The Thing About Puppies

On Friday morning of last week, I woke up at the crack of dawn (or at 6:30 am, whatever) and drove to Ottawa. I was on a mission - a puppy mission.

"You got a puppy?" a friend would ask me later. "What happened to your other dog?"

"Oh," I would say, "he died." Of course, that would be a lie. Dog did not die. Dog is just fine. Dog was just lonely with no dog friends to play with all day, and so it was decided that Dog would get a dog of his own.

Enter Hudson.

Hudson is just a little guy.
At 16 pounds, he is approximately 1/25th of the size he will be once grown. Actually, I just made that up, but he is way smaller right now than he will be in two years. THAT is a fact.
In case you are wondering, that is not me holding the little explorer in the above photo (Hudson is named after Henry Hudson, explorer and discoverer of the Hudson Bay.. or, as the French would say, 'Baie D'Hudson, huh, huh, huh.'). It is my younger brother. My arms are not quite so hairy and the hair on my chin, while present, is much lighter.
And to answer your other unspoken question, yes, I do plan to one day mutiny against Hudson, casting him adrift somewhere around James Bay.... never to be heard from again. But, that probably won't happen for at least two or three more weeks.

But it was drunk on wine, so it was way classier than just being regular drunk

One thing I enjoyed most about my trip to Israel was the wine.

Each night, after we'd spent ten or more hours out touring through various holy places, we would return to whatever hotel it was that we were staying at and open up a bottle of wine. We sampled Israeli wines of all different price points - sometimes two and three times, just to be sure our initial assessments were correct. You'd be surprised how much wine church ladies can throw back. I know I was.

My first night there, my roommate asked me if I was going to join everyone out on the patio for drinks. "I went to the corner store and picked up some gin and mix. It's going to be lots of fun," she said.

"I think I will have to pass," I told her. "I am awfully tired. It has been such a long day." The next day, the other people on the trip mocked me.

"You are the youngest person on this trip. You are rooming with the oldest person on this trip. You went to bed at 9 pm. What time did she go to bed at?" They asked.

"I do not know," I replied. "I was asleep by the time she got back," I said shamefully.

I decided that this was the last time I would let those church-goers shame me for my teetotaling, and so I spent the next nine evenings drunk. It's what Jesus would have wanted. I am sure of it.

Which probably indicates the super should be cleaning more often than she does...

I see remnants of my underwear nearly every where I go, which is really just to my apartment building or work.

The hazard of sequined underwear, I have learned, is that the sequins do not stay attached to the underwear, no matter how hard you will it to be so. The secret thrill I got over owning such remarkable underwear quickly waned as I realized I left a magical trail in my wake.

"Megan! You're wearing your sequined underwear again!" the cleaner at work once shouted at me.

"I am not. Today was just an arts and crafts day in day program. They were working with glitter," I cried in defense. After finding the first sequin in my office, it was probably a bad idea to start laughing and telling all my coworkers where its point of origins was.

It has been months since I've worn my sparkly underpants (I have ten pairs...), and yet, when I walk up the stairs of my apartment building each day, I am greeted by the sight of sequins.

Bitter sweet.

I'd like to take a bite out of that....

Lately, I've been dreaming of chicken. Hot, racy dreams of chicken. I should probably stop and specify that I have not been having erotic dreams about chicken, rather I have been having, hot, racy dreams of eating chicken. But it's not just chicken either. Hamburgers. I see a commercial for a Big Mac on the television and, instead of turning away in disgust, I feel myself drool just a little bit.

As a non-eater of land animals (please note this dietary choice has nothing to do with morals/ethics), this is probably something I should feel ashamed of or deny, but I do not. I proclaim loudly, "That looks delicious." Of course, in my apartment, the only ones to hear me are dog and cat. Dog, I am sure, agrees with me. He agrees with me about most things, with the obvious exception being the acceptability of dragging one's ass across various types of flooring/ground.

The cat simply judges. He is always judging.

Judging and waiting.

There is no question: one day, in the not so distant future, I will resume eating chickens and cows. It is just as certain as the inevitability that, within the next ten years, my tongue piercing will be a mere memory.... Probably. But the cows and chickens bring this on themselves by being so delicious.

Puzzle Pieces

In 2011, I was a world traveller. I logged more than 60 hours on various planes and probably spent the equivalent amount of time waiting around airports and at border crossings.

I grew in unexpected ways this year - unexpected to me at least. While I experienced so many incredible things, I never quite managed to escape the underlying feeling of discontentment that has been overwhelming me lately. If someone were to ask me "are you happy? I wouldn't even hesitate before responding, "yes, I am happy." But it is difficult to explain the sense that I could be so much more happy - that there is something out there is something out there that is just out of my grasp.

Lessons Learned from Sister Act

Have you ever watched the movie Sister Act? Of course you have. How could you not have?

I watched it this evening in preparation for the bar. Going forward, this will be a regular thing for me.

It was magical.

Did you know that the power to move people was in the nuns the whole time? It wasn't Sister Mary Clarence that made the other nuns great. She just helped them realize that there is greatness inside each and everyone of us.

For the nuns in the movie, I would assume that the aforementioned greatness is largely represented through the ability to sing gospel songs that have been modernized, but it is probably different for other people. For instance, for me, my greatness is in my ability to become a ridiculously great dancer after having consumed a few alcoholic beverages.

I am going to confess something: I may have had a few drinks tonight. Or maybe I had five drinks. Whatever. That is unimportant. What is important is that I am going to leave my regular job to pursue a career in interpretive dance. My dances will all be interpretations of various colours of crayons that Crayola makes.

Shocking Pink is going to blow your mind(s).

Israel: It's hot there

In my head, I had always imagined all of Israel to look like something out of biblical times. You know, like this.

I thought there would be more sandals. Oh boy, did I ever think there would be more sandals. I did not see many sandals though. Actually, truth be told, I did not ever really pay attention to the footwear of others. In fact, I cannot recall having ever looked at the footwear of others while on the trip. And it turns out that people in Israel (or at least most people in Israel) stopped building houses out of piles of stones a long time ago.

My trip to the Middle Earth was full of Jesus, Bedouins and camels. Also, there was lots of wine.

I haggled for a hookah, covered myself in Dead Sea mud, poked a dead crab in the Sea of Galilee (it did not rise again, in spite of my best efforts) and saw lots of places where Jesus may or may not have visited/been born/been buried/ascended/etc.,.

Lessons learned: (1) adding "You mean, assuming that there was a Jesus.." to the end of what a tour guide is telling you is not necessarily a popular response when touring with a religious group and (2) there are some exceptionally attractive Jews in Jerusalem.

Out of office automated response

In Israel.

It is hot here.

Be back soon.

Pictures of my Stitches

It was 9:40 pm and I was right on schedule to by in bed by 10 pm. Beautiful. The only tasks I had to accomplish were (1) Walk the dog, (2) Do the dishes and (3) Take a shower (if I was feeling exceptionally ambitious).

"I will do the dishes first," I decided, as I was bound to lose interest in them once I walked the dog.

This proved to be a mistake.

I was halfway finished with my domestic engineering duties when the glass in my hand, for no apparent reason, broke in two. "Oh shit," I sighed, as I watched blood escape from a newly formed wound on my hand.

As I am wont to do with most injuries or medical issues, I took a picture and sent it to my nurse friends with the message, "Do you think this needs stitches?" And then waited patiently for an answer.

I decided that this was as good of a time as any to take the dog for his walk. He needed to go to the washroom and I needed to.. Well.. I needed to go to the hospital and didn't want to return to my apartment only to find a pile of dog shit on my dining room (a.k.a. bicycle room) floor. He had already pooped on the floor once that week (long work days + dogs with indigestion = bad things) and I was not keen on a repeat performance. So I slapped a generic bandage on that bad boy and headed outdoors.

People complain about Emergency Room wait times, and I can understand being moody and impatient when you are ill or a loved is ill, but, really, it is not so bad.

Sure... It was a work night and I sat in the ER, waiting, for five hours before I was taken to into an examination room, but Flashdance was playing on the television! It was practically worth cutting my hand open for that alone.

I waited in the examination room for another half of an hour before one of the Emergency Room doctors was able to see me. She was friendly and we made small talk while she tended to my wound. "I am just going to tack that back together," she told me. We'd been discussing the possibility of glueing my wound instead of stitching (please refer to this post to see the awesomeness of glue when it comes to wounds), so I was unsure which option she had decided to go with. I mean, the English major in me knows that "tack" typically refers to a temporary stitch, but it also refers to the quality of being sticky... which super glue is.

Even after she had injected my hand with freezing, I was still not sure which route the lady doctor would take. Perhaps she had an exceptional bedside manner and wanted to ensure my visit to the hospital was as painless as possible, even if she was just going to glue shit back in place. She had mentioned that sometimes glue did not work so well on joints, so, for the sake of my career as a (future) hand model and my reputation as a badass, I was crossing my uninjured fingers for stitches. And it worked!

It was 3:30 am by the time I was bandaged up and ready to go. I decided that I would make a half-hearted attempt to be at work for 9 am the next morning, but that I would realistically opt to sleep in instead. I was going to get sympathy no matter what, so it really didn't matter when I showed up.



The doctor had told me to leave the bandage on until "tomorrow." While at work, I argued with co-workers over when tomorrow was. "You got your stitches at 3 am. This means tomorrow is Friday," they all said. But the more I thought about my bandaged hand, the itchier it got and the more determined I was that Lady Doctor's definition of "tomorrow" was probably flexible.

When I finally took the bandage off of my hand, I was disappointed. It looked pretty wimpy. I mean, yes, of course I was totally badass now with three stitches, but the street cred it gave me was comparable to that which Martha Stewart received when she went to Camp Cupcake. So I made a decision right then and there: from now on, when anybody asked, instead of telling them how I really injured my hand, I would say that I got cut in a knife fight.


Will they believe me? Maybe yes, maybe no (probably no). They do not need to know that "knife fight" is code for doing the dishes. It is none of their business. Plus, I have stitches now. I am badass. People who are badass don't care about stuff like whether or not someone really believes that they were in a knife fight.

New challenge: drunk jogging.

Out of boredom, I have decided to take up drunken jogging. As normal jogging has never really held an interest for me, I feel like drunken jogging will open up a whole new door.

"But Megan," I am sure you are saying to yourself, "you cannot possibly expect to stay drunk throughout your entire run." And that is a good point, but I actually can expect to stay drunk throughout my entire run, and I will tell you how: I will fill my camel pack with amaretto and coke.

Will I vomit? Absolutely. Will it make me a better runner? I am going to have to go with no on this one. But will it make running more interesting? Probably... if only because it will make it that much more difficult to actually do the running in the first place. Will I fall over? Will I veer from one side of the the sidewalk to the other? Who knows, but it is pretty likely. Only time will tell for sure. 

Something to think about...

Every year, upon getting older, I make myself a list of things I hope to accomplish in that year of life. With a little under two months until my next birthday, I have started looking over my list in an attempt to see what else I can reasonably cross off.

If my calculations are correct, I could, in theory, put a line through another six of my goals. That would give me an 80% success rate for goals achieved in the 26th year of my life. I think that is pretty decent when you think about.

I have started thinking about goals for my upcoming year of life. As I will be turning twenty-seven, there will be twenty-seven of them. I am now accepting suggestions from the Internet.

I bake bread now

It's true. I do. I made that bread in the photo above. And it's not just any bread; it is fancy bread. Two loaves are sun-dried tomato and rosemary and the other two are caramelized onion.

I do not recall what inspired me to take on the challenge of becoming a baker of bread, but one day I said to myself, "Megan... It's time."

Bread making, I have found, is an art that takes time to perfect. Making the dough is relatively easy, but making the dough in such a way that it will rise properly and in the shape you intend it to look like post-oven is another story. And let us not even discuss the challenges of ensuring your bread is golden brown.

Needless to say, I have made probably about 20 loaves of bread in the last two weeks. That is not even an exaggeration. I have made at least two loaves of bread per day, every day.

"But Megan," I would imagine you are saying, "what ever are you doing with all of this bread?"

The answer is that I have been taking it to work and giving it to the people there. It makes me look like I am a great person when really I am just trying to pawn off my bread onto others. It is like I am an evil genius.

Reality Check

"I've gotten away with not shaving all week. I am not sure if I am going to break the cycle or stick to what's working," I said.

"You haven't gotten away with it all week. It's not working," she told me sternly.

Illusions shattered, I glanced down at my legs. Of course I could see the hair there, but do other people really pay that close attention when I am out and about?

Apparently, yes.

Incontinence Sunday

I paused, unsure what to do, as I made eye contact with the black and white beast.

A snake.

A snake in the stairwell of my apartment building.

What the fuck?!

As I have been an apartment dweller for nearly a year now, dog and I have a daily routine of going for walks so that he is able to evacuate his bladder and bowels in a location that is not my floor. This is why I found myself to be in that particular stairwell, at approximately 11 pm on a Sunday night, face-to-scaly-face with a two foot long snake that was very clearly not indigenous to the area.

The dog seemed confused. The snake seemed angry and frightened. I seemed questionably able to keep control over my own bowels.

"Come on, Dog," I said, slowly backing away, "I like the other set of stairs better anyway."

Later, I would post a warm-hearted, cleverly composed (in sparkly pen no less!) note to the mailroom door, in the hopes that whoever owned the snake would keep better tabs on it in the future and I would not have to worry about needing an underwear change upon returning from walks with my own beast.

And now I just wait for the money to roll in

One of my neighbours has this sign posted on her apartment door:

I decided that this was a good idea (time and paper saver!) and created a sign of my own:

In case you cannot read the above, it says: Willing to convert (religions or political affiliation) for cash.