Things Other Women Do That I Don't Understand

Sometimes I feel very sorry for the Mister; he's surrounded by estrogen. He lives with females, his staff is all female and the majority of his clientele is female. Maybe that's why he wanted to get Toby: one sure-fire dose of testosterone to his day. You'd think the Mister would be a freaking expert on women by now, but sadly, he is quite the opposite. He's learned to never, ever leave the toilet seat up, and he would never ask a woman if she was pregnant unless he was actually seeing a baby come out of her, but other than that, he's as bewildered about our behaviour as he ever was. And not that I blame him, I'm a woman and I find our species to be more than a bit puzzling myself...

• Being afraid of insects. Things flying around my head are annoying, but don't make me shriek and yell and dance around like a lunatic. I'm not sure why they would; they are much smaller than me, and unless a mosquito is carrying Dengue fever or malaria (an unlikely scenario in Southwestern Ontario), unlikely to inflict any serious harm. Why woman react the same way to a caterpillar as an axe-murderer is beyond me.
• Shopping for recreation. I shop to get things. Things I need. I don't shop if I don't need anything. Acquiring more things is not fun for me, let alone relaxing. If I want to relax, I will read a book, not get more shoes I can't afford.
• Men as meal tickets. I like the men in my life, and would hang out with any one of them simply for the pleasure of their company. If they buy me dinner, that's fine; sometimes I would buy them dinner, too. But spending time with someone you don't particularly like or respect because they buy you things doesn't seem like very much fun to me. It seems like prostitution.
• Feigned helplessness Okay, this is the one that puzzles me the most. Why would you pretend to not know how to do something useful, like fill the car with gas or cook a hamburger or change a printer cartridge? Or worse, why wouldn't you ever learn to do any of those things? Why would you want to wait around for someone to come home to do those things for you? What possible payoff is there? I suppose sure, you get someone else to do them, but....you'd have to get someone else to do that for you. Beats me.
• Expensive Handbags The way I see it, a $25 handbag performs exactly the same function as a $2500 handbag. It carries my stuff. It does not do it a thousand times better. What's the point?
• Ask your boyfriend or husband his opinon on your clothes, hair or general appearance. This happens all the time in the salon; a woman is just finishing getting her hair done, her boyfriend/husband comes in to collect her, she asks what he thinks, he says "looks okay, I guess", and she either A) gets pissed off because he didn't respond with the appropriate enthusiasm, or B) panics because she thinks he doesn't like it. News flash: he doesn't notice that it looks any different whatsoever. If you had shaved half of it off and lit the other half on fire, he's say "looks okay, I guess". That's because he doesn't care. If you are happy he's happy, but honestly, he really doesn't care. Don't bother asking any more, you will NEVER like the answer.
  

May 2-4

Yesterday was Victoria Day, which is the first long weekend of the summer around here. It is usually marked by distinctly unsummer weather, but this year was a pleasant exception in that the rain did not come down horizontally and the temperatures stayed up in the double digits for most of the weekend, and it was sunny, sunny, sunny.

We put out all the breezeway furniture and got some plants in the ground and I washed some windows and cleaned up around the yard. It was nice to get moving and feel like summer is almost here.

After dinner, all four of us went to the driving range. Surprisingly, we all love going to the driving range. I say surprisingly, because only one of us actually knows how to golf. Who knew the driving range would be the one family activity that ends with everyone smiling and still talking to each other?

The Mister, of course, is very good at the driving range. The Mister is pretty good at most sports, possessing a modicum of physical co-ordination that eludes me entirely. He regularly astonishes me by catching things tossed to him, descending stairs in an orderly fashion and landing upright on both his feet at the bottom of them, things I cannot do at all.

Thing 2 is very good at the driving range, too. Both her grandfathers are avid golfers and she seems to have inherited all the athletic DNA from both sides of her family. The first time she picked up a golf club she asked what she was supposed to do and she just….did it. And when she hits the ball, which she does every time, it goes. Far. In a straight line. I am in awe.

Thing 1 and I are cut from the same cloth, meaning that what we lack in talent we make up for in enthusiasm. We hit the ball more often than not, but where the ball will go is anybody’s guess. At one point last night, I saw a ball dribble past me at the speed of grass growing, and looked behind me to see Thing 1 doubled over with laughter at her efforts….I said I didn’t even know how you make a ball go that slowly, let alone at a 90°angle to where you meant it to go. I managed to hit the ball more often than not (Yay! A new personal best!), and have decided that an entire game of golf might be beyond me just yet. (Can you imagine? It would take me days to complete a round.) She also managed to go through six tees in a half an hour, which, if you don’t know? Is a lot of tees. I was beginning the think she wasn’t hitting golf balls at all, she was just swinging away at the tees.

Thing 1 and I giggled and laughed our way through our bucket of balls, and Thing 2 and the Mister actually hit their bucket of balls, and everyone got what they wanted out of it. Bring on the summer.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

At the dinner table this evening, Thing 1 and Thing 2 were pondering the wonder that is peanut butter. (I know, but it's what passes for conversation in our house.)

Thing 1 said she didn't know what she'd do without peanut butter; it has practically been her only source of protein since the day she started solids. (I've read recently that you shouldn't start babies on peanut butter until they are 3 or so, to avoid possibly triggering a peanut allergy. I can tell you straight up that Thing 1 would never have made it to the age of 3 if she hadn't eaten peanut butter. It was, quite literally, one of the four things she would eat at all between the ages of 18 months and 3 years, the others being: crackers, toast and french fries. I nearly went insane.)

Thing 2 said that she wouldn't mind being allergic to peanuts, since she didn't like peanut butter. (Because, you know, that is the ONLY thing that contains peanuts in the entire world.) She said that peanut butter was "too dry" for her.
Thing 1 noted that her sister often complained that things were "too dry" for her, "for example, peanut butter, chocolate.....my humor...."

Well, it made me laugh.

In A Nutshell

Our receptionist at work, Barb, was shopping at Winner's last night when she noticed a couple of kids who caught her attention.
Clearly brothers, the youngest, about 7, was marching up the aisle with a boxed toy in his steely grip and a look of determination on his face. His older brother, about 12 years old, was skedaddelling up behind him, saying "she's not going to buy that for you, you know, mom's not going to get that, you should put that back, she's not going to get it" in a snotty, older brother kind of tone.
Wherein the younger brother stopped, turned around most purposefully and firmly said to his brother: "Why don't you just f*** off". And then continued on his merry way.

And that is probably their entire relationship, for the rest of their lives, right there.

We Won't Be Invited To the PETA Convention This Year

The salon is in an old building in an older part of town. Old buildings have mice; it's just the way it is, I know that. But when I was doing one of the staff's hair this afternoon, even I was somewhat startled when we saw a mouse run across the doorway and behind the water bottle we use as a doorstop. (When the mouse was behind the water bottle, it was magnified to about 40x it's size. It was most disconcerting, let me tell you.)

Now, I've seen plenty of mice before, and they don't scare me or freak me out. (Not like maggots or earwigs. Now those I freaking hate.) We haven't had mice in this house since Toby came along, and I'm happy to not have to deal with them.

The two other occupants of the colour room had other ideas, however, as they proceeded to shriek and scream and jump up on chairs. Not me, though, I gave them both a withering stare and chided them for their hysterics and went to go capture the mouse. When it came running right at me!! No one was more surprised than me to hear the spine-tingling screech that I conjured up....it was blood curdling.

Anyway, Barb, the Fiercest Receptionist In All the Land, who is a champion of animals everywhere, and myself, who managed to compose herself after her unseemly display, chased that thing all over the salon in an attempt to catch it and take it outside. We were quite a sight, jumping around and down on all fours and giving the occasional yelp of surprise when it charged at one of us. Thank God there were no clients at the time. (Summer said "imagine if someone came in right now", just as Barb and myself were crammed into the closet with just our bums poking out.)

Finally, after about 10 minutes of this, Barb cornered it and I managed to slip an empty tupperware container over it, and she was able to carefully bring it outside, where she let it go beside the gate leading to our back alley. ("All the easier to find it's way back to our basement", I said.) She tried to coax it into the alley, but the dumb thing ran straight out into traffic and got run over by a truck.
Seriously. It was tragic.

So next time we see a mouse in the salon, we plan to catch it, train it to do shampoos, and never let it go outside.

In Praise of Rhubarb

I'm very happy these days because spring has really and truly arrived. Spring, in case you didn't know, is a very tempermental and moody season here in southwestern Ontario....we tend to get a half-hearted winter for a few weeks, and then, boom, it's summer. Not much of a spring at all, usually.
One of the reasons I adore the spring is rhubarb. And it is, indeed, rhubarb season here.
My family do not appreciate the delights of rhubarb at all, witnessed by the fact that Thing 1 plugs her nose and staggers around the kitchen, crazed with repulsion by the very smell whenever I cook it. Thing 2 and the Mister just look at me with a sort of bewildered distaste whenever I eat it. They just don't get it. ("But it's a vegetable! We grow it in the vegetable garden! How can you eat it with whipped cream?!?")

Rhubarb has a reputation of being "grandma" food, like canned fruit cocktail, or turnip. Or aspic. The words "stewed rhubarb" have nothing hip or funky or elegant about them. "Stewed rhubarb" is the orthopedic shoe of the culinary world. Which is a pity, because it's awesome. (For stewed rhubarb, you cut up the rhubarb, put it in a pot, dump a whack of sugar on top and let it cook down over medium heat until it is all unrecognizable. Done.)

I suppose part of that reputation is because it was very popular during the war; it was one of the few fruits my parents ever got when they were growing up in Ireland, simply because it grew there. I'm not sure what they did about the sugar, though, because the only thing about rhubarb is that you have to cook it and you have to add sugar, near-lethal amounts of sugar. Like, almost equal parts, because, man, is rhubarb sour. (When I was a kid we used to eat it raw, dipped in sugar, and it was so mouth-puckeringly sour that I recall actually getting cramps in our cheeks from it. ) Once my mother made a rhubarb pie and forgot to add the sugar before she put it in the oven, and OH. MY. GOD. was it sour.....one bite and all the moisture left your head. And it was no help to add the sugar afterwards, that just made it every bit as sour, but teeth-rattling sweet as well. Good times. Anyway, I've made some beautiful rhubarb pies, and rhubarb cheesecakes and a stellar rhubarb ice-cream that was the stuff of legend.

Tonight I made some stewed rhubarb that I served with strawberries over angel food cake, and tomorrow morning I will have the rest of that stewed rhubarb for breakfast with some custard and and I won't have to share with anyone. All is right with the world.

Amazing Race 14, Ep. 10

Yay for Tammy and Victor....they ran a good race all along, and it was a well deserved win. Mostly I'm happy Jaime didn't win.

I'm glad each team's results was directly because of their strengths and weaknesses, not just because of a good or bad taxi driver. Luke was doing well until Victor showed up, and then he started to psych himself out and succumbed to his paralysing frustration. (Band name!) Just as he has done before. And Jaime was doing okay, albeit she started way behind the other two, and although she got down to business and got to work, she spent a lot of energy freaking out and shouting. (At least she helped Luke, after Victor and Tammy left.) And Victor got out of there first because he's smart and he worked hard.

I wish those Hawaiian locals had been more drunk.

Who knew a pig would be so difficult to manage? I mean, a real pig, not a metaphorical one, or a chauvanist one or even a live one. I thought Jaime's head might actually burst into flames right there on that beach. Which would have made for a spectacular luau.

Also, I noticed she doesn't do very well with cab drivers who actually do speak English, either. Thing 1 and I both remarked on her urging the cab driver with the bait of "we're in a race for a million dollars"....unless he's in line to get some of that cash, I doubt he cares one way or the other whether you win or not.

Thank you Anonymous Hawaiian Taxi Dispatcher. You have avenged hapless taxi drivers from all over the world.

Yes, yes, I get it. Deaf people can do anything. Now, please stop convincing me, I'm getting tired of it.

Favorite Line of the Night: "I have no pants". And also, "When did we see JESUS?!?"

Did you notice that the fake-out surf boards had symbols from past seasons? Irish donkeys! Clowns! Giant Kiwifruit! I really wish I could find out what event Luke thought that Grateful Dead psycadelic skull represented.

Apparently, there will be another Amazing Race in the fall! Until then!