I weep at the beauty I find therein.

I come back upstairs looking like the beginnings of a bad BDSM scene.  I have small packs around my ankles and wrists with a larger one strapped around my neck.  I place myself in front of the oscillating fan to dry off my hot flash sweat.

"Better?" asks David.

"I don't have adequate words.  I want to start a charity that will give these to my sisters throughout the world.  SISTERS!!! SISTERS I WILL HELP YOU ALL!!!"

David and Rissa exchange a look.  "It's possible she might be hallucinating right now."

The House Hippo...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" from Rissa downstairs.

"What?  What is it?"  I bolt to the top of the stairs.

"This!  JUST. LOOK. AT. THESE. PICTURES!"

"What are you looking at!?!" 

"I signed up for the House Hippo Instagram feed..."

Oh thank God... She hadn't found any of those pictures...

House Hippos AKA Skinny Pigs AKA Hairless Guinea Pigs.  She has been obsessed ever since she discovered them at our local Buskers Fest's Crazy Creatures booth.  It was love at first sight.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  It's SO CUTE!!!"

Even I have to admit that I dig them.  I mean, what's not to love?  They're like naked mole rats but so much cuter.

She devoted several hours one afternoon to finding house hippo names for a pet she will probably not have until she's in university.

Boys	Girls
Cédrique	Aurelia
Ignatius	Helena
Lysander	Hermia
Demitrius	Bambina
Constantine	Celeste
Aloysius	Edna
Wolfgang	Wilhelmina
Remus	Maude
Sirius	Harriet
Bartholomew
Bram
Elwood
Paco
Tom
Inigo (Montoya)

    


















By reading her list of names you can glean pretty much all of her media influences:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Harry Potter, The Incredibles, The Blues Brothers, Love Actually, Studio 60, clowning, cartoons... My favourite: Inigo with (Montoya) in brackets because you know that although she would call it Inigo she would be thinking Montoya in brackets 100% of the time.

Summertime Bitch

Heat and hormones don't mix.  I get mean in the heat.  You know when you can hear yourself losing it?  When vitriolic tones spill from your lips and you don't even want to be around you?   That's me in the dog days of summer.  The rest of the year I do my best to be a kind person.  I open doors.  I use my pleases and thank-yous...  I actually mean them.  When there's a heat wave?  My kindness evaporates and I want to murder fluffy bunnies.

Swollen ankles and feet.  Sweaty shins.  Pressure on my chest.  The urge to weep because of the afore-mentioned...   Crabby, whiny, petulant - and that's with me not even voicing 3/4 of the things that I wan to say.

Random person says, "I just love this heat!"    I think, "I would love to see your decapitated, iced head on a platter providing me with the Popsicle that I so badly need right now."

Random person says, "Enjoy it while it's here!  This is Canada..."  I think, "Are you a fucking moron?   Environment Canada has told people to stay indoors so that they'd don't DIE!  This is not a perk!!"

Random person says, "It's shorts and skirt weather!"  I think, "FUCK YOU AND YOUR THIGH GAP!!!  I have literally stopped while walking down a busy sidewalk, grabbed the purse sized medicated Gold Bond powder stashed within my messenger bag, lifted my skirts and powdered my inner thighs IN PUBLIC to stop the rubbed-raw skin from KILLING me."

This may be why David makes me so many cocktails in the summer.

Come the Zombie Apocalypse...

Sitting naked on the side of the bathtub.  Legs out over the edge.  Wet hair dripping into the tub.  Humming "Smoke on the Water" to myself.

David stops on his way to the bedroom.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine."

His eyebrows low on his forehead.  "Why are you sitting there like that?"

"I'm conditioning my hair."

"Oh..."  He turns to leave... "You can't do that in the shower?"

"Oh I can.  I just don't want to waste water.  This is deep conditioning.  I'm doing this for seven minutes.  Come the zombie apocalypse, we're going to have to know how to conserve water.  I'm practicing."

David nods sagely.  "Good plan.  As you were."

Worth every last penny...

They sell food at Winners.  Gourmet food.  High-end, gluten-free, organic, tri-coloured pasta type food.  For a fraction of regular high-end, gluten-free, organic type prices.  If I wanted to have a 12 year Balsamic Vinegar at bargain prices, I can get it.   Now, on occasion, I will spend 5 times as much for a specialty food item.  Yes, I can get coarse salt for less than $2 at No Frills, but I can get PINK Himalayan rock salt at Winners at a mere $7.99 for... 1/2 of the amount.

This is one of many things that causes my mother to shake her head at me, blood pooling in her gums from a bitten tongue.

But I say this to you: Pink Himalayan salt has restorative powers - worth more than $7.99 for 454 grams.  Every single time I fill up my salt grinder and see that pink salt in it, I smile.  Every time.  I'm looking across the kitchen at that grinder filled to the brim with pinkness right now, not even touching it and it is giving me joy.  When my hands are actually on the grinder, I get a contact high.   My life is better with Pink Himalayan salt.  454 grams will last me months and months.  For a mere $0.05 a day I have visual (and culinary) joy. What else can you get for five cents a day that has the ability to induce immediate joy? 

One might say, "But the joy a child or pet brings is free - the love you feel for them is priceless." I call bullshit.  You're wrong. 

Sure, you can acquire the kids or pets for free, but on a daily costing basis?  My child eats at least 8 bucks of food a day.  The cats, are much more economical at only about a buck for food and litter.  I'm not saying that the Pink Himalayan salt gives me as much joy as my child (who will gargle Gershwin) or pets (who will chase their tails), but when I need a quick hit?  Casting a glance at the Pink Himalayan salt makes me feel like this:

Flat cats...

"Blergh."

"You okay love?" asks David solicitously.

"Heat.  Blergh. Sticky. Thighs... chafing..."

"But you're not even moving - your thighs can't be chafing if you're not moving."

"You'd think that would be the case, wouldn't you?  It's because I'm just thinking of moving.  My thighs, they know that I'm thinking of moving, and they've already begun to chafe."  I turn my head to the side and murmur despondently, "Je déteste l'été..."

I am one of very few Canadians who do not relish the dog-days of summer. I will choose winter over summer.  My seasonal picks run thus: spring and autumn in an equal tie for first place, then winter, then near-spring, the-day-before-autumn, near-winter and finally, after every other possible combination... summer. Give me a day of 23 degrees Celsius with zero humidity and I'm ecstatic. 30 with a Humidex of 39 and I'm threatening to murder inanimate objects.

"You fucking viscous oak dining chair!  Let go of the back of my thighs!  I will chop you into pieces and decimate you with the molten heat from beneath my breasts!!"

David purchases floor fans to move conserved cooler air from the window air conditioners around.  I hog the revolving tower fan in the living room as we watch episodes of IZombie.  It is a delightful show of skirt-raising as I  hunker down to air out my hot-enough-to-double-as-a-panini-press nether regions.

The poor cats.  I've never seen them so flat.  They ooze into the floor.  

Flat Minuit

Flat Steve

The cats are so uncomfortable that they aren't even asking for food.  And this is from beasts who routinely beg for their meals at least an hour in advance of feeding  time.  It appears that they, like me, become nauseated by the extreme heat.  Pro-side?  This heat-induced nausea has put us all on a meal apathy diet.  How do you feel about dinner?  Meh...

As a gal who freely admits to getting truly nasty during a heatwave, I'm also the first to say that  ingenuity is a heat-hater's best friend.  I have it down to a science.  The window air conditioner runs at full blast for the 15 minutes before bed, then the floor fan, at level 3, oscillates.  A cool shower, an ice pack wrapped around my neck and accompanying Gravol for the nausea, et voilà!  Not only can sleep be attained, it can be enjoyed.  And tomorrow night, if I can fight against the urge to slip into a heat-exhaustion, near-coma-post-work nap - I'll actually be able to sleep when I hit the sheets.  Bright side?  I managed to pen this post at 2:00 a.m.