Free Association Time! Nipples, Rings, and Pupils.

Unbelievable.

At our dinner table this evening the conversation was about the differences between nipples and pupils. Apparently they sound too alike to my 5yo (must be my accent) and she thought it was hysterical to keep mixing them up. She's right, it is hilarious.

What Is It? No Really, What Is It?

Once again it was too hot to venture outside lest we melt into puddles of goo so we stayed in and made our contribution to global warming by running our AC during peak-hours while making a weak cry that it was all in the name of survival.

Despite the Arctic air that was being forced directly into our living space, we were completely wilted from an earlier foray into the hot, cruel summer for sustenance and such. And since our AC is far too loud to allow us to hear a murder next door much less the television in our living room, we decided to be more creative and you know, create stuff.

Oh Canada

If you had been that fly on the wall in our home earlier on this lovely Canada Day (no humidity! I *heart* no humidity!) you would have seen a mapletastic and bacon laden pastoral scene of A Canadian Family.

The child on the balcony dressed quasi-appropriately for the unpredictable weather known as summer in Canada (fleece leggings because the wind is really frickin' cold, t-shirt because it IS July 1st after all, and a hat because that sun is blazing hot), the husband with beers following free-agent day, and the wife scouring YouTube for Littlest Hobo, Beachcomber, Degrassi, Mighty Hercules, Rocket Robin Hood images and videos, not to mention getting nostalgic over Heritage Moments, and tearing up over Tom Brokaw's video on Canada from Vancouver 2010.

No denying we are Canadian.

Big and Small Inspirations

Big and Small is one of the few children's programs where I think I might like the characters more than my child does. Big is one of those very zen-like bearish creatures who likes to take life slow and think things through while Small is some kind of biped orange rat who appears to be on high on life. Or meth. Take your pick.

They are a more tolerant Odd Couple for a wee generation who probably will never know the names Felix Ungar or Oscar Madison. Wow. That's sad that these kids probably won't know that classic show that peppered my childhood tv diet. A diet that also included liberal doses of Gilligan's Island, Three's Company, and Alf. Syndication: it's a good thing. Oh great. Now I have the Odd Couple theme song stuck in my head.

Anyway. We bought the first five episodes of Big and Small on DVD recently (the first season if you will) and sat down to watch it together. Obviously I discovered something jarring while watching the very first episode of the show otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post (or would I? Perhaps my intention is to bore you all to death. Mwhahahahahahahaha.)

It's All About Me: A Selfish Rant in less than Four Hundred Words

This morning I had all my "me" time taken from me by a ruthless mom.

Okay, to be completely fair, she didn't know she was stealing all my "me" time but did she really have to talk the entire time we sat in the bleachers "watching" our kids in swim class?

From the moment I sat my butt down and gave my polite daily "howdy" nod to all the other moms and dads, she started talking about this, that and the other thing.

For the record, I have never exchanged more than my polite daily "howdy" nod with her. Yet today she suddenly felt the need to tell me about her commute, her living situation, her plans for the new school year, and what's she's making for dinner -- all without the benefit of telling me her first name or even asking for mine.

Oh and there might have also been the obligatory weather talk interlaced in there somewhere but hell woman, yes it's all "Oh the humidity" in a total Hindenburg way so let's just all agree to shut up about something we can't change without a few more years of using fluorocarbons and feeding those damn cows.

Damn. I didn't even get a #brokebackswimmingpool tweet out today.

Yeah I know I'm being a bitch but when you get just twenty-five minutes to yourself each day, one falls in love with each and every second of those twenty-five minutes and makes them count. I make them count by doing things like answering really overdue emails, composing post outlines, hashtagging tweets about how my daughter's swimming instructor looks like Jake Gyllenhaalhoweverthefuckyouspellhisname, plotting taking his photo without being asked to leave or labelled the weird mom, and my by far favourite thing to do: numbing the mind with BEJEWELLED (drool.... my IQ just dropped 40% but I'm still able to make three -- sometimes five! -- jewels match in a row without the benefit of brains, precious, precious brains).

Anyhow, I now feel punchy over a lost twenty-five minutes so if my husband is reading this post, don't panic tonight when I lock you and the sprog out on the balcony for a while -- like twenty-five minutes a while - m'kay? Mama needs her Bejewelled.

/endrant

P.S. I don't even like Jake Gyllenhaal but there is no denying this kid looks exactly like him. It's FREAKY and completely fascinating.

This isn't a BlogHer Recap (alternate title: Viva La Siesta!)

Random lines from posts I've started but failed to finish:

(1) Hi. My name is motherbumper and I'm a "booyah" abuser. As in, I use the word "booyah" to punctuate too many thoughts in a "yada yada yada" kind of way.

(2) My deep-dish and uncomfortable thoughts on free stuff. When it comes to free stuff, I don't go looking for it but don't get me wrong, booyah! I luuuurve free stuff. Hell, if swag lands in my lap and it's of use to me, into the bag it goes. In fact, I pack light going to BlogHer because so many generous sponsors and party hosts give tokens of appreciation for attending their party. Attending being a very key word in that sentence. It is never expected but damn it's nice and I know it's going to happen. But if it didn't happen, it wouldn't change my weekend.

Anyhow, the swag thing at BlogHer was weird this year. There was a very small number of the generally awesome population acting like freaks. Freaks as in committing blackmail over shoes or like in my personal experience while working the door at The People's Party where I witnessed something small but strange. This incident kind of set the tone for me on the subject of free stuff over the weekend.

Let me explain it the best way I can: As a hostess of The People's Party, I was handing out drink tickets and big welcoming smiles and/or hellos to everyone I could reach as they surged (literally SURGED) through the doors. When the surging had died down to a well-heeled stampede, I witnessed a woman come in, make a beeline to the swag bags, grab four (!) (as in two on each arm), and then promptly turn around and march out. The only reason I remember her so specifically is she totally didn't make eye-contact with me when I tried to hand her a drink ticket -- she put her hand up in a blocking / dismissive way and marched on by. So I watched what she did because I was taken aback (what can I say, I'm sensitive). When she breezed on past me after her bag scoop, I stepped outside the door to watch her leave and she proceeded to walk away from the party crowd towards what I'm not sure... the elevators? Her friends? They weren't anywhere near the party, that's for sure.

I told myself, she's probably just grabbing it for other people and bringing it back to the room. I seriously tried to convince myself that she did because I didn't want to get pissy at my own party like my name was JLo or something. But then I thought about all the people who were here, not getting or caring about bags, and staying because they were there to meet people. Because you know, that's the purpose of The People's Party.

But my observations are full of total conjecture and it was just odd to watch. I could be totally wrong. Maybe she had already had her free drink and her friends had sent her in to grab the swag they didn't get the first time around and ten minutes was enough time at the party for all of them.

Yet I couldn't help myself and felt compelled to record this encounter because regardless of her reason / plan of use with the bag, it was somehow appeared more important to her to grab the free stuff than to just come to the party and meet with other bloggers. Instead she appeared to be doing a free stuff recon pre-party attendance. Because the free stuff is just a nice perk, not the purpose. It left me with an icky feeling.

(3) BlogHer is a mindfuck.

(4) Can't wait to do it all again in New York.

(5) Damn everyone looked good at BlogHer this year. Especially you.


(6) All Hail the Unicorn Cake from the planet MamaPop!

(7) This week during my BlogHer detox, I had grandiose plans to clean and reorganize this entire home while SB and G were out of town but after making a mental list of everything I needed to do I took a nap.

Then I woke up, decided to add doing an internal cleanse while eating nothing but fruit and veg because I don't have to prep any meals for others all week, and felt proud that the nap gave me such clarity. Viva la Siesta! Then I promptly sat on the couch, ordered a pizza (online! no human interaction! if I could have shoved an envelope under the door with the money, I would have!), and after eating more than half of the damn thing, I fell asleep.

So to recap: this week I've accomplished nothing but a post about Joe Jonas having his heart smashed in seventeen places by Camilla Belle (which I first read as Camille Paglia and let me tell you, I was very confused) and also I managed to go pee. Oh and I also managed to make myself into a Mad Men avatar (what do you think - did I get it right?)

(8) BOO-YAH!

I Was Wrong

Well look at that: the cat isn't trying to kill me as originally thought when the act of cleaning my face almost sent me to the hospital. My bad on the accusation front because it turns out it's my daughter who is trying to do something to the cat and he was probably hiding from her when he made face washing deadly. And I'm not sure exactly what my daughter is up to but here's an example:

Today I caught her trying to duct tape the cat to the coffee table and because he's a cat, he slept through a majority of the crime. But basically she started to tape his napping a*s down like a druid sacrifice and he really didn't notice until I yelled "DON'T DUCT TAPE THE CAT TO THE COFFEE TABLE PLEASE!" [points for remembering to use my manners but immediately lose points for using my outside voice]

Let me tell you: the cat caught on quickly that something was amiss.

Of course why was my daughter playing with duct tape? I think it's part of her tiny bag of tricks.

Literally, she has has this tiny bag that I must check daily because OH MY WORD the things I find in there e.g. tape. Or pictures of my huge pregnant belly which are totally NSFNS (not safe for nursery school) yet somehow made it to the hands of her classmate recently.

Now those little kids sure do crack me up and sometimes they might act totally clueless or nonchalant but nothing slips by them.

Nothing. Nada.

And while it really makes my heart sing to hear a kid refer to me as "Gigi's Mom" as in: "Gigi-Mom, why so big in that picture? You're huuuuge", I also must state the obvious: kids are brutal, BRUTAL I say! I think I told them all to cut me some slack and oh look, is that an ant?

If that ant hadn't worked I'm sure I would have gone on the defensive and explained that sure it took me three years to lose the thirty plus kilos (*cough* 70 lbs) that I gained thanks to my pregnancy support team of Ben and Jerry but I'm close enough now so whatever. And because it worked so well many times before, Ben and Jerry have once again generously offered their support in cooperation with Team Lays who have pledged to build a bigger and better motherbumper. So far I'm resisting but dammit, I feel some weakness coming on (must remain strong because I love my new jeans dammit.)

Anyhow, from the better late than never files:

The following people won free rice in the Let Them Eat Rice draw and you can clearly see I used a totally on the up-and-up process called "too damn lazy to write numbers on paper" or maybe the "look at me being all green - if you ignore how much electricity it took to power the laptop in order to actually generate the numbers versus how much human energy it would have required to just use a scrap of biodegradable paper and some ink to randomly pick five numbers out of a hat" process.

Winners! You are all WINNERS! of rice!
7 - where there's a willer...
9 - cool zebras
10 - playa minded
4 - cheaper than therapy
11 - mama tulip

And the world said I never gave it anything but shit shine and shinola. Take that world.

Perhaps if I spent less time staring at the tin and more time cleaning, posts like this wouldn't happen

Am I the only one who thinks this variety of baked beans sounds like p0rn terminology?

Okay, I guess I should have kept this to myself but seriously, I think an industry that spawned such awesome terms as the money sh0t and fluffer might just be using this one too. If not, I wonder if I can charge them money to start using it? Yes, I'd give Heinz their cut but you read it here: it's my idea suckers.

Oh man, I've been resisting the urge to google those words since I bought these beans earlier this week. Mostly because I'm slightly afraid of what the search results it might bring back.

Now that I've gone there, I don't really want to eat them. Let's not talk about this anymore.

AND OMG, stop staring at the coffee splashes on the side of my fridge. STOP IT.

I don't have time for stuff like coffee stains people -- please stop whispering about my dirty fridge. Details like random splashes went the way of the dodo when my loins came to fruition and something like three year old coffee stains on an appliance I don't even own does not rank high on my "things I must do sometime in the near future" list.  Actually that list doesn't even exist. Instead of a list of things-to-do, I have been trying out the "random scrawls on scraps of paper in the purse" methodology (RSOSOPITP) and so far I've had mixed results with RSOSOPITP. I'd tell you the exact results but I can't locate them right now because there somewhere at the bottom of my purse.

Anyhow, I'm over at Canada Moms Blog today talking about butts and I cannot lie: it makes me want to die of embarrassment.

And yes, I'm still screaming LET THEM EAT RICE like Marie Antoinette on a diet -- and I'll be doing that until next Tuesday.

Now pass me my purse because I have no idea what to do next. Be careful, that clinking sound is mommy's little helper in convenient travel-size.

Five Minutes in the Closet

MODERATELY NON SURPRISING DIRTY SECRET:

Do you remember that episode of Friends where Chandler discovers Monica's Closet? She had a closet full of all the crap or as she tries to justify it "things that defy categorization" and therefore do not fit among the organized things in her world. Yes her dirty little/big, secret. Literally.

Yes, well I have a Monica closet.

In fact I have five Monica closets. I opened one the other day, saw Jimmy Hoffa playing chess with Jim Morrison and decided it wasn't worth the pain or legal work or notoriety to clean it out. For all I know, I have a band of gypsys living in the one near the front door and Narnia at the back of the one in our bedroom. I figure cleaning out the mess will prevent any magic from forming in the confines of these walls so I'm actually doing us all a favour. The world needs more magic and dust bunnies.

Hey, did I mention we only have five closets in this apartment? You probably already guessed that.

MINUTE TANGENT:

How come no one told me about this Minute Rice shit?  Seriously, precooked rice in a box that can't be burnt by absent-minded and reluctant cooks? Humans are amazing with the inventions they produce. Who invented this stuff? I want to give her a hug.

Hey, if you are going to rain on my Minute Rice parade, please don't tell me it causes the shits or prolonged exposure will make me shoot ray beams from my eyes. Just, just -- please don't. I'm still recovering from the Olestra debacle of 98. Let me discover this one on my own, even if it's messy. The lesson will stick better that way.

Now this Minute Rice hussy will never replace my basmati but damn, that stuff is super fine. If I could, I'd buy it dinner at a non-fast food restaurant and take it to a full-price movie before establishing it as my main booty call. Because trust me, it will be a booty call but I promise I'll whisper sweet nothings into it's unusually white husks as long as it keeps me from having to actually cook.


GOOD BAD START, POOR FINISH:

So how was your weekend?

That's interesting.  Okay, now it's my turn: Do you know how I knew this last weekend was going to be awesometasic? I knew at 5pm on Friday when my daughter started to complain of a headache  and then she said her stomach hurt. Of course this was right after we had finalized an awesome line up of family fun activities for the weekend -- not that plans can't be cancelled but seriously, it was moments after we had just said "see you in the morning" to friends. By six she was burning up and begging to go to bed. My child -- begging to go to bed while the sun was still in the sky and without the benefit of bribes. Last time she wanted to sleep this badly, she had pneumonia.

Well this time there was no pneumonia but I'm sure there's still time. Still lots of freakin' time. I should shut up before the Universe hands me something else.

On that note: Seacrest out.

panning for old

Lately each time I sit down to write, instead of cranking out a somewhat complete story of katie yore, it's been a pile of trigger-induced randomness that makes a whole lot of no-sense except to me. And then sometimes not even.

Now because I'm extremely kind, I've spared you any uber-silliness of random thoughts that are as f'd up as pigs in space. Though holy crow, I really miss Pigs in Space. Mind you Veterinarian's Hospital also brings back fond memories of televisions with dials and the notion that remote controls were something out of a James Bond movie. Have I mentioned that lately I find it slightly disturbing that I can remember the days before bank machines, remotes for televisions, and sweet baby Jesus, I remember the days before Betamax and VHS. I may have even had my first date before those items became the every day norm and I think I'm going to have a panic attack now.

Speaking of attack, I had my tunes cranked the other day and I forgot how easy it is to get lost in Massive Attack. How my fancy got hardcore tickled when I blindly chose the movie Go at the theatre one night.  Not only did the show give me a dead sexy Timothy Olyphant and Taye Diggs, it changed my mind about present day zombie girl Katie Holmes, all wrapped up in a tickity-boo soundtrack. That film is definitely on my top ten list. Which one, I'm not sure, but it's on one of my top ten lists most certainly. Probably the one that also has Very Bad Things. Yeah, I liked that movie and I'll admit it.

Oh and my official first date was to the movies. This is Spinal Tap. I remember being very confused because I wasn't sure if it was really a documentary or not (if you really think I thought it was real, tsk, tsk, I just play dumb online)(I have a bumper sticker on my back that says "my other job is neurosurgeon")

Hey, my daughter's current number one musical request these days is Yeah Yeah Yeahs Zero. She knows the words because she was singing along full blast today. Or at least I think she knows the words. I come from a long line of "excuse me while I kiss this guy" kind of folks and I'm kind of hoping she didn't inherit my talent to butcher lyrics or teeth for that matter.

Not that I butcher teeth, I just have bad ones and I hope my daughter hasn't inherited them. Did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons when Lisa needs braces and the dentist shows her the Big Book of British Smiles? Yeah, I'm stopping the free association theme right here before I scare everyone away.

Flexing the atrophed blog muscle is more painful than initially expected.  Next up: magnets for weirdness ~ anyone able to relate?