Look! Someone made a comic strip about my life!

God bless you, Queen Wiener-Looks!

I am not a fan of Leap Year.

The extra day in February pushes all other days out by one, which means my birthday – the 169th day of the year – is suddenly the 170th and that is NOT COOL. There is nothing magical about the 170th day of the year OR June 17th; 169 has to fall on 06/18 or everything ever is completely meaningless. I am offended by February 29th. Because of the extra day, my birthday is on a Monday this year. What’s good about a Monday birthday? Nothing, that’s what.

I’m a little testy these days. Between my never-ending unemployment, my wonky shoulder, and the tooth I chipped last night, it’s safe to say that I’ve been better both physically and mentally. I hope tomorrow will help – I’m getting my tooth fixed in the morning, then going for a haircut. I’ve got two interviews lined up for next week, and I haven’t officially been rejected for my dream job yet so I’m counting that as a plus. I’m nearly three months without a job, which is incredibly depressing – I wanted to be working long before this. I am bored. There is only so much laundry I can do.

I could use some good, I think.

I dislocated my right shoulder yesterday morning – the same one I dislocated five years ago in the case of Kimli vs. the Curb. More on the how and why (Ed is convinced there is a why) in a bit – first, PONIES!

We drove down to Seattle on Friday afternoon, narrowly escaping some nasty weather. We tried to leave town early, but our timing was off and we got caught in traffic AND the border was a nightmare; it took us almost 2 hours to cross into the US for no good reason. After stopping for a quick dinner, we finally made it to Doug and Ali’s place just after 10pm. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling so hot so I crashed out pretty quickly (after the traditional Christmas in Seattle box opening, where I collect all the stuff I shipped to Ali since our last visit). We had Big Plans for Saturday, and there was no time for me to be sick. I slept in the following morning, then made myself presentable in time for us to leave – we were all off to see ponies!

Ali had invited Ed and I to join them on their family outing to see Cavalia, a Cirque-esq show with horses and acrobats and lovely shirtless men tumbling all over the place. River and Hazel were squirmy with anticipation of seeing the show, but I was right there with them – everything I had seen about Cavalia looked amazing, and I was giddy that Ali asked us to come along. We even had VIP passes, which gave us early access to the Fancy Tent: a cosy bistro set up in the middle of a field, with hors d’oeuvre and booze and popcorn. We hung out there snacking on delicious things while waiting for the show to start, then shuffled into another tent to see ponies. Our seats were ridiculously good, and before long we were watching an amazing show full of music, crazy people, and horses. So many horses! I’ve never really been a horsey person – never went through the standard Horse Phase that girls often go through – but I can absolutely see the appeal. The animals were spectacular, well-trained and just a little bit ornery to make things extra special. It was an incredible show; one I’d recommend to anyone – so much fun! During the intermission, we went back into the Fancy Tent for dessert (chocolate covered strawberries? YES PLEASE) and wine (aka more Diet Coke), then back for the second half of the show.

Afterward, there was an autograph session in the Fancy Tent with a couple of the performers followed by a visit to the stables. We got to get up close and personal with the horses, which was amazing – they’re SO BIG. The horses really didn’t seem interested in all of us silly people; it was feeding time and there was hay to be eaten (plus another performance that evening). Still, it was incredible to see all the animals and how they’re cared for, and the entire afternoon was so much fun. It was a definite treat for Ed and I, and Ali and Doug are way too good to us. As a thank you, I bought stuffed horses from the gift shop for River and Hazel (I am not above bribing small children for their love), which were well received (and unbeknownst to me, something River had asked for).

We are all old and turned into bed relatively early, but I stayed up until almost 4am reading scary stories on my iPhone. Truthfully, I tried to go to bed many times but I was too spooked to do it – turning off my phone meant it would be COMPLETELY DARK in the room, and that’s when things would get me. My inability to keep my eyes open for another second longer finally did me in, but it was an awkward sleep that I eagerly shook myself out of not four hours later. I awoke early, showered, and went upstairs to join the family for pancakes and bacon! We ate our fill before I had to go pack up our stuff: Ali and the girls had a birthday party to attend and Doug was heading out of town on business, and Ed and I had some American errands to run before heading home. I went downstairs to finish dressing and get ready, and that’s when I fell down.

Ironically, my need for safety and sense of self-preservation is what did me in. I used the railing as I carefully walked down the stairs, because I’m a little afraid of them – I have a phobia of slipping and falling down steep inclines which, when coupled with my ongoing rivalry with gravity, is a little more likely to happen than my phobia of tarantula attack or another Calgary winter. I’m not quite sure how I did it, but I missed the last three steps and fell down them .. while holding onto the railing, which caused my arm to jerk upward and pop my shoulder out of the socket.

I landed at the bottom of the stairs, sprawled out in an undignified manner. No one heard or saw me fall, so I sat there for a few minutes poking at my arm. Luckily, the bone relocated itself when I landed on my right knee so I didn’t have a floppy arm or anything .. just a lot of pain and bruises. I slowly picked myself up and went to the bathroom where Ed was showering to tell him what happened. After showing concern via frustration (a trait I personally hate), he tried to make me feel better by doing a penis dance – it helped a little, but I was still very sore. I left him to finish showering, packed up what I could, then went upstairs to pout and feel sorry for myself.

My arm hurts, but according to the research I did there isn’t a hell of a lot I can do about it. Being in a sling will do nothing but make me look stupid, and outside of Advil there are no miracle drugs that will make my shoulder behave and stay in the damn shoulder hole. It was being worrisome all evening – I was careful not to make any grand gestures or talk with my hands, but even while doing nothing my arm would twitch and I could feel it do this icky painful THUNK as something in there jumped around and made me screech. I slept fitfully, and I’m not at all convinced of my ability to dress myself properly – I know from past experience that removing or putting on a bra can re-dislocate a shoulder, but I have to go out this afternoon and must be presentable. The shower I’m about to have will be nothing short of an adventure – wish me luck. If my arm gets worse this afternoon I may go out in search of something stronger than an Advil to deal with the pain (and then tie my arm to my torso so I stop moving around and hurting myself). In the meantime, I will not go down any stairs and give serious thought to not falling down any more at all.

Ow!

I have a nipple span of 15″.

Miranda and I took our measurements to order our dresses for Josh and Shan’s wedding today, and one of the required measurements was from nipple to nipple. In fact, most of the measurements had to do with our nipples – distance from shoulder to nipple, from nipple to floor, circumference of nipples, approximate colour when compared against a chart of differently-strengthed cups of coffee, if your nipple was a tree what kind would it be. I don’t really know why the site wanted such detailed information about our nipples – the dresses we’ll be wearing with Kris as Shan’s Lady Party do not show our nipples, regardless of their distance from our hip bones.

Truthfully, I’m not convinced this isn’t some kind of hilarious Chinese prank and now there are dressmakers in Asia giggling that we fell for it. Then again, I’m completely ignorant in the ways of dressmaking – is nipple span actually a thing? Like, are people going to compliment me on my excellent nipple span, or maybe laugh behind my back at my freakishly big/small nip-to-nip number? Should I be embarrassed or proud of my 15″? I know how this works for guys, but I’m not so sure when it comes to lady time.

Dresses are hard.

for future reference

I don’t particularly WANT to freak out and spit venom all over the house like an enraged Dilophosaurus taking down Dennis Nedry with a canister full of stolen dinosaur embryos, but I may not be able to stem the tide much longer. The very act of being nonchalant about my impending doom is an exercise in forced hilarity, and I’m starting to come apart at the seams. No one wants to see my messy insides – it’s fun inside my head but kind of a mess in here – so it would be BEYOND HELPFUL if things would change. Soon. Like, now.

I need my tax refund to come in (we did our taxes last week because we are KEENERS). It’s a large one; enough to keep me living this jet style playboy lifestyle of at least one meal a day and all the Diet Coke I can mainline for almost two whole months. There’s a mortgage payment due tomorrow, and the next influx of cash won’t arrive until next week, and AHHHHHHHHH.

When I got laid off, I set aside almost a third of my severance in a crazy dream of being employed before I needed it. It’s true that I’m inching ever closer to being a productive member of society again, but it’s definitely not going to happen before tonight at midnight, when I turn into the saddest pumpkin of them all: I’m going to have to transfer some of my Daydream Money over to the Real World account.

Ostensibly, the Daydream Money was earmarked to pay down some debt and do other boring, proper things. In my head though, that money is set aside for LONDON and it breaks my heart to think that I may have to be a fucking grownup about all this instead of fun and fancy free.

This September will be our Ten Slash Fifteen – ten years of marriage and fifteen years of carnal relations in highly inappropriate places. I desperately want to go somewhere fantastic and memorable with Ed to celebrate/dispose of the body, and ever since my trip to London last fall with Heather and Renee I’ve dreamed of going there with Ed. We don’t do a lot of big scale adventures like this together – maybe a road trip once a year or so. Hell, our trip to Cuba last year was the first time we’d been truly away on vacation together since our trip to Vegas after the wedding, ten years ago. If we’re going to do anything big, this year would be a great year to do it .. and I want to, badly. I’m pining to go back to Europe and have been frantically doing math to make it work – hell, the very second thought I had when I was handed my pink slip in December was “so, no immediate adventure? booooooo” followed by additional swearing. The longer I go without a job, the more of my Daydream Money I have to use to keep a roof over our head, and that makes me so sad and mad I could just spit venom into Newman’s eyes.

I know it’s frivolous and silly and not at all worthy of being a true crisis, but there we have it. My demands are simple, really: I need my tax refund to come in ASAP, and I need an awesome job I can kick ass at so I once again have a day-to-day purpose in life.

otherwise, we're all gonna start spitting.

– Ed, after dropping his skateboard on the cat.

the offensive lego mexican, dinosaur, and virgin mary may have been in my head only.

It’s nearing the end of the month, so we’re starting to run out of groceries. In my head I’m worried about money so I refuse to buy more food, but honestly, it’s just been really gross outside and leaving the house seems like a terrible idea what with the requiring underwear and a bra and such. Since we’re out of  lot of fresh ingredients and most of the staples, I’ve had to get creative while making dinner – and for some reason, Ed doesn’t appreciate my frugal culinary efforts as much as he could.

Take tonight, for example. I marinated some salmon steaks in a garlic lime sauce, and planned to serve them with baked potatoes and corn. We’re out of potatoes, though, and as I’m still coming down from the weekend’s hot pot high (that is not a euphemism; we had traditional Chinese hot pot and ALL THE RICE at M&R’s over the weekend), I did not feel like rice. Time to rummage around in the freezer to see what I can find: a package of badly freezer-burnt scallops that expired last spring? Check! An improperly stored loaf of insta-bread? Sure! A sad, wilted box of spring mix with a best before date of January 30? Why the heck not! I pulled everything out of the freezer and got to work.

The salmon and sauce were purchased two weeks ago, so they were safe to eat. The scallops, though .. I didn’t know frozen food had an expiry date, but what doesn’t kill me can only make me stronger, right? Applying that particular homily to seafood might be a recipe (snerk) for disaster, but on the other hand, I might get super powers from my experiment. After all, where would Peter Parker be if he hadn’t decided he needed masturbation material a picture of Mary Jane at that exact moment in the low security wing of the Radioactive Spiders with a Taste for Human Flesh Lab? Certainly not fighting crime armed with spandex and hilarious puns, that’s for sure. With visions of a no-limit American Apparel credit card dancing in my head, I began to prepare the Danger Scallops in butter (not expired), garlic (safe to eat), and lemon juice (may have expired in 2009). As the salmon and sad, zombie-coloured bread baked in the oven, I plated the scallops artfully (covering the more dead-looking spots with garlicky expired lemon butter goo) and surveyed the result. They smelled pretty good, and looked fine if you assumed the grey parts were grill leavings. After they cooled a little, I took the leap: mmm, rubbery!

The first one didn’t taste too bad, so I ate another. The third one might have screamed in mindless terror as it moved toward my gaping maw, but it and the rest of the of the plate did not need to worry – by then, the aftermath of the first scallop hit me and I dropped the fork. No. This was no good. Man is not meant to play god in our freezer, and there would be no latex-flavoured justice in my future. As my stomach made some rude noises, I began to seriously think about a career in super-villainy. No time for that now – the oven dinged, and it was time to dish up course number two: garlic lime salmon on a bed of depressing wilted greens with a side of suspiciously doughy/sentient bread.

Ed asked if I was trying to kill him, which I laughed at – he knows all about the Murder Ham in the freezer; I don’t have to resort to poisonous seafood. Besides, I didn’t think he’d really eat the scallops. If they were horrible, neither of us would eat them. If they were delicious, they were all mine in accordance to the Kimli Loves Scallops Treaty of 2007. He was totally safe at all times – how dreadfully pedestrian.

Afterward, he made me promise I’d do groceries tomorrow.

Just wait til he sees what I’ve got planned for the Midnight Paneer that’s been lurking in the back of the freezer!

.. and significantly less butter chicken than anticipated, thanks to Ed’s heartless betrayal.

We ordered Indian food in on Friday night, and I didn’t eat very much – less than half of my order of butter chicken. I put it away in the fridge and planned to savour it later. Later turned out to be Monday, thanks to a whirlwind weekend of eating everywhere but at home – I was at my desk and hungry, debating ramen or crackers when I remembered my leftovers. HOORAY! I trundled off to the fridge with visions of naan dancing in my head, and grabbed my leftovers and a plate for some reheating goodness. I opened the container, and ..

Almost all my sauce was gone; scooped out by an unseen hand. I unwrapped my naan, and a big chunk of it was missing.

SOMEONE, not satisfied with HIS OWN leftovers, saw it fit to EAT SOME OF MINE.

I texted Ed my outrage (I may have divorced him via SMS), to which he feigned ignorance. He eventually confessed to taking “only a little” sauce (ie: all of it), but leaving lots of chicken and most of the naan. This is true – technically, there was lots of food left. I ate my fill, and had plenty of leftovers. That isn’t the POINT, though – as much as “Never go A2M” is rule number 1, “Don’t steal butter chicken leftovers” is rule 1.2. It’s .. RUDE. I would NEVER steal Ed’s leftovers or help myself uninvited, ESPECIALLY if the only reason I was at home to eat them in the first place was because I sucked a whole lot and refused to go outside to hang out or be social. It’s a Triple Betrayal, and I DO NOT CARE FOR IT.

Look, I know it’s not really that big a deal – but when you’re stuck at home with absolutely nothing going on, the little things are all you have to look forward to. I LIKE having lots of sauce in my butter chicken. I actually prefer it to having seventeen chickens. I am bored and lonely and more than a little sick of my own company. I’m on the verge of panic at all times about my employment situation, and I’m edging closer and closer to a swirling whirlpool of hopelessness and dispair. Is it too much to expect that my leftovers survive two days intact, especially considering we each had our own leftovers? *sniffle*

Yeah, I don’t have a lot going on right now.

Judging by the smell wafting in from the hallway, someone on my floor is cooking their famous Extravagant Blossoming Onion Surprise for the AGM tonight. I can’t wait! Hopefully the smell will stick around all day, so I can wallow in anticipation for the meeting. I mean, I already have the non-stop munchies from my awesome THC toilet – the people in this building really know how to take care of one another. From the mysterious tenant (or former tenant) who keeps breaking into the storage room to the person who keeps removing all resident notices from the elevator (I’m sorry we used colour; it must have really hurt your eyes/sensibilities), I really feel secure in my home. Hooray!

Tonight I am sure to be the most interesting person on Twitter, as I plan to live tweet our AGM in the lobby. I didn’t attend last year – I looked through my archives to see if I wrote about why I didn’t attend but there was nothing; I vaguely remember being too sad to go – so this time I have to. It’s going to be really, really boring .. so I’ll bring along the internet, and instead of keeping my snark to myself I will share it with my captive followers. YEAH! EXCITING STUFF! Truly, this was what Twitter was MADE for!

I’ve been so anxious for the last two nights that I’ve been utterly unable to sleep. I hope this changes soon – I’m wearing out the refresh button on my keyboard.

I was planning on melodramatically threatening self-harm via the expired can of whipped cream in the fridge, but I may have vastly underestimated the shelf life of things containing “real dairy”. The can has been in the fridge since before Thanksgiving and was largely forgotten, since we don’t usually eat things that require additional flavouring from a nozzle. I figured it HAD to be expired, and was theatrically exploring my food-related options for dramatic seppuku when I seized it (and the Diet Coke; I was thirsty) in glee. Unfortunately, even though the whipped cream was purchased last October and is 100% all natural whipped creamy goodness, it has some sort of pact with the food devil and won’t actually go bad until MAY. And that’s not even guaranteed – May 26th is still the “best before” date, meaning it’s likely to be edible and distressingly non-lethal for YEARS. This simply will not do. It’s time to break out Plan B (as in the second plan, not “oh shit potentially fertilized eggs”): sausages.

I am vibrating with stress and actual vibrators. Today is the receiving end of “we’ll let you know by X”, so I’m sitting by the phone/email with a heart full of anxiety and woe. I hate this part of the job hunt more than anything – waiting patiently has never been my strong point, and when it’s something that means the difference between a life of adventure and tacos or non-stop worry and government cheese, I’m even more unbearably gut-knotted than usual. I may have to resign myself to not hearing anything today and making the call myself tomorrow, which means I’ll be spending the night in a tense unhappy mess covered in creamed corn and tears.

At least my fingernails are growing out nicely – they’re actually clacking on keys! Maybe I can get a job as a hand model. Anyone need a specimen with freakishly small pinkies?

they're SO SMALL