It takes 21 Days to Break/Make a Habit

I bet you didn't notice the time passing, gentle reader, since your life has been abundant with metaphorical rainbows and puppy-dogs since my blog filled the dark hole in your heart you didn't even know existed until it was occupied by my musings. Or so I assume. But, time has passed, so much time that this is my 21st post. And, as my title may indicate, I've often heard it takes 21 days to break a habit, or, in this case, to make a habit. Unless you want to think of it as breaking my bad habit of not writing down random stuff everyday and posting it for your amusement, which is what I'm choosing to do. So today, I'm celebrating 2 things: My 21 days of posting, officially making daily posting a "habit" and the fact that I wasn't eaten by bears...yet. Everything's coming up Sharon!

Today I learned that when walking at Lilliput's place, it is important to watch for cow pies. That was a good lesson. I went on a quest to see their new calf while simultaneously not being eaten by bears, and though I was good on the second count, I could not find any sign of baby cow. I did see big cows though, and I think I need to apologize to Yelsel D'Stupid for mocking her belief that cows eat meat, because I'm pretty sure they were eying me in the way that something that wants to eat something else will eye up that something else. Then one licked its side, the universal sign for "I'm going to eat you and you will be delicious." Cows are terrifying and I'm glad for the invention of fences.

Thinking of fences, since going to the zoo, I have been considering ways it could be improved. My friend, Enna McLoggin suggested that it would be better if you could pay extra to go in a tiny cage inside the carnivores cage, so that they might be more interested in eating you. Also, to further increase the thrill, they could throw a rabbit in with you. I think that Alfred Von Bunnikins has super bunny senses, because after writing this I tried to pick him up and he bunny-ninjaed me.

So, later on (after first writing about my cow adventures) I went back with Shamus and did see the calf. Forgetting exactly how much the cows seemed to want to eat me earlier, I decided that I would try to pet one of them. Despite Shamus' assurances that the chances of them killing me were low (wait, in hindsight, he never actually assured that as much as didn't disagree when I asked whether it might be a possibility), I didn't manage to pet one because they seemed a little bloodthirsty as I approached. The point of this story is that I tried though. Tried and failed. And the lesson is if you never try, you never fail. But you also won't get to pet awesome cows. Although, I did try, and failed and also didn't get to pet cows, so I'm not sure what the point really is. Perhaps it's that before I die, I will pet a cow, even if it leads to my cause of death being cow.

You Can't Buy Happiness, Even if you Can Buy Monkey Butlers

It was my first day waking up on my BC trip, which means that I was up at 6am due my inability to sleep-in regardless of how late I stay up combined with a 3 hour time change. It was good because I got to see my brother Shamus before he went to work, but bad because then I spent hours waiting for anything interesting to happen. Periodically I would decide to try to befriend Alfred Von Bunnikins, but I think he must have somehow sensed my similarity to Elmyra from Tiny Toons and was smart enough to hide in his igloo whenever I came close.

Since the rabbit clearly wasn't planning on entertaining me, I found a book on baby names and leafed through it until it offended me, as tends to be the case with most books. It had a section on the first impressions that names make with lists of names under titles such as: "Arty", "Charming", "Friendly" etc. I thought, where are the negative adjectives? Then I found it, "Cranky". And what was there, nestled below "Doreen" and "Myrna"? None other than "Sharon". Really? And yet the name "Stormy" is under "Cheerful"? If I ruled the world, I would destroy all copies of this book. Wait, maybe my reaction is a bit cranky. No, I think it's normal, because that book was clearly out to get me. Also, evil.

It also had a list of famous pairs, I guess for those expecting twins. If I had twin boys, I probably wouldn't have much issue with naming them Bert and Ernie. They're solid names. I might call them Robert and Ernest for awhile, just to make it look like I didn't do it on purpose, all the while knowing that eventually someone is going to realize the obvious nicknames and then it will spread like wildfire. I guess it is true that some people shouldn't be allowed to have children, most notably my parents for giving me a cranky name.

So, after thinking about baby names for awhile, my mind drifted to yesterday, when I was at the Edmonton airport waiting for my connecting flight to Abbotsford and trying to steal WiFi to kill time. As you probably know, if you've read my other posts, I have no technical abilities, so I don't know how I did it, but I managed to get a few minutes of Facebook time in before it caught onto me and tried to make me pay. It was just enough time to notice a posting by my friend Birchington Wongstein that perked me up. I hadn't realized that I needed perking until I was perked, but was quite glad it had happened, because I really did need a good perking up, if only to allow me to overuse the word "perk" in my blog today.

When you wake up hours before anyone who might entertain you, it gives you a lot of time to think about things that perked you up (if you're wondering, I am trying to break the record for most instances of the word "perk" and its derivatives. It would probably be easier if I had some idea of what the record is, but I think I'm doing pretty well). Birchington is one of those people who doesn't really need to work to perk up someone's day. Once I tried to tell him this, but it didn't turn out well. First I tried, "You're special.....but not 'special' with quotations," then I went for "No, no, I don't mean it that way, I mean it more like you're precious....but not 'precious' with quotations." So, sitting there, WiFi-less, I spent the time thinking about the number of friends I've been lucky enough to have that can't be adequately described without a word that is also used in quotations when humoring "special" people.

I worry that this blog might be quickly descending towards a rather mushy side today, but I think I need to say that I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking about things that I want, like truckloads of money and monkey butlers. But, even a million monkey butlers could not replace knowing someone like Birchington Wongstein, Yelsel D'Stupid, Neyney Charmin, Byla Rong, Katarina Yashtastico, Bark Montes or the dozens of other magical people that I am yet to create clever pseudonyms for. Even if they were to all suddenly disappear from my life, I was beyond blessed to even know them for 2 seconds, so I should probably stop spending all my time thinking about how I might acquire an army of monkey butlers and appreciate what I already have instead. Yeah, I lied when I said I was worried about getting to mushy, because I totally went there, but I'm going to publish this anyways.

To make up for the mushiness, I'm going to tell you my truck stop laundry story. It begins with: Once I was doing my laundry with friends at a truck stop. There, we met a trucker, who we asked if we could drive his truck. He said he would be happy to let us, but didn't think we could handle the 18 gears. I think it was 18, it doesn't matter exactly how many though, because what really matters is that he then said, "That's more than I can count on my hands and feet." At that point you could see everyone looking at there hands and feet, trying to do some quick math in their head and thinking "Wait...somethings wrong..." After the proper timing for optimal effect he said, "That's right, I only have 2 toes" (or 3 toes or something...it doesn't matter, the point is, he was a trucker who was missing multiple toes and clearly used it as smalltalk on a regular basis.) The strangest part of the story is that I don't think anyone in our group thought to ask him how he lost his toes. Or, if they did, I don't remember it, which doesn't seem like me. I usually remember stories that involve anything being severed. So, like most of my stories, this has a lesson: If you meet a trucker and they tell you they are missing any organ or appendage, ask them how, because you'll regret it if you don't. I know I did.

4 8 15 16 23 42

I'm visiting my brother Shamus in BC this week. I don't get to fly often, so I got pretty excited about it today. I got up early yesterday morning to check in online and stake my claim on a window seat. As I was boarding today, I realized I'd inadvertently chosen a seat in row 15, one of the evil numbers from Lost. I think, as a rule, when flying one should try to avoid anything that could be connected to Lost, like knives or polar bears, so I'm not sure what possessed me to choose one of the numbers. As we took off, I noticed a 23 on the runway and decided I was most likely screwed. I was wrong, but I'm still going to stick with that rule, just in case (and I hate polar bears anyways).

When I fly I like to think of the beginning of Fight Club and wonder if this is the flight where I'll finally get to meet my soap making alter-ego. Could it be the middle-aged Asian woman beside me? I'm thinking that it probably isn't because she seems quite perturbed by me staring at her as I try to size her up. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time I fly to meet my alter-ego. I bet she'll be tall.

Since my jinxing the flight didn't make it crash on a mysterious island (in Saskatchewan...?) I am now able to blog to you from Shamus' apartment where he lives with his wife Lilliput, their baby Char-char Junior the Second and their rabbit, Alfred Von Bunnikins. Alfred has been shedding lately, so their is fur everywhere. It kind of rolls around the place, like tumbleweeds. I'm trying to figure out how to monetize on it somehow, but the only idea I have so far is that when Char-char is a bit older we can use her tiny dexterous fingers to create elaborate rabbit fur crafts to sell at various novelty shows. Or maybe we can use it to make her whiskers and somehow make money off the resulting cuteness.

Well, that's about all that happened today. I had thought that a plane ride would give lots of blog material, but apparently not so much. The following are some thoughts that don't really have much follow up. Edmonton is a very nice city for a stopover. The writers block in me wishes they were jerks instead, because that makes for good blogging. Mountains make me happy, because of the tallness. I'd like to be a flight attendant because it's like you get to perform a show every time you tell people how not to die in the event of an accident. This random assortment of facts does not a blog make, but I will still put them in to bulk it up.

Actually, I forgot to put something into my blog yesterday, and that to mention the CN tower is exciting to Byla because she's from Yellowknife, where all structures are made of ice, so nothing even close to the CN towers size has ever been built because of the inevitable tower floods in the summer. Sometimes, it's fun to mock where people come from. Just kidding, Byla, you know I'm just jealous because you can stay at a bar until closing and walk home in the sunlight. Actually, I'm not, because I'm a ginger, so sunlight is my enemy.

This post has gone downhill fast, I'm going to blame jet-lag, which is confusing me into thinking that I should have the energy to write this, because the world is still light. But I don't. I wish I'd brought my crayons. Tomorrow I'll get Char-char to write this. She seems to have some awesome graphic design skills. Also, she's a baby, so everything she does is automatically entertaining.