My Cat is Trying to get me Pregnant

And it's not how you'd think!

There was that one time, when she was a kitten, and she made the sharp realization that I had scaled up versions of the milk-delivery system she'd enjoyed as an infant, sure. But only once does one let their cat molest their sleeping body. If you're one of the people who has ever asked why I bother wearing pyjamas when I live alone in the hottest city in Canada, the answer is cat mouth-to-nipple related. My darling She Ra has moved on to more nefarious ways of ruining my sex life than scarring me emotionally. That is: condom tampering.

A big thank you to Kathy (check out her blog and leave lots of comments insisting she get back into it - seriously girl, it's been too long and you're too lovely): my compadre noticed that, "uh...there is a rip...puncture? Sydney. She Ra has been chewing on your condoms." Six. Six condoms had been bitten. Only one or two punctures each, so nothing conspicuous enough to draw attention, had we not been specifically looking closely at the condoms (reason below). That cat is lucky I have been getting none. Whatabitch.

yeah. she looks like a villain.

Which also explains why I was showing Kathy my condoms in the first place: they expire in two months. Dear. God.

Big Fat Yoga Crush

If you don't do yoga, I will probably seem like a creep, but if you do, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. A yogacrush. When you basically fall in love with a certain, or many, yoga teachers whose classes you frequent. You may remember a previous post about my yogacrush on Tracy from Moksha Yoga Halifax. These are teachers whose classes you not only love, but who make you want to practice better. You want to be the class pet, getting praise, and ample help along the way. That's the big one for me: any teacher who will give me an adjustment is immediately really high in my book, particularly if it's an awkward or hilarious adjustment (a couple of days ago Hannah at Moksha Yoga Monteal aggressively grabbed my hips, straightened them, and began to help stretch my hamstring, for instance).

Well I have a new one. I am big time in love with Annie from Moksha Montreal. She is so charming, willing to make fun of the class and play while still respecting the spiritual renewal it can provide. And yes, she gives ample shout outs ("this is beautiful!") and is not afraid to touch your sweaty, twisted body. And she has the most adorable French Canadian accent to boot.

Today she came up to me and apologized "I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name," and after I reminded her, she said "Sydney, you've had an absolutely beautiful practice today. Amazing."

flutter flutter flutter.

Weekend Survival. Mostly.

Ok, beloved team. Sit down. There is something I need to tell you.

I fell off the wagon. And hit the ground running.

I know - you're all heartbroken, right? My brother's reaction? "About time!"

I realized a while ago that I wasn't going to last until a draft of my thesis was done, which had been the original goal, and as long as abstaining didn't feel like an inconvenience or an obligation I was happy to do it. But on Saturday night, I just really wanted a beer. And it was fun.

I wanted to die Sunday, however. I would have been upset if I had missed yoga Sunday, but I managed to drag my butt to the last class of the day. I think that, my friends, is a truly impressive feat. But I had to do laundry today because of it - my towel stunk of alcohol sweat.

So, what I am doing these days is not drinking when I really don't need/want to drink. The casual "well, I guess if you're having one" beers are a thing of the past. Mid-day burger beers, for instance. But as it gets increasingly nice out in Montreal, a cold beer or a pitcher of sangria on a patio is just too irresistible.

Of course, no drinking the rest of this week - I NEED to get my ass moving on this paper. Groan.


Nine days left on the yoga challenge! I don't know if I'm going to drop the daily habit though...We'll see...

Post-Truro Reality

Today is the last day of my 4 week vacation from working on my thesis. Time to start working like a God damn dog for the next 3 months.

This was a fairly epic Truro. No photos to come. No explanations pending. Truro is an experiences best limited to the bar(n).

That said, it has reminded me that I desperately need to get back in shape.

Resolution: no more booze until I finish my thesis + exercise of some variety every single day.

No lie.

This is what is so hard about post-Truro reality. You look forward to it ever since Christmas ends, then the weekend comes and then it is gone. It is as heartbreaking as that moment on Christmas day when you realize that it's time to start throwing out all the wrapping paper. But Truro seems especially hard, because every Christmas you know you will be seeing your family. Truro runs the gambit. And this year could be my last. Eventually I may be too old to binge drink and hit on 17 year-old boys while playing some truly gritty rugby. And Truro is, as my last comment indicates, a physically close experience. I want to be snuggling everyone I am mildly acquainted with right this instant. But alas, instead I have rug burn and work to do, not to mention a cold and alienating city to return home to.

fuck rug burn.

My Guide to a Better Me (and You!)

I am on the path of self-actualizing my transcendental perfection. Making physical what is spiritually self evident.

Also known as, trying to reach peak physical hotness.

I'm tired of all this "perfection is relative" nonsense. Ok, yeah, maybe it is, but that doesn't mean we should just accept what we've been McHanded. Time to acknowledge that human flaws exist, and that it is ok to try to stamp them out.

I am full of bullshit right now. Basically I just have altered my daily regimen again, after my time in Cali, and am happy to share with you the depths of my vanity.

Step 1: Inside Out
Vitamins and such! Omega 3-6-9 to boost my immune system, Vitamin E to make my hair, skin and nails awesome (though originally started taking it because apparently it helps prevent lactic acid build up that will wake you up in the night with debilitating calf cramps - I know you know what I'm talking about), Glucosamine because I got it for free and it helps with joints, and Spirulina in case I don't get all my veggies. No one looks good sick and limping.

Step 2: Thick Shiny Hair!
Not the old fashioned way, the new, Finnish, Vogue-recommended way. Viviscal! A Hair thinning treatment that has been found to make those of us not balding grow thicker, stronger and longer locks. May contain shark. Whatever.

Step 3: Whitestrips.
Really white teeth are only occasionally frightening - yellow teeth always are.

Step 4: FaceFaceFace
Gotta insure the moneymaker. Viviscal apparently, alongside the sweet intended side affects, makes you break out. Fucking sharks and their black magic. So I balance that with Proactive Cleanser in the morning and at night. If I shower or wash my face during the day, I go for a gentler cleanser (I have both Keihl's Ultra Facial Cleanser and L'Occitane Amande Pomme Cleansing Oil - this one was a sweet stranded-at-the-Houston-airport based discovery). After washing, apply a gentle toner, Keihl's Ultra Toner. Follow promptly with a light facial moisturizer and, in the morning, SPF 45 sunscreen, or in the evening, Olay Regenerist Microsculpting Cream and Keihl's Avocado Eye Cream. Only perfection will do!

Step 5: Inner Zen - Outter Hotness
Hot Yoga. I try to go everyday - it keeps me sane on all sorts of levels. It gives me a break from work, it lets me focus entirely on myself for an hour and a half, and it means I can buy chocolate on my way home relatively guilt free.

Step 6: Green Tea
Abandon coffee, all ye who wish to enter the realm of hotness. It makes you prone to bloating, stains your teeth, and make thou a jittery, addicted mess.

Step 7: Early to Bed, Early to Rise
You gotta get shit done between aiming for physical perfection - like mark a million papers and write a god damn thesis. But you must avoid looking haggard while doing so. So, up no later than 9:00, even on weekends, to bed no later than 1:00. 8 hours of sleep minimum whenever humanly possible.

These are the tenants! May they lead me through the shadow of the Valley of the Unfortunate Looking. 

Online Overload

An ironic title? I mean, there have been no posts! What the fuck, right?

My apologies. As they so often are, my energies have been divided. I have been exploring other internet exploits.

Namely, the hilarious, if not alarming, world of plentyoffish.com.

I admit it to you, because you must know all.

It was a move motivated more by curiosity more than anything else. What can I say – those “meet sexy singles NOW!” ads that have been popping up alongside my illicit Law & Order episodes finally piqued my interest. And I know people who have used the site, so I figured I would see what it was all about.

This was something which I clearly did not think through in any sort of detail, of course. Do I want to ever actually meet up with strangers from the internet? Absolutely not. Do I even really want to talk to people from the internet who are going to hit on me without knowing me? That one turns out to be especially disheartening.  I had someone message me saying "You seem like a smart, funny girl, who shares my values." His values? "only interested in white women who only date white men. Those are just my values." Nice of you to use a display picture without your white hood in it - it really wouldn't show off those pretty blue eyes to your best advantage, I guess.

Ugh.

It is a sort of creepy world (read: my first contact was with a 44-year-old management professor, who I hope to God I never meet), one which I am not the least bit suited for. Because, despite what you may know about me, I try to be a nice person. Or, perhaps the more significant factor here is, I was never hit on a lot growing up. I only had two boyfriends in high school, and not a whole lot in between. I have never known how to handle myself under male attention. Especially unwanted attention. Usually, in bars, for instance, I just ignore people. But, on pletnyoffish, I mean, that’s the point, right? So how do you tell someone that they sound nice and all, but you really don’t want to meet lonely 30-year-old gingers in the real world?

But it does provide a nice ego boost. It’s horrible. I simultaneously feel awesome, receiving all these messages from strangers saying how awesome I seem (my word portrait was exquisite, to be fair) and yet so intensely superficial: “Ha, what were you thinking, 40-year-old finance guy?” “No picture? NO WAY!” “Come on, be serious now my unibrowed friend.” Yes, my inner dialogue is that inauthentic at times. But only when the internet is making me into a bad person.

I am going to have to part ways with it immediately.  Sorry world of internet dating – I am truly not ready for you.

Joe Jeans | Cigarette Cut | Lauren Wash | $174.00 CAD

On the less free and self-confidence boosting side of things, I did make my first ever internet clothing purchase! This world is probably more dangerous in the, my parents are going to get a 350.00$ bill for jeans I never tried on, but it feels all so much more satisfying. I am excited. Two pairs of Joe Jeans, cigarette cut, in both the Lauren and Tessa washes. Expensive? Yes. Worth it to avoid the excruciating experience of jean shopping? God I hope so. 

These babies are internet strangers I cannot wait to welcome into my home.

Maybe a real shopping trip soon though...

Girl Regressing in Light of Impending Dental Horrors

Am I still allowed to call myself a girl? Young-lady? Ugh.

Anyhow, tomorrow I have a dental appointment which I fear will result in a root canal. My dentist back Calgary told me he was worried I would need one, and that he wouldn't have the time to do one before I left, which is why I didn't have it dealt with then. Now I'm going to a dentist I don't know.  And not even the dentist I didn't know but who nonetheless was recommended to me by Dr Sheppard, and who the internet had confirmed is the tops. No, instead I have his 28-year-old baby-faced "associate." Seriously, there is nothing about the practice's website that puts my mind at ease, least of all the classical music and photos of people giving awkward open mouthed "smiles" (which really prove why you're not supposed to smile at monkeys - the people in these photos look like they thirst for my blood).

My "dentist" is "Dr." Henri Leblanc. Seriously - check this guy out, because I'm pretty sure he still gets IDed in bars.

So, apparently my coping mechanism is nostalgic escapism. Last night I dreamed that I was both playing Nintendo games (wherein, I kid you not, Mario was running drugs - though, you know, with all the mushroom power ups may not be too big a jump) and hanging out on a grassy lawn with three members of N'Sync. Yeah, only three: JC, Joey and Lance. These are perhaps the three most random members of N'Sync for me personally to dream of hanging out with (boy, is that ever a fucking sentence). Really though, Justin is the only one who still has a career (being a second rate Joan Rivers doesn't count Bass) and Chris Kirkpatrick was my favourite. Yes - you read that correctly. I know I'm not alone either, because N'Sync-mania circa 2001 was such that, in an attempt to plumb the depths of available information about N'Sync members, I had my first encounter with fanfiction erotica. Yeah. Starring Justin Timberlake and Chris Kirkpatrick. You can't even make this shit up.

Now, my more grown up self is watching Psycho and falling in love with Anthony Perkins while awaiting my last final chewable meal with Claire.

Does Anthony Perkins count as a more acceptable celebrity crush?

he's kind of dreamy when he's not in elderly drag

Note: I was tired of my blog being a haven for those who wished to gaze longingly on Chris Kirkpatrick's visage. And so it is gone. Mourn quietly.

Yes. I am that smell.

I am, miraculously, sitting in the airport.

I woke up to K, calling me from outside my house. She only offered to give me a ride yesterday. Had she not, I would be asleep or cursing myself.

Yesterday I finished a marathon of marking - a seriously impressive feat, I may add, marking 146 exams in 2 days - and went to Ye Olde Orchard to have dinner and a beer with my fellow TAs, Claire and Kristin. I also invited the students from my conference, and three actually came.

Long story short, I was doing tequila shots at 2:00 am that were bought for my students and I (everyone else had left about an hour or so earlier), packing at 4:00, waking up an hour before I had to be at the airport.

My mother called me yesterday to assure that I would not "look sloppy" when I got off the plane - we are touring my dad's new business acquisition straight from the airport. I took much offence from this phone call.

And here I sit. Greasy. Hungry. A touch dehydrated.


And She Ra has peed all over herself.

Sorry fellow airport patrons.

Vanquished Red Head - Impolite Library Patron

So after just over a year as a spicy red head, I have returned literally and figuratively to my roots. Courtesy of the Funky Toque, the outrageously francophone salon I go to (in 2 trips I have had 3 people deal with me who "don't really speak good English"), I am once again a brunette. This decision was made initially on a strictly pragmatic basis - it is too time consuming and costly to maintain the fire engine shade of rouge that I liked best, and my inexplicable inability to book a hair appointment before my style has irritated me to the brink of a sanatorium trip left me often times looking like a ragged carrot. Ragged. Carrot. Let the image wash over you. I am a poet.

However, I am taking the opportunity to cue in a more metaphysical change. Because, with no philosophy in my life, I miss metaphysics.

Perhaps I will post a picture of this revolution inspiring hair-do when I am not sitting in the McLellan library not working on my 6'000 word paper. I have one week to write this paper which is, in case I have not already wined about this, based on a 947 page novel which I am 440 pages into. My previous hope that I would be able to write my paper without completing the mammoth tome has been quashed by reviews remarking at the incredible turn the novel takes at its mid-point. Great news.

It would have been far more appropriate if I had posted this prior to  procrastinating in the library, but here is my comprehensive list of bad habits which I hope to expunge alongside my ginger coif:

A propensity to avoid yoga

My tolerance for dishevelled living arrangements

An inability to reply promptly to a facebook message or wallpost, e-mail, or phone call

Putting off necessary chores - grocery shopping, filling prescriptions, getting laundry appropriate coinage from HSBC...

Binge drinking 

Binge eating

Leaving school work to the last minute

Procrastinating

Not answering on Skype

Leaving my cupboards open

Using my cat to kill spiders with which I have made inconvenient peace treatie

Talking myself out of working at the library

Bringing my laptop to bed with me - in the non sexy, playing sporcle to 2 am way

Playing sporcle until 2 am

the Biggest Loser

Wafflesexual

So the Martlets lost in the semi-finals yesterday. I am not overly surprised - we were playing Laval, and they are a very talented team. Beatable, certainly, but a tough battle nonetheless. I was very crushed to have been taken off halfway through the second half. I missed a huge tackle, which resulted in a try, and as I was jogging back after the kick, after having cried in the end zone out of shame, convincing myself that I was going to redeem myself, Francois subbed me out. I am still mortified over it.

So I went out and got rather drunk last night. Had some beers, played some pool. Bought groceries at 1:00 am. Took home a package of Belgian waffles.

I no longer bring boys home from the bar - I bring waffles.

And every short lived moment spent with them is sinful, indulgent, and ultimately regrettable.

Mean Cat!

My cat is bringing out the worst in me.

She is not being very neighbourly with the cats which like to wander outside my window. And by that, I mean she flips shit and has even started to go so far as to gnaw on the window frame as an intimidation tactic. An intimidation tactic which I do not entire understand. It's like if, to convince me just how pissed someone was with me, they started, I don't know, kicking the shit out of a radiator outside of my dorm. Which may or may not have happened to me. And, in such a scenario, my point stands: it is not intimidating. These neighbourhood cats are sitting on the other side of the glass, like I sat in first year, laughing, impressed with their own ability to have such an affect on someone.

So, with feline peeping toms and tomasinas coming round my windows fairly regularly, She Ra has gotten a little sensitive. She is like someone on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She's like my mom when her arthritis used to get bad.
"Sydney. Did you just kick cat food under the dish washer? Why would you do something so ignorant?! Don't make that face at me! YOU'RE GROUNDED!"

and you're thinking is this her mom, or her cat, with the vested interest in the final resting place of cat kibbles, that she is quoting? God, what an absurd reason to be grounded for.

So, like an individual on the verge of a nervous breakdown, She Ra is quick to lose her temper without reason. Curled up in my arms purring one moment, jumping away and hissing the next.

And this, my friends, drives me crazy.

My cat hissing at me brings out some of the worst and weirdest qualities in me. I don't do anything I could be brought to criminal court over, don't worry, but I have developed absurd reactions to being hissed at. Normally when a strange cat on the street hisses at you, you jump away or withdraw your hand or whatever, and carry on your way: you assume you were in the wrong and leave the cat alone.

When She Ra, that obese feline for which I have been the lone caregiver of for three years, hisses at me I feel utterly indignant. I am Holden Caufield and she has scrawled fuck right across my front door.

Today I actually yelled - yelled! - "How DARE you?!"

At. My. Cat.

Insane reactions to being hissed at by my cat:

     "HEY! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?"

      Person hissing in response (which is not really effective, since it communicates all too well how pissed I am, prompting her to react more aggressively. But then I'm just impressed embarrassed to have communicated with her at all)

      Spraying water out of a glass using a straw, conveniently sitting on nightstand

      Going to the kitchen, filling a mug with water, dumping it on unappreciative cat, when convenient water glass is absent

      Nose flicking

      Rolling cat off bed

We both need to be medicated it would seem.

The Greater of Two Evils

watching the Biggest Loser while eating chocolate chips and peanut butter

OR

a candlelit bath, listening to Twilight audiobooks

my cats will be my boyfriends...

Thanks Mom and Dad

For buying me a removable shower head. Great end to a rough and tumble day.

So there has been another entry hiatus. I apologize. This one was preventable. My mind has been rather occupied with the stressful reality of a knee injury, and I was not quite prepared to post anything about it and thus make it real. That said, knee injury and all, I played my first game representing McGill. All is well, and so I feel safe to reveal that in last week's intersquad game I very likely tore my meniscus. The ironic and tragic karmic link between my best friend and grave robbing ACL pilferer Heather Blom remains strong, despite the distance between us. Not that I would liken our lots, since with my tear I am still able to continue my season. Thank God. I don't know how I would do in a new city with so few friends, such daunting classes and no rugby for respite.

I promise again to be more diligent. Tomorrow I have a game and perhaps will be hosting my very darling friend Melina for some of the week. Hi-jinx will ensue.

CTMP 2056: Philosophical Perspectives On My Going Away Party

Valuable Lessons Learned in the Past 24 Hours:

1. Never EVER start drinking white wine straight out of the bottle at 2:30 am

2. Waking up alone in a bed covered in lipstick and pizza sauce, naked from the waist down does not phase me anymore

3. I sleepwalk when naked from the waist down

4. The right blend of vodka, mango juice and white wine will incite me to make a guest appearance for the other team


5. When drunk, I have a latent desire to learn how to knife fight.

6. Other beach patrons do not appreciate it when you take a single stride off the beach path to vomit

7. Will Smith is a God amongst mere mortals.

8. Hangovers impede my logic skills to the point that, despite 3 case studies that show unequivocally that I am not going to be able to digest food, I ate a slice of chocolate cheesecake before being driven home by a friend's dad

9. The worst time to find out your house has no hot water is when you are covered in your own cheesecake vomit

10. Yes, you can still be horrifically hungover at 11 pm