I hoard food. This is a particularly bad habit held over from my formative years, when my mother would berate me for eating too much and then, in practically the same breath, berate me for wasting food. She would try to hide food from me, so I started keeping a hidden supply for myself, like a good fat girl. To this day, I still keep secret stashes all over the place, so I can have a treat when the urge strikes me. It’s a good system.

.. except it’s a totally lousy system, because my brain is all kinds of broken. If I don’t have any treats handy, all I want is junk food all day long. If there ARE snacky things available, I don’t crave them. As stupid as that is, it works quite well most of the time – I provide treats for others, since they’re there I don’t want to eat them, and everyone is happy.

This doesn’t work well with my super secret stash, though. During our last trip to London, I squirrelled away Marks and Spencer Millionaire Shortbread Bars and brought home probably close to 20 of the gooey, delicious, chocolate-and-caramel-over-shortbread treats. I love them madly, and eat way too many of them when I’m in the UK. I’ve smuggled the bars home from Europe before, but either played fast and loose with the clearly-visible expiry date on the packages, or, as is far more likely, ate them all up before they could go bad. This time I either assumed I could continue the pace of eating multiple sweets a day without dying, or .. I don’t know what I thought, or why I wasn’t smart enough to freeze the damn things, but my ridiculous treat hoarding has bitten me in the ass: the bars are way, way past the (July) expiry dates. I tried one a couple months ago, and it was .. not good. So today I get to throw out almost half my secret stash, because I was too stubborn/dumb/forgetful/not insane enough/dumb to eat them all while they were still good. Now I have no treats, and I’m sad. Clearly I should just book another trip to London. And maybe this time think about using the time-stopping powers of the freezer to extend the shelf life of my delicious secret yummy happy snacks.

Last night, Ed and I decided that going to the largest mall in BC one week before Christmas would be a good idea.

Truthfully, the mall trip itself was uneventful. Everyone has either completed their Christmas shopping or are waiting for the weekend for the last mad dash for unnecessary crap, because getting there was a breeze. We found a parking spot right next to an entry, and I didn’t have to elbow anyone out of my way for the crimes of barging into my bubble. I’ve had more traumatic mall trips on a rainy Sunday, so this was actually kind of pleasant. We managed to get everything we needed (plus a few ridiculous extras) and got out without murdering anyone. A total win!

So why, then, did my holiday stress levels go from -5 to 617 in the Apple Store?

My mother called.

I don’t know how or why or what the fuck, but my mother invited herself over after Christmas. My mother hates travelling, and has never once volunteered to come to the mainland – she’s been to Vancouver three times in the ten years we’ve lived here, and each of the previous times was at my insistence out of sheer holiday guilt. Ed and I were not planning on having a guest – in fact, we were hoping for a nice quiet Christmas full of alcohol and post-antibiotic boning. What on earth are we going to do with my mother for two days? She’s picky, doesn’t like doing anything, and then there’s that whole “instantly revert to a petulant 14-year-old” thing.

I now have an anxiety-inducing list of things I need to accomplish no later than Tuesday, including:

• Clean the entire house
• Deal with the massive pile of recycling threatening to take over the kitchen
• Plan meals suitable for my mother
• Buy the ripe bananas my mother asked for three times during the “I’m coming over” phone call
• Do groceries at four places to cover everything I need for the week
• Somehow find time to make things for two different potluck events
• Scrub my bathtub – it’s kind of gross, but I wasn’t really expecting anyone to call me on it in a passive aggressive way
• Figure out what the fuck to do with someone who DOESN’T LIKE ANYTHING EVER
• Curl up into ball
• Cry
• Clean my office so it’s suitable to house a body
• Hide the gay porn .. you know what? Fuck it. The gay porn stays out.

This could all easily be done by Tuesday, but I have actual Social Things planned for tonight, Sunday, and Monday night. That leaves .. tomorrow? Because I absolutely wanted to spend my Saturday neurotically washing all the vertical blinds because my mother is sure to notice and comment on them. ARGH. This whole thing is giving me ass marbles just thinking about it. Normally I’d have had several months to prepare for this visit, but I learned about it less than 12 hours ago and I am having significant trouble coping with the inevitability. I don’t WANNA clean the house! I don’t WANNA go shopping for all the groceries including Costco the last Saturday before Christmas! I don’t WANNA have to wear clothes around the house and make polite conversation! LIFE SUCKS WHY WAS I EVEN BORN

I needed to get that out of my system. I’m better now, I promise. And I guess it’s time to get to work.

Today is my dad’s 100th birthday.

Happy birthday, dad. I miss you.

One of the things I’ve done while sick with a stunning variety of diseases was cull the books on our shelves. This was a timely thing to do, as there was a charity book drive at work – so instead of taking the books to a donation bin, I hauled them into the office for other people to pick through.

At least, I took most of them into the office. The following is a list of titles I didn’t think proper to unleash on my coworkers:

• The Whole Lesbian Sex Book
• Best Lesbian Erotica 2000/2001
• Penis Pokey
• Glossary of Insurance Terms
• The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus
• Hot + Bothered 4
• Taboo: Forbidden Fantasies for Couples
• Net.Sex
• The Ethical Slut
• The Witches’ Bible
• Best Women’s Erotica
• The Trainer’s Handbook
• Best American Erotica 1997
• The Big Penis Book (just kidding, I’d never donate that because it’s awesome)

So if you want to see what erotica was like before the internet was an essential service, want to have sex like a lesbian, or need to know insurance terminology, hit me up.

Also, I dragged myself to a walk-in clinic last night after a day and a half of not being able to swallow or talk (I gave a presentation at work that consisted of me typing things into Powerpoint while mutely waving at people from the stage) and also looking down my throat and seeing huge gross white splotches where there ought not be any splotches at all. Diagnosis: strep throat. I have antibiotics, a recommendation not to go a-boning, permission to abuse the Advil, and orders not to work for the rest of the week (which I am ignoring, and working from home while dressed as a sheep). I still can’t swallow, but my fever is down, so I consider it a win. I do miss food, though. And wearing clothes. Is November over yet?

FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

I have been sick for the ENTIRE FUCKING MONTH of November, and I am PISSED OFF. I don’t really get sick-sick often – a migraine here, a kidney infection there – so to be utter laid out with the flu, and then a cold, and then a coldflu, and now this fucking ridiculous fiery baseball in my throat .. it’s too much. I hate you, November. You are just THE WORST.

It’d be bad enough if it was just me with this various diseases, but Ed’s sick too. I think we’re feeding off each other – as soon as one of us starts to feel better, the other releases additional germs into the air and we keep infecting ourselves with convoluted new strains of gross like an Abbott and Costello bit gone horribly wrong.

I’m so tired of feeling like shit. I’m tired of thinking I’m better, going into work, then having to work from home for the next three days because something new and awful is going on inside my lungs. I miss outside. I miss my friends. I know these are petty complaints compared with what’s happening in the world around me, but I’m just so over everything happening in my own little outbreak bubble.

Also, I am tired of Confluence. It’s like an ugly Sharepoint.

As I mentioned below, I spent much of last week with the flu. I had full body aches and pains and a persistent headache that would not. go. away. no matter what I did. There were no sniffles involved, just a whole lot of soreness and water drinking and worry, since we were flying to Edmonton on Friday for a long overdue visit. While I wasn’t feeling 100% by the time we headed east, I was feeling better and then the freezing ass asscold froze the germs (and everything else) solid.

Today was my first day back in the office in a week. People kept asking me “How are you feeling?”, followed up by “Are you sure you’re better?” I was getting a little insulted – are you saying I LOOK sick?! – until I got home this evening.

Now that we’re back in the balmy Vancouver breeze, the germs have thawed. My flu is gone, but now I have an awesome cold – and so does Ed. Hooray! We are totally awesome and riddled with parasites!

I guess I did look like crap, after all. I don’t care though:

I AM SLOTH

This year, instead of our standard gift exchange plans (operation: buy all the things for all the friends), we’re changing things up a little. We’re all at a point in our lives where time with each other is more important than presents (how dreadfully adult), and with finances kind of tight all around (mortgage reassessments, boats, ten thousand vet visits), we’re falling back on the tried-and-true draw method: draw one name and buy that person a gift. Not satisfied with how uncomplicated and cracker platter that sounds, we’re introducing a bit of a twist: along with the name, you also draw a theme that your gift must be based around.

This has all the potential of being hilarious, but is also proving to be somewhat difficult. In addition to the good theme suggestions we’ve got (colours, time periods, edible things that aren’t candy), we’re also getting suggestions that are .. somewhat esoteric:

• HTML5 Canvas
• The 1972 Stanley Cup run
• Poisonous fish
• That issue of GI Joe where Serpentor claims to have invented pizza in 52BC
• Licorice
• Radar O’Reilly

I wish there were more of us participating in the exchange, because this is going to be fun and/or confusing. Still, I’m somewhat sad that we’ve made the change at all – friends are the only people other than Ed I get to do Christmas for, and I love buying presents for others. On the other hand, themes!

In other news, I survived the flu and a brutal cold snap in Edmonton and eating four donairs in three days and voting, so now I’m going home to put on a sloth onesie. Wednesday, I have defeated you.

this is the only thing i remember from the marvel gi joe comics.