Flying Pigs in Blankets and Such

I just realized I signed up for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Writing a post every day but Sunday for the entire month? When I haven't written one post for so long I forget how?

So then I thought maybe my topic should be Being A Blogging Loser From A to Z. A could be Avoidance, because I've abandoned my blog for days at a time. At one point I only clicked on it because a friend told me a spammer was writing rude shite on it. You know, even ruder than my own personal shite.

I'll think about it. It's actually not a bad idea. I could probably even write something funny. And, you know, pigs could fly.

They could.

I saw someone throw a sausage roll across the room once. Does that count?

Vote for Laura!

My dear friend Laura Eno, author of more books than I have fingers and toes to count, has just found out one of her books, Immortal Desires, has been nominated for Best Romance – Paranormal Romance 2012, by The Romance Reviews.

Voting continues until March 31st. If you would like to cast a vote Laura's way, I know she would appreciate it. She has even promised to have her evil assistant Jezebel name a flavour of punch in your honour!

Now, I have to warn you, voting for Mizz Eno isn't as easy as clicking on a link and, shazam! You either have to sign up to be a member of The Romance Reviews or you can use your Facebook account. I signed up as a member. It wasn't hard – just come up with a username and password and play the "are you a human" game at the bottom. Sure, it takes a couple of minutes but helping Laura Eno is worth it. She is one of the kindest, hardest working, most talented writers I've "met" in my internet travels. She is always supportive of me, always, and I love her to pieces. I would vote for her a thousand times if I could.

Click here to vote for Laura's Immortal Desires. But remember to sign in or open an account first!

Congratulations, Miss Laura Eno, talented writer extraordinaire! You'll always be an immortal desire in my book!

Me, myself and my movie date

Ever been to a movie by yourself? Takes a lot of guts, doesn't it? I've only done it two or three times in my entire, long, painfully-long, life and most times it was hard to enjoy the movie because I was so worried about everybody thinking that I was such a loser that I couldn't get a date.

Well I went to the show by myself last night and you know what? I didn't feel like a loser at all.

I took myself out to dinner at McDonald's first. Wolfed down some McNuggets with the Sunday Star. It was really nice, spending some time reading the newspaper. Relaxing. When I was done, I drove over to the theatre, found a good parking spot, bought my ticket and some popcorn and found a primo spot to sit down. There was hardly anyone else in the building. In fact, I was the only person in the room until about five minutes before showtime. I relaxed in my seat, stared at the blank screen and daydreamed. It was ... nice.

In fact, it was so nice that I won't have any qualms about doing it again. I'm a good date, if I do say so myself. Good company, and a cheap date, too.

By the way, the movie I saw was Snitch, starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. I wasn't expecting much, believe me – that guy is not my favourite actor by any means. But you know what? It was really good. The story was engrossing... the trucker sequences were edge-of-the-seat exciting ... I got all emotional at the end ... and Johnson proved he had real acting chops. I was impressed, and after seeing almost all the Academy Award movies this year, I'm not easy to impress.

Loved Barry Pepper in this movie. He is terrific in everything, even in a funky ZZ Top beard. It didn't hurt that he drove a hot rod Chrysler throughout the flick and, I can't help it, I'm a Chrysler chick.

The Peeping Tom

Thursday afternoon. I'm home sick, hanging around in my underwear, talking to my real estate agent on the phone about real estate type business. I look out the front window and up pulls a white mini-van with an Asian couple brandishing cameras. They pop out of the vehicle and begin enthusiastically photographing the river.

This isn't entirely weird. The Muskoka River is beautiful and worth photographing on any day, no matter what the weather, but today is particularly beautiful. The sun is shining, the sky is brilliant cyan and the dark blue water is shimmering with winking diamond light.

Then I realize they're also photographing our house.

Feck, I think. This always happens when I'm in my underwear.

I go to our bedroom, which is in the back of the house, figuring I'm safe, and keep talking to our agent.

Movement catches my eye. I look up and into the face of the smiling round-faced man, who has waded through snowbanks around our house and is now staring at me through my bedroom window. He nods, then keeps walking.

"There's a man looking in my window!" I say to the agent.

"A what?" she says.

"Hang on," I say breathlessly. "I've gotta put some pants on." As I drop the phone I hear her say something like, "You were talking to me without any pants on?" but I don't have time for explanations. I dig through my drawers and pull on a pair of capris leggings, which nicely show off the fact I haven't shaved my legs since Dave went out west. They look like furry tree trunks.

When I pick up the phone, our agent is ordering me to do something. She is very businesslike, which is why we hired her.

"Go stick your head out the front door and tell those people if they want to look at your house they have to talk to me."

"Er," I mumble, thinking of my furry legs.

"Go!"

Our agent is 5 feet tall, probably at least 60 years old and weighs 90 pounds soaking wet but I admit it, she freaks me out.

I go to the front door and do as I'm told. The man says he tried to get the agent but there was no answer. I tell him I'm talking to her right now and hand him my phone.

Me and his wife look at each other and smile and make awkward conversation. She is slim and well-dressed and smart looking. I am sick and have no bra on and my trees, er legs, are furrier than the trim on her winter coat.

After a couple of moments talking about the beautiful weather and our beautiful trees (lucky for both of us she gestures to our towering spruce trees), I ask her where she's from.

"China," she says.

"That must have been quite a drive, getting here today," I say, straight-faced.

There's a swift beat of confusion on her face then she starts to laugh. "Barrie!" she says, referring to the city an hour down the road. "We live in Barrie!"

Anyway, our agent came out and showed them around the place while I took a drive into town, fully dressed with furred legs encased in denim, and bought me and the dog a doughnut.

Apparently the nice couple from China liked our house and were going to talk to the bank about financing. That, however, was Thursday and we haven't had an offer yet. We've had a showing every day this week but no offers. With that kind of traffic I'm hoping that an offer will be coming soon.

On a different note, I had to put word verification on the commenting process. I was getting all kinds of nasty, rude, shocking, sexually explicit spam so even though I hate word verification, I really didn't have a choice. I understand it drives a lot of people crazy – heck, it drives ME crazy – and I sincerely apologize. If you don't comment, I will truly understand.

Happy Sunday!

First week without the Dave

When no one's around you don't know you're crabby. Have you noticed this? You think you're doing just fine and then you run into a real live person and you tear their head off.

"I think I'm grumpy," I said to a co-worker, after I tore a colleague a new one.

"Just a bit," he said diplomatically. "Is it because they said your house is too small?" ('They' being the hordes of people who have been looking at our house but not buying.)

"YES. Those BASTARDS."

Our house IS small. It's a cabin, people, a CABIN. Right there on the listing it says it's, like 850 sq. ft. or something. On what planet is that considered large? OK, so maybe in Japan where everybody lives in kleenex boxes, but here it's small. So... knowing in advance that our house is going to be SMALL, why do people come look at it? Do they think it is going to be bigger in real-life than it is in the pictures? Are real estate showings like TV - where you gain 10 pounds? Only opposite?

There I am, scooping up the kitty truffles and the frozen dog poo and cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes and dusting everything including the bananas in the fruit bowl, and then the people show up and say our house is too SMALL. Well no shit, Sherlock. If it was bigger, it would cost more. If it was bigger, it wouldn't say COZY because cozy is a dead giveaway that the place is smaller than Granny's bread box. And yes, I mean bread box ... where ARE your minds tonight?

It's been exactly a week since Dave left. On one hand I am doing OK. On the other, I'm a complete mess. The house, though, the house is clean. Small, feck you very much, but clean.

Last night I was reading a blog post from my friend Lisa, the Square-Toothed Girl. I only dropped around because she grabbed me by the nose on Facebook and said, "HEY! STRANGER! I WROTE ABOUT YOU SO GET YOUR ARSE OVER TO MY BLOG AND LOOK!" Well, she didn't say that, not exactly, but close. That's pretty much the only blog visiting I've been doing is when someone leads me around by the twist in my knickers and says READ THIS. Either that or they miraculously appear first in my blog roll, because if they're not first, I'm too lazy/exhausted/depressed/anxious to scroll down any further. Anyway, I read what Lisa said and I started BAWLING. Like, you know when people write LOL? I was BOL. Ugly, blubbery blubbering. It was a good thing there was no one here to witness the debacle, except for the cats and the dog, of course. Fat lot they care. Long as their bowls are full, they don't give a crap. Well, that's not exactly true. They crap a lot. Big turd squeezers, is what they are. Like icing bags, only it's not icing being piped out their hind ends.

Note to self: stop writing about poop so much.

I miss you, Dave, and it's so much worse not knowing when we'll reconnect. It's all in the hands of the mysterious somebody who will love our house, smallness and all, and the suspense is killing me.

Comments, turds and Windex

Oh crap. I just accidentally erased about a bazillion comments. I AM SO SORRY. I was actually trying to delete the 12,789 spam comments built up and somehow wound up deleting REAL comments.

I suck.

Anyway, don't think I hate you or anything weird. I'm just a luddite.

Isn't that a weird word, by the way? It sounds like LEAD, which is heavy, and LITE, which is, well, light. Right? Weird ...

So what's new with you? Did you release that book? Did you have that baby? Did you bail out your mother from jail? Did she look good in orange?

Me? Not much. Well that's a big fat lie. I've been cleaning the house like a mad woman, making it ready to sell. I've been buying flowers and everything. The other night I pricked my finger on a thorn. Doesn't that make me Sleeping Beauty? How come I can't sleep then? My finger hurts like a bugger, though.

The other day I was picking up frozen dog turds on the front lawn. I was using a cheap plastic shovel and the turds weren't cooperating. Especially this one turd. I almost had it on the shovel four times before I gave up and picked it up with my bare hands and threw it in the turd bag. It was a revelation, picking up that little turd. I'd never before in my life, in 52 years, ever picked up a turd with my bare hands. It wasn't so bad, either. Cold and lifeless at first, but seconds later the heat from my fingers already started to form a slick slipperiness. I'm thinking it wouldn't take much to thaw a frozen turd. Just warm it up in the palm of your hand and, bob's your uncle, it's ready to go.

By the way, I felt so, um, soiled after that. It was just like those clichéd rape scenes in the movies, where the woman goes in the shower and washes her skin off, or Lady MacBeth reaching for the Out Damned Spot Remover. That was me, washing my hands all day. I still look at my fingers suspiciously, sniffing them for any little turd residue. I fear I will never feel clean again.

What am I talking about... of course they're clean! I've been nuzzling up to the Windex bottle all freaking week. Four house showings in one week! That's pretty good, right? Now if only someone will buy the house, I'll get to go out west and be with my Dave. He arrived in Cold Lake tonight (Friday). He left Tuesday morning and drove 10 hours a day every day. He's settled into his room, he's got his tools in his new workplace and he's tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired but happy to finally be here. This is one big country we live in.

Speaking of Windex, don't you love the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Remember? He thinks Windex is a cure for everything.

Toula Portokalos: [narrating] My dad believed in two things: That Greeks should educate non Greeks about being Greek and every ailment from psoriasis to poison ivy can be cured with Windex. 

Toula Portokalos: I woke up with this huge zit this morning. 
Ian Miller: Where? 
Toula Portokalos: [points to spot on face] There. 
Ian Miller: I had a huge zit this morning! 
Toula Portokalos: Really? Where? 
Ian Miller: [points to his face] Well, it was there, but it's gone now. 
Toula Portokalos: Why? 
Ian Miller: I put some Windex on it. 

Anyone want to buy a house?

The listing for our house: http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?propertyId=12890973&PidKey=1286723160

Hey, if you can't advertise on your own blog, where CAN you advertise?

Thanks for all your comments the other day. I'm still so weirded out about everything and my heart is still pounding. If I don't die between now and tomorrow morning, I'm sure it will be a tearful good-bye when Dave leaves for out west.

I am so not looking forward to that.

But the sooner we sell the house, the sooner I get to see him again.

So anyone want to buy the coolest cabin in Muskoka?