FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE LOTUS FLOWER

I recently purchased and received this beautiful pendant made in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Oh its so gorgeous, at least to me anyways.  It’s this lovely piece of turquoise that has a carving of a Lotus flower on it.  To me, its ironic that I received this piece one day before receiving bad news from my doctor. The Lotus flower, you see, is sacred for its spiritual meanings.  What most people do not know is that the Lotus flower grows below muddy waters and rises through the murk to the above surface to bloom with remarkable beauty.  At night, it closes and sinks underwater only to rise again and open at dawn.  The thought of something so beautiful arising from something so ugly, gives me hope.  Spiritually, the Lotus flower represents long life, good health and good luck...  All of which I seem to need at this point in my life. 

You see, yesterday was a hard day, one that I wish I could rewind and not repeat.  It wasn’t so much the diagnoses I received from the doctor, it was more the lack of remedy I received.  My doctor used phrases like: “we have to figure out how to make you more comfortable for the rest of your life” and “it seems to be several diseases overlapping each other and could take years to figure out the best course of treatment for you” and “I have never seen test results this abnormal”. I walked out of the office really not knowing where to go to from that point. It’s funny how your day begins, beautiful and sunny and with so much promise.  I must admit I was definitely looking forward to taking the day off and spending it with my better half and our pooch in my favourite City, but as I walked out of the office in a bit of daze, I spent the better part of my afternoon in deep thought, and sadly, I missed the moments I should have cherished.

I once read a quote by Anais Nin that said: “ Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” I do not wish to remain in this state, but I have however given myself permission to have four complete days of self-deprecating pity time.  But only four days because I really do believe in that saying: it’s okay to visit pity city but don’t take up residency.  And I won’t.  I just need some time to process it all, grieve the fact that I may never be pain free again and then take a plan of action. And in my usual dramatic fashion, I do see myself as the human equivalent of the Lotus flower.  Right now, in this moment of time, I am surrounded with the ugly, but I plan to rise above it.  Unlike the Lotus flower, I do not plan to emerge back into the muddy water as night falls, I plan to raise my head to the sun, the moon and the stars and keep it there.

In the meantime, I plan to wear my pendant as much as possible as I feel this odd connection to it.  I suppose in a sense it has become my talisman.  And I think that every one needs to carry around a piece of hope with them, mine just happens to be a turquoise flower.

Until Next Time
Smooches Pooches

I'M VELCRO BABY!

I’m a magnet for the unusual.  It’s true unfortunately.

It started when I moved from my small town to a bigger city at the ripe old age of 20.  The first week I was there I had gone out to a nightclub and as I was walking the street back up to my car, a homeless derelict came running out from the side of a building yelling “whore, whore, you filthy whore” and brandishing a butcher knife.  I had to kick off my heals and leave them behind and run my butt off to get to my car.  I made it in time, but I regretted leaving my shoes. (What? they were brand new!)  I had this weird feeling that he probably picked them up and hacked them to pieces.  I suppose it was better my shoes than me.

You think that would have been enough to kick some sense into my rather large noggin and send me packing.  Well it didn’t, and the next 10 years of living in the City provided me with enough stories that I could have written a novel, seriously!

Things happened to me like a serial arsonist set my apartment building on fire while I was in the middle of making Christmas cookies. I was on the top floor at the time and I calmly walked around my apartment unplugging my appliances (no, I don’t know why I did that) and collecting my jewelry and a clean pair of underwear while smoke was pouring into my apartment.  Ironically, our local stoned-out-of-his-mind postman saved the day! Then there was the time I got a hankering for a big salad after watching Elaine ordering a big salad on a Seinfeld episode.  As I was coming back with my salad, I noticed this scary looking dude hanging outside the entrance of my parking lot.  By the time I got out of my car, he was right there in my face.  Luckily for me, a young couple walked out of my apartment building at the same time.  He looked me in the face and told me I was a very lucky girl.  I wasn’t sure what he was going to do until I reported him to the police and they said his description fit that of a sex offender they were looking for.  Makes me shiver just thinking about it.

However not everything that happened was frightening.  Take the time a family from the states moved into the apartment building below me.  Their son was anorexic and he was attending a well known facility for treatment.  I ended up seeing them the following week on 20/20 as they were being interviewed because it was rather unusual for a boy to suffer from anorexia.  But what gets weirder is that later in the week, I saw the father on America’s Most Wanted.  Apparently, he robbed several gas stations on his way up to our City.  The next day, the police were knocking on my door looking for them.  Of course other things happened to me like the time I had new neighbours move in below me and I could hear all this arguing for hours.  Finally, being sick of it, I went down and knocked on their door and as the young guy opened the door, I leaned on it and fell inside.  To my astonishment, I saw approximately 30 young arab men in turbans sitting in an unfurnished bachelor apartment on bedrolls.  They were freaking out over something that was on TV and it was apparent that they were horrified that I saw them all.  The next day they vacated the apartment without notice.  Can you say future “Jihad”!  Lordy!

I wished I could say it stopped there, but no, it didn’t.  I can once remember taking the bus two hours to get to home.  A mother and her mentally challenged teenage son came on board and she sat him down next to me.  I spent the next two hours having the same question posed to me every 5 minutes: “Can I squeeze your booby?”  Um, NO!  That was a long ride home my friends, a very long ride!

Things didn’t get any better when I moved to my latest town of choice.  Without getting into too many specifics, I can tell you that I have had in my office an escapee from the 4th floor mental health ward of our local hospital, a homicidal maniac asking how he could off his wife without being caught (uh huh, sure buddy), a recently paroled bank robber wondering how he could get his ID back from the Government so he could claim some money that he had “stashed” away, a seriously drunk woman looking for a dentist who fell into the wall and passed out across my feet, and then proceeded to come back the next day and repeat the whole process again. 

Yup, there are days that I wonder what I have done in a previous life to warrant such bizarreness!  I am the human equivalent of velcro, everything that you don’t want to stick to it, sticks to it!

These days, I try and not even make eye contact, but it doesn’t help.  I have become the Pied Piper of weirdos.  I suppose that I shouldn’t complain too much as it has made my life a little more interesting.  Maybe I am a weirdo myself.  Come to think of it, my better half’s term of endearment for me is “little weirdo”.  A coincidence, perhaps not. Hmmmm, that gets me to thinking, I suppose if I can’t beat them, I might as well join them. 

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches

THE CASE OF THE MISSING MANNERS

I got to thinking the other day about general etiquette which I believe is a topic that should not be lightly dismissed.

Take for example when I first started dating my better half.  His manners were impeccable.  So gentlemanly was he that I was overwhelmed by his respectfulness towards me.  Now don’t get me wrong, he is without a doubt a complete gentleman in most aspects of our life.  He would be the first to hold a door open for you, pull out a chair, serve you food first, open a car door etc. I really admire and adore that part of his persona.  Unfortunately, there is a grey area, or better yet a stenchy area, that he is lacking some serious manner-tudes in and I remember exactly when and where this particular manner went astray.

It was about eight months into dating and we were going for a walk thru the town I grew up.  I had taken him to my old elementary school and as we were walking down the grassy hill towards my high school, he just let one rip.  And this was just not any old flatulence.  It was the exact moment the flood gates opened. I stood there in complete shock as he giggled like a ten year old boy!  I actually blame myself because I started to laugh at him giggling.  Well that just seemed to be an open invitation for my butt burner of a better half, because the next hour ended up being a series of nose penetrating, objectionable patoot thunder that left an unfortunate imprint on me for these last 7 years.

When you think about it, his minor gaseous offences, are nothing but a blip compared to other people. I have run into so many people in the last 10 years that are seriously lacking in socially correct behaviour and I often wonder what happened to general every day manners?  I personally still hold doors open for seniors to go before me.  I always stop and let people pass on crosswalks.  I would be the first to let you stand in front of me at the grocery aisle if you only had a few items and I had several.  But I am starting to lose my own proprieties of conduct.  Seniors, as well as other individuals, no longer say thank you when you hold the door open, people step right out in front of you when you are driving, and if you don’t let that person behind you with a few items go first, then you are stuck listening to them deep sigh for the entire time you are purchasing your items.

I am coming to believe that this must be a North American thing.  I have a few people on my facebook that are from some European countries and their politeness astounds me.  So I wonder to myself: when did we come to the conclusion that rudeness was an acceptable part of our society?

There are days now, specifically when I am cranky, when I open doors for someone elderly and as they walk thru I say quite loudly “YOU’RE WELCOME.”  It usually startles them and they get flustered and embarrassed and I feel thoroughly satisfied with the fact that I exacted a little revenge on them for their deplorable manners.  Although the fact that I exacted a little revenge says to me that my manners maybe deplorable as well.  However, I did have some 80 year old once turn around and look me in the eye and say “nobody asked you to hold it open for me dear.” She was right you know.  Nobody did.  I suppose if I am expecting something for being thoughtful, I should maybe change careers and open doors for living, then at least I would be paid for it.

I should of course mention that within my own household I am no angel and that I take it for granted that I can be free and easy with my own personal etiquette, per se.  And I probably could do with a lesson or two on the fact that “flatulent humour” is not the only thing worth laughing about. 

In the meantime and while I am out and about in public, I am still going to hold on tightly to my own manners.  I have to believe that I will hopefully rub off on someone, of course, it will be highly doubtful that it will be that person who flipped me the bird in the crosswalk the other day, but I can hope!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches.

GOODBYE SUNDAY!!

Hello Monday..... and so begins another work week for those of us who do the Monday thru Friday, 9 to 5 daily grind!  I'm certainly not knocking my job, but I often wonder how the work week can drag on and on but when Friday comes, watch out, you blink once and the weekend is over and you are back to the beginning of another tedious work week.

When I was a kidlet, I use to love Sunday evenings.  It was pretty much the only night of the week where I actually got to watch what I wanted.  Which in most cases was the The Wonderful World of Disney.  I, however, dreaded when hockey season came because Hockey Night in Canada would unfortunately trump Disney.  Those were in the good old days when you had one tv room, namely your living room (there was no such thing as a family room) and your father had the dubious distinction of being the boss over the tv channels.  Remember when you actually had to get up and walk over to your tv and change the channel manually?

I have to say that to this day, I absolutely dread Hockey Night in Canada, and I have probably offended at least 9 of my 10 followers with that statement.  But as a little girl, there was nothing worse than watching hockey ever freaking night on tv and then being dragged to every practice and game of your brother's.  As soon as I was on my own, I never watched it again!  It was the most liberated I had ever felt.  My own tv and my own choice in channels.  It didn't seem to matter to me that the first 3 years I was on my own, I couldn't afford cable.  So I used my tv as a beautiful plant stand.  It was just the fact that it was my tv and my decision.

As I have gotten older, I have to admit that I have become a bit of a remote control hog.  I often sit my patooty down beside my better half and just instinctively grab the remote out of his hand and start flipping channels until I find something that piques my interest.  Thank gawd he is so good natured, because if he did that to me, most likely I would smack him in the back of the head and take the remote back from him.  Don't feel too bad for him though.  He has that annoying habit of surfing between the commercials and by the time he gets back to the original channel, we have usually missed an important part of the show.  I suppose that is his revenge with me.  Tic for Tac, as my mother would say!

I guess its about that time now..... Gotta go downstairs and yank the remote from his hand!  Oh don't roll your eyes, it's Amazing Race night!  In the meantime, I hope this week goes smoothly for everyone!  I certainly will be doing my great big Monday morning sigh tomorrow and blinking as much as possible in the hopes I will land on Friday fairly quickly!

Until Next time

Smooches Pooches

WHAT A LITTLE WHITE HAIR CAN DO

This week has been draining.  I am tired and uninspired and reaching deep into myself for something to blog about has been next to impossible.

Not too mention that I found a stinking white hair in my eyebrow.  Really, a white hair people, in my eyebrow!  And you know what happens next, with one comes fifty more and before you know it, I am going to be in a rocking chair, sporting a foo man chu moustache, wearing some gawd awful printed little house on the prairies dress, with support stockings while wearing depends on my head instead of my bottom, in an old folks home, playing with my dentures......

That little white hair got me to thinking that maybe it was time to re-evaluate what it is that I want to accomplish in life. So I have decided to make a life list of the things that I wish to do before they open those pearly gates to let me in and I am sharing them with you in the hopes that you will help kick my rooty toot butt into gear and get me going on it.

Here they are in no particular order:

• Go to Italy (okay I lied, this is my number 1 thing to do!)
• Learn to play the acoustic guitar (I was subjected to five painful years of playing the Organ with a teacher who did not believe in using deodorant and let me tell you something, no child should EVER be subjected to that!  So I am ever so slightly scarred when it comes musical instruments)
• Get my motorcycle licence (hey!!! I can do that, my mother did it at 50... she's such a rockstar!)
• Speak another language (specifically a language that doesn’t involve rolling your “R’s”... hard as I try, I cannot get my tongue to roll that way)
• Star in a made for tv movie (even if I only play the corpse!)  Yes I realize that this maybe a delusional wish, but its my wish damn it! 
• Learn to sing.  (It doesn’t do much for your confidence when people constantly plug their ears every time you bark out a tune).
• Design and have made a very cool piece of jewelry (I think I could be very good at this one.  I have lots of retail therapy to back me up.).
• Become a mixed media artist (yup, just give me a canvass, some paint and some paper and I will chuck it all on and voila, I will be done);
• Really learn the ins and outs of gardening (I tend to wing it with sad pathetic results).
• Go to France, Spain, PEI and Belize (okay I would like to travel more than I have in the last 10 years.  It doesn’t help that I suck at planning).
• Drive a speed boat (I have a serious need for speed issue).
• Try pottery (I want my experience to be just like Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in Ghost....... I can see it now and I am liking it!).
• Write a children’s book (a short, rhyming one based on my adorable loveable little pooch).
• Go for a session of past life regression therapy (yes bizarre, I know, but what the heck).

The last couple I can’t share because they are just too personal to throw out into cyber space and best locked away in confines of my crazy mind.  But they have to do with some personal growth and I can say, that I pretty much work at those daily, so they are well on their way to being accomplished.

In the meantime, for those of you hitting this blog via facebook, I would love it if you would share one of your things to do on your life list with me and for those of you coming from wherever, please feel free to leave a comment because hey, your life list will most likely inspire me and maybe someone else.

In the meantime, I am going to set up a wooden table, slap some mud on it, whip my better half’s shirt off and role play us some Demi and Patrick tonight!  Here’s hoping that you get to check something off your life list this weekend too!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches.

MY DIRTY LITTLE SECRET....

By now you have figured out my dark and dirty little secret....... why yes, I love to shop!  Shop, shop, shop, just the mere mention of the word and I go into a whirlwind of tizzy whizzy happiness.  I can’t help myself you know, I’m addicted! 

In my 20's, my addiction lead me down a very bad financial path.  Now, now, it wasn’t like I was bankrupt.  Quite the opposite in fact, I have a credit rating so high that I just have to smile at  financial institutions and they willingly chuck money at me.  Nope, it was more like I didn’t have a penny extra in case of emergencies and you could say that my priorities were a little twisted, okay a lot twisted. But in my defence, I have to say: come on I was in my 20's, single, free and ever so slightly misguided.

I use to spend my time trying to decide what was more important:  toilet paper or that new scarf.  Of course, my decision was that I would have to develop some very strong bladder control and figure out a marked course to all the public washrooms close to my apartment!  It was, in my opinion, a small sacrifice considering how great that scarf was and ohhhhh look how well it went with my new coat!

These days, when it comes to my immediate retail therapy needs, my choice of poison is jewelry and purses and watch out to anyone who gets in my way.  Although I am not proud to admit it, I have unfortunately wrestled a woman over a purse before.  Of course, I won and she was lucky enough to walk away with only a few minor abrasions.  I maybe short you know but I have no problem opening a can of wup ass now and then!       

I don’t know what it is about shopping.  I suppose it is the female version of the thrill of the hunt.  Looking for that elusive item so that when you put it on, all your friends ooohh and ahhhh and gaze green with envy at it.  It’s a woman thing.  I hate to be so stereotypical but I have yet to meet a man who has felt the same way as me.  It’s like being on the greatest roller coaster of your life, you go up and up and up and as you buy it, you get those amazing butterflies, and then woooosshhhhh, you of course plunge downwards, and the rush is gone, but if you are lucky, you will still be sporting the afterglow.

I have to say that as I have gotten older I have changed my priorities ever so slightly.  I do pay for all the “necessities” first and then give myself an allowance to go crazy with.  The funny thing is that my necessities don’t seem to always coincide with my better half’s version of necessities and I can easily blow my allowance in one day.

I often fear that I will come home one day and see all my family sitting around in our living room with some stranger sitting in a chair who stands up and says “welcome to your intervention”, and then I am dragged out against my will to places like Wal-Mart and shown how to bargain shop.  Good gawd that freaks me out just thinking about it!

In the meantime, i’ll let you in on a little secret.... I actually don’t believe in that saying “you can’t take it with you” because when I finally kick the can and they go to roast me on that big marshmellow, weinee pit, you can bet your bottom that I will be covered from head to toe in pendants and purses.  Got to be stylin when I hit those pearly gates!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches

CONFESSIONS OF A.....

Ahhhhh, for those of you who know me, I bet you were assuming that I was confessing to being a shopaholic... Nope, today I am confessing my sins to being the worst-bride-to-be you have ever met!

My better half and I have been engaged for almost 4 years.  We met thru some mutual friends who had set us up on blind date, and we had our first date playing mini golf over top of a very stenchy septic field while our friends looked on.  Not the most romantic of dates and incredibly difficult  to get to know each other when you have an audience. To be honest, I wasn’t too sure about my better half when I met him.  Ultimately, he was very handsome (I like that dark and brooding thing he has going on), clean cut, impeccable manners and definitely what you would consider a complete Mr. Nice Guy.  And let me say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a nice guy.  They are dependable, reliable, responsible and you know where you stand with one, but I have always been ever so slightly attracted to those wickedly bad boys (and what girl hasn’t?). However, after a couple of holes on the mini golf course and what I perceived as a gentleman thing to do by always letting me go first, was nothing short of his own pervy maneuver to constantly look down my top each time I bent down to get my ball.  What popped in my head was, “wow what a pervert” and then the second thing that popped in my head was “cool he’s twisted... yup, I’ll go on a second date with him!”.  Three years later and we were settled together in our recently built little home where we were living in average couple bliss.

We had occasionally talked about getting married and we had even looked at a specific ring a few times, but I have to tell you that I have never been one of those girls who wanted to lasso a man and get him down the aisle before he changes his mind.  In fact, I don’t ever recall even dreaming of my wedding.  As a little girl, I dreamt about accepting my award for best actress at the Oscars and signing autographs while living in a mansion surrounded by 200 of my favourite dogs and a string of boy toys at my disposal. Nothing much has changed in my dreams, I still fantasize about people ooohing and aahhing over me.  Yup, my dreams are nothing short of delusional thoughts of grandeur.  But that topic is for another day!

Anywhoooo, one Saturday I had spent the whole day looking for an outfit to wear to a wedding.  This is no small feat I tell you.  While I adore shopping, I do absolutely abhor clothes shopping. Especially for this lumpy bumpy frumpy body I have been cursed with.  By the time I had gotten home, I was the Queen of Misery.  I was your worst nightmare come true.  My better half had come home after a hard day of work and he had seemed completely agitated which irritated my already cranky mood.  He asked me if I wanted to go to a favourite beach of ours for a nice Sunday stroll.  In one of my less than stellar moments in life, I nearly tore a strip off him and regaled all of my horrible shopping moments, never once thinking about what his day was or what was agitating his mind.  Needless to say, I was incredibly surprised when all of a sudden he dropped down on one knee and said “I can’t wait any longer, will you marry me” and then proceeded to produce the ring that I saw and loved a year earlier.  My first thoughts were: Are you kidding me? You want to marry me after my rant and rave?  I actually said to him “you are asking me now?” because I certainly would not have! I could not believe that this poor romantic bugger was asking this bitchy broad to marry him!  Of course I said Yes!  I mean who else would take me after that.  I certainly wouldn’t have.  And I was this close to kicking my own ass to the curb!

Well in these past 4 years, I have bought exactly one bridal magazine which did not inspire me with all those gorgeous stick woman sashaying around in their designer gowns, like that is reality.. Hello?  Then I bought an bridal organizer 3 years ago, which I still have not even opened or looked at, it has too many pages and makes my head spin!  I even succumbed to the pressure and went to an actual bridal fair last fall.  My head was swimming from all the people throwing brochures at me, some cutesy 20 something year old with her perky boobs hijacked me and painted a red heart on my cheek, girls were giggling and running from one booth to another all the while oohing and ahhing over this and that.  And then there was me, I was sweating profusely, my eyes were darting here, there and everywhere looking for the next possible exit sign and I was sure that at any moment I would need a paper bag to blow into before I passed out. 

Sadly I can confirm that we have set three dates now in total, all of which have come and gone and we are no closer to getting married than the day he proposed.  Its not that I don’t want to marry him, he is one of the best things that has ever happened in my life.  I suppose you could say that I am lazy and not much of a planner which is partially true, or you could say that I am cheap and I would rather buy artwork than put money into a wedding, again that could be true, or you could say that I just am too tired to figure it out, but I guess the real truth of the matter is that I want him to have an “out”.  I have never told him that but the fact remains that my personal limitations impede greatly on his enjoyment of life and I don’t want him to wake up with regrets.  I am seriously a really cranky woman!  And in my own way I am keeping that door open for him should he wish to bolt.

Thankfully, the majority of our friends and family have long since quit asking us when the big day will be.  They have finally become sick of my standard answer of “I don’t know, maybe in a year”. I am also thankful of the fact that my better half does not actually read my blog, or he would probably have a Justice of the Peace at our door tomorrow morning making sure that we were married.  In any event, who knows, maybe one day i'll actually decide it is time and we will tie the knot.  Until then, I think we are both okay with living in sin and besides, I could use the money for another really nice piece of artwork, which reminds me, I gotta go because there are so many art galleries and only so much time!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches.

BLOG PONDERING....

The other day I was pondering away.  I often do that, ponder away on the things that make me happy and the things that drive me nuts and the things that make me look crazy.  So it stands to reason that I got to pondering about blogging.  I never once thought that blogging would be that difficult.  Simply because I always seem to be rambling at the mouth, so rambling on a computer just seemed like the perfect next step in my life.  Ironically, it’s much more harder than I ever thought!  Not when it comes to finding things to write about, but the fact that you are sharing so many unusual, intimate details about yourself or the crazy perceptions that float around in your head.

My poor mother is my test on what to blog and what not to blog about.  If she is speechless, than I post it.  If she says, “that’s a nice one”, it will never see the light of day.  I get a tremendous kick out of what her expressions are going to be, and not because of the shock factor, but because my mother believes in being a lady, and she is one.  I wish I could record her comments for all your ears to hear.  She says things in her sweet little high peaked voice like “oh my gawd, you aren’t seriously going to tell people what a gross little girl you were by placing boogers on your wall, please don’t post that!” or “don’t tell people that you thought your vagina was a regina, they’ll think that I never taught you anything” and my favourite one “you got to be kidding, you are going to tell people that your dog and your fiancé pass gas on you while you are trying to sleep!”  Her expressions crack me up.  She is horrified at the fact that I am laying it out for all of you to read, and I wonder if she has a point, should I be horrified that I am sharing this with you?  She often points out the fact that she tried to raise me as a lady and good lord what happened there! However, I am who I am and I make no apologies for my openness. I can’t imagine myself any other way.  There are times I wonder if I could pull off sophistication, but sadly, it just would not fit my persona.  I would be the first to admit that I am ever so slightly eccentric and that I love love love to laugh, but most importantly I really do love to laugh at myself first.  In fact, my better half’s term of endearment for me is  “weirdo”.  Ironically, he is a bit of a weirdo himself.

I will tell you that I have no time for people who try to retain that cool facade of mystery about themselves.  I find it completely boorish.  I am much more attracted to people who are at ease with both their positive and negatives aspects within themselves. I actually don’t have any skeletons in my closet because I would be the first person to open the closet door and let them all out.  Besides, is anything really that bad that you can’t share?   I mean who cares if everyone knows that my dog and better half assault me with their machine gun loaded butts everyday.  Everyone knows that men fart.  Its no surprise that my fiancé farts.  He is quite proud of that accomplishment in his life.  In fact, he is even quite proud of the fact that he does velcro farts (ones that follow him wherever he goes!).  He loves it when he lets a bunch go into the couch and then I go to sit down and I get that horrible mushroom effect that surrounds me with his stench.  Believe me people, when I have had enough of his gassy ass, I purposely consume a whole can of chick peas just to exact my revenge!  And a whole can of chick peas can last you days and days of sweet revenge!  So there, now you know, I pass gas too!

The only downside to a blog is wondering whether you have just grossed out your only ten followers and you fear you might lose one of them in the process. Of course, there are other fears too, like whether you have just bored the crap out of them and whether they think after they have read it “well, there’s 5 minutes of my life I can’t get back”, or whether you aren’t articulate enough that you actually hold their interest while they read your blog.  I have had some pretty nice feedback from some pretty nice people.  And while I am completely honoured by their comments, I often wonder if they are just saying that so that I won’t feel like a complete moron.  It is after all just an expose of my very average life.  How interesting can that be?

Of course in the meantime, I have a zillion more things that are floating around in my head and I have this scary feeling that by the end of my blogging career, you will all have come to know me way more than you had ever wanted too.  In the meantime, I will continue to pay my 10 followers so that they won’t leave me.  And who knows what will pop out of my mind next, maybe I will talk about my breast reduction or the time I got caught passing gas around a city worker and his jackhammer.  Boy, I can’t wait to get my mother’s reaction on those two topics, not only will she be speechless but she will probably pass out from pure embarrassment.

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches.

THE BEAUTY OF MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

I love my little neighbourhood I live in.... full of the most wonderful people you will ever meet and I am sorry to say that our home is up for sale while we look for greener pastures, if that is even possible.... Today I watched a lady spend over an hour in my home (of course I was spying from my car down was spying from my car down the road) and all I could think of was to yell "GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT". Although that could have been related to the fact that I seriously had to go the bathroom and good gawd why was she standing there looking at my heat pump for over 15 minutes! It's just a bloody heat pump! Anyway,  a little bit later on in the day, my door bell rang, and it was a retired police officer who really loved our little home and was quite interested.  I got into my spiel about all the cool things, like our front door and our wrap around porch and our hardwood floors all coming from the property.  I saw the glint in his eye and I instantly regretted saying anything!   To top it off, he started telling me where he would like to put his hot tub and what he would move around in our yard.... I smiled at him, but in all honestly, I was visualizing booting his ass out of my yard...!  A half hour later and another car drove up and sat out front and looked over my home from top to bottom.  I thought about standing on my coffee table by the window and mooning them, but I might have freaked out my neighbours across the street, so I refrained.  Why is it that a house becomes more than just a house.... I love that it is the first home that we built together.... I love the fact that we were only together just a year and half when we took on this monumental stressful task of building a home, I love that our relationship survived the build, I love that it was in this neighbourhood that we found our pooch, I love that when there was only 4 homes in the entire subdivision, we all looked after each other, I love that I can sit outside any time of the day and my neighbours will mosey over and sit down beside me and we will chat for hours, I love that my neighbour's cat thinks that our house is her second home, I love that I know everybody's first name and I love that I know every pet by name in the entire neighbourhood and that they all come to me when I call them... *insert deep sigh here*...  I know, its just a house but it is really like your first love so very hard to let go of... and your neighbours really do become an extension of your family.  Oh well, such is life... Don't mind me tonight, i'm just a tad sentimental...

Until Next Time.
Good night and Sweet Dreams  xxoo

ITS CALLED WHAT.....?

When I was a small girl, I use to be mystified by the human body. I could not understand how girls ended up with things called boobies and why everyone giggled when they said boobies. Even to this day, I think the word boobies is just plain weird. I am sure that some man came up with that name, because a woman would have been more profound and used something like the juice of life or bountiful beauties or enveloping face snuggler, anything but boobies. What made this worse for me was when someone would call you a boob, I would continually conjure up the image of a head shaped like a great big boob, with two eye balls and a nipple for your hair! It was an image that took years to get out of my head.

Of course, when you are 7 years old and someone tells you something, you believe it. So it stands to reason that when a couple of boys told me that my “down there” was called a Regina, I believed them wholeheartedly. I never questioned it for one moment and I never once thought to ask my mother. So at the ripe old age of 7, I now knew I had Boobies and a Regina. Wow, lucky me!

Later on in the year, we were studying capital cities of Canada. I was horrified to find out that there was a city named after my who-who! Did they really call it Regina? Surely people must be traumatized to say that they live in Regina? I was just traumatized in saying the word Regina! I went home later that day completely confused. I grabbed our Atlas in a desperate search for a City called “Do-in’s Piece”. Obviously if they were going to name a City after my Regina, than it stands to reason that a City would be named after a boy’s Do-in’s Piece. Yup, that what my parents use to call my dog’s penis... the “Do-in’s Piece”. I scoured that Atlas for hours and could not find a city, town, village or even a street named Do-in’s Piece in the entire world.

I have to tell you I was not sure what to make of this revelation. Were women’s Reginas more popular than men’s Do-in Pieces? Things popped in my mind like, were all girls from Regina, when you became older and you were a woman did you have to move to Regina. What if you went to talk to the doctor and said I need to speak to you about my Regina, would the doctor say the City or your who-who. I was as close to a nervous breakdown that a little 7 year old could be, and looking back on it now, I would venture to say that I was almost in need of some serious psychological counseling!

Later that week at school, our teacher gave an oral testing on the cities. You know that moment in history where time stands still, well it happened to me during that test. It’s almost like I knew what was coming next, and before I could say “Bob’s your Uncle”, that damn teacher pointed her bony finger at me and said “what is the capital of Saskatchewan”. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, I had to say this out loud? Oh my lord......! I was the complete colour of the inside of a cherry. I looked down at my feet, I shifted uncomfortably, I pulled at my collar and said in the most softest, quietest voice that I could possibly muster “Regina”. “What’s that?” my teacher said. OH MY GAWD, is she asking me again? All I could think of was to just spit it out and get it over with. So as loud as I possibly could I shouted “REGINA”! I sat back down horrified, embarrassed and humiliated and buried my face into my desk and counted the minutes till the end of the day. Of course, the two boys behind me were in a fit of giggles and teased me relentlessly for months. I am happy to report that it was only half a year later that I discovered the truth about my Regina. I was kind of sad that there was no longer a city named after a part of my body, but in the same time relieved as well.

There are still moments in my life when someone tells me they are from Regina and it takes all my self control to not break out into laughter. I often think of those two boys from my childhood, they both have long since passed away in unfortunate tragic circumstances. But the memory of them lives on in a funny moment of my life. Besides, my who-who could have been called a Regina and you could have been born in Vagina, Saskatchewan!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches