I'd Fix It If I Could

There is no faff today - just twisty thoughts as one of my favourite people in the world has a scary and significant surgery today. Happy, healing thoughts are much appreciated, as are distracting stories about your Hallowe'en plans.

With A Twelve Pack From 12th & Porter With Billy 4:30am At Night

Dear Lovely Peeps Who Commented On Yesterday's Angsty Post,

Thank you for your kind words and suggestions. I was lost in my own head yesterday and you helped me find my way back out. You rock, dudes.

Love,
Trying To Be Less Crazy

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Dear Stella,

I'm sorry for not realizing it was your 2nd birthday yesterday until Facebook told me. Also, happy birthday!

Love,
The Lady Who Feels Guilty Even Though She Realizes That You Don't Even Know It Was Your Birthday

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Dear Wolfgang,

Thanks for the 4:30 wake up call this morning, buddy. Was it really necessary to continue to whine for half an hour after I took you out for a pee and gave you a drink of water and a handful of biscuits?

Sincerely,
The Lady Who Wants To Punch You

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Dear Shawn,

You didn't get up because you didn't hear Wolfgang? Really? Really?

Sincerely,
The Lady Who Really Wants To Punch You

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Dear A Most Wanted Man By John Le Carre,

Please do not end.

Love,
The Lady Who Is Attempting to Pace Herself

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Dear Ryan Johnson,

Watching you plow into the boards during last night's hockey game was horrifying; I cried when they wheeled you off the ice on a stretcher. I am very happy that you are going to be okay.

Love,
A Hockey Fan Who May Be A Tad Too Emotionally Invested In Her Canucks

When That Blue Heartache Starts Hurtin'

I remember family excursions to the Christmas tree farm. My siblings and I hunt for the perfect tree (we want height while my mom goes for fullness. She always wins.) My dad cuts the tree down with a hacksaw while we drink watery hot chocolate. My parents bind the tree to the roof of our station wagon - my mom flitting about with excessive amounts of yellow rope, my dad trying not to swear too much.

* * * * *

When I am eleven, my dad is living in Germany. My mom, attempting a return to normalcy, makes the trek out to the Christmas tree farm. I go with her, not out of love or respect for tradition but because she bribes me with a sundae from McDonalds. We manage to find a tree and cut it down and attach it to the roof of the car by ourselves - we are women, hear us roar. That night after we have screwed the tree into the stand and set it up in the family room and decorated it with years' worth of accumulated trinkets, the tree falls over onto the piano.

* * * * *

I remember Christmas dinner at my aunt's house. My mom's family is back east so we spend every holiday dinner at my dad's sister's house, avoiding her abusive husband and
dodging our maniacal cousin. We eat piles of ambrosia salad - the night's only redeeming quality and my first memory of emotional eating. When I am 20 my cousin dies and we start eating Christmas dinner at my parents' house, immediate family only.

* * * * *

It's a tired subject, but it seems that Christmas hits the stores earlier than the year before. Hallowe'en isn't over yet but Christmas paraphernalia already runs rampant and I can feel my Christmas Funk beginning. I don't know how to prevent it.

Just Beat It Beat It Beat It Beat It No One Wants To Be Defeated - Take 10

So I'm all caught up on the road trip shenanigans and I haven't faffed in a while. Let's faff, shall we? We'll call this one Friday Faff: The Catch Up Edition.

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The puppies came home the day after we arrived home from the road trip. They had been separated for a week (our families can only handle one pup each. Amateurs!) We brought Stella home first and it was adorable / heartbreaking to watch her race around the condo looking for Wolfgang. I have never seen the puppies so happy as they were when we reunited them. They practically vibrated with joy.

Wolfgang has become a bit clingy since we've been home. We've started calling him the stage five clinger (which is only funny if you've seen Wedding Crashers and if you haven't seen Wedding Crashers you probably should because it is hilarious.) He follows me from room to room, not letting me out of his sight. He has started jumping into my lap if I'm sitting at the kitchen table (which is impressive because our table is bar-height so it's quite the leap for him.) I got out of the shower yesterday and saw tiny little Wolfgang paws reaching under the bathroom door. It's funny but on the brink of becoming very annoying.

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Turtle made me a chocolate / beet cake for my birthday. I don't have any pictures to prove it but I totally ate a giant slice of it and it's counting for my October beets. Chocolate / beet cake is not awesome (sorry, lady) because once someone tells you that it's beet cake you can totally taste the beets, but it's not as gross as it sounds. You wouldn't know about the beets if you weren't told.

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I went out last Friday for some birthday shenanigans. Cat's birthday is the date after mine so we gathered a group of friends and went out for a civilized dinner. Which quickly turned into a not-so-civilized dinner when the pub we wanted to go to was full (a pub where I would have been drinking pumpkin beer, which means that I would have had 2 drinks because I can only manage to drink 2 pints of pumpkin beer and then I'm over it) and we ended up at a restaurant we'd never been to before and they had pitchers of cocktails on special and they had a special Pimm's cocktail on the menu and I love Pimm's and then someone started buying tequila shots. My head was very hurty the next morning. It was big fun, though. If you can't act like a drunken ass on your birthday, when can you act like a drunken ass?

* * * * *

Last weekend was birthday shenanigans and two family dinners to make up for missing Thanksgiving while we were road tripping and a massive hangover and puppy love. This weekend will be vacuuming and homework and cleaning out my closet to donate old clothes. The old lady in me is really looking forward to it.

Have a great weekend, peeps! See you Monday.

I Don't Care If Monday's Blue

I spent the morning of my 27th birthday in Bandon, Oregon, eating chocolate cake on the beach.

I could live in Bandon. I said that about pretty much every town we visited on our road trip but I really meant it about Bandon.

We didn't have much time to spend there (Bandon is over 500 miles from the Canadian border) so we couldn't do much exploring, but we will definitely go back one day (and when we do, we'll be staying at the Best Western Inn at Face Rock and eating at Bandon Bill's Grill again because we received excellent customer service at both. Seriously, best customer service I have encountered in a long time (and not just because they gave us free chocolate cake when Shawn told them it was my birthday.))

I could have stayed on the beach and listened to the waves crash all day long.


From Bandon we made our way to the Oregon sand dunes. Back in the planning stages of our road trip, the guys were quite adamant that we atv on the sand dunes. I was less enthusiastic. I was assured that if I did not want to participate I wouldn't have to. Fast forward to the bullshit guilt trip I got from Shawn in front of our road trippin' peeps and the owner of the atv rental guy about how atv-ing wouldn't be any fun without me and how could I ditch the group when we'd done everything as a group so far. Bullshit! So I went atv-ing on the sand dunes on my birthday. (Do you know what we did on Shawn's birthday this year? We went on a boat trip in the Dominican Republic and drank rum all day. Just sayin'.)

So it turns out that the dunes are actually quite pretty. I'm not an atv convert now or anything like that but it was ... kind of fun. Not fun like "oh I want to do that again!" but fun like "eh. We went fast. No one died."


The rest of the day was spent driving (oh, so much driving) and stimulating Oregon's economy at the outlet stores (Dear J.Crew: I love you. Come to Canada. Kisses, Hillary)

We arrived home at 3am Tuesday morning. And then I died a little because I had to be up for work in 4 short hours and we had no clean laundry and someone (whose name starts with an 'S' and end with a 'hawn') left the bathroom light on before we left and we got home too late to pick up the puppies so I had no one to cuddle with except for Shawn and that wasn't happening (did I mention the atv-ing? on my birthday.) However. The road trip was an awesome experience. I saw places and things I've always wanted to see (and some that I never wanted to see. sand dunes. ahem.) I got to spend many consecutive days with Shawn which is a difficult thing to co-ordinate with our busy schedules. I'm not saying I'm up for another road trip any time soon but I'm not ruling it out in the future. As long as there are no atv's involved.

You Came In With The Breeze On Sunday Morning

Sunday morning we ate sourdough toast at Boudin (my new happy place) and then drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and away from San Francisco. Spending less than 24 hours in San Francisco for our first visit to the city was ridiculous. We will definitely visit again.

Many hours in the Charger ensued. Many, many hours. My head was so fried that at one point I forgot that I was driving an automatic and I stomped on the brake pedal with my left foot. You know, to hit the clutch so I could shift. I was pulling out of a gas station so I was going very slowly. It could have been worse; I could have stomped on the brake pedal while on the highway or something. I conceded defeat and gave up the drivers' seat after that.

Finally we hit the redwoods. Out of everything on the trip, I was most looking forward to seeing the redwoods. We didn't get to spend much time there but we had enough time to drive through the hollow tree and feed crackers to a cranky goose and eat hot dogs cooked by a lady who looked as though she would stab someone with her bbq fork if she had to answer one more question about trees.

It's so thick! (that's what she said)

Come To The City On A Saturday Night

Saturday morning we headed to the beach. The manager at our hotel told us that cars were allowed on the beach and for some reason, driving on a beach seemed like a cool idea. And it was, right up until Shawn veered off the beaten track and we ended up stuck in soft sand. Things looked grim for a few minutes until the laughing started. Em jumped behind the wheel and the boys and I got out to push. It took a few tries but we managed to get the car back onto the packed sand.

We left Grover Beach and headed for San Francisco. We were making good time until we ran into horrific traffic (courtesy of a Fleet Week / Blue Angels / 49ers combo.) It was at this point with our hotel in sight, as it took minutes to move inches, after we'd been stuck in the car for hours, as our bladders simultaneously threatened to burst, that we had the first meltdown of the road trip.

The meltdown blew over as soon as we saw the snugly, stinky sea lions (the ones cuddling in the lower left side of the photo are my favourite.)


After the sea lions, we made out way over to Pier 33 to catch our boat out to Alcatraz.

The setting sun and fog combined to give everything an eerie glow as we sailed across the bay.

By the time we reached Alcatraz, it was dark and very spooky.

It felt like we were walking through a movie set. It was difficult to reconcile in my mind that this was a real place where real people lived.

We stood on a cliff as our tour guide told us stories of convicts desperate enough to try to escape Alcatraz by swimming to freedom and we tried to find some relief from the icy wind whipping around us.

Looking out across the dark water at the sparkling lights of San Francisco is something I will never forget.

Friday Night Last Orders At The Pub

Friday we awoke from our steak coma bright and early so we would make it to Magic Mountain when the gates opened. Something you should know about me: I'm not a huge fan of roller coasters. Something you should know about the three other road trippers: they are roller coaster junkies.

this photo makes me clenchy (though I did manage to ride this coaster)

I was determined to keep up with the junkies so I spent pretty much all of Friday in a state of fear/hysteria/shock/exhilaration. Roller coasters are fun, I'll admit it. The Magic Mountain roller coasters? Are over the top.

Example A:
The Goliath. Hits speeds of 85 mph, 255 feet tall, 61-degree drop, zero-gravity floating hills and drops. A twenty-five storey building would fit under the rise of Goliath.

I rode it twice

The park was not busy at all which meant that we didn't wait for long to ride each coaster. All day long, coaster after coaster after coaster. Which resulted in this:

Shortly after this photo was taken, I puked my guts out. Fun times. I then ate a churro and a frozen lemonade and went on more roller coasters (I was trying to keep up with my hardcore roller coaster junkie husband.)

We stayed at the park for ten hours. Ten hours! I was jelly by the end of the night.

When I Call They Better See Me On Your Video Screen

A while back (I want to say last week but that might be inaccurate. I'd look it up but I'm lazy and tired) Ben offered to share his wisdom on any topic with his blog readers. Ben is pretty damn hilarious, so of course I took him up on it.

My question:

I like one of my dogs much more than I like the other dog. Does this make me a bad person? If I ever choose to procreate, should I stick to having one kid to prevent this situation from happening with my hypothetical future children? If I do have more than one child, and I do like one better than the other, is that really so bad? Won't it motivate the other kid to try harder to win my love? Also, should I stop comparing my dogs to kids? When friends and family members tell me boring stories about their boring babies and I come back at them with an awesome story about my hilarious dogs, they give me dirty looks. Who is the asshole in this situation? I'm pretty sure it's them because seriously, who cares if your month old baby is sleeping through the night? My puppy has a mohawk! Fabulous hair trumps sleeping patterns any day, right?

His response:



Hilarious, yes?

Check out Ben's blog later for a list of all of his awesomeness that is floating around today.

Insisting That The World Keep Turning Our Way And Our Way Is On The Road Again

After five amazing days on the road, we stumbled into bed (our own bed! in our own home! with all of our stuff!) at 3am this morning. I was up four short hours later to go to work. Needless to say, my brain is fuzzy. The road trip was amazing, peeps, and I hope to be able to recap just how awesome it was. That recap will not be today. Today I will drink a lot of coffee and dream of my pyjamas. And puppies! We pick the puppies up tonight and I'm more than a little excited. I missed my stinky pups more than I thought I would (while watching the sea lions at Pier 39, I got a little misty-eyed. And tried to convince Shawn that we should bring one home for the pups to cuddle. He vetoed.)

An Old Piece Of Bacon Never Eaten By Elvis

The mornings have been dark lately, making the blinds on our windows unnecessary. Unnecessary, that is, until a random sunny October day filled our bedroom with sunshine at 8am. What does one do when awake at such an early hour on a Sunday? Brunch. Nothing cures a painfully early awakening like all-you-can eat bacon and hot chocolate.

Shawn wanted to ride his bike so I followed in the car and it was ... okay (apart from one road-ragey incident where a massive pick-up truck cut me off and proceeded to tailgate my husband, which made my heart skip a little.)

So here I am, waffling back and forth between hating the idea of Shawn on the motorcycle and being okay with the situation. Yes, watching him ride on the highway with nothing between him and the passing cars but a jacket made my head melt a little. But seeing how happy it made him (his eyes practically fucking twinkled when he took his helmet off) made me feel a bit guilty for wanting him to give it up. I am reserving the right to fret but have decided to make more of an effort to be less shrill about the motorcycle. So much so that I took the bike out for a spin.

What? Don't you ride your motorcycle in a sundress and ballet flats?

Right, so I didn't actually ride the bike; I just sat on it. I'm not sure that I'll ever ride the bike, though I'm not ruling it out. This is progress. Just give me, oh, five years and maybe I'll be ready to put the helmet on.

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Vancouver bloggers: Tomorrow at 8pm, Kristin from better now and Kate from sweetsalty (two ladies who make my stomach churn with their awesomeness) are having a shindig at Steamworks (Gastown location.) I'm going to be there; come say hello and put me out of my socially awkward misery!

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In other bloggy news, Amanda could use some votes to win a kitchen update and Jane has some happy news!

If My Team Loses I'll Be Mean All Night If You Tell Me To Relax We'll Get In A Fight

I promise I will stop bitching about Shawn's motorcycle ... soon. I'm sure we'll find our way to a compromise. For now, though, we're stuck in knowing that our own position is completely valid and reasonable, and knowing that each other's position is just as valid and reasonable, and not knowing where to go from there. Thank you for your comments on yesterday's post; it is helpful for me to hear that people can die from boring, everyday-type activities and not just risky activities. I tend to forget that in all my fretting about reckless drivers.

* * * * *

Tonight is the Canucks season opener and words cannot express my excitement. I'll be watching the game at the 2 Parrots (which provides a prime hockey-viewing environment.) Puck drops in 6 hours. Gongshow to promptly follow.

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To round out this post of randomness, I want to know what brand / type of mascara you wear. I am in the market for a new supermarket (read: cheap-ish) mascara and am overwhelmed by all the choices. The last one I tried was Covergirl Lash Blast and I found it very clumpy.