This was probably one of the least relaxing weekends I’ve had in a while, but it was fun. Friday night saw us wandering around downtown, where we did some Christmas shopping and were coughed on by small grubby children. On Saturday Ed and I went out to survey the damage from Thursday night’s storm – the power was still out along Marine Drive, and the trees in Stanley Park were blown around like matchsticks. We spent most of the afternoon looking for something that apparently did not exist, a story I still do not buy – I saw it, damnit. There’s a conspiracy to make me think I’m going insane, but I’m too wily for that. It’s out there. I will find it.

Today Josh had to work near Granville Island again, so I made Ed accompany me for some more wandering. We had lunch, bought some more presents, and generally had a very pleasant afternoon which was good because we were there for almost 6 hours. After Granville, I convinced Ed it would be a good idea to drive down West 4th, where – hey, would you look at that – PUPPIES!

I got to spend almost an hour playing with the most adorable, wiggly, lovable 14-week-old pug. They put me in a pen with him, and we played and I giggled and he chewed on my toes. I didn’t want to leave, but the store was closing and I didn’t have the money to take him home with me. This just solidified my lust for a pug – I’m fairly certain I’m going through what women go through when they feel it’s time to start popping out babies, except I want a dog. I really, really, really want a dog. I’ve just barely been able to keep myself from buying dog supplies for the dog I know I’m going to get – eerily reminiscent of shopping with Ali when she was lusting after babies – but it’s a battle I’m losing rapidly.

There’s some irony, too – while I was busy staring at the pug, Ed noticed that the girl behind the counter looked familiar. Sure enough, we knew her – she was the VOKRA kitten foster mom we adopted Hobble from. Josh just happened to have pictures of our horsecat on his camera, and we were able to show her just how huge he’s gotten. It made me feel better about the whole place, because I know just how dedicated she is to animals – she’d never work where animals were mistreated or milled.

I want a pug. Someone please give me a pug, or money to get the pug I spent the afternoon with.

WHO WANTS TO HEAR A SECRET!

It’s only somewhat juicy, but a secret nonetheless!

So, who wants to hear it?

For all the chirping I do about our horrible neighbours, I’m sure the people who live below us think the same about us. In fact, they probably think we’re the worst people in the universe. I’m sure if I scoured the internet, I’d find a site called Rumbling Cough or Look at my Scabies that has a running commentary of all the awful things we do. We like to THINK we’re so awesome and considerate of others; the sun glinting off our halos as birds serenade us with a chorus praising our glory, but no. Truth of the matter is we’re just as bad as we think everyone else is.

For starters, we tend to clean the apartment at strange times. Before we were chastised most severely, Ed enjoyed vacuuming at night; usually around 8pm. The downstairs people let us know that a) our vacuum was loud, b) they have a baby who sleeps at this time, and c) please shut the hell up and do your housecleaning during the day like normal people. We didn’t know it bothered them, so we apologized and cut back on our late night vacuuming.

Unfortunately, I also like to clean late at night. Last Saturday I got it in my head to reorganize my girl sauces in the bedroom. This is all fine and good, except it was midnight. While I was dragging baskets of girl sauces out to sort and fondle, I was apparently making some unholy noise. There was a knock on our door, and lo – it was the itchy coughing man standing in his underwear, asking us to stop dragging the damn corpses across the bedroom floor because we were right above their bedroom and it was quite possibly almost as annoying as his rumbling, non-stop coughing. I stopped, of course, but I wasn’t really making THAT much noise. The “dragging” was my pulling a box out from under the dresser, then putting it back. Still, it probably shouldn’t have been done at midnight so I stopped.

That’s two strikes against us that we know about, but how many more do we not know about? I can think of at least one right away: our horse.

Much like the idiots upstairs have an elephant, we have a horse in our apartment. The horse sleeps all day and only really makes noise at 11pm and again at 8am. Horses need exercise, and ours like to gallop around. It’s incredibly loud in our suite; I can only imagine what it sounds like downstairs. We’ve tried to stop the horse from pounding around the floors, but anything we do only makes him more excited and more prone to galloping and also poo arias. It’d be fine if he wasn’t so large, but how do you tell a 20lb horsecat to stop being a cat? He’s barely 1.5 years old; he’s just getting into the playful stage. I feel bad every time he starts to stomp all around the apartment, but it’s also really funny. They haven’t complained yet, and I find it hard to believe that my pushing a box 1 foot across the floor is more annoying than a horse galloping around like an idiot.

I’m also incredibly clumsy and drop things all the time. I’d want to hurt me if I lived below myself. Hopefully they’re a little less sensitive to noise than I am, or I’m in trouble in addition to being not as awesome as I claim.

Today would have been my dad’s 92nd birthday. I honoured his memory by making his favourite meal – Sheppard’s Pie – and having mincemeat tarts for dessert. I don’t actually like mincemeat all that much, but the smell totally reminds me of him. It was good.

Happy birthday, daddy.

I *know* I had an extremely good reason for placing Snow’s “Informer” in my directory of Christmas Music, because there’s an extremely good reason behind everything I do. I just can’t think of it right now, but I know it’s there somewhere. An extremely good reason, yep. You bet.

KELOID’D!

It’s bad enough my cat scratched me, but it looks like the wound has formed a keloid. Luckily for me it’s on my chest, which is prime Kimli real estate. There isn’t a single thing I own that isn’t cut down to my belly button, and every thing I wear shows off my lovely new keloid scar. Thanks, Hobble. You are a totally awesome cat and in no way a great big pointy sack of dumb.

I should invest in some turtlenecks, except the only ones I seem to buy have a keyhole cutout which does little to hide my more buoyant assets. I could make a nun’s habit look slutty. I’m far prouder of that than I should be.

My shirt has puffy shoulders, and every time I turn my head it kind of freaks me out. *turn* *puff* AHH!, etc.

This morning, while trying to squeeze in as many precious seconds of sleep I could get before my insistent bladder made me get out of bed, I had a fairly serious freak out. I was coherent enough to realize that it was Wednesday, but I could not for the life of me remember what my first class of the morning was. I knew on Thursdays I had Social Studies first then a spare, but what the hell was my schedule on Wednesday?

This is all fine and good, except I haven’t been in school in oh say 14 years or so. So not only was I in danger of being late for class this morning, I woke up 16 years old. If you think my updates are sad now, you should see the crap I wrote when my teen angst was real and not just what I do to pass the time on the internet. By the time I was in the shower I had cleared my head of the fog and knew that I wasn’t in high school, this really WAS my apartment, I really am totally fabulous in all ways, and I work as a cosmonaut on a space station. It’s a good thing I figured all this out, because I would sure hate to go about my day all delusional about who I am and what I do.

I am slightly jollier than I was yesterday. Confirmation of our Annual Christmas Wyatt helped; now I just need to get paid so I can shower my beloveds with gifts and meats.

Where are my jollies? I know it’s only the 5th of December, but usually by this point I am ripe – and have been for at least a week – with the spirit of the holiday season. Right now, I have nothing. Nada. Not one ounce of excitement, no lust for figgy pudding, and nary a trace of sugared plum dancing in my head. Where’s the fun? Why aren’t I soaked in it?

We’ve put up our tree already, and it’s very pretty. I’ve started buying presents for my friends and loved ones, and have already wrapped some. Usually any one of those acts would fill me with holiday glee, but not this time – instead of bubbling over with boughs of holly, I’ve got a whole lot of weary on my shoulders. I hope this goes away, because I love being excited about Christmas. I get almost ticklish with the anticipation of present-giving, and I have to keep myself from giving everyone their presents early because I’m so excited. Everything just seems like a huge chore right now – I have a list of things I need to buy for people, and instead of thinking about what fun I’ll have wrapping gifts and writing silly notes, it just seems like a huge hassle. Part of my woe is financial; I can’t even start this list until the 15th of the month and shopping will just be that much more annoying by then. I know that the few things I’ve asked for are pretty much unattainable because of our geographical location, and IOUs make me sad and wary because of the Christmas That Wasn’t several years ago. I know our Christmas might be pretty lonely this year because everyone we know has other plans and won’t be in town. I know I’m not getting a pug. I know I miss my dad, and his birthday is coming up which’ll make me even sadder. I’m tired and sad all over, and this just sucks.

I want my jollies back, please. This holiday apathy is just no fun at all.

They’re either filming something downtown, or we’ve been invaded by the US – there are stars and stripes all over the place and it’s a little disconcerting. I don’t mind a Yank or two – heh heh – but an entire invasion’s worth would be just too many soaring eagles and “Never Forget” mudflaps for my liking.

I promised the story behind my chemical burned nipple, so here it is. It’s actually not really THAT interesting, but as I couldn’t sleep that night because it hurt all over, I had to laugh at yet another one of those things that make the whole “Perilous Kimli” thing a little to factual to be just a cute nickname.

I did, in fact, get hair removal cream all over my left nipple. I was taking a bath and was kind of bored and hairy, so I decided to would put my bath time to good use by a) giving myself a facial, and b) using the rest of the Nair to de-hair my legs. It took some fancy maneuvering to get the lotion all over my legs while moving as little as possible and keeping my limbs out of the water, and for some reason I thought that if I were to lie on my back and stick my legs up in the air above me, I would be able to keep the cream from washing off while my face mask dried and the rest of me soaked.

Needless to say, it was a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be. A big glob of cream dripped off my leg and onto my boob, and I .. didn’t notice. It wasn’t until I was done scraping the hair off my leg and rinsing out my muck-clogged pores (sexy takes work, you know) that I noticed an uncomfortable burning sensation on my boob. I looked down, yelped, and rinsed the goo away – but it was too late. The cream had burned nasty red marks and spots into my admittedly already-scarred nipple, and it HURT. It’s better now, but still not entirely pain-free. I wasn’t TRYING to remove anything from my nipples; I do not have hair there – I am just clumsy and kind of oblivious to my surroundings about 80% of the time.

I promised a fabulous prize, and I will gladly deliver. In fact, it’s sitting beside me ready to send out. But oh! What to do! Ali is well-versed in my accident-prone ways, and quickly guessed the right answer. However, I already have a fabulous present for her that is completely independent of the Delicious Juice Dot Contest. It hardly seems fair (although she probably thinks otherwise) to give her TWO fabulous presents, so I am instead going to offer up the prize to LOLA, who posted the silliest – yet absolutely plausible, given my track record – guess of the lot. Yay! Lola, email me (kimli at this domain dot com) your address (I swear I am not a creepy stalker) and I will send you a fabulous prize!

I have more to say but I am swamped in other people’s laptops that are drenched with viruses and other nasty horrible things.