if a cow can ride a bicycle.........

so a few days ago, i announced on fb that i got a shiny new bicycle. some of you found this quite amusing.
the husband has decided that i need more exercise. we all know i hate exercise. (dragon boating does not count as you get to sit down while you are doing it.) so okay, i can ride a bike. fooled him!  you get to sit. this works.
so we decide to try out my new bike. on my old bike, i had these great saddle bags (no! not the ones attached to my thighs) i wanted him to attach them to my new bike. why do you need this? he asks. to carry my stuff! my camera, food in case i get hungry, my cigs and my water bottle. first of all he says, we're not going to be gone that long you don't need all that and your water bottle goes in the holder on the cross bar. ummm hello? that's for my coffee cup.
off we go. by the first block i think my head is going to explode cause either my helmet shrunk or my head grew a size or two. so we have to stop so i can adjust it, asked him if i had helmet head yet, he just gave me "the look". fine, helmet fits now, second block my thighs are starting to burn. change gears he says, okay which one is the non thigh burning gear? decide to jay walk(bike) across the street and this car comes out of nowhere burning down the road. dodged that one! by block three, i'm starting to get a bit wobbly. not sure if it was me, the bike or perhaps the couple of glasses of wine i'd had for fortification before we left. time to go home. i suppose we will be doing this again and perhaps i will make it 4 blocks next time!
on a side note- my cousin lorna, puts in several hundred kms every week. she is my new hero!

dreadfull?

i am seriously considering getting dreads.this has been a long time coming,this is not one of my random whims. last fall, the daughter and i were in downtown vancouver shopping. we stopped into a shoe store (surprise!) cause as usual, i had on totally inappropriate footwear and my feet were killing me. in the shoe store was this granny, somewhere in her middle 70's. she had long beautiful grey dreads and to make it even more perfect, she was buying multi-coloured high tops. instantly my hero!
so we got to talking. told the daughter that this may be the solution to my naturally messy hair. except for a few short hours after i leave the hairdresser i always look like i just got out of bed, and not the "just had the best sex of my life" look but rather the "don't you ever comb your hair?" look. it curls and it corkscrews and it frizzes with no thought process as to doing so in a pleasingly symmetrical way. if i had dreads, people would assume that i meant for my hair to look like this.

                                              Johnny Depp has dreads! have i ever mentioned that
                                        we share a birthday? yet another reason for dreads.

two things are stopping me at this point. #1. i would have to stop dying my hair cause i'm pretty sure it's impossible to dye dreads. not sure if i want to let my inner grey out just yet. #2. the husband. he's a tad on the conservative side. he's not on board with this just yet. but everyone knows that i eventually get him to come around to my way of thinking. i have a plan........................

                                                        i will tell him that i will look like this!

so the pros are.. i will not look like i just got out of bed. there's a good chance i will cause a riot at the country club. johnny depp and i will have yet another thing in common.
the cons are... i will have to let my hair go grey. if i don't like it or get bored of it i will have to shave my head.(which is really not a con cause i've been bald before and have a very nice shaped head AND i never had a bad hair day). so the cons are.. i will have to let my hair go grey.
hmmmmm................whaddaya think?

dear mr. policeman

dear mr.policeman;
i would like to take this opportunity to thank you for going out of your way to show me the errors of mine.
thank you for noticing that i had my blinker on and was trying to get out of the HOV lane, which i had no business being in because i drive a gas guzzling SUV all by myself. thank you for noticing that no-one would let me in and that the carpool in front of me was going about 30 km BELOW the speed limit. thank you for following me into the mall and turning on your shiny red light so i would notice you. thank you for understanding that applying lip balm to my cracked lips is not the same as re-applying lipstick while driving.
i just wanted to point out to you that while you were lecturing me, somewhere in the city, a drug deal was going down, some guy was beating up his wife and an old lady was being mugged. i feel bad that i kept you from going after the bad guys because you had to take the time to educate me on gas emissions and the importance of following the rules of the road.
oh! and thank you for not giving me the 2 tickets i so richly deserved.
i am duly chastised.

stand up and be counted

so yesterday i open the mail to find out that i have been selected to participate in the census. crap! i hate all things governmental that smak of big brother. the last time i was selected i had to answer about 400 things pertaining to my private life. i can't quite remember, but i'm pretty sure they asked how many times a week my husband i had sex. so i was ranting and raving and swearing that i wasn't going to do this. the husband calmy pointed out that it was against the law not to do it and i could get arrested. i then remembered that orange is not my colour, so fine, i'll answer their stupid questions.
okay they changed it. they no longer want to know about my sex life. yea! in fact they really don't want to know anything other than
1. how many people live with me
2. our ages
3. what language(s) we speak
4. what our first language was
and that was it! what was the point of this waste of money?
oh! there was one more question. would i consent to having my answers made available to my descendants in 92 years from now. just to be cantankerous i said no. i'm pretty sure my descendants can figure out for themselves that i spoke english.
senseless census!

and justice and freedom for all?

so bin laden is dead.
something is just not sitting right with me. i am not disputing the fact that he was an evil man and deserved to die. what i am disputing is the way that he died.
or did he die? a quick burial at sea? no pictures of the body? when they hung sadam they were pretty quick in publishing the pictures of him and his sons.
there is no substantive evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11. he never took credit for it and there is a theory that is was an inside job with out side help. bush liked his wars and was not above starting them (need i mention iraq?)
dancing in the streets! or dancing on a grave? vengeance is not justice.
they "may" have killed bin laden but they have not killed the ideology.
that he was responsible for the deaths of thousands again i do not dispute it but where is the justice in taking him out in a stealth attack? if they knew where he was, why didn't they at least try to take him alive and put him on trial? even sadam had his kangaroo court.
this little charade should guarantee that obama gets re-elected for sure. nothing makes the americans happier than a good old fashioned lynching.
just saying.

where have all the freaks gone?

i was driving through spokane last week and i saw a sign announcing that the carnival was back in town.
remember the carnival? cotton candy, riding the rides til you puked? the not-so-scarey house of horrors? or how about the greasy carni guys that your mother warned you stay away from?

carnival - carne vale - latin meaning farewell to the flesh. (don't you just love latin?)
they used to put on such a good show. now it's just everyday stuff.
300 pound woman - see that at walmart all the time
the tattooed man - everyone has tattoos these days
siamese twins - now we call them conjoined and there are documentaries about them on tv
the bearded lady- hello! cross dressers!!!
my point (if i have one) is that what used to be abnormal or freakish is now run-of-the-mill ordinary and mundane. there was a time when the aforementioned were oohed and ahhed over, where you had to pay money to see them and children's eyes were sometimes covered.
our tolerance levels have increased, which is a good thing, but still, wouldn't you like to be shocked or amazed, pay your penny and ooh and ahh? there are no more freaks, just people being people.
we need a good old fashioned carnival. maybe in a year or two when all the radiation that has leaked into the pacific ocean causes all the marine life to mutate, we will be able to display the 6 eyed fish and the double headed squids. then we will get our own chance to ooh and ahh .
until then, i'm still on the look-out for the invisible man.

sorry david, i'm not a fruit fly

according to david suzuki, we are all just fruit flies. excuse me?
fruit flies live for approximately 24 hours. they hatch, have sex, lay 10 billion eggs, eat your fruit and die. i fail to understand that analogy. okay i get it, but really, it is pushing it a bit to the extreme don't you think?
he takes extremism just a little bit too far. global warming?! hah! i don't think so. obviously he hasn't stepped outside lately. it's cold and wet and temperatures are well below normal for this year. doesn't seem like anything we need to be worrying about except for the fact that the lake isn't going to warm up anytime soon. okay so the arctic and antarctic oceans are warming up a tad and the ice floes are melting. this might be a problem for the penguins but i'm still in a coat and it's mid april!
took the carbon footprint test. you know the one. the one that measures how many earths we would need to sustain us if everyone lived like i do. i failed miserably. according to the test, it would take 10 1/2 earths to sustain us all if you all lived in my world.
1. drive an suv - fail
2. fly in an airplane lots - fail
3. do not grow my own organic fruits and veggies - fail
4. leave my computer plugged in - fail
5. have not installed solar panels on my house - fail
6. i use a blow dryer and aresol hairspray - fail
the list goes on, but you get the picture.
so what's a poor fruit fly to do?
i think i'll leave a few lights on so the burglars think i'm at home, pack up my blow dryer and fly south til global warming comes to my end of the world and i can put away my winter clothes.

my invitation must be lost in the mail

i confess-i am a closet monarchist.
communism, socialism, democracy, totalitarianism, none of them quite cut it like a good old fashioned royal rule. absolute power for one. every whim attended to, every wish granted, every need anticipated. really, what more could one ask for?
i try to live my life as queenly as possible.
1. my parade wave is impeccable.
2. i am the wearer of fabulous hats.
3. i own a lap dog.
4. i believe that your purse and shoes must match.
5. i have no aversion to living in a castle.
6. i like tea and crumpets
7. i prefer to be driven
8. i have brought my daughter up like a princess.
9. i'm always up for a good photo-op.
10. it wouldn't bother me not to wear the same dress twice.
11. i really really like large ostentatious pieces of jewelry.
12. i have a perfectly round head so my crown would never slide sideways.

and well i have never said "off with his head"! i have, on occasion, ordered other bodily parts to be either removed or at the very least, have harm done to them.

pardon my cynicism

i tried, i really tried.
at first i refused to read this book despite raves from friends and book reviewers. i assumed it was a book where every other sentence was "praise the lord" not that i have anything against the lord, just the phrase. then on a night of tv desperation i watched the movie.
so.........it's not what i thought! hmmmmmmmmm maybe i will read the book.
for probably the second time in my personal history, i liked the movie wayyyyyyyyy better than the book. the author should thank julia roberts for saving everyone from the drivel.
at first i thought, wow what a brave woman to take off to places unknown and live, really live the cultural lifestyle and do it alone! kudos elizabeth!
things fell into place about 1/3rd of the way through. i had my "ahah" moment.
this was not a personal journey! this was a book assignment! she had been given a rather large advance BEFORE she ever left the ground. when a person writes for themselves they rarely think of an audience they just write, but when there is an audience involved, phrases are coloured, feelings are altered to fit the scene, thoughts are abridged. in other words, this whole book is just one big editing job. it's not a memoir of the true sense, it's a sham. shame on you elizabeth!
on the other hand, maybe, because she knew there would be an audience, it added a quality to her writing that perhaps would not have been there had she just been scribbling in her personal journal. listen to this sentence.  "they in no way match this stinky, slow,sinking,mysterious, silent, weird city. venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place."  cmonnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that is not the stuff of personal diaries, that is the stuff of "i've got to earn my big fat advance for this pretend journal.
okay! i feel better now. got that off my chest.  rant is over, heart rate down to normal.

when we were young and beautiful

buried deep in a corner of my ex mother-in-laws basement lay a box of photos. they had been
sitting there for over 20 years. i knew they were there and from time to time i thought about having
her ship them out to me, but something always came up and i'd forget to do it. then i figured that they
had been thrown out after the divorce and i gave them up for lost. imagine my surprise when just yesterday
the ex himself handed them over to me. he had been back east visiting his mother, found them and gave them back to me!
these photos were largely of my early 20's, before we started dating.
a part of my wild and crazy youth. i look at them now and can't believe how young i was and yes, i was beautiful. we all were. we had the glow of youth, our faces weren't careworn with responsibility, our bodies weren't dragged down by gravity and babies. the only thing we had to worry about was what to wear to the next party. it was an exciting time of concerts and parties and talking long into the night, solving the worlds problems over a bottle of cheap chianti.
i look at some of the pictures and just laugh, the memory is still so sharp, not like it was yesterday, but certainly not like it was 30 years ago either.
would i go back if i could?
depends on what day you ask me :)