Christmas, Bailey's and a Phenomenal Stocking.

First thing roommate and I had to do was to get a Christmas tree. The first place we spotted them was at the Loblaws about a 20 minute walk from the house. I met up with roommate at the subway, me in my snow gear and her in her work clothes wearing a lovely black work coat, her Goretex ski mitts, a hat and her scarf wrapped around her neck...the fattest most chunky scarf you could possibly imagine.

We picked our glorious tree and carted it home in the freezing, biting, harsh, cold winter wind, all along the Danforth, roommate struggling with her purse while keeping a tight grip on the tree and me with my backpack full of groceries. Of course we had to get groceries at the same time as a Christmas tree...we would rather struggle through the pain of the heavy items weighing us down than have to go for a second trip to Loblaws.

We got home, I set up the tree stand and we brought the tree in. Swagger was extremely skeptical and very confused that the item he so frequently pees on outside was now entering his home. I held the tree in position as roommate tried to get the base of the tree secured in the stand. It was no use. "We have to do some sawing, the tree is too big for the stand". Oh roommate. Did she want me to go and grab the saw we had in our kitchen cupboard? As soon as she said it, she knew it was impossible. We don't own a saw. Nice try though roommate. So, a new tree stand it is.

Decorating the tree was magical, making sure we put nothing on the bottom part of the tree as Hooligan is mesmerized by lights and tree ornaments. I occasionally find an ornament on the floor and can sometimes hear her tinkering with the branches. I have a glass bell ornament that alerts me to her attack on the tree, it urgently chimes if the tree makes any kind of movement. Last year my tree took a tumble when she tried to climb it. Luckily I hadn't decorated it yet, and she narrowly escaped being squished.

Finally the tree was decorated, eggnog  and Bailey's bought, wreath hung on our door, stockings over the fireplace and garland hung. Since roommate headed west today we decided that we would have our Christmas last night. We did each other's stockings and seeing as her childhood stocking is with her family, i had to buy one for her. Unfortunately the thing is quite heinous. It was the only one I could find. A red felt thing with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" written across the top and three plastic bubbles on it with images of the classic Rudolph claymation film inside them.

Anyway, all cozied up in our jogging pants and hoodie attire with some wine in hand (and Bailey's too...), we began to unwrap our beautiful stockings:

Me: "Guacamole dip mix! I love guacamole!"

Roommate: "After Eights! I love After Eights!"

Me: "Organic animal crackers!? Amazing! I love animal crackers and they're organic!"

Roommate: "Oooooohh, Flake Away! For dryness! My scalp is so dry, this is perfect!"

Me: "Nooo! That doesn't go in your hair. It's a skin exfoliating wash! Please don't put it in your hair".

Roomate: "Oh, hahaha, imagine!?"

Me: "Yay! A Peel & Stick Chalkboard! We can put it in the kitchen and I can leave you a funny message every morning!"

Roommate: "Yeah, we have to find the other half of that gift. I couldn't find any chalk."

Me: "I love it!"

Roommate: "Oh my God...is this what I think it is!? Oh my God!" (Roommate is holding the yellow banana case I got for her). "Open that one! The one shaped like a banana!" she points to my pile of unwrapped stocking gifts.

Me: "No way! I got a banana case too!?!? Holy shit it's pink! I love it! And we'll know which one's mine and which one's yours because they're different colours!"

This was just phenomenal. There had been no previous talk from either of us about wanting a banana case for Christmas. We just knew. We knew it would be the best gift to give, and apparently it's the best one to receive too. No more bruised bananas, ever.

I was so excited for the last item roommate had to open. It didn't quite fit into the Rudolph stocking, it was on the fireplace mantle waiting for her. She unwrapped it and her eyes lit up right away and I could swear her head exploded when she recognized what it was.

Roommate: "NO YOU DIDN'T."

Me: "Yes! Yes I did! Ha!"

Roommate: "I was missing this! It's my favorite!!!!!"

Yes, I bought her the Dirty Dancing limited keepsake edition DVD. It comes with 2 special features DVD's and a book. It really is something. She loves it, and we decided right then and there that we were going to watch Dirty Dancing immediately. You can't just put that kind of thing on hold, but first I had to open my final gift. A beautiful pair of black leg warmers with buttons along the sides! I can't even explain how much I love these leg warmers. I knew right away they would be a perfect match for my black sparkle Christmas shoes. We really do know each other well.

Christmas is awesome, even if the lead up is chaos. I went to the mall last week, went into about 8 different stores and immediately turned on my heel and left. Too many crazy people. The Christmas music started on my favourite light rock station 98.1 the day of the Santa Claus parade, which was back in November. I hate radio Christmas music. That being said, I love curling up on the couch with roommate, the Christmas tree all lit up and sparkling, a hot chocolate and Bailey's in my hand (and a glass of wine!?), content after having opened the best stocking ever, munching on organic animal crackers.

Dirty Dancing starts, and our early Christmas couldn't have been more perfect.

After Christmas, we plan on making a giant snowman on top of all the empy bottles on the back deck.

Sailing School Chaos.

I love to sail. My parents signed me up for sailing lessons at the age of 8. Off I went with my lifejacket, my bathing suit, my boxers with hearts all over them, my Hypercolour cap and my brand new Teva sport sandals.The amazing thing about learning to sail when you're 8 is that they don't put an instructor in the boat with you. You pile into the bathtub-like boats with 3 other kids and away you go with minimal knowledge of sailing, let alone actually skipping a boat. You get a theory lesson or two, and then they just throw you in head first.

I went pretty far with sailing. I graduated from the bahtub boats, or as we called them "sea cows" and moved on to a Laser II. This was the only time I actually enjoyed wearing a diaper. The wire that comes down from the mast (trapeze wire) hooks onto the diaper that you're wearing and then you 'hike out' as the below picture displays. The feeling of trapezing is awesome, especially when you put both hands behind your head and stretch out over the lake, your body parallel to the water.

It's not me, but it's what I looked like when I was a cool sailor.

I got up to Silver Sail VI but when I was sent to boarding school, my sailing dreams came to an end. Taking sailing lessons was a thrill, and racing gave me a competitive edge that I didn't know I had. This being said,  there was also a kind of chaos that went on behind the scenes at sailing school. A couple of incidents that I'll never forget...

I think I was about eleven or so, and being that age you sometimes forget to do important things. It just so happened that all four of us forgot to put the plug in our boat. About an hour out, in the middle of the lake, we noticed that our boat was sinking. Slowly but surely our speed decreased and the gunwale (pronounced / "gunnel" to rhyme with "tunnel"- a nautical term describing the top edge of the side of a boat) was almost underwater. The emergency sign to hail the instructors over is to stand on the deck and flap your arms like a bird. We were in total panic mode and by this point we could swin in and out of the boat without any effort, meaning the whole top side of our little sailboat was under water. I flapped my arms, flapped and flapped until the instructors saw us. The zodiac turned in our direction and came at us full speed. I sat down/floated in the boat with a sigh of relief (and terror as I didn't know what the consequences would be for sinking a boat).

The zodiac approached really quickly and it was almost too late when we noticed the instructor putting up a battle with the steering shaft of the engine. He was freaking out, flailing his arms in every direction, yelling at us, making crazy hand gestures...and then... WABANG!!!! He ran us right over. Did you know that the bottom of a zodiac dinghy is made of fiberglass?

I think we all semi got out of the way when we realized he was going to run us over, but we got pretty pummeled. Four hysterical crying children swimming around in lifejackets, trying to figure out which way was up. I sprained my wrist, one of the girls broke her arm, my other friend got a concussion along with a HUGE egg on her head, and all of us were traumatized. The bruises were pretty hefty as well. Apparently they had the wrong motor on the zodiac and the driving shaft got locked. Don't ask me why the motor wasn't just turned off, but the instructor was all of 17 years old and probably wasn't thinking. I'm surprised the motor didn't chop anything up. We were legendary, and I'm sure this story still circulates at my sailing school.

'Chopping up' leads me to the next best sailing story that I can remember. I was about 13 years old. As we drifted along in our boat, my sailing buddy and I noticed something white floating in the water. It turns out it was a GIANT catfish. I'm not kidding, it was about 3 feet long, white, and super bloated. It was just bobbing along, belly up, and it stunk to high heaven. We poked at it a bit and every time we sailed by we tried to get a better look at it's face. This is what teens do, okay? Finally the sailing instructors (their nicknames were Toast and Jam, so you can imagine what kind of hooligan teen boys they were) came over to see what had peaked our interest.

They got so insanely excited about the catfish...they hauled it out of the water and started throwing it around. It was putrid and it smelled terrible. Toast and Jam thought it would be funny to throw it in the water and run it over.

Fish explosion. They took to that catfish at high speed and the thing got shredded in the motor. Fish guts flew up into the air for miles and our sails were sprayed with fish parts. Goo all over us, rotten fish, stinky fish. I can't even explain how gross this experience was. Toast and Jam pretty much died laughing and of course they didn't get one ounce of fish guts on themselves. We were unfortunately in the line of fire and we were shunned by the sailing community for the rest of the day.

I sometimes wonder where I could have gone with the sport if I had actually climbed to the top. For starters, I would be in wicked shape and I would probably be way more cocky than I am now. I would also have a great farmer's tan, calloused hands, blistered feet, a sense of invincibility, and advanced knowledge of cloud formations and wind changes.

And maybe I would even have a sailing medal or two hanging in my bedroom.



Blackberry Blackout.

I don't care how important you think you are. When you're in a meeting, get off your blackberry. Unless there's some kind of emergency like your wife is in labour, there's really nothing that can't wait for an hour. What ever happened to manners!?

I walked out of the subway a couple of weeks ago and joined about 20 other people at a bus stop. I waited and waited and after about 10 minutes I looked around and noticed that everyone, and I'm not exaggerating here, everyone was either talking on their phone or texting. It was super creepy, everyone was in their own little cell phone bubble and it just looked so strange. Like a bunch of robots lined up talking into mini robots, with robots responding back through the mini robot. Bizarro. Surprisingly enough, I can understand how we got here, how everyone is all wrapped up in technology and afraid of one another. I think it's ridiculous, but I get it. Insecurity, boredom and an addiction to technology makes us turn to our phones. But in a meeting? Isn't that basically like turning your back on the person that's speaking? You might as well just get up, turn around and stand there with your back to the world.

When someone is doing a presentation, don't sit in the front row of an all-staff meeting and start clicking away on your Blackberry. They aren't silent, and that damn clicking/typing noise drives me bananas. Why are you even in the room when all you're going to do it hang out on your Blackberry? It sends a really bad message, I don't care who you are...high up in the organization or not. Actually, if anyone lower down on the ladder (such as myself) were caught using their Blackberry during a meeting, there would be trouble. So why is it okay for the "higher-ups" to do it?

You know what's worse? Being in a meeting with three other people, two of them paying attention and the other one typing away on their Blackberry. I actually have a really hard time speaking in front of people especially when it's something prepared, like a presentation or leading a meeting. I start talking and you start texting!? Please save me the uncomfortable feeling of inadequacy and at least pretend to pay attention to what I have to say. If the topic of the meeting isn't important enough for you, then don't attend. Easy peasy.

I have a Blackberry, it was a free offer for switching over from Rogers the Hellraiser to Bell the Beast. I still hardly know how the thing works and my email isn't connected to it. I use it respectfully aka; it isn't my lifeline. I would die laughing if there was a mass Blackberry Blackout, it would be a good way to go. Come on people, get it together and stop disrespecting one another.

It's Not Cool to Pray All Up in My Face.

I won't go too far into religion here but there's one incident that I just have to share. It has to do with The Praying Lady at work.

There's a lady in my building that likes to pray out loud no matter who's around. I've been stuck in the elevator with her alone...pray pray pray. I've been stuck in the bathroom with her alone...pray pray pray. I've been on the bus with her surrounded by a million other people packed in like sardines...pray pray pray.

For the love of God, don't you have enough time to pray on your own? One particularly rainy morning, day before yesterday to be precise, I was waiting for the elevator in the lobby at about 8:30am. I was still groggy, clutching onto my coffee for dear life and a bit bitter due to all the kids and their backpacks on the bus. Two other people were standing around waiting for the impossibly slow elevator when in strolls The Praying Lady. She's quite a beautiful woman, very well put together and stylish, and always looking happy with a slight smile on her face.

Our lobby is quite big and the two other people were standing a fair distance away from me. I suppose The Praying Lady felt the need to get into my personal space. She came in and parked herself right next to me so that our arms were about an inch apart. And then it came...a strange kind of whispering with the only recognizable word being 'Lord'. Mumble... pssst...tretttt...mumble...LORD. Okay fine, I had heard it all before, but this time she was looking at me while chanting and she was way too close for comfort.

I took an exaggerated step away from her and told her she was in my personal space. She said nothing and continued to look directly at me while doing her weird whisper/chant thing. Then the elevator arrived. The two other people and The Praying Lady walked into the elevator and I hung back as the doors closed. What the hell...did she cast a spell on me!? Some kind of hex!? She freaked me out alright, and now I don't tolerate her presence anymore. I saw her in the bathroom again today and I actually left without washing my hands. That's how badly I don't want to see her or be in the same room as her.

Pray if you must lady, but don't come up into my personal space at 8:30 in the morning and start pushing your prayers onto me. And don't for one second expect me to be okay with it. You're freaky and I want nothing to do with you, not even shared air. Until next time Praying Lady, and maybe I'll prepare a chant just for you. A "get out of my personal space" chant.