Funky Town and TV

This week, I have been in a funk.

The last thing I want to do is write my blog when I'm that way

as I tend to get negative, piss and moan, and end up in a really bad place.

I also finished the book The Bell Jar and I do have to say, it

wasn't a good book for me to read as it truly did make my mood dark.

Sylvia Plath is such a good writer that I was feeling what the character was

feeling and it was a character who was in an asylum!!!!

My right foot with its plantar fasciitis has really been causing me grief.

My ankle is still compensating for the pain I feel with every step that it

is also sore and by the end of the day, I have a cankle.

I've been numbing my brain in front of the TV this week more so than usual.

Numbing, because hardly anything I watched added value to my life except

for the new Discovery series Curiosity.

The 1st episode was with Stephen Hawking and it was,

"Did God create the Universe?"

It was a great show, Stephen Hawking is brilliant.

I do have a question.

What happened to A&E?

I used to really enjoy Sunday afternoons w/A&E, now, not so much.

Yes, I find Hoarders fascinating. Terribly sad & fascinating.

But did I really need to spend 2 hours watching a dude clad in leather

with a mullet kill a trailer home filled with cockroaches?

Billy The Exterminator?

Is he the new Dog?  Is his Mom the new Beth?

Ugh.

I was excited when I flicked past  TVO  last night and they were about to air a

documentary until I saw that it was Food Inc.

I saw that once - not all of it, I had to shut my eyes, block my ears and yell

"blah blah blah blah" during the scene at the slaughterhouse.

Food Inc is like many documentaries, important to watch....once.

Click here & watch this.

I will however, NEVER watch The Cove. 

I think that it would change me. I'd get PTSD.



Ten On Wednesday

1. How do you pronounce the word aunt? Does your pronunciation rhyme with ‘haunt’ or ‘can’t’?
Aunt that sounds like awnt.  I think awnt sounds alot different than haunt.

2. Do most of the people in your life know you blog? Or are you partially or totally anonymous?
The important people know about it. Other than that, I don't talk about it. 

3. When you grocery shop, do you prefer to bag your own groceries or do you like it when the store bags them for you? Paper, plastic, or reusable bags?
Since Toronto started charging $0.05/bag supermarket cashiers don't bag anymore ever.  I like to bag my own as I'm a bit of a tight ass about that any way. I put items on the belt in the order they're to be packed.  I bought a good buggy that makes it easier on & off the bus. For just a few items, we always use reusable canvas bags.

4. Do you have a green thumb?
Sadly no.  I have one house plant now that my Mom gave me & its lasted the longest of any house plant of mine ever! I've never had my own garden. When I am able to have my own garden I'm much more interested in having vegetables than flowers.

5. If you watch the Food Network, which chef/show host is your favorite?
I am not a regular watcher of the Food Network.  I might flick though & stop on a show on a Sunday afternoon if I'm interested in the dishes being featured. I love reading cookbooks more than watching someone else make something.

6. Do you like to take baths? Do you take them very often?
Love baths. Prefer them to showers. I could spend hours upon hours in the tub. A few hot water refills & a good book and that's an afternoon. I don't get to enjoy them as much since I share a bathroom with a dirty man. It's not as relaxing when you have to spend 20 minutes cleaning the tub before getting into it.
 
7. What color are the walls in your kitchen?
White. The only other colors I like for kitchens are very pale butter yellow.

8. Do you prefer to dine outdoors or indoors?
Indoors - in the city at least. I don't enjoy restaurant patios. If I had a back yard with a gazebo or a cottage that would be totally different.

 9. Describe your ideal weather.
Fall. Turtleneck/long sleeve shirt weather is what I like best. Comfortable. Not too hot, not too cool.

10. If you could learn any foreign language, which would you choose to learn?
Cantonese or Mandarin.

Ten on Tuesday is hosted every week by Chelsea from Roots and Rings

Foggy Brain

I feel as though I've spent the last 2 days walking around in a fog.

My mojo is off. I'm not sleeping properly. I hate that.

I find myself just sitting, thinking about anything and everything, then I realize

I was going to do something, but I've forgotten what it was.

When I wake up in the morning I swear to myself that when I get home from work

I'm going to go to bed early. Lights out by 8:30pm.

On my commute home I sometimes struggle to keep my eyes open.

By the time I arrive home, I'm awake.

It's 11:30pm-ish right now & I am mentally and physically exhausted but not tired.

I don't spend enough time sleeping during the week and then I spend

too much time sleeping on the weekend. Vicious cycle.

I'm quite certain that part of my problem is the fact that we need a new bed.

We went to Sleep Country Canada a few weeks back and we tried a Simmons

bed that was just so perfectly comfortable that I could have fallen asleep

right there in the store.

What would be perfect right now is;

A nice hot bubble bath.

Fresh cotton jammies.

A warm glass of milk.

Tucking into a soft as a cloud bed with freshly laundered sheets.

Classical music playing softly in the background.

Complete darkness.

Fur Grandbaby

Had a drive by hello today by my parents

on their way home from staying at my brothers.

Crockett knows 2 names, Daddy (Adam) & Gramma (My Mom).

When I say to him, 'You gonna see Gramma?'

His ears perk up & he looks all around.

My Mom is the only person Crockett will speak to on the telephone.

On speaker phone she calls him 'best boy' and he barks.

The arrival

Crockett thinking, 'Who's that?'

Pugs make people smile.

My Mom makes Crockett smile.

I wonder if Crockett hears my parents speaking like
the kids of Charlie Brown hear their teachers speaking?

It is a hot humid day today. Too hot for pugs.
His tail was straight so my Mom gave it a little curl.

I'd Like to File A Missing Persons Report Please

Adam likes online forums.

He likes to have discussions with Internet friends about

topics like music, film, society...

See, Steve Vai is a great guitarist, but one better off as a solo artist doing instrumentals.

When he joined Whitesnake, it wasn't the right fit.

He can't restrain himself, he needs the freedom to rock out.

Where as Ritchie Kotzen is both an amazing soloist but also

has fit very well into the bands he's joined and in fact, improved them.

He'll discuss why Michael Mann is his favorite director.

He likes the looks and style of his work, both TV and film and appreciates

that he makes it as close to reality as possible.

Also, when asked, he'll tell you that he thinks Sylvester Stallone is a better

actor than he is a director.

 When directing himself, he did a better job with Rocky II than he did

with The Expendables. That might be however, due him acting more

than directing.

Really get him going and he'll argue which hair products for men are better.

He does not discriminate. He will debate with pretty much

anyone about pretty much everything.

Tired of following other peoples rules and being banned for having

strong opinions, he has started up his own forum.

This is why he will be missing from the world, from my world.

This is how I anticipate seeing my husband for the next well, forever:

The only things that may change is that he might one day put a shirt on

and I am confident that the number of empty coke cans on his desk will increase

and decrease based on the day of the week our recycling garbage is picked up.

If I really want to lose him forever, I should install a bathroom, a futon and

a mini fridge in his man cave and he'll never have a reason to leave the room.

Blood Shot Eye

I got home from work today (yay early Friday)

and I felt haggard. The first thing I did was change into my jammies

and lay down for a cuddle with Crockett and a nap.

Well, sadly Crockett wanted nothing to do with me.

 For whatever reason, my eyelids that,

at 12:30pm were so heavy, I could've fallen asleep at my desk,

were suddenly wide awake.

I went into the loo to wash my hands and noticed something weird with my right eye.

What happened?

This has actually happened a few times over the last year or so & it seems

to coincide with my being over tired.

Anything to do with my eyes or blood vessels kinda creeps me out.

Actually, I'm proud to say I got over a weird eye thing recently.

On my old organ donor card, I signed over everything but my eyes.

Even post mortem it would creep me out thinking of anyone touching my eyeballs.

When I just recently registered on the online organ donation site

www.beadonor.ca

I said they could have whatever they needed or whatever I was

able to give.....eyes included.

I see a blind lady every once in a while at the subway station

and to imagine getting on a subway without sight - that is so scary. 

If donated eyes give someone the gift of sight,

EVERYONE should register and be an organ donor.

Ok, Adam is out right now so tired or not, I'm going to try

and take a 15 minute power nap before dinner.

The Bell Jar

I am re-reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

I first read it a few years ago when I took it out from the library.

A couple of weeks ago, Adam had an appointment downtown in the

entertainment district at 10pm on a Friday night.

More often than not on Monday mornings, there is something in the

paper about a shooting or a stabbing or a hit and run in that part of the city.

It's not a bad area, it's actually a very nice part of town.

There are just too many young stupid drunk people that flock there

and do really stupid things.

So rather than sit at home and worry I went with him.

There was a Chapters Books one block away from where he was going that was open late.

I went in, bought The Bell Jar for $14.00 then got a coffee frappacino

from the in-store Starbucks,  read & drank as I waited for Adam.

If you know anything about Sylvia Plath, you know that

she was a poet more than a novelist.

The Bell Jar was her only novel and it was published just

a few weeks before she took her own life.

Her depression is evident in her writing.

Maybe that's why I connected with it.

She has a very real and clear way of writing.

As someone who suffers with depression, I prefer to read stories that are uplifting

and positive or so completely different than what my life is as a way to escape.

That's why I love watching films and reading.

While my eyes are focused on the screen or my nose is in the pages, I live in the stories

and get respite from the things in my own head.

I like to believe the old saying that most artists are tortured souls who have higher than average compassion and that the funniest comedians are those with alot of personal sadness.

Makes me appreciate my creativity and sense of humor when things are tough.

I am on page 141.

Esther, after having one session with Dr. Gordon, was prescribed Electro Shock Therapy.

She's gone to the private psychiatric hospital and had her first session.

The way Sylvia Plath wrote about it, you almost know that she's writing

from experience. She writes about the smell of the ointment put on her temples.

As I read, I am mortified to think that people with mental illness were actually

given Electro Shock Therapy as treatment.

Thank goodness for our present treatments of cognitive therapy
and a daily dose of 20mg of an SSRI.

I'll take that over shock treatment any day.

This excerpt from page 140 made me take a deep breath because I know there

are still people today that feel like Esther's mother.

'I'm through with that Dr. Gordon,' I said, after we had

left Dodo and her black wagon behind the pines. 'You can call

him up and tell him I'm not coming next week.'

My mother smiled. 'I knew my baby wasn't like that.'

I looked at her. 'Like what?'

'Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that

hospital.' She paused. 'Iknew you'd decide to be all right again.'

My plan for this weekend is to finish the book, relax, enjoy my time at home

with Adam and Crockett and try not to worry about anything.

Ten on Wednesday

1. Do you do laundry all at the same time or a load here and there?
Before I met Adam I used to do my laundry like clockwork every Friday night. Now, it gets done as needed and to be honest, Adam does it now more than I do. The only part that I still do is the folding.

2. What kind of detergent do you use?
We used to like GAIN.  We tried one of their new scents & it nearly drove Adam mental. Seriously. He was feeling really ill for about a week and feared that our fridge was leaking some noxious gas.  It ended up being the GAIN dryer sheets I'd left on a shelf in his man cave.  We threw them out and now we really like using Arm & Hammer with Oxy-Clean Cool Breeze. It smells fresh but not too overpowering.

3. Do you use liquid fabric softener?
No. Since we live in an apartment, we don't want to have to run down to the laundry room to catch the rinse cycle.

4. Do you use dryer sheets?
Used to until the GAIN situation (see #2).  We will again in winter, an unscented brand, just to deal with static cling.

5. Do you iron your own clothes or take them to a cleaner to get pressed?
We rarely need something ironed but when we do, I'll do it.  Honestly, I love ironing. I think it is one of those things that takes me back to my childhood in that I love the smell of freshly ironed cotton shirts.

6. Do you like heavy starch or light starch?
No starch. I've never ever used it.

7. Do you wash all your laundry at once or separate it?
We'll mix loads if it's t-shirts, sweats, jammies, towels...nothing that we'd go outdoors in.

8. How do you separate it? By people or by colors?
Both. My work clothes are always done separately so that they don't get Crockett hair on them.
Adam has so many t-shirts they normally get done together and our jeans get done together. Then by color; White Whites, White/Grey, Bright Colors, Black.

9. What clothes get hung up and what goes in drawers?
We hang up everything except shorts, t-shirts, jammies, socks & knickers.

10. Do you use plastic, wire, or wooden hangers? Do they all match?
In my cupboard they are all white plastic.  They all match. All shirts are hung facing the same way and go back in the same place they were taken from.  Adam's cupboard has any color, plastic, wood, wire and the shirts don't all face the same way when hung. He isn't kooky like me.

Ten on Tuesday is hosted every week by Chelsea from Roots and Rings

One of My Favorite YouTube Clips of All Time

How AWESOME is this Pug.

I don't know if he's staring down his owner to get them to take the shirt off him

or if he's just showing he's a badass & not to be messed with.

Either way, I've watched this at least 10 times & will probably watch it

10 more times.

Pugs not drugs!

Affliction

That is one way my long weekend can be explained.

Carrying the groceries home Friday, I hurt my back.

My upper left back by my shoulder blade to be exact.

The kind of pain that makes me swear every time I move.

Staying in bed too much due to my sore back caused additional

back soreness, but lower right pain.

The kind that grabs you as you go to get up & you end up in a very

odd position unable to move.

Add the Black Dog that's been nipping at my heels more than usual lately, 

the heat and humidity and it's fair to say I've not been a joyous person.

This heat we've been having has really got the better of me.

I'm happy it's August.

That means Fall is just around the corner.