Crazy, Sexy, Funny

Last Sunday it was really nasty outside, which of course meant it was my day off. Karma gets me like that.

I should have done something constructive with my time. I could have cleaned the house, for example. Or maybe read some fine literature. I could have brushed up on my guitar playing...or learned a new language.

What did I do all day?

Spent it on CrackTube.

I found this Brit-com called 'Black Books'.



Dylan Moran plays a small bookshop owner named Bernard Black. Bernard is a crazy Irishman...smokes too much, drinks too much, is very high-maintenance and has to be taken care of by his much put-upon employee Manny and his best friend Fran.



Hilarious show. Had tears streaming out of my eyes. I sat at my computer all day and watched all 3 seasons, each episode posted in three parts.

All. Day.

Best spent rainy day I've had in a long time. I've been forcing clips on my Facebook friends all week since.

Maybe it's really not that funny. Maybe I find it so funny because I work in a bookshop. The same shit happens to bookshop workers all over the world.

I wish Bernard was my boss.




Maybe I like the show so much because I'm now in love with Dylan Moran. Which brings me to my next thought: Why is 'funny' so sexy to me?

Take any ordinary man. He doesn't have to have traffic-stopping good looks. In fact, a lot of people might not find him good looking at all.

But if he's funny? My panties start trying to escape down my legs.

The sillier the better. A man that isn't afraid to look silly on purpose in front of people is a confident man. And not only that, but a funny man is usually a smart man. Stupid men can be funny, but it's usually by accident and you can tell the difference. They're funny in the way that small children and pets are funny. It's not sexy.

Normal women are attracted to nice bodies...riches...expensive cars...refined manners...aren't they? Not me. Why am I missing this particular chip in my brain?

Funny is sexy as hell. Throw in an Irish/Scottish/English accent? Panties are in full on disintegration mode.

Examples:

Anthony Bourdain. Not only is he funny, but he can also cook. Makes up for the lack of foreign accent. Boneus!



Daniel Tosh. I'm gonna marry him someday (Don't worry Chuckles. It'll be after you're dead.)



Most of the Pythons. Except Graham Chapman. Even though he was brilliant, 'funny' didn't make him more attractive. He's dead, so I'm sure he won't mind me saying so.

I have a particular attraction to Michael Palin. I think most of the men I find attractive have been in a dress at some point. Or...garters.



Craig Ferguson. A kilt is way sexier than a dress. Even sexier than being naked whilst holding a big meaty bone in front of your genitals. And he's wearing a hot guitar and a furry sporran. My panties are completely non-existant now.



Denis Leary. His nose is kind of all over his face and his teeth are weird, but hot nonetheless because he's hilarious. No foreign accent, but he is of Irish descent so that scores points. And he's also been spotted in a dress. I think he lost a bet.



Now Dylan Moran has joined the ranks of Funny Panty Melters.

Something is truly wrong with me that I find this attractive.



I think that's why I love Chuckles so much. He's funny as hell. Slightly different sense of humour than I have, so I have a hard time making him laugh. I take it as a challenge to get him to do so. REALLY laugh.

He has two different laughs. One of them is a generic laugh. Of course it's technically 'real', but sort of an all-purpose guffaw.

His real laugh comes from somewhere deeper. Balls deep. It's devilish. Bawdy. More like a long cough than a laugh. His brother and his best friend bring that one out in him a lot more often than I can. Drives me batshit.

You wanna know why? Because he can make me laugh my ass off with little effort. Sometimes I almost don't want to laugh, because it means that he wins!

Did I mention we're also very competitive?

One of the clips I posted on FB this week was this one. You'll have to watch it to the end or you won't know what I'm on about. It's short-ish.



Chuck's been giving himself 'Irish hair' all week at random times. I've laughed so hard over it. The only people I used to hang around with were Irish (because I played Gaelic Football, not because I have some weird prejudice towards the non-Irish). Hell, I married Irish.

Mum asked if I had taken any pictures, because she couldn't imagine it. Well, I hadn't. But I came across this one of Chuckles from last year while I was looking for a different picture. He was relaxing at the table after work, no staging. And voilà!

Irish hair lives!!



Chuckles may not be rich, but he's in the Funny Panty Melter Club. I'm sure he's melted hundreds of pairs over his 49 years with his rapier wit and his Irish hair.

What say you, Ladies? And you too, my Gentlemen Friends? Is funny sexy?

All right.

Just one more.

I promise.

Hardcore Garden Porn

To all you non-gardeners out there, you might want to click that little 'x' in the corner. Go take a nap. Or feed the cat. You won't be interested. Neither will your cat.




To all you gardeners...you might want to take the computer in the bathroom and lock the door. This stuff is so hardcore, I think it may be illegal in some countries. Some of you more sensitive gardeners may have to shield your eyes. But I promise you'll wanna peek through your fingers!


Get a loada these.


















Hey, you out there! I see what you're doing. Didn't your mama tell you that you'd go blind if you did that?

Well, she was lying. Carry on.

These, my friends, are 'Rococo' and 'Bright Parrot' tulips. They look nothing like the picture on the bag. The picture on the bag looks LAME compared to the way they really turned out. I just bought one little bag. Next year I'm going to buy an armload. They don't really go with anything else in my garden. But they won't last long, and they're the best thing in there, dammit.

I did plant two other varieties of tulips, but they were a little more softcore.

This one I planted around my crepe myrtle and around my mailbox. They were very eyecatching as well. They were tall, and stood up to my windy yard very well. Not sure of the name.




And this one I was least thrilled about. They're called 'Happy Generation'. I don't want to grow it again. It kind of looked sickly the whole time it was growing. The white around the edges of the leaf is supposed to be there, but to me it just looks like unhealthy foliage. The bloom is nice, but not anything I would describe as 'titillating'.

I Should've Married the Toilet King of Tennessee

The weather was beautiful this last weekend. Chuck decided to take the day off and spend it with me on Friday, to cheer me up.

Who couldn't cheer up with a face full of sunshine? And a face full of Chuckles, for that matter!

We drove up the coast to Beaufort, which I've written about in the past.

We ate lunch by the water, eating outside whilst everyone else at the restaurant was inside. I kept imagining the regular diners gazing out at us with disdain.

"Must be Canadians," they'd sniff.

The wind off the water was a little nippy, but we were sitting in the sun and it was really nice.






Chuckles enjoyed some fish & chips, and I had a juicy burger. I usually order fish when I'm in Beaufort. It's a seaside town for goodness sake! But sometimes a girl's just gotta have some meat.

Like the dirty rat he is, Chuck snagged the seat facing into the sun. So I coerced him to switch with me after awhile.




What am I gazing lazily at?

I'd like to say that I was staring out at quaint fishing boats...wild horses running across the island over the waterway...or even chicks in string bikinis.

Nope. I was staring at this giant, ostentatious, $10 million yacht called the 'Syrenka'.



I imagined that it was the yacht of some rich, Russian diplomat. Or maybe this guy.



Then I remembered that it was docked in North Carolina. Yeah. It's more likely the ocean-plaything of the Toilet King of Tennessee. There's big money in toilet-manufacturing, don't ya know? Too bad I didn't find THAT guy on the internet.

(I really want a boat, by the way. I used to be really, really afraid of them. Now I'm planning on buying one myself, one day. Just a small one. We're gonna call it 'Not-A-Yacht'. Most couples sit around and dream about what their future kids will be named. We dream about what our future boat will be called. I love my life.)

We had just paid the check, and Chuck spotted some dolphins frolicking in the waterway past the restaurant.

I realized as we raced from the restaurant to follow the dolphins that it probably looked like we were trying to skip out on the check. Chasing dolphins like fools. Really. I imagined more audible scoffs from the indoor diners.

I still can't wrap my head around seeing dolphins just swimming by in nature. Do you know what my first encounter with dolphins was?

At the mall.

My hometown city's claim to fame is having one of the five largest shopping malls in the world, West Edmonton Mall. It was actually the largest in the world for the span of about 23 years.

It used to have a little fake lagoon, which housed 3 real dolphins. In the middle of a freaking mall.

There were protests for years. One by one, the dolphins died off. They finally decided to nix the dolphin idea a few years ago. The protesters were satisfied. Victory at last! Tree-huggers everywhere rejoiced.

What did the mall do next? They replaced them with sea lions. Funny enough, no one protests.

Guess no one gives a crap about a sea lion.



Anyway, I was trying to get a picture of these dolphins swimming by in their natural habitat. I couldn't get a good shot. There were too many fake Russian yachts in the way.

We decided to take a short ride up to Fort Macon and walk around on the beach. It was windy as hell, but still so beautiful.

There's a huge state seaport near there in Morehead City. Big, industrial. Not pretty at all, but very interesting and did I mention, massive?




Hey....those look like...





Wow. Chuckles is SO immature.

(Not really, I totally made him pose. It was too awesome an opportunity. You should have seen the looks we got from the people fishing from a nearby dock. If you still don't know what I'm on about, put on your reading glasses and click the picture to make it bigger.)

He christened them 'The Boobs' and says it looks like they're wearing a 'Cross-Your-Heart' bra.

I thought this schoolboy humour was going to be the highlight of the rest of the trip, but then we ran into some old friends...




I just about ran around screaming, 'DOLPHINS!!!'. Like I'd never seen 'em before.

Well, I have.

In a mall.

Do you see how close to the shore they were swimming? The sand just drops off quite deeply, so it looks like they were nearly beaching themselves, but they weren't. I bet they were eating all the bait off the hooks of the many fishermen out that day.



Sorry the pictures are crap. Dolphins are tricky little bastards. This one could be a sea lion with a dolphin fin strapped to his head, for all I know. Sea lions are even trickier than dolphins. Jealous too. Never trust a sea lion.



Nothing could top the impromptu dolphin show, so we decided to head home and relax in the sun on the back porch. Chuck was still being a ham (pun intended). Feed a man some 'Broons, and this is what happens.



Amazing, amazing weather. Most of the year, I'm so homesick for Canada that it's ridiculous. But right now?




'Nuff said.

That's What We're Famous For, Don't Ya Know?

This St. Patrick's Day, why go for an Irish shamrock plant, when you can buy a Canadian one?



My Mum had one of these for years in the kitchen. One of those 'saw this in the grocery store, and couldn't pass the cute little thing up' specials, as is the one I just bought. Hey, for $2.99, even if it doesn't live after I repot it, I get to have something cute on the table for a week.

A very kind comment was left on my last blog entry by a lovely man called John Gray @ Going Gently. All of you should definitely check out his blog, if you haven't already. Wonderful sense of humour and lust for life. But you should have guessed that already, because I'm the one doing the recommending, right?

The comment he left me was "just checking for your next post!
where is it?". Very flattering, John! It inspired in me a (delusional and misguided) fantasy that everyone is chomping at the bit for my next little installment of nonsense.

This week has been tough on my tenderhearted little Canadian emotions. Frankly, I'm pretty depressed. The horrific disaster in Japan is really getting to me. All of those people wiped out at once, and the continued threats to surviving residents...the only thing I could do to not feel completely useless was donate money to relief efforts. And even that felt piddly, because I don't have a lot of it to give.

I've seen some people joking about it on the internet, which my friend Bub has just written about in her amazing blog.

It's in my nature to joke about everything, even serious things. I joked about cancer all the way through thinking Chuck might be sick again these last few months. Maybe bad taste, but it's the way my mind processes worry and stress. I've offended people with badly-thought out joking around, on things I don't take seriously and forget that other people do. I've apologized for it if I've done it. I'm an 'accidentally offensive' person, not in intentionally offensive one. I joke when I'm nervous or when I'm stressed, to push away the bad stuff and try to 'find the funny' in something serious.

But this type of 'joking' around about the shit going down in Japan...it doesn't seem like jangled nerves, it just seems malicious. There's nothing funny about it to 'find'.

All that aside, I don't personally know anyone in Japan. Many people in the area I live in do, however. And yesterday I read a particularly heartbreaking blog post written by my internet-friend IG. I may not know the guy in '3-D world', but I really feel for him. And for all those poor Japanese people trying to deal with this.

Chuck is a news-watcher. He turns it on while we're eating dinner promptly at 6pm. I've spent a few evenings this week sniffling and wiping my eyes behind my fork. I'm not ashamed to say it.

I'm allowing myself this week to be sad and get it all out. It's hard for me to feel like writing anything funny at the moment. Next post will be lighter, I have some bookstore shenanigans saved up for emergencies.

Waiter! There's Raw Fish in My Soup!

Chuckles and I haven't been on a date in awhile. His drywall work has been slow since Christmas, so we haven't had a lot of cash to spare. Both our dating life and my hair have suffered on account of this.

I think it's important for married people to date. Each other of course. Otherwise it just gets messy.



Some of my work friends asked us to meet up with them last night at this sushi place called Shiki.



It's not a very fancy looking place, Jacksonville doesn't really have fancy places to eat. 'Dress Code' in J-ville means you don't bring a concealed weapon or wear gang colours. It doesn't mean 'Jacket & Tie Required'.

But some of the best places I've ever eaten at were holes in the wall, and we really wanted to have dinner out, so we accepted the invitation.

The evening started off badly right off the bat. Most of you know that I live in a rural-ish area right next to a Marine Corps base. It took forever to even get out onto the highway from my area. Traffic was really backed up. We were setting out at a bad time, but even so...

Got up to the turnoff to the highway, and found out there was a big accident that was blocking 3 ways of traffic. Rush hour traffic. I was driving, and I was so angry. Nothing worse for me than just standing still in a car.




I'd rather take the long way round and just keep driving. But we were trapped in at this point, there was no other way out. Always awesome to start off an evening out with intense road rage.

We get to the place, and walk in and it IS a little hole in the wall, but it's packed. All of my friends were at seperate tables. My friend E said that they started pushing tables together when they got there and the server/bartender guy freaked out and said we couldn't because the fire marshall wouldn't allow tables being pushed together. Tables must be 3 feet apart.

Ok...

Well in that case, we just shoved ourselves around two tables instead of three, so that we were all closer together.

We finally settled in and took in the atmosphere. It was very busy, and the server looked very harried. I asked E what was up with that?

"He told us that the old woman that runs the place is cheap, and fired everyone else so it was just him working tonight."

Wow. This dude, lets call him Mumbles (because that's what he did when he talked) had to run around to every table, serve the drinks, take the orders, take payments...he was not a happy camper.

When Mumbles came back out to take the rest of our order sheets and saw us all sitting closer together, he was even less happy. Apparently the old woman would be angry with him for letting us seat 4 people to a table (even though they were 4 person tables, with one side shoved against the wall). We let him know that if she wanted our money, which we would be collectively spending a lot of, she couldn't be too angry. He looked at us like, 'Ok, it's your funeral.' Well, maybe he thought it was going to be his funeral.

I had a lot of fun talking with my friends. We talked. And talked. Talked some more....filling up the wait time with banter.

Hmm, more talking. Awkward silence. Some more talking.

Man, the food was taking a long time!!

Finally, some of my friends got their food. Some of us didn't.

More talking whilst watching them eat. Some more friends got their food. Three of us didn't, including Chuck and I.

Talking...

A few of my friends were already finished eating. I thought I'd slip off to the bathroom, because that always seems to be the time food will finally arrive.

The bathroom was a single person, hole in the wall-style bathroom. As expected. I went in to check my hair and make-up before I took a pee, because that's what ladies do.




Hm. No mirror over the sink. I looked towards the toilet, and oh. There was the mirror. Right above the toilet. And I'm talkin' right above. You'd have to be bending over or straddling the toilet backwards to see into it. I shook my head, and turned to sit down. Forget the hair and make-up.

Oh. There was the real mirror. A full-length one even. On the wall opposite the toilet. Right in front of the toilet. Why check your hair and make-up before or after you pee when you can do it at the same time??

I was so surprised at how absurd this was, I sat there and laughed the whole time. You pee faster when you're laughing, don't ya know? The one-person-at-a-time bathroom wasn't THAT small. There was plenty of alternative wall space to place a full length mirror.

After I watched myself pee (which I have never done before, I guess there's a first time for everything) I went to wash my hands, still laughing. I dried them on paper towel and threw the paper towel in the...

Wait. Where's the wastebasket? Is it on the other side of the cabinet? No. Is it hiding on the other side of the toilet? No. I open the door to the cabinet that holds the sink, maybe it's under there? Nope.

I had noticed a pile of wadded up paper towels sitting on the edge of the sink. Now I know why they're there. I thought it was because people were lazy. But it was because there was no freaking trash bin.

It's funny, you never realize what a regular routine using the bathroom is, until your regular routine is interrupted.

Anyway, I added my paper towels to the pile and I went out to find the food still not there. The friends that were finished were talking about what they were going to do afterwards, and then said 'Not that we're going to leave before you get to eat!'. How sad that they even felt they needed to say that. I don't know if I've ever waited for food so long. If Chuckles and I had been by ourselves, I'm sure we would have left.

Our food finally came when most of the place was empty except the gang of us. It was pretty good, but not spectacular enough to make up for the wait, and for how much the bill was. I'm really glad to have gone out and chatted with friends (if any of you are reading this, THAT was fun :)). But jeez.

This wasn't the worst restaurant experience we've ever had, but it was close.What was your worst restaurant experience ever, Dear Reader?

In The Room the Women Come and Go, Talking of Michelangelo

I used to think that fall was my favourite season. These days, nothing does it for me like spring.

J. Alfred Prufrock had his life measured out in afternoons and coffeespoons. Mine is measured out by full moons and cherry blooms.



I think my Okame Cherry tree is coming along nicely. The blooms on it are a little different looking this year. They're quite a lot bigger and droop a little.



I'm hoping this year will be a little easier on it. Last year it was so damn hot right from the end of April to the end of September. I watered the shit out of it, and it still was struggling.



Hopefully it's a little more settled this year, with a stronger root system. I took those pictures yesterday about 30 seconds before the sky opened up and started pouring buckets.

Thankfully I was inside at the time, because I hate getting wet. Getting rained on feels so disgusting to me...like I'm a cat that just got dropped unceremoniously into a full bathtub. I don't understand people that love being in the rain. Don't get me wrong, I think rain is necessary, I just don't want to be under it when it's happening. Bleah.

Today it's nice and sunny. I'm sorry I missed a lot of the morning, I slept in late. We had inventory at work last night, which I always dread. I didn't get home till about 2:30AM. But now it's over for another year. As will be my cherry blossoms, very soon.

My Mum

It's my Mum's 60th birthday today.




My Mum, Shirley, is the most awesome Mum on the planet. She should get the Nobel Prize for Mummery.

Smart, beautiful, talented. All my friends in school loved her. She was the 'cool Mum'.

She doesn't drink, she doesn't smoke, she doesn't swear. And she was STILL the cool Mum.

I told you a little bit about her background in this recent post.

I never even imagined the day that my Mum would be 60. I never imagined it, because that would mean that I would be turning 30. And I could never imagine myself as 30!

I would think, 'Hmm....I'll be 30 in 2011! That's so far away.' This was back when I couldn't even imagine living in a year that didn't start with a '19'.

Time. Flies.

As a birthday present to herself, my Mum is finally getting herself a computer. I'm very excited about that. We'll be able to follow each other's lives a little more closely. I was always close to her. She and my dad separated when I was 3. She raised me all by herself, and she did a damn good job.

Most kids grow up and move out, leaving parents behind. Around the time just before my dad died, my Mum moved away from me! That was a coincedence (I hope...Mum, you didn't poison Dad, right? :)). She was only a province away though, and it helped me gain independence I might not have otherwise sought. And she deserved a life of her own after devoting most of it to her 3 kids (I'm the youngest...my brothers are 43 and 37).

And then I totally outdid her by moving 2500 miles away. I haven't even seen a picture of my Mum in 5-ish years. We talked on my aunt's webcam about that long ago...and I haven't 'seen' her since. That's a little hard for me. But we talk a couple of times a week on the phone, and I send her oodles of pictures of me ;)

My creative side comes from her. She's a talented watercolour artist. She writes. She turns old furniture into cool new pieces. She can do amazing things with a garden. She's funny without even trying (unlike myself, who seeks out the mirth of others...sometimes with huge failure :) ). Like I said, she doesn't swear (I know, how could she have produced ME) so she finds creative outlets for her anger.

One time she was upset with me in the car, and I was feeling bad because I was a goody-two-shoes and hated disappointing her, and she thought I was 'smirking' (that's just how my mouth is shaped, I can't help it!) and said, 'Just watch it, Buster!' We couldn't help it. 'Buster' made us burst out laughing :D. She also said 'bloody' a lot, and when she was especially mad or frustrated, she would say 'Jesus Murphy!' I really liked that one.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Mum!! I'm glad you'll be able to read my blog. Close your eyes when I swear or make innuendos, ok? :)