And Her Thoughts Like A Daisy How My Mind Gets Lazy

Oh hey, guess what this isn't. A wedding recap! The wedding was two weeks ago and we have yet to put away our "wedding gear" - a basket of scissors, elastics, safety pins, markers, index cards, extra programs, placecards, etc that has been sitting on our kitchen counter since the day after the wedding. My wedding dress hangs, uncleaned, in the closet while I decide if I have it in me to donate it. A pile of presents sits untouched on my bedroom floor. The wedding was so much work. Work that I, foolishly, thought would be over when the wedding was over. No-one told me about the kitchen that would need to be re-organised to make room for the new kitchen toys we received. There was no warning about non-registry gifts. Gifts without gift receipts or any indication of where they were purchased. Gifts you don't want. Gifts that you feel obligated to keep because they're wedding presents. But what do you do with three glass balls (random, right? They're just solid-glass, different-sized balls. Do I put them in a bowl? In a planter? WHAT DO I DO?) or the hand-painted platter? Thoughtful gifts that someone picked out for us that we don't want. It's not even that we don't want them. We don't have room. We don't have room for the three platter & dip bowl combos that we received. Our home is not large enough that we would ever have a big enough party to justify three platters of food & dip.

I sound like a spoiled brat. I don't mean to be ungrateful, I am just overwhelmed (though being overwhelmed by presents is not something to complain about.) So instead of a wedding recap, I will leave you with pictures of my Stella:

what you can't see in this picture is the plate of pie I'm holding

Stella's grumpy morning face

watching the Olympics with her dad

fussed because her favourite sleeping spot was occupied by presents

"Back off, bitches. Get your own grill."

it's hard work being Stella

There's Rabbit And Piglet And There's Owl, But Most Of All Winnie The Pooh

Last night we went to Shawn's brother's house to check out his new reno (and sit in his backyard and drink beer. Oh suburbia, how I love you and your wide open spaces.) Shawn's brother lives on a main-ish street that has a lot of small cul-de-sacs off it. We were driving past one of these cul-de-sacs when I noticed a bear in one of the gardens. Not a cute little garden gnome-ish type bear, but a huge mutha black bear. So we pull over and watch it amble through the flower beds, wondering what to do. We couldn't just leave - what if someone came out of their house and startled the bear? What if the bear felt threatened? We decided to call 9-1-1.

The 9-1-1 dispatcher put me through to the Police dispatcher who was completely unimpressed with the fact that there was a bear! in someone's garden! send in the troops!

After discerning that I was not in the immediate vicinity of the bear (seriously, if you had a bear breathing down your neck, would you a: call 9-1-1 or b: run the fuck away?) she asked if the bear seemed aggressive (how am I qualified to answer that? Who am I to determine how the bear is feeling? I just found the bear, I didn't ask how it's doing) or if anyone was chasing the bear (I know, right? Chasing the bear. Who would do that? Moose tits, that's who!) I told her that no, the bear was happily munching away on something in the garden and no-one was chasing it. She then gives me the phone number for the conservation office and tells me that unless the bear is harming a person or is being harmed by a person, the police don't do anything. Which just seems wrong. I mean, it's a BEAR. In a GARDEN. Down the street from an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. But it's not a police matter because there has been no blood shed. Blows my mind.

So I call the conservation office. The man I spoke to told me that all they do is record the date, time and neighbourhood information for their statistics, unless the bear is harming a person. In which case I should call the police.

It's a tough one - on one hand I feel like when you build houses on a mountain, in wooded areas, you deserve to have bears eating your petunias. On the other hand, I feel like there needs to be some sort of agency to deal with incidents like this. It's not safe to have bears in neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods aren't going to disappear (and hopefully neither will the bears) so someone needs to be able to protect the people in the neighbourhoods. Just last week in Coquitlam there was a woman gardening and she got mauled by a black bear. It would be interesting to know if anyone had called the police with any bear sightings in her neighbourhood that day.

I Am Not Your Expectations No No I Am Not My Hair

Okay so I know that I should be posting a wedding recap (a real one, with actual sentences and no bullet points) but there are bigger things afoot, my friends. Now that the wedding is over, I can finally .....

CUT MY HAIR!!

To say that I am excited would be putting it mildly. I am peeing my pants excited.

I emailed Whoorl (do you read her Hair Thursday? You should!) begging to jump the line but no, there are no budgies allowed. She's got enough people lined up for what, like 30 years of Hair Thursday? so here's where you come in. I need you to tell me how to cut my hair. I am useless at hair. These pictures were taken after a trip to my stylist, so this is the best my hair ever looks (and seriously - I can never get it to look like this.) (Please excuse the lack of makeup and weird bandages - these pictures were taken the day after the bachelorette / GHB-fest.)

So. My hair.

My hair is in between straight and wavy. The individual strands are baby fine but I have a tonne of it. My hair is chemically processed and on the dry side of normal.

I want to keep colouring it the same way (which, if you're interested is all-over foils of 1 dark brown and 2 blondes lighter than my natural colour.)

I don't have bangs because I have an obnoxious twisty hair thing happening right in the middle of my forehead. If I have bangs, they require a tonne of work. I am lazy.

I haven't had my hair shorter than shoulder-length for at least five years (it's probably longer than five years but I can't be arsed to figure it out.) I don't want a buzz cut and to be honest, I probably can't handle anything shorter than chin-length, but I am definitely ready for a change.

If I don't make my hair super-straight, I do this:

Both require about 20 minutes of work though, so most days I do this:

(I could not find any pictures of myself with my hair up. I don't know what's wrong with the lighting in this picture but it will have to do because it is seriously the only photo of me wearing a ponytail. I'm so vain.)

The ponytail is my go-to hair. I would like this to change. I want hair that doesn't require a lot of fuss in order to wear it down.

So. Tell me what to do. Send pictures. Don't make me do this on my own or else I will end up in the stylist chair getting 1/2" trimmed off the ends.

I Need No Protection From My Bullet-proof Plan

I am such a slacker. The wedding was a week ago and I had Big! Plans! for an awesome recap and instead I've been lazy. Not only have I not been blogging, I haven't been reading blogs either. Which means that my google reader yells at me every time I open it. So I immediately close it and pretend that it doesn't exist. I am getting closer to hitting the magic "mark everything as read" button. Sorry.

So instead of the Spectacular Wedding Recap, you will get bullet points. You will get bullet points and you will like it, buster. There are starving kids in Africa who would loooove to get bullet points and all you do is sit there and complain about how bullet points are boring and taste yucky. Ingrate.

(If any of these bullet points sound intriguing, you can request a real blog post about it and maybe one day I'll elaborate. Or maybe I'll leave you hanging. That's how I roll.)

Things I learned last week:

- making 30 dozen chocolate chip cookies 2 days before your wedding is ridiculous. Even when your big sister helps you.

- when you book a 60 minute massage, more than just your back will be massaged. Which means that you should probably shave your legs unless you want to feel like a gorilla.

- Shawn does not belong in a spa.

- some people cannot be trusted to show up on time. Even when you've told them exactly what time they need to be at your house for the make-up lady you've booked (and are footing the bill for.) In the future, whenever you need those tardy individuals to be somewhere on time, lie about the start-time to create a buffer. If this circumstance is any indication, the buffer should be at least 40 minutes.

- going to your grandma's retirement community before the ceremony to take some pictures is a sweet idea. It's also an f-ing time sucker, which will make you late for everything else. The pictures though, will make it worth it.

left to right: Turtle, Grandma, Westy, moi, Mom, Dad, Bow

Grandma's body may be twisted but she can out-snark anyone

- taking wedding photos in Stanley Park on a sunny holiday Monday is pretty much the worst idea ever. Especially when you have 3 cars of people you have to co-ordinate and find parking for.

- Angella is funny and nice and not scary at all. Also? She can drive a manual car when everyone else is wearing either a giant dress or high heels.

- eating a chocolate chip cookie right before the ceremony = bad idea.

- Tide To Go pens will remove melted chocolate from your wedding dress. Seriously.

- I don't care what anyone says - corn is classy.

- Jalapeno poppers are now a requirement of my life. I would like to eat them every day, please.

- Doing tequila shots at your wedding may seem like a fun thing to do but really? It's a stupid thing to do. Slurring your thank you speech is not classy.

Ok that's it. That's all I've got. I have a tonne of photos to post (and I should get Angella's photos this week so there will be even more.) Right now I am going to go watch the Olympics and die of this stupid summer cold I managed to catch.

We Can Get Married And Live In Our World

Remember when I came back from Mexico and I was all "I'm so tiiiiired. I can't post because my head is sleeeepy"? Yeah, so multiple that by ten and you've got where I'm at right now. The wedding was amazing. Everything went so well. I had so much fun. And now? Brain = melted. I am exhausted. I am on such an adrenaline crash. Tomorrow we are headed off to Nelson for a few days. When I get back? SO MUCH POSTING WILL BE DONE! I will leave you with a few teasers:

and then I said, "you taste like beer"

Dahlias! Not the dahlias I ordered, but at least they weren't mums. I have no idea what the berry things are, or why they're in my flowers. But you know what? Totally didn't matter.

The shoes that were "so comfortable"? NOT SO COMFORTABLE! I ditched them halfway through the night and wore the pretty purple flats.

I haven't seen Angella's photos yet - these were all taken by my cousin. I am ridiculously excited to see the photos she took. Especially the ones that involved motorcycle cops. Yes, I did sit on a police motorcycle and yes, I will be posting those photos as soon as possible.

PS - Angella? Totally rocks. Elaboration to come at some point.

I'd Like To Make A Quick Toast

Mmmmmmmm kay? We've been in our new house for a month, maybe he's toasting that. Or maybe, he's just welcoming my cousin who had just arrived for a visit. Maybe he's toasting the new puppy who has been with us for two weeks? I had no idea but my Dad is very good at making toasts so I was looking forward to it. His toast for my graduation last fall actually provided a new name and direction for my blog, No Ordinary Rollercoaster.

So there we sat. The newf (my nontraditional significant other), my parents and brother, and our a few of our favourite relatives. I was mid-chew of a veggie burger, ketchup threatening to drool down the side of my face when he dropped this bomb:

"Today marks an entire year that Ben and the newf have been living together..."

Super. Who cares?

"...making them legally and officially...common-law married."

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaa now. The newf and I exchanged stunned looks. While we have talked about the prospects of having a big gay marriage someday and we're both very committed (a mortgage and two puppies will do that to the best of us) - you need to prepare a guy for the: "Guess what? YOU'RE MARRIED!" toast. At least with a wedding, there's so much build-up that by the time you get there, you're so sick of hearing about it that's it's more like, FINE. Just do the damn thing already! But common-law? That sneaks up on you. Oh - and it doesn't come with an open bar.

We went on with the evening with drinks all round but it wasn't until after the relatives left that I realized that the newf was drunk. This is generally a bad scene since he gets rude-funny when drinking. When there's no one else around? Yeah, it's basically just me and my own crowd of hecklers all in one person. But not this night...

"Let's have a first dance...like at a wedding..."

"Oh dear Jesus..."

"C'mooooooon..."

"You're drunk."

"I will be on our wedding night too so you better get over that."

"..."

"Yay! I'll get a song ready! How about I Hope You Dance? High-five for marriage!"

I chugged my beer in about three seconds flat to try to even the playing field and returned to the kitchen - I mean - our romantic dancefloor. I waited for "the song I'm going to sing to you at our real wedding". Please note: the newf is both tone-deaf and not tied down by things like rhythm, pace or lyrics. I knew it'd be better to just give him a dance and be done with it so I could go to bed at a decent hour.

The newf flashes a mischievous grin and presses play.

The first song? Disturbia, followed by I'm Too Sexy, The Naughty Song, Larger Than Life, and a series of random club bangers for just the two of us, drunk by ourselves, dancing in our kitchen on a Thursday night.

Yeah...I can be married to that.

Overthink My Fate Grasping A Pastel Jumper

Hi Readers of Hillary!

I’m OT from The Art of Over-Thinking. I consider Hillary to be one of my best blogging buddies so I’m thrilled to do a guest post for her while she’s out getting nuptialized and such.

I think I’m sort of the American version of Hillary. We have way too much in common, boarding on Twilight Zone-ish eeriness. One day we will meet in person (but we won’t “SQUEE!” because we’d have to mock ourselves if we did that). We’ll share our sarcastic personalities and become a force to be reckoned with at BlogHer ’09. I’ve given her strict orders to start looking frumpy so I don’t have to be the short, less-attractive one the entire time. And I’m bring my maple leaf hat (courtesy of Hills) because, duh.

Now for a bit of a rant. Because it’s what I do.

“And then I decided that summer is a bunch of crap…”

The Over-Thinker is pretty much over summer. And Fidgit is in the window.

Since leaving school a gajillion years ago, joining the year-round workforce, I've discovered that the idea of summer is no longer:

"Vacation-Relaxation-Time to Read & Write-Time to do some hardcore sleeping-in"

.....but moreover,

"June-August means nothing except for a rabidly crazy time period in the fiscal year known as some "quarter" so shoot me, shoot me, Ooo look! Sun!!, shoot me."

Each year, as June approaches, I start chasing the perfect summer---do any of you also do this? When May rolls around, I start to make my usual summer goals. These lofty goals usually involve leaving work-stuff at work, spending the weekend visiting with friends and family, going to baseball games, swimming, throwing cocktail parties and cooking buttloads (MMmm) of really good summery food. What ends up happening is usually some polar-opposite version of my goals and I end up all pissed and disgruntled, drinking rotten cooking wine while listening to the double-decibel roar of our air conditioner. AHHHhhhh summer....mine pretty much mimics one of those Country-Time Lemonade commercials. Except without all the happiness, outdoor activities and sunshine and with a higher intake of boxed-wine.

This "chasing-summer" thing is nothing new to me. Each June, I can remember my teenage self plotting a triumphant return to school in the fall because I'd envisioned a summer of working on a dark tan, losing ten pounds, going on an envious vacation and spending my baby-sitting moolah on totally necessary cosmetic purchases recommend by Seventeen magazine. Ya know, I was such a deep teenager. Nothing superficial at all. *gag*

I hate that it's August 2nd and I've sort of blown this summer, too. I suppose I could get a jump-start on plotting the disappointment that will be Summer '09. Have you all had a good summer? Any summeriness to share? Maybe I can just live vicariously through your days of sunshine and Country-Time lemonade :)