Actual Recent Conversation

This is why I love my friend Pablo so much.

While talking on the phone about death, just now.

Me: "I want to be cremated. But I totally don't want to be scattered in the ocean because I am a little scared of the ocean and all the fish and stuff. I don't want to be scattered in the forest either because I don't like bugs and the cold and all that outdoorsy stuff. Maybe I should be scattered in Holt Renfrew...Nah! I can't afford to shop there. I think the place I'd be most comfortable resting eternally is in a couch. So I have to find somebody who will scatter my ashes in their nice comfy couch. Or their mattress. Something cozy."

Pablo: "What about me? What should I do with my remains?"

Me: "Hey! I thought we agreed that I was supposed to throw myself on your casket at your funeral. Wearing a fabulous dress."

Pablo: "Yes, but then are you going to just leave me there to rot?"

Me: "No! What do you want me to do next?"

Pablo: "No wait! I know the perfect place to scatter your ashes. How about a cat cemetery?"

Me: "Perfect! That would be seriously purrrrfect!"

Pablo: "No wait, I totally know what I am going to do with you after you die. I'm going to have you taxidermied! I'll have you sitting on my couch with a cup of tea in a motorized hand. And your head will turn too. And when I have guests they will whisper to me that you are very quiet and I will say, 'Yes, she is.'"

Me: "Put a hinge on my head and store your spare change and keys there. Better yet, put a slit in my neck as a kleenex dispenser for when you are sad or have a cold."

Pablo: "How about I cryogenically freeze your head and then attach it to a garden nymph statue so you can play in the garden and weed it too."

Me: "NO WAIT! Attach my head to a Roomba and I'll vacuum your place for you. Maybe I'll do that with my mom. She likes to clean."

Pablo: "You're sick!"

Me: "NOW I'm sick?"

We finally decided that he will get me made into a diamond and I will have his body mummified and make a pyramid for him in Egypt to be worshipped for eternity.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-A Tip For Obama

Dear President Obama

I know you have a big job ahead of you involving all sorts of mess and chaos. I sorta know what you are facing as I have a cat and a new kitten who simply cannot get along. The kitten is impulsive, out of control, lacking in subtlety and restraint, and defiant. Not at all dissimilar to many people you will have to interact with in the near future. I contrast the first born cat is grumpy, unforgiving, completely lacking in humor and inflexible. Also eerily alike various individuals you will shortly be spending time with.

My cats do not get along under any circumstances...except when one very special ingredient is added to the interaction. This addition is so exceptional and potent that it makes even the most curmudgeonly cat soften. So transforming and influential it makes even the very insanest kitten focus.

I thought that this magical element might help you with your very challenging ambitions.

What I want to share with you is the power of....TUNA!

No hissing. No claws. No blood. Just a common love of the fish.

Well...until the little shit gets too close to her side of the plate.


In case you haven't got the news through the newsletter or my recent Twitter the 2009 Iconic Women By Yoshi Calendar is now available for sale. Same price as last year-$18.95

Check it out!

www.urbanbeast.ca

The Odd Couple

Terribly sorry about the long delay in a kitteh update. As it normally does this time of year things have become very hectic. I am working on the upcoming 2009 Iconic Women By Yoshi Calendar as well as setting up a new business and doing lots of volunteering.

Dexter is still cute. Very cute. He is also still exceptionally smelly. The vet says he is fine and often kittens do not have the best digestive systems at young ages so I’ve been experimenting with different foods and might have found some that are less rank gas producing than others. I might publish a research paper: Feline Colon Inexperience and Greenhouse Gasses-Nature's Balance Between Cute and Killer

I’ve never met a cat who is so frickin’ hungry every second of the day. Dexter wails for food every couple hours and eats like a jackal. There is no nom nom nom but snarl snorf gasp choke hack lick lick sniff sniff root freak-out FEEEED MEEEEEEE AGAIN! He gained ¾ of a pound this week. When I eat he tries to climb all over me. One night he caught me unawares and literally jumped from the back of the couch right onto my full plate. Yoshi has always been a very delicate eater and nibbles on her food through the day. Dexter treats food like air and inhales it like he is suffocating. Dork.

Yoshi is doing much better. MUCH better. She is eating just fine and seems to be adjusting pretty well. I can’t say she likes Dexter but she isn’t about to throw herself off the balcony. I’ve never had a pair of cats so I’m not really sure what to expect. Dexter clearly LOVES Yoshi. Yoshi clearly HATES Dexter. But not always. Or maybe I should say not always with the same intensity of loathing as other times. I’m thinking I might develop a scale of Yoshi hate levels, similar to the Richter Scale, to apply to various interactions. I shall call it the Hisser Scale.

So there tends to be two types of interaction between Dex and Yoshi:

• Dexter acting cute and submissive and lurking around Yoshi which she tolerates and then only hisses and growls at him when he gets too close or tries to touch her.

• Dexter acting like a complete ass and jumping at, stalking, harassing, chasing, sneaking up on and blindsiding Yoshi which she hates. This is when she hisses, spits and swats at him.

Honestly both are totally hilarious and make me laugh. Occasionally I take pity on Yoshi and squirt Dex with my ever handy spray bottle. And even less commonly squirt Yoshi if she is beating him up too much.

The thing that I am not sure about and gives me hope that one day they will really love and appreciate the other is that Dexter still tries to suck up and doesn’t seem to take the beatings seriously and Yoshi, while putting on a show of hating his ass, quite often seems to make an effort to be near him. Especially when he is playing. She seems fascinated by him interacting with his toys. We’ve had a few evenings where Yoshi, while hissing and growling, has run around and played along side Dexter. Sorta play with him without actually playing WITH him.

Sometimes I start feeling bad that Poor Yoshi is so annoyed by the kitten all the time but then she’ll quite often plonk herself down on her back RIGHT NEXT TO HIM! As soon as he shows interest in her she’ll freak but not always move away from him. The only way I can explain it is that it seems like she likes to hate him. So they run around beating the crap (Yoshi) out of or jumping (Dexter) on each other. It sounds scary but instead of running away or leaping out of reach they both stay very close and settle down and then hang out near each other.

What does this mean? I know that things would be less hissy and spitty if only Dexter would chill the fuck out and learn to respect boundaries but being a kitten and all he loses his fool mind and takes unnecessary risks like attacking Yoshi’s tail or standing right outside her litter box staring at her when she is pooping. Thankfully Yoshi is a good multi-tasker and can freak out while making a deposit quite easily.

I have video I am working on but my new digital camera uses a file extension not compatible with my lame-o Windows Movie Maker program. Yet, I feel that a documentary format is best for this footage so you all will have to be patient with me.

So I consider, overall, that things are good. Yes, it could be better like cute snuggling and such but knowing Yoshi I think that will take some serious time. Also I think it will help when Dexter matures and isn’t so spastic around her. A vet friend of Twisted Uterus, Dr. Cheryl, suggested Feliway, a calming cat pheromone, which I got and hope will help. It takes time to kick in so my weekly “buddy” test is seeing if they will eat tuna next to each other. So far Yoshi won’t but I’ll try again next week.

Here is actual photographic proof that Yoshi is indeed alive and well and not kitten chow.

Stalking The Rock Star

Calm Tolerance

Sucking Up

About To Incite A Riot Through A Brief Touch

Yep! Adios Pain In The Ass!

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-You Can Lead A Cat To A Kitten But You Can't Make Her Like Him. Who Am I Kidding, You Can't Lead A Cat Anywhere.AC

Here is the kitteh update you’ve all been asking for.

How is Yoshi doing? Well…not great but not terribly awful either. She stopped eating all together a couple days ago and still occasionally (meaning pretty much every day) yaks bile which, I’ve discovered, leaves a lovely green stain on my carpet. Who said having cats was not like having kids? My berber disagrees.

So I started getting desperate and bought all sorts of yummy things Yoshi might successfully ingest with no luck. I vacillated wildly between guilt and exasperation. It was not pretty around here.

I tried to push the limits a little by keeping the cats separated all of the time except in the evenings when I allowed them to be in the same room with each other-supervised for fair play and safety. And the thing is that Yoshi, while not happy, was fairly calm and resigned to Dexter flinging his noodley kitten body all over the living room. She didn’t even blink when he chased a toy under her chair or ran close to her head. One night, when I was playing with Dexter and some toys she jumped down from her perch and crouched about two feet away to watch us, her eyes never leaving the kitten or the feather wand.

I thought I was seeing a very faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Not so much because Dexter started really wanting to be with Yoshi and to approach her and play with her and if he so much as looked in her direction that is when the hissing, spitting, and growling frothed up in full vitriolic volume. Only on Yoshi’s part as Dexter is probably the most laid back kitten I’ve ever met. Nothing fazes him at all.

So as I watched Yoshi losing weight and some days getting worse instead of better I started thinking that maybe this whole kitten idea was just not meant to be and that Yoshi simply couldn’t handle a new addition. I resigned myself to returning the kitten after the long weekend and feeling very incredibly horrible about it.

Then I saw this.

And I got MAD! People introduce new cats and dogs into their house all the time with little or no problems. I saw all those cats living together in harmony and I decided I wasn’t going to let a 9lb cat with a bad attitude run my household.

But I wanted a medical assurance that pushing her further wasn’t going to jeopardize her health. So off to the vet we went today and this is what she said:

-I do not have to get rid of the kitten!

-Yoshi is an exceptionally high-strung cat.

-It is possible if a cat has not eaten for a very long time for their whole digestive system to shut-down permanently and they can die.

-Yoshi is not even close to this stage.

-Yoshi has lost almost a pound this week but she is not underweight by any stretch.

-When a cat is stressed and vomits a lot their digestive tract gets all irritated and they lose their appetite. This is probably what is going on with Yoshi.

-They took blood and urine to rule out any other issues that might be complicating things.

-Being a jerk is not an official feline medical condition.

-I have to give her an antacid pill every night.

-I have to give her a syringe of laxative twice a day.

-I have to pry her stubborn Siamese lips open and force feed her a foul smelling cat mush every couple hours. Literally poke it down her gullet. Although she makes terrible noises and spits most of it out doing this will get her tummy working again and her appetite shall return. However, she will hate my ass for some time to come.

-This unanticipated and expensive vet visit means I will not be getting a new pair of winter boots next week.

The main thing I came away from the vet with is that while Yoshi is very high strung she only is so when it suits her. She did something similar to this several years ago when I went on holiday. I returned and that night she started vomiting uncontrollably and then started barfing blood. A visit to the emergency vet and almost $2000 later it was decided that she was stressed about my absence. And we all know what happened when I brought Lulu home. Yet every time I’ve moved into a new apartment she’s adapted just fine to her new surroundings. No hiding under the bed or anything. She was fine when I was going through treatment and in the hospital a lot. She acts totally freaked when the dogs come to visit or friends and family are over but the minute they leave she is all perky and cute like she didn’t just hiss and try to bite them. So there is definitely a component of my energy that is affecting her as well so I’ve got to get rid of all the guilt and fear and concentrate on visualizing exactly what I want to see happen in my house.

MY house.

Fight the feline power!

First co-mingling of death ray kitties- lasers on standby. Yoshi rasps, "Dexter, I am not your mother" *gaspgasp*

Second meeting-Yoshi is more relaxed. Dexter is trying to eat the kitty crate/cat jail/feline transport unit.

Third meeting. Dexter bogarts the kitteh drinking fountain. Yoshi is not amused. Barfs on my bed later to prove that bad manners go both ways.

Kitteh Update

Day 3 of Kitteh Intro Hell:

Yoshi is really, really, REALLY pissed. She has taken to barfing twice a day on a 12 hour-you-could-time-your-watch-to-it schedule. She also will froth at the mouth to make a point of her displeasure. She won't eat. Not even tuna. Today she has taken to her bed with the vapors. In Yoshi world that means she is in her Snoozen Housen and won't come out. Last night after a little hissing but mostly curious sniffings I brought the kitten out and I think that is when Yoshi realized that he was not even remotely phased by her growlings and might actually be hanging around. Things got nasty when the kitten went to jump up on the sofa where Yoshi was. She literally screamed, punched the kitten in the head and then levitated off the couch to behind the plant knocking over the phone as she went. The kitten was unhurt and totally couldn't care less. I tried to stay calm and laughed it off. The sad part is that the kitten is absolutely fascinated with Yoshi and clearly wants to be friends.

Yeah... *swallows a handful of anti-anxiety meds*

So I am staying firm on this. I'm not sure how long Yoshi can go without food but she has some weight to spare around the rear end. The kitten is in my bedroom for now. I am really hoping Yoshi will finally get so hungry she will give up. I am trying to stay positive and visualize the results I want out of this. Yet, there is a little tiny part of me that wonders if Yoshi could starve herself to death out of spite.

I thank you all for the most excellent name suggestions. I took the ones I liked and tried them out and ended up going with one I had written down many weeks ago when I started this whole adoption process. So with a nod of recognition and imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery acknowledgement to Torrie and her pooch I have decided to call the kitten Dexter. Dexter von Cheddar. It simply suited him the best.

Dexter purrs constantly. I am totally serious. He purrs when he plays, when he snuggles, when he is getting a huge vaccination in his neck, when you accidentally step on him... The vet couldn't hear his heart because he wouldn't stop purring. When I lay on the couch with him he will walk up my body and throw his furry self onto my face drooling with purrs and joy. Settling in under my chin for a snooze is his favourite thing. So cute. He is absolutely the sweetest, bravest, cutest kitten. He loves everybody and is not remotely shy or scared.

Thank God because Yoshi will try to break his spirit after she finishes with mine.

Making Biscuits on Yoshi's Bed.
She Won't Sleep On It Now.

Den of Despair

Why I Love My Neighbours -Tuesday's Edition

Scene: Me and a well dressed older man in my apartment elevator. I've got my mail in my hand and he is holding a large platter of deli sandwiches.

Him: I'm the sandwich guy.
Me: Yes, I can see that.
Him: They are for a meeting. It's my turn to bring sandwiches.
Me: Well, they look very good. *being polite*
Him: Well, they are NOT for you. *being totally serious*

Another lady enters the elevator.

Her: Mmmmmm...whenever I see food I feel hungry. Those look delicious.
Him: *hostile look*

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Trollie Goodness

Hope everybody had a great Christmas and is ready to take on 2008 and kick ass! Yoshi and I sure am.

I've been blogging for almost 3 years and until the other day have never had any significant troll action. Lo! 2007 would not be complete without breaking that little charmed era and this lovely ANONYMOUS comment showed up in my Inbox relating to a past Crush Your Cat's Head Friday post:

you are all very sick fucks, i would love to crush your fucking heads and see how you like it

Well...crack my shit up!

First of all that video was 'banned' ages ago because me lovingly poking my cat was deemed inappropriate. Let's just talk a little bit about inappropriate behavior, shall we? In the last couple weeks Yoshi has farted on me numerous times, copiously vomited on my TV remote controls, wrecked shit, deposited some seriously stinky poos, hissed at my dad, bossed me around and turned her nose up at tasty offerings.

Don't see anybody protecting me from her, do you?

Anyway, I thought about how sick a fuck I was (I cannot speak for the rest of you) and decided to re-enact the offending video and was reassured that, yes, there is no doubt that Yoshi LOVES being poked. If only I had hooked her up to a throat mike for maximum purrocity there would have been no question about who is actually the sick fuck in the equation. Clearly not me. Yoshi loves the gentle abuse. I could also hypothetically add she loves being spanked and having her fat rolls manhandled.

Admitting that will probably get me arrested...

Dude. Chillax.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Priorities

It appears that comfort is secondary when warm and toasty toesies can be achieved.


Extreme Crush Close-up

Inbox Surprise

This nasty little pervert fucker just emailed me with a friend request from Facebook.

Fanfuckingtastic.

Equilibrium

Well, peace is restored to the Kranki Krash Pad as Lulu went home last night. I had every plan to video Yoshi moaning and groaning every time the dog came into her field of vision but within a day or so things settled down and that behavior stopped for the most part. Or at least wasn’t prolonged enough to catch on camera. By no means was a truce called but an uneasy tolerance was achieved and outbursts of serious drama were sporadic at best.

Yoshi ate fairly normally once I put her food in my bedroom which was a strict ‘No Dog Zone’ and when Lulu was crated at night Yoshi did some reconnaissance of the apartment including dropping some bombs and burying some mines in the litter box. There was also some serious feline gloating from my bed which made Lulu whimper. For the most part the cat stayed exclusively in my bedroom occasionally vying for sunshine spots when the temptation became too great.

Now she is back to playing and shedding fur over every available surface like nothing happened.

She purred like crazy this morning but her motor was rusty from disuse so it came out with squeaks and phlegmy rattles. I asked her if she needed to go to the shop for an oil change but things lubed up over a few minutes and she was running smoothly soon enough.

I had a great time with Lulu including some fabulous nature walks in the local park. These are places I don’t normally go on my own so it was nice to see these open spaces. I learned a lot about human nature as well when one time it became obvious that a man walking directly behind me on a nature path was clearly making arrangements with a call girl/escort on his cell phone.

Yes, I can hear you now.

The Beach Bum Theory - getting along because the sun has turned off their brains.

Uptight Dork Seeks Same

Good news! I got the Flickr/Yahoo! thing all figured out. They actually have an email form you can fill out for help and they actually answer your email. Unlike some other entity I know *coughBloggercough*. They will even answer your email again when their first emailed suggestions don’t work. So long story short they automatically flipped my Flickr account into a Yahoo! account using my Flickr identity (not my email) matched with my Flickr password. I didn’t know this and when I went to sign into Flickr it linked directly to Yahoo! log-in which is already set up with my original Yahoo! account information. So now I have two Yahoo! accounts: my original one and the one they made out of my Flickr account. Hence the issue with log-in. Now that I know about this second account I have access.

So yeaaaaay!

And what the fuck where they thinking?

So I was in the car today with my mom and we were talking about people and how often just a few wreck it for the majority. We hear this a lot from my dad who is a property manager and looks after several buildings in the downtown area. Most have on-site managers but a couple small ones don’t so he gets to deal with issues first hand. With all the crazy stuff my poor dad has to handle with tenants it is a miracle he hasn’t lost his mind. I know I’d freak out.

And the weird thing is that so many of these people don’t even think about how their so-called little lapses accumulate and add up to some serious hassle.

So after gossiping about various people we have heard about who live their lives selfishly thereby negatively affecting others I came to this conclusion,

“There are people who notice stuff and people who just don’t.”

I happen to be one of those people who notice stuff. Unfortunately I notice stuff in such minute detail it is actually a huge pain in the ass. Cleaning my apartment is often hell. I start on the big stuff and then get lost in the tiny stuff. I hate fingerprints and notice them on my desk top, cabinets, and glass. Don’t even talk to me about smears. Stains freak me out. It is not so much that I am a neat freak because I am actually not. It is just small imperfections are incredibly obvious to me.

Chips in the paintwork, spotted chrome, crooked pictures, dead leaves on plants….

I don’t know why.

For instance every time I wash my floors I wash the outside of my front door too. I polish the door knob and knocker and wipe off all the scuff marks on the base of the door from the toes of my shoe. You know those black marks from when you use your foot to push the door open if your hands are full?

But every day when I walk down the hallway of my building to get to my apartment I notice all the dirty scuffed marked and fingerprinty doors of my neighbours and wonder how they do not notice the dirt and clean their doors.

I then have to remind myself that most people just don’t notice this stuff. They are not bad or nasty. They just don’t see.

But what pisses me off is when some asshole spills half their latte down the wall of the elevator and doesn’t clean it up. Or lets their dog poop in the lobby. Or leaves dirty panties behind in the laundry room. How can you not notice that stuff?!?! Is it that they don’t notice or don’t care?

Sadly, us folks who notice stuff always appear like uptight bitchy dorks to those who don’t notice.

But even though I can get driven to distraction by these details they can also delight me in strange ways.

I recently bought some fabric to make pillows exactly because if you look reeeaaaallly close at the pattern it is filled with all sorts of weird and wacky shit. To just glance at it you would think it was some sort of childish fabric.

Oh no! No, no, no, no no….

"Hey Fluffy Bunny! I'm Timmy Raccoon. Can I play with you and your scythe?"

"OK! While I build a boat you dig a grave..um...I mean a cool hole!"

"Haha! See ya, Timbo! Hope you like swimming without a life-vest!"
"Why I LOVE swimming Fluffy Bunny! Wait for me!"

"Oh Hey! Feel like a campfire?
"Why yes, Fluffy Bunny, I do although my blue vest is knitted from nice cooling asbestos."

But Mister Bunny was bored of Timmy Raccoon and wanted to go home for a snack.

Bye bye, Timmy Raccoon.

The End.

Who Needs Fiction When You Have This Kind of Life.

Things have been very busy around the Kranki Krash Pad. I’ve done things, seen things and traveled to far away places this week. Get all cozy under your covers and I’ll tell you a bedtime story or several.

I consider myself a very mild mannered person. I don’t yell, I don’t hit and I certainly don’t freak the fuck out. If I find myself in a bad situation I try to rise above it all and emerge unscathed and well established on the higher road. Until last week.

So I was in this suburban mall parking lot.

I know! Most of you are all, “Yeah! I know where this is going!” and you are probably right. I had backed out of my parking spot and was just cranking the wheel over to go forward and out of the lot when this woman in a van pulls up to my front bumper. Reeeeaaaaally close. I drive a full sized early 90’s 4-door Jetta so this isn’t some tiny car that zips around tight spaces. I need a little room to move. So there I am backed up so my rear bumper is right up to a parked car behind me and I need that room in front to turn my car so I can go forward and straighten out to drive out etc… But right up to my front bumper is this van. And she continues to let her van roll even closer to me so I am basically trapped. She immediately starts cussing me out and waving her hands around. I reply with an incredulous look combined with the showing palms gesture of exasperation. She then starts to REALLY spaz out and scream at me. Clearly I cannot got very far because at this point she is about 6 inches from my front bumper. I just don’t understand why she cannot see she has gotten us into this predicament and needs to back up herself to give me some turning room. And it was not like I backed out right in front of her as I was totally clear to back up and she was actually stopped farther down the row with her turn signal on to go into a different spot. I guess she changed her mind and would have had plenty of time to see me pull out before approaching.

So I get stubborn and just sit there for a few seconds with my arms crossed.

The woman is literally shaking her head around and yelling, “GO! GO! GO!”

Sadly I cannot because she is blocking meeeeeeeee.

Then I just snapped and for the very first time in my very vanilla life I retaliated. I looked her square in the eye and mouthed very clearly, “FUCK YOU BITCH!” And the funniest part was she looked at me like I was the potty mouth evil hag after she had been cussing me out the whole time already. I guess I must have looked livid.

When I told this story to a friend she couldn’t believe I had done it. This is very unlike me.

I then cranked the wheel over and inched back and forth within the foot of space I had to maneuver and finally was able to get around her. I laughed the whole time and I know she could see that too.

I have to admit it felt really good to do that. My inner ‘feist’ is coming out in surprising ways.

Then on Friday I dog-sat my two girls, Xiola and Lulu for the whole day. I took them to the dog beach where they can run around off leash and play with loads of other dogs and jump in the ocean if they want. We came back to my place and I gave them both a bath and then we went for another walk to the park where I planned to brush them thereby giving all the wee birdies and animals clumps of fur to add to their nests and totally keeping my apartment a fur free zone. I sat on the grass and not long after this woman just walked up to me with her two Chihuahuas and sat right down next to me.

Oh! OK!

So we started talking and it became evident that she might be a little mentally disabled which explained her lack of personal space boundaries with complete strangers. We had a nice chat and I brushed her dogs too (all 5 lbs of them) in the sunshine. It was obvious she very much loved her dogs and when I asked questions she almost entirely answered me as if the dogs were speaking themselves.

Me: So what are your dogs’ names?

Lady: (baby voice) My name is Romeo and even though I am very little I think I am very big and I get into fights with large dogs and bark a lot to show them I mean business.

Me: Oh…um…what is your other dog’s name?

Lady: (higher pitched baby voice) My name is Juliette and I am the boss. Romeo thinks he is the boss but I let him think that way but I am really the boss and I sit in my mommy’s lap and never ever ever ever let her get up.

Me: Hehe… um…Well, Romeo and Juliette, you are both very cute.

Lady: (singsong voice) We knooooooowwww!

It was while sitting with Romeo and Juliette’s mom that I saw something I have never seen before and I hope I never see again. This woman and her small son were walking along a nearby path and she was shouting at him about something. The kid, I think about 5 years old, wasn’t saying anything or whining that I could hear but this woman going on and on about how he was not listening and bugging her and such. When they got about 30 feet from me she stopped and her voice got louder and louder and she suddenly spit on her child. Yes. SPIT ON HER OWN SMALL CHILD. It was all I could do not to say something but I had a large dog with me and I wasn’t sure how Xiola would react if this lady freaked out on me and did something stupid. She seemed really nuts. Poor little kid is going to be Hannibal Lecter when he grows up.

Then yesterday my mom and I ventured into the deepest and darkest of suburbs to visit the Holy Grail of shopping destinations. Yes, we FINALLY have gotten an H & M clothing store. I have seen them in other cities for years and years and I just couldn’t figure out why Vancouver didn’t have one yet. We have all the big designer stores and other big names but no H & M. Well we have one now in a nearby town and a downtown Vancouver one will be opening up in Spring 2008.

Sadly I cannot rave too much about it as the store was so packed with back to school teenagers and moms with kids and strollers you literally couldn’t move. There was a huge line-up to try stuff on and everything was so picked over. I’ll go back once school starts and let you know how fabulous it is.

And an update- Yoshi is now talking to me again as I bought her a nice big playzen tuben that she LOVES! I am the cool food lady now (with a 5 foot cat tunnel in the middle of her living room) and all is well.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-On Strike

Yoshi here again. I refuse to come out from under the bed (except to post this important notice) because my stooopid Food Hag brought over two ugly and dumb dogs for the whole frickin' day! My dinner was 3 hours late and my mom is covered in dog fur. She also smells.

So I am boycotting a photograph today and will only consider posing over the weekend if the following demands are met:

-1 (one) can of tuna served in 2 (two) installments for my dinner.
-uninterrupted use of the lap.
-my litter box scooped every hour on the hour.
-scratching of my chin combined with light bum spankings on demand.
-unrestricted access to all hair clips and elastics.
-undying devotion of all mortals.

Only if all my demands are met will I attend a photo shoot. If any of these conditions are not met in a timely manner I will penalize My Slave by pooping in her shoe.

Your co-operation is greatly appreciated.

However, I still hate you.

I just finished watching the entire first season of 'The Office' (US version) and can’t quite get that ucky feeling out of my gut. Don’t misunderstand. I laughed my ass off and really enjoyed the show but it is almost a little too lifelike in many ways. I guess that is the beauty of it. You watch and relate viscerally on some level based on your past or present experiences in the work-place. Those ugly and dark employee moments one tries to forget every Friday night at happy hour before you go home and have a real life on the weekend.

Here are just a few lovely work related past incidences I wish I could scour from my memory.

-When I was in high school I had a cushy summer job at a nearby town’s city hall. It was not unusual to find yourself sharing an elevator with the mayor. He was about a million years old and used to introduce himself to you no matter how many times he’d done so before. His typical greeting? A bone crushing in-every-sense-of-the-word handshake and a hearty, “You look like a fine group of young lads!” Friendly, yes, but we were all girls and we would be in skirts and blouses with purses and heels. I always wondered what he was like at city political functions.

-Once I made a mistake at work on a film. Not an earth-shattering mistake but a clear mistake on my part. I was spray-painting a pair of boots with fabric paint and I forgot to tape up the soles so some paint dripped under the shoes and got on the bottoms. I had the tape in my hand and got distracted and put it down and forgot to tape up the shoes. I also had a major migraine that day so I was kinda out of it anyway. But not a big deal as I very easily got some solvent and a cotton ball and removed the paint and everything was fine. Or would have been if I hadn’t been caught out by a co-worker. She wasn’t even part of my work area but she flipped out on my head anyway saying that I could get fired for that and if she was my boss I would be out of there and that it was unacceptable to give an article of clothing to an actor in that condition. I apologized to her and said that I had fixed it and it was all good. All day she would walk past me shaking her head, tsking and mumbling under her breath about how I had so royally fucked up. My boss knew about my error and was totally unconcerned so I ignored her. At the end of the day she started up on me again about how even though I was a newbie I couldn’t get away with doing something so stupid as this and wasting valuable time blah blah blah. The ironic part is that it probably took me less time to wipe off the excess paint with nail polish remover than it would have to carefully tape up the shoes and peel it all off afterwards. Nobody got hurt. Filming was not delayed or affected in any way. I didn’t wreck anything or cost the production money. I didn’t understand why she was going on and on and ON! So I turned to her and said, “Listen! I have apologized and apologized to you, which I didn’t have to because you are not my boss and I just don’t know what more I can say to you to convey that it was a MISTAKE! And I have learned from it and it won’t happen again. Let’s all just move on, shall we?” And she said to me, “Ok, ok! Maybe if you just dropped the subject and stopped making such a big deal out of it!”

Oh…my…god…

And the damned shoes never made it on screen anyway.

-Once a boss called me a “Dumb Shit” in front of customers and staff because a co-worker had snuck up behind me and noogied my ribs causing my arm to flail out and knock a box of little doo-dads all over the floor. Then she laughed along with the offending co-worker over his tickling maneuver.

-I had a boss who scheduled an inventory taking day on January 1^st. Yes, that would be New Year’s day. At 8am. And said that if any of us were even a minute late we would be fired. She then showed up 25 minutes late, no apology, while we all huddled outside in the cold waiting for her, very hung-over.

-I had a co-worker who, on a daily basis, would graphically describe to me and anybody within earshot what he imagined my breasts looked like.

-One boss berated me in front of my co-workers that the jeans I was wearing were too faded for work-wear. Never mind that my MALE co-workers, standing right next to me, were all wearing faded jeans too. They were exempt, I guess.

-I nearly got fired because my co-workers and I accidentally left the back loading door unlocked overnight. I was spared but not because I had only started working there a couple days earlier and not only didn’t have keys or the code to the alarm or any kind of locking-up responsibilities at all OR that I didn’t even know there was a loading door in the first place. No, I was kept on, as were my co-workers (who had keys and codes and knowledge about that stupid door), because it would have been too much of a hassle to hire and train new staff. I did get a royal chewing out though after which I had them show me the door they were talking about.

So tell me a personal 'The Office' moment that makes your eyes roll up into the back of your head.

All Sick and Twisted Roads Lead To My Blog

Once again I have compiled a tremendous list of how various people have found their way to my blog. One could argue that a blog stat counter might just provide information better left unknown. I say knowledge is power and, in this case, pretty fucking bizarre.

Here is a list of searches terms that resulted in a visit to this site;

-gay hermit

-ladies peeing while running London marathon

-Yorkie haircuts

-why is my poop long and skinny

-cross dressers in hair rollers

-homemade catshit

-fembot nipples

-asshole burning by dominatrix

-love it when she moans

-penis crushing video

-getting fucked in slut boots ripping assholes

-I am completely alienated how can I fix the world

-long johns fever

-cute constipated girls

-sexy farting women

-pussy cancer

-butch haircut suck

-crush pet hard

-shiny boobs

-bad Barney

-head in pussy

-good looking old guys

-Persian cat revenge

-new hooties

-how do I stop my toilet from running besides jiggling the handle

-I'd like to have an elephant for Christmas

-medical ass injection films

-older brothers tittie twisting their younger brothers

-pictures of possum poo

-melon fuckers

-acidophilus pill in your ass

-tittie twisting bras

-dishwasher making loud moaning sound

Really, human beings freak me out. In a good way.

Incoherent

I am a total asshole. There is a serious lack of posting around these parts and it is completely my fault. I owe a photo of myself to Sharkey to celebrate her 5th Re-Birthday and I thought this would also be an excellent way to show you all how much my hair has grown out as well as a bit of cleavage with the new hooties. I even have the outfit picked out and everything. Here is the problem; being a single genteel lady living on my own who the fricking hell can I get to take my photo? I tried to set up some timer balancing act with my camera on various surfaces with crappy results. I have to get one of my parents over to take the photo. Or go to Sears Portrait Studio. So I’m sorry but you all will have to wait.

I cooked up some CDs for Kristine per her heartfelt request but both yesterday and today I got to the post office after closing so the envelope sadly sits in my car weeping softly to itself. Hold on Kristine! It’s coming!

I would love to tell you all about how much my neighbour hates my ass and describe the look on her face as she glares at me every chance she gets. Sadly it has come to my attention that people Googling my full name are directed to this supposedly anonymous site. In no place does my name appear in any posts or comments so I have no idea how this is happening. **If anybody can help me with this issue I’d love your input.** I’ve noticed lots of folks getting to my blog via my name lately so I have to be a little more circumspect with my rantings until I get this all figured out. I am fully convinced that this lovely lady’s wrath shooting through her fingertips would short circuit a computer if she tried to research me but just in case I won’t be getting into any details. Yet…

So has anybody had any experiences ordering prescription glasses via an internet site? I’ve found a fabu set of frames (in an olive colour) but, of course, cannot be sure they will suit me. I also argue with myself over paying half the price for online lenses opposed to getting the prescription filled here in town where I can deal easily with any potential problems. Any horror stories? Or did you get a great product at a great deal?

I dropped off some stuff I cleaned out of my storage space at the Salvation Army today. While there I poked around in some bins and found a freaking great set of mid century stainless steel serving dishes with gorgeous Bakelite handles and feet. $5 for the both of them!! SCORE!

Lulu My Almost Dog went on her very first camping trip this weekend. You can see pics at my friend’s Facebook site. I’m not sure if you have to join to view photos. Let me know if you have trouble and I will try to get the original jpegs posted.

HEY! Thanks so much for sending out birthday cards to Shane. I appreciate it and I'm sure he will be thrilled.

So I’m sorry I am such a lousy friend but I can promise you a fabulous Crush Your Cat’s Head Friday compliments of MRTL this week. It will be the best one EVAH!

Redemption is mine!

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-To Kill a Mockingturd

Why do I bother trying to enhance her sleeping comfort when she throws it back in my face like this?
Little shit!

An Unsanitary Truth

The ever lovely Miss Kula posted on her blog her conflict over taking public transit to work with upcoming construction delays versus driving to work and paying hefty parking fees. I related very much to her post as I go through some serious car guilt at times. Yes, only at times. For instance after watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth' or when I have to fill up my gas tank with very pricy Canadian gas (as of today priced at $3.82 USD per gallon). However when I am driving in my sweet heated car with tunes blasting and passing all the buses stopping to pick up the masses I don’t feel that bad at all. Not one little bit. Especially when it is pouring rain out like it does the majority of the time in Vancouver. We have a little term used to describe public transit – Loser Cruiser.

I didn’t make that up. Don’t kill the messenger!

I didn’t actually own a car until I was 22 years old and took the bus to and from high school and college as well as to my crappy retail job and to the bars on the weekends. I didn’t have any friends with cars so I didn’t get to carpool with them either. I’ve certainly served my time on transit.

This sucked. My city has an appallingly bad public transportation infrastructure for its size. There is rapid transit (like a subway) that goes to and through various suburbs but that is very limited and rarely does it comprise your whole journey. Almost everybody needs to get a bus to the Skytrain station (yes, that is the suck-ass name of it) and a bus from the closest stop to their final destination. And because busses are lame you probably have a long walk in there as well. Getting pretty much anywhere is a long and convoluted ordeal. And you are almost guaranteed to be late.

Working in the film industry doesn’t lend itself to using mass transit with early call times, late finishing times, strange out of the way locations and the fact that it is part of the job to travel with a huge amount of stuff. On top of that it may be in your job description to run errands and the bus just won’t cut it. It is wasteful but that is the type of work it is. Can’t be helped. So I enjoyed the luxury of driving to and from work and was thankful not to have to wait for busses after a 16 hour work day.

I live right in the city core so I can walk to do most of my everyday errands and only drive when I have to go a significant distance which is not very often these days. But with all this extra attention on greenhouse gasses I’ve thought about whether I would give up my car if I could take public transport to a job.

Sadly, I probably would not. It is not that I don’t want to but it is that I have been so severely traumatized by many terrible incidents on public transit that I plead Post Traumatic Transit Stress Disorder.

Seriously.

Let me tell you a few stories:

-I’ve been on a bus where somebody puked copiously right in front of me.

-Have you ever sat next to a person who was whispering to himself that he shouldn’t hurt you? I have.

-Once I was on a bus and a guy pulled a knife on the bus driver. Fortunately a police car was driving right by and the bus driver honked and the guy ran off.

-I’ve been totally sexually harassed on the bus both verbally (several times) and physically (more than once) with a guy jamming his hand up under my skirt.

-I can also tell you how scary it is when a guy follows you off the bus and tails you to your destination because that has happened to me quite a few times.

-There is also a little phenomenon that a lot of us ladies are familiar with and that is when you sit in the aisle seat and pervy guys who are standing next to your seat use the oh-so convenient jolting of the bus to grind their pelvis into your shoulder. GROOOOOOSSSSS!

-I was taking the bus out of a very affluent suburb when a police car pulled the bus over. A detective wearing a rumpled trench coat walked on the bus and snapped a pair of handcuffs on this guy sitting across from me and then hauled him off.

-Not to mention the B.O. and other nasty smells. And the disgusting steamy germs on every surface. *vomit* I HATE being surrounded by sneezing and hacking people. I feel like I need a peroxide bath after every trip.

There is one particular public transit instance that I don’t like to talk about that really sealed my future as a unrepentant smog belching car driver and that is when I was peed on while riding the bus. Yes, a guy urinated on me.

When I used to take the bus to high school I had to go through a very dodgy neighbourhood. I got fairly immune to the grubby state of people I sat next to because if one got picky about such things one would never get on the bus in the first place. EVER!! So I didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that the guy sitting next to me was looking pretty rough. In fact he looked like somebody had kicked the shit out of him. As I said, not an unusual happening in this neighbourhood. You know, covered in bruises and small cuts stitched with that nasty black thread. I also noticed this guy was wearing a hospital bracelet but sat next to him anyway because I was so used to it by then. Well, I got very unused to it when the guy’s bladder let lose and he very quietly and peacefully peed his pants. And yes, there was overflow which soaked the side of my pant leg. I don’t think I had ever moved so fast in my life as I did jumping up from that seat. He looked up at me and quietly said, “Ooops.” He sat in his own piss for another couple stops and then casually walked off the bus leaving me to silently freak THE FUCK OUT!!!

I had to transfer onto another bus to get home and everybody was looking at my lovely wet spot as well as judgmentally sniffing the air. It was HORRIBLE.

At that moment I vowed that as soon as I could afford a car I would never ride the bus again and once I got my car I have, for the most part, stayed true to my vow.

So that is my dilemma. What would you do in my position?

More Rant For Your Buck

Part 2 of Thursday’s Rant.

So here a little story about what happened to me when I went to the local health food store for a bottle of acidophilus pills.

Several months before I was diagnosed with cancer I decided to visit the health food store as my stomach had been giving me some trouble. Certain foods seemed to make me feel bloated and out of sorts. I thought a simple little bottle of acidophilus might get my gut bacteria back on track again. Nothing else major was going on with me health-wise to cause me concern. The lady who ran the store was very helpful and started asking me all sorts of questions while looking my symptoms up in a very well thumbed reference book she had behind the counter. With such vague symptoms like bloating and strange pooping issues and burping she told me that I needed digestive enzymes as well as the acidophilus. Then she said I needed activated charcoal as well. Then she said I needed a colon cleansing kit as well. That means a special diet and many pills over a 10 day period to literally clean your bowels out.

I told her that I had done a digestive cleanse twice in my life and with the second one I had to stop within just a couple days because I got such bad abdominal cramps. Like so bad I couldn’t stand up kind of cramps. She then went on to say that maybe I needed a liver cleanse as well. So many ‘as wells’ that had upped my potential bill to well over $200. I told her I didn’t think my liver was an issue and that I thought I’d just stick with my original plan to do acidophilus pills.

Well, the nice lady put down her book and took out a quartz crystal on a chain and proceeded to ask the crystal what kind of treatment I really needed.

!

I have to admit that when I was very much younger my friends and I would use this pendulum fortune telling trick when asking excruciatingly important questions about boys but I had never thought to use it for diagnosing health problems. Yeah, I used such bizarre diagnostic tools like doctors and blood tests and such. If I’d known that a crystal could have done the same trick I might have saved myself all those pesky appointments.

Anyhoo…

So The Crystal told this nice lady that it was indeed my liver and that I needed a liver cleanse and other liver type supplements. And PRONTO!

While I was pretty much secretly snickering into my sleeve and faintly embarrassed over the situation I found myself in I told the nice lady I wasn’t going to buy all the stuff she wanted me to but I would do a cleanse and then come back for some acidophilus later. So the lady and her crystal recommended an extra gentle cleanse that would benefit my digestive tract AND my liver. Kill two birds blah blah blah…

Normally I would have just walked out and gone somewhere else so I could just buy my goddamned bacterial culture tablets in peace but I had been reading on a few blogs that other people had been doing cleanses as well and I thought, “What the heck?” Let’s try a cleanse as it might just do the trick.

So I got home and took my first course of pills and settled in for a night of laundry and TV watching. Within a few hours it was time to take my second course of pills which I did with a very simple veggie and rice dinner. So far so good.

I was feeling a bit queasy and unsettled by bedtime but I was feeling that way before I started the cleanse and that was why I wanted the acidophilus in the first place. So I didn’t really think much of it.

I woke at 2 am with a most terrible headache. I took a couple Tylenol but the pain got worse and worse very quickly. Really awful pain which made me rock in bed with a pillow over my face while crying. Like really bad. Now I’ve had migraines several times in my life and this was worse and very different from a migraine. This felt like my whole head was going to explode. For reals.

Then I got nauseous. Brutally nauseous. Then I started barfing. Barfing is not pleasant at the best of times but when your head is exploding it takes on a new level of hellishness. I felt absolutely vile.

Then the diarrhea started…and I officially entered a trifecta of physical nastiness.

I don’t remember much detail of that night but I do vividly recall washing my face in cool water in my bathroom and looking up into the mirror. What I saw shocked and, frankly, fascinated me. My skin colour was grey. Literally grey. A dark bluish grey. With a lovely tinge of green. I had never seen skin that colour ever. Well, that is not entirely true. I had seen corpses that colour on TV detective shows. You know the ones that have been left outside for a couple days? That colour. And it was now my very own personal colour. It was totally surreal.

It was at this time I thought that maybe I should go to the emergency room. What I did instead was take a shwack of codeine painkillers and pass out from sheer exhaustion.

The next day I did go to my doctor and he told me what had likely happened. He believed that I had a severe reaction to an herb in the cleanse, likely the burdock root, which made my blood pressure go up. Not just a little bit but dangerously high. I could have very easily had a stroke. Probably my young age and general good health saved me. Even 12 hours later my blood pressure was VERY high. And my doc was VERY upset. I didn’t dare tell him that I had done the cleanse on the advice of a crystal.

I returned the unused portion to the health food store and told the nice lady (and her crystal) what had happened. She started to cry. Maybe she thought I’d sue her. I just wanted my money back. I still wanted my acidophilus pills.

With this experience under my belt you can imagine how annoyed I get when people tell me (like my neighbour) that I should take ‘harmless’ herbal remedies for whatever ails me. People who look stuff up on the internet and consider themselves experts. Like the internet is a reliable source of information. HA! Very, very dangerous. There is also this belief that herbs and natural supplements are “safer” than Western medicine medications which is very untrue and a very dangerous assumption as well. I could have died from my ‘safe’ herbal remedy and I wouldn’t have been the first. People die from taking or mixing drugs both natural and ‘manufactured’ all the time. One must remember that herbal supplements are not tested or regulated by the FDA. Anybody can say that an herbal medication can do anything and do not have to prove it through tests and trials. Herbal supplements are also not quality controlled for potency or dosage like FDA regulated medications are.

So did I find a point to my tale? Yes, I did. Several points in fact. My points are these. Be smart. Don’t assume. Get your info from reputable sources and that DOESN’T include the internet. Anybody can post anything on the internet. When you read reference books check their sources and read those books as well. Don’t get lulled into a false sense of safety. Educate yourself and keep an open mind while doing it. And don’t listen to crystals no matter what they tell you.