Phlegmatic’s Weblog

I got a tattoo!! I’ve kinda always wanted one but never really seriously considered getting one until last year when I finally picked out an actual design and body part, but then I chickened out and went back to wanting-but-not-actually-planning-on-getting one. I’d still sort’ve toyed with the idea from time to time since last year and still wanted the same design and the same location, but I took the last chicken outtage as a sign that I was probably going to chicken out forever. If not before getting the tattoo, then probably after (which would suck deep).

Then about a month and a half ago I just decided to go for it and I knew that if I backed out this time, I’d regret it. I got the word Valeo, which means “I am strong” in Latin. It’s about an inch high by an inch and a half long and I got it on my lower abdomen, just above where my bikini bottoms sit, and off to one side. It’s all black and in a cursive font and I gotta say I love it! I’ve mostly kept it covered up so that my waistband doesn’t rub it, so I hardly ever see it and every time I do see it, I’m surprised by how much I like it. Not unlike a goldfish who is excited  every time he comes across the scuba diver.

It hurt, but not nearly as badly as I thought it would. In fact I would say hair removal (waxing/electrolysis) is WAY worse. Although, from what I’ve read, that part of the body is one of the least painful to get tattooed so don’t put too much stock in my daring tale if you’re planning on getting a giant dragon on your ribs or something.

I’m still not used to the idea that this is permanent and I’m not quite sure how I feel about the fact that I’m going to see this every single day for the rest of my life. You’d think I would’ve considered this BEFORE I got it done and I thought I had, but it turns out imaginary permanence isn’t quite as permanent as actual permanence. Who knew?

Anyway, for me the tattoo is to remind myself of things I’ve done in the past that I didn’t think I’d be strong enough to do, things I should be proud of, and to give me strength to do things I’m scared to do in the future. Makes sense to me.

I’m in no way hip OR cutting edge when it comes to new music. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit that I actually listen to the radio a lot of the time. So I’m probably jumping on this bandwagon WAY late, but I just heard Kings of Leon for the first time on SNL the other day (thank you TiVo) and oh my. When Caleb Followill sings I really feel it, ya know? I mean, sure, in my heart and in my soul and whatever, but mostly in a sort of quickening of the loins.

My friend and I are at this Ethiopian restaurant and we’re looking through the menus:

Her: I must say I’m thrilled by the lack of pork on this menu

Me: Why? Do you have something against pork?

Her: No, it’s just that this way you can’t order anything with pork in it. Therefore ,no matter what you eat, I’ll be able to pick off your plate.

Me: You’re not eating pork? What, you don’t like it or is it because you’re becoming Jewish?

Her: Well I’m just trying to see if I’d be able to handle not eating it…

Me: So it IS because you’re trying to be Jewish! Is that the most important part of being Jewish? Not eating pork? How long has it been?

Her: Well… ok, they have the best breakfast sandwiches at school BUT before then it was like 6 months!

Me: So… since breakfast, then?

Her: Actually no, more like 3 hours.

Me: Wow. So you haven’t been porked in 3 whole hours. Impressive.

I’m working in a new office now (as of two days ago) and guess what I did on my first day? I went to the guys bathroom! And I don’t meant I just “went” in there as in I opened the door, felt silly, and left. No, I mean I went into the stall and done did my business… WITH OTHER PEOPLE IN THERE!

I thought the deplorable “leftovers” in the bowl were gross (although it makes more sense now) and I thought it seemed a little bit dim in there, but it wasn’t unusual enough to be alarmed. Hell, I even saw the urinals and just thought to myself, “hmm… that’s weird“. There was a slpit-second where the presence of the urinals made me question the accuracy of my bathroom choice but I mentally confirmed that the stick figure had, in fact, been wearing a skirt. Obvious evidence to the contrary (URINALS) be damned!! I took a quick peak at the shoes under the stall door and didn’t find them to be particularly male so into the stall I went.

Once in there it hit me (right on time, brain, great job!); I was halfway through my VERY FEMALE task and I realized that there was no receptacle (duh) and then it alllll clicked.

Then! As I was hurriedly finishing up, someone else came in. Oh my god. I was praying SO HARD that he wouldn’t use the urinals cause I just didn’t need to see that, ew.

I had my feet all squished to the side, trying so hard to hide my feet from BOTH MEN in the MEN’S WASHROOM. Yeah, my little purple plaid shoes… those guys are probably wondering who the cross-dresser in the office is. Scandal!

 The second guy left (after a quick hand wash, maybe the shoes clued him in that something was amiss and he wanted to get the hell out of there…) and the first guy (probably also very aware that one of these things is not like the others) was holding it like crazy so I made a run for it. Thank God I didn’t run into anyone on my way out. Gah. “Urinals?? Hmmm… that’s weird”. Jesus.

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In less moronic news: I booked my flight to Scotland. October 17th! Woo hoo!!!

The bathrooms there will probably be even harder… don’t the boys wear the skirts in Scotland?

As I’ve said before, I’m a “temp”, which, I’m sure you all know, means that my job is to fill in for other people and do their jobs while they’re away. Often people have their name sitting somewhere on their desk and often I forget to remove it while I’m sitting there, which makes people crack jokes like “hmmm you don’t look like Sally!” or “Catherine! You’ve gotten younger!”. Funny things like that. Except they’re not funny anymore ’cause I’ve heard them a bazillion times. Still, though, I humour the jokester and giggle every time.

The other day someone walked by my desk and said “Hi, Mary” (he didn’t actually say ‘Mary’, he said the name of the nameplate on my desk, but you can’t be too careful with this here internet). I’ve seen this guy around lots and I know that he knows who I am so I thought he was being cheeky and I rewarded him with the typical giggle. i realized afterward, though, that while I know he knows who I am, I don’t actually know if he knows my name.

So, in his head, he probably thought he finally figured out my name and used it to address me and I responded… by giggling (which, let’s face it, was probably more like a guffaw).

“Hi, Mary”

“Hahyukhyukhaha duhhhh… ”

God, I might as well have drooled.

So he probably went from labelling me as “that girl” to “Mary” and then quickly to “Mary the Knuckle-Dragger”

It is so damn hot. So, so damn hot. I think it was four days in a row of 30 or above and that is hot, damn hot. It’s funny how a hot streak like this can completely wipe everyone’s memories clean, though. I mean, up until this little stint in Hell, we’ve had a pretty crummy summer: wind? Check. Rain? Check. Cold? Check. But now, somehow everyone’s convinced that this has been the hottest. summer. ever. Hahah, people are dumb… like goldfish. 

Normally super hot days like this don’t bother me too much because I find the biggest problem with intense heat is that you can’t sleep. Sucks. I, however, sleep in the basement so when it’s 30 degrees out I snore comfortably… under three blankets, no less. This past weekend, though, I was staying at the bf’s. In an apartment. In Hell. SUCKED. I swear I woke up no less than 20 times each night. Sweaty, miserable, grunty (I’m not sure why, but I grunt a lot when I wake up in the middle of the night at his house. Sexy, no?). Not good.

He’s leaving again today though, and I’m so looking forward to heavenly sleep. Mmmm, sleep.

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Okay, I have to tell you about my experience at The Fringe on Sunday. For anyone who doesn’t know, The Fringe is a great, big festival featuring shows from all over the world. There are musical acts, plays, improv, street performers, etc. Also lots of very greasy food (mini donuts galore!). It’s great because you can see a lot of theatre for pretty cheap in a condensed area and time period. It’s not so great because some of this theatre is REALLY mind-numbingly bad. Plus, the fact that it all happens over such a short period of time means that it’s not likely that you’ll hear any reviews about a show before you go see it yourself.

So Sunday we bought tickets to two shows. We hadn’t heard anything about either of them and didn’t even have the slightest clue what either of them was about (other than their titles). Mostly we chose them based on the times they were playing, actually. The first one was saw was called Hamletmachine, which we (mistakenly) thought might combine the literary genius that is Hamlet with the pure kick-ass-ery that are time machines. No. Sadly no time machines. More surprisingly, very little Hamlet.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I did not understand ANYTHING that happened in the whole hour that we were in there. It seemed to be random movement paired with random speech. It was like modern art, where I often suspect the artist is just thinking, “I wonder what kind of random crap I can put together and still have people believe it’s art…”, y’know? Like, “hey how about a sheet of bubble wrap covered with cat food? Will people believe this shit??”

I will now try to summarize, for your enjoyment, some of the aspects of the “performance”. Ok, so there were four females and one male. Three of the females mostly moved around the stage and randomly shouted things. Also they were all wearing matching tank tops (one’s had “Mao” on it, one’s had “Lenin”, and the other had “Marx”…) not sure why as it seemed to have nothing to do with the theme of the show, whatever that theme might’ve been. The other female had a look of anguish on her face for the entire show while the other actors (usually the male) would move her arms and legs around so that he could dress and then undress her over and over again in different clothes. Remember that this caused her great anguish (obviously). Also, it was necessary that the male bug out his eyes and leer at her while he did this. At one point there was this sort’ve fight scene between the three non-anguished women and the man, wherein they stripped the guy down to his tighty whities (giant ball alert!). Following this, the anguished woman came out of this upright coffin (wha?) and did a striptease for the guy while he cowered on a chair. During said striptease, she had an apple in her cleavage (as so many of us do), which she gave to the guy, who ate the whole thing (core and all). Then the woman screamed, “Do you want to eat my heart, Hamlet?”.  To which the man replied by running maniacally around the stage and shouting, “I want… I want… I want to be a woman!!”. The woman then dressed him in her striptease clothes. This made the man very happy. You could see his giant balls through the leather skirt. This made the audience very uncomfortable. Following this, one of the tank-top-wearing women came out en pointe, carrying an umbrella and wearing a mask on the back of her head, all for no apparent reason. She tried to lovingly coax Mr. Big Balls into the coffin (duh). After she left (unsuccessful in her persuasion, I guess), one of the other tank-top-wearing women came on holding a guitar, giggled, and thrust it at the guy. Then she sat and clapped (kinda like she was mentally disabled in some way) while the guy sang this little folky tune. She started to sing along. This (understandably) made the guy angry so he gave her the guitar so he could sulk. She continued singing the same song while the rest of the tank-top-team joined her and sang along. It was all very cheery until you realised that the guy’s eyeballs were damn near popping out of his head. He ended the sing-along by screaming “I’M NOT HAMLET!!!!”. Holy fuck, ok, dude, relax. Toward the end of the show the anguished woman wore a garbage can lid on her head while in her underpants. Also, there was humming, lost of humming.

I was actually getting angry as I sat through it. I wanted to tell them off for charging me money and subjecting me to an hour of crap. Also, I wanted to slap them silly for pretending that they actually believed it was any good, ’cause you gotta know that they’re just full of bologna. Heck, they were probably snickering about how they pulled one over on everybody when they were back stage. Gah. Bad.

We thought of suggesting to them that they could really have improved the performance by incorporating a time machine. Time machines rule.

Has everyone been watching the olympics? I must admit I was pretty ho-hum about it. I think my lack of enthusiasm is due to the olympics coming every two years now; it’s hard for me to be excited when it seems like they happen all the time. I miss the days of four year between olympics. That, I could get revved up for. So yeah, I made zero effort to watch the opening ceremonies (which I heard were pretty good, although my co-worker assured me that Tinkerbell lighting the fire at Disneyland is way more impressive), I haven’t made much effort to watch any of the events, and I haven’t been paying any attention to the medal count (which, unfortunately, is probably hovering somewhere around zero… poor Canada, just can’t get our athletic butts in gear). Yesterday, though, the family and I decided to tune in and man, does time ever fly when you’re watching! It’s hard to claim disinterest when I spent like ohhhh 5 HOURS watching them yesterday! Haha I was even tempted to skip going running in favour of sitting slack-jawed and glossy-eyed in front of the ol’ tube. Why do your OWN physical activity when you can watch OTHER people do it FOR you???!?? It’s like when I watch the teeny tiny hopefuls on America’s Next Top Model as they excercise and starve themselves and it makes me start thinking how much I could go for some popcorn…. So ummm where was I? Did I have a point? Oh yeah! Olympics is damn fine, people, watch them!

Oh! And I got a card from my bone marrow recipient! So cool! I kinda assumed he was from The States (even though they never told me where he was from) mostly just because I had to go to The States to donate but no! He’s Polish! Or, at least the card was written in Polish! So… he could always be a secret agent trying to throw me off the scent of his true location and identity… but I figure he’s probably pretty weak and all, so… probably just Polish. So neat! Plus he said that he’d received my card, which I was happy about ’cause I was a little worried that it hadn’t made it all the way through all the middlemen and on to him. But yes, he’s doing well, he says, and that’s so fan-freaking-tastic to hear, I can’t even explain.

Also, I got my hair did and holy hell, was it every expensive. Like, REALLY expensive. I went originally to just get hilites and all the random surcharges listed on the website (Rapunzel surchage? The hell??) had me a little worried about the price. The lady on the phone said hilites start at $70 and I could discuss price with my stylist. So I was thinking, ok, $70 is pretty expensive but I’m only getting one colour and I’m only getting my roots so I should be hovering right around $70-$80. Then when I was there I decided I might as well get my hair cut too. Sure, I was at the most expensive salon in the city but I figured since I was just getting a trim and a little extra snippage to my bangs, it probably wouldn’t cost much different than the colour. So I went up to pay bracing myself for up to $150. “Yes, it’ll be expensive, but relax, as long as it’s under $150 it’s ok, it’s ok”, I told myself… $234!!!!! Two hundred and thirty four dollars!!! PLUS TIP!!! I almost had a heart attack. I mean, wow, I think I was shaking as I counted out the bills… which I didn’t have enough of and had to supplement with debit… but I THOUGHT I had enough so I was all “I don’t need any change”. Probably cause I’d left $240… yep, tell her those four dollars are hers to KEEP! Gah, it sucked. It was embarrassing and awkward and… gah. It looks good though. I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s made of a unicorn’s mane or anything else that would justify $234 plus tip, but it does look good…

Occupational hazard of working in my office: gaining 58427503025 pounds. Seriously. There’s ALWAYS food here. I’m not even happy when people bring “treats” in anymore, I’m just mad. Actually MAD at these people, like “holy fuck, thanks a lot guys, no really, my ass appreciates it”. Sure I could try exercising some self-control but that’s not really so much my style. Just looking at the past few week or so we’ve had: 2 birthday cakes, brownies, a loaf, muffins, coconut buns, coconut tarts, and various assorted Chinese desserts. Seriously, guys, fuck you. Fuck you and your delicious generosity.

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I’m devolving into pet talk. I have two cats. I love them. Also, they drive me crazy. Also, we have a neighbour who HATES them, it has made things between us rather… em, tense. As annoying as either of them is on their own, it’s amazing just how annoying they can be in COMBINATION. For instance, one cat loooooves to eat to an annoying (but fairly typical) extent while the other turns his nose up at most things that are offered to him (again annoying yet typical) such that we plead and cajole in order to get some cat mush in the ol’ food hole. What’s REALLY annoying, though, is the two combined (like horse and carriage, they are not). Nickel neeeeeeeds to eat, like MAJORLY needs to eat like right NOW. His day is consumed by mealtimes, by the two five-minute-periods during the day when he can get his feed on. He can’t relax for whole hours leading up to mealtimes lest he miss something, God forbid. So from the moment in the wee hours when your dreams lapse for a moment, or you maybe breath in a sort’veawake-ish way, he’s on you! He’s constantly watching you, constantly staring into your soul, constantly willing you to please to feed the kitty, sir. Fine. Great.  Agitating as hell, but fine. So you get up to feed Nickel but where’s Boo? You can’t feed Nickel without Boo because then when Boo finally DOES come for breakfast, you have to feed Nickel again because, like I said: the food, it consumes him. Hmmm, Boo must be outside or something. Go to the door. Call Boo. Call Boo and call Boo and call Boo while Nickel’s having a panic attack at your feet and staring intently across the lawn for a sign of tardy Boo (meaning late, not stupid… although, he is that too). Oh wait, there’s Boo, just sitting there, just freakin’ staring at you… all “what’s your problem, dude?”. “Boo! Get your fuzzy butt in here! Boo! Boo! BOO! Come on!”. But no. No, he’s just gonna sit there if that’s cool, he’s not really all that hungry anyway, plus he’s awful sleepy…

So you go in and you feed Nickel and whatever all grousing and frustrated and “well fine, if Boo doesn’t want to come in he can just miss breakfast then” and you clean up and go downstairs to use the bathroom and there’s Boo, sitting at the door, ready for breakfast. *sigh* 

I work at a pretty high security place (read: I’m a patient in a mental institution. I am currently flossing my toes with a pickle… heh *looks around nervously*, shhhh don’t tell them)… umm anyway, high security = cardkey required to get in to AND OUT OF most areas.  My office has a “vault” where we keep confidential files (and compromising photos) and also the paper shredder. In order to get into the vault you need a cardkey AND a secret magic code so, I mean, that’s a pretty heavy duty lock, right? Right. Ok so the other day I went in there to shred something and for whatever reason I didn’t bother to use the door stopper (which is clearly below me in some way) and I just let the door close behind me. Fine. Then when I tried to leave, I WAS LOCKED IN! Shit shit shit shit shit. I looked around to find some sort of something or other to unlock the door. Nope. Pulled frantically on the doorknob. No luck. Then I started banging frantically on the door. Actually at first I almost didn’t want them to find me cause it would’ve been embarrassing explaining how I’d gotten locked in in the first place, ya know?  But then It started getting all hot and claustrophobic in there and I started thinking ”since the door’s obviously not supposed to be closed behind people, maybe no air gets in here…”, fuck. Bang bang bang! Then I was wondering if anyone would even think to look in there when they finally realized I was gone.  Bang bang! And even if they did find me, maybe I’d be all passed out on the floor by then and oh my god oh my god oh my GOD, I gotta get out of here! And THEN… ha, well then I found the little green “exit” button. Oh! uhh heh heh, oops… So I composed myself, took some deep breaths, blinked the deranged look out of my eyes and walked out all non-chalantly. Looking around like “what on earth is that obnoxious banging…?”. Heh, I’m smooth.

Also, I am a lowly office drone (actually, not even an office drone. I’m a “temp”, remember?) and yesterday through a strange turn of events the umm guy who’s the second highest in this whole big company ended up going to Second Cup to buy me a muffin cause I said I wanted one. How rad am I?? Very. He even felt bad when they didn’t have the kind I wanted and was all apologetic that he brought biscotti instead, “I hope it’s ok, I know some people don’t really like biscotti”. I just glared at him. What? Otherwise how will he learn??

Lastly, this weekend marks the return of my favourite of all of the festivals around these here parts. Heritage Days! Oh the food, the wonderful food. This is definitely one of those festivals where you have to plan on walking in and rolling out, ya know? Well, ok, you don’t HAVE to, I mean some people go for the performances and the crafts and stuff… but they’re weeeeeeird. Let’s judge them.

So happy almost weekend! If anyone wants to, y’know, if it’s not too much to ask *blushes, fiddles nervously with skirt, passes gas*, you could leave me a comment saying what you’re doing this weekend, heh, yes please, do!

I spent this weekend basking in the glory of doing absolutely nothing. Well, not nothing, I painted my toenails. It felt weird for me to be looking forward to a plan-less weekend ’cause I’m usually not a very busy person; in the days of my youth I would dread the standard Friday question: “so, any plans for the weekend?” and would respond with “umm gee I’m not actually sure what I’m doing yet”… as if to imply that I was so incredibly popular and had so many offers on the table that I hadn’t yet had the time to sift through them all. In actuality, though, I was probably planning on falling asleep watching whatever movie my parents rented… putzing around on the computer… then maybe cementing my popularity status by visiting my grandma or something (not that there’s anything wrong with that…). I always WISHED I had plans, wished I could spout off all the fantastic things I had planned, but alas, I never did.

In the last few months, though, I’ve found myself incredibly busy. Between training for my run, my best friend’s wedding, and getting in a big enough fight to lose my oldest friend (yep, I’m easy-going like that), I found I had very little time to devote to falling asleep during bad movies. The weird thing is, I really MISSED having nothing to do. All those years I’d LONGED for plans and now I had them and I realized that that sucked too. I think I’m going to name this type of situation The Grass Is Always Greener Phenomenom… catchy, no?

So after being so busy I was really looking forward to having a weekend to do absolutely zilch. I planned on reading in the sun, maybe watching a movie, reading in the sun some more, maybe watching another movie and I was damn excited about it. But ya know what? I realized that the sucky part about having no plans isn’t that you worry about being bored, no, it’s that you worry about being judged. People react to your lack of plans as if it’s because you’re some kind of leper who people won’t hang out with out of fear that they’ll mistake your sores for salsa when they’re dipping their nachos. Mmmm nachos…

Tasty

So yeah, I realized that all these years I haven’t been bothered by the fact that I have nothing to do, I’ve been bothered by the fact that people seem to think I SHOULD have something to do! Well fuck you, co-workers, classmates, and aquaintances, I LIKE doing nothing! Even this time when there was an obvious tone of excitement when I told people that I had “nothing to do!!!”, they still reacted with “aww, that’s no good”. That’s no good??? Why not?  Suddenly I was overcome with that same old urge to cover up my leprosy as I tripped all over myself to placate them with things like “oh , well I HAD plans but my friend’s friend is in the hospital so we had to re-schedule” and “I MIGHT still be hanging out with this one guy on Saturday” and so on and pathetically so forth. And then they seemed satisfied! Like I’d reassured them that I wasn’t a total loser!… phew, cause they’d been worried for a minute there.

But I tricked them all MWAHAHA! I didn’t end up hanging out with that one guy, I wasn’t even considering hanging out with that one guy, in fact, and I had a great freakin’ weekend! One of the best in a long time! I talked to the ol’ bf late into the night on Friday (he’s out of town, if you’ll recall), I slept in on Saturday, I went for a long ass bike ride on both Saturday and Sunday, I went for dinner with my parents, I went grocery shopping (which I ENJOY, don’t judge me… another leprosy I keep hidden beneath my robe), I went running Saturday and Sunday, but mostly I just sat outside and read on the deck in the shade. The weather played along perfectly and basically put its foot down and wouldn’t let me do anything other than laze about and enjoy myself and I’m not gonna feel bad about it either, I’m happy I had nothing to do rather than doing this or that or whatfuckingever else, dammit, I LIKED it!

So how was YOUR weekend? And don’t feel bad if it was awesomely devoid of activity cause it’s not like I did anything!… well… I mean… I DID have plans but then my friend’s friend was in the hospital so we had to re-schedule, see? And umm, well I was GONNA hang out with this one guy and uhh…