Friday, May 29, 2009

He's a little testy! Okay, not any more.

He's got no balls. That's right. Even before my boy could kiss his first girlfriend between the fence posts, his manhood is gone. I did this. I'm the ball stealer.

Kao, my boy, Mummy is sorry. I didn't mean to do it but I had to. You were humping Bella, and at 15, she's not as understanding as she used to be. I don't think she'd ever be THAT understanding, but when you sneak up behind her and try to mount her, she will tend to freak out. If she had claws, you'd be blind 50 times over. You're just not her type. It's not you, it's her. Now, if you were a big bowl of milk with a side of tuna, then maybe you two could talk. But you didn't have any small talk, no foreplay and for that she can't forgive you. And, as much as I love you, I do not love seeing your lipstick dick every morning, even though some men may be more than a little jealous.

I'm also sorry that you haven't been allowed to clean yourself. I know this is your third favourite thing to do, the first being to chase after frisbees. The second has to do with balls, but not yours - tennis balls. No more licky-licky, Boyo. It's icky, icky, especially when you insist on kissing me right afterwards.

Now that that is out of the way, I will tell you bloggers that Kao is recovering from his ball buster surgery. He went under the knife at about 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Since then, however, we've been dealing in puke. Kao had a reaction to the anesthetic. He also had a reaction to a pair of my underwear, which he, unbeknown to us, had unearthed from my laundry basket. Yes, mine. Not the man's. Mine. We discovered it today, after a $90 vet visit, special "gastro-friendly" food and two different medications, only to discover the true reason for Kao's tummy distress. He has an aversion to lace. Sure, it must taste good going down but it's a whole other story coming out.

I'm just thankful it did come out. Picking through puke to rescue my gotchees was not my ideal way to spend my lunch hour, but the alternative is just something I can't fathom. And no, I did not eat afterwards. I couldn't. I was grossed out. But, it showed me that I have enough balls of my own to investigate a whole load of vomit to diagnose the issue and dispose of the culprit. I sure as hell wasn't going to wash them so they would see another wear. My new rule: puppies don't eat underwear and Scribe does not wear underwear that puppies eat.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Apron strings around the world untie!

God, if it were only that easy; to break the cycle, release the apron strings and the years of hurt, drama and tears. You see, I just got off the phone with my archnemesis. Mother. Mum. Mummy Dearest, Margaret.

I know, no names. I really shouldn't, but you see I'm pissed. Pissed enough to write something really, really personal on this blog and out into cyber-space. Maybe she'll see it and rethink how she should interact with me.

It's been a really bad day, bloggers. Really bad, and it all started with a telephone call. I called my dad today for his birthday. He had come over on the weekend to spend time with me while Margaret was at a bridal shower in my hometown, but I could not let the day go by without phoning in my congratulations at reaching another milestone: his 77th birthday. That's when she got on the phone, telling me she was worried about me, about my health because apparently I'm so gargantuan size that I'll keel over at any minute. I will take responsibility for this: I am overweight but when you can't say something positive, don't say anything at all. It almost never has a good outcome. Margaret knows this, has been taught this, but Margaret never follows this rule, all under the guise of concern.

My weight is a sore spot with me, not with other people, only with her, because it's been a constant since I was five. And at nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 (I was a healthy weight throughout). Fast forward to 38. Always under the guise of concern, she has consistently nitpicked all of my faults: my hair, my make-up (she called me a whore at 14 for wearing eyeliner), my choice in friends, my finances, my house and the maintenance on my house, my relationships and especially my weight. At 30, after I had lost my mother-in-law to cancer, left an abusive relationship and lost a house in the subsequent divorce, she told me I would never be able to survive without her, and that included maintaining a healthy weight. Her answer to bringing to my attention to the last 5 lbs. of the 70 I had lost was to grab my belly and squeeze, saying "Oh Scribe, a little thick around the middle still, I see." Okay, she didn't call me Scribe, but she did grab, and I grabbed back. Literally. Painfully. Squeezing until she stopped. It was my only defence and the only way she would stop. At that moment anyway.

It's fodder for psychiatrists everywhere - a mother who loves too much, who is too concerned all of the time . Before my parents moved out of town and into their next phase of retirement, I had gone on a 20-minute walk from my house to theirs. I was not alone and it was not dark (the streetlights hadn't even come on). She was convinced I was kidnapped. Kidnapped at 35. Six phone calls and a drive-by later (remember, it's only a 20-minute walk, oh but I have to cross the street), and she had relaxed because I was now sitting in her kitchen with my cousin sipping tea. But before that, I was dead. She was convinced. And I can't forget about the time she told me I would die if I drove on the highway, insisting I spend two hours on the regular roads to get anywhere.

So what does this have to do with my weight? My weight is just one part. By bringing up my faults, it's her way of telling me that she's unhappy with my state, the way I look, the way I live and my choices - all of my choices. Her worrying is her defence. "I'm only saying for your own good." It was permissable at 8, it's not at 38.

So, it's time for a surgical procedure - the removal of the steel rod up her ass and the snipping of the apron strings. Get ready, Margaret. You're in for a lengthy, painful recovery and I'm not sure if our relationship will ever recover.

I apologize for the rant. Mummy made me do it.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I'm a quitter!

That's right, my bloggers. I, Scribe, am a quitter. Well, as of 41 minutes ago.

After being a social smoker-turned-regular, I am giving up the tobacco, the smokes, the cancer sticks. Truth is, I used to love to smoke. Socially on the patio, the Matinee King Size Slims were part of my party arsenol. I'd buy a pack for a night on the town and smoke for an evening, storing them in the freezer so they'd be "fresh" for the next time two weeks or a month later. There they would be, between the ice cube trays and the bags of coffee beans. My friends. A little while later I would take my friends out more and more often.

The truth is I was a late bloomer, picking up the habit when I was 35. Thirty-five! I had avoided it all those years before, thinking I would be a traitor if I did. Both my parents smoked and I would chastize them for it, snubbing out their cigarettes when they weren't looking. They quit in 2000 after more than 50 years living with the habit, and five years later, I took up their charge. What a fucking moron, but I will be a moron no more.

May 25th is the new dawn of no more smoker's cough. So unattractive, it's a wonder my boyfriend still kissed me. No more sneaking a puff on my way to the karaoke bar where I'd sneak a puff between songs. No more taking Kao out for a pee and a quick drag.

Wish me luck, bloggers. It hasn't been a lifetime but it's been long enough to create quite the habit. Sure, I'll still tuck away the $10 I used to buy the cigarettes but this time it will go into the travel fund and I'll have a smoke-free, healthier lifestyle where birds will chirp, squirrels will carry on conversations with me and dogs and cats will happily co-exist. Oh damn, that's the nicotine withdrawl already starting! Save me Nicorette!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Oh my god, what did I do!?!?!?

I had been debating for weeks on whether I should book them... the tickets across the pond to visit family and friends. Yes people, I'm going back to Scotland. Again. Perhaps that's the reason for my insomnia. I'm a bit nervous. It's a lot of money, people. It means two months of freelancing and a bit of scrimping and saving where I can. But, it's worth it in the end. I think.

The main reason is to visit family. My aunt is 89 this year. Yes, 89. Eighty-nine. Almost 90. Given that my grandmother, Bella, after whom I've named my cat, lived to 99, it's not far-fetched that dear Auntie Tibby will enjoy the same ripe age. Or, maybe not. And that is why I hit the purchase button tonight because you just never know what life will have in store - for me, for her, for Scotland.

It's also a chance to visit my sister-friend of 27 years. We often go months at a time with no communication but when we get together it's like the time has never passed. Jokes are shared, bottles of wine are opened and we catch up with two years' worth of news. Her daughter is now four, no longer doing the bum shuffle along the floor. She now grabs the phone from her mum to speak to Auntie Scribe from Canada. The conversation is mostly one-sided, but it doesn't matter.

My love affair with Scotland started when I was 18 months old during our first family vacation. My mum's aunts living in Canada kept up the love affair by playing Pipes on Parade (my favourite) and offering to pack me away in their suitcases whenever they went home for a visit. It never happened and I was mad every time they left for the airport without me tucked away. They came home with gifts from the "motherland" but it just wasn't the same. Scotland, I felt, was in my blood. It was my birthright to go and experience it for myself. Even if I was only five.

Fast forward to my 11th year, March Break, when my mum decided it was time. It was a 10-day visit but it was magical. We spent a week in Wales visiting my gran and grandad before traveling by train to Edinburgh to visit my aunts and uncles, cousins and my best friend who I didn't know was to be my best friend before we were introduced over my aunt's back garden fence. I can't count the number of times I've been back, with my parents and by myself, often doing side trips to the Highlands (where, funny enough, I was chased by a Highland cow - true story), a jaunt to Amsterdam and to the Anne Frank House, and now to visit friends in England. The last visit saw me spend 10 hours walking the Edinburgh streets, visiting St. Mary's Close and Roslin Castle. I visited the auldest pub in the U.K. and wore the heels off of my good walking shoes. I can't wait to go back, to feel the cobblestones under my feet and rest my head where my heart lives.

So why the apprehension? I really do not know. I'm always welcomed with open arms. Even the rain feels good - and even the golf ball-sized hail stones I experienced in 1999 while walking past the old Scarlet Fever Hospital-cum-0ld age home where my gran once lived. Perhaps it's because I am afraid of the love affair's end. Is this the time when I'll notice the grime, the increased crime and the bad economy? I sure hope not. Perhaps the sound of the pipes marching down the Royal Mile will drowned it all out and I'll be free to continue to love my home-away-from home.

Until then, I'll just put my credit card away, start saving my cockles and sleep knowing that in three months' time I'll be back in the land of the thistle. God help me, how I love it, but did I have to book in the prime holiday season?

Monday, May 11, 2009

Ionic bullshit

Let's start by saying that I'm usually the first to question everything - does that bread really have 45 grams of fibre in it and if so, why aren't I crapping 24/7? Does the Sham-Wow really absorb a gallon of water (or whatever liquid you spill on your new couch)? I need to test it out, break it down and examine the inner workings. I did it with grasshoppers and caterpillars when I was little and I do it now. So, that's why I even surprised myself this past weekend when I stepped foot into an ionic foot bath to find out what toxins were in me, no questions asked. Okay, I really wanted more pampering and after having a manicure and waxing (ouch! okay, it was only my gargantuanly overgrown eyebrows), I still wanted more. The more turned out to be a footsoak in my own filth and tinny stench - that's right, tinny - because apparently I'm so heavy metal I secrete vats of the stuff.

The process itself took only 20 minutes but the results were painfully disgusting. After ensuring my feet were spa-worthy pristine, blue toe polish and all, I stepped into the tub and got hooked up to a pad of wires designed to send a current through my body and out of my feet. Within a minute the once-clear water was orange: metal. A past yeast infection came to light again in white foam coming from my feet, later changing to black specks (damn, my liver had spilled forth my secret, nightly wine ritual). My friend's daughter, the reason for the all-girls, all-spa moment, concoted the perfect moniker for the exercise - toe juice.

Toe juice. Tinny toe juice. Or as her 14-year-old ears heard, titty toe juice. This is a girl who, upon hearing "I would like steak for dinner," would deduce that I had said that "Angelina and I both have a dog named Clifford." No, I haven't changed Kao's name and certainly wouldn't pick Clifford as a replacement, but you get the picture. She needs to clean her ears out and she has a vivid imagination.

Anyways, back to the titty toe juice. Did that all come out of my feet? Is there a man behind the curtain playing with all of the controls (and the controls in my feet)? Or, am I so toxic that my once clean feet had to be showered and washed of my gross, disturbingly smelly toxins?

I'm apt to believe that smoke and mirrors were behind the whole thing. How could I have survived 38 years with all of that orange, blacky flaky crap in me? Am I doomed to live a toxic life? I agree I could make better choices - organic vegetables, fish, kamut and tofu - but will I be doomed to secrete toe juice because of the environment around me? These things I can not control?

Tinny toe juice be damned - and that titty toe juice too.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Procrasti-Bitch

I'm a procrastinator. I can take what may appear to be a 10-minute task and drag it out to an hour. There's no real reason for it. Sometimes it's me being anal - scrubbing a sink once, twice, even three times over to make sure it sparkles. And, when I do decide to do an overall kitchen clean it's an overhaul. Stove elements are cleaned. Cupboards are washed down. If I could scrub down into the drain I would. I keep an old toothbrush for such a purpose. Is it a bit over-the-top? Maybe. Is it keeping me from doing other things, like writing and working out? Perhaps. Okay, yes.

Interrupt me from my procrastination and tell me to shake a leg will get you nowhere but in a whole load of bitch. I become indignant and often insist I'm not wasting time. This shit has to be done and it has to be done right. It just may not have to take me two hours to do it. Water breaks punctuate the space of time and light. Music breaks too - don't tell anyone this but I often dance around the living room with Kao. He's a bit of a two-left feet dog but he makes up for his gawkiness with his energy level. Bella won't entertain the notion and would much rather run and hide in my closet. Hey, that's another thing I can do today! Okay, I digress. Again.

Procastinating is what I'm doing now. Don't take offence. It's not you - it's me. I think being on here and in the writing moment is important. Actually, right now, there is no place I'd rather be. Certainly not in the kitchen tackling the dishes left over from breakfast/lunch/brunch. It's also raining and that does not lend well to my energy level. It's almost non-existent - like the rain has washed it off, away and into the sewer system where it's left to rot.

Last October, my favourite author friend, Kathleen Molloy (she's written her first novel, Dining with Death, that's - excuse the pun - to die for) introduced me to a publisher in the hopes that I would get off my ass and get some of my poetry published. Enter procrastination. I was supposed to contact the company, based in Chelsea, Que., in March to start gathering all of the work and putting it together. I'm still in the editing process. I'm nervous, you see. It's one thing to write them, it's another to have them read by more than my friends and my family. I don't even let my parents read the poems outloud for fear of hearing that "sing-song" sound that accompanies many rhyming poems. I don't rhyme. I don't like rhyme and find it limits. And, it's annoying - like when someone breathes on me and all I want to do is slap their face away. It doesn't work well in relationships either.

So, my goal is to get these poems together and reader-ready for June. It gives me a month. A month to read and re-read, get nervous and then slough off the fears like a layer of dead skin. Wish me luck. Kick me in the ass. Take away my telephone privileges. Whatever it takes to get me up and writing, editing and in the moment. Now it's time to tackle that kitchen sink and bedroom closet, but not before I grab a cup of coffee and dance like there's no tomorrow. Or at least until there is no clutter in the kitchen.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Introducing Scribe-ilicious

Okay, so I did it. I took the plunge and created my first blog. I'm a newbie, so go easy on me.

An introduction is in order. Hi, my name is Linda, but you can call me Scribe. I've been a writer since I could hold a crayon, creating stories for my stuffed animals, real animals and anyone else who would listen - and that includes really bad poetry in my teens. I mean really, really bad. I was full of angst and woe. "O lowly moon, do not weep for me," my friends would joke. I was Emo before that term was coined. The teenagers today have nothing on me. My mother, who shall be referred to as "Mags," 'cause she so does not suit that name, calls it my black phase and I think she believes I'm still in it. It's quite the opposite in fact; I'm full of laughter and light and a bit of twisted psychosis, which you will probably see displayed here. Don't worry though - I'm harmless. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to spit.

So, why am I blogging? Besides the fact that I want to keep up with the young'uns (I don't really. Honest.), I was searching for another venue for my writing and freelance writing for web sites may pay the bills but it doesn't pull at the heartstrings or stir my creative juices. I look at Scribing Life as an escape where my mind can race, I can spew out ideas and muse about my life as it stands now.

My first blog was going to be a retrospective of sorts - looking at my life now and remembering where I've been and then maybe I can find out where the hell I'm going. I remember when I was five wondering what it would feel like to be 14. At 14, I tried to look ahead and think of my life at 18, then at 21 and moving on to 30. Let me tell you this: this is not where I thought I would be - living in a townhouse in the same city where I was born, divorced (best thing I ever did by the way; I firmly believe that people should be married at least once) and embarking on a new relationship with my boyfriend, my 8-mth old boxer Kao and Bella, my 15-year-old soccer ball with a head cat. I thought I would be well-established in a writing career, married with three kids and living in the city. Instead, I'm stuck in the suburbs, my compass reliant on the same coordinates I was born into and wondering again when my real career and real life will begin.

But, this is my real life. My Scribing Life, and I'm here to make the most of it. Come join me as I navigate the next chapter with humour (yes, I am a Canadian and the "U" is intentional), a little bit of self-deprecation and just a wee bit of insight into where life will take us.

Let's get started!