It's true, I am a wimp

I am sure that I've mentioned it before, but I am not particularly fond of snakes. For many years I spent my summers knee deep in shrubbery along side my sister and best friend as we made it out mission to catch as many garter snakes as possible. We'd place all the snakes we captured into a big garbage pail and then stare at them until my father would make us carry the pail down into the woods behind my house and let the snakes free. You would think that someone who is afraid of snakes would not actively go out and try to catch snakes, yet I did. But the image of twenty snakes gyrating against each other at the bottom of a garbage pail is something that I still have nightmares about.. As is the image of all those snakes slithering away as we tipped the pail onto its side and set them free (we played rock paper scissors to determine who the unfortunate soul would be that would get stuck with that task).
Snakes are everywhere. They hide under rocks, or leaves, or in piles of wood. They show up when you least expect them, and it's always sudden. There is no snake, and then there are twenty snakes in the blink of an eye. Well, maybe not twenty, but the point is they appear without warning. My family has a tendency to be careless in the summer months, every so often leaving the back door open just a crack in their comings and goings. On three separate occasions I have encountered snakes in my basement because of said carelessness. On three separate occasions I have hopped up on anything I could and have yelled for someone while pointing at the snake. Pointing clearly sends the message to the snake that I am dangerous and have found it out. Eventually either another member of my family will appear to pick the snake up and return it to the outdoors, or one of my parents' cats will corner it so that I can make my escape - backing away slowly, all the while pointing.
I point when I run into snakes outdoors, too. First I utter a surprised gasp, and then I point at the snake until it slides away. Why the pointing? I do not know. Maybe it just makes me feel better to know exactly where the snake is. Up until a few years ago (back before I had my dog), my parents had a black cocker spaniel who would pick snakes up and remove them from my path, or restrict their movement until I could get by. My dog does not care about snakes, as I found out yesterday upon meeting my first snake of the season.
"I did not know you would be out yet!" I cried at it and pointed. Instead of defending me from the terrifying snake (it was actually a very small snake, but that did not make it any less deadly... Unless you take into account the fact that it is non-venomous), my dog bounded by with a stick - actually driving the snake closer to me. Eventually my mother noticed that I was standing still and pointing at something so she took a short break from her gardening to move the snake and chastise me for being such a wimp.

It makes me hungry just thinking about it

I don't know what most people day dream about, but I day dream about making pasta. There are so many kinds of awesome pasta that I have yet to make and I spend hours a day thinking about the day(s) when I will finally make it. I dream of pasta dough rolled out into perfectly rectangular 5" x 12" sheets, ready for me to slice into the noodle of my choice. I dream of adding spinach, or basil, or some other type of herb into the dough as to infuse it with a little extra flavor (and colour). Sometimes I even go so far as to incorporate making my own sauce into the same day dream.. Other times making the sauce takes up a whole day dream on its own.
I lead a wild life.. What can I say?

The cat is almost as big as the moon

The above picture is a drawing I made of a night this past week when the President escaped through the back door and tried to run away from home. My father chased him, for a reason unbeknownst to me, and this resulted in the cat running away from me when ever I approached him. As you can see from the photo, I have horribly mutated hands and feet, beady black eyes, and was only wearing my underwear and a hooded sweatshirt and I ran down the street (apparently the cat can hop 8 foot fences..) chasing after him. This picture may also offer insight into why the cat is trying to escape into the outdoors.. it would seem as though he could actually be a raccoon.

And now I take some advil

I woke-up in my living room on the couch in nothing but my underwear. I was freezing and confused. I went to bed last night wearing a shirt with a picture of a bass jumping out of water and I am not exactly sure when I made the journey from my warm bed to the cold couch, or when exactly I decided to take off my shirt.
It took me a little while to rub the sleep from my eyes and come to my senses.
After several minutes of looking, my shirt turned up in the bottom of my shower soaking wet. Evidently I had been in such a rush to shower that I did not even bother to take off my clothes.. Which may have been for the best, otherwise I might have woken up naked on the couch in the living room.
My computer revealed a message from my brother inquiring as to why I felt the need to call him in the middle of the night to see how my dog was doing. When I closed the message window, my essay magically appeared. To my relief, I had not in attempted to edit it, or write page after page of incoherent babble. I did, however, find one new sentence at the bottom of the page.
"Cinderella is a giant asshole." it declared in bolded letters. I am not going to lie to you, as I sat there, staring at the screen, I considered using it as part of my thesis statement.

Sad but true

I still have to sing the alphabet to myself every time I need to alphabetically reference something past the letter 'p'. Seriously... I sing it to myself starting with the letter 'q'.
My goal is to one day work past this.

Preventing teenage pregnancy

I dragged my Mom down to the lake front tonight so that I could use my newly acquired tripod to take some pictures without using the flash on my camera. I'd decided the night before, driving home from the bank, that I would dedicate tonight to camera experimentation and scrubbing old wall paper paste off of the walls in my parents' kitchen. I had wanted to take awesome pictures of dirty factories that blew fire into the sky at night, but taking awesome pictures is easier said than done (sometimes) and I wasn't able to focus as well as I would have liked to. My mom sipped coffee, by my side, and humored me as I took picture after picture of blurry buildings and abandoned benches.
"Why do these cars keep driving by?" she asked me.
"Oh, I am guessing that those are just people looking to park. This is a makeout spot. People come here, up the hill down the road, the park downtown. Pretty much anywhere there is a spot to park and the least bit of seclusion. They probably keep driving away because we're out here in the light, away from the car." I explained.
During our hour long stay, many cars did a tour around the parking lot before leaving. I picked the picture above because you can see a car near the middle on the left hand side and I wanted to tell all of you that the people in that car were having sex. They were there before my mother and I arrived, and stayed (presumably) long after we left. We may not have been able to help those people, but I'd like to think that we prevented a few teenaged pregnancies tonight... Even if, realistically, those kids just went to go park somewhere further down the street.

Highway Philosopher

My dog doesn't appreciate my singing the way I feel he should. As we drive down the highway, I sing of sailors, drugs and heart break. He just stares at me blankly as his nose begins to drip. My dog gets nauseated when he's in the car and lately I have been getting the feeling that my singing does not help. At one point during the trip, I stop my singing to explain to him that Hallelujah is less about prayer and more about surrender. I use car rides to lecture to my dog about lyrics and poetry. He doesn't understand, but I don't expect him to.

Do fish get lonely?

The lone neon, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, is a survivor. He swims the tank in a series of jerky movements, resting every so often against the rocks at the bottom. Sometimes I can't decide if he is slowly dying, or slowly living. He must lead such a lonely life. I wonder if fish get lonely. Does he crave the contact of other fish? Does he long for a companion to live out his fish days with? Is he even a he?
Stephen Harper (my pleco) seems indifferent to the lack of life in the fish tank. He clings to the glass sides and lets the current the filter creates sway his tail ever so slightly. Every so often the neon will swim over to him, seemingly just to bask in the presence of another living thing. Does he feel an overwhelming sense of grief to be the last? Watching as his friends all fell victim to a filter with too much suction, one by one.
I can't imagine being the last. I can't imagine being that alone. I wonder if I'm not just projecting; if the fish really even cares that he is alone at all.
I think I'll buy some more fish.

Dog Park

The dog park is, not surprisingly, full of dogs. Dogs of all shapes and sizes, young and old, black, beige, brown and every colour under the sun (except hot pink). I have taken my dog to the dog park twice now. The first time he went, my dog spent 45 minutes being tag teamed by a pair of boxers. The drool was flowing free that day, as it would seem to flow free anytime dogs play. He chose to ignore my calls for most of the hour that we stayed, and I left the dog park wishing that I could have traded him for one of the better behaved dogs that were still running around jovially in the enclosure.
This time he was a changed dog. He was bombarded by four dogs upon entering the gate. He waited for me to enter first, and once he was sure that I was staying in there he decided to join me. After only a few minutes he went from cowering behind my legs to bounding around after the other dogs his size and running to his hearts content. Every few minutes he would run back towards me, stop to let me pet him, and then run back towards the group of dogs he was trying to befriend. He waited half an hour before he started to hump any of the dogs there. I think half an hour is a good time frame to wait before you try to hump people (or dogs) that you just met. Some dogs would stand there and take it, and I would end up dragging my dog off their backs and telling him to keep that sort of thing in the bedroom. Other dogs snapped at him, chasing him away as soon as he tried to mount them. "This is how he will learn not to mount other dogs." the wise lady next to me explained. "You have to let the other dogs teach him that it is not appropriate, he will catch on pretty quickly." And he did catch on, unfortunately he decided that he could still try and hump the little dogs because they were too shocked by his sudden attentions to snap back at him. Eventually he met his match, though, in a husky-like dog. My dog would mount the husky-like dog, the husky-like dog would throw him off its back and proceed to hump him... My dog would then throw the husky-like dog off his back and try to hump it again.. It went on and on and on and on. That is when I decided it was time to play with the Frisbee, and luckily my dog agreed.
I knew it was time to leave the dog park when, after playing with the Frisbee for twenty minutes, my dog chased after it and decided to lay down when he was only halfway to his goal. When I left the dog park this time I felt much better than I had before. My pants were tattooed with muddy paw prints and my sweatshirt was covered in the drool of various breeds of dogs, but I decided that my dog had earned the privilege of returning to the dog park again the next day.

On Saturdays

On Saturdays, we celebrate birthdays with loud cheers and bad music. I sit myself down on a stool in the center of the room and wonder why it is that my skirt has suddenly become so short. How did I not notice that it barely covered my ass when I tried it on in front of the mirror at my house? I tug on it, feeling self conscious, trying to pull it just a little bit lower. When that fails, I ensure that my legs are shut together so tightly that there is a chance that they may never open again.
But eventually they do open because I get up and migrate to the kitchen where various shouts of encouragement are emanating from. I peer around the fridge to see a guy with a box on his head funneling a beer. I wonder, to myself, when it was that we all became cliches. I don't mind though. I stay in the kitchen for just a little while longer. Long enough to see another guy funnel a tall boy. "You are a God!" his friends shout.
I make my way back down the hallway and around the corner to a bedroom. There is a much smaller group of people gathered here. They are discussing the Smiths, and Morrissey. I occasionally interject a few comments into the conversation, but am generally content to lean back against the wall and absorb everything around me.
Later on someone from this room will run around the house writing words on the necks of those who agree to it. "For Morrissey!" they will exclaim. The next day, the few that did agree will wish they'd thought to ask if the marker being used was permanent.
Nothing is really permanent, not even marker. This is the last year we will all be here like this. People are already packing up their belongings and getting ready to take them somewhere else, somewhere that is not this city. Next year, those of us who remain will be haunted by ghosts of the past. We'll remember the people who used to sit beside us and talk about Morrissey, the people who held the funnel high above our heads and cried out with joy as we emptied it, and the people who made us realize that the most significant parts of University are not the facts you learn, but the people you learn you can never live without. But right now we try to forget that. Thinking about the future too much only causes us to miss out on the present. And so we sit in that room just a little bit longer, trying to hold off the inevitable for as long as we can.

What ever happened to knocking?

Who needs friends when you have a neighbour who is missing his front teeth and seems oblivious to things such as over staying his welcome. No. Wait. Over staying ones welcome would imply that one was welcome in the first place. No, crazy toothless neighbour just walks into the house. Leaving the front door unlocked is welcome enough for him. Crazy toothless neighbour does endearing things like smoking in the house. Things that none of your "guests" have ever done before because most "guests" think to ask if you mind. Crazy toothless neighbour's eyes never leave your breasts while engaging in conversation, even if he is the only one doing the talking. He stares at your breasts intently, in a more than slightly unnerving way, as if they hold all the secrets of the universe. You look down at your breasts. Nope. The only thing they seem to be saying is that the house is a touch on the cold side. The dog saunters into the room and sits down for a moment, looking crazy toothless neighbour over to determine if he is a threat. He tilts his head to one side as he appraises him. Unsure, the dog decides that it is in the best interest of the household to plop himself down by your side. Crazy toothless neighbour fails to notice this ordeal, still trying to communicate telepathically with your breasts. You look down at them, once again, to see if they might have transformed into something significantly more interesting while you weren't paying attention. Nope. Still just breasts. After several more minutes (hours?) chalked full of awkwardness, crazy toothless neighbour decides it is time to leave - or at least that is what he tells your breasts right before he turns around and walks out the door. The dog trails after him, ensuring that be does not change his mind at the last minute. Once crazy toothless neighbour closes the front door behind himself, the dog turns around and stares at you, unblinking, until you hurry to the front door and turn the lock. You can't decide if crazy toothless neighbour is one of the reasons you love this city, or hate it.

Ejaculation

Prior to reading the book "Anne of Green Gables", I had never realized that "ejaculate" (or, better yet, "ejaculated") could be used as a term of exclamation. Imagine my surprise when, upon reading the book, I found out that it was chalked full of ejaculation. One thing was ejaculated after another. It was almost tag-team ejaculation. People were ejaculating all over the place.
Now I am a fairly juvenile-minded person, and so I had a hard time not giggling when I read lines like "'Well, this is a pretty piece of business!' ejaculated Marilla." And then listening to teachers read out various other lines that also contained the word within them.
I have come to the conclusion that L.M. Montgomery merely enjoys ejaculating. I guess there is no harm in that. A little ejaculation from time never hurt anybody. It may have knocked a few people up though...

Or maybe I just have it coming...

I talk to the cat like he is a person. I've dropped the whole "Mr. President" thing, and have started to refer to him merely as "Mr. Cat". Should I feel bad because he has not served a full four years before I stripped him of his superior title? I don't know. All I know is that, when I am drunk, "Mr. President" is two syllables too many. Eventually he will answer to "Hey, Cat!" It is only a matter of time.
Each night, when I go to sleep, I wonder if this is the night when the cat will take my life when I am in REM. I watch him carefully as he lays, stretched out, at the foot of my bed... smirking. He is a cocky bastard. "Don't think I'm not watching you." I tell him, as I fluff my pillows and tuck myself in. I narrow my eyes as I stare him down and he merely stretches out even more, if that's possible, and proceeds to lick himself and purr. What an asshole. In the middle of the night, he wakes me up. He is trying to eat my face! No. Wait. He is rubbing against my face. He wants me to pet him. Why does he not want me to pet him during waking hours? Why does he wait until four in the morning to demonstrate that, not only is he aware of my existence, but he wants me to have some sort of contact with him. I think it is all part of his clever plan. Sleep deprivation. He wants to break my spirits, make me go crazy, before he takes my life. Waiting patiently at the foot of my bed for a chance to strike. I have just one thing to say to you, Mr. Cat, and that is that I have got your number. Not literally, Mr. Cat, but figuratively. I am on to your plan. I am wise to your ways. I am clearly more tired than I thought if I am actually trying to engage you in conversation through a blog entry. But seriously... I am on to you.

As my little brother watches on

Since my sister is busy in South Africa having $4,000 surgeries on her neck to determine why it has swollen up and is now causing her an excruciatingly large amount of pain, it would seem as though I have taken over her role as resident alcoholic (for as long as I am at my parents house.. Which is one more day). I'm not going to lie to you - I am drunk right now. I imbibed two and a half mickeys of rum, and then for good measure I finished off a big bottle of peach schnapps... All while my brother sat next to me watching a movie. I know. I know.. It's not healthy.. But I have a really poor justification for it all. You see, internet, I keep a certain amount of liquor at my parent's house so that it is always on hand in case I need it for something. When I came home this trip I realized that my father had been dipping into my stash of liquor. Since I had no need to take it with me back to school (I already have a full bar there just for the occasions that my friends ask me to mix them a drink), I decided that it would be a super great idea just to drink it all so that it wasn't there for him to drink. I can't really tell you why I thought this was a good idea. I can only assure you that, at the time, it seemed like a really great way to teach my father a lesson. Obviously it will teach him nothing at all, as me becoming inebriated rarely teaches anyone a lesson... Except maybe the elderly, who should learn not to be out so late or else they run the risk of being flashed. But seriously, at this point in time it would seem that driving home tomorrow may not be the best idea as a killer hangover is most certainly headed in my direction. Please forgive any spelling mistakes/things that do not make sense in the post.. I don't actually read over them when I'm sober, so editing when I am drunk is out of question.
It serves me right for getting drunk in front of my little brother...

Medicine

I am an impulsive shopper, to say the least. I see things. I want things. I buy things. Or at least I used to, back in the days when I could afford to spend money. During my first year of University I decided it would be an awesome idea to buy a home pregnancy test. Why? I don't really know. I think I thought that it would be funny to have for when people went through the medicine cabinet in our bathroom. Everyone knows that people look through your stuff when they use your bathroom, so I really wanted to give them something to think about while they were in there. Later on, our collection of "stuff in medicine cabinet for shock value" grew to include a party pack of condoms and a douche. But this post is not about a giant pack of condoms, or a product to fix womanly odor problems. No. This post is about the evening I bought my home pregnancy test. I, shockingly, came up with the idea when I was looking at the display of tampons right next to the home pregnancy tests. The idea popped into my head and the next thing I knew I was scanning to see which one was the cheapest, and grabbing it off the shelf to stick in my shopping kart. Upon checking out, my friends made sure to reference the pregnancy test as many times as they could. "If you could keep your legs close this would not be a problem." one would say, while the other would nod in agreement. The checkout boy (man?) looked embarrassed, and hid the pregnancy test away in a bag as quickly as he could. I smiled to myself for some unknown reason, and entered my pin number to pay for the groceries. What I did not expect was the alarm to sound as I was leaving the store.
The mortified clerk rushed over and said to me in a hushed voice "I think it is your medicine."
"My medicine?" I questioned, and looked to my friend to see if she could offer any clarification. She shook her head, and then it dawned on me. "Oh, you mean my pregnancy test." I briefly wondered if I should take the time to explain to the clerk that a pregnancy test is not a form of medication. It does nothing to clear up a bad case of pregnancy. No matter how many times you take one, the pregnancy is not going to go away. I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble. The clerk scrambled, pregnancy test in hand, back to his checkout lane to pass it over that magical device that disables the alarm triggering tag and then hurried back to me to hand it over. "Thank you." I told him. "I've got to get home now to use my medicine." I explained, as I walked out the door.
I see the same clerk pretty much every time I go to buy groceries. His name is Corey, and since that fateful day he has even asked me out on a date. I can only assume this is because he thinks I am more likely to put out due to the whole "medicine" incident. Each time he sees me approach the check out lane, he smiles to himself. I can only hope that he never knocks a girl up because he will be awfully disappointed with the results of the "medicine".