Holy Mackerel

Who knew that hunting for school supplies could lead one to an old girlfriend, a disagreement, and lots of "umms" and "errrs" from an embarrassed husband? That's right. And right before our 18th anniversary, which is today, by the way. Happy Anniversary, dear. One of Mr. Handsome's many jobs around the house is to get the kids' school supplies ready for the school year. And he does it very well, I might add. What he doesn't do so well is make sure framed photos of his ex-girlfriend are not also in the box of said school supplies. Oh yes he did. Oh, he tried to hide the evidence. Obviously, after 18 years of marriage, he still doesn't know how detail-oriented I am, how I see everything, hear everything. Know. Everything. I grabbed the gold-framed photo of his ex (who, I might add, at first glance looked a lot like a younger version of Mr. Handsome), and asked for an explanation. Folks, there was none. Surprised? Me neither. I asked how he'd f...

To give you just a little idea of how confused and utterly "out of it" I am, I cannot even get the smallest thing right. Case in point: is it blue box week, or black box week? In our fair city, we alternate between recycling plastics one week, paper the other. It's the city's awesome and entirely economically-minded way to save a penny by forcing its residents to fill their bins to the brim, then buy another bin because one is almost never enough to last two weeks. Bins break because you try to stuff them as full as they can be filled, and then you fill them some more, and then they break, and then you swear loudly, and then your neighbours shun you even more. The big question around our house most every week is: Is it black box or blue box? And god knows why no one can ever keep it straight from one week to the next. We never know. Every week, it's as if it's the first week ever of having to figure out which box it is, because we all look at each other come ...

For the past year or so, I feel almost as if I've been going back in time, back to my pubescence, my time of adolescent unknown. You know that time, when you thought you knew everything, and yet you really knew nothing, and deep down inside, you were more confused than you ever thought possible. The Great Unknown Future reared its ugly head for the first time, and trying to figure out what the hell you were going to do with the rest of your life began creeping into your thoughts without you even realizing it. Well, I'm rather unexpectedly at that place once again in my life, strangely enough. I never thought such a thing could happen, at my age. I'm in my 40s, for god's sake. But here I am, nonetheless, in more ways than one. At least as a silly, flighty and relatively carefree teenager, my main worry, besides boys, boys, finding pants long enough to reach my ankles, and acne, was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Nowadays, my main worries are many and v...

Feeling a little worse for wear ... my amazingly titillating, scintillating and erudite ramblings will have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry, folks! And no, I do not have a hangover, regardless of what any of my friends may say in the comments. In fact, I am suffering from a migraine, extreme nausea, and uterine pain. Now are you happy? And by the way, no harm was done to the dog used in the production of this blog post. He wasn't feeling all that well either.

The dog's depressed. I bet you didn't know dogs could get depressed. I'd heard of elephants getting depressed, and sometimes dogs feeling kind of sad when their owners go away, but depressed? Nah. But Gryphon? He's depressed. Most definitely. How do I know? Because for the past three days, he won't get up when food's put in his bowl, he refuses to play, he will not get up and greet us at the door, and he has refused to go out and pee for the past 24 hours. But, I mostly know because of this: But more because of this: Why is the dog wearing oven mitts, you ask? Don't all pets wear oven mitts? Because he's a twit, that's why he's wearing dirty, ripped oven mitts, wrapped around his paws with clear packing tape. Yes, that's right. We abuse our dog, and we're damn proud of it. Seriously, though, our dog is depressed because we put oven mitts on him to prevent him from chewing himself to death and destruction. Our hypoallergenic standard poodl...

Thank god I don't have a job I have to get up every morning and go to. Because if I did, I couldn't: (1) wipe the kids' noses since they're both deathly ill with H1N1 or some other godawful disease that makes our house sound like a TB sanitorium of the 1930s. (2) listen to the kids whine, each consecutively, so that it ends up being one long, continuous whine, from morning to night. (3) listen to the kids fight with each other, both verbally and physically, when they are not busy whining or coughing. (4) surf the Internet and find all sorts of interesting jobs, such as greeter for a one-day porn event that's coming to town. (5) plan amazingly fun things for the kids to do every day because god forbid they have to plan their own fun and games, or actually do something like read, or use their imagination. (6) tell the kids that I am not their event co-ordinator, nor their amusement director, and that they're sh*t out of luck if they think I really care that they...

Funny how the mind plays games on you. I am finding, since the day I got let go (that would be last Tuesday), that my mind casually wanders back to that day rather unnoticeably, and before I know it, the unending tape is rolling over and over in my head, playing the scene over and over again: me sitting in the office, facing two managers, the paper lying facedown on the desk, one manager telling me I'm being let go. For the most part, I am keeping myself occupied, busy enough that I don't think about things too much. Looking at job sites, trying to figure things out, cleaning the house, talking on the phone; all to push the bad and ugly thoughts out of my head. I don't feel sad about it. In fact, I'm actually rather glad it happened. Somewhat of a blessing in disguise, as they say. I just have to keep reminding myself that this whole deal wasn't my fault, and I have to move on. But just the same, the bills still have to get paid. I've been occupying myself by t...

I got canned yesterday. Not exactly Dooced , as in being fired for talking about your job on your website, but I'd like to claim that I was Dooced just the same just so that maybe I can garner the same fame and fortune as Dooce has. It's a thought. So, I got canned for taking a vacation. Of course, that's not what they told me when they handed me the paper, but that's the truth of it. There is no other explanation, despite their proclamation that I "wasn't a good fit", whatever that means. They couldn't give me specifics or examples. Just a lot of platitudes and generalized statements, which, of course, could mean just about anything under the sun, including perhaps that I don't wipe my bum properly, or maybe because my sweater had a bit too much lint on it for their liking. Oh, I know what it must have been. The cream cheese in-between my two front teeth after having lox and cream cheese on a bagel for lunch on Monday. Either way, I'm unemplo...

Well, yes, I guess you can say I've been away for awhile. Seventeen days, 2 hours, and 45 min. to be exact. A lifetime in a blogger's world. Oh, and I lost four followers. What's up with that? Basically, I needed a wee break. I apologize, to all those of you who sent me sweet messages worrying about me, hoping I would again post and show my ugly little face to the world once again. Here I am! Apart from needing a break, I also didn't have much of substance to say, to tell you the honest truth. No funny anecdotes, no interesting photos, no sad stories. Nothing. At. All. I was at the point in my life, after my last post, where I needed to just breathe, let go of all my duties and responsibilities, and just do nothing. And that included letting go of my blog for just a little bit. I thought about it everyday, for sure. In the back of my mind, I was perpetually aware of the need for blog topics, posts, photos, anything. And yet...nothing. Nada. Rien. Zilcho. Zip. Which mad...