This is a very true story about a magic worm. His name was Wimmiin.
One day he fell into a toilet and drowned. Being magic, he thought he would be able to swim, unlike most worms.
He was wrong.
He just drowned.
Middle.
I slept in my bed last night.
It was good.
After my conversation with you I went for a long jog along the track. Then I came home and went to my haircut and colour. My hair is now very black.
This could be good or black.
I will wear my hair to the airport when I come to meet you.
What colors of paint did you choose? And did the blueberries go down well with the water, on the sand? I find nothing tastes as good as oranges at half time, so I do not fully appreciate your blueberries. I probably missed the first five minutes of our conversation this morning as my mind was not yet awake, but oh it is so nice to start the day off by having a nice chat with you.
I have also started a story for you:
Once upon a time, a gargoyle found himself made flesh and pale in the rocky world. I will finish it for you when we go away; when we lie in that warm place.
I’ll whisper in the shell of your ear the sussurus of a life – like a river bed, like a whirlwind.
End.
Semi-reclined, this skin sobbing salt water
Arid air agitated and abrasive against
that tallowy tan
Thirsty
For fabulous dusk’s cool silence and,
Her thirty billion twinkling eyes
In a dream you waited to drink.
In that heat you shuddered
(alone and uncovered)
In my dream you rose up, and met me
Waiting, and impatient, at Gobi
I have a question for all of you beautiful people:
Do any of you nutters have kids?
Full disclosure: I am not with child.
I’m just curious that’s all. You see, there is a kid, currently located just outside of my kitchen window, who has been crying and screaming its absolute head off for say, the past fifteen, twenty minutes.
And this is not a baby, we’re talking about here. We are talking a legitimate, walking, talking human being – one who is weeping for all of Canada. He probably has a full set of teeth, takes trips to the loo solo, and can choose his outfits in the morning.
Having listened to him wail on and on for the last little bit, I just want to lean out of my window and holler, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM KID? THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL! THERE. IS. NO. CRYING. IN. BASEBALL!!!11!!
AND GET OFF MY LAWN.
You whipper-snappers!
…
I mean, that’s pretty horrible of me, is it not?
I know.
I am definitely the worst.
And it is reactions of mine – like this one just described – that make me fear for the day (should I be blessed in the properly functioning uterine department) that I become a mother.
I just can’t imagine that scenario working out all too well.
For one, I have zero maternal instinct.
No, minus zero.
I have never, ever, had that “twinge” – when, after having glimpsed some beautiful scene where a glowing mother cuddles here gorgeous offspring – something inside of me says “I want that.”
To be honest, most of the time everything inside my entire being begins screaming, “DO NOT WANT. COMMENCE THROWING UTERUS IN GARBAGE DISPOSAL.”
I mean, sure, there are moments where I concede that it wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, the people I know and love who have kids make it look downright phenomenal. There are tons of great children out there, and seeing how many of the cool cats in my life love their kids is darn cool.
Plus I keep telling myself that I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about my child as I do about many of the random children I come into contact with – that being mostly terror, confusion, and incredulity.
Deep down I know I would definitely love the crap out of them.
But I still worry.
I worry for a number of reasons (above and beyond the fact that I seem to have pawned off my biological clock sometime in the early 90s for two Kitkat bars, some sour keys, and a copy of Kirby’s Dreamland for my Gameboy.)
The first and mayhaps the biggest?
I just don’t get babies.
I made it through about 4 minutes of this movie before turning it off:
Like seriously, people go absolutely bat shit CRAZY over babies. Not only that, but they go bonkers over baby paraphernalia.
WHAT THE HECK PEOPLE?
It makes me think that babies have some magical power to get you stoned. (Just think about it -marijuana gets you high, and potheads LOVE them some weed leaf stickers, Bob Marley posters, and giant decorative bongs – so I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be the same for those crazed baby-lovers.)
And if it isn’t for their ability to get you high, how else could people possibly care about a tiny pair of socks or a facecloth with a frog on it?
WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW THAT I DON’T?
And in terms of the baby itself – I too need this explained. Babies are small, foreign, angry old men or women, hell bent on breaking your ear drums, defecating mustard gas, and peeing all over every square inch of your life.
This is terrifying!
Seriously, their catchphrase could be – “BABIES: POOP GRENADES ONLY NOW WITH MORE POOP.”
And yet people think they are the bees knees.
And don’t tell me it’s because of their new baby smell.
I’ve smelled me some babies in my life and I know for a FACT that it’s not all cake and roses.
I worry that I’ll have a baby, and the baby will all be “I’m a baby SCREAM POOP PEE EAT SLEEP HAHAHAH JUST JOKING I’M NEVER GOING TO SLEEP SCREEEEAAAAAMMMMMM” to which I’ll just be like, “You, sir, are an arsehole, BUH BYE.”
I worry that I’ll have the baby, and the baby will all be, “BABY” and I’ll be like, “That’s all you got? Where the frick is the rest!? I JUST SPENT NINE MONTHS MAKING YOU – ENTERTAIN ME SPAWN!!!”
I worry that I will be the worst mother ever.
The first baby I ever held. I was sweating like crazy I was so nervous.
So what I guess I’m saying is that I worry.
I worry that I’ll give my kid the eating disorder that I struggled with for years; that I’ll give them the anxiety that I deal with on a daily basis; that I’ll make them think they need make-up to be beautiful because I too like to wear make-up; that I’ll drop them on their head the second I get home.
I worry about the unknown – what about my job? What about my relationship?
What about my body?
I worry about worrying about my body.
But throughout it all, I have one ace in the hole that makes all of these questions seem not quite so daunting.
That one person who makes me worry just a little less.
And that, of course, is Mr. M.
My freaking knight in shining armour.
Because somehow (and I have no idea how) he doesn’t have any of these doubts. He just knows. He has confidence in not only himself, but in me, and it is through him that I have started to believe, little by little, that one day, if this happens, it will be just grand.
And while I’m not necessarily at the same level of belief that he cooly-as-a-cucumber maintains, I have the belief that I will get there, eventually.
Because when I see him with children? That’s when I feel something flicker.
I imagine him and I giving piggybacks, and leaping through sprinklers; teaching small, wild haired munchkins about tidal pools and earthworms, making mud pies, and reading storybooks by flashlight.
And it gives me pause.
But who knows – maybe one day all of what I currently feel about myself, and my relationship with my yet-to-be-born babies will change. I will wake up, flick on the internet and order the newest poo grenade and pay extra for the express shipping.
But until that day, my questions remain.
As does my love.
Unlike, thank goodness, the echoes of the crying child, outside of my window.
M and I have just arrived home from four days spent out and about, bopping along the BC coast.
Here are some snaps from our travels:
Sunflowers.
Woods.
Ferry.
Docks.
Sunset.
Pond.
JUMP.
So there you have it kidlets, a brief look at the last four days spent running, hiking, boating, cooking, and building (woodsheds!).
I got some pretty serious sun on my face (M told me that I should probably stop wearing those sunglasses for the next while because it’s starting to look like I have a wicked goggle tan!), watched the meteor shower – so amazingly beautiful, and learned that a cow has six teats and that the UN General Secretary during the Cuban Missile Crisis was was U Thant (oh Trivial Pursuit…)
Now we’re watching Star Wars and eating blizzards after a simple, delicious dinner of garden grown beans, squash, and local Island gruyere cheese.
Sublime.
What did you cats get up to for the weekend? I want to hear all about it.
So I originally wrote on Friday that M and I were planning on hiking Mt. Seymour on Saturday – a fab hike for an early August day. However, as it is wont to happen in life, our plans changed and we ended up taking on another venture – running from our house in New Westminster to M’s parents’ house in Surrey (which according to “Google map my run” is a distance of 16.45 kilometers).
They recently had their carpets redone and needed help moving a boatload of furniture back to its original positioning, so we were happy to (literally) run over and help out.
Now, Vancity is enjoying its first real heat wave of the summer, and to say that this run was stinkin’ hot might be a bit of an understatement.
We left at 9:40 am and even then the sun was a-blazzing. The one section of the route that afforded us some shade was the part when we ran up King George Highway under the skytrain; after that we were cooking.
I’ll just come out and say it: this was not the best of runs.
In fact, a lot of it was pretty miserable.
It became obvious pretty quickly that M and I were interested in running our own runs, and were not all that interested in running each other’s runs.
This made for some pretty heated commentary along our path (and quite a few sprints, stops, and starts at that.)
We are both highly competitive, highly focused people – and as such, sometimes we start out so fixated on what we want to get out of somethings that we forget how important it is to work together as a team and be open to blending (or at the very least bending) our expectations.
Because seriously, hashing that stuff out on under the blinding hot sun, halfway through an almost 17 kilometer run is not only frustrating, but also exhausting.
Expending that much energy on emotions leaves you with much less juice to finish off those final clicks – it’s pretty darn mentally draining, and as any runner will tell you, that’s a huge component of finishing your race.
Or, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, “Running is 90 per cent mental, and the other half is physical.”
By the time we arrived at M’s parents’ place the two of us were completely done.
We were KNACKERED.
Please see exhibit A for confirmation:
However, communication wise we were a-okay, tip top, lindy hop.
And the crazy thing is, we still ran that stupid run in less than an hour and fifteen minutes. I can’t help but wonder what we would have done it in if we had actually liked each other during the run!
Alas, that is another question for another day.
After cooling down and drinking litres and litres of water, we changed into some non-sweat soaked duds and moved some bloody-giant wooden furniture around (or how I like to think of it – playing real-life doll house.)
Then it was time to return home, shower up, put on a cute sundress (only I did this – M donned a sweet t-shirt/short combo) and hit the downtown waterfront.
Once there we found a lovely spot for some NYT crossword, patio and Caesar action (I’m pretty sure that M and I are the only nerds out there brining crosswords to bars, but whatever, I’ll take it.)
ALSO DUDES. LOOK AT THIS SIGN:
GOODNESS GRACIOUS GREAT BALLS OF FIRE.
This, two days after writing about how I have a strange penchant for mispronouncing Coke, and here we are: VINDICATION.
Also, whoever wrote this should probably spend more time proofreading their work.
But seriously, I almost died when I saw this. Maybe they read this blog and were hoping I’d read this as I walked down Columbia Street?
I can only hope.
I can only imagine.
In final news we have been watching the everliving heck out of the Olympics. As I sit here typing this we are getting ready to watch France and Japan square off in the women’s soccer semi-finals, and we are of course looking forward to Canada taking on the USA later this afternoon.
Seeing Usain Bolt win yesterday was epic, I don’t even understand how gymnastics works, and I want the abdominal muscles of every single heptathlete in the competition.
I believe the question I asked M last night before we went to bed was:
“Do you think if I exercised six days a week and only ate one dessert a day I could have abs like that?”
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
What about you cats? What’s been shaking in your neck of the woods?
Rant and Roll 