The Greatest Story Ever Told

I’ve been watching Little House on the Prairie this week.  I used to love that show as a child.  I still love it.  I haven’t been able to stop talking about it since I started watching it again; I even asked my mom to buy me season two on dvd for Christmas.

I came across an episode last night (a two parter, actually), that, as a child, inspired me to tell the greatest lie of my life.  So far.

When I was in grade one, the same year that my jerk teacher forgot my birthday, we had a Show and Tell every morning.  Except without the Show, so it was more like a Tell, where we would each stand up in front of the class and Tell everyone what we’d done the night before, and then write about it in our journals, adding a picture if it suited us.  Being that it was grade one French Immersion, barely anyone spoke conversational French, so I can’t imagine how tedious this task would have been for my unfortunate, if jerky, teacher.

I for one, would always say the same thing.  Hier soir, j’ai jouee avec mes poupees Barbies.  Last night, I played with my Barbie dolls.  Yes, the French word for doll is poupee.  There’s an accent somewhere in there, so it’s pronounced poo-pay.

One day, the teacher told us that we were short on time, so only the kids with important stories were to stand up and tell their tales.  So, not wanting to lose my moment in the spotlight, I faked it.  I told the class that my mom had a baby the night before.  And I drew a picture in my journal of my mom, with green hair and a huge stomach, laying on a hospital gurney.

The teacher wrote a note for my mom, something along the lines of “Congratulations, I had no idea you were pregnant, you certainly weren’t showing when I saw you last week at meet-the-teacher night, blah blah blah, I’m a jerk”.

Stupid me, I had no idea what to do with the note.  A smarter child would have ditched it on the way home from school, but I waited until I got to my babysitter’s place, and then threw it in the garbage right in front of said babysitter.  She fished it out, gave it to my mom, I got a spanking and was sent back to school the next day with a note to my teacher that said something like “I’m sorry my child is retarded, she was born out of wedlock, and her father is a bastard, too.  Take that any way you please, it still works”.

My mom and the teacher decided that after talking to teacher about what I’d done, that they would make it my responsibility to tell my classmates the truth about the baby.

So I told them that the baby died the night before.  He died from my mother’s bad milk.  And it is this story line that appears on season one of Little House on the Prairie.

One kid asked if I was sad.  I said “Yeah . . . hey let’s go play on the monkey bars!”

Highest Rating

And then there’s the flip side.

The men who I have adored through the ages.

Like I said, there are many men who have been spared the agony of my critical keyboard, and it’s only fair that these fellows get credit where it’s due.

So for the men who will never be seen in a harsh light, I dedicate this post to you.

I realize that I am a passionate and overly sensitive woman, and I applaud you for stepping up to the plate and not only accepting me for who I am, but enjoying me for these very reasons.

When I spilled my sushi all over the place (hair, scarf, and possibly bag), you politely looked away and pretended it didn’t happen.  When I fell on your marble floor, in a poorly executed attempt at sexiness, you were, once again, courteous beyond your call of duty.  When we were in bed and you told me something sweet and my clumsy response embarrassed you, I felt like a total asshole, and have been trying to come up with a way to tell you something sweet in return.

So this is my something sweet.  I really like you, and I’m sad that you are leaving forever.  Whether or not my reasons for liking you are due to the fact that you are leaving forever (which would tie in really nice to my fear of commitment), is irrelevant.  I like you, I don’t normally like people, and I’m going to like them even less once you’re gone.

And sometimes I daydream about you taking me with you.  Mostly because the daydream involves you telling me that I never need to waitress again, and that all I have to do is keep a clean house and pursue my fashion career, which is an offer that I would never accept in the real world (I am far too independent for that kind of lifestyle, and for some reason the west coast makes me feel like barfing and punching), but sometimes I just want to be taken care of.  I guess that’s a daddy issue.

Dating Hating

I need to get something off my chest.

It’s in regards to my recent behaviour that involves me bitching about the stupid things men do when I date them that causes me to stop dating them, and follow it up with mocking them about the stupid things they did.

The last time this happened, I stopped dating for a year.  I figured that my intolerance to their actions meant that I was not yet ready to date, and that if I gave myself some time, that I would grow to be more accepting of certain quirks and idiosyncrasies.

But I was wrong.  I started dating again this past summer, and as it turns out, I just find most people annoying.  Not every man falls victim to my ire, quite a few are pleasant and remain so even after I stop dating them, but some of them are just so good at acting like jerks that I have to demonize them while simultaneously questioning my own dating ethics.  Maybe I aim too low.  Maybe I should extend the not-having-sex time frame to an eighteen date minimum.  Maybe I should make a list of attributes that are definite deal breakers and not allow myself to stray from this list.

What has changed since my last sabbatical, is that it now takes me more than two dates to come to any concrete conclusion about the man in question.  And while the inconsiderate behaviour has continued to be the foremost reason for my decision to dump certain men, I am happy to announce that those with passive aggressive issues no longer get my attention.

So there is progress.

And here is a new list of things that make me dump you:

Talking about your bowel activities might not be a reason in and of itself, but if you insist on continuing this monologue even after I politely ask you to stop, then I might have to never talk to you again.

When I open a door to let myself through, and you are walking behind me, please don’t shove me out of the way in order to go through that door first.  Unless we’re competing for a prize on the other side, or there’s a monster chasing us, in which case I suppose it’s acceptable to be looking out for number one, but I’d still be more impressed if you chose the path of chivalry instead.  And there was no prize, nor was there a monster, you were just being. . . I don’t even know what you were being.  Words fail me on that one.

The Poor Girl’s Guide to Kicking Ass

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been really broke.

Without going into the details of why I’m so broke (something to do with making less money), I have to admit to a certain Betty Crocker streak.

I have been cooking and baking up a storm.  Soups, chilis, cookies by the bushel, cupcakes, pizza, I am a kitchen queen!!  My soups are the best of the bunch.  I even come up with fantastic names for them.  There was Leftover Fiesta (old vegetables and frozen corn, the corn was the Fiesta part), Cluckenfart Soup (chicken, cabbage and bean), and Paddy’s Lament (cabbage, watery broth, and little else).

As far as cookies go, I made a batch of chocolate chip, followed shortly by a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip.  And both times I forgot that I didn’t have any shortening, so I had to use vegetable oil and applesauce, which obviously made the cookies kinda sucky, but whatever.  Roommate and I still managed to consume almost 100 cookies in a week.

Which brings me to my next achievement.  Hauling out the exercycle, for the first time in years.  It’s cheaper than buying a new wardrobe.  And it ends with me looking hot, so I’m totally there.

Sometimes Isn’t Always

Faith is not something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

I have, over the course of my life, believed in a god introduced to me by my grandmother, not believed in that god, not believed in any god, and not known what to believe.  This is chronologically speaking, of course.

I stopped praying in my twenties, mostly due to my belief in the absence of a higher power.

I guess you could say that I had faith that there wasn’t a higher power.  Because faith is all I’ve ever been going on when it comes to that sort of thing.  I never had any concrete proof of the existence or absence of a god.

That something larger than any of us may or may not exist, and to what extent that being may or may not involve itself in our individual lives is never going to be proven either way, so why should I spend my time thinking about it?  There are far too many tangibles in my life that require a more immediate consideration; work, bills, cat litter.  You know, the important stuff.

But sometimes things happen that make me question both my faith and my unwillingness to consider a higher power.  Sometimes it feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle that I’m never going to win, and it’s only when I realize how inconsiderate I am to this potential higher power, that things start to loosen up for me.  I let go, and then it lets go, too, and everything gets easier for awhile.

I say “for awhile” because life is always changing, and while I think that it’s important to be able to adapt to the concrete changes, it’s also important to be able to adapt to the spiritual changes, too.  Maybe I don’t always have to keep the same belief system.  Hell, even the hardest rock will get worn down by its environment as time passes.

Incidentally, I started praying again, some time in the past year.

And sometimes my prayers get answered, too.

Life’s weird.

Beethoven Sighs With Relief

Sigh.  So I’m a flake, what else is new?

I say one thing and do another.  It comes from my grandmother, who met her husband of 50+ years while attending a corn roast with another young man.  She showed up with Cute Guy #1 and left with Cute Guy #2, aka Grandpa.

And while I may have inherited my grandmother’s love of clever party tricks, that’s not what this post is about.

What my hangover addled brain is trying to convey is that I have now quit the band that I joined back in, uh, whatever month it was that I joined a band.

Usually when I make these rash decisions, there is little thought involved.  This time however, there was plenty of thinking and logic that brought me to this end point.  What it boils down to is that my fashion design skills are stupendous, and should not be upstaged by anything as trivial as a new hobby that will take years to firmly grasp.

That, and I’m too lazy to practice the keyboard.

Anyway, here’s the band that I would have been in, had I never developed any loyalties to my chosen medium:

Name Game

Everyone’s right, I am fantastic.  In your face, Jane.

If Only it Were Thursday . . . Sigh

I’m not normally a superstitious person.  But sometimes a person gets one stuck in their head at an early age, and is helpless to its ridiculous power.

My superstitious habit is that old nail cutting rhyme:

Cut them on Monday, you cut them for health;
cut them on Tuesday, you cut them for wealth;
cut them on Wednesday, you cut them for news;
cut them on Thursday, a new pair of shoes;
cut them on Friday, you cut them for sorrow;
cut them on Saturday, see your true love tomorrow;
cut them on Sunday, the devil will be with you all the week.

Okay, I don’t know why the text is tiny and lavender and I don’t know how to fix it, so let’s just pretend we don’t notice, shall we?

Anyway, ever since I first read that stupid rhyme, I went all weird about when I should cut my nails.  Right now, for instance, I have two raggedy nails, but am waiting until tomorrow to cut them because I don’t want to be sorrowful.

I know it’s stupid, but I still do it.  And I know for a fact that the nail cutting on Saturday is bullshit, because I’ve tried many times and have yet to see my “true love”.  Unless it’s me.  I suppose that works, seeing as how I’ve been the only person I’ve seen consistently on Sundays since I first cut my nails on a Saturday with this poem rattling around in my head.

And the Sunday devil thing used to scare me, too, until I realized that I’m generally devilish by nature, and one extra week of such behaviour isn’t going to send me further into hell, or wherever it is that devilish people go.

Which reminds me of a keychain I used to have.  It said “Good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go everywhere”.  I bought that when I was ten.

I had no idea.