Life – Page 27 – Rant and Roll

Let’s get together and feel alright

My life currently revolves around three things:

1. Running.

Scotiabank half-marathon this weekend! I’ve raised almost $1,200 and it’s going to be an absolute hoot of a run.

Sub 1:30 or bust!

2. Bring up the Bodies (by the AMAZING Hilary Mantel)

This woman is an absolute genius. She makes me want to create beauty.

3. HOMELAND.

OMG.

Are you dudes watching this!?

IT’S SO GOOD. (Although mega, mega stress-inducing.)

Also, the whole world needs more Mandy Patinkin.

Meanwhile, around the apple orchard:

Oh hi there.

Delicious treats.

Godzilla-fied New Westminter.

Close cribbage games.

Post-talk flowers.

…

So blue haroo, and pip pip, and all that my good chaps.

I hope this week is filled with all the good things.

And more.

And many more! (On channel 4)

This is my mum:

She is very old.

JUST KIDDING!

She’s brilliant, and beautiful, and utterly fab, and I love her more than can be properly communicated on ye Olde Rant and Roll.

And it’s her birthday!

As I will be seeing her in exactly two weeks, when the family descends upon New York for my sister’s wedding festivities, I didn’t send her card in the mail (plus Canada post is notoriously slow).

Also, one thing to know about my momma is that she is a Buddhist, zen master extraordinaire, so in her quest to reach nirvana she has shunned all worldly possessions.

(And yet despite this fact, I cannot seem to stop buying her all the beautiful jewelry that reminds me of her.)

I’m working on it, okay?

(Just not that hard.)

However, as soon as I saw this card I KNEW that I had to purchase it:

I mean, how perfect is that?

Momma, I love you to death, and if I could buy you a lifetime supply of nothing (or, at the very least, all the salmon and salads in the world), I would.

I would in an instant.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

Five things that are making me laugh.

1. In Act V, scene i of Much Ado About Nothing (my spirit animal in play form), Benedick calls Claudio “Lord Lackbeard” when confronting him on his wrongful scorning of Hero.

Now, I’ve always thought this to be a terrific insult, and I laugh at it every time I either read it on the page, or hear it used live.

This past weekend, I made a joke about the fact that I’ve pretty much run my breasts into non-existence. Building off of this love, Marc didn’t miss one beat, and immediately called me his “Lord Lackboob.”

LORD LACKBOOB.

Classic.

I’ll be laughing about that for YEARS.

2. This Lonely Island song.

Angela Merkel is a lyric.

A LYRIC!

I can always do with more Merkel in my life.

3. I was speaking with my mum on the phone yesterday and she told me how she was helping out at my sister’s store when she went to the washroom to use some of my sister’s hairspray.

(My sister practically lives at her shop, so she keeps an assorted array of housekeeping materials in her bathroom – toiletries, changes of clothes, shoes – it’s a veritable treasure trove of her stuff.)

Anyway, my mum nearly gave me a laugh-induced stroke on the skytrain when she followed-up with, “only what I thought to be hairspray turned out to be industrial grade oven cleaner!”

And people wonder why I am the way that I am.

4. This photo of my sister and I from Christmas this year.

Yeah.

It’s really amazing Ford Models isn’t blowing up my phone trying to sign me.

5. Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars.

This lady is one heck of a great writer, and funny to boot. Ever wondered how hard it is to use a toilet in zero gravity?

No?

Me neither.

(But you’ll definitely not want to miss her chapter on just how hard it can be. I mean – they actually have to practice, on earth, with cameras, before launching themselves into orbit!)

I mean, who knew that there would be such a science, to well, this part of science?

…

So that’s all she wrote my darlings.

I’ll just be here in my little corner of the interwebs, silently shedding these tears of happiness.

And I’ll probably be here for a while.

I’m running free, yeah

Yesterday I ran 16 kilometers.

With only two weeks to go until the Scotiabank half-marathon, this was my second to last long training run before race day itself.

I haven’t been sleeping super well of later – not necessarily badly, just not very long – so I was out the door just a little before eight.

Normally I eat light before any run over 10k, but I my stomach wasn’t feel too great from the day before so I went out after drinking just two cups of water, and one cup of coffee.

(I definitely made sure to go to the bathroom before leaving, lest I be tortured throughout my route by the need to relieve myself; be it a phantom need, or otherwise – I find it’s never best to really challenge those boundaries when the feeling does arise.)

For some reason I always forget how much I love running in the earlier parts of the day. There are fewer people out and about, be it on the road, in the parks, in the woods, on the paths.

Most individuals who are up are with their dogs, out for a stroll to pick up bagels for breakfast, or grab the Sunday paper.

Yesterday morning was cooler, but not cool.

My t-shirt and shorts were a perfect pair against the slightly overcast sky. For most of the route my overgrown bangs were toyed by an inconsistent, but gentle wind – a wind that didn’t seem to so much blow and it did bristle.

As if it too couldn’t believe that it had to be up that early on a Sunday morning.

And that it had been so long since I had cut my hair.

Look at this silly girl, running about when she could be in bed. Let’s give her fringe a little bounce – one to match the speed of her footfalls.

Good thing I always have an extra bobby-pin.

(Or two.)

I thought a lot during my run.

I thought about new jokes that I’ve yet to try out, and old jokes that could be made better.

I thought about Father’s Day coming up this weekend, and my dad’s impending visit.

Unfortunately, even the greatest of runs can be upset by the most inane of happenings.

Yesterday it was the sight of a pile of McDonald’s garbage lying off to the side of the beautiful wooded trail that marked kilometers six to eight.

The worst is probably individuals who spit, and don’t look around to see if anyone is approaching them from behind.

If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve almost been spat on, I would have a handful of nickels.

This is too many nickels.

After the rogue loogie hockers, it has to be the drivers who never bother to look for pedestrians at designated crosswalks.

I’m running to extend my life, not cut it short.

Next, it’s walkers who refuse to briefly walk single file as you run past, forcing you off of the pavement (you can just see their inner monologues of TWO ABREAST! TWO ABREAST OR DIE!), and dog walkers whose leashes are about twenty-feet long.

Why such long leashes dog lovers?

But in the end, these things are just little annoyances that can’t take away from the overall greatness of a run.

If anything, they make you wilier, more adaptable – they ensure that you’re ready for anything.

And you can’t ask for much more than that.

Except for less spit-related nickels of course.

Say Cheese!

On Monday night Marc and I walked up to London Drugs to get some photos developed.

Can you believe this is actually still a thing?

I barely remember life before digital cameras – a time where you had “rolls” of film, that, once processed, were delivered in an envelope with a set of “negatives.”

How utterly quaint!

Now that we live in the age of the duck-faced selfie, you might be hard pressed to find someone under the age of fifteen (maybe even twenty) who would even know the definition of “negative,” let alone what one looks like.

Excluding, of course, hardcore hipsters, who walk around with their clunky Polaroid cameras, not-so-secretly wishing that real life itself could be viewed through a sepia tone filter.

I am, of course, just waiting for that one enterprising hipster who will start carting around a Rand Collins (you know, the cameras with the curtain, and the post-shot plumes of smoke), and who will always be yelling at their bored-looking girlfriend to “WATCH THE BIRDY!”

Because that will be great.

Anyways, to get back to my original story, on our way back home we walked past this hair salon:

This has got to be the most fun place to work, in the history of places to work.

If I wasn’t so suspicious of what actually consititutes LIVE DJs, I would probably have to go in one day and scope out the joint myself.

Although, any attempt at reconnaissance on my part would probably end poorly. I’d be there, waiting on an eyebrow waxing, all IF THIS ISN’T THE NEW DAFT PUNK I’M OUTTA HERE!

And they’d be all – WHO IS THIS CHICK?

And then I would end up having this done to me:

What?

How?

WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN?

If any of you peeps out there are esthetically inclined, please, I beg of you, explain this “special effects” phenomenon!

Oh, and speaking of complete confusion –

The other day I was out on a lunch walk-about with my terrific friend Katie (she being in hot pursuit of a fab dress to wear to the many weddings she will be going to this upcoming summer) when we came across this outside of Forever XXI:

Now, individuals who have been reading this here blog for many moons will know that I have a long-standing love/WTF relationship with this store.

I have procured a number of lovely pieces from its many sales racks, but more often than not I am overwhelmingly mystified by the majority of the vestments on display within the store.

In short: EVERYTHING IS CRAZY.

I mean, just look at this poster.

LOOK!

This woman is literally wearing animal-print diaper pants.

If someone asked me to name this garment, I would answer, “Depends.”

They are crazy and I don’t understand why anyone would want to walk around outside, in the daylight, looking like they had freshly filled their drawers.

THIS IS NOT A GOOD LOOK FOLKS.

I have no hard feelings either way towards this whole “bralet” trend, suffice to say that it’s not really my cup of tea, but heck if I will trample on someone’s rights to sport a seven dollar, studded bra top.

Unless, of course, it’s sags all the way down to their ankles.

Then we’ll need to talk.