A Pox On You

I think this building dispenses small amounts of crack dust through the central air system.  My mom has even commented to me that she's had some weird dreams, but I think last night took the cake for me.  I hesitate to even put these into writing.  In one of them my dad had a slightly challenged identical twin that showed up at some party at my parents' old house.  And I kept confusing him for my dad if he didn't say anything.  And then I got in our car as we were preparing to leave.  Weird to host a party at a house and then leave yourself while guests are still there but I guess I still have moving issues.  And from outside I was witness to my dad's twin almost running out into the street and getting scared by passing cars.  In my second dream I went back to high school to finish a credit (12 yrs later?) and Katie was there.  And we ran into each other in the bathrooms and she says "oh boy," and I screamed "get out of my fucking life."  That one sums up pretty accurately how I feel about her, except I probably wouldn't have vocalized it quite like that.  But holy weirdness batman.  I think maybe I was oversleeping and that was my brain's way of saying GET UP.  But I'm also partial to the crack dust theory.

Life with mom has been pretty great.  Aside from being displaced from my bed we're having a good time.  She's fairly early to bed most nights so I have time to myself then.  I have someone cooking about half the meals which is something I haven't had since I moved out.  Half the meals, half the trips to the garbage chute.  I'm actually really going to miss her when she leaves.  A lot.

I'm in the middle of a David Gilmour novel, so it's really interesting the controversy that's in the news.  As a prof at U of T he has a balls to tell someone interviewing him that if you're interested in literature by a female author go down the hall because you won't find any in his class.  And to defend that he says he only teaches what he's passionate about and the only female author that he has passion for is Virginia Wolfe so he does one short story of hers.  He likes man's man stuff, whatever that means.  He's not mean-spirited or a misogynist at heart.  He's just an author that for a brief moment forgot how to use his words.  If he had said, "I stack my syllabus with what I'm most passionate about", and if someone questions the lack of female writers he can just say they aren't at the top of his list.  He doesn't have to say they're all at the bottom.  Dumb dumb.  I would like to believe he's just lying to himself.  I think there is a lot of crossover between genders and writing styles.  Anyways, that's a whole other thing.  I'm going to finish this book, because it's effin good, and raspberry to that.

Our family is flirting with the idea of going North for Thanksgiving again.  If the weather dips down into the single digits it's not going to be a very pleasant experience.  We might just go up on Saturday, close er up, hit up the Haliburton Studio Tours, and then head back down for an inaugural  Thanksgiving in C-burg.

I guess my last piece of news, is that we all have to be very very careful with our privacy and our money.  My dad recently had his work email hacked, and the effin effers used information from his email account to draft a letter to his financial advisor asking him to transfer all of his retirement savings into a different account.  Obviously the advisor said uhhh, no.  But the letter they drafted mentioned C-burg, it mentioned an upcoming trip to California my mom is taking.  Although they got it wrong and thought the itinerary was for my dad.  It's creepy, it's invasive, and it could happen to ANYONE.  They also used his contact list to send out an email asking them to log into a website to view a google doc about wealth management, in an attempt to ascertain their email account information.  And then they deleted his contact list so he couldn't send out a blast for them to ignore it.  That's why I operate without a contact list.  It might be a little bit inconvenient sometimes, but it's worth the peace of mind.  I had a fucking conniption when I found out it wasn't just a spam attack but something much more serious.  If the a-holes that did it weren't in Kuala Lumpur I would go fuck their days up.  It made me realize that it was only slightly targeted, and this could be happening dozens or hundreds of times a day.  And you only find out when your account is suddenly empty.  I'm getting angry again just thinking about it.  A pox on you, Malaysians.  But not all of you, just the jerky ones.

That's all from me.  Byeeee.

That Time My Mom Moved In

I have a house guest staying with me.  I`ll give you some hints.  She's a bit shorter than me.  We have the same eye colour.  And oh yes, she gave birth to me.  I can hear her lightly snoring in the next room as we speak.  It's almost soothing, like one of those sound machines that plays the sound of the ocean.  She moved in two weeks ago and things have been great.  She's picking up the grocery bills, so I'm eating all sorts of weird and wonderful foods I am far to cheap to ever buy for myself.  Blood Orange SanPellegrino is just about the tastiest thing I have ever had, ever.  Yerrrr-my.

My mom dropped the bomb on me yesterday that she's staying tomorrow night as well.  Fridays and Saturdays have become my own days to unwind.  And when I say have become I mean one time, but now this week I will have one more night on the blow-up mattress.  I usually switch between the mattress and my 2-seater couch throughout the week.  Sometimes I sleep better all curled up.  Or as curled as I can get, which in all honesty isn't very curled.  I half-invited myself to join my mom this weekend for an excursion to Uxbridge.  But logistically that could mean spending Saturday night in Cobourg and coming home to the mattress, without ever having a night of reprieve in my own bed.  My mom offers constantly to take the air mattress but I refuse.  Mama Bear gets the bed that's just right in this story.  And since I'm also going away next weekend that would total 3 straight weeks without a night's rest.  Isn't life so tough??

We've had a few small accomplishments since my mom moved in.  I finally got all the pieces from Nikki to set up my internet as wireless.  At first it wasn't working, and even messing around on the administration page didn't help.  I felt like a failure until Nikki told me all that was required was plugging it into the wall.  So a day later I tried again and bam, success.  I did hop back into admin to add a password though.  Too many neighbours in close proximity to steal my 'widths.  My mom said, "This is great, so any time I stay over I can bring my laptop and have access."  I said in return, "Lets wait until you're not a house guest to talk about visits, k?"  And also just tonight I downloaded the Netflix channel for Wii.  I find it harder to navigate than online, but perhaps only because I am accustomed to it.  On top of those wireless achievements I got this place into about the 80% clean percentile.  I don't really know how I lived for the past few months with sooo much junk everywhere.  There are still remnants of junk.  My mom likes to comment about how nice it could look if I would just.....and I like to cut her off there and tell her to stuff a sock in it.

Speaking of sock stuffing, the gems that bought my parents' house have turned out to be thieving bastards.  Luckily as their claim of a wet carpet unraveled it was determined they felt the carpeting company had installed the carpet into a wet environment.  Ergo my parents have no responsibility.  Hopefully it stays that way.  And the carpet company will tell those two it was bone dry and where they can stuff it.  Any damage after closing is their own.  I told my dad if they manage to hold him responsible for any dollar value I will defecate on their property and in their pool until I feel their grief is on par with my parents.  I hope it doesn't come to that.

With that joyful tidbit I bid the internet adieu for the night.  Sleep tight internet, sleep tight.

See You In September

September is upon us, and it's already a subpar month.  My air conditioning is officially broken.  I did some master googling and found that the air filter might be the problem.  So I crossed my fingers, bought a new filter and started her up again.  And within minutes it was once again blowing hot air.  The good news is that it starts with cold.  Which might limit the possibilities for potential damage in a good way.  But what do I know.  I've asked a friend of mine with an HVACing husband to give me some hot tips.  Until then I will have to hope the days stay moderately cool.  Especially since starting tomorrow there will be two bodies creating heat in this apartment.

I went back out to Cobourg today, to give my parents a hand and wish my father happy birthday.  We drove out to Newcastle to start emptying their rented storage unit.  I got a bit angry with them a week ago when I found out they hadn't made a payment on the unit.  I was like, "HAVEN'T YOU SEEN STORAGE WARS???  Cause they're making a Canadian version.  And you don't want to see yourself on it."  After we got back to the house, my mom and I continued to unpack and my dad went back for a second trip.  Overall they were trying to trim down on furniture, they also bought new really nice new china cabinets.  Some old family china that used to be closed up in boxes is finally on display.  After lunch and a bit of chatting I got on the road back home.  Although I'll have the weekends to myself, tonight is my last night alone for a long time.  Breath in, breath out.

The good news is I'm going to use my mom to help me finish a few projects around the house.  Including buying and setting up a new desk.  And perhaps getting some old stuff into boxes and down into my storage locker.  At least this is the final push I need to get everything here put away and in order.  And she might give me the push I need to get some bar stools.

In other news, I rolled my own sushi last night and it was AMAZING.  Oh I can't wait to get that going again.  And for next time Kyle has recommended a butcher we can pick up some sushi grade ahi tuna.  Soon we'll be consummate professionals.  Sayonara.