on not being qualified

whoever said that getting a dog before you have children is "good practice" was obviously a little more out of touch than my babcia when she asked if i was a lesbian because i was 24 and unwed.

after seven exceptionally long months that have traversed labrador toddlerhood through adolescence, i am starting to think parenting something that both talks and will eventually demand an ipod, over simpler requests for idle back scratches and peanut butter may result in a poorer return after the many years of co-payments to a behavioral family therapist.



in the midst of a rather animated "teaching moment" with young axel, i occasionally step outside of myself and hear the- my -interaction. and then i wonder what on earth the neighbours must think when they (surely) hear me during one of these multi-daily exchanges.

diner pour quatre

"i invited the oral surgeon and his wife over for dinner next friday."

apparently you have confused my compulsive behaviour about keeping meat in the meat drawer, instead of thrown on top of the bag of arugala and a cheesecake, for someone who appliques apple pies and is fluent in ironing. and these are not the kind of people who come over for a "build your own pizza from this fine selection of ingredients i have procured and we'll just work our way through a kiddie pool of cheap wine" night.

"well, it's a good thing you are so well versed with the gas grill and it's various accessories".

except the good doctor doesn't eat red meat, and his missus is a vegetarian (obviously not an animal rights one, as evidenced by the floor length fur she wore out to dinner in march), and we do not own a "dining room table". *

unfortunately whole foods has yet to develop a line of ezee sundried shitake steaks nestled on an artisan bed of flambeed orzo infused with a rustic pine cone pesto. the default "order the steamed lobster and clams carry out for four" is not going to work as they are "mainers", and my own one trick foo-foo pony does not meet the previously referenced dietary criteria.

i can only hope that one of them has a '6 month old crack head labrador puppy' allergy.


* "dining room table" being the litmus of achieving 'now we have somewhere to put a large silk table runner and centre piece to really reinforce how little we will use this overpriced pile of kindling' adulthood.

lessons learned in purgatory (sounds more poncey than: "so i painted my first ceiling and realized i don't actually know what the hell i'm doing")

ceiling paint is thicker than the regular stuff, comparable to a gallon of whale's semen in semi-gloss; its also pretty stinky. and it dries funny (funny like michael jackson's face after the thriller years, not funny like jacko thinking we all believed his facial fairytale after he moonwalked with other corpsey looking characters).

ceiling paint dries patchy, and it leaves shadows. this activates the lady macbeth reflex, leading to obsessive rolling of additional tacky layers, spawning more patchy clusters.

and so it goes on.

i am a home improvement sisyphus, except instead of rolling a gargantuan rock up a hill, the "must not exceed 250lbs" podium is my purgatory, rolling shamu's special brand with lactic saturated arms.

wanderlust is not sexy

ultra long haul flying means that your (and the other 349 passengers) crotch, armpits and mouth have a nice chance to really marinade, before disembarking the aircraft, 14 hours, and several time zones, later.



severe weather can cause "unexpected delays". so can twerpy ground crew who drive their luggage trolleys underneath the wing (instead of around those rather inconspicuous orange cones), and rip off a chunk of the plane.



transiting abu dhabi airport -and it's unrelenting P.A. system- for half a day, is guaranteed to match every sleep deprived itinerant in the terminal's arabic language skills with those of a foreign service officer (rosetta stone certainly doesn't come with a bottle of duty-free glenfiddich single malt).



and by law, every flight over 6 hours must provide passengers with carbonated beverages, in-flight entertainment, and a cabin full of screaming 2 year olds.

circle of insanity

i learned a new dance today. fortunately, the choreography isn't too complicated.

to remedy an ice-cream brain freeze; press your thumb onto the roof of your mouth. to divert from the inter-oral pressure, you then stub your right toe. to distract from the metatarsal "ow-ies", flick your ear. to ignore that pain, give yourself a papercut between your thumb and forefinger.

pretty soon you've forgotten about your headache and are ready for another scoop of pralines and cream.

(and look like you just had a handful of electrically charged thumb tacks dumped down your shorts).

a co-dependent's purgatory

the all prevailing and incessant need to be liked by others is a life long project for codies. as long as they have breath in their bodies they will exhaust themselves with gifts, entreaties, and more mea culpa than a 747 full of martyrs in order to improve their public opinion poll.

however, the only thing worse than not being liked, is not being able to do anything about it. codies die young, all that self flagellation can bring on a heart attack, no doubt a relief for the even more emotionally drained people in their orbits. their funerals doubtless have a number of resentful and pissed off, over smothered attendees. and all the codie ghost can do is hover around in misery helpess to beg, plead or turn somersaults to change opinions.