This is just awesome. I’ve been bugging my NZ co-worker to perform the haka before his team meetings, and while I don’t think I’d want to see him do it naked, this news story only fuels my interest in sweaty men yelling and dancing.
I love this story. The part about the “streaker” is just fucking hilarious and adorable – my pants on to you, good sirs!
So far so good – I made it here towards the middle of the second band’s set. They sound pretty good, so I bought their EP for $5. I even made a profit – I paid with a 20 and got $15US in change. Wacky!
Speaking as someone with a great deal of experience and knowledge on water and the whole sub-counter-culture of being wet, I have never in my entire life been as soggy as I am right now.
I’m supposed to be in a tiny hall listening to punk rock, but instead I’m at home wringing out my clothing and waiting until I can feel my legs again before I head back out to hopefully catch the last part of the show.
I am a miserable girl.
I’ve had better Mondays.
My day started out with a visit the gynecologist’s office, as outlined below. As much as I claim otherwise, opening my legs for a stranger has never been a top priority for me – especially when the end goal is not mutual sweaty pleasure but instead nasty cold speculums, medical-grade lubricant, and admonishment for pubic shaving. As nice as the doctor was, it’s never a good way to start your day. There is cramping. I do not like it.
I decided to treat myself to breakfast on my way to work, so I went through McDrive Thru for a sausage mcmuffin. I asked three times for no cheese – once at the speaker box, once at the window, and again when they decided they had to park me and bring my order out. NO CHEESE. I hate processed cheese. My breakfast order is a sausage patty in an English muffin – no egg, no cheese, no fancy sauces – and that’s the way I like it.
Naturally, my breakfast had cheese on it.
Okay, whatever. I picked off all that I could, then wiped down the rest to make it cheese-free. I know there are starving children out there, and they are more than welcome to my cheese.
Fast forward to lunch time: I’m hungry. Faced with few options, I decided to give in to the horrible sandwich and grab a sub from Quiznos. I ordered my sub the way I like it, which is to say NO LETTUCE. I love me a good salad, but I cannot eat warm lettuce – the smell makes me gag. Confident that I’d been in there enough that I didn’t need to stand over the sandwich wrapper to remind her not to cram my sub full of lettuce, I went to pay and waited for my meal.
Naturally, my sub had lettuce on it.
I picked out as much as I could, swearing the entire time. The thing is, my sub was full of tiny pieces of chicken and bacon and bbq sauce. Picking the lettuce out was a messy affair, to say the least – which means my hands were covered in warm wet sticky sauce.
Have I ever mentioned my OCD when it comes to the cleanliness of my hands?
Dirty hands make me FREAK THE FUCK OUT.
Not only am I trying very hard not to gag at the smell of the warm lettuce, my hands are covered in horrible things which made my brain short circuit and had me running to the kitchen for some soap and water. I came back and tried to eat my lunch, but the smell of the lettuce had permeated the rest of the sub. I couldn’t eat it. I took it apart, ate as much chicken as I could stand to touch, then balled it up to throw at someone’s head. Today is not a good day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to wash my hands again.
I did everything right: I talked it over with my partner. I did my research. I waited until I was past 30, because at 29 I was clearly too irresponsible and indecisive to make such an important decision about my reproductive schedule. I weighed the pros (no babies) versus the cons (babies) and came to a perfect ten in terms of what I want. I am not being selfish or immature and I will not change my mind. In fact, it is incredibly easy for me to say never: watch me do it now.
I do not want children. I will never want children. I have known I do not want children since I was but a wee Kimli, and now that I’ve grown into a wee adult Kimli, my resolve is still strong: childbearing is not for me. Never will I want children. My womb will never open for business. I like my eggs like I like my dirt: unfertilized and sperm-free. I am the president in excellent standing of Team No Babies. The shirt is literally in the mail. I DO NOT WANT CHILDREN.
So why oh why will you not tie my tubes?
I was in gynecological wonderland today, visiting a new doctor about a variety of things to do with my womanly gardens. I successfully steered the conversation towards contraceptives, because I am looking for a new – hopefully permanent – method of keeping my vagina free from babies. I let it be known that I was on the pill for nearly 11 years, but I recently stopped taking it because I first ran out, and then I realized how great it was to not be on hormones (my sex drive came roaring back, the horrific acne that was supposedly kept at bay by that little blue pill has yet to appear, I felt liberated and not tied down to remembering to take the stupid things every day and did not miss the panic when I inevitably missed two or three days at a time, I am having fewer headaches). Since I thought I’d be long past the age of the insulting “you’ll change your mind” talk, I felt I was a shoe-in for tube tying.
But .. no.
The doctor, while very nice, stressed that tube tying is as permanent as it’s going to get and that it should be considered irreversible (all reasons I wish to do it), and “never say never!” – it’s not a good fit for me.
But it IS. It’s a great fit. It fits so well it is like a glove. It fits like painted-on latex; it fits so well.
She wants me to go back on the pill. It worked so well for me in the past (no sex drive, terrible consistency and additional headaches aside), she reasons, that if it ain’t broke why fix it?
Because I WANT to fix it. One of the things I adore about living in Canada is my legal, unrestricted access that wonderful word: CHOICE. I am exercising my right to CHOOSE what happens to my body, and I CHOOSE to not want children therefore I CHOOSE to take the steps necessary to prevent the unwanted children from accidentally appearing on my wombstep.
The Man – in this case, a woman – does not want me to do this. Never say never, she says, the delighted breeder gleam appearing in her eyes. I’m sure she was once like me, strong and proud and confident that she would never want children – but then one day the heavens opened and the angels sang and a choir of giggling, cooing babies sang forth and called her to a woman’s true duty: motherhood. I’ll change my mind one day, and I too will long for babies. I have to. I’m a woman; it’s what we do.
I am frustrated and more resolved than ever.
However, I also hate condoms.
I won’t go back on the pill. Same for the patch, because having to remember to change it once a week is a pain. I will settle for no less than one of the following:
I told her I’d talk it over with my husband (and the rest of the internet) and call if I decided to go with an option that is currently not sitting on my bedroom floor.
If I go with the IUS and after 5 years they STILL won’t cut my damn tubes, I’m gonna start having babies out of spite and leave them on the doorsteps of my doctors.
Say it loud, say it proud: TEAM NO BABIES!
I am content.
Yesterday Ed and I braved the insane border crossing with Miranda, Shan, and Gillian in tow, with Josh following behind on his motorcycle. The US border guard laughed at us, asking why we didn’t own an SUV and if we were sure we didn’t have anyone else crammed into the trunk – I don’t know what he would have thought if we let on that we made a 6th friend follow us on 2 wheels, but it was funny. We made a beeline for Mi Mexico and feasted on delicious Mexican food, eating ourselves just shy of a coma. Then: shopping.
We tend to make these little pilgrimages to the US whenever the guys are desperate for work clothing, so we built the road trip around that excuse: the menfolk needed pants. I don’t care if Target is just a fancier version of Walmart; we love it so – and we all came away with an assortment of US goods and gum. Operation: White Bra was also a smashing success; I managed to get myself two white, one beige and one purple bras and a handful of underwear for a silly price due to some magical coupon work by the girl behind the counter.
It was fun. After we managed to smuggle our booty back into Canada, we crashed into Richmond to meet up with Reilly, who was finishing up at a wedding. A quick decision to hang out at Dadeo’s was made, and we all met up again for a late dinner and unwind before heading home, exhausted.
Today was a complete 180 from yesterday in that I did nothing whatsoever. We slept in until 11am, then sat around the house watching tv/playing video games/napping/goofing off on the internet. The weather played along with the plan, pissing down tremendous amounts of rain until almost 6pm and making it generally an unwise idea to go outside if you wanted to stay dry. I feel no guilt about my inactivity today; rather, I revel in it. I’ve been naked all day! It’s been awesome!
Good lord, the Canadian Olympic uniforms are ugly.
Time for more nudity and relaxing now!
When I was seven, I was really into the whole “arts and crafts” thing. I didn’t really have much talent or many ideas, but I liked cutting pictures out of magazines and making colleges and decorating it with yarn and glitter. I had any number of projects on the go at once, and I would usually work on my art before bed. I didn’t have a desk, so I would pile my supplies on or under any surface handy.
I could have turned my talents for glitter/yarn art into something spectacular – this generation’s Warhol or Mapplethorpe – but because of my suspicious, insane mother, I never got the chance to blossom.
She did, however, introduce me to a world of mind-altering substances.
All my playful arts and crafts came to a screeching halt one day when my mother, just looking for something to fly off the handle about, found my stash of supplies “hidden” under the small table next to my bed. Everything was in plain sight – the yarn, the construction paper, the vials of glitter, and the bottle of Elmer’s glue. Ignoring the obvious conclusion a sane person would come to after analyzing the items under my table, she immediately assumed the worst: that I was a 7-year-old freebasing heroin addict selling my (barely) pre-pubescent body on the corner of Suburbia and Little League for my next hit.
Wait, what?
My mother snatched up the bottle of Elmer’s glue – the old school kind; white and thick in a white bottle with a red twisty cap – and shoved it in front of my face.
“ARE YOU SNIFFING GLUE?????”, she shrieked.
Wait, what?
Until that very moment, I was blissfully unaware that glue COULD be sniffed – and at only seven years old, exactly WHY you would do that was still several years beyond my understanding. I had no idea why my mother was so angry and accusatory, and why she would think I was doing something so stupid. The part of me that would grow into the jaded cynical busty husk of a creature also spoke up (wisely in the depths of my head only) to think “is she fucking stupid? Does she not SEE the glitter and yarn and magazines?” but it was no use. Convinced I was sniffing glue to achieve some sort of nascent high that would undoubtedly lead to reefer madness and a life on the streets, she confiscated all my art supplies and wouldn’t let me have them back.
My burgeoning career as a textile artist was over before my 8th birthday.
I could have been a fantastic artist. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum which is what I am, let’s face it. I could have been Marlon Brando.
To this date, I have never sniffed glue. The closest I ever came to sniffing illicit substances was with those smelly markers, the ones that smelled like watermelon and root beer and licorice. Those were awesome, but didn’t make you high.
If I had done even a tenth of the things I have been accused of over the years, I would have had one hell of a life.
Importing my archives by hand has forced me to read through them chronologically, and it’s given me a lot to think about. For starters, I think my writing has improved a lot – I tend to use fewer exclamation points, anyway. That can only be a good thing, even if I’ve traded those happy points of joy for dramatic pauses in the form of the almighty dash.
While I wrote a little less back then than I do now, I also think I had a lot more fun. It seems that almost every entry was a recap of some fun, exciting thing I had done – whether it was driving out to Banff to play in the snow in the middle of August, or going to Edmonton for a LAN party, or getting one of my many tattoos – there was just an overall sense of doing. I like doing. It makes me feel very accomplished.
Another thing I can sense in my words from Back Then is just how close a friendship Ali and I had. We were very, very close – for two friends living almost a thousand miles apart, we were damn near inseparable for many years. It brings a funny little pang to my heart to realize that we lived so far from each other but saw each other monthly – and in many cases, damn near weekly – and now that we’re only 3 hours apart, we often go 6 or 7 months without seeing each other without a second thought.
We’ve both changed, of course. We run in different circles now, and her life is almost the complete opposite of mine. I don’t think either of us would change that for the world, but for a few years there, we were practically the same person – and now we’re really quite different, and the gap seems to widen every day.
My back hurts, so I’m feeling all introspective – you’ll have to bear with me, okay?
All the thinkie thoughts I’ve had about friends and relationships in the last little while sort of came to a head this afternoon, when reading about Ali’s upcoming dinner adventure. I’ll readily admit that my insides deflated and went “oh, boo” when I read about the big dinner out with friends both local and afar, because Ed and I – once among the bestest of friends – were not invited. I don’t begrudge either Ali or Doug that at all – let’s face it, we aren’t as close as we all once were – but in trying to think about it in a constructive way, I realized something important:
I don’t WANT to go; so there.
I love Ali and Doug. I love Seattle, and dinners out. However .. I don’t love people I don’t know. I don’t love pedicures. I don’t love small children .. and I don’t love being completely out of my element. Ali and Doug invited close friends, people with similar lifestyles and interests. I don’t know most of their friends, and from what I saw at the last New Year’s party, I don’t fit in with the ones I DO know very well. I haven’t changed very much since the days of yore – my priorities are still the same: have fun, ride a scooter, drink Diet Coke, get tattoos, live in Vancouver. It’s awesome – I like my life very much – and yet I know that the people who did get the birthday dinner invite have vastly different priorities from my own.
That doesn’t make them bad people and it doesn’t make me an irresponsible twit (shut up), it’s just .. different. And they’re what Ali and Doug need right now: people who are like them, who have the same goals and lifestyles and hopes and dreams. I don’t fit in with that crowd very well, and it’s rude to roll your eyes when people are animatedly discussing potty training and summer homes out in the country.
I love you guys and always will, but I don’t want to go to your grown-up dinner party. It’s good that you didn’t invite me, and I really do mean that. Ed is a different story – I have my sneaking suspicions that the man I married would much rather have that life than the one I’m trying to steer him towards – but it’s okay. We’ll still be here when the diaper smoke has cleared.
Diapers DO smoke, don’t they?
Anyway, I’ll be over here in the corner, playing video games and eating popsicles for dinner.
:)
Meat and cheese left out overnight are probably not the safest things I could eat, but it’s in pizza form so that should hopefully negate any festering germs that might have settled. Besides, I’m hungry. Leftover pizza for the win.
It’s been a very quiet week. Lousy weather means we’re less inclined to do things, and the overcast cloudiness of it all has made me very sleepy. Our evenings have been spent watching Olympics coverage (Ed) and alternating bathing and playing video games (me). Two nights in a row now I’ve fallen asleep long before my usual bedtime of midnight. You’d think the extra sleep was doing me a service, but no – I wake up in the morning more tired than ever and have to literally drag myself into the shower to start my day. The rain is good, I suppose, but I’ll be glad when the skies clear and I can scoot to and fro without having to carry extra pants.
I honestly have nothing to say. I’ve had blog blocks before, but always managed to dig a story or two from my past to fill in the creativity holes. My residual weariness from the week is making me draw a blank, though – I have no more stories. Did I run out, or can I just not remember any? This is scary.
Wait, I think I have one: have I told the story about the glue before?
Went to the office
I worked all day
58 different documents
To determine if your internet is okayBut now I’m jaded
You’re out of luck
I’m rolling down the stairs
Too drunk tired to fuck write a proper update
delicious juice dot com 