America the Beautiful.

I had a fine time in the States on my holidays.... I love going to the U.S., everything is familiar, but different, they speak the same language (kind of) , the money more or less makes sense and you can get anything there. It's sort of like going through the tv and visiting your favorite show, like Alice in Wonderland.

I especially love American grocery stores. Nobody does junk food like Americans, and even though I have no desire to have Cool Whip in 6 different flavors, I'm all giddy at the possibility that I can. They have an entire aisle of salty snacks and another whole aisle of sweet ones. (When one is on vacation, I cannot stress how delightful this cornicopia of nutrtionally dubious food is.) Plus, American grocery stores have a way better selection of Mexican food than the average Canadian store. (On the flip side, there was a dearth of curries, pampadams and biryanis south of the border.) My dad and I enjoyed all kinds of new, unattainable for us, ice cream flavors when I was away, and we were beyond thrilled at the selection.

I like Americans very much, too. Individually, they are pleasant and friendly people, even if they do baffle me en masse. (They seem to put an enormous priorty on liking their president. Here in Canada, we are pretty sure our politicians are not people we would ever want to hang around with.) I don't think I ever went to pay for something or deal with anyone where they didn't ask me where I was from or how I was enjoying my vacation or where did I get my shoes. It was very nice.

I remember once being in the States where they thought my accent was "just adorable". (Just for the record, I don't have an accent. Everyone else does.) They thought I sounded "like the Queen", because I said "solid" instead of "salid", and "box" instead of "bax", and "sorry" instead of "saw-ry". I had no objection to being called "adorable", and took it as further proof that Americans are fun.

Also, when I was in Florida, everyone in the complex thought I was way younger than I was, which was partially because they were all so nice, but mostly because I was hanging around 70-year-olds. One woman thought I was in my 20s (I'm 47), so that's what cataracts will do to you.But she was very sweet to tell me so, and I'm happy to go anywhere that I can pass for a generation younger than my own.

There are many things I like very much about Canada; the health care, the Crispy Crunches and celcius, but I can really only get one flavour of Cool Whip here. I guess nowhere is perfect.

Down South

I'm back from Florida, the state Most Likely To Give You Melanoma. I had a fabulous time eating and swimming and going for walks and napping. I behaved as though I was 70 years old, and so fit in very nicely.

The States still uses Fahrenheit to measure temperature, where we've been using Celsius since the 70's, and I know no other way to figure out if I'll need a jacket or not. My father, who can flip back and forth between the two systems admirably, came in very handy when it came to translating, since he can figure it out in his head, and is comically unable to answer any question put to him. (If he actually knows the answer, so much the better, but not knowing hardly slows him down at all.) So we had many conversations that went like this: Me: "The weather channel says it's going up to 82 today, what's that in metric?". Him: (loud muttering in Irish as he works it out in his head) "28 degrees Celsius." Me: "Great. It's going to be 63 tonight, what's that?" Him (more muttering under his breath) "17". Me: "Okay, now they say it's going to be 79 tomorrow, what's that?". Him "Warm. It's going to be warm, kind of warm, and very warm for the rest of the week."

There is seriously nothing like that blast of hot, humid, decidedly southern air that hits you once you step off that plane. It was fabulous. It's hard to pack here for what you are going to need there....one of the other weird little rules of life is that it's hard to imagine being any other temperature than the one you are at the moment. That meant that I spent most of the night before I left saying to myself "no, you should pack another t-shirt, not a sweater!", and then packing another sweater before taking it out again. It took me ages to pack, and then I spent most of the time in one pair of shorts and one t-shirt, because nothing gets dirty in Florida. (There was a garage sale at the condo complex my first morning there, so I bought another pair of shorts there for 2 bucks. Which I did NOT declare when I came back over the border.)

The first thing I did when I got to my parents place is get into the pool. Swimming in the middle of winter outside is possibly the most exotic thing a Canadian can do, and I swam at least once every day. I tried to stay out of the sun, though, because I have fish-belly white Irish skin, and my DNA is not designed to ever see daylight. I got it from my father, and the two of us looked like newly plucked chickens sitting around by that pool every day. I had on my 45 SPF sunscreen, which allowed me to sit in the sun for an entire 3 and a half minutes before getting burned, so I came home as white as I left.

When I came home last night, my family were all delighted to see me, and Toby has been following me around like a little orange shadow for the entire day today. Although Thing 2 did remark to me this morning that "it was kind of nice not having you around....we didn't have to put any of our stuff away the whole time."

It's nice to be home.

Amazing Race 14, Ep. 4

Hey everybody ! Its thing one reporting on Sunday nights amazing race ! Sorry i didnt write on monday, i completley forgot. And I have a tonn of homework ! anywaays. since my mom is in freakin florida. I will write :)

Siberia . My first thought. shit. thats cold. Which reminds me. When the stunt men didnt have enough money so they offered their coats to the cab driver. I yelled in my head NO! NO! I hate being cold. Yet i always am. My mom and i watched this "together" while she was in sunny warm florida and i was sitting here surrounded by a cold and wet atmosphere. I cant say it worked well. She was at least a minute ahead of me. so she'd text me "oh em gee" and i'd have no clue what had happened. Dont try it.

ANNNYWAYS. the detour. I was almost comletley torn between the 2. mom and I settled on the window thing. all though we dont know crap about building anything. It looked better than stacking wood ( but honestly. what dosent ? dont answer that) . We decided after seeing team after teams stacks fall, that we had made a wise, wise choice. Those stacks falling (especially mike and mel's) shattered my little heart. I felt so bad for them. Also i felt bad for the barbie doll couple that i liked. They gave up and had to do it anyways. just to be eliminated. HARSH. That couple i actually didnt mind. they werent bickering and crabby. They stole my heart at " I have to find my fanny !"

The roadblock , was all my mothers this round. I bet you she knew what Chekov is. (or whatever) When the asian brother and sister were like "WHO DOSENT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS ?!" I felt a little offended and stupid. But then i rememberd that it was realted to sports, and i probably didnt care. I felt so bad for the deaf kid doing that. wonder how long that took him.

Ou, - favourite line(s) of the week " we looked like a caravan of idiots" and " it was "4 smart guys and the rest of us " hahaha. :)

I'm going to have to say . It was a less than exciting episode. But better than nothing at all.
until next week !

- pce :)

Heading South

I'm off to sun and sand and warm and lazy for a week. My parents have rented a place in Florida for the month, and I'm heading down to see them for a few days. I haven't been away in the winter in about 18 years, since I went to Jamaica with some girl friends and laughed so hard for so long at a bar one night that people came over from the next bar to see what was so funny.

I'm getting picked up by the airport service at 5:15 tomorrow morning, so if I play my cards right, I should just about be waking up when we get into Detroit airport.

See you all in a week!

Statements That Are Always Lies

There are some statements that we are so used to hearing that we don’t hear them anymore. When I hear the following, I turn it around in my head to hear what the person is really saying:

Don't worry, I'm not really crazy." This is usually said by someone who’s actions and demeanour are so the opposite as to render this sentence moot.

"I'm not trying to be difficult." Then maybe you should stop being difficult.

"I'm not a racist." This is usually said after a statement so outrageously racist that the person feels required to backpedal.

"I'm not trying to hurt your feelings." Just because your intention was not to hurt me, you have done so anyway, and I’m pretty sure you knew that. "No offense, but..." falls into the same category.

"I swear I'm telling the truth." Shouldn’t that be obvious by your behaviour?

"I don't like to complain." But you are going to anyway, right?

“I am stepping down to spend more time with my family.” I love this one. Like, any man in a position of power wouldn’t just do whatever he damn well pleased anyway. “Screw this meeting, I’m going to the beach with my kids!” Usually said by a politician who’s stepping down immediately before some embarrassingly lurid information is made public. (Which, ironically, probably wouldn’t have happened if he had been spending some time with his family.)

“We're not lost!” Then why have we been in this car for three days and all the signs are in Russian?

"The dog ate my homework" They maybe you shouldn’t slather your homework in gravy.

“I run a classy establishment" If you have to say it, you don’t. “Classy” is a funny word; once it’s used it negates itself entirely.

“It's not about the money." Oh, man, its ALL about the money.

“ Your call is important to us". The other day I spent 35 minutes on the phone waiting to talk to an actual human being at Rogers Wireless, and they must have told me this about 50 times. I wanted to set them on fire after that. Really, “your call is important to us” means “you are stuck here because we are entirely uninterested in you and couldn’t possibly care less about providing any service whatsovever to you. We understand that you have no alternative but to put your life on hold and swing slowly in the wind while we get our butts in gear and get around to dealing with you. But “your call is important to us” As if.”

Cravings

I am occasionally possessed by dire yearnings for various foodstuffs, that seem to have no rhyme or reason whatsoever. They come out of nowhere, hijack my life for a few days or weeks, and then sink into obscurity with nary a scar to remind one of it’s existence. Sort of like “American Idol”.

Currently, I am mad about pistachios. I innocently picked up a bag of roasted, salted pistachios at the grocery store a few days ago, to supplement Thing 1’s lunch. (Hallellujah, they allow nuts in high school.) Without thought to the frenzy I was launching, I had a couple, and that has been it for the past week. I can’t get enough of those stupid nuts, and not only are they having a detrimental effect on my waistline, I’m going to have to consider another mortgage if this keeps up much longer. Plus, my kidneys are going to go on strike because of all the salt.

My friend Sue The Librarian said that when she was pregnant, she had a wicked pistachio craving, and put herself through the exquisite torture of shelling them all and then eating them one by one. She said she would be all delirious with want by the time she had shelled any significant amount, and could barely see straight by the time she actually consumed them.

When I was pregnant with Thing 1, the Mister put me on a “Fruit Budget”, because I was eating fresh fruit like a mad woman, and thought nothing of scarfing a couple of mangos in the middle of winter at 4 bucks a pop, or sitting down to twelve dollars worth of grapes.

And let me assure you, cravings are not at all limited to pregnant or otherwise hormonally challenged women, far from it. I know plenty of men who find themselves slaves to their appetites, too. The Mister occasionally gets a calling for chips and dill pickle dip that cannot be ignored, and I once had a male friend who admitted to eating hot chocolate powder straight from the can in a particularly desperate search for chocolate.

I give up chocolate for Lent every year, and oddly enough, that isn’t that difficult and doesn’t seem to increase my desire for chocolate one bit. Maybe because I expect the chocolate famine every year, or maybe because there is a specific date when it will end, but I happily nix chocolate for the 40 days without a problem. I do, however, demolish a Lindt bunny in a rather unseemly fashion on Easter Sunday, but I can wait until then.

My cravings aren’t limited to merely snack food, either. Not too long ago, I was watching Top Chef, and one of the contestants made a pan-fried chicken cutlet with a lemony arugula salad on top, and I was beside myself with longing for that dish. Guess what we had for dinner the next night, and it was fabulous. I should never watch cooking shows or read cookbooks, I’m far too easily tempted.

In fact, I’m going to make dinner right now….pistachio crusted chicken with arugula salad. Lucky for my family, I’ve never craved turnips.

Amazing Race 14, Ep. 3

Brad and Victoria seemed very nice, and I'm always happy to see the fit, oldsters do well in this thing, but these two were Philiminated because of their bone-headed decision making, not because they couldn't handle the physical end of the Race.
Apart from the fact that going from Munich to Amsterdam to get to Bucharest is sort of like going from Toronto to Atlanta to get to Montreal, if I were on that race I'd pick a direct flight over a connecting flight no matter what....I can't seem to ever get a connecting flight ever anywhere that I don't end up sleeping in an airport on top of my luggage.
I'm kind of surprised that they had to finish the race when they were so clearly behind everyone else. Usually when that happens Phil finds you and puts you out of your misery. Maybe the producers just liked the idea of Brad and Victoria covering themselves in blood.

The gymnastics task had Thing 1 and I arguing over who would get to do it....we both think we have an "inner Nadia" busting to get out. Those balance beams are narrow, I'm surprised they didn't have more people toppling off that. But they did have trouble on the parallel bars, because those things?? are a bitch. Neither Thing 1 or I have any upper body strength whatsoever, so we'd have been decidedly ungainly on that. We were very puzzled as to why Tammy couldn't do a cartwheel or a sommersault, we thought everyone could do that. Maybe she didn't get outside much as a kid, because her older brother told her not to. Could you see either of the two Frat Boys from last season doing that task? We were in fits just thinking about it.

Speaking of Victor, he seems like a tool, although one of the nicest tools I've ever seen. And a bit of a drama queen, too. "I don't care if I die"? What's with that? I think Victor is more in line for a heart attack than Mel.

Those gypsy families sure had some weird-ass belongings. Does every gypsy family come equipped with a burnt-out car chassis and some plastic goat harnesses? I wonder if the producers have come up with a new strategy for keeping the locals happy and laughing throughout the filming: beer. Last week we had drunken Germans, this week it was drunken Romanians and the first week there were some very easily amused Swiss guys the first week.

Kris, learn from Dallas, and never, ever take off the fanny pack. It's called a "fanny pack" because is stays on your fanny. Get it?

I'm pleasantly surprised that, in this point in the race, I like every team. A first, I think.

Until next week!