Category Archives: Domestic Adventures

Apr2

both ears

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both ears

Self-Portrait-with-Bandaged-Ear-and-Pipe

And I do, have both ears that is, so romantically it’s really not so bad, right?

I went to see “Hello, My Name is Doris” with two friends in sympathetic life situations. Specifically, we are over 50 and in various stages of divorce and dating. These are my movie peeps, also known as the women I see movies with when I’m not being empowered badass and  taking myself to a movie dammit. Right, so the movie. The previews were shamelessly targeting those of us whose love and life situations might involve fantasies about a metaphoric or actual sledgehammers.

Really, I want a sledgehammer. I really, really, really do. I would also like Jake Gyllenhaal to come help me swing it around.

Both movies are about dismantling your life and possibly moving on. Possibly, not happily-ever-after moving on, just the moving on part.

Back to Doris and Van Gogh, who is never actually mentioned directly in the movie, but is used in the Our Love Lives Don’t Suck Too Much comment, “at least we have both ears”. Doris is going through a major life change and developes a crush on a much (30+ years-isn) younger coworker. I spend the movie deciding if I felt empowered, depressed, mortified, embarrassed or simply grateful for both ears.

TWO pairs of glasses

In regards to dating younger men, I’ve been there, but just 16years younger (#ThatWasAwesome). Still, Doris resonated with me. I spent my time oscillating  between ‘insane old lady’ and ’empowered fabulous woman’. I still do.

I spend my work life and much of my leisure time with fabulous 30(ish) yoga teachers and half the time I forget I’m 20 years older or at least pretend no one notices, and half the time I think, what the hell am I doing here? Surely someone will figure out I’m much too old to be doing this sort of thing. The teachers who are my age are in stable married relationships, and then there’s me.

Doris is fun and open and spunky, but her younger friends and coworkers while quite fond of her, describe her as ‘weird, but in a good way’.  And then there’s me.

In the end I will say this about the movie, Sally Field does an amazing job, that and that at least I have both my ears.

Mar16

Bitches get stuff done

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screenshot_2015-12-20-12-55-38-01.jpegThis morning I poured, plopped actually, chunky milk on my cereal. Well yum.

This was before coffee.  Thankfully I make my coffee with butter and coconut oil.

Chunky, plopping, smelly milk because my refrigerator was warm. It was also quite full of science experiments I had been pointedly avoiding, but all seemed to be thriving under the new warmer climate.  My fridge, a microcosm of global warming, without the polar bears.

img_20151230_162144.jpgEnter YouTube. After coffee. Seriously, I do have priorities.  I Googled “what to do with a warm fridge, cold freezer” and there was a very helpful video.  I love YouTube. First I had to deal with the long forgotten “Back There” section of the fridge which by the time I got to it had it’s own blossoming ecological structure and a rudimentary the_walking_bread_tshirtgovernment established. Being the good Imperialist that I am, I decimated their ecosystem, laid bare all their fertile grounds and ran their leaders through the garbage disposal. I renamed their sacred ground ‘mustards and other condiments’ and installed my beloved Pesto as their new leader. I plan to rule with a fierce and occasionally forgetful benevolence.

Three YouTube videos, including ‘how to get that goddamn shelf out of your freezer’ (yes there is a video), several tools that I called Thingy 1, 2 and 3, and one curly-girl hairdryer (it’s what I have, what can I say?) later there was definite  progress. Twenty attempts to get one wire shelf out of a freezer. Twenty. If you ever need a shelf removed in your freezer, I am your handyman.  A friend aptly described my heroic and epic efforts Apollo 13 level McGyveing, which they were, but so much more. Apollo 13 had NASA, I just had YouTube and the trauma of milk chunks to get me through.

There may or may not have been a perfectly preserved house fly in the frozen freezer coils, who may, or may not have had a role in the blossoming ecological system’s rudimentary government, and possibly was so frozen he was singing Let it Go. I cannot comment any further on this, and even though I’m Canadian, I’m taking the 5th here. Don’t ask me about this, and we will never speak of it again.

10012580_10208753901426182_7065326088401290501_n

fecking LASAR beam 

In the end I prevailed and now have a spotlessly clean and refreshingly cold refrigerator. I also had a garbage bag of paper towels and tragically discarded ecological systems, a load of soaking wet smelly tea towels, and a completely full recycling bin.

Oh, and I forgot to buy milk.