Wow, I feel like I haven’t blogarrhea’d out a post in eons, not because I’ve been lazy…okay, maybe a tiny bit lazy, Freddy and I are power-watching, or Bluthing, all 4 seasons of Arrested Development before he goes away for the summer. But I have also been busy flying my broomstick in the west end of the city. I’m going to have to change the title of this site to “my toronto WHEEEE”…you know the “EH” stands for “east hoods,” right? It’s not that bovine Canadian colloquialism, “eh” that every patriotic hoser uptalks at the end of every sentence whether it is a question or not, because I never do that….eh?

Anyway, I have a job in the west end and more on that later, I signed a confidentiality agreement that I read as assiduously as an Apple licensing agreement when downloading the latest version of iTunes,in other words not a single word of it passed through my retinas, so I don’t want to blab about it too much in case I say something that taints the orange halo. When I say “west end,” I am not talking about twee Trinity Bellwoods, half-gentrified Parkdale, or that contrived, trendy, boring dump, Liberty Village. My new job is in deep, dark Etobicoke! Do you know how long it took me to learn how to spell it? So many syllables, where do put the emphasis? For those of you out-of-towners who read me, you say it like: uh-TOE-buh-COH…the K is silent, like all good k’s should be. Etobicoke is the stomping grounds of our mayor, Rob Ford, and where I work, dollars for donuts, he will walk in one day for a weed whacker or a propane tank and I am going to just DIE star-struck. I mean it, the more shenanigans the mayor gets into, the more I love him and I love him more intensely each day as he is such an amazing gaping goatse of an asshole, but in an entertaining way. So delete me or whatever.

I thought I hated the west end and it would be a drag to get there because in my old age I have developed a fear of highway driving. Every time I’m on a highway, I keep thinking my mind is going to snap and I will spazz out and steer my golf cart into a giant truck. That’s another thing, my little first generation Scion XB drives like a toy car and velocity is not its thing, so when Precious gets to the highway speeds, there is a definite sensation that her wheels are going to pop off, especially when she hits those thrill bumps at Humber Bay. So I take the Lakeshore/Queensway and I love it. I am a mellow city driver and stop lights don’t get me down and time is my bitch, I like to waste it doing the most mundane things like sitting in traffic. Also I have discovered all kinds of cute stores and restaurants along the way, like THE CHEESE BOUTIQUE off of South Kingsway. My sister told me about this place, it’s rooms full of cheese, chocolate, and pepperoni. It’s like a culinary museum where everything is for sale and melts in your mouth.

It’s a whole new world for me and fuck knows I need a change, you can set your watch by my east end activities. I am super-stoked about my job. I get to wear steel toe safety boots, so I found a cute pink pair at Mark’s. gonna put the “ho” in Home Depot. There you go. The other day when I was walking to the training room from the paint department, which is going to be my beat, I got all choked up and teary eyed, not because I was sad but because I was so overwhelmed with a relief and gratitude. Weird, right? Everyone there is so nice, I’m just not used it. I’m used to being invisible. Even the training has been fun. Don’t you just hate being in a conference room with out a bunch of motley strangers and then being forced to do that thing where they go around the room and everyone has to say their name and tell something about themselves…like what? I have nothing to say about me, ironically, and I live in absolute fear of these types of situations. I hate saying my name out loud and always have the impulse to say my name is Ginger. At The Home Depot, which I can’t stop habitually pronouncing “DEE-poe,” as “duh-POE” emphasis on the last syllable, they find it funny and my unbridled enthusiasm charming. Instead of circle jerk introductions, we partnered up, cracked open a box of Smarties, chose 3 colours each, and asked each other 3 questions from the board which matched each colour. Important inquiries such as what is your favourite tv show and what would you do if you won the lottery? Then we got to introduce our partner and tell everyone what we learned about him/her. This was genius because in less than 10 minutes and with just 3 questions, I got my partner, George’s, entire life story including his phone number. I am going to rock this job.

Also there is a Bier Market next door which is one of the better chain restaurants. After my third(!) and final  interview last week, I met Jesus there for a pint. Not THAT Jesus, MY JESUS, JESUS OF THE JUNCTION, the name of my screen play, don’t steal it. This Jesus has always got something going on, he needs me for “free” therapy which costs him a minimum of 2 pints, sometimes 3…or when he is completely needy then we have 4. Trust me, it’s a bargain, he is such a hot mess. He is 43 and dating a 20-something-year-old like he is entitled even though he barely has a job, you know the type. He lives in his married sister’s basement for free but babysits her kids whenever she needs him. This is a pretty awesome set-up because when they are at school, he spends all his time at the gym or the tattoo parlour getting his ink touched up. He does have the most beautiful mermaid tattoo on his forearm that I am jelly of except that she is wearing a seashell bra, I would have had her sans bra but with strategically placed flowing hair, or not. Who cares about a nip slip on a tattoo? It’s so badass. But Jesus does because he doesn’t want to “shock his mama.” That is just so hilarious.

He can’t sit on a patio in the sun because one of his arms, the non-mermaid one is freshly scabbing over with blue and red flakes of skin. It’s some big mess based upon the “Red Wedding” from “Game of Thrones.” Gross. So we sit inside at the bar on the only nice day of the summer so far. Whatevs, I actually care about the weather. The sun is bullshit anyway, I like this whacky cold summer. But let’s get right into Jesus’s problem du jour.

Jesus’s younger brother, Hector, is getting married at the end of the month. It turns out EVERYBODY, family and friends, hates the guts of his fiancee. She is a “conniving cunt,” his words, and is after him for his business which is a fish market, The Fish Monger’s Cunt, name of the next screen play, don’t steal it. He went on a big rampage about her that we don’t need to repeat but suffice to say, this is one of those women that give bitches a bad name.

Jesus asks: Should somebody tell him, before he gets married, that we all hate her? Or do we just let it happen and watch the inevitable train wreck?

What do you think, people?

I am of two minds on this sort of thing, having been in and seen people in destructive relationships. On one hand, you can’t tell someone NOT to be with someone because they won’t listen and they will resent you.”Love” makes people not just blind, but deaf AND with the judgement of a drunken teenager. Ages ago I used to be in a circle of couple friends (“couplings” *barf* I know) where the dude was funny, smart, and handsome but his wife was this super-ugly, chinless, pear-shaped militant vegetarian twat with no humour or redeeming qualities whatsoever, and yet I was the only one who vehemently hated her. I am convinced the others in the group just put up with her because the guy was so nice, but no, they seemed to actually like her. I had to scratch it up to one of those mysteries of life where I am the outsider and everyone else is in the Twilight Zone. But when EVERYONE hates the person, that is meaningful and maybe someone should say something. If you don’t, then some day, maybe not next year, but in two or three, Hector will wake up from his oxytocin fog and look at the woman he married and shriek whilst biting off his arm: “WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SOMEONE WARN ME I MARRIED A COW?”

I think it’s up to Jesus, the best man.

So the burning question is: How do you tell someone they are about to make a huge Bluth-style mistake?

1. The passive aggressive approach. You tell a story as though it is an Aesop Fable and you hope the person understands it is about them. Like Jesus could watch Arrested Development with Hector, specifically an episode that depicts Michael’s disdain for George Michael’s homely girlfriend, Anne, and he could turn to his brother and say something LOL-like: “This show is so much like our family, if I were a character, I would be Michael and if you were a character, you would be George Michael.” And then hope he gets it. But he won’t, because people are stupid. And Jesus is totally GOB anyway, so that point would be moot.

2. Get even more passive aggressive. Send him an anonymous note like: YOUR FIANCEE IS A COW, DON’T MARRY HER. SIGNED, A FRIEND. This will probably never work. People believe anonymous notes are written by embittered cat ladies or hermit men who have enough equipment in their sheds to build bombs. BUT! At least it plants a seed in their dumb heads.

3. Tell him gently. Simply say: “Hector, I think you might be rushing into this and if you want to back out, it’s okay.” And you have done your due diligence, although probably far too mild mannered for it to have any impact that when he does end up chewing his arm off, coyote-style, he will completely forget you said anything at all.

4. Just tell him straight up. I am a fan of this one and have been known to point out many loitering, flatulent elephants in any given room. Say it in language he can really understand: “Hector, usted está haciendo un gran error, tu novia es una vaca, todo el mundo le odia.” And there you have it. Brutal honesty is super scary and sometimes you will have diarrhea afterwards but it will be a great relief, trust me.

5. And if you chicken out: Get your friend to work it into a blog post and send him the link, and if he gets past the first 5 bloated paragraphs then he gets the message and if he doesn’t, it is out there forever living in the ethers of the internet where you can access it in 10 years and say: “I TOLD YOU SO!”  Oh, and anybody else who knows somebody who is about to make a huge mistake, you can send this as a cautionary tale. You’re welcome.

This is about fixing a broken heart and I am OBSESSED with this video:

I like to play this game: Would you rather have lunch with Rob Ford or Justin Bieber? Obviously, Mayor Rob Ford…right? I don’t hate him as much as you people, my fellow Torontonians, as his shenanigans have increased traffic flow to my little blog with google search terms like:  Ass-grabbing, fat mayor of Toronto who ate the gravy train while smoking crack and eating KFC.  My fertile imagination could never fathom creating a character so amazing.  I would actually love to hang out with Rob AND his bro for an afternoon of drinking beers, eating wings, and shooting the shit. Good times. So much fun would they be, unlike the Biebs who would probably pout and slouch in his leather diaper pantaloons, scratching the scabs off his stupid tattoos and never looking at you in the eye whilst he complains about his greasy chicken fingers. He is 10 gallons of menstrual berry douche water poured into a 12 ounce can of Red Bull. I have an irrational hatred of him that far exceeds your somewhat rational disdain of our corpulent mayor.

So judgey wudgey are people. So what, a little a crack. Obviously he’s not doing so much of it that is it detrimental to his physique. Seriously, people, do you really care that Rob Ford’s brother, Doug, was a hash dealer in high school? WHERE DO YOU THINK THE HASH YOU HOT-KNIFED IN GRADE 10 CAME FROM? Your mom? No, it was distributed from the drug lords in South America to the good citizens of your hometown, the people who ran small businesses like car washes, chicken shacks, and nail salons (watch some Breaking Bad, people) and then funnelled to enterprising youth like Doug Ford who sold it to ALL of you so you could get high in a kitchen party on Saturday night. And guess what? He didn’t have to get up at 5 a.m. to deliver the Globe and Mail like you did to make thirty bucks a week. THAT is what I call smart hockey.

I saw this picture on Reddit last week of Rob Ford and his jubilant politico cronies that made my heart cry with Jesus-like compassion and yes, even love. Look at those bitches clapping and laughing like the prom scene in Carrie and then to left there is Rob, all alone, sullen and out of place…I just want to take him under my soft, downy wing and wipe the stress sweat from his forehead and introduce him to Smashbox Photofinish green primer from Sephora and take him to my favourite restorative yoga class where the smell of lavender essential oil candles cuts out the wafting fetor of SBDs. And THEN we can go out for a bucket of chicken because fuck yeah, KFC is awesome:

I want to squeeze all the so-called evil out of him!  I do so much love a fat man. AND I don’t care what y’all with your righteous lawn signs say about bike lanes and no casinos, I think he had a valid point on both of those issues. Casinos bring in both revenue AND Tony Orlando! Also your visiting relatives from Minnesota will have something to do like play slot machines while you go biking on the Martin Goodman trail to Cherry Beach to get a quick blowie in the high grass. Which brings me to the point that bicycles are all very well and good for subversive traffic but if you are going to share the road with cars and trucks, you better follow the rules of the game, Pinko.

Here’s a quick rant before moving on to diet tips: As much as we want our city to be green and bicycle-friendly, it is not designed that way. The weather is shite most of the year and guess what, granola bar? There are cars and trucks that need to go places. Also as part of our transit system, on some of our busiest roads we have big lurching, slow-moving manatees, otherwise known as streetcars, that clog the arteries of traffic. Why does this antiquated system still even exist? This is not Tennesse Williams” New Orleans, this city is bigger than Chicago.  They are awkward and mismanaged. When they are stopped you can’t pass them, when one breaks down, they all go out of service, lined up and hogging an entire lane of roadway. As a driver of a car, you have to be stealth like a ninja to get anywhere downtown. But noooo…they want more bike lanes to add to the combobulation of traffic because cars bad, bikes good.

I used to be a courier and rode a bike for a living. Never once in those days did I think I was equal to a car. One false move and I could be hurt or killed and so I rode DEFENSIVELY, with the understanding that drivers in vehicles have blind spots and other important things to focus on than my dumb, pimply rashed, lycra-clad ass. The other day, while I was driving in back of a streetcar on Queen Street East, just west of Broadview during rush hour, the fat fucking manatee streetcar hissed and farted and if you’ve ever seen Toronto streetcars, you know this is the special sound of a streetcar driver stopping the car and running into a Tim Hortons for a slash and then picking up a coffee which is by all means their right and no one should begrudge anyone of a donut, but it also means you can pass the car and go on your merry way. So I went into the right lane AT THE PACE OF YOUR GRANDMA IN HER WALKER, and slithered by the streetcar and then stopped at a crosswalk where people were crossing, I am not a dick, I did not run them over. I hear a knocking on my car and a cyclist rides up to my left and yells into my open window; “You cut me off!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t see you,” I said, which was true as I was watching out for pedestrians in front of me.

“You cut me off when you changed lanes, you should check for cyclists!” The cyclist is one of those ubiquitous sinewy middle-aged men who buys trail mix at the Carrot Common, you know the type.  He  participates in triathalons even though he has sloping lady shoulders and is probably a shite swimmer. He is laughably dressed head-to-toe Tour de France ensemble while his ugly navy blue suit waits for him in his office at his boring finance job. The only joy he and his shriveled testicles get is biking to work, obviously. Here’s a pro-tip, Captain Gear Geek, when you are out riding with the big boy cars, how about slowing down with the traffic when it is coming a halt and ANTICIPATE what the car in front of you is going to do which is obviously to pass a stopped streetcar. This whiny little asshole enraged me to the point where I wished I had knocked him over crushed his $5000 bike with my dainty Scion tire, but he sped off, weaving through traffic and over the bridge before I could even form the letter “F.” Entitled white man privilege motherfucker.

End of rant.

Last week from my Facebook newsfeed, I worried less (as in not one fucking iota) about crack-smoking Rob Ford than I did about GMOs and Montsanto and the Frankenfood causing diseases with all the pesticides, etc.  I read all the stuff people were posting and really began to get freaked out. Wheat is one of the scariest deviations of genetically engineered food out there. I am not an alarmist type but this really bothers me. So I decided to cut out wheat for a few days last week to see how I would survive. Also what the hell, I will give up other things like fructose corn syrup. And Oreos. And cut back on cheese. And who am I kidding? I’m ON A DIET because I have a much-anticipated wedding to go to in 8 weeks and I need to fit into something in my closet and I want to look hot on Instagram in the context of an old lady cougar. I’m going to be wearing my disco shoes.

I hate when people talk about their weight and diets, it’s so boring. Hearing people go on about how many weight watchers points in a burrito, gluten allergies, master cleanses, etc, makes me want to force feed them globs of lard after I have duct taped them on top of a medical scale. When I was a teenager, I had cultivated an eating disorder that lasted a few years until it got tedious and unrewarding and I realized no one else really cares what you weigh, in fact they like you better fat and happy. NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR DAILY CALORIE COUNT SO SHUT UP.

Because of my teen anorexia, a few rounds of disco diets in my twenties, and following the Zone a couple of times post-babies, I am awesome at dieting. It’s not rocket science and I read up on all the current new “facts” and it’s just hilarious. You are no longer just a plain old fatty anymore, instead your diet is causing “inflammation.” LOL! I just figure if you give up a bunch of shit that you were normally eating, then you will lose weight but no, they have to constantly put out new spins so you keep buying the latest books.

“You know giving up alcohol is key,” said Jesus (not that Jesus, my Jesus, Jesus of the Junction) when I told him I am relinquishing wheat for the sake of humanity and not having to wear Spanx in July. Jesus trains with a kick boxer and watches his carb intake like a little girl.

“Fuck that, Jesus, I give up alcohol for a month every January and sometimes in August and I can tell you, I will lose a quick couple gallons of water bloat but I will make up for my misery in ice cream. I need to focus on a cause and make myself believe I am doing something for the greater good like creating a better environment for our children and their children’s children,” I explained, trying to be earnest about my one woman wheat boycott, “Not drinking is dreadfully boring and inevitably leads to binge drinking and then a melancholia that can only be described by the Smiths in the song ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.”‘

“Alright then, you have a point,” Jesus conceded and then went on to talk about himself and some 24 year-old girl he’s been banging who he met at the gym, apparently she is on some Paleo fuckery diet and went from a size 10 to a 4 eating like a cavewoman, woohoo! He is such a perv to be dating someone 20 years younger but I listen to what he has to say and pay enough attention to realize that dried up berries probably fermented into alcohol that our hairy relatives enjoyed and therefore this diet will work for me.

Here are some pro-tips on how to lose weight and keep on drinking like that crazy mofo Rob Ford, he should go on it with me.  I HAVE MY VICES AND I AM GOING TO WORK AROUND THEM SO HERE WE GO:

1. Your liver is not a mulit-tasker, it’s a man, it only processes one thing at a time. In order to avoid metobolic mix up, don’t eat when you drink. Plus you will get drunker faster. Win win.

2. A Caesar (or Bloody Mary if you are an ignorant, deprived American) makes a nice light lunch.

3. Don’t drink fancy cocktails made out of sugary mixes like margaritas and Bellinis, otherwise you will drink your way into Type 2 diabetes and that will be the end of that.

4. Instead, mix vodka with club soda and lime.

5. Drink a bunch of water every time you have a cocktail.  Hahahaha, you will totally forget to do that so leave a bottle of water by your bed and try to remember to drink it before you pass out.

6. Beer also makes a nice light lunch but don’t drink that shite  cloudy wheat beer because GMOs….and it’s crap.

7. Remember that drinking lessens your inhibitions and makes you break open the Goldfish GMO crackers when you pass by the pantry. Do not do this! Eat a carrot! Pro tip: If you encase a walnut in a Medjool date, it tastes just like a brownie…sort of. Close enough.

8. If you have a hangover because you drank too much and you must have a greasy breakfast because you are dying, then skip the GMO toast with the eggs and bacon and eat maybe half the home fries, this way you will avoid most of the “inflammation” that white carbs cause. By the way, inflammation is just a fancy term for bloat but makes you feel less ashamed. “I am inflamed because of all the GMOs,” you can legitimately say in order to avoid the cycle of self-loathing and feel like a victim of environmental toxicity instead of merely a pig.

Maybe that is Rob Ford’s problem:  He is simply inflamed with GMOs. When you think of him that way, he is much less of a monster. All of us are inflamed, just some of us are more so. To paraphrase Morrissey: Some pigs are bigger than others.

Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.

So yeah, my birthday came and went and I didn’t dry up as expected. On the eve of the big day, the gods delivered an exploding magnum of sweet menses nectar that I welcomed with a fist pump: “Yesssss!!! Still full of fossil fuel!” Only to be shot down by my friend, Ask Yahoo: “Your period is like a geyser? That’s a sign of menopause, ho!”  Whatevs.

As you may know, if you are on my tail of tales, I turned 50 on May 11.  I was all freaked and couldn’t even say the number, it came out like “fuh” then graduated to “Fuhfff-tuh” but now I am saying it every where I go like I have Tourettes.  On my actual birthday I began to own the whole ragged mess.

“I’m 50!” I blurted out to no one in particular as I sat in the ladies’ washroom stall at The Only Cafe.

“Fuck yeah,” the feet waiting outside in front of me said, “My mother is 50. She looks fab and she can still ride a bike.”

“That’s awesome! And I can still wipe my own bum!” I said, walking out of the stall.  It turned out that the feet in front of me was one of my daughter’s friends, age 19, who was at the bar to see her play a solo show.

“Oh my God,” she gasped (not really, but it’s my blog) and she really, honestly, truly did say: “You don’t look 50, I thought you were about 35.” What a dear, sweet, stupid girl. I thanked her and gave her a hug, smothering her with my expired mom tits and went back to the bar. It was a good birthday, once I started pronouncing “fifty” properly, my friends and family spoiled me rotten, buying me lunch, dinner, beers, a golden skull, good old money, and my beloved Elizabeth Arden’s PREVAGE, holy cow. But I don’t like to milk a birthday. There’s nothing worse than a grown-ass adult who makes a big production of their birthday like they are the second coming of a newfangled Narcissist Jesus. Hear’s the rule, people: Over the age of 10, NO MORE LASER QUEST FOR YOU!

Anyway, this is just a segue to what I really want to hash out, analyze, make pro con list, confer, deliberate, and bore you to the point where you yell at me: JUST MARRY HIM ALREADY, like I have a choice. As I have blathered on about before, I have a “Remainder Man.”  He is that platonic-ish male friend I have mentioned who parks his trailer in my driveway and buys me beer and wings AND who I have known for many, many, many years, who I may or may not be actually in love with, but let’s discuss. Thankfully he doesn’t read this blog so we can yap about him freely, but I’m going to refer to him as R-Man to protect his identity just in case because he has a wide circle.  This is going to be messy and disjointed so I’m just going to do this in list form and you just follow along or close your eyes and think of England or check out Perez or whatever:

1. R-Man did not call me on my birthday, which is fine, he is a man and birthdays are filed in their brains right behind bullshit and boring chore lists. But he did call me the next day which was Mother’s Day which was by far and away a more thoughtful and sweeter gesture, no? He took me out that afternoon as a Hangover Helper and we drank copious sums of cleansing ale.  He told me about how he was at another dude’s 40th birthday party (I know, right? It’s the men that need all the birthday cuddles). At the party, R-Man was talking it up to all the ladies as that is the R-Man’s modus operandi, he flirts like a fucker on fire, and his girlfriend ended up punching him in the mouth. Of course, that is what a crazy jealous bitch will do and I completely get it, been there and used my acrylic finger nails to swat at some dude’s face once, but you cannot change the stripes of a tiger. Just saying. Also she really needs to go. I hate her with a venomous passion.

2. R-Man’s tiger stripes amuse me. Over the years I have learned his checking out other women is like his Tourettes and sometimes he will mutter “vagina” in public when there is a lull in the conversation. This makes me laugh and laugh because I am actually a 12 year-old boy trapped inside a 50 year-old lady meat costume. But maybe this means we are just like bros and we should go huntin’ and fishin’ and pee standing up together.

3. Whenever R-Man walks into a room, I feel so happy that if I had a tail, it would wag vigorously. Now hold on, is this just platonic like dog love or is it romantic? My heart does NOT do that beat skipping thing which might be over-rated. Now that I am old and know better, is that fluttery feeling just a flight or fight reaction to some sociopath that you really need to stay away from? And if my tail wags, is my pussy far behind? I’m just asking, I don’t know.

4. R-Man is 5 years younger than me but that will even out in old age because he has more afflictions than I do. In reality, if I marry him (shut up!!! just thinking out loud), I will most probably still enjoy a few golden years as a widow, rockin’ the seniors’ home with my bubble gum pink hair and neon green stretch pants, drinking kir royale in the lounge. I’m excited for that.

5. Back to R-Man’s girlfriend just because I think it’s bothering you that he has one and that I am big ho for stealing him away WHICH I HAVEN’T DONE YET. First of all, this is not a Brangelina scandal waiting to happen. No one can “steal” anyone who doesn’t want to quit a bitch. Don’t kid yourself, 99.99% of all couples you see walking around in Canadian Tire purchasing garden hoses are fantasizing about using that thing to somehow escape through the water tank and then run like the wind into the sewer. R-Man and his girlfriend live in separate places, and they break up like it is a casual activity. What are they doing tonight? Oh, just staying in, maybe ordering a pizza, watching Homeland, then breaking up. Or maybe instead of pizza, get takeout from that new Indian place except that butter chicken gives him diarrhea.

6. Lots of things give R-Man diarrhea and while I wouldn’t say he is a picky eater, he is particular. For me, that is somewhat of an all around deal breaker, but we can work it out. He wouldn’t do anything as asinine as going on a “Master Cleanse” but he does obsess about his weight. I swear, I have never had a conversation with him where he doesn’t tell me at some point what he weighs and what he weighed before the current weight. It’s really annoying, I don’t want he wants from me because it’s usually just within a range of four pounds and we have just eaten a pound of wings and washed it down with 3 pints, oh my god, girlfriend, who cares? But everybody has things that exasperate the other person, right? Some things you just need to let go but I swear if he brought a scale into my house, I would smash it down from the roof, just watch.

7. R-Man is the most boisterous person you will ever meet. He will walk into to a bar and yell out HEYYYYYY, everybody in the beach knows him and they are all tickled to see him, he’s got the kind of name you want to shout out. Although I have a special nickname for him that I say in a baby voice, that’s kind of cute right?  He is a classic extrovert but with his moon in hermithood. He has some primitive cabin that he escapes to for his alone me-time which only makes good common sense because otherwise he would just be a buffoon all the time. I like a loud man, but even more I like a loud man who knows when it’s time to shut up. I have noticed that quiet dudes are the controlling, sneaky ones that you need to watch out for. There is never a dull conversation with R-Man but!!! BUT! He has a temper on him. And when you think that age might have mellowed him out, something sets him off, and it’s usually road rage, and then The Fury comes out. Road rage is one of my pet peeves. Why do people get all crazy Jekyll and Hyde when they drive? You wouldn’t yell and honk if you were walking in a mall and had to slow down for a lady with a stroller so why get so enraged when someone in front of them takes their time to make a left turn or merge or whatever. Even if some taxi driver pulls a douche move, just settle down, and guess what?  You’ll get from A to B without having to scream expletives. Calm the fuck down. I like it better when I drive. I guess that’s the solution, just don’t let him drive.

8. R-Man and I took a road trip a few years ago to Sudbury to pick Freddy up from camp.  It was the funnest day ever, there was no road rage at all, just a lot singing along to The Smiths (we love the Smiths!!!) at the top of our lungs and then many stops after drinking Red Bull and urinating in the woods together. We both like to go pee outside even if a proper toilet is available. The first time we bonded was on the same day we met in 1998, we played some random softball game (don’t even ask who what where or why because I have no idea) one afternoon and had some beers, then we both peed in the parking lot in back of my mom van, the Mercury Villager aka The Great White Whale. Maybe we have some kind of primal connection that occurs in the animal kingdom when bodily fluids are excreted and a little bit of oxytocin comes out in the pee-pee, and why wouldn’t it? It’s biology, yo!

This is all the rumination I can handle for now, obsessing about a dude only leads to despair. It’s probably best that he remains Remainder Man as dreams have a knack of just not coming true…sigh…and time is against me now.

In the meantime, let’s just dance, omg, these girls are so funny:

I think we can all agree that job hunting is the worst thing ever. I’ve been on an aggressive blitz this week for the past couple of weeks and I can tell you, I’d rather walk naked through an Abercrombie and Fitch CEO board meeting than write a resume and cover letter. Why is it that I can write a blog, tweet a tweet, and tell you all about my precise level of moistness for Idris Elba but I can’t even bullet point a single skill I obtained as a real estate ho? I don’t even know the proper job title is. I forget how to string words together. And I would rather give good old fashioned blow jobs under a desk than create a profile on LinkedIn. I just can’t with that site.

On Monday I had a phone interview where I paced back and forth on my back deck like a wild cat while I answered the questions. This is why I can’t have an office job, I can’t sit still on a chair. Even when I write these blogs that take up half a day, I’m moving from “half lotus” to “boat” and then to my own personally patented yoga position that I call “snake laying an egg-” don’t ask.

After stuttering and forgetting the word “customer,” I managed to get a second interview where I had to go to the actual place which is in Etobicoke, which means I have to QEW it, which is the highway where all the exits have like sounding names. “Islington” and “Kipling” look exactly the same, at least to me. I got off the wrong one, of course, got lost, then got very sweaty, and arrived ten minutes late. It didn’t matter, I had to wait 40 minutes for the interview because the woman wasn’t even there! And then when she arrived, I had to follow her to a remote office, even more sweaty, dry mouth, and out of breath because of 3 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, I answered a bunch a questions clearly and concisely, with only an occasional nervous bit of too much information rambling. The interviewer woman, who was probably 35-ish, did NOT get my sense of humour so I was able to keep it dignified. HOWEVER, at the very end, she asked for two forms of ID which I was told to bring and I actually had because I am nothing if not always prepared.

“What do you need it for?” I asked, thinking it is a good sign.

“We need to run a police check,” she says.

Fuck. This has happened before when someone googled me, which of course is not a police check per se. A woman with the same name as me got arrested in Toronto three years ago for terrorism during the G20 shindig. It turned out her crazy husband was the one building bombs in their swanky Forest Hill home, unbeknownst to her, but she still went to jail and made headlines. People thought it was me even though her first name is spelled “Kristen” not “Kristin,” but you know how thorough folks are with details ಠ~ಠ….not. Oh well, hopefully the police don’t use google. And if I get this ridiculous job, it will be blog fodder galore, I promise, maybe it will even have its own anonymous Tumblr. A police check takes a couple of days and then a THIRD interview, she said. It’s jaw-dropping really, I’m not going to even tell you where it is because most of the people who work there look like they are from the island of lost misfits so if I don’t get it, I’m going to volunteer to be the next experimental monkey that gets launched up into space.

If I could really be me, and not the boring version, and could write a resume my own special way, it would go something like this:

1. Data Entry Clerk at Pratt & Whitney Canada. This is the summer job I had at my dad’s company during university for 3 years. I still remember my badge number, 27642, because I had to type in hundreds of times a day, along with payroll and shittons of mysterious engineering data that went into a giant box of a computer that was the size of an ensuite bathroom. This was the 80s, you could probably fit all that crap in an iPad now and all the women that worked in that department are probably dead from carpal tunnel-related cancer. There were twenty ladies in the department, a hummer of hens, all clucking their dentures while they clacked on the keyboard. And smoking all the while. Women can sure multi-task. Martha, Shannon the Crazy Bitch, and I were the summer students whose papas swung us these soul sucking jobs. Martha and I, forming an impenetrable love club, kept our spirits up by gossiping, and Shannon kept jealously accusing of being “lezzies” like we cared. Martha had the best stories because she had a bazillion boyfriends and she was a total sex goddess. She liked me because I made her laugh so hard that no sound would come out so we would stay out of trouble that way, her laughing silently and me squirming in my seat imagining what it was like to bang a Jamaican man on a dance floor.

We lived for the two weeks in July that was called “Plant Shutdown’ because it was then we had to work the four to midnight shift and not have to go in at 7:00 a.m. with our dads. One of us would get an Oldsmobile (ALL the Pratt & Whitney drove those!) and after our shift at midnight we would hit the local brasserie and drink until 3 a.m. Good times.

But the best EVER time was that Tuesday we got out extra-early at 6:30 in the evening because the big clunky computer spontaneously farted out an explosion, and she had the brilliant idea of taking the Oldsmobile over the bridge and into the CITY which was Montreal, FYI. Her Jamaican boyfriend, Winston, was taking a summer class at Concordia, and was shacking up in an apartment in NDG with his cousin, James. We could go over there, order Chinese, drink some beers, then head back home at midnight and her dad would never know she hijacked the car downtown.

Here’s how it went real time, play-by-play:

7 pm: We arrive at Winston’s apartment.  Winston is a BIG STRAPPING black boy on a football scholarship, hotter than hot, of course.  Martha gives him a big goopy kiss. James, his skinnier but also cute cousin, is also from Jamaica is speaking Patois to set the mood. It should be noted that it is July and they are not wearing shirts and they were sweat-ayyyyy. They had already ordered the food. They give us a beer and some egg rolls. Oh yes, and of course, a big giant doobie is passed around.

7;10: Still eating and not yet finished the first beer, Winston puts on some reggae music at maximum volume.

7;15: Martha and the cousin James are “dancing rub-a-dub” which looks like this:  The guy is standing against the wall and the girl is grinding her crotch on his upper thigh. Hands are everywhere.

7:20: I am grinding my crotch on Winston’s knee. His fingers are sliding around in my ass crack.

7:25: Martha’s clothes are on the living room floor and she is in another room. With James.

7:30: I am stark naked on the couch with Martha’s big giant Jamaican boyfriend on top of me, pulling his pants down.

7:31: Okay, now I am freaked out. I HAVEN’T EVEN FINISHED MY BEER AND THERE IS A NAKED BLACK MAN ON TOP OF ME. How did this even happen so fast? This is what happens to me when I smoke weed, I get paranoid. I manage to slither out from underneath him and he is a perfect gentleman, he hands me my clothes. I apologize and flee like a scaredy cat. Believe me, I wouldn’t do that now.  Flee, that is.

7:45: I am at my friends’, Kingsley and Mark, apartment a couple of blocks away, and telling the tale what just happened in the timeframe of a tv sitcom and oh, how we laughed. Also, as it turns out, I am wearing Martha’s bra inside out.

SKILLS:  Knowledge of DOS, data entry, and Rub-A-Dub wizardry

2.  Busser at Le Select Bistro. This was my very first job in Toronto. I had to bus tables, make cappuccinos, and keep the bread baskets full. Everyone, the owners and the customers, thought it was cute to have hanging bread baskets over the tables and I would constantly get yelled at by the customers: “THERE ARE CRUMBS IN THE CREAMER!” Where I wanted to say: ‘IT’S FROM THE FUCKING BREAD BASKET, MORON!” But I didn’t, I politely apologized got them some “fresh” cream, all right.

SKILLS: Revenge

3. Assistant Manager at Parachute in Yorkville. This was a store that sold the quintessential eighties fashion victim-style clothing. It was one of the funnest jobs I ever had. In fact, I’m going to lazily link from the archives to a whole blog post I wrote about it, it’s that epic.

SKILLS: The fine art of fag hagdom, how to pose in the mirror like a supermodel

4. Receptionist at a head shot photo studio. I do not remember the name of this place! I remember my boss was named Joe Black! I remember I was reading Martin Amis’ “Money” when Carole Pope came to pick up her photos in and said; “Martin Amis is so nasty and that is why I love him!” I remember trying to process that statement and not really understanding how anyone could like anything “nasty,” I was that dumb and naive. But I was starstruck so I pretended to agree. Carole Pope was one of my all time lady heroes.

Skills: Satire, also I got good at quitting jobs.

5. Bike Courier for Sunwheel Bicycle Couriers. I delivered important documents in the era pre-fax machines for a year with gusto and tenacity until one day, I crashed into the back of a parked truck climbing up Yonge Street because I wasn’t looking. I bashed my head and stabbed my leg with a wheel spoke. I finished my deliveries, bleeding and concussed, riding a bike with a wheel shaped like a Pringle chip. Like a boss.

Skills: North and South, East and West, developing an innate knowledge of where toilets are located.

6. Shopgirl at Holt Renfrew.  I sold pantyhose to rich Forest Hill and Rosedale women, who, when they got a run in their stockings, would always bring them back for a replacement. I know, right? You’re thinking what cheap cunts, HOWEVER, the pantyhose industry is a diabolical business because a single pair at Holt Renfrew cost $7.95 and they would only last a day. Do that math and then tell me these ladies are cheap. I wore Donna Karan opaque tights for $19.95 and they NEVER ran, in fact, more than 25 years later, I still have 3 pairs. So I pushed these babies to these grateful women and was top in sales during the winter season.

Skills: Up-selling, talking the talk, making animal sculptures out of spent pantyhose

7. Painter. I painted with this dude who did Marbalux faux-finishing in Italian wedding halls.  What a hot mess. I did that until I was 8 months pregnant and then I couldn’t bend over. I actually loved that job and learned a lot, no joke. Painting is all about patience.

Skills: Fucking use a good quality primer, fucking never use alkyd when latex will do, fucking use actual painter’s tape, not dollar store masking tape for a clean line, fucking take down the light switch covers, fucking wrap the brushes and rollers up in cellophane so they don’t dry up, and fucking don’t sit on someone’s white sofa when you have hunter green paint still wet on your ass.

8. Stay at home mom.  I had two babies and raised them to be fine upstanding teenage citizens. Both of them are really smart and I drank like a longshoreman while I breastfed them, hahahahahahahahahaha.

Skills: Herding, hoarding, humility

9. Real estate sales. Helped people buy and sell homes. That’s where I started this blog, hoping to help my career and promote community and neighbourhood spirit. Instead I went off on a tangent and ended up telling you stories of how I a rub-a-dubbed a Jamaican man one hot summer night, hahahahahahahahahaha.

Skills: Resume writing

REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

It’s May, as if you didn’t already know that, but it’s also my birthday month. Yes, I get a month this year because it is one of those b-days that end in a ZERO. I am not going to lie, I AM FREAKING OUT. I can’t even say the number, it comes out like “fuh-” and then stops. Help me. I need to work through this crippling dread so I can own that number when it actually happens on May 11. So I’m going to write out a pro and con list of what it’s like to turn fuh and feel free to add some of your own in the comments, I need you’ll more than ever.  FUHHHHHHH!!!!!! Please don’t put me out on the ice floe just yet!!!

1. Con: I do not enjoy people conversing about menopause. Yes, surprise, I am the person who will talk bodily functions from head to toe, diarrhea sandwiched by dandruff and toe jam, in all the grossest detail, but I can’t handle the hot flash jokes. For the record, I am not sure if had one yet or just have middle-of-the-night drunk sweats since they seem to happen on mostly weekends. “You would know if you had a hot flash,” I am assured by a locker room buddy, Deb, who by the way, is rocking her mid-fuh’s without trying too hard unlike another woman of similar age I know, a real estate agent, who gets puffy hair extensions and sports the second coming of acid wash(!)  jean suits(!!) that even a twenty year old shouldn’t be wearing…barf, just barf, it depresses me to look at her, hanging on to her fugly heyday that was 1985. But Deb makes me happy to join the fuh club. Menopause happens, you can’t stop the train. But I have a big beef with the term “perimenopausal,” that fancy word used to describe the onset of menopause. Your mama simply called it “going through the change” when she drew the curtains shut on a sunny summer day and laid down on the couch with a wet washcloth over her head. My friend, Flanders,who loves to remind me that she is 6 whole months younger than me, has told me for literally 15 years that every physical thing that is happening is because I am “perimenopausal.” See, I’ve typed it twice and you can’t see it but my spell check cries bullshit and is underlining it in red, so appropriate. You either have a tampon stash or you don’t, it’s that simple. What is this “peri” crap? It’s a made up term for women to feel even more badly about themselves and buy more pharmaceuticals. Fuck that perimenopausal shit, by that logic we are all peri-dead then. Ugh, fuh.

2. Pro: Age is wisdom. Why am I so afraid to say the number when my forties was the most painful, tumultuous decade of my life? Why would I want to hang on to that number? Going through my forties was like going through a second adolescence only with financial worries. It was a learning curve on a very dark highway. Everything I thought I knew to be true and right was tested by my own misguided self sabotage. Seriously, what a dumb ho I was at 40, walking around like I knew it all. Maybe the next decade will be filled with the wisdom of self acceptance. Bring it on, fuh-fiffffff…. I still don’t want to say it.

3. Con: Getting old sucks a big scaly dick that needs moisturizing. For women though, not so much for the menfolk. Those silver shards of hair that peek out around the temple are cute on a dude but not so much on a lady. Also jowly things forming. Also a beard. Also going blind and slighty deaf. Also attack of the middle pudge. Also what is that new flesh fold in the back there underneath the ass cheek? Fucking fuh.

4. Pro: I am at the tail end of the Baby Boomers, cusping on that lazy, bottom feeding Generation X crowd. The Baby Boomers, because they are so vain and ambitious, are trailblazing the way to eternal youth blasting their Botox needles through the forest of free radicals. God bless them and their  prolific nip/tucks and injections. Yes, some of them are over-done which is a good thing, their weird puffy faces make a little neck waddle look charmingly human. We can learn from their mistakes and apply the rest in moderation: A little squirt o’ Botox to soften the eyebrow scowl (and helps with the migraines, I am not kidding), a little Juvederm to caulk in the those puppet mouth lines that when left to deepen, turn into gutters filled with drool when walking towards the wind. Just a tiny bit here and there and that’s how your face can rock the aging process. Not so bad, fuh!

5. Con: I read a head-line on a tabloid at the grocery store saying “60 is the new 40″ with Kris Jenner on the cover…I know, foul…but still, I love when people make proclamations like this and put it up in a bold font. You can almost believe it’s true and continue to surmise that if 60 is the new 40, then fuh must be the new 30. The thirties were my mojo years. By the time I hit 38, I was in my prime. It was good until it got bad. So if 60 is the new 40, then I’ve got another rollercoaster ride ahead of me and I don’t think I can take another decade-long chapter of crippling existential angst fuckery. 60 is 60 and fuh is fuh, and that’s all there is to it…why must we get all caught up in journalistic subterfuge? Just stop.

6. Pro: This woman, no comment necessary:

7. I don’t know if this is a Pro or a Con but my mojo has come back. I don’t what happened, but I attribute it to this restorative yoga class I take on Tuesdays. Flashback ten years, summer of 2003, when I was FORTY, I fell on the sidewalk trying to get on my bike after consuming shots of tequila. There was a loud crack as I hit the pavement landing on my ass, I had the wherewithal to break the fall with my right hand but I ended up cracking my tailbone and breaking my wrist. I didn’t know it though, and walked around broken for two weeks trying to learn how to drive my new manual transmission Mini Cooper, why does it hurt so much to shift gears? I told you I was a dumb ho when I was 40. I finally went to the hospital and they told me that while I was most certainly a dumb ho for not coming in right away, they could have just set it in a cast then instead of having to operate and reset it with a pin, it was a good thing I was drunk when it happened because drunk people fall better than sober people as they are more “relaxed.” Oh how I laughed but I was too embarrassed to tell them about my tailbone because that was what made the loud cracking sound. ALSO, I had heard the only way to fix a tailbone is for an osteopath to shove a hand up the ass and manoeuvre it from there. Not happening.

After the fall when the cast came off, I started taking yoga which is a Pro, as yoga is so much better for you than running on a treadmill like a ridiculous gerbil going nowhere. I have done Hatha, Ashtanga, and Bikram, but a couple of months ago I tried one called “Restorative” where you hold a pose for 10 minutes. And they are all done on the mat with props and booster pillows. It is like an awesome nap where you don’t feel like much is happening but lots is happening, the chakras are in full flow mode. There is one pose where you sit with your knees splayed out and the soles of your feet hold a block. You fall forward and your forehead rests on the block. After a minute, your lower spine starts to burn and get somewhat uncomfortable and then you imagine it is blocked energy getting released and as you breathe into it, things start to loosen up. I’m serious, my broken tailbone loves this activity, it’s like I sprayed a whole can of WD40 up my ass, and it’s ready to bust some moves! An awakening of mojo has occurred since I started this class and I guess it’s a Pro until it becomes a Con. And it will. If I learned anything from the Journey of the Forties is that nothing ever stays the same. Everything is in constant change. Rolling, rolling, rolling.

In the meantime, this came on my laptop screen:

IDRIS ELBA! OMG! OMG! OMG!

So I love my butcher because meat, but also because he tells me what tv shows to watch. A couple of weeks ago it was “Hung” which made me want to be a lady pimp (jokes…not really, still holding auditions). This week’s viewing suggestion was “Luther” a BBC series about a crime detective…ugh, barf, I hate crime shows, I can never follow the plot, even “Charlie’s Angels” was too complicated. But what the hell, that particular butcher has that sort of power over me so I downloaded it even though I thought bleccchh, “the new James Bond’ my eye. I am now Queen of Torrents which I probably should keep to myself, and I love to watch stuff on my laptop…it is so intimate. My screen is all dotted in sneeze spittle but I don’t care, it’s my portal into the wild world of interwebz and how I communicate with you.

So yeah…LUTHER IS AWESOME AND IDRIS ELBA IS TO DIE FOR! And this is the funny thing, I have seen Idris Elba in “The Office” and “The C Word” (no, I have never seen “The Wire”), and I didn’t bat an eye or put my hands down my pants even just to scratch. But watching ‘Luther?” I took to the bed after watching the first episode on the now tainted family couch…that’s me in the cover photo with ma boo sitting on my lap…and I watched the rest of them with my wagging tailbone under the covers. Oh my god, those little white beard hairs! I love him so much it hurts. In a good way. PRO!

So yeah. Fifty …Five Zero #YOLO. Bring it on.

This week I was talking to my old buddy, Jesus (not that Jesus, my Jesus, Jesus of the Junction) and he was telling me about how frustrated he is going on dates with these women he meets on Plenty of Fish. My Jesus is in his forties and he has never been married. He is sick of GAME PLAYING. You know that is my biggest pet peeve about menfolk: I hate it when they say how they can’t stand “drama” and “game playing” when drama and game-playing is how we roll in the great cluster fuck that is the human race.  If it didn’t work that way, we’d all still be sea monkeys, it’s the Darwinian way.

He said: “I usually go out with much younger women but lately I have been focussing on older, single 45-year old moms. I figure we’ll go out on a date, if we have a good time, we’ll go home and bang it out. We’re old, man, we can fucking figure out if we like each other or not.  What is it with these women and their rules? Fuck man, WE’RE OLD!  I don’t have time for this shit!”

I know, right? When he was telling me all this, I tried to recall The Rules and thought to myself: “Jesus Christ, Jesus, what is your problem? You’re just soooooo old, you can’t possibly wait for the third date?” I felt bad for him though, the pain was in his face, and if there was a big enough napkin around, I would have given him a quick little handjob. A handjoblet, as it were, just for some lukewarm comfort. I am compassionate that way. With a name like Jesus, I bet he has one of those stress busting rockets I like so much so it would have been win win.

I thought about what he said for a couple of days though. While I am a lady and I understand the fundamentals of playing the waiting game, but like Jesus, I am an impatient ho and not one to be confined to too many rules. I read Steve Harvey’s book “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” and I probably sacrificed 20 I.Q. points for it, it is THAT dumb. According to Harvey, women should wait like, 6 months before putting out and for what gain? So they can finally have sex with a dude who has been having sex with other women for 6 months while you have been spinning some clever little web that you think is going to lead to marriage with some “quality” fuckarrhea? Not smart hockey at all.

I respect Jesus’s primal need to “bang it out” on the first date. Why would you want to waste any more time than possible sitting in a bistro after bistro, collecting farts while you try and make small talk? With every inane topic, like how you always cry when you watch “Marley and Me,” a subliminal subtext of how tragic your life really is has been planted in the other person’s brain, processed, and filed into the “not banging this tonight or ever” category. Dating is just so damn depressing. This is why Jesus’s Bang First, Explain Yourself Later strategy might be the smartest hockey for old bitches on a first date.

But how can Jesus and all you other dudes out there get what you want in the timely manner in which you want it?  You have to convince her that it is her idea, obviously. Most ladies of a certain age will not suffer a fool for all steak dinners at Harbour Sixty, they have been a few rodeos and know the whole thing always ends up with painful crotch burns.  I might not be an expert on the art of seduction, that seems too complicated and European ridiculous, but I know what puts ants my pants and hurries things along and can be done over beer and chicken wings in any dump of your choice. If there’s one of me, there has to be thousands more with same responses. Here, read, learn something, go forth and get ready to start pounding from the back:

1. Don’t even bother to lie. The bad news is that seasoned smart ladies know when you are bullshitting, like you are “in between opportunities” and doing some “consulting” in some vague field like “marketing management.” The good news is they’ll rationalize just about anything, like that you are unemployed still live in your mother’s basement, for some decent bone. Remember, women in their forties are horniest people on the planet so rest assured,you have targeted the right group, son. In order to score with some young chick for the first time, you have to make up a pack of lies, write them down on a list and stuff it in your wallet, then figure out what douches dress like and get some new pointy shoes, a leather jacket, some skinny dark wash jeans, probably borrow a car, and money even. Then you get to go on a SUCCESSION of the most boring dates in history where you have to listen to her talk about those inane things but she puts a question mark at the end of everything? She says it like this: “Oh my God, every time I watch Marley and Me, I cry at the end?” And you don’t know if you if it is a statement or a question? And should you answer? So you tune the fuck out just because you think there is a pot of gold at the end. Are you stupid? That is not rhetorical. Yes, you are.

Old bitches don’t talk like that anymore, their inflection stays steady after years of asking questions that don’t get answered. And they don’t want to see your dumb ass in those skinny jeans so just don’t. Wear your regular jeans (Levis 501s, I’m telling you) and a plaid shirt (I’m begging you) and don’t overthink your game plan. Go with the flow and do not get attached to the outcome because that is what will lead to despair which is you on your desktop fapping into your filthy gym sock watching LiveJasmin.

2. Compliment wisely.  Do not say anything stupid like; “You look beautiful.” That is a generic word reserved for European men with English as a second language. Everything is beautiful. Even just this morning I went to pick up my dog’s dainty turd and admired its dry and compact texture: “That is just beautiful,” I said out loud, which is why I am known as the crazy pyjama lady of Brookmount (the street Betty poops on). Tell her she is “hot” or “fierce.” These are power player words that make things happen. “Fierce” once made me go home with a dude who had a busted face and no front teeth. Because he was a hockey player. So hot.

3. Have a funny childhood story to tell.  Just don’t tell that one about how your mother beat you with a wooden spoon because you let your little sister get stung by a bee and then the rest of your childhood memories were completely blanked out after that. There’s not enough lactating women in the world to soothe that savage beast. Instead tell a little story about your first crush in kindergarten, Debra Jo McMakeitup so it sounds adorable that you still remember her name after all these years. Tell us about how you pinched her, then pulled her pony tail. We will be captivated by what happened next, how did she react? She cried and you had to stand in the corner for all of recess. Then she moved to another city because her dad was in the mining industry and you don’t know what happened to her but you searched her on Facebook (trust me, that will make us wet our pants that you still think of the one who got away) and you think you found her but she still hasn’t accepted your friend request, so maybe it’s not the right Debra Jo LeWhatever. Copy, print. You’re welcome.

4. Find something yonic on your plate and eat it like you mean it. What’s yonic? You know I can hear some of you reading this out loud in your outdoor voices. Yonic is VAGINA SHAPED! There’s nothing hotter than a guy who eats everything and anything with gusto. I have only one hard and fast rule about what is a deal breaker and it is this: PICKY EATERS ARE NOT ALLOWED ON THE VOYAGE! Also if you are on, or have ever been on a colon cleanse, keep it to yourself. Pro tip:  When eating with a lady you want to bang, find something on the plate like a perogie or a fig or even a chicken wing…let’s go with a chicken wing that’s shaped like a safetypin, not the drumstick because that’s what I will be sucking on to show my prowess. Take the safetypin wing in both hands and lick it on it’s side, then quickly take a tiny bite, chew that one slow, swallow and then push your tongue through the remaining meaty bit so the tip shows between the tiny bones then suck all the flesh into your mouth. Be a bit of a pig about it, as long as you ate the carrot and celery sticks like a gentleman so we know you’re not a complete Neanderthal. Lick your fingers, too. The more we see your tongue flickering around, the juicier our beef brisket slow cooks in the crock pot that is our lucky underpants.

Sigh. You know, it’s that easy.

Okay that is about all I got for now, gotta go, I have something burning in the oven.

So yeah, Spring finally showed up, yay! So yesterday I walked around Leslieville in the blinding sun for a couple of hours while Mike the Mechanic changed my winter tires and performed some other tender loving things to my precious box that is a Scion XB, filter and oil change, et cetera. I window shopped and drifted into some stores, taking street #selfies because that is my hobby.  I went to get a drink at one point and I stopped dead in my tracks because parked on the street in front of The Pumps was the car of a dreaded ex-fuckarrhea. It is bad enough running into an ex-lover-type in a controlled environment but most horrifying when you are off-guard, TAKING PICTURES OF YOURSELF like a douchette in front of THE BONE HOUSE  because you think it would make a funny cover for your fake on-line magazine/dumb blog. I looked around but I couldn’t see him BECAUSE THE BULLSHIT SUN WAS BLINDING but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see me wherever he was so I took a quick shot (it was too bright for the letters to show up! Damn you, sun!) and stealthily headed back to the mechanic shop. I don’t really care if he sees me, looking like crap with #nomakeup, as time has healed that particular wound into an invisible but tiny, jagged scar in the bottom left hand corner of my calcified heart that I sometimes pick at when I go too far deep-sea diving into the ocean of #sadz, which is hardly ever, but I would just HATE running face up into him and if he was with his new generic wife and then it would be all fight or flight flustered. Since I am entirely made up of chicken shit and apple cider vinegar, I would probably say something rude while running into traffic. Thank Hayzoos there was no encounter and the only person I ran into blocks away was my little soul sister, Ania, who works the front desk at my gym, and she was on her way to her shift.  We squealed with glee when we saw each other.  Isn’t it funny when you have a sparkly connection with someone who is from a whole different generation? I could have even given birth to her if I was prolific enough to have boned her father when I was 21.

“OMG! Your hair is so shiny!” (that’s me).

“Your hair is so shiny, too!” Her.

“You’ll never guess what I use!” Me.

“I bet I know…” Her.

“APPLE CIDER VINEGAR!” Both of us in unison. Apple cider vinegar a frugal lady’s best beauty secret. We laughed, high fived, and then went about our ways. And then I tripped over a streetcar track because I was wearing flip flops. THAT is the first sign of spring as far as I am concerned.

Last weekend I downloaded all three seasons of the HBO-comedy series “Hung.”  José, the butcher, recommended to me last week as I am a power-tv-watching champion and I finished Downtown Abbey (embarrassing) and American Horror Story, Season 1 (awesome). I’m IMDB-ing “Hung” for you so you can check it out but if you are too weak to click, I will give you a quick synopsis: Ray is a forty-something high school gym teacher/coach who is divorced with a twin teenage son and daughter, moves into his parents sweet retro cottage-style home that he inherits but doesn’t insure. There’s a fire and enough damage that he has to live in a tent in the backyard which is by a lake…OMG, I love his little house, even half wrecked, it’s like real estate porn for me!  You can have your Downton Abbey drafty mansion but give a tiny bungalow and I will be a happy lady of the cabin-with-the-screened-in porch. SIGH! Anyway, he has to build it back himself but because he is poor American teacher in Detroit, he needs to supplement his income! He has an awkward one-night stand with Tanya, a hippie guest poetry teacher who happens to be in one of those Learning Annex-type business development classes he takes to figure out how to make more money, and he ends up fucking her again (even more badly) because HIDDEN CHEMISTRY… somehow they decide his GINORMOUS dick is his shtick that he needs to market. Ray becomes a man ho, and Tanya is his lady pimp. They call themselves HAPPINESS CONSULTANTS. The synopsis sounds far-fetched but it’s played out brilliantly and makes you think it’s all very plausible. At least I do.

I spent the entire weekend watching all three seasons. The weather outside was shite so I stayed in my jammies and took to the bed. JUST ONE MORE EPISODE, I kept saying, I neglected to shower, ate raw food, I was so consumed in this show.  Not since the “Breaking Bad” 48-hour power-watch of January 2012 have I gotten so lost in a tv screen. Last year I wanted so badly to make crystal meth in my basement with my tenant who loves Heisenberg even more than me. He would be Walter and I would his Jessie, this landlady don’t give a fuck. Buck the system! It didn’t happen though, he had better things to do like build a back deck, so don’t go calling the DEA or the RCMP or whoever. The only dodgy thing in the basement is a nest of snakes and I never want to go down there ever again.

NEVER MIND THE METH, NOW I WANT TO BE A LADY PIMP! Specializing in that untapped niche market of men servicing women.  Why is this not a popular thing? I have no idea. I’m going to brainstorm some ideas with you, so stifle your judgements while we go through this.

Now on “Hung,” Ray is played by Thomas Jane, who is a handsome All American JCrew-type rocking his forties. He is like a unicorn because he will bone a woman of any age. We all know that in real life, a forty-something man who looks like that always has that arrogant self-entitled pickiness where he would only bang twenty-year bikini models. Let’s face it, women that young are not going to be paying customers. Disgruntled wives, cat ladies, and cougars with their mojo on overdrive with some money to burn are the ones who would pay for the service. I know I would if I wasn’t making up this business plan. But I think if I am going to have some man hos working for me, they would have to be in their twenties just based on boner power, willingness, and stamina. Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s a young man’s game.

And does a man ho have to be well-hung for this career? In my humble opinion, NO! Now that I am old and have seen a variety of penii, I don’t really care about the size. Or girth or whatever the fashion is of the moment. They all have their own personalities and stuff to bring to the table. The penis needs to be demystified if I’m going to be peddling it.

First of all, you can’t tell just by looking at a dude’s hands or feet what size he is. It’s like sometimes when you know a guy and go to his house to meet his dog (not a euphemism) and you think he’s going to have one of those cute Lab/Shepherd crosses and it turns out he has a frightening looking Chinese Crested and you are completely repulsed and you really don’t want to pet it. Or you expect a Jack Russell and you get a Great Dane. Now I am speaking in metaphors: The truth is that as majestical and horse-like a Great Dane is, they only have a life expectancy of 8 years as do other giant breeds, whereas a Jack Russell will be jumping around like a puppy for twice that long. Just saying.

Helmets versus Rockets. If a North American man is of a certain age, born in the 1970s or earlier, he is more likely to be circumcised than not and women of the Sex and the City-era are used to this helmet look to the point where they would shudder in horror if they saw an uncut one. This infuriates me. In praise of rockets, I like me some extra foreskin. Since I was a toddler, I had tactile OCD habits and I would carry my blankie around and run my fingers along the satin edging until it completely wore out. Uncircumcised dicks are an OCD girl’s best stress toy, they remind me of these fun snake water tubes where they slide up and down in your grip and you never want to let go. So. Much. Fun.

I know men have some insecurities about their dicks for whatever reason and they just want approval and for a woman to look at it and say it is the most magnificent thing she has ever seen. For me though, the first time I see a man’s dick, I am going to be shocked no matter what. I’m never prepared for the strange colour, the bulging veins, the shock of pubes or even lack of pubes. But then I gradually get used to it and then it will grow on me. It’s never going to be a love at first sight scenario so just be patient and introduce it gently. The only dick that doesn’t scare the beejezus out of me is my Remainder Man’s (you know, my strictly platonic male friend I go on about ad nauseam who parks his trailer in my backyard and takes me out for beer and wings and cuts down my shrubs, blah blah, etc). Before he became civilized and had all the fun whipped out of him by his heinous girlfriend, he had the most hilarious habit of pulling out his penis in public and slapping it on top of the bar like a floppy eel. I know you’re thinking how vulgar, what about the children, he is a pervert and should be charged with public indecency, etc…Relax, hardly anyone saw and his dick is so friendly and non-threatening, you just want to pet it.  In fact it reminds me of my wiggly little dog, Betty. So cute.

So for my Happiness Consulting business (shhh, not lady pimp, this is legit), I would have to hold auditions. Must have dick power but I am more interested in finger and tongue action, those are the gateway tools into a woman’s pleasure zone. So dudes, if you are up for a new career and want to pay of your students loans in a hurry, you know to how to contact me…and ladies (you know who you are), I’ll keep you posted and in the meantime go get a bikini wax and here’s a cute puppy to put you in a happy mood and you know I’m just kidding about all of this, right?  #notreally #callme

I wish this was a real magazine, “The Art of Modern Living” …like Oprah’s “O” only with actual practical advice that you can really use such as how to hashtag your Instagram photos for maximum likeage, I fancy myself the nouveau poor-but-grew-up-without-incest-and-poverty version of Oprah.  I might not be able to give you a brand new Volkwagen Beetle but at least you won’t get a pair of sequin Uggs from me either. Ok, I know you would like a pair of sequin Uggs and so would I for my elegant dog walks with Betty who may or may not be just a ferret on steroids.  Who am I kidding? Oprah is the awesomest and the stuff she gives away is all the best shit, but in my magazine, I can only share with you what I’ve learned from my first world trials and tribulations (the hashtag would be #trialsandtribz). It would be way more entertaining than “O.”

I had an epiphany this week. Oprah would call it an “Aha moment” but since your with me, it was more like a WTFLOL moment.  And it’s not a complete and tangible realization but more like something that has been slowly gestating and is starting to spew forth from my brain to this blog. Please, bear with me!  Or if you can’t bear with me, beer with me…go crack one open, I’ll wait….It is about a spiritual journey, and I have been working through it for the past ten years ever so slowly, one step forward and then a nap, then drunken wino weekend, then a nap, then another step forward, then watching the entire three seasons of Downton Abbey, a Jays game, and another step forward…in other words, my little rudimentary “spiritual journey” is more on a par with an errand in to the corner store for some emergency Liquid Plumbr than an epic pilgrimage to the three corners of the Earth like that smug chick in “Eat, Pray, Love” JUST TO GET SOME JAVIER BARDEM BONE. I’m SO jelly.

Mine started like this:

I went to a Blue Jays Game.  Lorraine had an extra ticket to see the Jays play the Indians and asked me to come along with her family.  I was like, yes! I don’t know shit about baseball but who cares? A stadium full of testosterone is just what the doctor ordered and BEER ME! I can’t eat hotdogs, so I pre-ate beforehand, slapped on a Tena-pad because I am no dummy, and hopped on the streetcar to meet her.  The Queen streetcar, as much as I hate that slow-moving bitch in my motor vehicle (I am still doing the Downton Abbey accent), is a really soothing ride, kind of meditative if the other passengers aren’t sniffing glue and speaking in tongues. It put me in a good mood for the game. At the Rogers Centre, we had great seats and not only did Lorraine know ALL the words to the national anthem, she also knows everything about baseball and all its subtleties. I learned a thing or two that I have since forgotten but at least I know all the words to “Seven Nation Army.” In the 9th inning, because “we” were tied, the excitement of the crowd escalated to fever pitch and a wave ensued. “Whee!!!” squealed me, jumping up ( 5 sections too soon). Nobody loves a packed stadium wave more than me. I got the rhythm of it by the next round, don’t worry.

I am not always a crowd yahoo. A few years ago, when I was a real estate agent, my brokerage manager convinced to take a 3-day Mike Ferry seminar at the Convention Centre to learn better business practises in order to achieve SUCCESS! (Success is always in capital letters in real estate publications).  It took place in an auditorium of over a thousand other real estate agents with their hair and their outfits and their coffee and muffins, all talking shop amongst each other.  I sat in the very back with my hair and my outfit and my coffee and muffin, all alone and paralyzed with dread and fear. When Mike Ferry came prancing onto the stage with his Gwen Stefani headset, Jumbotron backdrop, the disco lights went on and out blasted “Y’all Ready For This?”  Everybody, and I mean every single person, bolted out of their seats and started dancing and clapping with the oh-so groovy beat.  I was mor-ti-fied. Cannot deal with forced jubilance. I got up alright…and bolted to the bathroom.  This ritual happened every morning and after every break. Fucking horrifying.

What’s the difference between me giddily hopping up performing a wave and singing The White Stripes at the top of my lungs at a baseball game or me cowering in a toilet stall to avoid a crowd of dancing realtors? One word: Mojo…or MOJO in capital letters. Sergio Santos, I would so hit that. Dude in a white shirt tucked into a pair of dress pants eating a muffin with a Blackberry in a belt holster, noooo. Not even drunk.

But the question is, does it take an entire stadium to get my MOJO`to flow? And the answer is no, I can do it all by myself. Here’s how:

I went to a guided meditation group at the library.  Sounds like a good time, right?  My daughter, Evangeline, who is 19 has had anxiety attacks for a few years. She gets into a state when she starts thinking about her own mortality in relation to the rest of the unknown universe. She fears her own death, and maybe Betty’s but not so much other people’s. For a few months she has been going to group meditation in order to control her emotions and cope with anxiety. I, too, have a simmering stir fry of anxiety triggers:  money, death, jobs, getting old, drying up, the future, loneliness, etc. They make pills for this sort of thing, I know, but I would rather learn to cope by myself. With a lot of people, anxiety and depression are a barf-awful couple like Brangelina but thankfully my anxiety is like moi, a lone wolf who might occasionally send out a sexy text message with a random body part attached. I can get the sadz alright but it only lasts a day. My anxiety needs to be on a short leash that’s for sure, otherwise fuck knows what disorder it might want to pick up for some good times.

The group meets on Monday and it’s free!  ’Not everything you have to pay for, Mom,”  Righteous Teenage Daughter knows how to buck the system. Her boyfriend, Tamas, has also been going which is not surprising, he is a fascinating neo-hippie-type and I feel like he is a whole blog post on his own.  I thought it would be just three of us and the guide because bitch, please, meditation?…isn’t that seventies thing? But there were over twenty people in the room. And I’m not going to lie, the first thing I did was a scan of “who would I bone in a pinch?” It’s a game I play wherever I go and so do you, admit it. Why would you ever have to bone someone in a pinch?  In case the bomb dropped and you were the only survivors and had to propagate the species, duh. There were mostly women of various ages, a couple of young dudes like Tamas, but there was this one middle age man in a suit who stood out because demographically speaking, he was the one I would HAVE to bone in a pinch.  I kept my eye on him, just because he made me worried, he looked so incredibly sad. Or meh, I couldn’t tell which.

I learned a thing or two that I have been retaining because we got some handouts that I actually read and then googled. Our guide was a thirtysomething dude who had just been to INDIA on a spiritual pilgrimage, of course. He smiled a lot and had those kind of twinkly eyes that make you feel like surly, sarcastic drag-ass and that maybe you should lighten up a bit.

He told us this story of seeing an entire family: Father, kid,and mother holding a baby, all perched on a motor scooter, weaving through the traffic. Imagine all the tickets they would get if they were riding along Queen Street. We all laughed like what a bunch of crazy mofos in India, but then he explained that it was a culture of “collective fearlessness.” That is how they roll in India.  In our culture, he said, we are excellent communicators, what with all our cellphone texting. Isn’t that cute? I’m serious, sometimes you have to get tired of all these cellphone shaming memes you see on the Facebook, but he puts a positive spin on it. So tap, tap, tap, away, kittens, we are part of a collective power of excellent communicators!  Huzzah!

Then he guided us through a meditation exercise where we were sitting in a chair, both feet to the ground, we had to do some swirling around with our hands from our laps to the top of our heads, then tie a pretend bow, and then make a rainbow over our bodies. WTF for you ask? To bring awareness and create energy flow, don’t be so skeptical. The energy is Kundalini, which is Sanskrit fancy-pants for MOJO, hookers. And MOJO isn’t just about boner power, pervs, it’s the energy that guides the whole spirit. This energy flows through the seven chakras centres through the body, called the subtle system.  Is it Science? No, but not everything has to be “science” all the live long day, I’m looking at you Neil Degrasse Tyson. By the way, this energy flowing ritual is not unlike thousands of people performing a wave at a baseball game. Yes, it is.

Once you get your energy flowing though your chakras, which is not unlike UNCLOGGING A TOILET, you can close your eyes and achieve the state meditation. And what is that?  It’s like an emptiness, where you are calm and void of all emotions. Anxiety is emotional blockage and if you can calm yourself, by yourself SANS Ativan, you should be signing autographs in my opinion. Our guide says sometimes this state of meditation only lasts a moment and when you get good at it, you can go for an hour or more.  It takes awhile to achieve this so I’m gonna try if it kills me. At this point, I can’t really tell if I had any actual meditative moments or I am just thinking of a very boring thought. Also, the girl beside me and I were having duelling banjoes of stomach growling. Distracting! How can you ignore outside noise? This little grasshopper has much to learn! But even just being in a group with all the positive-style energy flowing, a packed stadium or a room in a library, is a powerful MOJO stimulant. I peaked a few times to check up on the man I would have to bone in a pinch and he still seemed to have the sadz or the mehs but maybe that was his default expression. Who knows what goes on inside a person?  Also worthy of note, is that during our meditation silence, one woman started to cry in big, greasy sobs and then on a dime, it turned into laughter! THAT is one messed up set of chakras I would think.

My little epiphany? Don’t be such a goddamn hermit and find comfort in the collective energy of those who inspire you to NOT hide in a bathroom stall. Don’t be afraid to ride the waves!  Go, little elephant, go!

Also I have had enough rounds of spring fever to know that where there is hope, there will inevitably be major disappointment.

Yes, spring is exciting, there is definitely a natural mojo boost from extra sunshine, not just those annoying rogue beams that peak out from sides of your drapes when you take to the bed to watch endless hours of Downton Abbey on your laptop. It’s time to get outside, lazy ho!

The warmer weather brings out the people from HBO hibernation and everybody wants to sit on a patio. The pressure is finding the right patio with the optimum possibilities. The perfect patio has all the best sidewalk traffic, with a parade of motley humanity that will keep you entertained. In my neck of the woods, the Beach, it’s all same old year after year: An endless stream of boring ass couples with their ugly strollers and their purebred dogs who lead the way like majestic protectors of their boring ass masters. Why so loyal, dog? You want to say, break free and chase some squirrels and run to the lake and roll in some dead fish. I used to be one of them, my husband and I, and my custom slip covered Peg Perago double stroller…our Shiba Inus used to get loose and bolt every chance they got which was HILARIOUS!  *sigh* Was that fun or a pain in the ass? Snap out of it…now I am a crusty, single old bat with just one lunatic mutt who dive bombs for every crumb and canine anus that passes by. Definitely not hilarious. I need new hood and a new game plan, that’s for sure.  I have some ideas (which doesn’t include dog training) that I am going to implement this spring and I’m going to share them with you and feel free to comment some pro tips of your own because I love hearing from you:

1.  Last post, we discussed the art of flirting and I got a lot of feedback in my in-box.  I’m going to read a book, the sequel from the classic “Men Are From Mars, etc” and it’s called “Mars and Venus on a Date” and perhaps we shall discuss it in a future blog post (if I actually get around to reading it). Meanwhile, I feel a million dollar idea coming around like we need another take for the disillusioned souls who have had their heart ripped out and shat on, something like Men Are From Uranus (obviously) and Women Are From Pluto (because that’s a planet that doesn’t even exist and you know how we’re supposed be all like difficult and stuff, *eye roll*).  Anyway it’s real time right now and I am back at the same place with Refat, the very same bartender who was ignoring me last post and now even though the place is packed, he came running up to my table which is in the same spot as before.  ”Can I help you, Miss?”  The power of cleavage.  ”I’d love a pint of Stella Artois, Refat, please!”  I know, I sound like one of the dumb cunts on “Downton Abbey” ordering a footman around but I have been fervently watching the show in marathon sessions and it’s given me some lessons in poise and lady manners.

2.  I need to find a new crush, speaking of Downton Abbey.  One of you wrote me last week and said “I think it’s awful that you would flirt with a married man.  I take offence to that!”  I apologized profusely because I am stupid but the more I think about it, the more indignant I get. I was married once and I let ridiculous bitches flirt with my husband which only gave him a mojo boost and therefore more cache, and it was beneficial for everyone.  So fuck you, I will practise flirting on your husband whoever he is and you will put on your big girl pants and suck it up.  Anyway, it’s just FLIRTING and I’m really not that good at it.  My current crush, who is tits on a bull when it comes to flirting, is of course married, but to some hooker who runs a tight ship, a lady who most probably has her man’s balls in a vice grip. Men love that type of woman for some reason,I know it’s true because there are entire Tumblr blogs devoted to macerated nutsacks.  Anyway, I told my crush I watched an entire season of “Downton Abbey” over the weekend.  And he said: “Downton Abbey is a really good show.” Oh… I know, right?.  And I, incredulous, said:  ”But Downton Abbey is a girls’ show.”  And he replied, chest deflating:  ”Well I’m not the one who puts it on.”  And then he went about his business with his head down whilst my lady boner wilted to thirty percent of its capacity. I might still carry the tiniest of torches because cute! But! if somehow I find out he is watching “The Bachelor,” which I suspect he is, I will never look at him the same way again. So I need a new crush, one who watches hockey and maybe some reruns of Seinfeld while he is unimpeded to scratch his free wheelin’ balls in front of the lady he loves. Bitch, please, it’s that simple.

3.  Laura and I went out on Friday night to see a bar band. We went to Dora Keough which is a pub-type place full of wretched professional drunkards.  She and her friends go out regularly and they know how to swill the beers and shake their hips.  I am a day person, a vodka drinking hermit, as you know, a reverse vampire who wears pyjamas at 5 pm.  Laura is “taking a break” from men because of their tedious game-playing ways.  But me, I am always zealously on the prowl, I scanned the room:  ”Everyone here is a circus freak!”  And before y’all accuse me of being a stuck-up picky bitch, I am hot for Louis CK who is a balding, chubby, ginger hunk of cerebral sexiness.  So don’t bust my balls if I have a certain standard.  Anyway Laura, who is all off the men and not paying attention to anyone but the band, gets asked to dance by a young dude! He is bat-shit crazy but still…we have decided that Laura has some kind of magical powers. a mojo so fierce and fine-tuned that we need to scrape her armpits of her pheromone debris and chemically recreate its essence and we will be rich, I tell ya.  To which I ask this question:  Would you rather be really rich or have Laura’s sizzling hot fucking mojo?  I pick the mojo. The most valuable commodity in the world, in my opinion.

4.  It’s time to buy a new vibrator.  Just saying.

5. It’s also time to exfoliate.  Even though I appear a little bit casual at times (read slovenly), I am massively vain when it comes to skin care.  I think if you are a lady of a certain age, you simply have to buck up and get procedures done.  In my opinion, you don’t have to spend a shitton of money on skin care at home but where you should drop the big ones is at an aesthetician who doubles as a nurse just as a side job.  You need a wand wielding bitch who can shoot out laser beams into those gaping pores and rejuvenate with medical proficiency. Don’t get me wrong, at home I put rotten avocados and honey on my face while I watch my Downton Abbey, but there comes a time for professional restoration.  Save your pennies, get some Fraxel or a Vampire Lift, but until then and before you enter another yoga class, get ye a salt scrub even if its from your kitchen cupboard and rub it all over your ass because scaly skin is gross.

6.  I’ve been taking some #selfies (don’t judge) for recreation and going all around with the iPhone lens and noticed my Hello Kitty tattoo has changed shape and even disappears at certain important angles. Ugh! This means a fitness goal of some sort which is something even my lazy ass can handle.  For some reason I like the gym (three words: hot tub jets) and if I change my time that I go, I might be able to find a new crush, hence killing two birds with one stone. Snap!

7.  I’m going to make a scotch egg.  Labour intensive, yes, but my lazy ass enjoys a culinary challenge.  Check this out, you will looooove it, it is all about eggs but is sexier than “Game of Thrones.”  I’m in love with Heston, is he gay or just British? The scotch egg is around the 12 minute mark but you are going to want to watch the whole thing and maybe make your own mayonnaise, yo. And THAT is not a euphemism.

8.  I need to finish watching “Downton Abbey.”  I took a break because I was missing something.  I wasn’t sure what it was until I saw “Game of Thrones” and I realized it was it was the soft core gratuitous porn of HBO.  A lady needs a little porn now and again but maybe my brain doesn’t have to be marinating in it.  It’s all about balance. And patience. Speaking of which, once again Refat is completely ignoring me, even though I am stroking my decollete with my fingertips.  What the hell?

But first, in the past couple of days when I have checked my site stats for what it is that you google in order to find me, I have had a huge spike in traffic from this term:  Lululemon pussy see-thru yoga pants.  And I just wanted to say thanks for dropping by, but there are no see through yoga pants here .  But! in any given hot yoga class, you will inevitably see some in their splayed out glory, so maybe that’s what you should be doing instead of trolling on google looking for rogue camel toe.  Just saying.

Also as an aside, yesterday my male platonic boyfriend without any benefits whatsoever (otherwise known as Remainder Man) came over to my house to check out the hole in my kitchen ceiling where it is snowing plaster chips on my stove top as we speak (he will work for beer) said “Let’s go for lunch.” And I, as usual, thought he meant Gabby’s for chicken wings and the company of really old,  glassy-eyed professional beach drunks.  The beach hood is infamous for this particular pack of old dudes who live for the 11 a.m. opening of the beer taps and then do the stroll along Queen Street, starting at Castro’s in the morning and ending at Captain Jacks at midnight.  They spend the whole day not speaking to one another at the bar and then one of them will finally say something and then a fight will break out and somebody gets their nose broken. Lather, rinse, repeat the next day.  I love it so, these are the men that need to be flirted with and I am fully prepared to hone my newly acquired techniques on them.

But no, Remainder Man wanted to go to my gym, where they serve beer and soup.  ”I want to eat lighter,” he said.

“No, you just want to see vaginas in yoga pants,”  I said.

Giggity.

So we had lunch at my gym and he as he ogled some yoga-panted MILF-type who trotted by with her screaming toddler.  Some other sweaty gym-regular menfolk with their squash racquets dropped by our table of crass talk, and I came to the realization that I MAY AS WELL GROW A DICK.  I am just one of the boys. What the hell?  I am not even remotely masculine looking, I wear mascara and I have been dutifully reapplying lipstick throughout the day as per my New Year’s resolution, I have projectile boobs and a bunched bum. I rock the latest nail colours, I always carry a purse full of crap, my voice sounds like a little girl (true story, telemarketers always ask me if my mother is home), and I am afraid of snakes.  Not one of these men are ruffled around me, they carry on talking their talk of boring golf shit, completely ignoring me while their eyes wander around the room at the ladies that AREN’T at their table.  It is virtually impossible to practise flirting with them, they are such assholes. They are all bark and no bite.  Even if you flirted with them, they would look at you like you were a frog on the highway and then resume their infantile ignore game.

I left all frustrated, as usual.  My Remainder Man is always kind to me though and doesn’t let those loathsome squash dudes hang around for too long. As we drove back to my place, we passed a girl in yoga pants(!!!!!!!) walking her dog.

“Woof woof,” said Remainder Man.  She can’t hear us, we are in a car, but he does it to bug me.

“Her fucking dog could carry a pizza box through the gap between her legs!”  I’ve told y’all before, when I am jealous, I am one mean hooker.  Look out.  Also I am not even sure why I was jealous…do I carry a torch for Remainder Man?  I feel like we might be in one of those worm holes and we will hook up when we are in a nursing home.

“I know, she is a little too thin, that one up ahead though…HOT!” And she’s an elderly lady with a walker.  And that will be me one day.

“Seriously, what is it men want?”

“They want it all!” Except for me and my phantom dick, obviously.

I must figure this out before I get too old and settle into this mess and become ONE OF THE BOYS in the retirement community on that remote island off the coast of Venezuela I plan on escaping to (you are all coming with me).

I have been googling how to flirt  and I will practise techniques RIGHT NOW, REAL TIME on Refat, the bartender where I am writing this on my laptop plugged in to the far wall but with a direct view of the bar, I will SMILE and begin:

1. Make eye contact.  He is busy right so I’ll just wait.  Bat eyelashes?  Yes I think that is cute.  Maybe too cute?  I don’t know, help me.

2. Take interest in what he has to say.  After I get his attention with this eye contact that is not happening, I am not kidding, there is a woman in YOGA PANTS at the bar and he can’t take his eyes off her, I will ask him about his childhood in Bangladesh.  Goddamnit, it’s been over ten minutes and he’s still talking to her.

3.  When I am talking to him, I will touch myself. NOT IN THAT WAY, dumbhead.  You are supposed to stroke your collarbone or flip your hair, or tickle your own cheek, or something, I read that in Cosmo or some other lady rag.  I do all this shit already because I have OCD.  I am yanking at my bottom lip, and waving my hand, but he is still talking to the bitch in the yoga pants.  Fuck him.

4. Learn from the masters. Since he’s completely ignoring me, I will watch what the hooker in the yoga pants is doing that is so riveting.  Her hair is in a really high pony tail and when she talks, it wags back and forth, like a tail on a Golden Retriever.  She is laughing and he is laughing, this is KEY!  I never laugh.  I am always in a serious panic about something, you know it’s true, I run into various businesses in tears asking for duct tape because my car key fob as fallen off the ring.  A master in yoga pants would be all like, giggling about duct tape and its many uses, she would be using duct tape as nipple clamps and LAUGHING ABOUT IT.  I must learn how to make light of the folly of the day.

5. Watch body language.  Apparently, and according to Cosmo or some other lady rag, most things are said NOT with words but BODY LANGUAGE.  If you fancy a certain dude and you are sitting down, you need to cross your legs and point your upper foot directly toward him.  I think swinging the leg back and forth will help draw his attention to you, it’s almost like you are pulling him in, and bonus, it will also feel good. I had a friend who actually used to masturbate in class this way, no joke, she grew up to be a squirter obviously.  Anyway, I fucking hate Refat right now so I am sitting splay legged with my feet tightly entwined on the chair legs.  He’s still talking to yoga pants, she’s standing up and moving her hips from side to side like she has to go pee.  I am sure he finds that alluring, he probably is into golden showers, maybe even a little scat. Perv.

6.  Touch his arm or tap his leg when you speak to him.  If he ever comes over, you can be sure I will not touch him, scatman poopy germs.  I am NOT a touchy-feely type person.  Although sometimes when I accidentally touch a certain dude, we graze fingers like when he is handing me something or we pass each other and our arms bang together, I get a little electric thrill, and that’s when you know you will hit it off in the boudoir. At least in my imagination. I do not even want to see if this works with Refat.  And he is still talking to that yoga ho!

7.  Make sure he knows you are available.  If you manage to hook a dude with your foot or gaze or hair twirl or whatever and you actually get to talk to him, this is when the word “ex-husband” coming out of your mouth is all magical sounding, not like a disease:  ”My ex-husband is taking the kids to Chicago FOR THE WEEKEND!” Maybe the neanderthal will get the hint and throw a ball in your court, or not.  And here’s a pro tip on the other side of the flirting/flailing woman that is me: if you are married or hooked up, it is nice to chat with someone in a flirty way for a brief amount of time, just to give the other person a mojo boost.  There is no need to say “mywife” like it is one word or “WE love the biryani at Lahore Tikka House” within the first 30 seconds of meeting someone.  Just saying.

8.  Close the deal.  If I knew how to do this, I would not be sitting here writing this with such rage in my heart for Refat and by the way, he never showed up at my table:  ”It’s the end of my shift,” he said when I finally went up to him at the bar just now.  Light is off the cab.

And that, is the story of my life.