A Variety of Ways I hope not to Die in the Near Future

I've been working for 2 weeks to pass the 80 posts mark on this blog. It has not worked. I keep on thinking amazing blog thoughts, but it's always when I'm running or biking and I don't have my iPod to record them, so they are lost to the ages. I always say to myself that this one is so great that I will remember it for eternity, but it's not and I do.

I raced Shamus. He won the race, but I kicked teenage Sharon's ass, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I was so thrilled by the whole event that I signed up for a half marathon in March, partially to force myself to exercise going into the final days of studying for boards. The threat of dying trying to run a stupidly long distance because I haven't done the proper prep work will probably be enough to tear me away from my books for an hour a day, or at least to bring some cue cards to a treadmill. If not, at least I'll have something other than the potential that I failed the exam to worry about after it's done. I really hope I didn't sign up to die though, because a t-shirt is not worth much if you are dead, and I really want that t-shirt.

The other day, I brought a bunch of helium balloons home that were leftover from work, and by a bunch, I mean 24. Well, it would have been 24 had I not lost 3 in a tree on the way home. Things like that make me want to waste more paper, because, let's face it, trees are kind of mean. They've also stolen a few kites in my life. I wish they would just buy their own balloons and kites and stop taking mine, or at least stop complaining when we chop them down and use their flesh to make post-its. Whiny bastards.

Anyways, I walked home with many balloons, but was sad at the number of people who didn't even blink at someone walking down Sheppard Avenue at 8:30 with a whole bunch of balloons. It's like these people never had a childhood. Where was their unbearable envy of my situation? They didn't even have one helium balloon and I had between 21 and 24, depending on when they saw me. If balloons = happiness, I was an infinite amount more happy than they were. That's right, infinite. Unless they had one balloon that I didn't know about, then I was 20-24x more happy. Actually, now that I am home, I have 21 balloons most people I run into on the street are unaware of, so perhaps I just ran into all the balloon hoarders in Toronto who secretly knew that their happiness was equivalent to mine. That explains it. The good thing about hoarding helium balloons is that they won't fall over and crush you. That is what makes me not a hoarder, the falling and crushing aspect. Otherwise, I love random crap, so I'd be all over the hoarding thing, were it not for the sudden death by crushing and/or smothering that would almost certainly occur at some point.

My happy song for the last few months has been Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and other games) by Of Montreal. My roommate Byla also likes it, but I think it is because she is from the frozen North, so feels a deep soulful connection with Antarctica. I wonder if kids from the North try to dig holes to Antarctica instead of China. That would have made me work harder at digging, because penguins are cute. Wait, so are panda bears. But, the tie-breaking factor is that panda bears are bears and penguins are not bears, so of the two cute cuddly things, one is much more obviously going to maul me. Then again, I would have been in the north, where digging is much harder because of the plentiful ice, so the motivation probably would have just brought me to the same point that any attempt to dig a hole to China got, which was not ever particularly far, usually right around the bottom of my sandbox, at which point the wooden bottom posed a challenge I was too lazy to ever overcome.

I'm average, biatch.

My lungs have decided to strike. I woke up the other day struggling to breath. I'm not quite sure when they even unionized, I clearly didn't get the memo on that one. Luckily, there must be some scabs crossing the picket line, because I don't need to be on a ventilator...yet. Anyways, my general state of hypoxia left me with nothing to do that won't make the situation worse, until I remembered this blog and figured this is probably the time to actually write something, since typing takes minimal effort. I can't guarantee that it will be any good, since thinking takes a little bit more effort.

To begin, I have some advice. When you are sick with a lung infection and the lack of air has caused insomnia, a bad thing to read to help to sleep is a biography of Jim Henson. Yes, most of it is just happy muppet goodness, but if you get to the end it will really help the hypochondria to take over. As wonderful as Kermit is, just wait until you're better. Just trust me on this one.

Anyways, I can kind of see why my lungs might choose to abandon me at this point. I've been feeling a little under the weather for the past few weeks, but despite that I ran a 10k charity run on Sunday morning, then biked to work (whining the whole way about how stupid it was). As stupid as it was, the whole thing made me very proud. You see, throughout my life, I have received much recognition for my extraordinary ability to try when it comes to anything athletic. On any team I've ever been on, I have been appreciated for my constant trying. Of course, being the best at trying is generally a bad thing, because if you were actually succeeding, no one would notice your incredibly impressive trying (and it's pretty damn impressive, if I do say so myself, which I do).

In high school, I was well known on the cross country team for my trying. I'm not sure how I ended up on the cross country team, I think it was mainly because there was no limitation on team numbers so they took anyone. Sometimes when you say you ran cross country in high school, people assume that means you can run. That is a key example of why when you assume it makes an ass out of you and me. You because you're so very wrong, and me because I have to explain that my main contribution to the cross country team was, for the most part, managing to get through races without walking and/or dying.

Once, I got passed by the first place runner in the race that started after mine. He was nice enough to encourage me on in my valiant attempt not to die. Another time, my friend (who could run) finished the race, got her results and ran back to cheer me on as I finished. I was the person on the team that's contribution was making all the other members feel good that, if nothing else, they at least had me coming in behind them. I think it helped that I was very comfortable with this place. Back of the pack is a special place. You can cheer others on as you pass them, because you know they're eventually going to pass you back and that there's really no difference between 87th and 88th place in the grand scheme of things. Often, I would make temporary race friends, because, in the end, these were my people, those poor souls, struggling to survive.

But, this Sunday, everything changed. I got to the end of my 10k to discover that I am no longer a complete loser in the realm of running. I'm now distinctly middle of the pack. That's right. I'm not particularly good or particularly bad. I'm just there, running, like a normal person. My world has been turned upside-down, well, maybe not upside-down, but kind of on its side. I am an average runner.

I may have let this new position in life get to my head too quickly. My brother Shamus and I were having a conversation the other day that somehow ended with a challenge for us to race when he's visiting in a few weeks. In general, challenges with Shamus end with him winning, a fact that I've usually accepted prior to even suggesting we compete. Not that he's better than me at everything, for instance, I am a distinctly better tryer, and I'm more skilled at losing gracefully. But, my big head caused by my recent discovery that I am now average has led me to actually think I could win this one. Of course, my lungs disagree, but I'm sure they'll get in line soon enough. Maybe I'll just threaten to take up smoking, or something, that'll teach them not to mess with me. Maybe I'll call that Plan B, since I'm hoping that the time spent staying still writing this blog might have built enough goodwill for them to consider returning to work, at least long enough for me to kick Shamus' ass. He'll be sorry he ever questioned the power of my newfound averageness.

Tired.

Today I decided to tackle something that I've been putting off, and that was the construction of my new dresser that I picked up with my friend Jennijen Newnew on Monday. Well, not so much picked up as gradually shuffled off the shelf onto a cart, and then from the cart to her car. And she pushed the cart, because I decided to buy a 50 cent hot dog but wanted to finish it quickly in case we ran into anyone I knew. I know it's not real food, but, seriously, 50 cents.

One thing I like about the Ikea cafeteria is how they present things as deals that aren't. Like, 2 hot dogs for $1 is a specific listing. Or 2 hot dogs and a drink ($1 on its own) for just $2. Even with basic math skills under my belt, I still find these offers tempting, as would anyone.

Anyways, eventually I shuffled the box to my apartment where I emptied it and then left it to sit until I had time. All the while, my old dresser continued its decent towards trash. I was bitter today when the weather decided to take a turn for the worst, since I was depending on not having to open any drawers containing warmer clothes, because I was pretty sure opening them would compromise basic structural stability, possibly leading to a chain reaction that would bring down the whole building. Did I say the whole building? I meant world. You should all be thankful that the weathers been pretty good lately.

So, today I spent 4 hours building a dresser. It wouldn't have taken quite so long were it not for the necessity for frequent mental health breaks. Ikea always seems like a good idea when you're eating cheap non-food, but like a very bad idea when you're constructing/living with the results. However, I survived without any major injuries or aneurysms, but I'm pretty tired and I think a rib is out. I'm pretty sure the rib is not due to the furniture building though, but just from life. I just wanted to throw it out there in case someone reading this wants to fix me tomorrow, perhaps someone who has been begging for a shout-out?

Song that is happy. Moving Right Along from The Muppet Movie. It's Shamus' favourite vacation song, and just generally a song that I like. I like it even though it's 50% bear, so you must imagine that it's pretty friggin' good.

I don't know where Shamus keeps finding computers

My first poll finished last night with the following results:

Does this blog need more Shamus Van Nostrum?

Yes, because I am him and I love myself	7 (17%)
Yes, because I'm not him but I'm not mentally well	0 (0%)
No, he does not interest me	0 (0%)
I don't care/Who's Shamus?	3 (7%)
Don't you have another, more interesting brother you haven't even mentioned?	29 (74%)

I would graph it, but I have an angry computer, plus I'm lazy, a combination which leads to no pretty graphs. If you really need a picture, just close your eyes and think of delicious pie. Now eat the pie. Wait, the pie is not actually pie, it's a big lemon. Now open your eyes. Did you make a sour face? Isn't that a fun trick? Okay, close them again, now the pie is mainly made up of Mysterious Brother X, with a chunk of Shamus and a dash of apathy/confusion.

What have I learned from this experience? Well, first, I need to give a shorter time-line for polls because I really didn't care 3 days into this poll. Second, Shamus is a crafty one. It's lucky that I'm more clever and made an answer so obviously him that he had to reveal his evil plot by choosing it repeatedly. Third, I'm not certain people know what a question mark means, because I think they chose it assuming it was a promise that a more interesting brother exists, but there's every chance that the answer to that question would be a simple "no". That would be a waste of a vote.

To be honest, I don't really know the answer to the winning question. Yes, Mysterious Brother X (MBX) does exist, but is he more interesting? I have no idea, because, already being the most amusing child, I haven't spent a lot of time figuring out 2nd and 3rd place. I mean, as long as I'm around, it really doesn't matter anyways.

The unfortunate problem with blogging about MBX is that he is not fond of me telling all the best stories about him. I think I'm allowed to tell ones that involve both of us though, like how we used to sit in my closet, in the dark, and play farm. Yes, that's right, in the dark, because all we needed was the power of our imagination. I know it sounds odd, but, I've got to say it's a thousand times better than Farmville. It was also safer than playing in the old fridge in our basement, which we also were fond of. It was not a farm though, it was a club house for me, MBX and a stick of butter. I think our club house would have been way more awesome if my mother wasn't always "rescuing" us from it.

I'm not sure I have much more to say about MBX at this point, except for the many many things that would end in total alienation of 50% of my brothers. In general, I try to make a habit of not alienating family, because they're pretty much walking kidney farms. So far, my kidneys seem good, but, from what I hear, you never quite know when a night at the bar will end with kidney theft. If some med students do decide to steal my kidneys, I hope that they at least try to stitch in their initials when they sew me back up. Then I'll have a cool scar and a clue to the "Mystery of the Missing Kidneys". At first, I'll just know it's someone with the initials "JC" or "MF" or "BM", but, over time and through careful study with a tiny mirror, I will realize that they must have been right handed, and that they most likely grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis. I don't know how I will learn this, but I'm obsessive, so once my kidneys are gone, I'll spend a lot of my time learning about handwriting and such. Eventually we will meet face to face and I'll realize that I still have a number of organs they probably wouldn't mind harvesting, and I'll run away, but not before snapping a picture of them to post on my blog. And all this will not be possible if I don't keep potential replacement kidneys on my good side (cause otherwise, they steal my kidney and I die, so no time for exciting learning and chasing).

Today's happy song is I Got You Under My Skin, sung by Frank Sinatra, mainly because, who knew a song about parasites could be so perky? Especially parasites that have already spread to your heart (deep in the heart, actually), which is rarely, if ever, a good thing. But, despite his obviously inevitable demise, the band keeps playing, and then I forget that he's probably going to die soon and it won't be a fun death. And the forgetting is what makes this a happy song. If I ever get drunk and someone steals my kidney, I'll sing them this song to them as well. We'll probably have a good laugh about it until I pass out from the pain.

Finally, the deal with the bears

Today someone asked me what my deal is with bears, and since it was not the first time I've been asked this question, I thought it was time for an in-depth exploration of that relationship.

But first, I promised a heart person picture yesterday, and heart person picture I shall deliver.



Note that the hearts are all intact. If you were to introduce a bear to this picture, it would be very different. This is one of my many issues with bears.

I was looking for a "Blood Red" crayon, but apparently that colour doesn't exist in either my 96 crayon set, or my various novelty crayon packets (personally, I think a sparkly blood coloured crayon would be pretty damn popular if they ever created it), so I had to use "Razzmatazz".

To get back to bears, I was not born with a dislike of bears. As a child, I once asked my parents if I could keep a baby bear as a pet. They said no. I said, "Why not? I could keep it in a cage in the back yard." We had a fair-sized yard, so I didn't see why we couldn't sacrifice a small chunk to my bear. My parents said, "But a little bear will grow into a big bear, and then it will need more space." And, of course, I replied, "Don't worry about that, I just won't feed it." This seemed like a perfect plan, given that I'd been taught you eat to grow, so if you don't want to grow, you just don't eat. I wasn't yet aware of the option of Fluoroquinolones . I kind of wish someone had taught me about them, instead of wasting time on useless information, like rhymes about piggies going to market. I just started thinking about that rhyme and realized I always imagined the first piggy was going to market to buy a pumpkin or something, but thinking about it now, I'm wondering if he was there to be sold and subsequently slaughtered for delicious bacon. Also, what kind of pig eats roast beef? Actually, I guess a smart pig that knows how to avoid being eaten.

Actually, the story of my dream of owning a pet bear contains a good lesson about talking to children. When you say "If you don't eat your broccoli you won't grow big and tall," always remember that the child also hears, "If I want to stay tiny and cute so that I can continue to manipulate these silly large humans, I should stop eating broccoli." A better way to phrase it is: "If you don't want to die a horrible death of scurvy then you should probably eat your fruits and vegetables. What? You don't know what scurvy is? Well, basically, your skin won't be able to hold itself together and then you'll bleed to death. It won't be pretty. So, eat your damn vegetables." This way there's no confusion about what the worst consequences of not eating are. It's also a good way to familiarize them with the various vitamin deficiencies and how they can kill you, which, like the adverse effects of Fluoroquinolone use in adolescents, would have been nice information to have ingrained early on to save me some study time this summer (I should probably note, there's a big licensing exam in August that's planning on taking my life and my brain...but don't worry, that M.F. doesn't know who it's up against).

Wow, I left bears rather quickly. Back to it. So, I did not get a pet baby bear in the end, which is good, because my ingenious not feeding him plan would have almost certainly led to death. By which I mean my death, because at some point I would have tried to hug my fuzzy baby bear and he would have hugged me back with his very sharp teeth.

The point of that story is that at one point I did not fear bears. In fact, I had a potentially lethal love of them. What changed? Well, my best guess is that it somehow relates to my brothers (Shamus and Mysterious Brother X), who both have had close encounters with bears trying to kill them. Bears are tricky though, from reading this blog and other sources, you might get the impression that they just wander around mauling people randomly, but, sometimes, bears also commit premeditated murder. Luckily, both Shamus and Mysterious Brother X both escaped mainly unscathed. To the best of my recollection (forgive me if there are errors, I have trouble remembering stories without me in them, you know, because of the boredom), Shamus was run off the road by a bear. I don't believe that the bear was also in a car at the time, but it might have been, because I just know he saw a bear on the road, and while one would assume that means it was running across, he very well could have meant it was waving at him from a red hatchback. My younger brother, Mysterious Brother X, had a bear walk right past another tent full of cookies to break into his tent and eat his bug spray. Clearly the bear didn't actually want to eat bug spray as much as he wanted my brother to be defenseless against the mosquitoes and blackflies so that they could kill him and no one would trace it back to him. How do I know this was his intention? Because I was that bear. Dun dun dun.

Actually, no, I'm not a bear. That I know of.

We still haven't reached the root of my bear fear, because if I feared everything that ever thought it might not want one of my brothers to exist, then I wouldn't be able to leave the house...or stay inside the house...or live inside my own body. No, I think it's more due to the fact that as long as I was around them, I knew that they would be eaten first, which was comforting. So, maybe my fear of bears is actually just that I miss having my brothers around.

Or it's because I had a nightmare in which a bear (or tiger...or bear-tiger hybrid, "teariger"...dreams can be confusing) ate the leg off one of our school's deans while we all watched in horror. Oh, and then another one where a family of bears chased me and a group of unfamiliar people up to an isolated cabin, and the dream ended with us hiding in the ceiling as the bears waited beneath. Periodically people would fall and then the bears would maul them to death, until I woke up. Then they stopped mauling/existing. Actually, that last one is probably the reason for the bear fear. And thus another mystery solved.

You think I'm going to zig...and then I zig

Some days I imagine I'll have more time that is temporally possible. Today was one of those days, by which I mean I frittered away my morning and over scheduled my afternoon, so I'm literally writing this as I walk to my friend Andi (to the) Maximum's apartment. I'm assuming I won't accidentally wander into oncoming traffic, but if I do, I'm hoping my iPod will survive so there is evidence of my attempt to blog.

As I listen to my completely randomized music I'm struck by the proportion of country I have (usually I wouldn't notice things like this because I skip a lot). This country-music-liking thing started pretty subtly, if you'd asked me if I liked country 4 years ago, I probably would have laughed at the idea. To be honest, I'm pretty sure it's Shamus and Lilliput's doing. Who started them on it? I don't know. Probably some sort of a leprechaun (or so Occam's Razor would indicate).

My favorite thing about country (or at least my random assortment of country songs chosen mainly for nostalgia purposes) is that it often contains a story and usually zigs for awhile before it zags, just to mess with you. Like there's one song about a poker game where they're all talking about who they would be if thy could be anything, and they all want to be famous and rich and generally awesome...until you get to the guy singing it. He's pretty much like "I want to be a good husband and a father, because my life's pretty damn good." If I had written that song, I also would have added "Now don't you all feel unappreciative. Booyah M.F.s!"

I also have a song about a horrible highway accident where the whole song you think it was the preacher that survived. Until, BOOM, you find out it was the hooker all along. I also like the added touch of a blood soaked bible immediately after that revelation. I don't get to spend enough time imagining blood soaked bibles, so I always appreciate when that one comes on, even though I already know the answer to the mystery (in case you didn't catch it, it was the hooker).

So, I didn't die from my iPod writing, although it was close. But it turned out it was unnecessary because our movie doesn't start until 10:30, so I have a chunk of time to write now. Oh well, now I know that I can do it if I have to, although I suspect people are driving by thinking "Stupid kids, attached to their electronic doohickeys." Actually, this chunk of time is less "blogging time" and more "publishing and then stuffing my face with food time", so I'm going to sign off now. Tomorrow, I promise more crayon drawings, even if both my hands are chopped off in a horrible lathe accident and I have to draw by gripping the crayons between my painful stumps. I guess I could do in my mouth too, but the taste of wax too easily brings me back to kindergarten, which would result in mainly heart people pictures, because for a few years, I would not draw anything that wasn't completely composed of hearts. Tomorrow, I will draw an example. But for now, I'm going to fend off starvation.

Baby Geese + Fluoroquinolones = Unemployed Optometrists

Today, I'm in class again. You know what I love to do more than anything on a Sunday morning? Learn about anti-fungals. Am I alone in this? No, I'm not. I'm fairly certain that only those who are a demon or of the demon variety would disagree.

I went for lunch with Yelsel D'Stupid, Neyney Charmin, and Lysha McSomji. We took the subway and as we were getting off, we saw EMS putting someone on a stretcher. There was a busker playing "Que Sera Sera" on the saxophone, which made me think exactly how awful it would be, after a horrible subway emergency, to have to stare up at the ceiling worrying about dying and listening to a song about the unpredictability of life. I also might start believing that I've actually passed on and this is God's idea of a funny joke. By the way, God, if you're reading this, it's not. It's just not. I got Neyney to promise me that if it ever occurred she'd run over and request another song. I think "I'm Alright" could be a good one, although I've never heard it on the sax, so it's hard to say for sure.

Normally, in emergency medicine (which we also covered today) you start every scenario with a scene survey, meaning you look for fire, wire, gas, glass and blood before approaching the victim to help. This is to avoid dying (or, alternatively, losing various appendages). I suggest that list be revised to also include "ironic music". Wait, is that irony? I don't know, I guess all my English teachers were right to be angry at Alanis Morissette for confusing an entire generation about the definition of "ironic" The point is, I want people to listen for music that would suck to die or near-die to and include eliminating said music in their initial emergency procedures.

Walking back to school, we were hoping to see the baby geese that have been hanging out around the tennis courts lately. Neyney kept calling them ducks. She said it was because she doesn't like geese, but I think she was just never good at "Duck, duck, goose". She was probably that kid who just kept going around the circle saying duck until the teacher felt so sorry for her that she would just start snack-time. Yum, cheesestrings!

Anyways, she said she loves baby geese but doesn't like the big ones. I mentioned that the little ones do grow into the big ones. She said, not if we give them Fluoroquinolones (we'd just learned that they will arrest bone growth if given to children, and we're nerds). The image of tiny, but adult looking geese disturbs me, but also kind of intrigues me. It would actually be pretty dangerous because you would see the goose, but think it must be very far away. You probably wouldn't realize the error in that assumption until it has already pecked your eyes out, preventing you from making the same mistake twice. So, unless you are an evil mad man/woman looking to take over the world by blinding people with optical illusion geese, please think twice before making a tiny novelty goose. Although, if all the geese were tiny, it would probably decrease the total amount of goose poo I could stumble upon, which would be positive. I think what I'm saying is I need to do a more in-depth risk/benefit assessment of mini-geese, before I make a final recommendation on the creation of them.

The other day, Shamus messaged me to say that I haven't been blogging about him enough lately, and that he's pretty sure that's all people want to read about, so I should increase my average Shamus percentage in my posts. I wasn't so sure, but then I remembered that I could add a poll. Actually, I've been looking for something to poll about, because polls are super fun and I don't get to do enough in everyday life. Please answer my poll question and I will reward you by either listening to or ignoring the responses.

To end off, I'd like to say that every emergency medicine course I've taken has been totally useless, because they never include what to do in the event of a bear mauling. Yes, it is helpful to know how to deliver a baby, but what is the ideal method for delivering a baby while a bear is eating your left arm? And how do I do CPR when a bear is clawing my face off? They just never give the important information, that's all I'm saying.

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.

Marbles are magical, like the number 3

Tonight I went to Shamus' softball game. It brought me back to my T-ball days. T-ball was upsetting to me because I had to wear pants, which I was not fond of at the time. Also, I didn't quite understand the rules, and no one realized that they needed to explain them to me. When my coach brought me out to the field and told me to "stand here", I thought that meant that I needed to stay in exactly that place. Looking back, it seems I was aware that I could temporarily leave my assigned spot, but was worried that I would never find my way back to it, because I'm bad with directions and could have ended up anywhere. Then, I feared, my team would lose the game because of my inability to stay in one spot.

So, I created elaborate schemes to guarantee that I could find my way back. Usually, this involved drawing designs in the dirt that would allow me to identify my assign position. I would draw a picture and then step back and think, "Could that happen naturally?" and if the answer was yes, I would erase it and start again, to ensure that I wasn't distracted by any spot marker decoys. Unfortunately, this gave me a rep as the team dunce, which meant that I was always in the outfield, so I always felt like I needed a special marker. The funny thing is, had I been put at a base, this wouldn't be an issue and I probably would have actually played. Just one of the many Catch-22s that make up life. I had one day where I found a marble, and that game was the highlight of my entire T-ball career. I was running all over the place, safe in the knowledge that nature was not going to magically craft distraction marbles.

Here are some examples of markers I would draw:

This one is easy to draw, which is good, but is too easily reproduced by an evil child falling on their face. So, I would erase it and replace it with this:
Also, far too commonly found in children's t-ball fields. So I would replace it with this:
This one will work. No drawing of this caliber could be produced without significant, deliberate effort. Now I can finally get into this game. Wait, where's everyone going? Noooo, not again. Why am I so bad at this game?

After reading my blog about baby names, Shamus said to Lilliput, "If we have 7 children, I'm calling the 7th one Seven. That's our deal." And, after having dealt with a fussy Char-char all day, Lilliput said, "If you're having 7 children, it's not with me." To which, Shamus said "You could have sextuplets, and if we do, we'll just give them numbers." But I said, "What about poor Six," because you know that Six is totally going to be mocked mercilessly when the other children realize that a simple vowel substitution will lead to a wonderfully horrible nickname. And Lilliput said, "What about Six? Because Two, Three, Four, Five and Seven won't have any trouble." (Sarcastically, obviously, I hope.) Lilliput frequently makes good points. Except that I think Five will be good, because the kids will probably call him/her "Five Alive" and often high five him/her, which will lead to a positive sense of self. Also, Three might be magic.

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.

Sleep is totally underrated...

Today I am tired. I woke up to discover that I have officially run out of clean clothes to wear and had to work incredibly hard to put some semblance of an outfit together. By the point that happened, I had run out of time to dry my hair and was happy when I left my apartment to discover it was raining, because, that way, people could think that I was caught in rain, when, in reality, I'm just lazy and bad at time management.

So, obviously, number one on my list of things to do when I came home was laundry, which I did while watching "Funny Face" with my friend Byla Rong. I should note that our aim had been to watch a romantic movie, and believed that we couldn't fail with Audrey Hepburn. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten about the 30 year age difference between Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, which really didn't create the illusion we were hoping for. Yes, I know he has rhythm, but it's just not enough to make it not creepy. Also, it's never a good sign when the male lead's looks are improved by a false beard. Wardrobe's decision to dress him in a number of Mr Rogers style sweaters also really didn't help matters much.

Anyways, the reason I mention my laundry is to illustrate why this post might not be up to the standards you've come to expect, because my brain seems to have temporarily left me, hopefully not for Fred Astaire, because, as mentioned earlier, he's old (and, umm, dead...is it insulting to call deceased people old, or is that particular insult nullified by death? It's so hard to keep track of all the rules around that stuff...). So, I took the elevator down to get my laundry out of the dryer, and when I got down I realized that I'd forgotten my laundry basket. I live on the 14th floor of an overly superstitious building, so the 13 floor trip is not insignificant, but I trekked back up to retrieve my basket. Then I went back down to get my laundry and realized as I left the elevator that I had forgotten my basket again. So, I traveled the 13 floors up and down again. In total, it took 6 elevator trips to get one basket of laundry, and the entire time, my feet were dressed like this:

The moral of this story is my brain is fried and I shouldn't be allowed to dress myself. But, as I've mentioned frequently lately, my goal is to write every day, come rain or come shine. And, now that I know my brother Shamus is watching my every move, just waiting for me to slip up, I'm working even harder to make sure that there is something, anything, posted each day, because he is good at catching me in lies.

When we were kids, Shamus liked to make brownies, and I liked to eat brownies. It would have been a match made in heaven if he didn't also like to eat brownies, creating a competition for resources that, technically, he was entitled to win. I did not care for this, but, since he was bigger and stronger, I had no method to convince him that his brownies should actually be my brownies. Luckily, what I lacked in brawn I made up for in craftiness. Oh, and also, sneakiness: I can tip-toe like nobody's business. So, at night, when no one was around, I would sneak into the kitchen and steal delicious brownies. But, Shamus has a photographic memory, so, obviously, I couldn't just take a brownie without him noticing it was missing. I was good at geometric reasoning though, so instead of cutting a square brownie, which would be easily missed, I would carefully cut a strip of brownie off the end. That way, it would add up to the same amount of brownie, but its absence would be imperceptible to the human eye.



This system went on for months, and as I got cockier, I stopped worrying about how much brownie I took, because my strip system was so perfect that he could never discover me. Then, one day, I went to the kitchen for a scrumptious brownie treat, and just as I was cutting it, Shamus jumped out from behind the kitchen counter and screamed "I knew it!"

To help you to fully understand the amount of terror I felt in that moment, I'm going to completely lie about the rest of the story...

The shock of him jumping out caused my hand to shake so violently that I accidentally cut off my pinky finger. There was blood everywhere. It was horrible. Then Shamus said "You deserve this. How dare you steal my delicious chocolate treats?" and chased me out of the house with a broomstick. As I bled into the gutter, I thought "Never again will I let Shamus catch me off guard." And that is the reason that a post such as this is able to exist.

Can one quack lugubriously?

After last night's post I was talking to my brother, Shamus Van Nostrum, and he told me he was just waiting for me to slip up and miss a blog post, and then, kablamo! (he didn't actually say kablamo!, but I assume he would have, had he thought to at the time). So, my resolve to post everyday has been further strengthened, which is why I'm starting this one at 5:30am, because I'm not sure when today I might have time to actually write one. I figure, if nothing else, I have this paragraph, which is already pretty much awesome, because of the 2 instances of the word kablamo! (wait...3).

Oh, I also have a picture. Remember how I don't know how to work my cellphone? Well, in one of my many attempts to share the picture of my magic mug with the world, I tried to e-mail it to myself. Having never e-mailed from my cell, when it didn't arrive, I just assumed I'd messaged a random Sharon with my mug picture and would never see it again. But, through the magic of internet it arrived later last night, which makes me kind of wonder where it was hanging out for those hours in between. So, now I can share a slightly better fuzzy picture of my mug teetering precariously off my bottom shelf. As you look at it, remember that this is how it landed after falling off my desk and bouncing off the floor, but also be careful not to let it blow your mind.

So, this part of the post is no longer 5am, in case you're wondering. This is the midafternoon, "Hey, let's blog while I drink my coffee to keep me up for the rest of the day," part of the blog.

I spent my day at a school teaching small humans how to eat healthy. At the beginning of the day, I was given the all important job of helping them cook, of which the most important task was ensuring that no little fingers were lost, and if that was unavoidable, then to at least ensure they were not eaten. I'm happy to say that, despite little training, I was successful.

It had been a long time since I'd been in an elementary school. I was surprised to hear that they listen to the same a cappella recording of "O Canada" at the beginning of the school day as we did approximately 2 decades ago. I'm not sure what exactly it is about this particular recording that they think will engage the nationalistic spirit of our youngest citizens, but it still doesn't quite do it for me. Except, of course, for the addition of a punctuated "Ca-na-da" at the end, which is helpful to remind me which country it is I've been singing about for the last minute and a half ("What? I thought we were singing about Grenada. But that Canada thing does make the north reference easier to understand.")

They also had a list of synonyms for the word "sad" on the wall. No "happy", no "angry", just "sad". As a daydreamer who throughout a year in a classroom would read anything posted on the wall about 10000x on average (are you aware that "chemists do it in tubes"?), I have to imagine that an entire list of words meaning depression could really mess up a 12 year old's psyche. I'm not sure if the focus on improving the children's ability to express sadness was driven by a need to more accurately prescribe antidepressants, or whether the high schools had asked them to better prepare them so that their emo poems might be less repetitive to mark.

Example:

Pre-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so sad.
No one understands me.
That makes me sad.

Post-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so devastatingly miserable.
No one understands me.
That makes me lugubrious.

Forgive me if I misused the word lugubrious, not having been a part of Project Sad Vocabulary I've never been fully trained in the proper way to use it in a sentence. But, I was part of: Project When People Come to Farms They're Oinking at Cows and Quacking at Horses, We Seriously Need to Fix That. It has served me well when conferring with barnyard animals in my day to day life.