Life – Page 31 – Rant and Roll

The best things in life are free

So.

I’ve been trying to save up my sweet cash dollars for a while now, what with the upcoming summer months being chock-a-block full of fun and fancy things (like trips to NY, and Ashland; weddings galore, and my five-year wedding anniversary, to just name a few.)

Now, stashing all my hard earned moolah under my mattress hasn’t really been all that hard – what with how unbelievable busy I have been since the birth of the new year, and me not being an overly extravagant person (outside of my personality, of course).

But yesterday I was in London Drugs, hemming and hawing over two brands of nail polish – practically having a conniption fit over which one I should purchase – when my lovely husband turned to me and said, “Vanessa – they are $4.99 each. I think you can maybe splurge and get both.”

My response was rather short.

“Huh,” I said.

Huh indeed.

So I did. I purchased them both.

And I am (kind of?) proud to say that I only spent about five minutes worrying about whether or not I had gone overboard.

But that’s when it hit me –

I AM BECOMING A CRAZY OLD MISER.

For real dudes.

I am Scrooge McDuck, incarnate.

(The fear that this strikes in me is only partially quelled by my long-standing desire to go swimming in a giant vault filled with nothing but gold coins.)

Side bar: As a child, I used to think about the logistics of what exactly doing the front crawl in a pool of coins would entail. I thought about this A LOT. I mean, if you just dove right in (off of a diving board and everything) wouldn’t you just concuss yourself on the massive pile of coinage? And if you DID manage to break through, wouldn’t you just DROWN in the literal manifestation of your ridiculous wealth? For reals, that idea – of drowning in a giant pile of metallic (I know it’s gold, but I just think of how terrible pennies feel and smell) awfulness is enough to bring on a panic attack.

ACK.

Must. Think. About. Other. Things.

Okay, back my curmudgeonly ways.

This isn’t to say that I’m scrimping on the bare necessities (nor Mother Nature’s recipes). I like to think that I still exit the house looking swell, and I’m definitely eating foods filled with enough nutrients to stave off the scurvy and the rickets.

I’m just stopping myself from buying anything that I don’t absolutely NEED, even though there are tons of things out there that my little, silly heart so very much WANTS.

I mean, I think it’s normal to get to a point where you look at your clothes (in particular your work clothes) and think to yourself: I CANNOT EVER WEAR ANY OF THIS STUFF EVER AGAIN.

I think I’m also thinking this stuff because the weather REFUSES to cooperate and I’m still wearing much of my winter wardrobe despite the fact that we are almost at the end of April.

Let me break out the bare legs and dresses damnit!

And I really think there is something to be said for learning to really understand where it is your money is going, and how you can optimize your saving potential BLAH BLAH BLAH.

But then the other part of me is all: I’M TWENTY-EIGHT! LET’S PAAAAAARRTY!

*Eats peanut butter M&Ms and cupcakes for dinner*

So in an effort to find some middle ground, I went out the other day and purchased these amazeballs (YES I SAID IT) pants:

I mean, how epically fantastic are they OR WHAT?

AND THEY ONLY COST FIFTEEN SMACKEROOS!

(Or clams, or bones, or whatever the cool kids are calling them these days.)

Meanwhile Marc, being the HUGEST anti-fan of patterned pants is totally thinking, “She could have just bought three more bottles of nail polish!”

Alas, he will just have to walk two steps in front/behind of me whilst I’m out rocking these pantaloons.

And they will be rocked, oh yes.

I mean, I’ve got to look good when I’m out not buying anything, right?

There’s no other way I’d rather be.

Love in the little things

Things that I love.

Marc’s cold hairy knees pressing into the backs of my (warm, hairless) knees, as we spoon together at night.

That first sip of vanilla latte – all sweet steamed milk, espresso and foam.

Finally smelling spring in the air.

The funny way my big sister always says, “Oh hellooooo” at the beginning of our Skype calls.

Short sundresses.

Telling a joke and then pausing, so to let the audience’s laughter wash over me, like a wave made out of happiness.

Managing the trifecta of hair removal – leg shave, armpit shave, brow pluck – ALL IN ONE GO.

When my little sister calls me WAWA.

Finally watching 30Rock.

My poppy-red coat that makes me feel like Paddington Bear.

Kitten kisses.

Cleaning the shower REALLY WELL (and then using it right away.)

Eating chocolate covered cinnamon buns.

Sprinting so hard until I feel as though the only way to put out the fire in my lungs is to barf them right up.

My mum’s broken sarcasm detector. (“Oh that’s not true…IS IT!?”)

Looking at myself in the mirror and thinking I look really pretty today.

Laughing with friends until I think I am going to pee my pants.

Quoting Arrested Development, The Big Lebowski, A Fish Called Wanda, Rushmore, Love Actually, and Mean Girls all the gosh-darned time.

She doesn’t even go here…

Having a mad dance party in my underwear, in a Top Shop change room because the song playing at that very moment was just too good not to.

Boardwalk brunches.

This.

My brilliant friends.

My amazing family.

My beautiful man.

You.

Never forget.

Always, always you.

You’ve got to put one foot in front of the other

Question:

Do you make the first move?

I do.

I have only had three relationships in my relatively short time here on planet earth (the last one being my very happy – and enduring – marriage to my completely bonkers husband), and in all three instances I was the one to initiate the formal courtship proceedings.

Writer’s note: I did not in fact propose to my husband – he was the brave one to take that leap. However, had I not been the one to first declare my attraction, said proposal may never have happened.

To me, there is only so much angst that one can go through before reaching that crush crossroads: either declare your love for the person, or do everything in your power to get over your quivering loins (and moony eyes) as quickly as humanly possible.

While most would say the former is pretty much one of the hardest (and scariest) things out there, hot damn, I cannot even IMAGINE taking on the latter. Sure, there is the chance that you will be left with a relatively heavy heart, especially if your plans to profess your love fall short of a successful outcome, but COME ON.

Never knowing if the other person likes you back? Constantly destroying yourself by wondering, “What if?”

That, my friends, is Dante’s ACTUAL tenth circle of hell.

The first boy I ever asked out was a dude name Jacob*. He was a year older than me, and we did improv and theatre together, sat next to each other in chemistry and physics, and just generally had a great time.

He was really into skateboarding and making movies, and I was into pretending I was into skateboarding, but I did like to make movies, so our friendship was pretty stellar.

One day after school he was in the editing suite, piecing together the score for his latest project when I thought to myself, IT’S NOW OR NEVER.

I awkwardly stood in the doorway and mumbled through my much-practiced lines. Our dialogue was something along the lines of:

V: Hi.

J: Hi.

V: Ummm, do you want to go see a movie with me this weekend?

J: Ummm, sure.

V: Like, just the two of us?

J: Okay.

V: Okay, great!

I leave. He then follows me out a few seconds later and qualifies:

J: Uh, were you just, like, asking me out on a date?

V: Um. Yes.

J: Oh. Okay. Yeah, so, I really like you as a friend, but I don’t think it’s the best thing if we go out.

V: Okay. Sure. No problem.

END SCENE.

Okay, I would be lying if I said that this exchange didn’t leave me feeling REALLY bummed out, but truth be told, I would much, MUCH rather have endured that short (intense) grieving period then never knowing if he liked me or not.

And hey, in the end, our friendship survived, and I ended up dating his (much better looking) friend Ryan*.

JOKING.

About the better looking, not about dating him.

(Kind of.)

My solid-steel guts were also the catalyst of that relationship. After months of extreme back and forth ICQ flirting (holy crap ICQ!!!) I accosted him as we were exiting the gym after our high school’s annual holiday square dancing jamboree.

I basically just dropped all of my Christmas cards, gifts, exams, and papers on the floor before turning to him and blurting out:

“Soooooo, I don’t know if you like, but if you do well, that would be awesome, and if you don’t, well, that’s okay, because I really like you as a friend, and I don’t want to lose you as a friend, but if you like me more than a friend, well, I think we could have something great, and…yeah.”

To which he replied: “Oh. Yeah. Great. I’m totally in the same boat.”

SUCCESS! SUCCESS!

I was so happy I practically started crying. Then we went ice skating and didn’t kiss for a week.

Ahhh, young love.

My next boyfriend I snagged by asking him to go for a late-night walk down at the beach, which was actually just a smoke screen for me to seduce him into kissing him under the moon AND GUYS SERIOUSLY IT WAS SO ROMANTIC.

Oh, and I also told him: “I like you.”

(In my head I was thinking – PLEASEPLEASELIKEMETOOANDKISSME)

And he did! (Like me AND kiss me!)

SUCCESS AGAIN!

Finally, my last foray into making the first move was when I told my beautiful, brilliant husband that I liked him, by literally doing just that.

We were eating dinner (AS FRIENDS) and I wasn’t saying much. When he asked me what was wrong, instead of lying, I took a huge gulp of water, looked him square in the eye, and then said:

“I REALLY LIKE YOU.”

To which he replied, “Oh. Thank you!”

What a gentleman.

And then Ilikeyoutooblahblahblah…

SUCCESS TIMES THREE!

Now, I’m not going to lie and pretend that letting these guys know how I feel didn’t make me sweat like a glass blower’s arse. And sure, my track record is pretty good.

But I swear it – I felt a million times better just saying those words, rather than having them fester away inside of me like a rotten banana peel made out of feelings.

Because dudes, that is just the worst.

So I implore all of you – take your love and run with it! You never know what amazing relationship adventure (short or life-long) you may end up on.

And then when you do, please be sure to tell me all about it.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And nerdy.

For no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run

Hey dudes!

This weekend I competed in the BMO April Fool’s Half-Marathon on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.

Somehow I managed to pull out the best run of my career, finishing the course in 1:31:36, and coming 7^th out of all women (3^rd in my age group) and 29^th overall (out of 537 participants).

HOLY SMOKES.

To say that I am stoked would be a bit of an understatement, but I am very, very tired and as such, there is a bit of a competition between my exhaustion and my happiness.

So as I sit here in front of the fire, clad in nothing but an over-sized t-shirt and sweatpants, I am mostly just very comfortable, and very cozy.

And that’s pretty awesome.

Marc and I left for Gibsons on the last ferry on Friday night, eager as we were to avoid the Saturday ferry traffic, and just get comfortably ensconced in our race-weekend digs (the paradise on Earth hideaway I have so often written about) as soon as possible.

His parents were also up for the weekend, and were lovely enough to accommodate our late check-in. As such, we tried to be as quiet as possible when we arrived a little after eleven o’clock at night.

Despite our own knackerdness, the lateness of the hour had made us absolutely ravenous and we spent a good fifteen minutes loitering about the kitchen, stuffing our faces with the delicious sushi we had not been able to eat earlier.

If you haven’t had the chance to sample the Maple Roll from Okonomi Sushi, YOU HAVEN’T LIVED.

Then we went to bed and slept for nine and a half hours.

Saturday, in an effort to conserve as much energy as possible, I did pretty much zilch.

Highlights include: listening to a lot of good music, completing the NYT Saturday crossword, enjoying a beautiful jaunt about the harbour with my parents-in-law in their boat, and finding this record:

EPIC.

This is why I married a (half) Swiss man.

I mean, they are LITERALLY singing about ham.

I love it.

That night, after eating my fill of spinach and cheese ravioli, grilled veggies, salad, fruit, and rhubarb and strawberry cake, I read a little before falling into a rather (for lack of a more eloquent word) crap sleep.

My dreams I tell ya, they are CRACKED.

The next morning I woke up to my alarm at 6:15 and immediately checked the weather outside.

No rain.

Thank goodness.

Then I made coffee, and read the newspaper.

I’m pretty weird and slightly superstitious when it comes to my race-day preparations, so I like to do everything in the same order as I have in the past:

Drink water.
Drink coffee.
Drink more water.
Get ready
Eat a banana with peanut butter.
Leave.

We were out the door by 7:30, and although the day was cool and the wind was making its presence known, the skies were still clear.

This was a terrific sign, because I’ve never run a race without a pair of AWESOME and GIANT sunglasses, and I didn’t want to end this streak to end at this run.

To combat the cold, I wore my long lululemon running pants (I normally loathe ye olde cult of LULU but heck if they don’t make a cracking running pant), a long MEC running top (SO GOOD) and my ScotiaBank half-marathon shirt (for great memories).

The ride to Gibsons was about forty-five minutes, and to pass the time, Marc and I sang along to this sweet mixed CD I recently made. (Highlights included a raucous version of Sisters are Doing it for Themselves and Third Eye Blind’s Never Let You Go.)

Once we got to the community centre, I picked up my race package and then proceeded to go to the bathroom five times.

Phantom pre-run pee here people. LOOK IT UP.

Before I knew it, it was 9:15, and it was time to head to the start line with all the other competitors.

Marc, playing paparazzi, took a number of snaps of yours totally unaware.

Oh, and also this one:

(Of this I was aware.)

I like to start as close to the start line as possible, so I huddled up with all the other elite runners and counted down with the course marshal –

5…4…3…2…1…- and they’re off!

The first part of the race I felt that I was running really fast. I was a bit worried that perhaps I had gone out a little too quick and, believe it or not, I actually wondered perhaps if I should have peed one more time before setting off.

Sheesh.

At around the four kilometer mark I felt as though I settled into a good rhythm. As we maneuvered in and around one of the town’s residential neighbourhoods, I tried to focus on keeping my stride as long as possible.

Around the six kilometer mark we were back out on the highway, which if I’m honest, was pretty miserable, what with the wind blowing right into me, and the traffic creating even more of a head wind.

But soon enough we were back into beauty central, running down side-streets flanked by gorgeous arbutus, douglas fir, cedar, and alder trees.

It was also around this time that the terrain began to get really hilly.

And we all know how fun that is, don’t we?

Kilometer seventeen was a mixed bag, because I felt absolutely destroyed after cresting a massive hill, but overjoyed because Marc’s parents were there waiting to cheer my on.

And from there, believe me when I say that it really did seem to be over in a flash.

My right foot felt very hot, so I knew that I had a blister forming, and my knees were a little sore, but otherwise, I felt great as I put the pedal to the metal for the last four kilometers.

As I ran past the final aid station at kilometer nineteen, all these little girls yelled out. “WE LOVE YOUR SUNGLASSES!”

That was all I pretty much needed to get me through the homestretch.

As I rounded the very last corner, I caught sight of the race clock, and I couldn’t believe that it said 1:31.

I sprinted as hard I could across the finish line, totally incredulous that I had run so fast.

Then I met up with Marc and his parents and had the chance to take many funny photos.

After, it was time to chow down on some cookies and yogurt, and head back to town.

So in the end, it was a really brilliant day.

I must give a HUGE thank you to my lovely cheering squad (the amazing Mr. M and his parents) and the fab organizers of the race.

I’ll for sure be back.

You can count on it.

Anybody hear that? I’m fairly alarmed here

Hey dudes!

I don’t know about where you live, but it’s raining like a raining thing out here on the west coast of BC.

Normally this isn’t something to really gripe about (what with it being my choice to live smack dab in the middle of a temperate rainforest an all) but come this Sunday I will be running 21.1 kilometers (13.1 miles for all you lovely Yanks/Brits out there) and I would prefer to do so sans soaked running shoes.

(Sans soaked shoes and/or any garment really.)

It’s not that I don’t like running in the rain, I just always imagine it being so much more romantic than it actually proves to be.

And for that, I blame Four Weddings and a Funeral.

“Is it raining? … I hadn’t noticed…”

NO ONE BELIEVES YOU ANDIE MACDOWELL.

NO ONE.

Okay, let’s get back on track.

And what better way to do this than with one of my favourite blog posts:

THE FRIDAY FRY-UP.

Hold on to your butts.

YOU GUYS.

Jurassic Park is back in theatres!

HECK YES.

Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane shall we?

1993. Age 8. Summer. Vacationing in Calgary. Staying with my mum’s friend Claire. She has twin girls who are 10, and a boy who is 12.

We all get along like gangbusters.

Are we going to go see this movie?

OF COURSE WE ARE.

If I remember correctly, I talked my way into permission by telling Claire that this film would be easypeasy compared to some of the other flicks I had previously sat through (despite my, well, extreme youth.)

Her eyes got pretty wide after I told her that on Easter we had rented The Fugitive for some festive post-egg hunt family bonding.

But I mean, c’mon lady, if I could handle Han Solo jumping off of a dam and the terrifying one-armed bandit, I could definitely hack a bloodthirsty T-Rex and a shirtless Jeff Goldblum.

AM I RITE DUDEZ OR WUT?

The other thing that really sticks out in my memory about this day (other than how much I loved this movie, despite it scaring the absolute crappola out of me) is that it was also the day I first heard the term “Jeeze Louise.”

This, to my 8 year-old self, was pretty much THE FUNNIEST THING OF LIFE, so in order to calm myself throughout the scariest parts of the film, I just repeated it over, and over again.

OH HAI NEWMAN BEING SPRAYED AND KILLED BY DISARMINGLY CUTE BUT ACTUALLY TERRIFYING DILOPHOSAURUSjeezelouisejeezelouisejeezelouise…

(And so on.)

Anywho, as you may imagine, going to this re-release is very high on my TO-DO list (as it too should be on yours), but in the meantime if you want the very best ever summation of the movie, please read this.

You will laugh.

I promise.

I am very famous.

Just saying.

And because I am very famous, I eat things like this:

And take family portraits like this:

Help.

Goodbye, my friend.

So come Monday, my best friend at work (the amazing, brilliant, and beautiful Jen) is moving on to a new job, and despite the fact that I am SO HAPPY FOR HER, my little heart is pretty sad knowing that I won’t be working with her for the REST OF MY LIFE.

Veteran readers of this blog will know that she has been a top partner in crime for the past two years as we’ve kicked butt and taken names, skulked about local shopping haunts, and tried out delicious cuisine in and around the downtown core.

(She is also a formidable gym partner, professional Ticket to Ride competitor, and the official Rant and Roll fairy god-mother.)

So Jen, if you’re reading this (and I know you are), let me say this-

GTFO.

YOLO!

Also:

Yeah. That’s pretty darn cheesey.

And I love it.

…

So there you have it folks.

What are you up to for the weekend? Any there any runs, films, fame, or friends on your radar? Do tell me all about it.

Happy Friday to you all!