I RULE at Sunday!

Up at 9:30, mom called, 7 loaves of banana bread in the oven (two banana chocolate, three banana walnut, two plain), dishwasher going, kitchen cleaned – and it’s not even 11am. WHO’S AWESOME? I’M AWESOME!

Did you know that it’s very difficult to bake when you’ve got a near-obsessive compulsion to have clean hands? It’s true! I absolutely HATE having anything on my hands, and baking is not a tidy job. It’s why I can’t make anything that involves ingredient manipulation, like shaped cookies or pies – I’d have to touch the dough and I just can’t do that. Having sticky or dirty hands is so uncomfortable to me that it makes me panic a little, especially if there’s no easy way to get them clean. Ever see me fish ice out of my drink and rub it all over my hands? Yeah, that’s me with a desperate need to clean myself off. I’ve always had an aversion to being sticky, but I think I can pinpoint the moment it turned into a phobia: we were at Circle in Calgary, celebrating Yule. The candy was flowing fast and furious, and people had brought their children to the party. At one point in the night, we had to form a large circle and hold hands – and to my left was a small sticky child with a cold, who had, mere moments before, sneezed into his hands and wiped them off onto his pants. He was covered in crumbs and germs, and I had to hold his hand for what seemed like forever – it makes me shudder to this day; remembering the horrible sensation of icky sticky snotty child hand tightly clutching mine. It may have been a festive Yule, but a compulsion was born: clean hands, all the time, or a little piece of me dies inside.

My other phobia – and this is an actual phobia; if it happened for longer than 3 seconds every two months I would scream out loud – involves hair dryers.

I am off to shower! It’s time to finish my Giftmas shopping!

ninjamas!

We didn’t have a tree up Lastmas, because we had just moved in (one year ago today!) – but this year, it is crazy festive all up in here:

treeeeeee!

We decorated with ninjas, Olympic mascots, my Mighty Ugly hockey, and secret Domos:

slurpees are festive

It’s been a busy couple of days around here. Last night was my office party, which was a blast – I wore the Kermit Dress, it was so green. Today was the kid’s party in Stanley Park, riding the Bright Lights train in the rain. It was my first time on the train, so I had fun even though it was friggin’ cold and wet. Trains are awesome, and there was a bear on stilts:

let him love you

Tomorrow I will bake a multitude of banana breads, finish my Christmas shopping, and possibly take a nap or two. I’ve got a busy week ahead (but less crazy than this past week), but I’m looking forward to getting some work done (the raise and booze I got on Friday likely has something to do with my sudden work ethic). Then .. Friendmas! And Foodmas! And a mini vacation – I’ve got a 5-day weekend over New Years that I plan to put to good use. I don’t know what that is yet, but I have grand aspirations and nothing on my plate – the very best kind of time off!

Yeah, it’s been a little scandal-free around these parts lately – I’ve actually been too busy to get into any trouble. Also, there’s nothing really hilarious going on. Things are just super, which doesn’t make for exciting times – I’m happy, conflict-free, enjoying my life, and have 14 litres of Diet Coke in the house. I may never need to put pants on again! Except I will, because I kind of miss my friends – feels like I haven’t seen them in seventeen years. We’re having Brunchmas at Sparta on the 25th and dinner in Railtown, but I hope there will be Hanging Out before then.

she can see into your soul >:E