In which I play plagued to save Christmas.

Today I join the ranks of cut-throat deal shoppers. The annual Warehouse toy sale is today. This means ridiculously cheap brand name toys and 23847293487293423428792873 shrewd and heartless Moms & Grammies.

Normally, I hate shopping (and don't get me wrong, I still hate shopping), however..... for the past few years, I've managed to get allllll the Christmas gifts for the kids for under $300. Thus, I have to do it. Biting this bullet ensures that I will not have to step foot in even one mall in December and THAT is a beautiful thing. This toy sale is brutes, though. SOMANYPEOPLE. You have to have a contingency plan, I've found. The year before last, waiting in the 3 hour line was like playing survivor. You have to choose the correct line & form alliances with other people so that you can go to the bathroom sometimes and be willing to step over people who have died, or you will never get out. The more friends you make in line, the faster you get to the cashier. You divide and conquer. I have a new strategy. I am ready.

I've put on my protective gear, practiced my contagious sounding cough and painted red around my eyes.. because nothing makes people back the #$%& off like a really contagious looking sale-crazed woman. "Um.. maybe we should come back later.." they'll say as I am writhing & drooling alkaseltzer bubbles from my mouth in front of the 2010 Holiday Barbies. What this conveys is, "Back off people, I'm going to be first in line here. If you want one of these Barbies, you'll have to go to your car and get your hand sanitizer first", leaving me a large enough window of time to get in, get my shiz and get. out. Or maybe they'll call the police. Who knows? You have to take risks if you want your holiday season to be truly wonderful. I need to find some way to spurt fake blood around.

K, gotta go do my warm ups.

____________________

UPDATE:

20 seconds in the life of Michelle.

Ben and I went for a spin down the hill.

The take off... this is gonna be awesome!

WheeEeeEEE!

Oh, didn't see that giant ice lump there...

Here is a nice close up of the moment. If the Titanic was tobogganing with it's kid, it would be me.

Brought to you by: Robaxacet Max.

In which we are carjacked by elk, boar, deer, wolves and goats.

Let's go on a nature hike/drive, shall we? It's a Canadian Safari park! Hurruh!

This is the rare and beautiful slack jawed zombie deer.

This is a Tibetan Crowbar Goat, used in ancient times for jacking up cars so that the tires could be more easily stolen, prized for their mobility.

Showoff + wolf= showolf.

Some people were sitting really nicely, quietly doing up their lipstick while we were distracted by the pretty beasties.

Hurry Libby! Do up the window! We'll catch his lips and Eleanore can do his lipstick too!

Little Miss Bison here got a little too friendly with my Neily... I got out and punched her in the kneecaps. You leave my man alone. I saw this same Hussy buying all of the M&Ms and tube tops in Walmart last week.

Another one?? I TOLD Neil not to wear musk today. It sets a poor example for the children.

Gangster roadblock. It was ascary.

AwWWwwWWwww. Nature is just beautiful.

"You give me that camera and any cash or apples you got or I will shove these 5 point antlers right down your throat"

Dammit, Neil.

The Walmartian Abduction Risk (and pet alligators)

I basically live in crippling fear of being featured on the People of Walmart blog. I loathe Walmart as it is, but sometimes I have no choice. Like if twilight posters or glue on googly eyes are on sale or something, and I'm making googly eyed twilight crafts that day- I have to go. I'm chained by price rollbacks like a pet alligator on a leash. "Sure I'm here. I'm going to bite your knees off in a minute th....OOoOoh! Are those Mr Clean Magic Erasers really only 99 cents??? Oh, I'd better get loads!". Then live in self loathing for the rest of the day, with the magic erasers spread around me like ill begotten blood money. "WHAT HAVE I DOOOOOOOONE???? I said I'd never do this again! I'm sorry family and loved ones. I am sorry", as I scrub and scrub and scrub away the dirty feeling.

But what if one day, I realize that I have to go there at like 11 pm and I'm already in my purple velvet mini skirt and "Git r Done, America" sleeveless denim print work shirt tied at the midriff and the only shoes I can find are my white, thigh high, vinyl, six inch, high heeled boots with extra zippers and my pink feathered shabby cowgirl hat that I bought out of a trans-am on the side of the highway one day when I was driving to the country fever beaver festival with my internet cousin, Starla_Dawn58 and what if our beat up old truck broke down with nary another traveller in sight? Then what if we spotted the man with the black t-top trans am selling his wares, thinning & worn out sandy mullet blowing in the wind, wrangler jeans, the crater in his shirtless pigeon chest collecting morning dew as he lay on the hood of his spectacular hot rod?.... Then the punishing decision... should I buy the rose/kitten print, beadazzled, artfully shredded and beaded t shirt.. or feathered cowboy sunhat...? Or should I just cut the legs off of my white nylons and wear the gusset on my head? What if that happened?



And then what if I have to hurry because Walmart is closing and I'm never going to make it on time so I just throw on a Lucky Charms Members only jacket and head on over. And then what if someone takes a photo of me and decides that it should go on the Walmartian website? I will be soooo mortified, you guys. I wouldn't even have time to mace them.


But for real. What if I pass out from Sprawlmart/McDonalds fumes one day and fall into one of their clothes racks, get tangled up, come to and stand up only to realize that a pimp did my make up while I was passed out and I'm all surrounded by fizzy mouthed Walmart paparazzi and BINGODAMMIT- a picture of me tangled up in tube tops and green checkered jeans ends up the internetz.

I hope that doesn't ever happen.

Not even duct tape could save the Titanic.

This is the root of it all, Nerdsquad. The very pedigree that begins the evolution of the sophisticated and steadfast rules of an officially recognized gaming event. The crude parent of Olympians. The Eden of Sports.

It's the kind of crux in history that gives way to the multinational events we all attend now. A primitive moment in time when people get together (I'm thinking men), likely get drunk and try to decide what to do with the leftover apple baskets, the frozen solid horse poop, the pig's bladder or unreasonably gigantic pumpkins they've grown. "Let's display them!" "Let's Decorate them!" "Let's travel in them!" "YES! LET'S TRAVEL IN THEM!" "LET'S RACE THEM!!!!!!" And the room goes silent while the brilliant plan is absorbed.

And so it begins. The careful planning and carving, measuring & reinforcing with duct tape, the perfect home-grown boat. A thing which requires the most delicate of balance and grace to outmaneuver the rival Pro-Squash Sailor, Popular TV personality or Member of Parliament. Kayaks be damned! The crowd waiting in baited anticipation, wondering whether the stinking, fetid pumpkin which was left to rot for 2 weeks before entering the water would indeed hold the two men struggling for victory and buoyancy until the very end, the trepidation and then relief when the Black Pearl of pumpkin boat racing truly makes it halfway before the men inside flip it and land, sinking into the shallow bog like a Titanic gourd meeting its watery fate.

Here lies the very beginnings of pro sport, and why I think modern organized pro sports are stupid and boring. For one thing, in monstrous pumpkin boat racing- I've learned that cheating is definitely allowed. I've also learned that there are no gender or age boundaries. It is perfectly acceptable to stuff two grown men in a pumpkin boat and race them against a lone, white haired lady whose boat has filled to the brim with swamp water before the race even begins. She can be stuck on the edge of the bog, where she's left with no help- just an ineffective plastic kayak paddle, sloshing around in circles and muttering to herself while the triumphant winners make several passes through the finish line to get the perfect victory photograph. None of that hardly ever happens in football.

This is my kind of competitive games. Give me rudimentary, disorganized sports any day.

PS. I got to meet Rick Mercer, Canadian Hero . Yay!

Nice picture, eh? SAY IT'S NICE.

Seeing Beer Dogs for the Criminally Insane.

You know what gives me a red rump? There is no bud light lime in any of the stores in Ottawa anywhere. Everyone is sold out. Which one of you is buying it all??? Huh? Get some help, eh? Stop using up all my beers. Sure- I only looked in one store and then just went home, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume by the condescending smirk the beer store clerk gave me when I asked if they had any while pointing at their giant poster of it, that nobody has any. Nobody. Well maybe the french do, but Gatineau is alllLLLllllll the way over there. Also, I am not pleased that the Canadian beer geniuses haven't come up with a Canadian version of lime infused beer, or if they have, they've forgotten to send me a registered notice about it in the mail. It had better not be Kokanee, either. Ew. Not that I would normally touch a regular budweiser with a million bazillion foot pole. The lime kind is A-OK. The only thing more depressing than this whole scenario is reading Post Secrets.

All this after spending the afternoon at the Canadian seeing eye dog farm. I'm not joking. We went for a tour because hey, free donuts and water! Also educational stuff for the kiddies. But it was blistering hot out and all I could focus on was all the bud lite lime I was going to purchase on my way home. The dogs were pretty nice, though. I thought about putting one in my vehicle, because hey... it's not like anyone would see anyway, right? Plus they said that the dogs are totally free, and I think only giving them to the blind is discrimination against the visually unimpaired. Oh man. That was kind of a tactless joke, eh? I'm a jerk. Sorry visually impaired people. If it makes you feel better, I owe money on my taxes. Also, FYI, I put money in the plastic dog and everything, don't write me hate letters, k?. The universe has rebalanced itelf. No bad Karmel for me.

What I should have done, though, if I'd have only known about this whole no lime beer shenanigan, was stop at every beer store on the way home until I found my lime beer. I need a lime beer finding dog. A seeing lime beer dog if you will. I would name him Beery the Beerdog, or Fender.... or Mister Sprinklybeer or Limey Beerstard.

The End.

PS.. check this out. Radioactive, Conjoined, Mutant Strawberry!:

Awesome.

That's how they git you. They're under the $#%&@& ground!

So tonight I'm going on a real live date! I've had this post stewing around in my head all afternoon, by the way. Even when I was laying half consciously on the couch, reclaiming the sleep I'd lost by my ridiculous adventure into boot camp at 6 am. Even as Neil and I sat at the restaurant, gnawing on deep fried dill pickles (which I've decided are my newest and most potent vice after triple espressos), I stewed. It rolled and sloshed around in my brain like a half filled barrel of fish aboard an express train to hell, and you can imagine what THAT must be like. I even felt a little sea sick.

So. I wonder what we should do on our date... at first we had considered going and renting a fancy hotel room, but you know what? You can totally nap at mattress world for free, except for that time that I fell asleep there chewing gum- First they wanted me to BUY the mattress, but as if. I told them that there was gum stuck to it and there is no way I'm buying a gummy mattress, so I loaded up my take-out boxes and my sleeping bag and vowed never to return.

No no, naps are an awesome date idea and all, but I'm thinking of something much jazzier. We've already taken Neil's phone to the repair shop to have the glass replaced from an unknown and mysterious incident which caused the glass to crack and has nothing to do with me borrowing it and going out for martinis the other night. It's something else altogether and frankly I'm a little offended at the implicating feeling I'm getting from all of you who are glaring unapprovingly at your monitors right now. I can tell, you know and I'll thank you kindly to knock it off. So basically we can cross that activity off the date night list of fun rendezvous ideas.

I'm a little disappointed that the date isn't tomorrow night as the Mayfair is featuring the movie, Tremors. I haven't seen Tremors in a theatre. I only saw Tremors when I was 11ish years old on late night satellite when I'd snuck up to watch TV one night. I was not allowed to watch Tremors for a very valid reason. That reason is that I may or may not have had the inability to tell horror monsters from reality and I might have believed that there was a very real possiblity that the show was actually a documentary about living beings (because what if it WAS?). Once I saw the monsters in the movies, they probably existed which would lead to my mother being annoyed to death with my paranoia. In fact, after watching it, I distinctly remember playing at my friend, Donna's house, and trying desperately to jump on her trampoline without alerting the underground space worms as to my location so that they wouldn't explode from the earth and slurp me down their terrible, muddy throats, moreover, I had to still appear to be cool and fun to hang around. It was a fine balance to walk.

I also refused to go into the basement and avoided it at all costs just in case a tremor worm burst through the concrete and sucked me into the ground adjacent to me. I felt pretty safe in the winter, thanks to frozen ground- but I developed a genuine fear of making the ground vibrate in any way. So I was a very light stepper. Being pregnant helped that whole stepping lightly precaution. In fact, when I was pregnant, I remember stomping around, hoping that the ground WOULD open up and swallow me. Even if it was just for a few hours of nap time.

Well. I want to let you know that I've gotten over it (pretty much) and in celebration, it would be prudent to watch Tremors at the Mayfair Theatre/renew my very real fear of giant underground predatory worms for my date if a nap is going to be totally out of the question.

This is still bugging me.

So the other day we went to the beach. It was a very nice day. Very nice weather. The same day that I ran up the hill, actually. Anyhow, we'd decided to all stumble around in the sand. The kids were finding shells and dismembered crab claws and garbage etc to stick in their pockets for me to find later and throw up.

Not too far from us, was a nice little family building a sand castle. Oh how delightful it was- until we wandered closer to them and found that the Father was like, the angry, jaded foreman of sandcastle building and his 3ish and 5ish year old crew members were just not making the cut. I'd say borderline ass on the line, almost fired if they didn't watch it.

Never in my life have I seen someone more frustrated at sandcastles being built unevenly by preschoolers:

"No no no, it's NOT STRAIGHT. We have to remake it", and he mashes down the new tower.

"No, it's not symmetrically lining up" Mash Mash

"That will never work!, COME ON! Line it up!"

"I SAID don't put the tower there!"

Among other confidence building statements.

Like, take a step back and a big breath of fresh air, guy. Mebbe count to 12 or something or picture baby chickens and rainbow unicorns for a minute or two. Was he worried that clients were watching? Was he worried that the Mike Holmes of sandcastle critique would pop out of a bush and criticize their shoddy workmanship and he'd never work in this town again? "Gee whiz there Buddy, if that's any indication of how you would build a real castle, you and your crew here are just not going to be able to work for our massive, global sand-home building enterprise. Better luck next time. It's a shame because you stood to make gajillions of dollars. We're also going to be filming a shameful exposé about the substandard work we see here today".


I dunno, Maybe that WAS the case. There were quite a few strangers there after all. Mike Holmes is pretty much everywhere. Him and Christopher Lloyd. Anyhow, the point is that I've finished publicly judging him and it was very cathartic for me.

Carry on.

The Hills have I.

Today I ran up a big fat, steep grassy hill. I haven't done that since I was a kid. I was pretty exhilarated that I was so nimble vaguely capable. So once at the top, I enjoyed the view of Moonie's Bay while trying to will away my butt cramp and decided to run back down juuuust like my kids. Bad idea, Self. I forgot about that suspended moment in time that occurs when running down a steep hill. It's that mental purgatory made up of sheer panic when you realize that your legs are running faster under your body than time allows and they begin to take on a mind of their own, picking up speed faster and faster until you are a teeth chattering, jiggling, wailing mass just praying for God to make your feet heavier and screaming at small children to hit the deck because Heaven knows- there is NOTHING you can do about it.

"Wowee Mom. You can run REALLY fast! Was what you said a swear??"

"No, I said 'Rolling Ducks', didn't you see them? They were all kinds of tricky. Geez. You should pay more attention to nature, ungrateful kids." (there is a lesson in everything)

Well I was afraid that if I actually tried to stop, I might have launched myself into the picnic of the large, non-english speaking family who were happily chattering away over lunch at the bottom of the hill, or into an unsuspecting cyclist. Try explaining THAT while attempting to look like you meant it so that you might keep some small semblance of your dignity.

Yeah, who am I kidding? My dignity left the moment I made the critical decision to hurl myself off of a large, public hill.

A BeAutiFUl day at the park.

It's been a while since I've gotten some sun, so we went out in public.

The boy just after doing a flying lip-stand on the cement. What sort of sick & demented mother would take photos of her child's facial road rash while he's still crying, you ask? Me. Duh. Photographic moments have to be preserved in the pristine and fragile seconds that we have. If I'd have waited, I'd never have gotten a glorious bawling road rash picture. He would have already been up a tree, waving a giant stick at the teenagers who were thoughtfully smoking pot in the park and it would have been much, much, much too late. It's all about timing.


Incognito Mosquito


The children serenely watching a friendly ground hog as Ben prepares himself for a game of real life Whack-a-Mole.... Too bad we forgot our family mole-whacking mallet. That stick will do, though.


Get him Sull! HE IS RIGHT THERE! Easy pickins'. He doesn't even SEE you! Ha! Take that, Funtime Arcade. See who has a high score on Whack-a-mole NOW, eh?? They'd better give me that rubber Batman mask when I slap this sucker down on the prize counter.


I see you, Mr Squirrel.. slinking around my kid. You twisted little SOB. See how you feel when we're done playing Urban Park Whack-a-mole.


That's right, clever squirrel. You just watch your back. We'll release the deadly fishing-hat stick ninjas... We WILL DO IT.


Or perhaps we'll loose the heartless Squirrelshire Slasher on you. Eleanore feels no mercy toward the fluffy delicious squirrels. She is equipped with the ultimate secret weapon, too- squeakers in her shoes. They attract groundhogs and squirrels from MILES around... the little Squirrel Siren will suck you in with her irresistible, hypnotic 'squeaky-squeaky-squeaky' steps, Dastardly Squirrels- then seal your doom like the squeaking pied piper of cute rodentdom.

Mwahahahahahahahahahaha

Fancy Dinner at the Allium.

Fancy Dates

Fancy Appetizers.
(salmon tartare - cilantro, scallion, lime, truffle oil, crispy wontons, chipotle mayo,pea shoots -cured salmon 'french toast', citrus tomato relish, lemon maple, chives)

Fancy Rare Albacore Tuna
(Terragon & garlic marinade, sauteed oyster and shiitake mushrooms, foie gras and cilantro mousse, marinated grapes-which Eleanore scavenged, balsamic, pickled onions & truffle cream.)
I am going to have dreams about it tonight.

Fancy crème brulée. Eleanore swiped the cookie that came with it.

Neener. Neener.
Neeeeeeeeeeener.

Winterlude!