Thursday, December 29, 2011

Last Time I Checked, I Was An Ordinary, Bipedal Hominid




Seriously, why are people such douchefaces? Why??

I know that all of us have the innate potential for asshattery, but for most of us it's not a constant modus operandi.

Retail workers are human. HUMAN.



We make mistakes. But thank God we're not surgeons, so you won't die from them.

We don't know everything. We're flattered that you think we do, but we don't. I lost my crystal ball a few years back and my clairvoyance has never recovered.

We don't have a direct line to the President of the company. We don't play golf with him every week. He doesn't invite us over for Christmas dinners. We are his minions. That is all. And we're good with that.

We don't keep a huge supply of just what you need up our asses, and then lie about it just to piss you off. Trust me. If we could immediately procure what you need from the shelves of our rectal receiving rooms, you'd hear the thumping sound of thousands of pairs of work pants hitting the floor across the world. Just to make you happy so you'll stop yelling at us.

We don't get off on being abused. We don't walk around with ball gags and nipple clamps in our pockets (well....some of us might, but we don't talk about it in mixed company). No thank you Sir, I don't want another.

We have feelings. We have families. We cry, we laugh, we bleed, we sleep. We don't live in the store, so please, when it's closing time we'd like you to leave so that we can clean up and go home to visit with said family members.

We're not robots. We don't plug ourselves into the wall at night to recharge for the next day.



I think customers forget these things in their crazed lust-frenzies to obtain more 'stuff'.

Do me a favour, my friends, the next time you see a poor retail worker being verbally sodomized without lube, step in and let the abuser know that they misread the 'for hire' sign on the door.

'Asshats Need Not Apply'.



Christmas is dead! Long live douchebaggery!

Sunday, December 25, 2011

I Did it All For the Nook

Wow, that's an attractive thumbnail shot. Yikes.



Anyway, Merry Christmas, bitches! :D

Ps: Apparently I wear the same blue shirt in every photo and video I've ever been in.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

You Can Cumber My Batch Anytime, Benedict



Dear Mr. Cumberbatch,

I really would appreciate it if you'd take a small vacation from my head.

 Just a small break will do. You must allow me some time to do other things.



Yes, yes, I know you want me to get straight into bed with you so that you can ravish me, no need to point.

But I have to get some housecleaning done. I can't concentrate on my work.

I've missed entire meals because you'll just happen to pop up in my YouTube playlist and then I'll sit there for hours listening to you read fairy tales with that delicious voice of yours. 

Your accent goes straight to my vagina.





I spent the afternoon in the hospital because my ovaries exploded.

And I will never be able to hear 'Little Red Hen' again without it eliciting a sexual response. But I forgive you.

I'm starting to lose friends because I can't talk about anything else.



Damn you and your awesome hair and awesome voice and awesome suit and awesome pink socks. 

And the Purple Shirt of Sex. Ohhhhhhhhh the Purple Shirt of Sex!



Non-believers know not the mighty power of the PSoS. Able to incinerate panties around the world in a single leap.

When you reply, please be kind enough to enclose reparation payments for all the underwear of mine that you've burnt to a crisp. I can't afford to buy any more.

And I see from the trailers of next season's 'Sherlock' that you once again wear the PSoS. You might as well send me the money for that now. I may have to stop wearing underwear altogether.



And did I mention the mental anguish I've been given from my husband? I think that he may be jealous of your phwoarness.

He says your eyes are too far apart and asks why I would want to be in love with someone that I'd have to stand on a chair to make out with? He just doesn't understand the dedication of a Cumberbitch



All I'm asking for is time.

Time to meet with friends, spend time with husband, and to sleep and to eat and to remember to breathe and stuff.

But not too much time. I don't think I could handle it for too long.




Ok, I changed my mind.

Already.

Forget what I said. I was in shock.




You're allowed to take up as much room in my head as you'd like. Stay as long as you like.

But make sure you're wearing the Purple Shirt of Sex.

Or a bedsheet is fine. It's all fine.



Love and kisses and squees and I'd like to climb you like a tree,

~Kyna

Ok. I just had to get that out.

Here's a fun fact: I discovered today that if you search the term 'Cumberbitch' on Google Images, about halfway down there are pictures of Chuckles, most awesomely the one of him wearing the tiara.

Cumberbitches everywhere are going to see the pictures, fall out of love with Benedict, and start drooling after my husband.

Wonder what his fangirls will be called?

Chuckfuckers?

Edit: I decided to start a Tumblr blog to feed my Ben-addiction. Please visit Cumberbitch Sandwich if you suffer from the same glorious affliction.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Bored on a Saturday

When one is combatting boredom due to lack of internet, one turns to the delights of filming themselves repeatedly.



I picked the video where I talk about something lame, rather than the one I made of myself dancing naked to "Thriller".

You're welcome.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Crunch Time

And by crunch time, I don't mean that Christmas is in 10 days and it's time to optimize my bookselling prowess.

I mean 'crunch' as in the sound of my fist connecting with someone's maxillofacial area.



ONE more person asks me why we don't have a book in the store, right now, on a subject like...?

~Kilt-making
~Mule training
~Celtic knot puzzle solving
~Blacksmithing
~Manny Pacquiao

...etc, etc, etc.

ONE more person tells me I ruined their Christmas for x reason?

ONE more person says, "Yes, I know you have 5, 576 bibles in the store, but I don't want any of those, it has to be this one."

It's bang, zoom, to the moon Alice!




POW, right in the kisser!

Yesterday a dude came and and asked, "Where are your Elf on the Shelfs?"

I stifled the urge to say, "You mean Elves on the Shelf?" and smiled and told him instead, "I'm sorry sir, we're out. But I can see if there are any available to order."

"Oat?" he said.

"Yes, we're out," I replied, highly aware of the fact he was making fun of my accent. Because I'm not an idiot.

"Oat?" he asked again.

"Yes. And I'm Canadian, I can't help the way I say 'out'. Do you want me to order that Elf for you?"

I was so pissed off. I've never wanted to jersey someone so badly.



There are some good customer stories. One woman came in last week, frantically looking for a 'How to Draw Dinosaurs' book for kids.

"It's all little Timmy wants for Christmas! I hope you have one!" she exclaimed.

I took her into the children's department and handed her a book on drawing dinosaurs. "Oh! OH! You saved my life!" she cried. "I love you! You've made my day! Little Timmy will love this! I would have been SO dead if I hadn't found this! Thank you!!!!"

That made me laugh. "Well," I said, "it's not very often that a bookseller gets to say she saves lives for a living."





But that's how it goes.

People will tell me that I'm the most amazing customer service rep they've met in a long time. People will tell me that I'm stupid and ruined Christmas AND their wife's birthday.

All on one week (last week, in fact).  Sometimes in one day.

This year I'm not feeling too Christmassy. Even with the job I have, I usually like it anyway. I enjoy giving gifts and sending cards and decorating and all that.

But I'm so tired of it all. The only thing I enjoy this Christmas is reading by the lights of the tree. I come home, pour a glass of wine, and settle down next to the lit tree with a good book.

Right now I'm in the middle of reading 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes'. All part of the current obsession.

I posted some of the things on my bucket list a little while back, and I mentioned that I wanted to read some immense classic just to say I did.

Well, I'm glad I picked this one (even though they count as several stories and not just one massive one, but who gives a shit about the details) and I'm kicking myself that I haven't read all of them sooner.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (from now on I'm referring to him as The Notorious A.C.D.) was a fucking literary genius. Master of the first line hook. Master of quick, witty dialogue. You can't help but get pulled in, it's ridiculous.




Anyway, I read. I've also been inspired to write again (and not just in the ol' blog, I actually fancy myself a 'real' writer at times). I work. I rest.

No time for Christmas, my plate is full.

Besides, it never feels like it's Christmas here in NC. The temps are still awesome enough to go for picnics and sit on the back porch playing cards. People are still wearing flip flops and shorts (silly people, but they're doing it nonetheless).

10 more days.

10. More. Days. To not punch people in the face.


Monday, December 12, 2011

Some Kind of Wonderful

Chuck and I have been together for seven years today.


Us then:





Us now:



We're a little older and a little wider, erm, I mean wiser. But we're still happy.


Chuckles and I are awesome together for a lot of reasons.


1) We like to go on adventures. I've been places with him that this Canadian never thought she would ever get to go to.


Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.



Chuck on the back steps of Thomas Jefferson's 'Monticello' in Virginia




Spelunking (oh, how I love that word) in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.



2) Chuckles loves me even though I'm a complete weirdo. He lets me be exactly who I am. I can burst out into song and dance in the middle of the grocery store and he doesn't bat an eyelash. I swear like a sailor. I'm loud and opinionated. He accepts everything and loves me more for it.








3) I admire Chuckles because he doesn't give a shit about what people think of him. He does crazy things because he knows it will make me laugh. He lets me post pictures of him doing silly things all over the internet. I love hearing other people say, "I love Chuck." It's awesome to have a husband that everybody likes, instead of the other way around.










4) We both like the 'little things' in life.


Hanging out with good  friends....


The same music...



Going for picnics in the park...


Visiting museums....



Enjoying sunsets from our back porch...


Finding a cool place to enjoy the outdoors and take a picture...



Or even going on a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, impromptu canoe trip.



5) Chuckles loves me for what I strongly believe in...




....And I love Chuckles for what he strongly believes in (*cough*even though the Browns always lose*cough*).



There's no one that I'd rather be with more. Even though both of us aren't easy to live with. I challenge him, he challenges me. We're both challenged. (hehe)

I've been with him through lung cancer. And his oldest daughter's wedding. I don't know which was more stressful!

I think the wedding.



Happy 7 years, Chuckles. Can't believe it's been that long already.

*mwah*

Friday, December 9, 2011

Dirty French Friday

Kyna parle sans arrêt. Quelle mitrailleuse, cella-là!






Kyna talks nonstop. What a friggin' blabbermouth!


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Like a Bear on Skates

I'm a really messy person.

When I lived by myself, I was kind of a pig. I'd go through every dish I had before I'd wash them. Sometimes it took 3 weeks to go through every dish I had.

I'd end up eating cold cereal out of a saucepot with a fork. That type of thing.



It was the same with laundry. Cleaning the bathroom. Whatever. My mum was always horrified when she came to visit.

I was pretty much a bachelor with tits.

Then I met Chuck. Total fucking neat freak. When I first came down here to visit, every time I put a glass in the sink, he'd pick it up behind me and wash it. I thought he was just being nice.

The longer I spent with him, I saw that it was because he couldn't stand to be in the same house as an unwashed glass in the sink.

You could practically hear the whistle-music from 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly'. It'd be a showdown between him and the dirty glass.

Chuck was always quicker on the draw. The glass had no chance.



I asked Chuck if being in the military had made him a neat person, and he said that he'd just always been that way.

The one time he came up to visit me in Canada, I had my place spotless. I took out four garbage bags full of trash the day before his arrival, so he wouldn't see what an oinker I was.

When I unexpectedly stayed in the US and moved in with him after his cancer surgery, I'm sure we drove each other batshit.

In fact, I know we did.

I wasn't working at the time, and my little messes here and there (sounds like I was pooping on the carpet or something, but I promise I'm not that much of a pig) would piss him off. His neatness would piss me off. His lack of a lung pissed us both off. It was fun times.

Don't smoke, boys. You'll end up losing a lung and gaining a messy-ass Canadian wife.




I was actually unable to work for about two years before I got my green card, as that would have been highly illegal.

In that time, I tried really, really, really hard to become a neat person. Chuckles never 'expected' me to clean the house, do the laundry, make him dinner, etc. He knew better than that. I'd had 'the talk' with him when we first met about how I wasn't ever going to be a 'traditional' wife. Expecting me to be the housemaid wouldn't fly, no matter what his previous live-in significant others had been like.

I said that while I wasn't working I would do all these things because I had nothing better to do, but once I was able to have a job, we would be sharing the housework, the cooking, the laundry, etc. I wasn't going to be working full time and doing all the cleaning. Fuck THAT shit.



During this period, something weird happened. I did naturally become a little neater.

I found that indeed, cleaning dishes as you go is a hell of a lot less work than cleaning them after you've used them all and left them sitting for three weeks.  And your cereal won't taste like metal. And that peeing in a toilet that you've scrubbed more often than Halley's Comet comes around is quite nice, actually.

I still found a way to be 'me' of course. Stickin' it to the MAN. The man being Chuckles.

I made a deal with him that stated if the rest of the house was clean, I would still be able to have a complete mess in two places and that he couldn't complain about it. Next to my side of the bed and in my closet. No. Complaints.

The current state of my closet...I think there may be a few gay dudes hiding under that mess. And maybe even Jimmy Hoffa.



Chuck agreed, and actually kept his promise to not complain about it. Mostly. (The windows in our bedroom are on my side of the bed, and if he ever has to come around and close them, he'll mention how he has to wade through a pile of dirty clothes to do it.)


Eventually I landed my current bookstore job, and we started sharing the housework more equally. Even though we'd had 'the talk', I think it was hard for Chuck to get used to me not cleaning everything all the time. Of course, he had a full-time job too, and didn't feel like cleaning either.

Do you know what happened? He got a little messy.

He discovered that the dirty glass could wait until the morning to be washed and the house wouldn't collapse around us. We could go to work without making the bed and the Bed Police wouldn't bitchslap us.

I got neater, he got messier. It's interesting what marriage does to you.




Have you ever heard a messy person say, "But I know where everything is! If I clean it up, I won't be able to find anything."

Drives neat people bugfuck. But it's true!

That's because many people who are messy on the outside are really organized in their heads.

My brain is neat as a pin.



Ok, we all know there's a multitude of shirtless hot guys hanging around in there, but on the whole it's a very organized place.

Even though I have a busy life, I never carry a planner. If I need any extra help remembering very important things because my head is too full of shirtless hot guys (who may or may not be kissing each other), I write them down on the back of my hand  or put up Post-It notes.

This blog has really helped to clear my brain out every week. Whenever I feel like my head is getting messy, I throw everything out into a blog post and I feel better. For you tree-huggin' hippies, you could call it 'thought recycling'.

One thing about having a tidy mind is not dealing with change well. Big changes, small changes. I've never dealt well with them.

My mum kept a baby journal about me for awhile, and she wrote something like 'does not accept change well' in there. Apparently I also bounced around when Michael Jackson came on the radio and was allergic to cow's milk, but I digress.

I barely ever change anything on this blog. The colours are mostly the same as when I started it almost two years ago.  So is the format. So was the header picture until yesterday.

I've been trying to train myself to accept change, just like I trained myself into keeping a cleaner house. I feel like a Russian circus bear most of the time, but you know.



Or maybe you don't.

I forced myself to change the header picture. That's the one place where I will always use a photo that I took myself and didn't lift off the internet. I'm going to change that and my sidebar pictures more often.

So far I like the change. I'd really like to change my blog colours, but I discovered I'd have to change the whole layout to ditch the green background. (Have I said 'change' enough times??) But I like the layout. And I'm not talented enough to make a fancy one that I'd really like.

Dammit! *clutches head*....baby steps Kyna, baby steps...

I always think that if I change anything on my blog, people won't like it and stop reading or something. But I tell myself that it won't happen just because I change the header picture.

Who doesn't want a giant Rodin vagina staring them in the face when they click my link? People who are not my kind of friends, that's who.

I'd love to change my blog title, because it seems like a big lie now. But that one really scares me.

It's like cutting all your hair off and dyeing it pink. It's a big change and not something you can reverse easily.  And your friends all think you've lost your mind.

Maybe I could hold a contest. Anyone have some good title suggestions for me?