I am a hardened criminal.

Last night I picked up Miranda, and we headed to the airport to fetch Josh and Shan from their weekend trip to exotic Regina. We were most of the way through downtown when we were pulled over by a cop. I immediately checked to see if my lights were on – they were – then ran through the other possibilities for my being harassed by The Man. I wasn’t speeding, I didn’t go through a red or even yellow light, I didn’t cut anyone off, and I didn’t do that thing where you go around a corner on two wheels. I was confused but open-minded; perhaps there was a mistake. Maybe they were looking for a REAL criminal who happened to drive a white Mazda 3 and thought perhaps I was that criminal. Miranda fished my registration out of the glove box, I rolled down my window, and said hello to The Man (who was actually a young woman).

“Hello there, I pulled you over because you made a right hand turn from Richards onto Helmcken, and that is illegal between 11pm and 6am.”

It was 11:03pm.

Are you fucking shitting me.

She went on to tell me that I had tinted front windows and that was also illegal, and could I please hand over my license and registration.

WHAT THE FUCK!

Okay, the tinted windows – that is 100% Ed’s fault, as he actually paid money to have them slathered with illegality. But the turn? Three minutes into a really bizarre time restriction? On a Sunday night? On GRANVILLE, three days before Halloween? Seriously, isn’t there a bar fight or stabbing she should be breaking up instead of pulling me over? Grrrrr.

She came back and handed me my stuff along with a nice $109 ticket. The ticket wasn’t for the turn, but for the windows. We get a lovely $25 discount if we pay the ticket within 30 days, but that’s still a $84 fine for something Ed insisted we pay for the privilege of having installed. Guess how awesome this is? That’s right; it totally isn’t at all.

I would so make Ed pay this, but all our money is linked and I’m the one who’ll actually have to go through the process of paying it anyway, so why bother.

I looked over the ticket while we were waiting for the flight to come in. To add insult to injury, the cop thinks I am very old (she didn’t check off the Young Person box), and she SPELLED VANCOUVER WRONG. I should get a 100% discount just for that alone – any respect for her authority I may have had went flying out my tinted windows when I saw that. Spelling mistakes infuriate me. Spelling mistakes made by people with guns still infuriate me, but there’s less I can do about it. How do you spell the name of the city you live in (and serve and protect and have plastered all over your CAR) wrong? What the hell, dude. I am more disgusted over that than I am the ticket itself. Illiterate bastards.

The winner of the Haiku contest will be posted this afternoon, I promise!

Awesome: finding a supremely flattering dress in your size
Awesomer: finding TWO supremely flattering dresses in your size
Awesomest: getting the two supremely flattering dresses in your size for $35 total, tax in
Super Hyper Mega Awesome: local designers clearing out the last of their summer stock for super cheap!

Hooray! Now I have something to wear to Ed’s Corporate Holiday Event next month, and something for the fancy champagne reception at Bodacious on Thursday night! I just need to find a way to make the one dress show slightly more cleavage and I’m good to go. After all, you know my motto: “It’s not cleavage unless it makes somebody uncomfortable”.

Don’t try that at home, kids.

With the good, however, comes the confusing. Contrary to logical belief, Pumpkin Pie Blizzards are not at ALL delicious. Not one bit. An excellent idea with a tragic follow-through, I’m now tempted to drop everything and make up my own tasty pumpkin treats that do not taste like cold baby food with mystery chunks.

I have a Plan: I aim to be done my holiday shopping by the end of November, and then spend the month of December baking. I love baking but I’ve avoided it because our oven sucks. I might invade Miranda’s house and use her oven instead, or perhaps run double duty between our apartment and Shan’s – at any rate, baking will be done and it will be delicious and confusing or somewhat disappointing like my non-good Blizzard treat.

Now I am off to nap before heading to the airport at super late times to pick up Josh and Shan.

zzz

Hey, everyone! Here’s a little quiz!

It’s 1 in the morning on a weeknight. You’re drunk, you’re old, you’re having a conversation with a deaf man outside your apartment door, in the hallway. If someone asks you to please take your conversation inside, should your appropriate answer be:

a)    “Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize what time it was!”
b)    Say nothing, but go inside your apartment and close the door
c)    “Put a sock in it, I’ve lived here for 14 years and I’m talking to a deaf gentleman”

If you’ve answered C, then you are Drunk Betty and please stop reading the internet and instead oh I don’t know, stop being so damn drunk and old and loud. Living here for 14 years does NOT give you any kind of power over us impertinent whippersnappers; you’re TALKING LIKE THIS right outside our apartment door and it’s so loud I expect to find you in bed with us. I hate you, Drunk Betty. You are quite beyond belief.

Hello to the lovely people who seem to be descending upon my humble juice box in large numbers – I don’t know where you’re coming from or why, but I am certainly not complaining. Hello to you! Pull up a chair and grab a bottle of wine!

So hey, it turns out that I somehow – completely unintentionally, of course – bought two copies of the new Transformers movie on DVD. It’s not like I bought one, then went to another store and realized THEY were selling an exclusive edition in a fancy tin case or anything – no, it was a complete accident. Quite embarrassing. How silly of me. Anyway, I have two copies of the film and I’d like to give one away. Of course, I’m going to make you work for it because I am mean like that. If you’d like a chance to have me send you stuff, here’s what you have to do:

Write me a haiku about Delicious Juice Dot Com and post it in my comments below. I’ll keep it going until Sunday at 6pm PST, then pick my favourite and you’ll get a prize. Please try to keep the haikus to a maximum of three entries per person, and I’ll be quite offended if you censor yourself in any way. I know it’s not the grandest of prizes, but haikus are easy to write and really fun. So, um. Yes. Have at it, then.

Contest is void if you’re Drunk Betty, because I don’t like you.

Can someone be your nemesis if they don’t really do anything to nemesize you?

There’s a lady who lives on the bottom floor of our building, and it is generally known that she is crazy. She is not crazy like I am crazy; my crazy is more “manic cheerleader” whereas her crazy is talking to herself, forcefully engaging strangers in uncomfortable conversations, and having her kids taken away from her because she lives in a utility closet kind of crazy. Not at all the same, really.

It dawned on me recently that none of us actually know her name. While I admit we hipsters are a standoffish sort, we honestly could never get a word in edgewise to introduce ourselves so she’s been known as “The Crazy Lady Downstairs” since day one. She’s the one who insists that we live in the ghetto of North Vancouver, that the landlord is a horrible slumlord because he lets her rent the half apartment half utility room she lives in, and that as soon as she gets her baby back she is so out of here and that the one time we lost a cat out the window it definitely went back to Calgary because it doesn’t want to live in the ghetto of North Vancouver. She has a lot to say. Not very much of it makes sense.

When I was checking the mail yesterday for things that will never arrive, I saw an envelope attached to the free for all corkboard. It was addressed to #14, which is where the crazy lady lives, and it had a name on it. Finally! A name to put to the crazy lady’s face!

The letter was addressed to Kimberly Lou Last Name.

Her name is Kimberly Lou.

Kimberly is commonly shorted to Kim.

That means her name is Kim Lou.

I am Kim Lee (even though I spell it Kimli).

CLEARLY, WE MUST FIGHT!

She is totally my archenemy, my nemesis, the Bizarro Land version of me! Kim Lee versus Kim Lou, live in the Ghetto of North Vancouver! This will be a close one. She is crazy, but I am feral and I fight dirty. Also, I am clearly the more awesome one so I am not at all worried.

FIGHT!

Oh, right – I promised a shocking confession. Well, that will have to wait. I am too busy plotting my attack.

FINISH HIM! I mean, HER!

Holy mother of shit, Me Mom and Morgentaler has a new album out TOMORROW.

I think.

It’s not completely new, it’s .. I’m not sure. A re-mastering? A re-release? The same album with a darker blue cover? I also don’t know what it’s called, or when it’s actually out, or how much it is. On MM&M’s MySpace, it’s called SHIVA SPACE MACHINE – GONE FISSION and it’s out 10/23. Everywhere else on the internet it seems to be called Shiva Space Machine: The Second Incarnation, and on amazon.com it’s out tomorrow (for $36, lolz); amazon.ca on November 6th for $18, hmv.ca on June 11th for $20, and nowhere else seems to have it listed. I am confused. But SO EXCITED! I will hunt this down and proudly add it to my MM&M shelf! Yay!

I am hoping that this week will be less traumatic and dizzy than the last. I spent most of yesterday being incredibly cranky and breaking cups (b caused a, I think) and it would be nice to not have any kind of tantrum today. I am continuing to feel better with every passing day – I never want to use this distraction method again, but Sasha’s getting sick drove all thoughts about my werewolf herpes out of my head and it became little more than a passing annoyance in amongst all my terror. While I still have occasional flashes of vertigo, we can chalk that up to my being a naturally dizzy person as opposed to being quite unable to remain upright for any length of time. So, all is good. Now I can concentrate on finding a goddamn job already.

I’m trying not to return to misery on that front, too. Last week I received a phone call from someone who was very eager (their words) to meet with me and give me money and work and stuff. We played phone tag for a day and a half, then nothing. The ball is thricely in their court now; I am trying to avoid being a stalker. If you call someone, then follow up your voice mail with an email reiterating how much you want to talk to them, can you really getting too annoyed after 2 rounds of phone tag to want to speak to them after all? I’m paranoid that this is the case, even though I returned calls promptly each time and left a message saying I was around and would love to chat. I need a job. I am bored out of my mind at home, and spending far too much time on eBay.

I took Sasha to the vet on Friday afternoon, and she’s thankfully forgiven me for it. The first part of the visit wasn’t too bad – they weighed her (she’s lost 3 lbs from her normal weight of 9), stuck a thermometer up her butt (to which she curiously had no protest), then made me wait until the vet came in. We chatted about my concerns, then she whisked Sasha off to do some blood work and maybe try to pull the tooth that looked like it wanted to come out.

And then I spent the next 30 minutes sobbing on a leather couch in the reception area.

Sitting there and listening to Sasha scream in pain and outrage was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. She did NOT like getting blood drawn, or the vet, or the technicians, or the universe, or me very much at all at that moment. Eventually they brought her out to me in her carrier, smelling all sad and antiseptic like the world’s most depressing piercing parlour. I paid them a lot of money, they said they’d call me tomorrow with the results, and we went home so I could try to make her love me again.

The vet proved good to their word and they called me the following afternoon with the verdict: Sasha has bad kidneys. One of them isn’t working as well as it should, the muscles in her rear legs are beginning to atrophy, and she is old. This, however, is almost all good news: I took her to the vet early enough so that they caught the kidney problem at the earliest possible time. She’s not even on kidney medication; the vet suggested I put her on some special wet food for old cats and we’ll check her again in 4-6 months. If her kidneys look the same or better, we keep on the same path. If things are worse, we move her to a kidney diet. In the meantime, she gets special food that she seems to really like, all the love and attention she can handle, and a mild scolding from me for being old. Ed and I have to be really careful about not leaving human food out, as that was probably what was making her throw up so much. I’m thinking about investing in a bear-proof garbage can, since she really is a pain in the ass when she decides that she’s entitled to something.

I am happy enough, since nothing short of a diagnosis of “she seems to be reversing in age, it’s the strangest thing” would satisfy me completely. Sasha seems much better than she did even a couple days ago; she’s eating all her food (and then some of Hobble’s), being affectionate, and not throwing up. This is good. She is doing much better than I am.