can you spell 'misspell'?

if i read 'wierd' one more time on a sign, blog, or in the paper, i'm gonna go ballistic. i know the stupid rhyme is 'i before e except after c' but c'mon people...oh, and i also have a book club recommendation for you. it's called the dictionary.

P.S. you'd better not differentiate right from left by holding up your hands and seeing which index finger and thumb make an 'L', either.

a wohk in the pahk (to be said a la dick van dyke in 'mary poppins')

as the mercury in southern ontario rose to a balmy 1.9 degrees, and as i am the world's best procrastinator (self-proclaimed, mind you, but i bet i would beat you anyway), i went into guelph yesterday afternoon to hang out with two of my favourite babies (and their mommies, who are not too shabby either). contrary to the title of this post, there was not really any walking in the park (too much slush and ice to navigate precious cargo down the big pre-park hill), but there was a lot of walking. and a fair bit of talking, cake-eating, and some of us even filled our pants (shame on you, jess!).

it was a glorious day - sunny, crisp, mucky, with a hint of spring, and it was just what i needed to balance out the hours i have been spending trying to memorize the types and functions of white blood cells, the crazy mathetmatical formulas for lung elastance, and what the stomach looks like under a microscope as compared to the jejunum. although i was feeling quite apprehensive before the visit about taking so much time away from my studying/ panicking/desire to ram a pencil in my eye, it was a wonderful reprieve. so thank you girls! and thank you, my sweet babies!!

just one last note...as we walked and pushed the lucky monkeys in their deluxe, ready-to-scale-mountains stroller systems, with their visors to shade their drowsy eyes from the sun, their little warm fuzzy carseat sacs, their blankies, and their soft squishy pillows to cradle their heads...i wondered, for the umpteenth time, why someone couldn't make strollers for adults. someone hop on that, mmkay? i'll tradeja some really cool physiology facts about the liver that are sure to be party pleasers...

it's kinda hard to study when...

...something this cute sits on your anatomy textbook!

from comatose to furious in no time flat

as many of you will know, i am a passionate person, but not unless i am descending into the depths of one of my terrible depressions does this passion fuel rage. however, there is one person who can make me go from comatose to vibratingly murderous in about 0.243 seconds. his name is kris, and he lives downstairs.

b and i have taken to calling him 'the slug' because frankly, that's what he looks like, and i would estimate that his intelligence is at slug-like levels as well. (do take note of the fact that the slug in the diagram below is heading away from the maze entrance.) the two things that differentiate him from a slug, however, are a huuuuuge ego and a thunderous voice that he uses to announce/trumpet/bellow the details of his life to our entire neighbourhood. and because we are so fortunate to live above him, we are privy to every. fucking. thing. he. does. and yes, that includes sex, watching porn (we wish this was an uncommon occurrence, but alas, no.), using the bathroom (far less gross than the porn and sex), singing really terrible songs on his untuned guitar (almost worse than the sex), and other similarly revolting things that we could all do without hearing - and i mean ever.

kris' whole ego thing is odd, cuz i'm thinking most slugs have probably seen themselves in a mirror, and have the good sense to know they are slimy, lumpy, and pretty much disgusting to anyone--except other slugs, that is. enter kris' girlfriend, kristina (yes really. kris and kristina). she too, is from the sluggus grossus family, but is paler and has more hair. i know waaaaayyyy more about this girl than i know about some of my best friends, and there is a reason for that--it's TMI. contrary to popular belief, i don't want to know what you sound like at the height of ecstasy. i really don't want to be able to hear about (and then, actually hear the soundtrack for, your preferences for porn). i don't want to hear the sweet nothings you whisper/holler into the ears/tentacles of your lover/slug. i will like you better for not knowing that stuff, believe me.

speaking of being better for not knowing things...i just have to say that i didn't need to learn that slugs are hermaphrodites. i also didn't need to read ANY of the section on reproduction, and i'd suggest that you don't either.

as i am typing out this tirade, i can hear more of the daily slug-drama unfolding: "HEY KRISTINA DO YOU WANT SOME TEA?" "YEAH WITH LOTS OF MILK AND SUGAR, NOT LIKE LAST TIME. I ONLY SEEN YOU PUT IN 3 SPOONS OF SUGAR YESTERDAY." note that the hollering comes from our living room, which means they are probably next to each other on the couch. earlier they were watching 'superman,' which is one of the two movies they loop continuously on surround sound (the other is 'moulin rouge'). thankfully, he has not played anne murray today, nor has he played the CD recording of himself singing...but wait! hark! as he does like clockwork each day, he is launching into a million-decibel lecture at his seven year old daughter (yes, the same one whose bedroom door opens out to the oily futon where hermaphroditic slug-intercourse takes place). this time he's ragging on how sick and tired he is of cleaning up after her. (as an aside, she is actually pretty cute. from the looks of her, i don't think she is a full-blooded slug, but i worry about her prospects, given her custodial parent. which reminds me: what court of law in this godforsaken province determined him to be the better guardian?!) aha, just on time...she is now sobbing. so the slug should stop now--he usually keeps it up until she dissolves into helpless tears. it turns out that this is a win-win situation for everyone.

we need to get out of here. seriously. this is a violation of human rights on a number of levels, i'm sure of it. i think we will have to start a non-profit organization (entitled 'rescue mission: from slugs to safety') and an accompanying bank account for donations. you've got to help us get out of here. you know we'd do it for you. just follow the trail of slime up the hamilton mountain...but knock loudly, as we are holed up in our bedroom (located above the kitchen - the least disgusting noises come from there), wearing earplugs covered in cotton batting under our headphones with our heads pressed to our white noise-blaring sound machines.

p.s. does it help our cause to mention that we share a washing machine, and have started to suffer from strange, mysterious slugly symptoms (e.g., laziness, weight gain, affinity for parading our bloated bodies for all to see, etc.)

"say hello to my leetle friend..."

she's just pint-sized, really, weighing in at just under 10 lbs, but she has a very BIG personality. she has just recently celebrated 42 days on 'the outside' (that's 6 weeks, for all you mathematically-challenged folks) and manages to have her mommy, daddy, four sets of grandparents, and auntie kd wrapped around her (very long) baby finger. currently, she's stylin' in size 0 cloth diapers and sleepers with feet, though with the occurrence of several blow-outs, may need to wear size 1 pretty soon (and possibly lose the pants altogether). she is recovering from a recent bout of male-pattern baldness and mild cradle cap, and remained quite stoic throughout - though she did tend to visit the (milk) bar more frequently to cope with the embarrassment. she has been determined by her midwives (and her infant-experienced auntie k) to be 'freakishly strong,' bright, and very alert, and should probably be ready to walk, talk, and solve complicated algorithms by, oh, probably next week. may i introduce you to the world's newest orchestra conductor (she waves her arms around like she is conducting, both awake and asleep), super-sleeper (6.5 hrs at a time during the night - yay!) and professional stink-eye-giver...scout kathleen baynham-pooles!

why i want to be my cat

bona fide snow day

snow continued to fall for all of yesterday, and apparently all last night, because BAM! this is what i found when i (a) opened up our door, and (b) tried to find our car:

now, our situation's not as bad as it could've been, mostly because b only came home at 10 pm (she ventured to guelph for her basketball game, that girl is hard-core), and shoveled the driveway, stoop, and sidewalk for the third time in four hours (yes, i shoveled one of those three times!!). actually i don't know if this is an entirely representative picture of how crazy it is out there, but everything is closed, including work for b and skool for me, and i'm pretty sure i shouldn't drive to guelph for choir tonight. i suppose we could snuggle up and celebrate our 6th romantic valentine's day together....except we were planning to do it tomorrow, and we don't have any of the supplies we need to make the scrumptious dinner we planned. further, i have a lab report and an anatomy quiz tomorrow, which, it turns out, kinda kills the mood...

and we're expecting a shwack more

the spectrum of my weird-ness

i've been seeing this meme (scroll down to the 3rd or 4th entry) traverse the blog circuit and i definitely wanted to participate. i mean, who doesn't want to broadcast their various weirdnesses to the web-savvy public?

so, here are six weird things about me (i tell ya it was hard to limit myself):

1. i often 'see' words that are being spoken aloud - as in, a marquee-like banner rolls through my brain with the words typed out (usually in times new roman, though i would prefer arial). that is why when you tell me the name of your future child, invariably my first question will be 'how is that spelled?'

2. similarly, the spelling of names can make them or break them for me. a misplaced 'e' or some funky garbled spelling can lead to ruin, i tell you!

3. if i am suffering from insomnia, i will try to picture everyone i know asleep. or, i think of babies sleeping, because that is comforting and cozy and sweet.

4. i like baby food. specifically, i love strained pears.

5. the index and middle fingers on my left hand click every time i flex them. it drives b wild.

6. one of my nostrils is a significantly different size than the other. meaning, i won't be offended if you peer up there the next time you see me - in fact, i will be offended if you don't.

newsflash!

so it turns out, counter to my concerns of yesterday, that i was of great use during the karaoke-a-thon last night. though my nasal passages are kaput, my lungs are apparently quite healthy, and enabled me to perform a couple of hits with two other midwives-to-be who shared my penchant for self-humiliation in large crowds (i couldn't help but feel the whole night was reminiscent of tunes that would've been played on winnipeg's 1290 fox station, circa 1992). whatever the case, it was good times.

however stunned we may have rendered the (mostly drunk and oblivious) audience with our unadulterated talent, i must say that my favourite performances of the night came from a rotund, white-haired man wearing a tight, retro t-shirt emblazened with 'super star' (two words, not 'superstar'). it just worked for him, y'know? he first sang something country (wendy the honky-tonk would probably know the artist, but alas, i did not), and then an old showtune that i recognized but also could not name (apparently i need to hang out at this place more to up my 'karaoke cred'). anyways i enjoyed him. i would highly recommend a trip to the snooty fox in hamilton on a sunday night just to hang out with him.

it turns out that i am less and less able to create kleenex art, which is a positive thing. okay yet another tangent...but i have to get it out. every time i say/write the words 'it turns out' i always think of this one lecturer we had for anatomy, because he always used those words to describe things he thought were really interesting, or just really obvious. for instance: 'it turns out that our gastrointestinal tract is just one long tube connecting the mouth and the anus' or 'it turns out that we swallow about 1.5 litres of mucous a day' or my favourite, 'it turns out that people with injuries to their scapula will develop what look like the wings of a chicken' (?!). so now every time i utter/write those words, i can hear his nasal, annoying voice in my head...which frankly, i could do without. it's noisy enough up there already.

okay. i'm going to go watch supernanny, which my lovely woman-servant taped for me to watch upon my return from my class an hour ago. can i just say that i adore jo-jo? (i just about wrote 'and her naughty spot' but that takes things to a whole other level. if you watched the show, however, your mind would be out of the gutter and you'd know what i meant!!!)

i love this guy

i've been meaning to post this guy for a couple weeks - i am fascinated by him! he's the 'pale man' from the movie pan's labyrinth, a night which will forevermore be solidified in my mind as the night a bunch of yahoos smashed the passenger window of our car...yes, for the second time. no, they didn't take anything, as we hadn't replaced our stereo from the last time we got broken into. have i mentioned the bountiful love i have for hamilton?! gah!

anyways, i think this pale man is absolutely brilliant. i mean, how much more creepy can you get? he is skinny, pasty, saggy, and the only way he can see is to hold his hands up by his face...it's scintillatingly freaky! i love this character. love-love-love it! i wouldn't want to meet him in the middle of the night, but i am so impressed at the mastermind who thought him (it?) up. it was almost worth the shattered window...

my new trademark...

this pretty much sums up my weekend - and these pictures are only from this afternoon. i am a shuffling, snuffling vector of disease, and i am none too happy about it. this is getting ridiculous.

needless to say, i am going to be of little use to the karaoke-a-thon in which my fellow midwifery students are participating...i may show up to cheer them on if my fever drops, just for the amusement, as i am reaching new levels of insanity. i haven't left the house since thursday, and have only had the constant company of one neurotic, possessed cat. luckily for all of us, b has escaped (i just typed 'excaped', ha ha) periodically, to work out at the gym, and to make a few trips to the grocery store to buy mittfuls of kleenex, soup, and O.J. in the name of the 'what would shannon do' game i like to play (of 'what would jesus do' fame), i originally sent b to the LCBO to get some gin to throw at my problem...but alas, a cure was not to be found.

anywho. it's been a slice chatting to you, but i've got another few hours of being propped up in bed, calling out in my pathetically-stuffy voice for my gorgeous woman-servant to ply me with affection, orange juice, and lipton cup-a-soup (she is a very talented cook, as you can tell). :)

and whatever you do, don't hesitate to send me well-wishes, trashy magazines, and bonbons...

i have just been...educated?

okay, so i finished my last post and went up to the second floor of the library to my quiet little nook...and what did i come upon but one scantily-clad (i.e. top off) girl and one panting, perspiring boy getting it on against 'the journal of adult education.'



no joke.




what fun.

this is not a retraction...but it may be a reflection

okay, so yesterday's post probably came across as a little crusty. funny, that, cuz i was feeling pretty damn crusty, though my tongue was firmly implanted in my crusty cheek as i wrote...

after a decent night's sleep (periods during which i snored like a chainsaw, according to B), i had a revelation. actually that was a lie - i just wanted to say 'revelation.' i was, however, able to think about the issue from a bunch of different angles. interestingly, one of my friends from school, whose opinion i value a great deal, inspired this post, when she pointed out that my "directionless dripping sarcasm" was actually, um, how do you say...directed! she was right, of course - it was. but not quite in the way she implied, in that i was directing it towards all of us. more than anything, what happened yesterday was a repetition of similar patterns i have experienced - indeed, many of us have - over a lifetime.

so...i don't want you (whoever you may be) to feel attacked...but i would like you to think about it, and perhaps even comment on it, if you feel so inclined. why do we shy away from expressing unpleasantries (is that a word?!) head-on, and instead employ less-than-fair communication tactics to express how we feel? and if you had a strong, visceral reaction to what i wrote in the first place...what do you figure that's all about?

a musing...but not amused

*warning: this is a bit rant-ish, so if you aren't in the mood, DO NOT read further*

**seriously. this entry may put a bee in your bonnet, and may induce paranoia that i am talking about you. who knows, you might be right! but don't say i didn't warn you...**

so here's a question: how fair is it to hold out hope that people will actually tell us when they are upset with something we have said, done, implied, enacted, emailed...whatever? actually you know what, let's bring it in from the abstract, cuz what i really want to know is how fair is it for me to hope for this? personally, i like my criticism straight up and straightforward. have i hurt you or disappointed you? are my personal habits making you bonkers, or do i never call you back when i say i will? i'm serious here. how do you like hearing the not-so-glowing things from people in your life? would you rather everyone sweep it under the carpet and hope it goes away, never to be referred to again? or would you prefer the build-up-and-explode method, of which there are several variations (e.g., the build-up-and-explode-years-later edition, the build-up-and-explode-in-front-of-an-innocent-third-party approach, and the build-up-and-execute-silent-treatment version)?

after writing my gd outline until the wee hours of this morning, i was almost on my last nerve. luckily for me, someone chose 9 am to perform a mexican hat dance on my third-to-last one, which left a whole other two for all of today (which were subsequently used by 1. cleaning up the lumpy puddle of cat puke i nearly stepped in following my shower and 2. the bubblehead who, in addition to apparently bathing in 'white diamonds' - you go elizabeth taylor - also jostled my coffee-holding arm at the self-serve tim horton's). so, between the cat barf and my uplifting 12:30 class on toxins in breastmilk, i attempted to address built-up-and-exploded-over-email issues with said person, and then donned the guilt cloak for awhile (i have this thing where i am really selfish with blame, in that i like to keep it all to myself) but once i shirked that...i was pret-ty bugged.

now, by no means am i perfect, as anyone who knows me can attest. i have a very detailed series of log books that go back to my toddler years, upon whose lines are painstakingly etched (by me) the ways i am imperfect. while i'm at it, i might as well admit that i can be somewhat hypocritical, in that i don't always practice what i preach...a quality that i find quite repugnant in self as well as others. anyway. all i can tell you is i'm working on it. in fact, i'm getting pretty broke from working on it).

all directionless, dripping sarcasm aside, i am in a conundrum here. i really don't understand this shock and awe approach, yet i'd say more people than not use it. i spent a lot of time trying to reason it all out today, like: do we do this out of fear (of reproach, retaliation, rejection)? or is it just simply that it is easier to be on the offensive than to be vulnerable? are the things that irk us the most in others the things we need to work on ourselves? are we just too polite? how much of it is a result of our upbringing? and then lastly, what kind of valid, achievable alternatives really exist in those prickly, difficult situations when we need to communicate our not-so-happy feelings with someone we care about?

with the quickness of my anger this morning and on a couple of other recent occasions, i realize that my nerves for the 'build-up-and-explode' varieties of communication are few and close to the surface. not only is this problematic in terms of the amount of anger i could potentially expend, but if i am not careful, i could all too easily feed into the very cycle that puzzles me, by being so angry about the approach people use, that i become unapproachable. ha. the irony. i think there is validity in that, and i have added this to my personal to-do log book.

but i refuse to sit with this question alone, and encourage you to take a little self-survey and see what you find. what's your favourite way to 'do' criticism, and is it the same way that you like it done to you?

distractions

thanks to my good friend shannon's recommendation...reading stuff over here is why i almost peed my pants three minutes ago. i refer you to the one entitled 'take me, my mighty silverback.' soooo stupid. gah. back to the history of the CBC...

wild weekend...for us, that is

well, all i gots to say is: so much for endeavouring to write daily blog entries! (thank goodness i didn't pledge it to everyone on my blog, which was my original idea...)

yesterday was cottie's birthday (the big 29, whoo hoo!) and we took him out for dinner in TO with our friends maria and ruth. following some pretty decent indian food (you know how critical i can be about that!) we headed to his gig at gate 403 with the elizabeth shepherd trio. i'd really recommend checking out her site - has some clips of their shtuff, and a video as well. the gate 403 was hopping, and we consumed a couple pitchers of creemore (and a round of broken-down-golf-cart shots, courtesy of cottie's gf robyn) while we rawked out...overall a pretty great night, seeing as we actually left the house, and did social-y things in the big city (and found some friends that were willing to go out with us in public)...

today, my lovely fiancee has decided that she is throwing a superbowl party...for one. gad she's cute. i say, all the power to her. i may partake in some of the culinary fruits of her trip to the grocery store (hawaiian pizza, M&Ms, coke)...but alas, i will not be celebrating anything beyond that. i'm a werkin' girl. essays to write, readings to absorb, and notes to take. (and hell, if i'm going to procrastinate, i'll play solitaire on the computer. or maybe wash my hair or something.)

i haven't yet decided what i'm going to do with this blog, and who i'm writing for. it was originally a way to keep m' MB peeps informed as to the goings-on in the life of kd...but i think that might be slightly boring! i've also seen lots of people (some people i know, but also people whose blogs i read) that become really attached to writing for an audience, and start to feel neglected/ upset/worked up if they don't find any comments on what they have written. i too can see the potential for that happening...but here's my decision: instead of obsessing (beyond the usual) however, i've just decided to let it evolve. yup, that's what i'm gonna do. so...until the next time i decide to blather randomly (hopefully after i finish writing my paper for my communications course on the history and inception of CBC, and maybe after i've reviewed congenital heart defects, respiration, and completed my case study)...have a wonderful day. and enjoy the superbowl, if that's your thing...