Most of the time, that is.

I’ve only very rarely had any major cooking disasters worth writing about, like that time I got salsa on the ceiling, or my devil-may-care attitude towards expiry dates, or my experimentation with foods that were best prepared before the Reagan era. Three questionable meals out of thousands isn’t that bad a record, actually. Maybe I should rethink that career in the culinary arts.

At least, I would have before last Monday night, when I inadvertently made a simple meal that turned out so toxic it gave me wicked, unrelenting heartburn for almost 36 hours.

We heartily groced last week and stocked up on many fresh items, but completely forgot to restock the staples. Since we were out of a lot of things, I opted to marinate some chicken filets in some random jerk sauce I found in the cupboard. We often eat jerked things (albeit a different flavour of jerk), so I didn’t think anything of it – it was either this unknown jerk, or plain baked chicken strips that taste like bird. No thank you.

My first sign that something was amiss should have been when I poured the sauce onto the chicken: it looked like baby poop, or at least what I imagine baby poop to look like since there is nothing I would rather stay far, far away from than babies, poop, and baby poop. I was mildly startled but forged bravely on, since I was hungry and had no other options. I prepped some potato cubes, slapped the whole thing in a baking pan, and made with the cooking for half an hour or so. When it was all done, I took it out of the oven (it looked even more like poop at this point), let it cool, and dug in.

That was my second mistake.

It’s a well known fact that I love black pepper more than any one person should love black pepper, but this .. this “sauce” – was comprised of nothing but the vilest, meanest, most morally corrupt black pepper to ever have been forged in the very hell fires of Satan’s colon; a fiery mixture of despair and suffering and that annoying little tickle you get at the back of your throat when you inhale cat hair. It peeled paint off the walls. It tasted like burning. It called forth an unholy army of the damned to tap dance on my flavour buds. Eyes? They watered. I’ve never been tear gassed, but I am imagining it feels quite the same as my insides did after one tiny swallow of this devil tar.

The sauce I used was SO INCREDIBLY SPICY that I put all the chicken in a colander and rinsed the fuck out of the cooked chicken to get rid of as much sauce as I could. Even then the sad watery chicken was almost too peppery to digest, but I am not one to waste food so I ate my dinner without (too much) complaint and was immediately rewarded with Epic Heartburn for my troubles. It lasted all night (making it difficult to sleep) and into the morning (making it difficult to properly enjoy my morning wood); continuing unabated until early today (and even then I awoke in discomfort that could not be attributed to my over-full bladder) when I could finally declare myself more or less over it.

I don’t fail at cooking often, but when I do, it’s almost ER-worthy.

Perhaps someday I will tell you about the Fruit Milk .. but the Fiery Pepper Chicken of Death is enough humiliation for today.

it’s a coupon for my birthday presents!

Thanks, Ed. I think.

Did someone lower the bar on what quantifies a “hero”? Are we so desperate for role models that “can throw a ball” is the baseline criteria? The entire idea that professional sporting men are heroes deserving your fanatic worship is everything that’s wrong with America today: yes, they’re good at what they do. Sure, they look great in tight pants and have Gatorade coursing through their veins in lieu of blood. Athletes won the genetic lottery and went on to train hard enough to be physically imposing and sweaty. Good for them! We throw millions of dollars their way, and sometimes they win cups or rings or green jackets and then people litter the streets in their honour. Money is funnelled into sports in staggering quantities, while arts and academia are left holding bake sales to raise money for textbooks that include all 118 elements instead of the just the four attributed to Jesus.

What part of any of this makes them heroes?

This isn’t just my natural tendency to lol sports speaking, but genuine confusion. You can absolutely look up to pro sports player, and admire them, and trade pieces of cardboard with their picture. But heroes? Really?

Back in my day, she said shaking her cane and peering through her bifocals, heroes did amazing things. They saved burning kittens from collapsing buildings, or donated kidneys so another could live. Heroes made astounding discoveries that enriched the world. They dedicated their lives to teaching, or healing, or stopping that guy who kept burning kittens in collapsing buildings. They didn’t throw balls real good, or jump very high, or have abs you could grate cheese on. Years from now millions of people will remember that time LeBron made Ohio cry, but only a few will remember the name of the guy who saved billions from starvation. A guy who can throw a ball makes more than $27 million dollars in a single season. The average teacher salary in 2012? $47,000.

That sucks.

I reject the notion that professional sports players are heroes. I reject the hero ideal I’ve had in mind since I was but wee, that heroes only come in spandex, giant robot, or fully-articulated-with-kung-fu-grip form. Heroes are not Disney princesses or movie stars. I wish this didn’t need saying, but reality TV stars? Also not heroes. If you listen to one thing I ever say about children, make it this: introduce your kid to some REAL heroes. You may never find a poster of  Alan Turing to replace all those pictures of David Cassidy or Menudo, but if just ONE kid delivers an essay about Ethel Collins Durham instead of El Santo or Wayne Gretzky*, I will consider my legacy slightly better off than when it was entirely dong-related.

Since I’m up here on this soapbox anyway, here are some people I would consider an actual hero:

• Norman Borlaug started the Green Revolution and introduced ideas that would forever alter the world’s food supply for the better; saving billions from starvation
• Henry Morgentaler campaigned tirelessly for women’s reproductive and health care rights in Canada. If not for his work, my life would be drastically different right now and I am forever grateful for the opportunities afforded me because of the choices I was presented with; options he fought relentlessly for. Also, he’s the Morgentaler in “Me Mom & Morgentaler”, one of my favourite bands.
• Chris Hadfield showed the world that Canadians are awesome while reminding us that space is still this vast, amazing unknown waiting to be discovered, and that science is cool and all around us
• Martha May Eliot and her life partner, Ethel Collins Dunham, did amazing work in public health and pediatrics at a time when women weren’t generally accepted as doctors, let alone experts. Martha was the only woman to sign the World Health Organization into being. These two women are largely the reason any of us lived past the age of two (which is when I did all my best work)

These are just a few of the people that came to mind when I was thinking about heroes and who would fit that bill if they weren’t a giant robot that turned into a truck.

Who are some of your heroes? Bonus points if there’s a Heritage Minute about them!

*: as a Canadian, I am legally obligated to acknowledge that Gretzky is the greatest hockey player of all time

We’re not going, though.

I’m not a superstitious person, but something about this trip didn’t feel right. What started out as a weird gut feeling was quickly accompanied by all these SIGNS that I should listen to my insides:

• Ed’s mysterious throat-based illness that has not yet been solved or cured
• The check engine light appearing on the Minibator for no raisin
• I have done zero planning, which is highly unusual – I love travel planning and start as soon as I possibly can
• I haven’t been packed for a week
• We weren’t super excited for the trip

Our general apathy and Ed’s malfunctioning nodes all came to a head last week, and we officially decided to 86 the trip. We may go later in the summer, or go somewhere else, or go not at all. It doesn’t matter. We can do anything (fun) or nothing (terrible).

Unfortunately, I now have to deal with the sole reason the trip was scheduled for when it was: my birthday. In order to escape the yearly angst I have mid-June because no one wants to play with me, I purposefully decided to be on Alcatraz on June 18th to celebrate my birthday with prison walls and a boat ride. Now that we’re not going, I have to figure out what I want to do on my birthday. I could do nothing, but then I would be super sad. I could do something, but what and when? I hate planning my own fun, but I want cake.

At first I was relieved that we cancelled our vacation, but as is my fickle nature, I’m suddenly sad about it: I finally got excited about the thought of cruising down the 101, taking a million pictures, being in San Francisco, eating the bowl .. and now we’re not going. Is it too late for take-backsies? Probably: even without my gut feelings, all the other reasons we canceled are still valid.

Maybe I should just abscond with the vacation fund and go to London.

I am in desperate need of some kind of adventure.

looking at pictures from our last trip is NOT HELPING

I think everything is hilarious, which sometimes has repercussions - not everyone gets my sense of humour. It doesn’t help that I often forget that the entire world neither lives inside my head nor knows me intimately enough to discern joke from reality. People who haven’t been reading my blog since day one (so, everyone) don’t always know all the silly little in-jokes or running gags I use repeatedly in my posts, which is fine – but sometimes, like yesterday, it backfires and bites me in the ass and then I am sad (and have a sore ass).

In retrospect, I completely understand how yesterday’s post could have been taken seriously, and how someone who doesn’t know me as well as they obviously should could think I was being completely truthful. I AM annoyed at all the Father’s Day reminders, and I DO wish I could turn them all off so I don’t have to be constantly reminded that my dad is gone. That part was true. 

The rest .. well, that was pretty much boilerplate me.

My dad died of stomach cancer, at age 91. I’ve been claiming my dad died of “mysterious causes” for years now, because it makes me laugh. As well, my dad was cremated and his ashes spread in various places across Canada (in his cemetery cubby hole, at Thetis Lake, in Montreal) so when the zombie apocalypse does occur, it’s unlikely my dad will rise to walk the earth again.

I am very sorry if I made you think my “coming to terms” with my dad’s death was anything other than my usual attempt at humour, and I’m very sorry if you are actually experiencing a situation (be it a mystery or an undead invasion) that I applied to my own life for funny. 

Seriously, I felt like a complete ass when I realized that not everyone got the joke. I suck.

As penance, here is a ridiculous picture I just took at work:

i am really very sorry!

Every year, I think I’ve finally come to terms with my father’s mysterious death. I get to a point where I feel I can live without knowing what TRULY happened, but all my hard work is undone in June when every form of media seems to exist simply to tell me that dad really would have wanted the complete Stargate franchise on DVD or 43% off a set of self-correcting golf balls or perhaps this keychain with a tentacle on it. I’m sure he would much rather have those things that being dead – who wouldn’t; that tentacle is pretty cool – but since we took extreme precautions to ensure dad would not rise when the dead walk the earth, it’ll never happen. And that sucks. And I don’t appreciate the reminder every fucking year.

un

The backstory: a few months ago, a decision had been made by Those In Charge that would take most of the fun out of my job and make things extra tedious and confusing. Naturally I was unhappy about this, because I love fun and hate tedious – also, I am Good at Information and with the new format, I would not be allowed to be Good at Anything outside of reading and regurgitation. I started rocking the boat in sadness, and had asked anyone who would listen that should these changes come to fruition, I needed to be in a different role: one that would allow me to DO the things I am Good at. I felt that the changes would hold me back and punish my voracious need to know All the Things Ever, and this would make me miserable (and also be bad for the company: I’m smart! Use me!).

To my extreme surprise and joy, my plaintive mewling was heard and last week I was told The Plan: instead of moving me into Sales (scary) or making me a Project Manager (terrifying), I am being moved to a brand new team called Product Design, where my job would be to do all the fun, hands-on, thinky, scary, talky, creative stuff that I was worried I was going to lose. It’s a role that was both literally and figurative MADE for me, and I am so excited I could just squeak. HOORAY! It’s absolutely the most awesome outcome that could have happened; one so good it never even crossed my mind to ask about. I can’t wait to get started (the team officially starts on June 24th)!

Have I mentioned lately that I love what I do? And now, I get to love it even more. YAY! I am about this happy:

“yay!”, honked the goose, showing off his frightening teeth.

Also, my weekend was this good:

turtz.

*: I asked for an updated job description, but was asked to wait until we actually get started so we can figure out what the whole proces is going to look like. I have a fairly good idea what I’ll be doing, so I’m not worried. Also, I get to invent a new title for myself. What should I be? I am currently a Technical Writer, which has no pizzaz whatsoever. I need a flashier title. Help me!

I know it’s May 29th and the weather kind of sucks. It’s a Wednesday, which is usually the worst day of the week what with the no end in sight. Maybe you slept poorly, or you missed your bus, or your boss has been riding your ass about the Harrison account. Car’s in the shop? Pants are too tight? Husband fell asleep after his orgasm and forgot about yours? I get it. Stuff sucks all over.

But that is NO REASON to be such a RAMPAGING MEGA BITCH all over my happy little Wednesday, you stuck-up harpy twats.

Everyone is so cranky today. I got many nasty looks on the bus from various women who disapprove of my bountiful bosom – many more than usual, that is – and when I got to work, four different snooty ladies in high heels were varying degrees of bitchy towards me. Was it really necessary to yank the door out of my hand because I evidently wasn’t moving fast enough? Did you really need to shove past me to get to the elevator first? I’m sorry that my accidental crossing of your path ruined your day to the degree your heaving sigh warranted, and yes please throw shade my way because I accidentally brushed your $ridiculously expensive, utterly hideous designer bag with my low-brow self. I earned your scorn! Teach me to always defer to the better-dressed!

Seriously, people. What the fuck could be so terrible that you have to not only ruin your day, but the days of those around you? Not at all cool, and I refuse to play along: for every person who glares, harumphs, sneers, or tuts my way, I shall counter with a brilliant, mocking smile. You won’t bring me down, nasty people! I laugh at your general disapproval and grim-but-well-toned asses!

I sent out an emergency email begging for safety pins or a sewing kit, but came up almost empty. I was only able to scrounge up three safety pins and numerous offers of a stapler, and I definitely didn’t want to go home for the day just because I’m dangerously close to naked .. so I improvised with the tools at hand:

• An emergency t-shirt
• 3 safety pins
• 1 binder clip
• A kilt pin

I sprinted to the bathroom, put the dress on backwards, and voila:

you can hardly tell there’s a problem!

I can’t actually close the dress because when it’s on properly my boobs fit nicely into the boob pockets, but I can at least use the pins to keep the dress closed to just below my ribs. Sure, I look a little deranged, but it’s Monday so it’s okay.

MacGyver’s got nothing on me!

Even more, now that I’ve seen the new Star Trek movie (which I enjoyed, even though the destruction of San Francisco is really going to fuck up our vacation plans .. again).

This week: exciting news, for real!

Aren’t you just a-tingle with anticipation?!