i guess we don't get any prettier

i was in a hospital the other day, just hangin out waiting. people probably do more waiting than getting cured in hospitals. and, because i like being in with what everyone else is doing, i was waiting.

two official looking men came around the corner, wearing white coats and those black hospital shoes that doctors wear. they were looking worried, and discussing private things in low, grim voices.

unfortunately, i was the only other person there, and the sound of their soft-soled hospital shoes on the tile didn't quite drown out the sound of their voices.

"she's not going to get better," stated the shorter of the two men, the one wearing thick, dark-rimmed glasses.

his friend nodded, his mouth a straight, morose line just below his just-as-depressing mustache.

i tried not to look like i was listening, all the while wondering whose dire medical condition these men were discussing. she's not going to get better. how sad.

my hug instinct kicked in [when i hear something sad, i get this overwhelming urge to hug someone. most preferably the person who is sad, but if they're not available, i'll hug someone else. i'm a girl, it's what we do], but there was no one to hug except these two middle aged men, so i just sat there like a bump on a log, feeling sorry for Sick Mystery Woman.

there was a thick silence in the room. then, the man with the glasses spoke again:

"she...she just keeps falling on the chart... as she's gotten older; i'm trying not to notice, but..."

"mmhm," interjected man #2.

"and i'm not saying she's not attractive anymore at all, but--"

"i know what you mean."

"--yeah. just not gettin any prettier."

i love you-gurt

today, i came home from work to find that my bathroom door was missing.

it was a good bathroom door too; it said "i love you-gurt" on the back in bright yellow paint.
sigh.
anyways.
this picture is for jen glen. she knows why. the rest of you are all curious and stuff, and that's ok. curiosity is great--curiosity killed the cat!
[i hate cats.]
[cute cuddly kitten calendars are ok]
[my mom hates cat too. when i was little i had 3 kittens named "tiger" "snowflake" and "blackie" and mom called them all "speedbump".]

memo for showgoers

why do we call them mosh pits still?

answer: because of the college freshmen who didn't get the memo that the cool kids don't jump around at shows anymore; they don't windmill kick, they don't body slam, they cross their arms, they look at the band in deep concentration, they appreciate the music. they may let out a yelp of excitement, or move along to the music a little, to show their appreciation. but they do not annihilate the rest of the audience in doing so.

so this is me, memo-ing you all. you are now in the know. you are now without excuse.

i went to a show the other night.

i think i've seen this band like 7 or 8 times, but i just keep on going back for more. [[i think bands like this one should have punch cards like the ones you can get at tcby or cd plus [where, when you buy an item, you get a hole punched in your card and when you've bought 6 or whatever, you get something for free]. i'd get free concerts all over the place.]]

anyways.

the point is not that.

the point is that there was this girl, dressed in her brand new band tee shirt she'd just picked up right before the show, flailing her limbs and swinging her head around like a lethal bowling ball. the point is that there was this guy in skinny jeans and a deep vee tee shirt, swaying wildly to the music, knocking down a row of people on either side of him with each drastic dip of his body. the point is that i stood behind a young oblivious blonde chick who was constantly trying to feed her bushy blonde ponytail to me, and couple of college kids who pumped their arms in the air and jumped up and down, during a slow song, because they obviously were not even at the same show i was at, and all they'd really come to do was pump their arms in the air and jump up and down, and make googly eyes at the blonde girl, who'd come to pump her arms in the air and jump up and down. when a flying fist grazed my nose, i'd finally had enough. i took a swing, with my wrecking ball head, and cracked the guy full in the face.

ok, i didn't. i just stared like a deer in headlights at the retreating fist.

but anyways.

the point is that i am a lame old lady who actually goes to shows to appreciate the music, not to pump my arms in the air and jump up and down. and i wish everyone was lame like me.

reflections--but not mirror ones, though

when i lived in the mountains, me & some friends took the old work truck, seatbelt-less, windshield-less and brake-less and drove through the forest as fast as we could, ramming into trees and plummeting down steep drops, protected only by goggles, hockey pads, and climbing helmets [but there weren't enough climbing helmets, so darcy had to wear a welding helmet]. we took an air mattress, tied some ropes around it, and took it down the rapids, as expert rafters looked on in disgust and concern but mostly disgust from their fancy canoes. i explored caves, went cliff jumping, climbed and military repelled a flimsy 50 foot wall covered in chicken wire in the middle of the night, sat on the edge of a waterfall, rode a bike at full speed down a mountain and crashed face first into a tree stump.
i got a black eye.
and a black most of me.

i was just thinking about all that, and realized something terrible about myself:
i have since turned into a boring old fart with a bad hair-cut.
how did that happen?

caffeine poetry

i 

drank

waytoomuch 

coffee today.

...

!

i have orange pop 

instead of blood

coursing through my veins

and rubber bands 

instead of bones

i'm afraid one will 

SNAP!

and start a chain reaction.

i will lay on the floor, a limp, lifeless, rag doll.

barclay will have to scoop me off the floor with a spatula

and pour me into bed.

and maybe tomorrow, i will feel better.

mr & mrs krause go out on the town

my husband likes to take me on a very very expensive date at least once a week. it's called grocery shopping and i like it even better than going to a movie or for coffee. 

we spend countless minutes in the cereal aisle, comparing prices and nutritional information, kelloggs and post, nesquick and reese puffs. we pause in the refrigerated section, so i can pick from all the tantalizing flavors of creamers to make drinking coffee bearable (yesterday i discovered white chocolate macadamia nut creamer. one word, two syllables: WOO-OOOW). we stand in front of the ice cream freezers for a while, pick up a few things, put them all back because i know if we buy them, i'll eat them all by tomorrow without a second thought. 

by the time we get to the produce aisle, we're enjoying ourselves thoroughly; laughing about funny people we encounter, discussing music, picking through pomegranates and pineapples and zucchini. 

and the whole time i'm thinking about photography and how a good photographer can take a picture of anything, a park bench, a bicycle, a jar of pennies, and make it look special.

and how if you look at the whole of life like that, "mundane" things, grocery shopping, yard work, peeling carrots, can be special too. 

oh, ps, mom, gramma, auntie elaine: i didn't actually dye my hair black. it was a wig.

so best

someone had a very, very good idea. 

http://notsonoisy.com/gameover/index.html

armpit chocolate

i know this lady, who is my mom, who vacuums the house with a mini chocolate bar under her armpit [calm down, she leaves it in the wrapper]. she tucks it under there and just lets it melt as she works away. she says that the best reward after house work is a chocolate bar so melted that you have to lick the chocolate out of the wrapper.
true that.
anyways, it inspired today's work game. I came into some chocolate recently; another lady, who is not my mom, gave it to me. i put my little fire hazard space heater under my desk, and the chocolate bars on top of my desk, and let the hot, hot heat do it's melting thing. then i passed it out to my coworkers and jen, and we stuck the melted, gooey chocolate chunks to the roofs of our mouths and discussed molecular bonding and said such geek-associated phrases as, "will you go to the science fair with me?" and "my science fair project won first place."
note to self: try this game again later with peanut butter.

the krause hair chronicles

i looked at the time on my cell phone.

"wow. 6:15. we're actually going to be early this time. i'm impressed."

barclay grinned. 

"yup. and i even had time to shave myself a sweet civil war moustache."

he had indeed, despite much protest from me, his mustaphobic wife.

so i showed him.

 i dyed my hair black.

HEY MUD PUDDLE!

this morning, when i got to work, i was in an unreasonably good mood.
it was drab and grey outside, cold inside, i was tired, hungry, late for work, and felt self-concious about the way my pants made my legs look, but other than that, i was seriously in this really good mood.
i smiled at the man on the roof, and a fly-away hair flew into my face. when i moved to brush it away, i noticed that my sleeve was damp.
and brown.
and absolutely covered in mud.
i held up my mitt.
mud, all over it.
i examined my arm, my back.
mud EVERYWHERE.
my hair, my FACE...
yup.
and i had absolutely no explanation.
or so i thought.
but upon further reflection, i realized that i had heard of this happening to someone before me.
ever heard of Robert Munsch? ever heard of that book, Mud Puddle?
yeah. (if you haven't, you really should. click here and robert munsch himself will read it to you:
http://www.robertmunsch.com/playstory.cfm?bookid=29. it's a marvelous piece of literature, and also a great comfort to those of us who have experienced the pain of being randomly and mysteriously jumped on by a mud puddle.)
scoffers, what other explanation is there?

what we do

the other day barclay and i were walking down the street, because that is what we do; it's good for your heart.

we were talking about something spectacular, i'm sure, because that is what we do; anything short of spectacular is not worth a discussion.

a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties suddenly appeared at barclay's side. 

he had a cardboard sign hung around his neck which read, and i quote (a little inaccurately, due to the sign's potty mouth), "kick my butt for a dollar".

this must be a new form of busking. i suppose one knows when one has hit rock bottom, when one has no talent to give, no wares to sell, and can only offer themselves as a human punching bag for a dollar a bop. i suppose, though, that this would be a better alternative than working at staples. (zing)

we smiled at him politely, because that is what we do; we're a polite couple.

he looked barclay up and down, grinned.

"Hey there cupcake. come 'ere. gimme a buck and i'll let you pummel me. bet you could."

we smiled at him politely, and walked on.

because that is what we do. 

the you're a dragons go to a show. part number two

so i was you-tubing it up, in some spare time i found under the couch, and i found a video with me in it. on youtube. without my permission.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaqomvj6OAE

9.26.9

a chicken with a fairly fantastic moustache

so today i went grocery shopping, and saw the best person. 

i will describe him for you:

short, bushy white hair, early 60's, bushiest, BUSHIEST white mustache you've ever seen, gelled on the ends so they stick out from his face in little points, big black horn-rimmed glasses, suspenders, AND a nice red bow-tie. 

and he wasn't joking. 

he was standing in front of the frozen foods freezer, mopping up some water that had collected there, and i stepped behind him to grab my frozen raspberries. 

because the fact is, i can't eat cereal without them.

he looked up and gave me a very nice grin. "heyyyyy leetle girl!" 

i smiled at him. he was so creepy, in this really endearing way. i never thought that was possible until today.

i started rifling through the frozen raspberries, comparing prices and brands,

because the fact is, i don't like to pay too much for anything (i bought a really cute pair of brand new sandals today on sale for $1.10).

anyways, i was in the raspberries when i heard the noise. 

i paused. 

was that...a chicken? 

i turned.

it was him, standing directly behind me, happily "BAWK"ing at the top of his lungs. 

not to anyone, or at anyone, or for any apparent reason at all.

i appreciated that. 

but moved on quite quickly.

here i am, entertain me

ever heard of the game "quelf"? it's a wierd little board game with cards with things you have to do to advance on the board. pretty standard.

example: "put your forefingers in your ears, your thumbs in your mouth, and your pinky fingers in your nostrils. once everything is in place you must say the following phrase three times, at the top of your voice, 'FEELS GOOD, DON'T IT!?'"

other cards instruct the player to beatbox for five minutes, or to say "i'm a mummy!" and go to the bathroom and wrap their head in toilet paper.

i went through and picked out some of my favorites and strategically placed them at the top of the pile. and every time someone walks past my desk i challenge them to office quelf.
in other words, i have them draw a card, and do whatever the card says, and then i laugh at them i mean we laugh together and they carry on. no one seems to have picked up on the fact that i don't have to do anything except sit here and enjoy hours upon hours of endless entertainment.

one of the pastors had to go into his office and put his shirt on inside out, and it's still inside out, because he was distracted by something Aimee the Intern was doing, which involved a bit of jumping and yelling.

this is the best day ever.

fluff with a fork

the basement is dry.
my pre-worded speech didn't get said, because when he walked in the door all i could say was, "so...wanna see the basement?"
and he looked at my face and read my mind like he always does and calmly asked, "were you doing laundry today?"
and i nodded and he hugged me and trekked downstairs to clean up the rest of the soggy mess i'd made. i don't think he was thrilled about my basement waterpark, as it was exceedingly generous on the "water" side and seriously lacking on the "park" bit, but he's one of those too-good-to-be-true guys who just love and love and love you even when you mess up largely and on a regular basis. he got soggy toes for me.
[he's also one of those guys who gets the man-giggles anytime someone says the word "fluff". you want to make him laugh? read him the instructions on a box of brown minute rice.]

i think we need to learn to laugh at this stuff, otherwise we'll just cry all the time

i'm trying to think of what to say to barclay when he gets home from work today.
"the good news is, you're married to me. and i did the laundry today. and also remember how yesterday i cooked you supper and you reallyreally liked it? and also would you like a back rub? the bad news is i flooded the basement. and also would you like a back rub?"

there's this thing that you're supposed to open before you turn on the washing machine and this hose you're supposed to run through the opening and whatever, and who remembers to do everything all the time anyways right? [i never remember to do anything half of the time.]
i went downstairs and stood in the water for a while, shaking a mental fist at the unknown cause of my soggy toes [not much makes me grumpier than soggy toes] before i realized that i was the cause. i sloshed through the laundry room, spun open the valve, and stood there in the giant toilet that is my basement as the water swirled past me down the drain.
everything's wet.

getting married is like a box of chocolates.

so i got married, and it was good.
in a superbly stellar kind of way.
most of everyone i loved was there.
some of everyone i loved did other things that day, and that's ok. i still love them.
i wore my mom's dress and got married in the same church as her and daddy and walked down the aisle to a rocket summer song i picked out for my wedding in grade 12. and then me & my new husband hit up tcby in swift current.
there's more to it than that. the last couple weeks have been completely, insanely surreal, and i'm not actually sure they happened. i would pinch myself but that might hurt, and i might wake up alone with pinch marks in my arm.
ew.
but when i've sorted everything out, i'll blog it. that's what good bloggers do. i'll post a picture or two. i'll write some stuff. we'll bond.
if anyone out there is still checking this thing after my two whole weeks of absence.
helloooo?

on the verge of speechless

i'm getting married in three days.
i'm getting married in three days.
i'm getting married in three days.

i used to hate reading books about married women because i felt that marriage should be the end of a great love story, not the beginning or even the middle.
well i've changed my mind.

me the make-up artist

i got a black eye at work on friday.
dallas hit me in the face with a ball, so i, the quick thinker that i am, immediately made a big deal about it even though it didn't hurt at all and ran to the bathroom. i came to staff meeting later on with a very bruised and swollen-looking eye and cheek, due to the fact that i just so happen to live out of my car and therefore happened to have my make-up case handy for just such occasions as these. a little eyeliner goes a long way.
he felt pretty bad, i think. i helped him to. i prodded my "swollen" eye, which appeared to be glued shut, moaning, "my wedding...my wedding is in one week..."
ben tried to make me feel better by saying that it was a nice black eye and that he wished he had a black eye like mine. i glared at him spitefully, saying that it was not a nice black eye, that it was going to ruin my wedding pictures.
later that day i washed it off and we all laughed together, happy that my wedding wasn't ruined and that i wasn't really actually that much of a cry-baby.
i love love love pulling people's legs. if i could find some job where someone just paid me to pull legs, literally or figuratively, i'd be there.

showering with all my clothes on

i went through this phase once where every time i ate an apple, i washed it first with dish soap (because i saw a dirty guy digging through the apple pile at the grocery store and i imagined bacteria crawling off his hands and onto an apple and off the apple and onto my tongue and off my tongue down my throat and into my every part of me and making me sick.)
but i stopped doing that because i don't like dish soap, so i stopped liking apples, and i got all unhealthy and probably fat and greasy.
then i went through this phase where i couldn't eat ham, because someone told me that if you pour coke on a piece of ham, stuff will crawl out of it.
but i don't think that's true. so i had my first ham sandwich in months this past weekend.
anyways.
i had two wedding showers this weekend. and they were practically perfect in every way (just like mary poppins). the best part of all of them was my cousin hannah's mad poetry/harmonizing song-singing skillz. you all should have been there for that. maybe i'll get her to do a repeat performance at my wedding...
the most embarrassing part of all of them was that now all the nice ladies of frontier know about the time the acrobats from cirque du soleil invited us to do drugs with them in their hotel room. thank you patricia, for sharing that at my church shower. (but i still love you.)
oh, for the sake of clarification and for you all not thinking i would do something like that, we did go on our sweet and innocent little ways without taking them up on their offer.

tutti frutti, oh rudy

i drove past that band, ac/dc, a couple weeks ago. me in my little purple car, them in their ginormous stretch limosine-bus.
i love famous people.
i wished my saskatoon people were there with me, so we could go make their aquaintance. like the time little richard came to saskatoon: when i found out he was coming, i got all excited. he was one of the first people ever to be inducted into the rock'n'roll hall of fame. he was on full house. he sang a song on my favorite movie ever, the brave little toaster. i told all of my friends that when he came to saskatoon, i was going to meet him.
i remember walking downtown a few weeks later and seeing this limosine parked in front of the bez. and i knew, because i'm really smart. i said to my friends, i said, "THAT is little richard's limosine. let's go say hi."
half of them got all cynical and left, saying, "there's always limos parked there, it's probably for a wedding or some rich guy or just an airport limo and you're nuts," and half of them dubiously took a seat on the curb while i went over to talk to the limo driver. who happened to be nice. she looked like she'd be straight up with me, so i got right to the point.
i asked, "is this little richard's limosine?"
she said no, but my toes were tingling. this limo definately belonged to the man who belted out the song Tutti Frutti from the little am radio in the garage as me and my mom shucked corn years and years ago.
an important life lession: sometimes, if you ask once and you don't get the answer you want, all you really need to do is ask again. but in a different way though. (note: this does not work on mothers)
i said, "cool. that's cool. but if it did happen to be little richard's limosine, you probably wouldn't be allowed to tell me so anyways, would you?"
she smiled. "no."
"thought so...did they say anything about maybe, giving me a signal? like, tugging your ear?"
she smiled again. and tugged her ear lobe. "you know, even though this isn't little richard's limosine, you might be tired and in need of a rest. you might sit on that bench for about 5 minutes and catch your breath."
i grinned. "yeah. i might." i went back to my friends. i got out my camera. i told them, "wait for it...little richard's gonna come out that door..."
and he totally did. i said hi and took his picture, and i have it as proof that the tingly feeling in my toes is always right.

the you're a dragons go to a show

me & rachie (the brunette-head in the picture ((and co-founder of a club i co-founded in college [the "you're a dragon club". it was fierce. pretty much a gang.]))) went to an outdoor noon-hour concert the other day. had to leave halfway through on account of i had to be somewhere else. the music was good though, and i was sad to go. the guy performing was sad we had to go also. he actually stopped playing, and asked why we were leaving. it was so unexpected that i just looked at him blankly and said, "because." and then he asked us to maybe not leave and i just looked at him blankly, and at the audience, and back at him and shrugged, and mumbled, "nice music," and left. i'm not good at thinking on my feet when everyone's looking at me. but we felt pretty cool.

but then i felt uncool, because --don't make fun of me -- i have started listening to a radio program about video games. it's like 3 guys sitting around on the air talking about video games and their graphics and their soundtracks and their plot lines and when they come out.

they aren't funny, i don't really love video games, and it's not quality programming.

and still, i listen. and none of you who read my blog can make fun of me for it, because by reading my blog you're basically doing the same thing.

a boring blogging

where is all the money going?

well, actually, i know where it's all going. down the toilet. well. not down it. into it, though. we bought a toilet and 286 chocolate bars. that adds up. turns out that shoplifting, though not entirely ethical, is a lot cheaper. don't worry though, i'm a stand up kind of girl. we paid for all 286 chocolate bars. and the toilet.

anyways.

we're renovating our house, my barclay and me, and we just finished our first room: The Kitchen. want to see before and after pictures?

Oh, well, sure you can.

Before:

After:

again?

before:

after:

so that is that.

can i microwave an apple and a cat?

I’m one of those people. I was talking about language today at work with some friends, and, as usual, it reminded me of a story. Everything reminds me of a story. That is why I have to have a blog. Preventative medication. So that I don’t interrupt every conversation in life with “oh that reminds me of the time—”
But the point is not that. The story.
When I was a debt collector, I called Americans, and as we all [should] know, sometimes, Americans speak Spanish. Which is nice but as we all [should] know, I’m painfully monolingual. As in, my French is limited to asking if I can go to the bathroom and microwave an apple and a cat (really). (Oh and I can also say, “my name is” and “I love” and “what is it?”). So when I got my first Spanish inbound call, and realized I didn’t know what to do, I turned to the guy beside me [Nick, I think it was] and mouthed, “SPANISH! WHAT DO I DO???” He reached over and scratched these words onto my notepad:
señor, usted tiene rodillas agradables
I stumbled through them and then he pushed a button on my phone that transferred the call. I looked at Nick for affirmation that I’d pronounced the words correctly, and asked what they meant. He explained that I had said, “Sir, I will transfer you to someone who speaks Spanish.” Ok.
I kept my notepad beside me all summer, often using my new Spanish phrase and beginning to feel very good about how Spanish and suave I sounded. Until.
Until one of my Spanish calls got monitored by the gals over at QA (Quality Assurance, for those of you who don’t know the debt collection lingo), and I was informed by my big angry boss, Ricardo, that I’d been telling all my Spanish callers, “Sir, you have nice knees.”

philosophothoughts

pardon a serious entry, but i was thinking about life.
if you think about life too much, about depth perception and colors and sounds and time and space and gravity and on and on, you can drive yourself crazy, but if you think about it too little you miss out on big things.
so i was thinking about life the right amount, and about how it's made up of a lot of "i could never do that"s which eventually always turn into "that wasn't so bad"s.
and how there was a point in time that i didn't exist on earth, and how there will be another point in time in the future where i won't exist on earth again, but life will still go on without me (like words in parenthesis).
and i was thinking about how there's no time in eternity. does that hit you funny?
i was thinking about taste buds and 3d movies and how quickly my feet can tell my brain that my toe hurts. ridiculously fast. faster than my mouth can tell barclay he stepped on it.
and i was thinking about God.
and how smart He must be to keep the world spinning and the seasons changing in order and my fingernails growing, all at the same time.
and i was thinking about how people say so often, "life is short."
we almost got hit by a bus the other day. me & my cousin. it blew past us, honestly (and lyssa can vouch for me) mere inches from our faces. we screamed bloody murder, but we're fine.
life is short.
but not as short as it would have been if i got hit by that bus.

yogurt hippy

there is a little shop on 13th ave called the paper umbrella. today, i visited there and was greeted by a hippy with dredlocks who was eating his dinner off of his little orange mandolin. i browsed, and he finished his food, brushed the crumbs off his instrument, and strummed a few bars. after i felt i'd seen enough, i turned to go. at this, the hippy cried, "wait! don't go..."
i turned.
he held something out to me.
"you need to try this."
i made my skeptical/worried face combo.
he urged me, "no, seriously, it. is. amazing."
i can't remember exactly how you tell for sure that someone is high besides just looking at them and seeing if they look like they're high. but he looked high. that may or may not mean that he was.
i smiled politely; "what is it?"
"YOGURT! seriously. smell it."
he held it up. i awkwardly leaned forward and smelled the tub of yogurt.
it smelled like yogurt.
i said, "it smells..." i couldn't lie to this guy, high or not, "pretty...standard..."
offended, he stated, "it is not. it is amazing. it is better than anything else, EVER."
"ok," i said, "i'll have to try it sometime."
because i'm agreeable. that's why hippies think i'm cool.

priestess in the park

i just saw a middle-aged woman wearing white priestly robes in front of a crowd of people on lawn chairs, blessing pets in the park. the poodle wasn't having any of it. i wonder, if you're a kid with a puppy and you take it to a priestess in the park to get it blessed and then it gets hit by a bus the next day, what that does to you?

in the event that your first impression really is everything i may have to retire from meeting people as i'm getting exceedingly more bad at it

i met this girl yesterday. never seen her before, but she looked nice.
i said hi.
she said hi.
we were off to a good start.
then i said, "my name is suzy."
immediately she answered, "elena."
i was bothered, because
a) how dare she correct me; yes my name is elena, but if i want to be suzy, let me be suzy how about and
b) how did she know my name actually is elena?
i frowned at her in concentration. she offered an apologetic smile.
there was a lot of silence. then i broke it. i break everything.
because i realized i was being an idiot. i realized that she wasn't correcting me at all. i realized:
"your name is elena."
she nodded, really confused.
understandable.
i offered a more-apologetic-than-hers smile. i squeaked out my explanation.
"me too. that's my name too. i'm elena too."
then she was more confused because, hadn't i just said that my name was suzy?
then something else clicked in my head. like 3 weeks back, i'd overheard some friends talking about "elena's boyfriend's spectacular moustache."
i know, there are probably more elenas in the world than me and this other one, but really, there's always a chance. the world is small.
"do you have a boyfriend? with a moustache?"
she nodded.
i don't think i've ever made a worse first impression on someone.

stu the stealer

i did something wrong today. something illegal. but we'll get back to that in a moment. [don't worry, gramma, this story has a happy ending.]
this trying new things thing is great. except, i've had trouble finding new things to try. oh, don't get me wrong--your suggestions were great. but i don't have a kitchen, so i couldn't bake cookies for my boss, and i don't have an iron, so i couldn't iron wrinkles into my clothes, and french fries and ice cream is not something i havn't tried before (sorry, breanne), and wouldn't you know it, jannaya has never done an embarrassing thing in her LIFE! that i know of. you may enlighten us, jannaya, if you feel like it.
but. i did find two new things to try this week: installing laminate flooring, and shoplifting.
the installing laminate flooring thing was nice; i'll put up a picture of it later when it's finished. the shoplifting thing i will try never to do again, because it's illegal.
i stole four spools of purple ribbon from walmart. i picked them up and was carrying them around, on my open palms, clapping them together loudly as i walked through the aisles, completely obnoxiously.
then i started daydreaming [about barclay, obviously]. and, carrying my merchandise in my outstretched hands, making all the racket in the world with it, i strolled past the cashier and out the open doors, hood up, smile on my face.
no one even stopped me.
the moral of the story: if you act like your not doing anything wrong, you can get away with anything. OH, AND: stealing is bad.
but don't worry, i took the ribbon back and paid for it. and the cashier was just tickled pink that i was so honest.
i even donated a dollar to some children's charity, which made her even more tickled pink. but when she gave me the donor card to sign my name on, i was already so flustered that all i could think to write was "STU".

paisley fishbug wars

this morning, as i wandered reluctantly from a sweet dream back into reality to face the day, i became aware of a man's voice, a droning, monotone intonation, going on and on and on, as though unaware of me. i couldn't make out what he was saying, but was alarmed at his presence in my bedroom. i sat straight up, looked around, saw no one.
silence.
then, he spoke again, louder this time, clearer: "police are disturbed by the remains of a mutilated cow found in a field near saskatoon."
what a way to start the day. thank you alarm clock radio.
update on the paisley bugs situation: upon closer inspection, the paisley bugs are fuzzy, and look almost like little fish with lots of legs. i've seen about 20 of them. i've been dreaming about them. when i pull the covers up to my chin at night, my imagination goes wild, and i picture millions of them swarming under the sheets, devouring my legs, slipping under my toenails to make their homes there.
paisley fishbugs seem like the kind of fishbugs that would do that.
pleasant fact: spider blaster destroys paisley fishbugs.
spider blaster is the best.

the Creatures in guzz's basement

i live in the basement of one seventy-something year old lady named guzz. she is my future grandmother-in-law and she is awesome and she cuts up red peppers into a bowl for me so that i have something to snack on every time i walk in the door and we play yahtzee and she calls the dice "dirty dog" whenever they don't do as she asks and she feeds me til i'm excessively full and then she plops a handful (yes, a handful, as in: who needs a serving spoon when you have perfectly good bare hands) of cake on my plate for dessert. you would like her.
in the basement, however, i have recently discovered some kind of Creature. there was that episode with the spider, where i got the Spider Blaster, (remember?) and blasted the spiders. and there was one spider that came back and i blasted him and he kept living because he was a ripped spider, the arnold schwarzenneger of spiders ("I'LL BE BACK", right? yeah), so i crushed him under a huge bottle of expensive salon shampoo and left him there (2 weeks ago; i can't bring myself to look and see if i killed him or if he's just under there waiting for me). but recently i've been discovering these Things everywhere. one jumped out at me this morning from underneath my towel and i screamed and woke guzz up. they look like this, drawn actual size:

i call it the Paisley Bug. its tentacles are probably a bit longer than that, and its teeth a bit bigger.

also, it moves at an incredible rate. it jumps, pretty much straight horizontally, and really fast, and in a confusing pattern, so you can't predict where it will end up. thusly, i can't squish it. also, i don't really want it on the bottom of my shoe.

WHAT IS THIS THING? anybody?

pants-losing

yesterday, i got out of the truck in the sobeys parking lot, and my pants fell down. to my ankles. it would have been a terribly embarrassing moment, except that i'm just cool and calm and collected and i just reached down and pulled them back up and kept walking. i would have turned beet red, except that it didn't even faze me. i even chuckled about it with barclay. i would have been mortified except i was maybe not wearing those pants. i was wearing some other pants. those pants which fell down were the ones i was carrying on my lap. 

but i had nothing to blog about today, and i thought maybe you all were getting bored of me having nothing to blog. and that was almost a good story. i tried. 

well, if you read the first part of that, and are now disappointed that no one actually lost their pants, and you want to see someone, anyone, lose their pants, this'll do ya (don't worry, it's not scandalous):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS6Z2Aq5NFk

something for you to think on

this weekend i went wakeboarding for the first time. AND learned to drive a standard. i am 22. it was time [also, jewelia made me]. and you know what? i only swallowed half the lake and stalled the car once [but not at the same time].
the thing about trying new things is, trying new things is a thing i don't often try.
so i was thinking about maybe trying one new thing/week. good new things though. like for instance not drugs. like for instance getting married.
if you have an idea of something for me to try, let me know and i'll try it. i almost promise [if it's stupid or impossible or will cause me to smell bad, i won't try it].

taylor swift wants me dead

i'm mostly pretty brave. whining is for babies. only sissies feel pain.
but sometimes when i get beat over the head with an automatic door, i'm a wuss. and now i feel whiny.
i was goin into the mall today with shlee, and as i turned to say something to her, i heard a loud, solid, thud. it came from behind me, and in front of me and beside me, and inside me. then my head hurt and my hand hurt and it was bleeding and everybody was staring at me.
it was an automatic door. those aren't supposed to close while you're walking through them.
everyone probably thought i was a klutz, but you know what? automatic doors are not supposed to close while you're walking through them.
somebody is out to get me. probably taylor swift. she's probably getting sick of people telling her that she looks like me.

hey baby, wanna go for a drive?

rats.

really: why don't i carry a camera in my purse? 

cuz i saw--and really, i did see it-- a person on a motorbike the other night, driving beside a person in a car. and they were holding hands, driving ever so slowly together along wascana. 

and you know, it was kind of cute. as well as awfully annoying for those of us driving behind them. and wierd, impractical, and probably dangerous. 

but either way, it would have made a dang good picture, and instead of writing this whole thing, i could've just uploaded that picture. 

whine whine whine.

get rid of excessive arm pit sweating, by reading my blog

i have an idea. one of those ideas. the kind that may or may not be a good idea, and may or may not even work, but which, if it does work, will be a story i can tell to my grandchildren. i'll tell you it later.

oh, but here's something not even a tenth as interesting, and of little relevance to anything: i have this thing on my blog where it shows me what keywords people typed into their google search engine that caused them to stumble upon my website. there was "elena carin" and "suzy blog" and "eakas it walked on my pillow". and there was also "get rid of excessive arm pit sweating" and "bunny with siamese twin".

beach blonde

there are blondes out there that ruin it for the rest of us. i saw one at the beach yesterday. she laid out her beach towel, smiled appreciatively at the clear blue sky, and then noticed the seagulls swooping above our heads. she turned to her boyfriend to point them out, and uttered these words: "OOoooOOOOH, look! Eagles!"

i tried my best to keep my "are you kidding me" face hidden in the folds of my beach towel. 

the special edition downtown chicken

my friend erinn is going on a trip. for a year. just everywhere. so this post is going out to her. it's a story about her grad night, and bruce lee. however, i'm not saying for no one else to read it. you can read it. it's like eavesdropping. and eavesdropping, is fun.
erinn, i don't know if you remember bruce lee. i don't know if you remember your grad night. i was there. and micah, and jeremy. and dustin. (but of course dustin was there.) and we were wandering downtown saskatoon when we saw this white thing on the side of the road. and someone said it looked like a chicken and we all laughed at the thought of a chicken wandering downtown saskatoon by itself in the middle of the night. but, as it turned out, it was a chicken. so we picked it up, and somebody immediately named it bruce lee, and just then the police pulled up and wanted to know what we were doing wandering saskatoon in the middle of the night with a chicken. i don't know why they cared--i mean, you can't really commit violent acts with a chicken. when we told them we'd just found it and picked it up, they told us to throw it off the train bridge, and drove away.
but we didn't, remember? and do you remember why?
that crazy animal rights activist.
she was probably like, 19, and she had way too much make-up on and a fancy little sports car. and she was on a mission to save bruce lee.
she came right up to us and demanded to know what we were doing with the chicken. micah, right away, informed her that we were throwing him off the train bridge. she threw a fit and got out her little pink cell phone and started calling every animal shelter she coud think of. we left her there, almost in tears, trying to find a home for a stray chicken.
i dunno, i didn't care one way or the other. it was a chicken. i eat those.
anyways, erinn, i hope your travels are great. maybe you'll even run into bruce lee--who knows where he ended up?

i am your neighbor; i can hear you. [i got this tin can with a string through]

i like listening. all kinds of listening. listening to you tell me about your day, listening to music, listening in on other peoples' conversations...

oops. did i say that last one out loud?

well yeah. yeah. i like to eavesdrop. not on important things, don't worry. i'm not a snoop [yes i am], i just think overheard information is somehow...funner.

example: go into le chateau, you know--that fancy dress up store. go in there and look at the scarves. this will put you in a good place to be able to hear the cashiers talking amongst themselves. i did that today. for fun. i'll let you in on what i heard:

"like, k. girls. like...you know those shoes?" ("like, k" is only a real sentence in le chateau)

"yuh. why?" ("yuh"= "yeah" but with a snobbish, hearty sigh stuck right in the middle)

"i got them for that wedding..., like, massive BLISTERS!!! i HATE THEM!" (TRAVESTIES!!!)

"NO WAY! they were SO pretty."

"yuh. but i HATE them."

"oh hun" (sympathy)

"yuh. and THEN."

"mm?"

"my sister borrowed them. and. LOST. them. like. ugh. how do you LOSE shoes?"

"yuh! is she buying you new ones?"

"wulllllllll i think she SHOULD. and they better be the same as the ones she lost." (those ones that you HATE?)

"yuh."

for all the hair flips and eye-rolling, i wouldn't have been surprised if some hair extentions came flying over and landed on my head---or if one of them rolled their eyes right out of their sockets.

but then my listening was interupted by an older lady with a loud, nasally voice. she found herself some red shoes and decided to share them with me.
"LOOK AT THESE SHOES. THEY LOOK LIKE DOROTHY'S SHOES. YOU KNOW. LIKE WIZARD OF OZ. EXCEPT HERS WERE HIGH HEELS. NOT THESE ONES. THEY'RE FLAT. BUT NO, I NEVER DID SEE THAT WHOLE MOVIE. PFFT." she smiled knowingly at me, like that movie wasn't cool and she and i both knew it. then she found some earrings. "THESE ARE BIG. THEY'RE SO BIG. DEAR, LOOK HOW BIG THESE EARRINGS ARE."
so i listened to her for a while.
cuz i like listening.

"three little peppers and how they grew" or, "how barclay krause saved my life"

we were driving in his truck, playing the Game. 

oh right, you don't know about the Game yet. it's our game, we invented it. i name two characters or people who have distinct voices, and barclay has to imitate both of them at the same time. (example: i say "jim carrey as the grinch aaaaaaanddd....let's say....elmer fudd." and he somehow manages to sound like jim carrey as the grinch and elmer fudd at the same time. and then i laugh for a half hour and give him another one.)

so i was about to begin round two of the Game, but he cut me off. "SUZY. LOOK AT ME."

so i did. a little concerned. a little flustered. 

he said, "trust me. don't look out your window. just look at me. keep looking at me." 

he drove a little faster, turned a corner, pulled over, hopped out of the truck. before he shut the door behind him he instructed me to keep staring out his window. 

so i did. a little wierded out. a little confused.

then, behind my head, there was a gentle thud. 

barclay got back into the truck then. 

smiled at me. pulled away from the curb. 

suddenly, i just knew what he was up to.

"there was a spider behind my head, wasn't there?"

he nodded. "a big white one. i didn't want you to see it."

and then we went back to our Game.

isn't he the sweetest thing?

residual killing

just to update you all on the spider sitch. (the abbrev.'s for you, hann.), i went to walmart yesterday and picked up some more spider spray (aptly named, "SPIDER BLASTER")[the last can we bought of it lasted exactly 5 minutes. i'm not lying to you. used the whole dang thing in 5 minutes on the rafters in the basement, cuz they were givin me a fright]. i went home and, before crawling into bed, went to town on those spiders. absolutely BLASTED those spiders to certain and absolute death. they are absolutely dead.
oh, then i read the label. "provides residual killing for up to 2 weeks". yes. 2 weeks, spider-free. and what's this..."harmful or fatal if inhaled". oops. so, don't spray my bedroom right before i sleep in it? uhhh....
also, "do not spray on people." oh, ok. cuz i was gonna go upstairs and spray gramma...
---but you know what, if i ever get paralyzed or can't move, i hope someone sprays me with spider blaster. under my armpits and behind my ears. cuz i can't think of a worse feeling than having a spider crawl on you and not being able to jump up and down and scream like a little girl.

the most wonderful thing of the year

i hate spiders. i hate hate hate spiders. i hate them.
hate.
and whenever i tell people that, instead of sympathy i get: "they can't hurt you," and "but they're so small" and "just ignore them".
did i say i hate them because they're big? did i say i hate them because they can hurt me? no. i hate them because there is something in my mind that snaps whenever i see one. it's like a glow stick full of fear, in this inner compartment in my brain, and it breaks open and all the fear pours down into my head and neck and heart and legs.
which is why a recent discovery of mine (actually a recent discovery of ruth's, which she was so kind as to share with me), is the Most Wonderful Thing of the Year.
spider spray. you spray it in your room, in the bathroom, in the basement, on the porch, anywhere. then, the spiders die. and it keeps them AWAY for 2 WEEKS. and then you spray it again. and it smells like lavender. i don't like the smell of lavender much, but i looooove the smell of no spiders.
but this morning i found a spider in my shower. and i'd already used all of my spider spray up (but not in the shower. dang). i threw some shampoo bottles at it but have unfortunate aim. so i skipped the whole showering thing altogether. and i smell terrible.
i'm going to buy all the spider spray that walmart has, and i'm going to douse everything in it; my shower, my desk, my fiance, and my porch. i'm going to be like that old lady i saw in a public bathroom, who carried around a bottle of febreeze just in case she ran into a bad smell.

UNDEROOS EVERYWHERE

i went to the us of a today, with my family, to go shopping.
me & my sister were in k-mart, and we came upon a clearence bin chalk full of underoos. i like those. so we rifled through, laughing at the fact that most if not all of the colorful gitch was big enough to fit three people at the same time, when the bin started falling off the shelf. i tried to push it back on, and the shelf rolled away. so the bin fell into my hands, and i spilled extra-large gramma panties everywhere. then my mom came around the corner to see me on my hands and knees surrounded by the things, trying to clean up my mess. i could have laid down and made a snow angel in them.
there is a funny mental picture for you for today.

crusty moldy stale blog thoughts

i have no internet these days at where i live. i'm in between homes now. i was living at this one place, and working on fixing up another place to move into, and then had to move out of the first place, so i dragged all my stuff over to a third place and am sleeping at a fourth. this is why i can't find my comb.
besides all of that, it makes it hard to blog. i have all of these thoughts bottled up inside me, writing themselves out in my head in the form of blog, and they just stay there and get stale. then, by the time i get to a computer...they're hard as a rock, and crusty too. and you don't want my week-old crusty thoughts.
but i thought i should try anyways. i'll dedicate this useless post to my mathelete friend, karzlie.
[we were in the bathroom at staples the other day and i was fixing my hair and she was in the stall (sorry for sharing this information karz), and all of a sudden i hear, "OOOoooooOOoooOHHHhhh!!! i found TWENTY SIX CENTS!"
i congratulated her, cringing a little at the thought of public-bathroom-floor coins. she came out of the lou grinning and tucking the coins into her wallet. then she proudly proclaimed: "i found a penny, a nickel, AND a dime in there!"

2 am musings about poop and lies

someone told me when i was younger that if you look at a bird while it's flying over your head, it will poop on you every time, because in looking at it, you make it nervous. i realized recently that this is probably not true. but still, every time a bird flies over my head, i can't look at it, for fear i'll get a face-full of poop. today, i tried to look at this seagull flying overhead, but it was like looking into the sun. i just couldn't do it.
and it made me wonder: how many of the things that i was told as a child are actually true, and how many of them were fabricated by my uncles or my parents for a laugh at my expense?
there was that time when i was born and my mom told me my name was suzy, and got everyone else in on it, so that they called me suzy, to the point where i figured my name must be suzy...they even put it on my dental records. and i found out on my first day of kindergarten that my name was REALLY elena. elena carin. elena carin christensen. there is no "suzy" in elena carin christensen. i went home and tearfully told my mom that the teacher wouldn't call me by my name. my mom nervously laughed and said, "suzy...honey...elena is your real name. the teacher is right."
i don't know who i am. and i can't ever be a bird watcher.

rubbernecker

i perused walmart with barclay last night. we found things to make fun of, and then we made fun of them. it's entertainment that can last you for hours if you're good at making fun of things.
don't worry, we're not jerks. we weren't making fun of people, just things. advertising, and lame packaging, and odd products. example: deoderant which advertises that it "DOES 7 THINGS!!!" but doesn't tell you what. i only really want my deoderant to do two things: keep me dry and sweaty-free. if it's going to make my armpits sparkle, or help me pick up men, i don't want it. i can't even think of 3 more things deoderant could possibly do. any ideas?
oh, but i did make fun of one person recently.
he drove into a parking garage wall while watching me watch him drive into the parking garage wall. i think he thought i was checking him out. haha...well no dude you're like 16. i was just watching him drive into a wall. and it was funny.
am i a jerk?

"good luck exploring the infinite abyss!"

21 was a pretty sweet year for me. i got a boyfriend, got a job, quit a job (but kept one, just cuz mothers seem to think you need a job), saw mothermother in concert (twice), ate my first spaghetti squash, learned to drink coffee, climbed a tree, got engaged, and bought a house.

i rung in the first day of 22 standing in the pouring rain with barclay holding his hand and listening to some sweet music. my 1 dollar garage sale umbrella turned out to be more of a sun umbrella than a rain one. i was dry for about two seconds before the rain started pouring through the fabric and down my face, gluing my eyelashes into little triangles and my bangs flat to my forehead.

we got wet, and i decided that music is more fun to listen to in the rain. i felt like that girl in that movie who climbs on top of the dumpster and yells as loud as she can into "the infinite abyss". i didn't have an infinite abyss, but as soon as i got that movie scene in my head, i had to do something about it. so i gave a little yell into barclay's ear.

i lov you even though you don't listen to me when i'm speaking at you

a conversation i had with my dear friend rachel the other day in crystal's bathroom while gettin gussied up for carmie's wedding:

me: rachie, can i borrow your toothpaste?
rachie: oh...sorry, i didn't bring any.
m: (looking at her toothpaste sticking out of her make-up bag) but...i just saw you using it...
r: no, i really didn't bring any. but crystal might have some.
m: (perplexed that rachie won't share her toothpaste with me) yeah, i couldn't find hers--
r: probably in the kitchen.
m: the kitchen? who keeps their toothpaste in the kitchen?
r: um, everybody.
m: toothpaste? in the kitchen?
r: yes. where else???
m: i keep mine in the bathroom.
r: what for?

pause.

r: wait. toothpaste?
m: yes. toothpaste.
r: oh. i thought you said toothpicks.

a glass can only spill what it contains

some people are too grumpy to be let out in public. you know how people say, "i did NOT want to get out of bed this morning"? i think that should be an option. then, only the people who DID want to get out of bed this morning would be grocery shopping at the same time as me, and none of us would have to put up with people like mr grumpy-pants* and mrs two-year-old-face*. so i'm standing in line at the superstore, and a self check-out station opens up. i'm next in line, so i take it. just then, another station opens up. this lady comes out of nowhere and, obviously not noticing the line-up, heads for it. that's ok, she didn't know. but there's this man and this woman behind me, and they know a budger when they see one. and they are NOT happy. this man and this woman, both probably in their 40's or 50's, know how to handle situations such as these. they know injustice when they see it. they storm up to the superstore sales associate nearest the budging lady and both begin yelling. at the same time. the man says, "we've been BUDGED on! this WOMAN! that's not FAIR!" and the woman backs him up with, "WHAT is this?! does she not see THERE. IS. A. LINE??? and that WE were in it? she just GOT here!" the poor bewildered lady, who most definately budged, albeit unknowingly, spins around. her face is flaming red and she looks like she's going to cry. she fumbles with her groceries, trying as fast as she can to get out of the path of the hurricane that is two full-grown, middle-aged babies. she abandons the idea of self-checkout altogether and scurries off to join the 10 items or less express lane. that's when i notice that i've taken the only station that doesn't accept debit. so i gather up all of my groceries and head to the back of the line.

swedding

i found a thumb tac in my bread the other day. i've been dreaming about the implications of actually ingesting one of those ever since. scratched vocal chords, punctured stomache lining, etc.

it was a good weekend anyways though. i went to a wedding where the groom walked up the aisle to "sexy back" by justin timberlake and the pastor entered to "eye of the tiger". i was almost late for the wedding because me and janet got stuck at the thrift store waiting for a nice old volunteer lady to figure out how to work the cash register (i got a nice new dress for 3 dollars!). we ran as fast as we could, skirts flying, janet barefoot, carrying her heels, and arrived at the wedding red faced, disheveled, and drenched in sweat. and 3 minutes early. i gasped for breath during the entire processional, patting my frizzy hair and wiping my sweaty brow. but, boy howdy, we made it.

that night, after the completely stellar wedding, in which carmie made a picture perfect bride, we went to corydon in winnepeg to get some gelatti. spied a large group of hooligans in white t-shirts far down the street and pointed them out to my friends. much too loudly, as per usual, i said something like, "oh look, a group of ruffians. let's fight them" (but i'm peaceful and was only joking). unfortunately, right in front of us there was a biker gang all dressed in black leather hanging out on their bikes, who all heard my statement and thought it was directed at them. they didn't kill us though. i think they were even amused at me, the stupid little blonde girl who obviously didn't know how to conduct herself on the streets of winnepeg after dark. i felt that they very well could have picked me up by my head and thrown me over the nearest building, shot-putt style.

snooze cruise

last night i was so tired as i was driving home that i began to wonder if i was actually awake or just dreaming that i was driving home. gravity felt a lot more powerful than usual and i felt like i was being pressed down, sinking into my seat, as though it were a big black bottomless marshmellow...and i have to tell you: that is one of my favorite feelings. but not while i'm driving.

it happens though. along with the invention of cruise control came a generation that doesn't technically have to stay awake to operate a vehicle. this one time i was driving home from millar, and i just plum fell asleep. i woke up a bit later, hands folded peacefully on my lap, cruise control set at the nice mediocre speed of 110, plowing through some field parallel to the road. i woke up and realized i'd crossed over a lane of oncoming traffic to get where i was, and furthermore that i was still moving at a tremendous rate for one who was bouncing in and out of ditches, dangerously close to hitting cows and fences and hay bales. and i lay like that for a moment before reality hit and i realized that i should maybe take hold of the wheel and reestablish my place on the road before i ran over a sheep or was spotted by a policeman.
i have a feeling that wouldn't have gone over so well in the city.
MIGHT I ADD that i would think it takes one a tremendous amount of skill and class to sleep and drive and not die.

now i'm going to talk about something you care very little about

i was a debt collector once, did you know that? i did that for four whole months, and i thouroughly enjoyed every minute of it sometimes.
GC Services. that was the place i got my very first death threat. also, my very first marriage proposal. also, my very second and third death threats. also, a few other marriage proposals (debt collection is a rollar coaster of emotions. i recommend it if you're bored, i don't recommend it if you dislike death threats). i talked to a middle aged man who offered to buy me a plane ticket to new york, so i could meet him and see if he was as handsome in person as he sounded on the phone. i told him, "well, according to my records, you're a few hundred thousand in debt, and i don't think you're gonna be able to afford that." i was amazed at people's getting-out-of-talking-to-the-debt-collector tactics. there were those who would just hang up, those who would pick up and say a swear word over and over and over for half an hour, those who would full on scream into the reciever every time you tried to say something. i talked to young men who tried to convert me to various religions, and elderly women who cried and told me they were victims of credit card fraud. the girl beside me was on the job for a full 48 minutes when she called a psychic who lived in delaware, who informed her that he knew the names of all of her immediate family members and was going to kill them all if she didn't remove his debt and stop calling him. one man told me that he was going to track me down and tie me to the ceiling by my fingers and let rats crawl all over me. little did he know, i'm not all that afraid of rats. (spiders. spiders, i am afraid of.)
sometimes, i fell asleep on the job, and left incoherent messages on peoples' answering machines. sometimes i played pick up sticks with the coffee stir straws from the break room with the girl in the cubicle beside me.
i worked with a very scrawny version of Wolverine, an aspiring actor, and a hobo, who lived in his van in the company parking lot. those were the best days of my life. (but that last sentence is just lyrics from a song.)

ch-ch-ch-changes

i made a new banner for my blog. because:

a) i wanted to.

now that it's all snazzy, you maybe will enjoy your visit more. maybe you'll even leave a comment. in this crazy dark room called the "blog", comments are like hugs.

so, if you're smelly or have lice, please don't leave a comment.

that story about the drunk man in my bedroom

tj turned 24 on monday. that's wierd. for those that don't know, tj's my older brother. and he's the best dang older brother anybody ever had. he's got down's syndrome, so i guess he's different, but in this awesomely stellar way. when we were little he was always pulling amazing stunts [like crawling out of his second story bedroom window and hanging there for half an hour, or slamming a pie in my unsuspecting grampa's face], and messing up the house and causing my parents gray hairs.
one time, our neighbor was over for coffee with her little girl. me & my little sister were hangin out with the neighbor and her baby and my mom, when this police car screams into the yard, sirens blaring, and screeches to a stop in front of my dad's shop. we lived a good drive from the nearest police, so to see one out in the middle of nowhere was pretty exciting. i'm not gonna lie, i was thrilled. we watched through the window as the officer and my dad came running up to the house and burst through the door. the officer looked startled to see us sitting calmly at the kitchen table, obviously not in any trauma.
then he explained to us that there was a drunk man somewhere in our house, and that man had just called 911.
news to us. we didn't think we even had any alcohol in the house, let alone enough to get someone drunk. for that matter, we didn't know there was anyone else in the house to get drunk.
the officer asked where all our phones were.
that was back in the day where you only had like, one phone in the kitchen and one in the office. none of this crazy phone in every room business. oh, but i had one in my bedroom, cuz all i ever did (according to my mom) was talk on the phone. [but really, she talked on the phone more than me]
so we checked the office, no one there, and we were in the kitchen, so that left the phone in my bedroom.
a drunk man, in my bedroom! what was a drunk man doing in my bedroom? sleeping? playing with my polly pockets?
but then my mom remembered who else was upstairs: tj. he's not the most articulate guy, so i could see how 911 could make that mistake.
i went up and got him and we asked him if he'd been making phone calls and he said yes and we asked who he called and he said the police and we asked why and he said there were aliens in my bedroom. so really, he was trying to protect me. and that is why tj is the best dang older brother anybody ever had. happy birthday, teej.

gullible people are probably cooler in the end anyway

this girl, this girl who's named carmen, this girl who happens to be the daughter of my boss: she told me her dad (my boss -- keep up now or the story won't make any sense) hates cotton balls.
not just a little.
not just a little bit more.
but like, a lot.
she said, "you know what would be really funny, is if you went to staff meeting with cotton balls in your ears. it would make him squirm. he would hate it. ..he's pretty much OCD about cotton balls. you would drive him up the WALL. it would pretty much be the funniest thing you could do."
so, you know me.
i brought cotton balls, a lot of them, to work and handed them out to all the staff members. then, when it came time for staff meeting, we all paraded into the room with cotton balls in our ears. we were smirking, giggling, red faced and trying to remain calm. pretty much a bunch of bumbling fools. with cotton balls in our ears.
then we waited for that coveted reaction. the squirming. the OCD-ness. something.
nothing.
he looked at us all blankly and asked why we had cotton balls in our ears.
and then we all stopped giggling and looked blankly back at him. then they all looked at me like, "why did you make us put cotton balls in our ears?"
i felt like an idiot.
well played, carmen, well played.

i like to make fun

i just saw a commercial for a product that sort of colors over your grey hairs, but not completely. so you can "look like you have experience, but like you're energetic at the same time!" (their words, not mine)
i wanted to make fun of it, but i'm terribly, terribly alone today.
that's pretty much why i have a blog.
so we have a product that "sort of" colors over your grey hairs. why not just buy and use half a bottle of hair color? or half a can of grey paint... or leave your hair the way it is? or dye it brown? i don't know, did we really need another option?
i'm going to invent a product that helps you to lose weight but not too much weight, so that you can "look festively plump, but like you're a supermodel at the same time".
or how about a product that helps you to get rid of zits, but not ALL your zits, or something that whitens your teeth but leaves them a little bit yellow.
people will buy anything, as long as you sell it right.

something great about getting married

barclay came with me grocery shopping yesterday. we were wandering the cereal aisle together, one of those things we both get a kick out of (which is one of the reasons i like him a lot) when i realized something about what it really means to marry someone. like, beyond getting to live with him, and see him every day, and learning what ticks him off or what makes him happy. beyond learning how to be a good wife, and changing my name. even beyond getting to eat his cooking often (he is a more-stellar-than-me cook). it has this other perk: now, whenever i want to, i can say, "hey barclay, bet you 10 bucks i'm right." and if i'm right, he owes me 10 bucks. but if i'm wrong, it doesn't matter anyways, cuz we're gonna have a joint bank account.
that is cool.

back-tracking

i'm being backwards-stalked. like, stalked in such a way that whoever is stalking me is making me feel like i'm the one doing the stalking. [this happens to me all the time.]
like once, when i lived in swift current, i saw this dude in that pita place on that service road. he saw me. we were both standing in line. i got my pita, and headed for my car. as i was backing up to pull out of the parking lot, i noticed him walking towards my car. strange, i thought. he's coming to talk to me? but no, he couldn't be. i continued to back up. he walked faster. he was indeed coming towards me. i started to pull away, he started to run. he caught up with me and started pounding on my window. flustered, i sat there and stared at him through the window. was he going to mug me? i could drive away. but i was curious. i cracked the window down a bit.
he shouted, "THERE'S A PITA ON YOUR CAR!"
oh.
cuz i'm stupid and i left my pita on the roof of my car and started to drive away.
that's not the backwards-stalking part.
the backwards-stalking part was where i began to see him everywhere. i went to a concert and he was sitting behind me. i went to another concert and he was the lead singer of the opening band. he was at the mall, in church, at the park, at the show; he usually got wherever i saw him before i did, so i felt very guilty of stalkery, but was actually quite innocent. by the end of my time in swift current, i knew exactly who he was and where he was from and who his sister was, and other random trivia regarding him, but had never officially met him. i was a dirty rotten stalker. but not on purpose, though. the last time i saw him, i was at a friend of a friend's house for the first time, and he came out of the bathroom, in a towel. he saw me and we had a brief awkward moment of recognition. he said "you" and i said "yeah" and he looked longingly at the door he'd come out of, wishing he hadn't come of out it and probably wondering what the stalker girl was doing in his living room and why his friend had invited her there. i'm sure everyone else in the room was curious, but when they asked if we knew each other, it was like, "yeah" "no" "well no" well he rescued my pita" "well yeah". and then he was gone. then he quit backwards-stalking me. or i just moved out of swift current.
right now, i'm being backwards-stalked by a tan SUV with a bumper sticker that says, "you belong outside" and a white car with a nikita sticker on the back window and a girl with bleached-blonde hair in the driver's seat. everywhere i go, for the past 8 months or so, i get stuck in traffic behind one of these two vehicles. somehow, they always know where i'm going, and go there right before me.
coincidence? yes, probably.
or else i'm being backwards-stalked.

back alley antics

the time was summer. the year was 2006. the city, saskatoon. i was a stupid little farm girl, new to the big city. i didn't know yet that when someone invites you into a back alley for the best time of your life, that you should politely decline while running, screaming, in the other direction. i know, that sounds like something bad happened. nothing bad happened.
it was only very very wierd.

me and a friend were walking down broadway one day, when we found a homemade flyer printed on a page of letter-sized foolscap. it read:

COME TO THE BACK ALLEY BEHIND BROADWAY FOR THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE!!!

it had a date and a time. i was intrigued. my friend, too, was intrigued. we showed a third friend the poster, and she was sketched, but also intrigued.

we asked some guy friends to come along to protect us if anything went wrong, but they declined. they were not intrigued. they said, "it's gonna be a bunch of teenagers doing drugs. you shouldn't go."

but we were intrigued.

we went.

we waited.

half an hour went by...then another half hour...then a wierd looking lady with a megaphone showed up. then a crowd of people slowly gathered. all kinds of people. hippy people, teenagers who were obviously expecting to be doing drugs, tall, willowy ladies with short boy haircuts. when i say "all kinds of people", i really mean "all kinds of wierd, artsy people." there were no suits, no preppy boys. lots of dredlocks. and me, shlee, and erinn.

the lady didn't really explain what was going on, she just made sure everyone was ready to go and led us down the back alley.

kids, this is a bad idea, to follow a group of hippies down a back alley.

but we did anyways.
this is the first thing we saw:

yes, it's exactly what it looks like. two ladies jumping on a wall. then they danced, for what seemed like forever, in silence.

the hippies loved it. they clapped and applauded and cheered.

ok.

so our tour guide led us on. and we saw this:

this lady had a lot of armpit hair, and a poem to share with us:

"i am a ssssssssssssnake. i am a ssssssssssnake. i am like the sssssssssssssun. i am a flowwwer. i am SHOCKING! i am quiet. " etc etc etc.

oh, the audience was LOVING it.

i didn't, very much.

but the next corner we came to... there was this lady...lying on an air mattress...covered in lettuce.

she wanted to tell us a poem too, but i can't repeat what she said. this is the part where i began to feel like i might be dreaming, or trapped in a poorly made indie film.

i ventured away from the group a bit. the salad lady was creepin me out. a tall lady with boy hair approached me. she said i was beautiful and had nice legs and asked if she could paint me.

i wanted to go home. but then we came to the french chicken lady. oh, i liked the chicken lady. she was telling a story about the war, and about her son, and the sun, and maybe something about love, too, and as she did she took pieces of a chicken costume out of the boxes she was sitting on. she proceeded to put them on, one by one. then she sang "frere jaques" into the megaphone.

ooh, look! there's me! i'm the one with the white tank top, standing in the crowd, just loving the chicken lady.

that's the chicken lady, still singin her song as we walk away.

the night went on

and on

and on.

and finally, i had had enough. i left.

when i got home, my head was full of art. but really wierd art, though. the art, images of chickens and puppets and ballerinas and snakes as quiet as the sun, was sloshing around and building up behind my ears. i felt like i might explode, and out of me would just come a lot of wierd things.

i saw the evening on the cbc tv a few weeks later. critics raved about it.

raved.

kool-aid girl

i met a girl with lime green hair the other day. and a lip ring. she was selling me a movie. i smiled tentatively at her. she didn't notice. as i turned to walk away with my purchase, she gave me the old chin gesture and said, "is that your natural hair color?"
i said, "yes. is that yours?"
cuz i'm stupid, and stuff.

sunday night at the senior's home

lois: oh thank you for coming! i just love music. my husband was a symphony player. have a cookie, dear.
me: well thanks for havin us. and thanks, but i'm full. i just ate--
lois, eyeing ross up and down: is he your boyfriend?
me: o, no, this is my friend, ross.
ross (caught off guard): we're just pals.
lois: oh. well. thank you for coming. i just love music. my husband was a symphony player. have a cookie, dear.
me: oh, no thanks, i just ate--
lois: oh well, would you like a cookie? (sees ross, as if for the first time) is he your husband?
me: no, this is my friend, ross.
ross (turning red): my...my g-girlfriend's name is kara.
irene: oh, hello! you need a cookie... and some coffee....
i start to protest, but then lois sees ross.
lois: oh, well! what a catch! where did you find HIM?
me: um, i met him through my fiance, barclay. they're friends.
lois: oh you have a fiance! how nice! is this him?
ross: NO, no, i'm just her friend. i'm dating kara. kara danyluk. not her.
irene: OH. this, this...this afternoon...well...i was...and then....well...i went...but you know...yes. it was horrible. i was very cold.
lois looks at irene for a long moment, as if understanding that the story made little sense, but not understanding why. her eyes wander and light on ross: who's THIS handsome young man?? is HE your HUSBAND?
me: no, this is my friend, ross.
lois: oh that's wonderful, how long have you two been married?
ross (overly flustered, as if lois is going to go tell kara he is married to another woman): oh, oh no, we're not, ha, we're not maaarried, no, no no...
irene: well, we've enjoyed having you--
lois: oh, and i have as well--
irene: and me, also.
lois: i love music. my husband was a symphony player. have you seen, there are cookies here. OH. who is THIS handsome young man!? does he belong to you?

the conversation carried on very similarily to this for the duration of our coffee time at the senior's home with lois and irene. it was discombobulated and poor ross was apparently very distraught at even the thought of dating me, which is ok. all in all, it was a great night. the ladies thanked us over and over for being there, and asked over and over when we would be back. it's hard to understand being so excited to sit down and have coffee with a perfect stranger, not to mention with two red-faced kids who don't have anything intelligent to say other than, "this isn't my spouse." i guess, sometimes, you just need to know someone is there, and listening to you, and caring about you. even if that's literally the only thing you know. i can see how it would be enough.

world's unhappiest lady goes shopping

i love the grocery store!
it's my tuesday thing to do. i go to the superstore, buy something good smelling (like body wash or shampoo or conditioner or soap) and wander the food aisles with the open bottle right underneath my sniffer and a big smile on. i walk down the cereal aisle, just to admire it all. i love cereal.
yesterday though, i saw this lady who did not feel the same about the grocery store as i do. she had a huge loaf of bread flopped over the crook of her right arm and a big green bin full of produce. she had a bigger frown than i have ever seen, perhaps even the size of a banana. she stormed out of the bakery aisle, planted herself firmly in the middle of the frozen foods section, and said, loudly, crankily, and to no one in particular, "WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE. SERIOUSLY!" it was wierd. i've seen people talk to themselves, but never witnessed someone yelling at themselves. i wanted to give her a hug and a bottle of apricot shampoo and take her down the cereal aisle, see if that wouldn't brighten her up a bit. but she looked like she might break me if i tried talking to her. so i took my apricot shampoo and wandered back up the cereal aisle.
and i smell lovely today.

if i were lindsay lohan

this weekend i wished i was famous. famous people have a lot of power. if i was famous, i would use my powers for good. i would go on tv and say, "hey, you, girl who works at the shoppers drug mart in regina, saskatchewan, you know who you are, girl with the black hair and green streaks and piercings all over the place: i SAW you wink at my fiance while i was paying for my cereal. how dare you." and then i'd say, "hey you, kids who egged my vehicle the other night while i slept--please email me your address so i can egg your face while you sleep." not meanly or anything, i just think, you know, what they did wasn't very nice, and i had a sticky, egg-covered door handle on saturday morning and i thought they could have at least, you know, NOT thrown eggs at it...
but 'whatevs', as you city folk say. and 'what goes around goes around goes around comes all the way back around', as justin timberlake would say.

running man

i'm not snoopy. but some people would call it that. i like sitting in the mall and people-watching. i like watching people in their cars when we're stopped at a red light picking their noses or singing along to screamo. the other day, i saw an absolutely enourmous man in an absolutely enourmous truck with tattoos and a bald head and pierced everything looking generally miffed about life and aggressively sucking on a little tiny juice box. and i know, it doesn't sound that funny, but i laughed. you would have, too. it was like watching a gorilla eat a poodle. he owned that juice box.
anyways, the point is not that. on my way home last night, at like 10:45 pm, i saw a middle-aged man dressed in standard middle-aged man clothes running in tight little circles on the side of the road. not race track sized circles, not duck duck goose sized circles. i'm running around a hat sized circles.
i even drove back around the block to see if i could solve this mystery, which i knew would bother me all night, but by the time i got there, the running man had vanished.
and i don't think i'm snoopy to wonder why.

the only post i'll ever write regarding politics

my mom likes politics. my mom likes politics like i like a good old hug, or live music.
so the other day, when she was babysitting two young boys, she made them watch politics with her on tv. they were bored to tears.
"COOKIE I'M BORED." (the kids in frontier refer to my mom as "cookie". kaiden started this when he was three. we asked him why and he said it's cuz she's cute. she's been cookie ever since.)
"just a few more minutes, alright? just a few. i just want to see something..."
it's some parliament thing. with the house and the speakers and that. i don't follow politics very well. i would have been bored too.
a man from the liberal party stands up to speak. he's east indian and wears a turban. suddenly, one of the boys sits up right. his eyes are glued to the tv. he stands up and goes to the tv, completely captivated. mom is happy about this, sure she has converted the 5 year old to caring about politics.
"COOKIE!" he's still staring at the east indian man. "COOKIE...where'd they get a GENIE!? is he gonna do some magic????"

the pregnant gentleman

lois is a shameless flirt. she makes a pass at every man within earshot, young or old, single or married. she pats her chest where her fluttering heart is and says, "woo, woo! aren't YOU handsome? i better behave myself!" it doesn't matter that she's 88 years old. it doesn't matter that she has short term memory loss and can hit on the same man three times in thirty seconds, without realizing it. i think she's great.
yesterday, we were hangin out in the coffee room, when a very tall man walked in. it is condusive to the story to note that said man had a large beer gut. lois noticed him right away.
"WOO WOO!" she said, really really loudly, "i've never seen HIM around here before! WOW! he is a tall fellow!" she patted her heart and stared at him admiringly. when he turned to face her, her eyes widened even more, "OH!" she screeched, "AND HE'S PREGNANT!"

the only time i was ever immature

city driving. it freaks me out. i'm a small town girl, this is all quite bewildering.



when i first started city driving, i remember an encounter with a very large man in a white truck. he tried to merge into my lane, and when i didn't leave enough space for him to get in, he was instantly angry. that was annoying, it was rush hour, i couldn't slam on my breaks fast enough for him. when he honked angrily and shook his fist at me, i wasn't sure what to do. i stuck my tongue out at him. [immature? most definately. i have grown up since then.]

it made him madder than i have ever seen anyone in my life. he stuck his tongue out back at me, and shook his head vigorously, his face reddening and his double chin flapping back and forth.

so now i just use my "i'm only 16 and am quite lost in this big city and i'm just really really sorry" face.

it's 100% effective.

dissapointing doppleganger

in grade ten, a guy came up to me at a open house at millar college and told me i looked just like a friend of his--ellaina brown. later that day, someone else came up to me and told me the same thing.
years later, another person came up to me and told me that i looked like a girl they knew--ellaina brown. soon, it's happening regularily. i'm at a barbecue in saskatoon and an old man hobbles up to me and says, "dear, you look just like my granddaughter, ellaina brown!" 8 or 9 of my close friends are friends with her and they all agree, the similarities are there. i have people come up to me at work and tell me about this girl, ellaina, who i am just the spitting image of. my friend, shlee, is in one of her classes in university, a girl at the church went to school with her in grade two, a friend from manitoba worked with her at camp last year... it has been SIX YEARS since i first started hearing of this girl, i now live in the same city as her, and have yet to see her.
until yesterday.
i'm drivin the good ol mini van, shlee's in the passenger seat, and i look over at the vehicle beside me. there's this girl in the driver's seat, long blonde hair, blue eyes. i punch shlee. "hey..is that..."
she freaks out, knowing the ginormosity of this moment: "ELLAINA! it's her!!"
i don't look a thing like her.

dontcha wish your girlfriend had superpowers like me?

i have wrinkled lady old prune face hands today.
oh, guess what? this is exciting: everything i say, comes true.
ie) the other day i said to someone, "i have never seen a taxi cab pulled over by a police car. ever." and a little while later that day i said to someone else, "i have never seen a police car on prince of wales. ever."
the very next day, driving down prince of wales, i see a taxi cab pulled over by a police car.
k, honestly, you scoff, but really.
what are the odds?

i will not cut my own hair i will not cut my own hair i will not cut my own hair i will not cut my own hair

i drove into a mini van yesterday. it all started with some pimples.
on my forehead.
not usually a big deal. but i was really tired...and really didn't like these zits. they were terrible zits. so i decided i needed to cover them up. options: hat? headband? make-up?
i am impulsive, irrational, and stupid when i'm tired. i grabbed a pair of scissors and gave myself bangs.
they look terrible.
this all happened about five minutes before i had to leave for work.
it flustered me. i envisioned cute, thick bangs, gently falling on my forehead to cover up the monstrosity that is exploding acne. mm, not so much. it's a hack job.
i sprinted to my borrowed mini van, got almost to work and realized my engagement ring was not on my finger.
once again, i was reminded that i am a tragically emotional woman. poor, poor barclay.
i tried to remember if i'd shook the hands of any possible ring thieves that morning, and finally concluded it was either on the street outside my house or in my house.so i drove all the way home, found my ring, drove back to work, and plowed into another mini van in the parking lot. thankfully, i am graceful, and plowed gently.

p-heart 2

engagement is a funny thing. who you're going to marry, that's like one of the single hugest decisions you'll ever make (it's up there, anyways), and you are expected to make it on the spur of the moment, after being caught completely off guard by the one you love looking you in the face and asking you to say yes.
it's not like i didn't see it coming, but i wasn't expecting it.
we're official now. as in, it's on facebook. when my mom was little, it was the ring that made it official. now it's the facebook status. "barclay is now listed as engaged to elena" and a billion people are asking me, "how did he do it?" people i havn't talked to in years. maybe they're just asking to be polite, i dunno. but after telling it a billion and two times this weekend, my mouth is tired. so i thought i'd just type it up, just once, stick it on my blog, and then refer people to here to read it. longest blog entry EVER.

so it's thursday. beautiful day. we're gonna go on a date, and i'm pumped. barclay is just so good at planning dates. so he picks me up from work, 4:45 (he's late, i get off at 4:30!), and presents me with a small book of homemade coupons. the date has rules: i have to use my coupons in a certain order, i'm not allowed to look in the back seat of his truck, and i'm not allowed to even touch his ipod (rats).
the first coupon is for dinner at my favorite restaraunt: the mongoli grill. a place we eat at all the time, but only on special occasions. i get a fortune cookie with not one but TWO fortunes in it -- "tonight you will recieve a pleasant surprise" and "be prepared for a sudden change in your personal life". if this were a ficticious book, this part would be called "foreshadowing".
second coupon: a latte at starbucks. another favorite, 2 points for barclay. i have to get it to go though...in order to use my next coupon:
One Mini Road Trip!
one of my favorite things to do is drive while just listening to music. i ask him where we're going, and he says, "oh, there's this highway that has some nice scenery..i thought we'd drive out there a ways and then back to use the rest of the coupons. is that ok?"
it's kind of a wierd thing to go on a road trip with no destination, but i'm ok with that. just to get out of the city, it's cool.
i look at the next coupon. it's for the farm wife seat in the truck. i lov the farm wife seat. which is embarrassing, as i make fun of other people for sitting there. but i have a coupon, so it's ok.
we embark on our adventure. he's driving, sometimes we sing along to the music as loud as we can, sometimes we pick it apart and discuss it, and sometimes we're just quiet and i'm smiling and lookin out the window. this highway really is very pretty.
after about an hour and a half of driving, he turns down a familiar road, and i realize we're at his parent's cabin at katepwa lake. what the heck? am i so completely oblivious that i didn't realize this was our destination? sure, he took a back road, but honestly. i'm a moron.
suddenly, my stomache folds in half and a thought crosses my mind: what if he's proposing? tonight? now? here? but no...he hasn't asked my dad yet. and he said he was going to. in person. that makes me a little ticked. he should be proposing. this would be perfect! why didn't he think of that?
rats.
so he gets out of the truck and tells me to sit tight for a minute. i have a hundred and two questions but i just sit tight. obedient me. so he comes out and gets me and i follow him into the cabin...noticing that the path to the cabin has been cleared of the deep snow that's everywhere. which is strange, cuz the krauses don't go to the cabin much in the winter.
i poke barclay, "when did you do this?"
he doesn't answer, and my stomache folds in half again. why would he go to so much work for this, drive an hour out of town and back to get this ready, if he's not proposing!? but he has to ask dad first. rats.
we get into the cabin, and there's Christmas lights everywhere, and a roaring fire, and food and stuff to drink. it's cute. now i'm sure something's up, and my stomache is doing origami.
my next coupon is for a romantic fire. another favorite thing. this is turning out to be a date of everything favorite.
and the next coupon is for a mix cd.
the thing about mix cds is, when i started dating barclay i told him, "don't buy me flowers. i don't want flowers. i would rather have music. if you're going to spend 20 dollars, i'd rather have a cd. better yet, burn me a cd. all full of good music. just don't buy me flowers."
so, he's never bought me flowers, but i have a lot of great music now.
so he throws my new mix cd in the cd player. the first song i've heard before. the second song... i look at him, "you wrote this didn't you?"
and i don't wanna get excessively cheesy, so i won't tell you all the gory details. let's just say...it's cute. it's really cute. it's moist eyes cute.
instead of singing, he's recorded his voice overtop of the music he composed, reading a letter he'd written to me. he finishes with, "k...i have a secret. i'm sitting right beside you...ask me for it."
so i turn to him.
[for this next part to make any sense, you have to know a little background. on my facebook page, there is a picture of me holding the movie "Once". the caption i put on the picture was "if a man ever buys ME a piano, i swear i'm going to drop everything and marry him!" k. continue.]
so i turn to him. and he has another burnt cd. it has a picture of a piano on it. he says something about how he wanted to buy me a piano but has no place to put it right now. and how he has money put away for it, and how the cd with the piano on it is kind of like an iou, and how he likes me quite a bit. he may have used the L word. i can't remember wording, who remembers wording at a time like that?
the next bit is super foggy. all of a sudden he's down on one knee.
whoa.
i'm sorry, i honestly don't remember the rest. maybe a "will you marry me?" from him and an "uh.....YA!" from me. his song is still playing in the background, he'd timed it all out so it would build and reach this great finish as he proposed. i suddenly have this gorgeous sapphire ring on my left ring finger. i probably look like a deer in headlights and am suddenly thinking about how warm and cold it is at the same time, and how engagement is a funny thing. who you're going to marry, that's like one of the single hugest decisions you'll ever make (it's up there, anyways), and you are expected to make it on the spur of the moment, after being caught completely off guard by the one you love looking you square in the eyes and asking you to say yes.
but i'm glad it's like that. especially right now.
oh ps: there were a few other coupons. one for a sweet game of speed scrabble, and one for a husband, which i can't redeem until sometime next fall. we're thinkin september.

now it's time for a series of cheesy, serious blogs..

i'm sorry if you've heard this story, or don't want to hear this story, or would just rather hear the story about the really really stupid thing i did on friday (which i'm not telling anyways because it's completely awkward and not really your business).
it's a love story. and those are wonderful, but some people don't think so. if you are those some people, maybe you should just go watch rambo instead of reading my blog, because obviously you're too manly for a love story.
anyways.back to love.

do you remember last year, about this time but maybe a month earlier, when i was anti-men? i told my friend sara that i was giving up on them.
all of a sudden her eyes BULGED out of her head and she exclaimed, "SUZY! I KNOW WHO YOU'RE GOING TO MARRY!"
so, naturally, i wanted to know who.
"barclay krause," she said, "he's perfect for you."
and she went on to explain why he was perfect for me. and when she was done, i did agree that he sounded perfect for me indeed. with the exception being that i had never met him before and he lived in regina and i lived in swift current and neither of us were planning on moving any time soon and therefore would never meet. rats.
i lamented that i'd never meet him.
she said, "if it's meant to be, it'll happen."
but then, a few months later, i DID move to regina. my roommate was getting married, so i couldn't stay in my apartment anymore, and i quit my job, and a day later my friend patricia called to say that she needed a roommate...in regina. and i agreed.
i was in regina for a grand total of two days when my new roommates suggested we hit up a local college & career. we picked a random one and went. on the way there, mal said, "suzy...i bet you anything, you'll meet your future husband tonight." i liked that idea, because future husbands are the kind of people you like to meet when you're single.
this is where i'll admit to being a creeper.
i am such a creeper.
we picked a couch and sat on it, people watching. "is he it?" she'd ask. to which i'd reply, "uhm, no." "how about him?" "uhm....no."
that was when he came in.
ooh la la.
"that's him," i told my roommate. "that's the man i'm going to marry. i hope he's single."
i spent most of the evening gathering courage. i WAS going to talk to him. somehow. except i was going to make it seem like it was his idea. i'm sneaky like that.
so with half an hour remaining in the evening, i walked to the back of the room where he was, got some food from the dessert table, and turned my back on him. i talked to a random girl, and then these other two random guys, and then finally, finally, HE joined our little circle. and shook my hand. and introduced himself as barclay krause.
i almost fell over.
then we talked music. and that was how i knew.

suzi the racist (accidentally) dragon

i always say the wrong thing at the loudest volume in the worst place. this is the definition of having a big mouth. rats.
a few days ago, i was in robin's doughnuts, ordering there for the very first time in my life. and it crossed my mind that it was very, eerily, similar to tim horton's. the food, the menus, the atmosphere, but different, at the same time. so i loudly announced to barclay, "HMM. THIS IS JUST LIKE EATING AT TIM HORTON'S, BUT IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY!"
unfortunately for me, the man who was taking our order happened to be chinese. so it was, actually, exactly like eating at tim horton's in a different country. like, say, china.
barclay was mortified, and shushed me quickly.

butter me up

i don't like milk on cereal. it makes it soggy.
but i do like cereal. a lot.
sooo...instead of milk..i melt peanut butter over my cereal every morning.
this morning i dropped the flipping bowl of peanut butter cereal, and the thing shattered, and the kitchen was saturated in hot peanut butter with shards of glass stuck in it.
it looked like someone pooed all over my kitchen.

pow! right in the kisser

i like to remember firsts. you know, first airplane ride (florida), first broken bone (my leg, grade one), first man i killed (kidding). well yesterday, march 7th, i had another first.
first time getting closed-fist-eyes-watering-nose-cracking-punched-in-the-face.
it's a long story.
but i'll tell you anyways.
so yesterday i did some fun things. went for lunch and shopping with kate and robyn. played some music with robyn. had supper at barclay's house. went to a games night at the hills, where i played some dutch blitz and speed scrabble (cuz i live in the fast lane). went to mike's house.
but then.
it was about 2 in the morning. give or take a half hour or more (i just honestly had no real concept of time). either way, it was late. i went home, came into my house. it was pitch black--my roommate was sleeping. i got my regular skin crawling shivers from my regular thinking about murderers in the shadows. i crept downstairs and quickly hopped into bed.
but i kept hearing things. creaks. footsteps? no...maybe...i don't know. i usually "hear things", but its always nothing. but last night, i was SURE, i was POSITIVE i heard something. i pulled my covers up to my chin, because somehow i feel safer that way.
that's when it happened.
this is where the story gets really anticlimactic really fast.
as i was pulling the sheets up to my chin, they slipped from my grip, but my hand kept coming.
and i punched my own lights out.
and it hurt.

super[natural]bowl

today i had two seperate conversations with two seperate people about aliens crawling up the toilet. yeah, aliens. up the toilet. i have never before had a conversation with someone about aliens in the lou, and then today i have two. the thought of aliens in the toilet just never occured to me before.
as if i'm ever going to the bathroom ever again.

sign language

there's this electronic sign on the side of the ring road highway. when the roads are icy, the sign says "drive slow--icy roads".
when all the cars see this sign, they slam on their brakes. last week, a truck movin at 120 km/h slammed on his brakes at the sign, slowing to a speed of about 60 km/h, forcing me to slam on my brakes. on the icy roads.
this is lame. i'm going to die because of a warning sign.
this same sign often says, "don't drink and drive". it's in the middle of the highway. i think, by that point, if you are drinking and driving, it's a little too late to do anything about it. this sign should be something you see right outside the bar, not halfway home.
the same sign warns of fog (when it's foggy) and snow (when it's snowy).
what are they gonna do in the summer when we're not getting precipitation? will the sign say, "it's sunny out, drive fast"?
maybe, instead of sending out birthday cards this year, i'll get in contact with the sign people and get them to write neat things like, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY [friend's name]. FROM SUZY"

something else to worry about

i'm watching a tv show called "the doctors". it's a show on 5 minute cures...
there's a cure for canker sores... a cure for snoring...a cure for headaches... a cure for back pain...
and what's this? a cure for...flat chins?
flat chins. is flat chins an ailment? do they hurt? and even more importantly, do i have one?
i went and checked, just now. uhm...i don't think it's flat. but it has a zit on it. rats.
this is what's stupid about the way it is: you grow up in this happy, oblivious little world, thinking everything is beautiful and not even noticing your own face in the mirror, unless your mom tells you to wash it. but then, as you grow, people randomly inform you that you are, in fact, imperfect. you are, in fact, ugly because of this. "you think your nose is nice? your mom likes your nose? you got it from your grandpa? it's too big. you're ugly."
who decided that flat chins need to be fixed? who decided that eyes could be too close together or too far apart?
did you know that in the victorian era, pasty white and fat was hot? and, according to the pictures, everyone had gross frizzy hair. but that was hot too.
pause. reflect.
wanna see a cute little kid on drugs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyrHKOkD6QQ

back when romance was a hunk of bloody goat meat

i've always been back and forth on the whole valentine's day thing. my stance on it has gone from, "I HATE IT PASSIONATLY AND IN CAPS LOCKS" to "february 14 = any other day" to "hmm...i really really like an excuse to go on a date".
but. did you know that the origins of valentines day involved men hitting women with bloody chunks of raw goat meat, and a man getting executed for marrying people in secret when it was illegal, and a secret prison romance and an ancient dating service consisting of a giant urn in the center of the city and birds?
i'm very glad guys have progressed from the meat thing to the flowers thing. if a guy ever hit me with a chunk of bloody anything, i'm pretty sure i would possibly NOT marry him. tradition or no. even if he was handsome. even if he bought me a piano.
well, maybe then.

a list of things that are good about suzy. [by her own cocky self.]

1. i can tolerate any temperature of drink. if my hot chocolate or tea gets cold, i can still drink it and not complain. this is good if you're having me over for coffee, cuz i always talk too much, and my tea gets cold. i cannot, however, tolerate any temperature of house. so this is not good if you're having me over for coffee and you have a cold house. i might go home.

2. i won't ever make you listen to country music. unfortunately, if you want to listen to it, i won't let you, either.

3. you won't ever hear me complain about you snoring, if by chance you happen to fall asleep within earshot of me. i complain about a lot of other things though--a LOT of other things.

4. my friends are something that's very good about me. my family too.

just a few minutes ago, a man came in, completely red from cold, dressed only in his pajamas. he got locked out of his house and is now waiting for his wife to get off work. nothin like hangin out in a church all day in your pajamas, i suppose. i'm kind of awkward and don't know what to say to a man i don't know, especially when he's wearing pajamas. so i decided to type a list, a list of anything, just to make it look like i'm very busy. i guess i'm self-absorbed, because the only thing i could think to write was a list of things good about me. but i guess i'm not TOO self-absorbed, because i could only think of four things. while typing this, i'm wearing a most concentrated look and trying to appear like i'm just swamped with things to type.
ah, there is his wife, apparently.
he just informed me that this is the third time this has happened in the past 2 weeks. i'm not even mad, that's amazing.

teriyaki mi

my kitchen absolutely reeks of teriyaki sauce.
reeks.
i'm a woman who generally follows the rules. and the label on the bottle of teriyaki sauce said "SHAKE WELL". all caps, just like that. so i did. i shook vigorously.
unfortunately, the lid wasn't on. like, at all. so i sent a wall of sauce...well...everywhere. then i stood there in my newly teriyaki-coated kitchen. one of those awkward moments where, if someone else had been there, it might have been something i could really laugh at, but since i knew the humor had been wasted, and i was going to have to clean it up alone, i just kind of sniffled and glared at the floor. then i looked down, and noticed the kitchen-- the fridge, the table, the floor, the garbage can--was not the only thing covered in teriyaki sauce. me too.
my pants, my brand new white slippers, my hands, my arms...
and then i had to laugh out loud a little bit.
even if the humor was wasted on only me.

falling and falling and falling and landing

the youth group is going on a ski trip soon.
well i'm not going.
the last time i went on a ski trip, i was the only one to not ski or snowboard, but the only one to end up in the emergency room with a concussion and a broken pinkie finger.
so, while i might not hate skiing, or snowboarding, i do hate ski trips.
it was at diamond willow. the place was just being built, so there were no railings on the balcony. because of that good reason, the people who owned the place said, "you know what? we're not gonna let a youth group stay here. we don't want anyone to fall off the balcony and sue us."
my youth pastor said, "oh, it's ok. we'll be careful."
but then i went along. i always forget to be careful. my youth pastor knows that now.
i even remember saying as we were walking through the front doors that if anyone was going to fall off the balcony, it would probably be me.
so, i did. not on purpose, you know, it was completely stupidity and my lack of forethought.
my youth pastor thought it would be good to put couches up around where the balcony's railings should go, so no one would accidentally walk off. i sat on the back of one of them, and there i went, feet over head, falling and falling and falling.
then, everything was black, and i thought i might be dead. i couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything. "yes," i thought, "i'm very dead." i lay there for a bit, wondering what dead people were supposed to do. my dark cacoon didn't feel very much like Heaven.
then i heard voices, far away, and then closer, and then i opened my eyes and was quite dissapointed not to see Jesus, or some angels or even a gate, just my youth group.
went to the hospital, called my mom, walked a little funny the rest of the night.
i'm fine now. but one pinky is a little shorter than the other. a shame, as i already have too-short pinkies to begine with.

interesting but terribly overrated.

so i just ate supper. it was good. last week i was on this awful diet and was pretty hungry the whole time. it was the "i can't cook and i've run out of peanut butter and rice" diet. i don't recommend it.
today, jen showed me this blog by this lady whose full time job IS her blog. she just sits there and bloggity-blogs her life away, and is paid enough by doing so to support her family. this makes me kind of feel like i live in a cardboard box, and was quite content to be here until i noticed little miss www.dooce.com in her fancy cyber-mansion over there. she even has a STORE with teeshirts with her blog name on them.
maybe i'll make teeshirts that say "itwalkedonmypillow". and everyone will say, "you didn't think of that on your own", and i'll collapse inside my cardboard box and die, and it will be all jen's fault. [but really, i don't think badly of you, jen]

jump around and dance

two nights ago i saw anberlin. and they were playing with this band called between the trees, who i appreciated to an extent. nothing amazingly unique or fantastic, but overall, nice. madina lake played too, and the lead singer jumped around a lot and said cheesy things like, "HEY EVERYBODAAYYYY!!! LET'S GET EXCITED! FORGET ALL YOUR WORRIES!! LET'S JUMP AROUND AND DANCE!!! there were two pogo-stickers at the front, but everyone else just stood and stared at them. so madina lake thinks regina is dumb. but the sold out show came alive when anberlin came on. so it was fun, and i became drenched in the sweat of 20,000 screaming children.
today though, i'm pretty tired. so tired, in fact, that when i got into the shower this morning, i realized i was still wearing some of my clothes. i hope you don't think less of me.

shakespeare & me

the thing i remember about shakespeare, was that he always had this one character that had this one tragic flaw, something about their character that caused their ultimate demise. unfortunately for all of us right now, i can't think of any examples, so if you don't already know what i'm talking about, i can't help you with that. you should have paid more attention in shakespeare class [me too].
i was thinking about this today, because i realized that we all probably have a tragic flaw. i have this one friend who always calls me suzy sloth fingers. he's a nice guy, but that is his tragic flaw. and it will cause his ultimate demise. another one of my friends sits beside me on the couch and talks loudly on the phone while i'm watching tv. again, wonderful person, ultimate demise. i don't think they read my blog.
today, i realized my tragic flaw. i have this new coat, you see, and it's bright blue, like a really neat color of blue. just fantastic blue. and it's this neat fabric, like none other that i own. and it only cost me 17 dollars and i bought it at giant tiger.
but, if you've talked to me in the past week at all, you already know that. that's my tragic flaw. if someone says, "nice coat", i can't help but tell them where i bought it and how much i paid for it, and then help them notice how neat it is and in what ways it is neat. so it is with all of my clothes. "nice shirt suzy" "thrift store, 75 cents!" "nice pants suzy" "regular 110 dollars, but i only paid 10!"
i hereby apologize, but probably won't quit.

a poem for my japanese friends

それが私の思考の外のこの冷たい凍るすべての開始時。
そしてバックアップを再度始めるとき、日本語のすべてある*
suzyによって




*when it is this cold outside my thoughts all start to freeze.
when they start back up again, they’re all in Japanese.
by suzy

ya gotta love the bpm

today i'm thinking really hard.
on sunday i went to a concert. (those two thoughts are unrelated.) on the way there i got a little lost and turned onto some train tracks thinking they were a road. hannah told me i should mention the event in my blog. here, hannah.
we got there an hour and fifteen minutes early, thanks to hannah's punctuality and my inability to read, combined. there were some people who were even earlier than us though, including On a Mission Woman. aptly named. she waited, silently, for the doors to open. she made no eye contact with anyone, didn't smile. a man came to open the doors and like a shot, she was up and marching through them, even before they were completely opened. she marched everywhere. she marched right up to the merch table and bought a bunch of merch. she marched to the bathroom and put all the merch on. she marched to the stage and waited indignantly for the band to start playing.
we just kind of meandered everywhere. cuz we were an hour and fifteen minutes early.
i didn't buy any merch, but did swipe a sizable stack of [free] Lights stickers.
before the show started, as the crowd was mulling around the darkened stage, a ting tings song came on, you know, "The Great DJ", pretty much my favorite right now, and me and hannah got ridiculously giddy because we'd just been listening to it on the way there. you should go listen to it on youtube. i'll help you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJnsqGgxxM
so we wiggled along to that for a while. at the end of the show we started the "one more song" chant, and successfully got our song. that was nice.
the next morning, we went for breakfast and were the third ever customers in this new restaraunt that just opened up. we were greeted by this like, heavenly host of suited waiters and waitresses, because we were the only ones in the restaraunt at that point in time. but i can't remember the name and there was hair in my food and then they gave hannah shredded hashbrowns when she asked for cubed ones. i should have gotten cubed ones too, my shredded ones tasted like cigarette smoke.
but all in all, the whole experience was lovely. minus like, the cigarette hash browns and the hair and stuff.

oh no! i'm a girl!

i got a PIANO for Christmas (!!!!)...some assembly requred. (some assembly required means why don't you just kill yourself). so i'm building it and i lose a piece inside one of the holes where a screw is supposed to go. so i get a bobby pin out of my hair and start fishing around inside this hole for it, and lose the bobby pin in there. so i call barclay. "barclay...i need to screw this leg onto this piano...but there's a bobby pin in there... and i can't get it out...so the screw doesn't fit..." barclay is quite quiet for a moment, and when he answers there's a little quiver in his voice: "suzy. why, why are you doing carpentry with bobby pins? don't touch anything til i get there...you goof!" he's laughing now. "you are such a girl..."
rats.
so i give up on the piano. i'm goin to robyn's house for a movie night. i bundle up semi-warm, start my car, and i'm off. i'm about five minutes into my drive, listening to the good old fashioned news, when i notice i forgot to scrape my back window and can't see a darn thing. so i pull over into someone's driveway, hoping they won't notice or mind, and get out to scrape the snow/ice off the window. mission accomplished...head back to the car...the door is locked. the car is running, the keys are in the ignition, it is freaking COLD out here, it's dark, it's regina, aaaand the door is locked. and in that quiet moment of realization, i hear...what's this...country music blaring from my car radio??? oh yeah...coz the news...is over...
rats.
i think that makes me madder than anything. i have to stand beside my car in the cold dark, listening to taylor swift.
thankfully, i have my cell in my pocket (which is odd, coz i usually keep it in my purse). so i text trusty old barclay again. "i'm stupid. come to my rescue?" and by the time he gets there, from the other side of town, 20 minutes later, i am this blubbering icicly mess.
then i drive from there to robyn's house and get my car stuck in a snowbank.
rats.

hippo ewe ear

i feel like it's a very "blogger" thing to do to write a deep and thoughtful blog entry about how last year is the past and 2009 is a new tomorrow year and stuff. so i would, if i had any wisdom to share with you. but right now my heart is racing too fast to think about anything necessarily "wise". freaking snow clearer man came right up onto my front porch to sweep it off and i thought he was a burgler. with all the adrenaline pumping through me, he's lucky i didn't lunge through the glass pane of my front window and bop him in the face. i'm having a hard time calming down.
listening to: the soundtrack to nick and norah's infinite playlist. well, mostly just track 14, over and over and over...it's soothing. o my heart...

yelling suzy

embarrassing story (ahem):so i'm staying at my boyfriend's parents' house these past couple days, for Christmas, and sleeping in his little sister [julia]'s room with her. so last night, i woke up. and looked beside me--and there was barclay, sleeping soundly. and julia was gone. this perplexed me. i shook him. suddenly a thought dawned on me: what if julia or even worse, his MOM walked into the room and saw us sleeping together??? they would kick me out! on Christmas! dang. so i tried desperately to wake him up. "BARCLAY!" i scolded him, "YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE! what do you think you're DOING!? WHERE is JULIA!? what if she comes back before you get out of here? WHAT will your MOM think?" suddenly, his face began to change, and i realized that it was julia. that i had been half asleep, thinking julia was barclay, shaking the poor girl and yelling at her. i was so shocked that i didn't even think to lower my voice. i continued to yell at her, sort of comprehending what had happened but not completely. "JULIA? where did barclay go? you're....where did YOU come from?" suddenly, i was fully conscious. and realized how stupid i was. and turned over and went back to sleep.

rage, of sorts

i heard on the news that a man got a speeding ticket while driving his wife to the hospital. she was in labor. he made them wait 10 minutes while he ran the guy's liscense and registration, and asked to see the wife's belly to make sure she was really pregnant. upon finding she was, indeed, really pregnant, he still issued them the ticket. i think this is dumb, and would like to express my rage publicly. that's what blogs are for.
also, today is december 20th. so i am officially legally 21 and a half.

another one of those you had to be there stories

this morning i was driving and flipping through the stupid radio stations. this is always a frustrating thing, except for at 1:00 in the afternoon on wednesdays, when one radio station plays good music for about an hour. unfortunately, though it was a wednesday, it was only 11:00. dang. today i turned to a station just in time to hear the announcer say, "and that was j.d. fortune with the tune from inxs' new cd..." and man, it took me back to a couple summers ago, when i was in this hospital in saskatoon waiting for a doctor to fix my friend, and this guy gets wheeled in on a stretcher. and he's waving to my little bleary-eyed group of 2 am emergency room waiters as though he's something special. and he's smiling as though he's happy to see us, soaking up all our vacant stares as though it were 1998 and we were a group of 13 year old girls and he was all the members of backstreet boys and nsync combined. and we thought maybe he was a mental patient, so a couple of us smiled back, sympathetically, but nobody waved. we didn't know if we should encourage him.
a little while later i found out "the rest of the story".
j.d. fortune was in town that night, playing a show with inxs...and they were rockin out for their fans. so hard, in fact, that good old j.d. fell off the stage. that's what they said, anyways. i kind of wonder if he tried a stage dive and the crowd parted and let him fall to the ground. either way, he had to be carried out on a stretcher. and we saw him later in the saskatoon university emergency room.
i gained some pearls of wisdom from this experience:
i think that if you're not in a very excellent band, you shouldn't stage dive. no one might catch you.

Christmas! at the disco

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

snowflake headbanging

i'm done. i'm free. i'm never going back. i flew out the door, blowing kisses to the other cashiers, came very close to running into a family on their way into the store. i smiled at them and took off running. i shouted a quick "sorry" to them, but didn't look back, and i heard them laughing as i ran to my car. i was not graceful, i was not polite, i did not act sad to be leaving. i was not sad to be leaving. even an "i'll miss you" on my way out would have been an outright lie.
my last day was as lame as all the other days. i stocked the ink wall. i sold countless calculators, and the incompetant computers crashed all day, causing my customers to complain. alliteration!
a manager handed me a headband partway through the day with little bobble head snowflakes on it. i had to wear it. and every time i moved my head, i could feel them bobbling. so i stood at my cash register and slowly nodded my head. this was the high point of my staples career.
when i left, della told me i could keep my shirt.
i'm going to burn it.

spa scammers

interesting. i googled the lady from my previous blog entry to see what kind of sketchy business she was in, because she wouldn't even tell me that, and it turns out: she owns and operates a spa. now, lady, why couldn't ya just SAY so?
interestinger: the same day i was visited by spa scammer 1, a man came in and offered me 90% off of a spa package, as long as i paid for it right then and there. i'm no fool, you don't pay up front for something you don't get up front. my manager sent him packing because she got the same scam played on her last year and she is now out 60 bucks.
hmm.. are spa scammers 1 & 2 related? working together? maybe i just look like i'm in need of a facial?
but i can put eggs in my own hair and cucumbers on my own eyes, thank you.

a quote to leave you with:
"eating is been around since the medieval times. colors is been around since the 1950s. if medieval times and 1950s had a baby, it would be a bag of skittles."
-trale lewous

3 work days left

talked to a crazy today. oh, she didn't look or act crazy. she was very nice, well dressed, perfect teeth, busniness suit. she came into staples and, after complimenting me profusely on my smile, offered me a job. i asked what her business was and she wouldn't tell me. just told me to come for coffee with her and find out. i asked what the name of the business was and she simply said, "we deal in people, not numbers and statistics. come for coffee and i'll tell you more about it." i asked if it was actually a real job and she said, "not a job...a business opportunity. if you'd let me buy you a coffee i'd explain more." i politely declined. she said, "why not? if you like it, you could expand your horizens. you could make money. if you don't like it, at least we had coffee." i think she's just lonely.

rolaids guy

today, i had enough. today, i became a quitter. today was AWESOME.
i said, "Reg, this is my two week's notice."
and just like that, i'm done. well, in two weeks from today. i will be DONE.
an example of people i will not miss:
mr frumpy grumpy rolaids guy. he comes in and asks, "where's your rolaids?"
i say, "we don't have rolaids."
he says, "well..can you check?"
i say, "i'm sure we don't have rolaids."
so he goes over to the candy shelf and starts looking for rolaids.
i wait for a moment...
"are you sure you don't have rolaids?"
i shake my head. up and down. vigorously. furiously. adamantly. i'm sure. i'm 100% sure. i'd stake my life on it, sir, get out.
now he's mad. at me! for not having rolaids.
he says, "well! i thought you'd have rolaids. you certainly have everything BUT rolaids..."
huffily, he walks out.
it's called staples, guy, not the rolaids store.

it's finally safe....

i stole a credit card from my boyfriend's dad. i went online and drained his bank account. he was all like, "honey, i think something's wrong with our credit card..."
i put a finger to my mouth and said, "gotcha".
alas, be sure your sins will find you out. someone video-taped the whole thing and posted it online:

http://smartswipe.ca/benefits

broken news

i don't usually listen to the radio. it's natasha beddingfield and rihanna and chris brown and radio announcers who aren't funny but wish they were and locally made advertisements for job openings at staples. but in the winter i have no choice, as my cd player doesn't operate in the cold. dang winter. so i listen to the news, and talk shows, and poorly done radio dramas. yesterday on the news, i heard something interesting, about a study on music conducted by some scientists somewhere. a brief summary:

Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to expand in order to increase blood flow. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow.

this study just proves something that i have suspected my whole life: country music is literally UNHEALTHY for me to listen to. as is that song "pocket full of sunshine" and anything that gets regular play on the much music channel.

i'm going to replace my exercise regimen with a good dose of mewithoutYou and an earful of mother mother.

twizzlers is the taste

watched an episode of the office the other day, where dwight shrute goes to work at staples. at the end of the episode, he rips off his uniform and throws it on the floor, marching triumphantly out the door. this has always since june 2008 been my dream. dwight, you lucky lucky dawg.
i hesitate to share this next bit with you all...for fear of you thinking that all i do is surf youtube. maybe i do. whatever.
either way, i have more gold for you. spend some time with it. love it. it's trale lewous. and he's a sexy man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozXQqAXUkHY
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp-PX13ZlX8
oh, wait, you might like this one too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktwb-boe7t8&feature=channel

there is a waiter at tony romas that looks just like ryan guildemond.

remembered something this weekend:
when i went to school at millar, me & two friends were bored one day and decided to play a prank on the entire student body. rules prohibited us from entering the boys' dorm, and salt in the water is ages old. so we did the best we could with what we had: some bristle board and markers.
made three signs which loudly and colorfully proclaimed: "BEST NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE! meet in front of community hall at 7:30 Wednesday Night--Dress warm and wear red!"
we hid in the girls' bathroom in the lounge and waited til it was locked up for the night before creeping from our hiding place in a darkened stall (which would have been awkward if someone had come in and found us there). we hung up the posters in the student lounge and giggled all the way back to the dorms. then on wednesday, we watched the student body travel in a red mass out to the community hall. and stand there, in the cold november night air, for over an hour.
yes, this was our idea of a good time.
the crowd's excitement grew, and then diminished to a puzzled and annoyed silence. which was quickly broken by a random boy in the crowd, who realized then that there was nothing planned for the group. he yelled, "k guys, it was me! here's the deal--there is a prize at the top of the hill--first person there gets to keep it. it's pretty sweet."
about half of the crowd took off running to get the prize which was not there, and the rest of the crowd watched them go. the crowd dissassembled and the deans spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out who'd hung the mystery posters and wasted the students' evening. crystal, rachie and i breathed not a word.

staples...that was dumb

staples is in the halloween spirit. that's right: pumpkins. all the employees get to carve & bring in a pumpkin. everyone was so excited, that two people participated (neither one of them was me).
suddenly, one of the managers had a brilliant idea! there's a lightbulb by the cash register--what if we put one of the pumpkins up there, so it would glow in the brightly flourescent-lit store!?
oh, good call.
so this stupid pumpkin is hangin out by my cash register, and i'm watching it melt throughout the day.
enter fire, stage right.
that's right, a little spark, which i did not notice...then a little flame...which i noticed pretty dang quick. i'm ringing through paper for this little old lady, when the stupid pumpkin bursts into flames. brief thought: wouldn't it be wonderful if the customer service center burned? as in, to the ground.
so i'm watching the thing burn, and people are starting to display various reactions: shock, enjoyment, freaking out-ness (shock from the customers, enjoyment from the employees, freaking out-ness from the managers), when the stupid pumpkin falls to the floor. the flames jump to a nearby box of paper. my dream is coming true--staples is on fire.
today, staples business depot burned down. as in, to the ground.
and we, the cashiers, rolled and played in the ashes, laughing through our third degree burns
and shouting: we're free!
daydreaming is what gets me through the work day.

THE ADVENTURES OF DRUNK GIRL and the HOT LITTLE ROCKET! (a concert review)

went to a show last night. i was so very excited, as live music is about as exhilerating for me as going to the bahamas, or being at a theme park, or opening a brand new tube of tooth paste and using it before anyone.

got to the venue at 8, cuz that's when myspace said the show would begin. at 8, the show did not start. at 9, the show did not start. at 10, even, the show did not start. at 11...the room darkened, and a single male voice pierced the air. there were 11 of them, on this little stage. they didn't really fit. two drumsets, a couple modified keyboards, an accordian, a couple of girls with little blow-into handheld keyboard things (i forget what they're called, but i think jannaya has one), some guitars (lots of guitars. well, 3).
they played one song. then the power went out.
daaaaaang. if they had started at 8, they could have finished by the time the power went out.
but marshall burns and friends did not give up. well, one friend did. the accordian player opted out for a sit down chat with his girlfriend. but the rest of them began to play a very pitiful acoustic set, consisting of only a single drumbeat and about 4 notes played over and over on those little blower keyboards. oh, and the vocal part: EVERYBODY SING!: "YOU won't be leaving ME! YOU won't be leaving ME! YOU won't..." etc etc etc.
ENTER DRUNK GIRL, stage left.
we watched her try to pick up about 4 different guys. including the two lead singers of the band. while they were trying to perform their acoustic set.
we watched the crowd quickly lose interest in the repetetive song, and the band notice, and then we watched the band move from the stage into the audience, singing at the top of their lungs. we watched the audience get annoyed. we watched drunk girl dance. we watched marshall burns staring at the ceiling, singing loudly and pretending not to notice drunk girl standing an inch from his face, grabbing his ears and telling him how she thought he should get them pierced.
we left.

more news.

thanks to kjersti...
you all have to watch this too---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNCLTDKr0ZI
it's an insightful look into the difficult lives of the tall. pretty important viewing, i think. ignorance is not cool.

woe

waking up is hard to do. last night was a rough night...i was woken up at 2:35 in the morning by alexisonfire screaming from my cd player. my first thought was, oh my goodness, someone broke into my house and is listening to my music... but even in the fogginess of my midnight mind, that didn't make any sense. so, i dont know. ghosts i guess. i lay there for like an hour waiting for the music to stop cuz i was too afraid to get out of bed and turn it off. wuss. then, for some reason, in my infinate wisdom, i set not only my alarm clock, but the alarm on my cell phone as well. so this morning i woke up to feur elise coming from my cell phone. then my alarm clock went off. i reached over to turn it off and go back to sleep, but for some reason after i turned it off it just kept going and going...then i heard a woman's voice beside my ear saying, "please hang up and try your call again." that scared the crap out of me. who the heck is in my room... oh. i guess i got up, grabbed the cordless phone, turned it on, even started to dial a phone number, and went back to sleep. then my cell phone started up again with the beethoven thing. when i finally became fully concious, i was lying in bed holding my alarm clock, my cell phone, and my cordless phone, frantically pushing buttons and telling the operator lady to shut up.

onnnnnnnn your side

i found a couple of news documentaries, one on romance and one on mp3 players. thought i'd share them with you in case you need some help in either of these areas. music and love, isn't that what everyone thinks about 24/7 anyways?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL6l1rLJdbU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5ytAOsrOUo

oh, and if you're going to be a bum and not watch them because it's news and you don't like news, turn away from your bummish ways. watch them. they'll change you.

let's talk art

the future freaks me out. i found this:
http://www.dna11.com/
wierd, eh? you can send your dna to this company and they'll make it into artwork for you to hang on your wall. my opinion? heck no. sounds like a bad horror movie to me. people sending in their dna to this obscure company nobody knows anything about. years later they're visiting relatives in another province only to run into...themselves. clones. thousands of them. and they're all in love with the same guy. some guy who was smart enough not to mail off his personal identity to dna11.com. one guy. thousands of the same girl. that would make for an interesting season of the bachlorette.
besides, what if you spend all that money, get your dna art back, and you don't like yourself? what if your dna is ugly? what if an ugly person has nicer dna than you? what would you tell people? "oh, uh, this is our pit bull's dna. what ugly dna he has."

you, diagnosed

after conducting extensive research on you, my blawgawdience, i have discovered some interesting findings. 100% of you would like my name tattooed on your bicep, and 37% of you would rather meet a man with a knife in a darkened alley than a spider. 12% of you would even rather meet a ghoul or a violent cougar than a spider (citing polls on right side of blog).
hence, i find the large majority of you to be me-obsessed arachniphobes. it's ok, i'm in the same boat. we're in this together, guys.

winkin, blinkin, & blog

i explored the tv today, and found a channel that offers free aerobics classes--taught by students at university here in regina. there is one girl in the front who knows what she's doing, and two miserable saps in the back puffing along at about half-speed. so, if anyone feels the need to don some spandex and a headband, we could get our richard simmons on and get fit, awesome-style.

3 recipes for the non-and-never-will-be cook

this morning, as i was eating my exceedingly good breakfast, i thought of you, my blawg-awdience. the people of this dark room. the faceless mass of about nine wonderful people who faithfully tune in every once in a while to leave scattered comments and vote on my polls. and i thought to myself, i wish they could eat the wonderful things i eat. now, i know what you're thinking. you're thinking, suzy can't cook. suzy has never been a cook. what is she eating that i'm not eating? well my friends. you don't need to be a cook to eat good things. all you need is some food and some peanut butter.
so, bloggerz, here are some recipes i like to call good. here i go, getting all martha stewart...
1. peanut butter wrap
ingredients:
1 wrap
lots of peanut butter
directions:
liberally apply peanut butter all over the face of the wrap. throw it in the microwave till it's a melty, gooey mess. fold the wrap in half. voila. peanut butter wrap. maahhhhvalous.
2. peanut butter porrage
ingredients:
porrage
lots of peanut butter
directions:
add some water to some porrage and heat it up till the water's all gone and the porrage is about right. however you like it. add like, 2 whole tablespoons of peanut butter. it'll melt into a melty, gooey mess. eat it like that. mmmm-mmmmm.
3. peanut butter bannana
ingredients:
bannana
lots of peanut butter
chocolate chips (optional)
directions:
cut a bannana in half, lengthwise. add lots of peanut butter all over it. add lots of chocolate chips in the peanut butter. heat it in the microwave til it's a melty, gooey mess. sooo good!
you're welcome.

blink three times and you'll miss it three times

hello world.

after an exhilerating weekend of camplife, i am back in the real world with a new appreciation for uninterrupted sleep. in fact, i appreciate it so much that it's all i really feel like doing right now.
and eating. but i always feel like eating.
today, i cooked a spaghetti squash, and ate the whole thing.

i'm full of squash.

in other news, i have developed a stupid person's habit.
i just typed out what it was, and read it over, and realized how dumb it made me look, and deleted the whole paragraph. so, you don't get to know what my new habit is. except that it maybe has to do with me being a bad driver [again]. and people giving me dirty looks and waving certain mean fingers at me and muttering certain rude words at me. ah, city life.

my karma ran over my dogma

today, i'm going to summer camp for the weekend. i'm gonna be a counsellor. for junior high girls. ah, i remember the days of summer camp all too well. i remember one night in particular...probably the low point of my camp career. our camp counsellor was in a bad mood. and i'll be honest with you, it was most definately my fault. i was a hyperactive terror. i might still be a hyperactive terror, but not to that extent. i was nuts. and that night, i couldn't sleep. and no one else could either (my bad). there came that point where i made her use her stern, "i don't even feel like pretending to like you right now, you're the kid i'm going to complain about when i get home" voice, and everyone finally lay back for a good night's sleep, which seemed impossible to me. i got really squrimy. tossing and turning, and then the next thing i knew... i'm not really sure what happened there. all i remember is that i woke up with my bottom half trapped between the wall and the bunk bed. my top half was sticking out the top, staring at all the sleeping girls, wondering if i should wake my counsellor up for help or if she'd beat me within an inch of my life. but then my ribs started to hurt. so i began to whisper, really loudly, "guys....GUYSSSS....pssss.....hey....i'm stuck..." i tried pushing the bed away from the wall with my feet but it was sturdy. long story short, my counsellor ended up waking up, and she and a couple other girls had to pull the bed away from the wall so i could ungracefully fall to the floor, smacking my face on the way down. (i think my counsellor may have done that on purpose.) i slept then. thinking back, i'm like, terrified for this weekend. what goes around comes around, and i feel like i may be about to pay for the annoyance i inflicted on that poor camp counsellor all those years ago.

the case of the golden mailbox

sometimes logic eludes me. example: i'm coming home from work. i'm putting my key in the door. i notice my mailbox is suddenly golden and the cement step in front of my door is mysteriously missing. first thought?
"oh...my roommate painted our mailbox."
logical enough. but as soon as i began to ponder the missing step, the light came on.
suzy, you're an idiot. stop trying to get into your neighbor's house or they're going to call the police on you.
at staples the other day, two grown men got into a fight over who was first in line. they were swearing at each other and saying fighting things like, "don't step up to me! i'll *^#&@&$ kick your *&$!" and "back off *$#$@, don't talk to me like that...i'll hit you man, don't make me hit you!"
it was intriguing.

today i pickpocketed an armless man

please don't think i'm mocking handicapped people.
i'm not.
i just couldn't help but think it was a little bit funny. just his word choice.
there. now that i've put out that disclaimer...i have a short story for you.
today i was working in customer service at staples, and a man, probably in his mid-forties, came up to the desk and said, "excuse me, miss, could somebody please give me a hand?"
i looked up. and i swear, i SWEAR, i thought he just had his hands inside his jacket and was trying to be funny.
so, he wasn't... thankfully, THANKFULLY, i was able to realize this BEFORE i laughed out loud, or said something stupid about how he didn't have any arms.
it was just one of those things. it caught me off guard.
so i was helpful. i was nice. my brother has a handicap; those kinds of things don't get me wierded out or anything. but it WAS a little awkward when he asked me to reach into his pocket and get his wallet for him when paying for his purchases. he had rather deep pockets. and there were people standing around, watching. what does one do when asked to reach into a stranger's pocket and pull out their wallet?

so that was awkward.
but after he left, i found myself looking at my hands a lot. and feeling a little bit dumb for complaining about the paper cut on my finger all weekend.

you are a pirate, i am a princess

yesterday at church i noticed a little girl in her father's arms staring at me. her eyes were growing bigger and bigger, and when i smiled at her, she immediately burrowed into her father's neck, whispering excitedly into his ear. he turned to me and explained that his daughter thought i was a princess. i felt pretty cool.
after the service, a guy i've never met before came up to me and told me that i looked like a banana.
pride goes before the fall.

i award you no points

i saw a sign in a store window today that said, "nice shoes for less."
good one guys. best ad campaign EVER. might as well just make a sign that says, "kind of expensive, but not really, and sort of comfy, pretty long lasting shoes" or better yet, "our product is average".
i had another one of those moments today where i thought i was going to be killed by some guy. i was walking in the park and he was walking in the park and he had a plethora of scraggly unwashed hairs covering the chin region of his face. and as he approached, he rolled up his sleeves, staring at me the whole time, and started flexing his muscles. no lie. so i thought maybe he was going to use his muscles to punch my lights out, but he was actually just showing off, in his scary crazy man sort of way. i was unimpressed.

jailbreak

today is the first day of the rest of your life. it is also the first day of september. and, it is labor day. which just means that everyone and their dog and their dog's fleas get to take a day off while i go to work. [overjoy]
in other news, there was a jailbreak last week and five murderers broke out of the prison not too far away from my house. they are considered armed and dangerous--don't tell my mother. not like i think i'm special enough to be murdered for no reason. though i do think if my manager at staples had the chance, he would probably hire one of the armed and dangerous escapees to murder me for the reason that he doesn't like me very much.

word (to your mother)

i heard this word that i really liked the other day, and vowed to myself that i was going to use it in a sentence later on. now i can't remember what it is, and frankly, people, it is driving me crazy. if you think of a good word for me, just leave it in a comment right here, deal? i need some new words, i'm getting to be a poor conversationalist. seems as though there's a 2:2 ratio for how many times i say "like" to the times i say any other word. i hate that. like, a lot.

handlebar MASTERPIECE

i saw the most brilliant display of facial hair today. it was absolutely disgusting. it was a moustache...a long moustache...and the man had gel in it...and it stuck out approximately 5 inches on EACH side of his face. like, you could see it from behind, poking out.
and he wasn't even kidding. i think he liked it.
wow, on tv, there is a man in leopard print underwear wrestling an alligator.
who is stupider? the man with the moustache or the man with the alligator? i doubt either has a wife.

subconciously, i'm brilliant

i discovered a surefire way of getting what you want.
my 3 step program makes it easy.
1) go stand near someone who can get you what you want.
2) loudly proclaim within their hearing exactly what it is that you want, but nonchalantly, though, as if you don't know they're present or that they can get you what you want
3) hold out your hands, as they're soon to be filled with everything your heart desires

i know, i sound exceedingly spoiled. i'm not. i just, wanted this cd the other day. and i told my friends that. in the middle of hmv. and the person who worked there just walked over and gave me that specific cd. for free. and i recall various other instances where this same technique has come in handy, without me meaning to necessarily use it.

now, the question is: is this ethical? and the answer is: if i was sleepwalking and i stole a diamond necklace, is that ethical? and the answer to that is: if you're sleeping, do you even KNOW what you're doing?
no. no you don't.

it's tired in here

just watchin olympics. i don't like watching olympics.
driving in the car, i'll be flipping through the radio stations, and 10 minutes will go by before i realize that for 10 minutes, i've been listening to french talk radio. without even realizing it. my subconcious likes different entertainment than my concious.

good thing to know if i ever need a day off all i have to do is DIE

staples is a lamewad business for which i have no love in my heart. today i woke up sick. my tummy hurt, my head felt like it was full of little bombs that kept going off every time i moved, my brain didn't even get around to turning on. the flu....
first thought: "back to bed!"
minor problem: "work at staples!"
dang.
what to do?
call in sick!
so i did.
my manager. i explained my situation. he told me to come to work anyways.
i said, "if i throw up on a customer, can i go home?"
he said, "i'll see you in a bit"
so i went to work, almost died.
i need to go to sleep.

i got troubles

today, i was on my computer when a little window popped up. it said something like but not necessarily, "potential security threat. fix now?"
why does it need my permission to fix a potential security threat? of course i want it fixed. given the choice, would i ever choose NOT to fix it? no. pft.
so i clicked on the fix button. and another pop up appeared.
it read, "PLEASE WAIT WHILE NORTON FIXES YOUR PROBLEMS."

in other news, i'm mad at entertainment lately.
who let scarlett johansson be a singer? who let the hills be on tv? who gave simple plan a record deal? fix those problems, norton.

fie on football

a woman is buying school supplies at staples. as i ring through her pencil sharpener, she squints at the screen. "how much is that?"
i tell her four bucks.
she glares at me.
"WHAT. four bucks? what does it even DO?"
i have no patience for someone who doesn't know what a pencil sharpener does.
"sharpens pencils."
she has no patience for the stupid cashier who probably personally priced every single item in the store.
"well maybe i'll just get a cheaper one. here. this one. it's 2.50. that sounds like more of a pencil sharpener price now, doesn't it?"
i learned my lesson.
i hereby apologize to the general public for being associated with a place that sells 4 dollar pencil sharpeners. please, if YOU have any issues with the way staples is run, or the price of erasers, or whatever, feel free to come yell at me. all the mature adults are doin it. besides, it's completely all my fault and i can probably fix the problem for you.

awwwwwgust

last night, i thought i was going to die. like, again.
it would seem that i often think i'm going to die. it's kind of ridiculous.
but last night, i was pretty sure.
it all started when i arrived home sometime after 11, wandered downstairs and tried to go to sleep. that's when my brain turned on and i thought to myself, "what if someone comes into my house and kills me? what if i turn over right now and there's a man standing over my bed with a butcher knife? what if i overhear my roommate being murdered in the room right above my head? would the police even get here in time?" i decided that if i heard footsteps in the house, i would just crawl under my bed and call the police. cuz, honestly, i HATE horror movies, where the main character hears a noise and, instead of calling the police or hiding, she goes to see what the noise is and ends up getting stabbed. how stupid could you be? and like, she never even brings some kind of weapon to defend herself with.
that's when i heard footsteps in the house. by this time it was like 12:30 in the morning, and my roommate goes to bed at like 10:30. so i decided that i should go see who the heck was wandering around my house at 12:30 AM. i grabbed my cell phone (well ya know...i guess i figured if there was a murderer in my living room, i could politely ask him to hang on a sec while i contacted the proper authorities), and went to investigate.
i didn't really find anybody. i thought once that i saw a shadow move, but i think it was mine.
upon talking to my roommate this morning, i found that she, too, had been up a lot of the night, afraid of murderers and footsteps and knives. basically, we probably just heard each other wandering around locking doors and flipping lights on. tonight, i'm sleeping with all the lights on.

knock knock ginnnnnnger

someone just rang my doorbell, and when i got there, they were gone. i'd be annoyed, but i totally did that a couple weeks ago. i was coming home late (like 2 in the morning-ish), and was, as per usual, slightly disorientated and overtired. i fumbled with my keys in the dark, picturing masked, armed men jumping out of the shadows at me, and finally got the key in the door. and turned. and, for some reason, could not get the door unlocked. i jerked the key out of the lock, banging my elbow against the door frame--and the doorbell--in the process. i felt pretty bad, hearing the loud bell sound inside the house, knowing i'd probably woken my roommates up. as i went to put the key back in for a second try i noticed that my address was suddenly 3858 instead of 3862.
so i ran, as fast as i could. who knows how crazy my neighbors are in the first place, let alone after being woken up at 2 in the morning by the stupid blonde next door.

thinking, that's all

hey there. just sittin here, thinkin about paper. how one sheet weighs like nothing, and two sheets weighs the same as one sheet, but a box of paper is too heavy for me to lift. also thinking about fat women with tattoos, and how if they lost enough weight, the tattoo could potentially just dissapear, couldn't it? i'm maybe thinking even a little bit about death. and how scary regina is in the dark.
just gonna head off to bed now. busy weekend ahead. hi rachie, lov ya.

last night i dreamt a horror movie

so guess what. today, i grew up a little bit. an adult told me that it is perhaps a little bit childish that i still go by the nickname "suzy". he recommended that i be elena from here on in. apparently 21 year olds don't do nicknames. and you know what, i think he has a point. so...here i am: sophisticated, grown-up, mature, Elena.
"Elena"
what a grown-up name. i feel like i should maybe trade in my chucks for some high heels and invest in some hole-free pants. out with the emery and thrice, in with the celine dion and michael buble. maybe own a house. have some kids. care about politics. have something living in my house (say, a potted plant) that isn't growing under my bed. stop running into things in my car and obey the traffic lights. get a real job.
what a horrific way to live.

foamy unbreakable heart

i think that cars should be made of foam, or bubble wrap, at least the front and back of them should.
all breakable things in LIFE should be made of foam and bubble wrap. because, what fun is anything, if it's just going to break?
[on a slightly more emo note: hearts, too, should be made of foam and bubble wrap.]
the reason i think of this is: on my street in front of my house, i have to paralell park. every night. and some nights, say, last night for example, i get home very late. like 2ish [a.m.]
thusly, i'm tired. on these nights, it's also dark, so i have poor depth perception. also, on these nights, i'm in a hurry to get into bed, and the steering wheel is slippery, and the road must be on a slight incline and people don't leave enough room and it's probably not my fault at all because i never did have a very good driver instructer...and all these other reasons collaberate against me. and i find myself maybe running into other vehicles. and yes, it has happened more than once. i'm a bad neighbor. but not on purpose, though.
also, i had this epic moment today, in my car, where i thought i was going to get hit head on by a bus. it was completely magical. time slowed a little and i looked into the bus driver's eyes as i swerved a little to get out of the way.
it was just so in sync with the music i was listening to, i'm not even being a little sarcastic. as the bus' headlights washed over my little car and i felt the gentle rumble of the huge vehicle sweeping past, i thought to myself: "wow. i'm going to blog about this."
and then i realized that i'm a little bit addicted to blogging. and despised myself.
and this post is dedicated to kara, even though i don't think she reads my blog, because i used the word "epic", and it was on purpose, coz i think it sounds cool when she says things are "epic".

ok, i believe you, but my tommy gun don't

this post is dedicated to good ol megan maquin, who is off invading the streets. well done, megan.
does anyone else feel like suddenly, everything is ridiculous?

pulse

i'm watching a movie that was made in 1988. this is generally a bad idea. what makes it even more of a bad idea is that it's a "science fiction" "thriller". so there's lots of "da da daaaaa...." music, and the main character has pretty much been in tears for the entire duration of the movie. i'll read you the description: "Pulse. [pg-13] A boy tries to warn his father and stepmother about their unsafe household appliances."

"sir...what...please tell me-- WHAT is going on? i hear...i hear....voices..." the music is growing. "it's like the house is getting more powerful...it's growing. it's gaining. it's all around..."
"lady...i'll tell you what i told your son. unplug it. unplug ALL of it. not just some of it. or...or...."
da da DAAAAAAA......
"but what do i know? i'm just....crazy...." i love how people in horror movies just whisper something ominous and drive off without saying goodbye.
hmm...what's she gonna do? oh, good idea lady...go home and have a shower.
and now her appliances have locked her in the shower and are boiling her to death.
well. that was gruesome.
ah, but you gotta love people in horror movies. the husband in this one is a real winner.
hmm..the appliances have murdered your wife. what do you do? venture back into the house at midnight to check on your power tools? [which, incidentally, can be pretty dang lethal when they have a mind of their own.] good idea, steve.
awww, you're dead.

oh no! i'm mean!

i told a guy at work a few days ago that norwegians are from norwegia.
and that in norwegia, schooling costs so much money that i could only afford a fifth grade education, and am therefore quite illiterate.
and he said, "that's cool. i knew you were from a different country, i just wasn't sure which one. i'd never heard of norwegia. do you think you'll ever finish your high school education?"
then i told him that i was just saying stuff that wasn't true, because i was bored.
and he said, "oh...so you mean...schooling is free in norwegia?"
i wasn't trying to be misleading. i was trying to be sarcastic. apparently i suck at sarcastic and rock at being misleading. and suck at mentioning the part where norwegia isn't actually a country. i hope he doesn't share his newfound knowledge with too many gullible people. i may have just invented a new country.

ew. who picked the hot dog. sikko.

yesterday, i had a frightful moment. want to hear it? doesn't matter, i'm about to blawg it whether you want to or not.
i was out practising my going for a walk skillz, near the edge of town, so not really in the city so much as beside it. and this car slows as it drives past. it came back. drove past me slowly again. i walked a little faster. a third time, it came back. it was like, a shark car...circling slowly...duhhh-da, duhhh-da, duhh-da... this time though, it stopped. and the window rolled down, and a very creepy looking man called out, "hey there...you want a ride?"
i kept walking, "nope, i'm good."
but he persisted, "hey, it's hot, where're you going?" yeah. it was hot. but i'd rather sit in a microwave than get into that car with you.
and then he opened the door. uhhhhh...
so i made a beeline for the nearest house and called out, "i live right here!" he drove off then.
so i'm ok. and today, i'm going to get my nerd on and go to the science center.
i'd like to leave you with a quote from a song that, i'm sure, will be running through my head all day.
"...bill nye, the science guy (bill! bill! bill!) --science rules--bill nye the science guy..."
-bill nye, the science guy opening credits

paparazzi

i felt a little famous yesterday. i was walking down the street, and came to an intersection, where i had to wait for the little white man so i could cross. you all know the one i'm talkin about. there's the little red hand, and then when it's safe to walk, it changes to a little white man.
[speaking of the little white man, i have to share a story about him. miss kimber & i were walking one day in saskatoon. we, too, came to one such intersection, where the red hand told us that, no, it was not ok to cross the street, as we might be struck by oncoming traffic. so we waited. and waited. and finally, our moment came! the little white man appeared! and as we began to cross the street, i loudly expressed my joy at seeing that little white guy. i said, "YES! THE LITTLE WHITE GUY. that guy is HOTT! let's go meet him!" and crystal loudly agreed with me, "YES! that little white guy IS hott! i agree!" and we joyfully, gleefully, and loudfully skipped across the street to the little white man. what we were painfully oblivious to was the fact that across the street from us, standing there, watching us skip towards him loudly proclaiming the hotness of the little white man across the street, was...a short white male. like, a for real life type one. underneath the traffic light one. he had a dog on a leash and he looked a little unsure of whether he should come towards us. as we were already bounding towards him, yelling about how hot he was. oops. upon realizing this, i made a fantastic save. i said, "yes. that is a cute dog." and crystal agreed with me. and we sheepishly skipped past the man and his dog.]
back to yesterday. so i was standing there waiting for the little white man, when a truck pulls up beside me. and as i stand there, the driver begins to slowly roll his window down, while peering creepily out at me. i'm awkward by nature, so i begin to pretend i don't see him and look spastically around at the sky...and the other cars...and the building behind me. nice...brickwork... next time i look back at him, he has his CAMERA out and is TAKING PICTURES of me.
so like...i struck a pose.
just kidding. i just...walked away.
umm...the end.

budger and friends

adults are more like kids than 3 year olds sometimes. you would be amazed, AMAZED, at how hard the concept of standing in line is for some 30 year olds. the following scenario has happened more than once, but i'm citing this specific one because it happened today: there is a line. at my till. it's HUGE. everyone's impatient. everyone's glaring at everyone else, because everyone wishes they were the only one in the line. and i don't think it's cuz they just want to be alone with me. or maybe it is. i don't know. anyways.
this guy comes up, out of nowhere, and just steps in front of the lady that's next in line. and her eyes just bug out of her head and he just plops his stuff on the counter and glares at me. like, "you're wasting my time already, and i just got here." and then the lady's glaring at me like, "you're gonna let him do that?"
and i just glare at the counter like, "i hate my job.
and as the day goes on...i start losing my ability to form coherent speech patterns. and basic english skills. i begin to substitute things i see around me for the words that are appropriate for the situation. for instance, while speaking to a heavily tattooed man, instead of asking him if he would like a bag for his purchases, i ask him, "would you like a tattoo?" or, take the time i inform a lady that her day planner will cost her "two-ty two dollars and 5 cents."

irrelevant gender

what i want to say now...might sound mean. but i