The Dance of Puffy-doll

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy .... NOT

My work shifts have recently changed and I am slowly adapting to my new sleep patterns. Thankfully, the graveyard shifts have gone, but this realm of daytime activity and being with the family enliven me. I accomplish so much now. For example, I was up at 6:00am today, cleaned the kitchen, unloaded/loaded dishwasher, 2 loads of laundry, posted ads on Craigslist selling used tires and never worn Miu Miu boots. I made a profit of $250.00 by 1:00pm. I went shopping, dilly-dallied at Michaels, the Dollar Store and returned home to peel a 10lb bag of spuds, mashed to perfection to accompany my perfectly marinated chicken breasts & steamed broccoli, while simultaneously preparing ingredients for a banana bread recipe I found on Facebook using the coconut flour I just purchased a few hours earlier from the new Winners store at the Semiahmoo Mall in White Rock. Life is accelerated at daytime. Tomorrow I go to physiotherapy for pain management for my woe-is-me hip, as I anxiously await that surgeon's phone call for consultation for hip replacement.

BTW: banana bread was awesome! Hip started to act up again. Last year I was diagnosed having Crohns, necessitating huge doses of steroids, which probably is the culprit for my now decreasing bone deterioration. I need medicine to control the pain and some of these are scary, addicting things. I take minimal amounts, or go without sleep. Lying down hurts like hell. The pain can be described like this: they shoot horses. Anyways, I wrestle through it. Hope carries me on, the love of my job and my family, and clearance sales at Winners, of course.

Colleen's Feet-in-the-Sand Music

I cannot express how difficult it is to choose songs to take along for the ride.

That special list of songs you want to listen to at the beach as you relax away the entire year of working the 9 to 5 grind.  It's even more difficult when your music taste is significantly more bitter ~or sweeter~ than those who will share your beach towel at the lake.

I rely on memory of the songs I love to listen to over and over again yet, my memory is fading, my repertoire is building.  How does one possibly choose?   You can't.

I'm disgusted with myself.  Not one Pink Floyd song.  No Elton John.  No U2.  What the fuck is wrong with me?  Why am I picking Amy Winehouse?  I wasn't really into her stuff, don't even know much about her.  Yet she made the list.  Michael Jackson didn't.  Neither did the Rolling Stones and not one goddamned Queen song.  And I was their biggest fan !

I've got Australian Crawl though, you know, their hit "Reckless".   Of course you don't.  I wanted to add some opera but I think I may cross the line there and create needless controversy as to "who spilled the drink" as a dive is made into the OFF button.  I am constantly running around with those *future thought* bubbles above my head.

I did my best.  I was warned I have limits as to how many songs I can "spotify" by my daughter, thusly:  "an audio streaming platform that provides DRM-protected music and podcasts from record labels and media companies."  I am assuming from them to YouTube to eventually my little ole blog.  Apparently it's time consuming to create playlists from one platform to another.  Oh, golly gee, if only some brilliant, pimply faced 15 year old out there could program such a solution to this dilemma.  

Well, here it is, folks.  My final final list, in no favorite order:

Coldplay:  Clocks & Fix You.
Audioslave:   Like a Stone
Hot Hot Heat:  Middle of Nowhere
Australian Crawl:  Reckless
Joe Walsh:  In the City
Collective Soul:  The World I Know
Tina Turner:  River Deep, Mountain High
Spoons:  Romantic Traffic
Eddie Vedder:  Hard Sun
Donnie Iris:  Ah Leah
Chilliwack:  Lonesome Mary
Smashing Pumpkins:  Disarm & Tonight Tonight
Stone Temple Pilots:  Sour Girl
Foster the People:  Pumped up Kicks
Adele:  Someone Like You & Hello
Gino Vannelli:  Wild Horses
Cage the Elephant:  Read to Let Go & Whole Wide World
Rhianna:  Love on the Brain.
Eminem:  Stan & Monster
Foo Fighters:  My Hero & Walk & Learn to Fly
Muse:  Madness & Dig Down
Kim Mitchell:  Patio Lanterns
Justin Bieber:  Despacuto
Thom Yorke:  Suspirium 
Radiohead:  Fake Plastic Trees & No Surprises & High&Dry
Jann Arden:  I Would Die for You
PP Arnold:  First Cut is the Deepest
Velvet Revolver:  Fall to Pieces
Bruce Springsteen:  In Candy's Room
Train:  Drops of Jupiter
Counting Crows:  Mr. Jones
The Verve:  Bitter Sweet Symphony
Mazzy Star:  Fade into You
James Blunt:  You're Beautiful
Amy Winehouse:  I Love You More than you'll Ever Know

Tongue in Cheek

Hello friends,

It's been 1858 days since my last,

POST.   ha!  Tricked you again.  Well, anyhoos.  How the hell are you?

I have to catch up on all this new blogging tech.  After all, those Blogger folks must have paid a shit load of money to lure us back to them and not to, say,  Facebook.  I was going to post a picture of "tongue in cheek" except Miley Cyrus gifs kept popping up.

So what's happened since I last posted.  I'm older that's for dang sure.  I'm grouchier, my patience reservoir has dwindled to near drought.  I got sick and am being treated for Crohns.  I must say that's one shitty disease, but it's manageable now by an onslaught of pharma and it's side effect trickles.   For example, I have been losing my glorious, long thick hair, which is sort of plus when you think about it ~ I no longer have to shave my legs. I've lost the weight of one single sheet of drywall, 70lbs.

I lost some teeth too, so now I wear dentures,  What the fuck!  Something about iron malnutrition, ho-hum ho-hum ya-da ya-da doctor-speech no one really hears as you gaze upon their shiny stethoscopes.

My kidlens are older.  Brandon is so responsible.  He saves money and eats right.  No by-product, synthesized fast food, no late night drunken Uber waits.  Sometimes I think he's older than I am. Sabrina is into fashion ~ as far as her bank account will allow.  She likes to cook and we shop together for ingredients, spices, anything she wants to purchase to cook a meal.  Money is no object *wink wink*.  

Hubby has been the exact same since we first met in 1980 ~ we still love each other.  There's been a few hiccups along the way of course.  Let's be honest, which one of us hasn't had the urge to slap-fuck your loved one into a pot of cheese curd?

We own two boats now;  one fast one and one not so fast.  This logic escapes me so you''ll have to ask the guy with his head driven hard into the Hors d'oeuvre.  We have this rule you see "don't talk about my stuff and I won't talk about your late night drinking".  

No no.  It's not like that ... anymore.  I now go to the casino to drink.   That way I let my habits fight it out and see who wins victorious.  Of course, these past statements aren't true at all ~ there may be a slight exaggeration so I tried to find a "tongue in cheek" gif, well ... you know what happened with that.

And from past experience, I've learned people don't want to read and read long drawn out blogs ~ my Uber is waving his hand crazily at me right now so I've got to go....

The Escape

Hubby & daughter went to visit our friends out in Mission yesterday, since they were in the area. The driveway is not normal like most are, it's a secluded property, trees upon trees, unpaved rocky climb to the house. You basically need a 4x4 to get up the drive. So hubby and daughter decided to park at the road and walk up. It's raining heavily heavy. ~enough said~ As they reach the halfway point to the house, they both feel the ground thunder, a huge ~thump~ and soon realize a BEAR has jumped off a tree nearby. Sabrina starts to -boot it- up the drive, Hubby is yelling STOP STOP DON'T RUN. The rain persists. The path is slippery as Hubby grabs her arm and pushes her in the leftover blackberry bushes because the dog is too afraid and keeps barking instead, safe in the stoop of the house. That dog is one smart dog. Meanwhile, hubby and daughter are trapped. Should we continue to climb, or find another way down ?   ANSWER: 
they find another way down. The rain has miraculously created a mudslide and created a new path to the road.

Myths and Long Fingers

Does anyone else think he has freakishly long fingers ~ they look like Daddy Long Legs. Yes, Glenn is brilliant, but has anyone ever mentioned those weird long spider fingers? When Sabrina was first diagnosed with her eye disease, everyone kept saying "make her take piano lessons, the blind are really good at it" ... such myths abound.

Hot Hot Heat - Middle Of Nowhere (Video) (Standard Version)

Cage The Elephant - Whole Wide World (Unpeeled) (Live Video)

Australian Crawl - Reckless (1983)

The Waiting Game .....

I enter the change room and I am handed my supply of surgical appropriate attire : knee length green socks, paper booties, one robe that ties behind and the other is an overcoat that ties in the front. They have a sample hanging in the room as to how to assemble this wardrobe. I have mistakenly fitted the left foot paper cover on my head. I thought the extra was a spare. Neither of these items match in color or are color coordinated.


I wait on the gurney with the ~ever so private~ cloth curtain that divide patients. I have heard the entire life story of the lady next to me, how her sons are so fabulous and her "designated driver home"
begins to chomp on carrots because they run along the beach and she is already complaining about the wait time to return to her routine. I fart. I ask my husband loudly "Has Doctor Nowzaradan arrived yet?" because in that question I know my husband will laugh out loud and then start spewing inappropriate comments about fat people and weight and calories. 

Sometimes he is useful. 

After an hour or so I am sequestered at another area, where hubby has stirred up blasphemy by bringing a cup of coffee by my bedside " I won't share" he politely argues, but apparently it is not appropriate to bring smells of food to those who have had to fast for surgery. At this moment I am hoping my farts do not resonate garlic. He leaves to dump his coffee but Nurse Ratched has sneakily strolled me away .... no good-bye. No last kiss. No last ~smell you later~. I will learn that this has upset him quite a bit, but I assure him I will make up for it.

I am strolled into a room with real surgical stuff and spot lights, there's four nurses and an anesthesiologist and a table that seems to be suffering from anorexia nervosa, and they want me to roll onto it. There's no fucking way I'm going to fit onto that teenager sized maxi pad, but I evidently managed to roll onto the strip, as they brought out the arm extenders, IV on the left, blood pressure thing on the right ... the only part I didn't understand was the hole where I had to place my ass.

Then my Doctor comes in, she's wearing a blue wig and has a big, huge smile. "HELLO" But that may have been distorted by the oxygen mask on my face that eerily smelled like a smoker had used it previous. I'm still a bit blinded by the sunlamps tanning my face.

So there I lay, all tarped down, then suddenly I am awake. In a different room. I'm realizing difference. That's the odd part about the whole thing. I have been beamed up to my current position, but missed the journey. And there's some sort of sadness about missing the journey.

Winter Blues

Here's a great song ...
.

S

The Apple does not fall far from tree.....

Even in my youth I knew what to watch. Academy Award Winners, 1976 was no different.

My new friend and I took a bus downtown Vancouver. Now, this is something I didn't normally do being just 16 or 17 years old. I rarely left the backyard of sleepy North Delta let alone travel to a bustling city with crime and prostitutes and drugs and who knows what.

So we end up at some Hippie's house and they smoke lots of cigarettes and wear careless clothes, but they all talk about seeing the Nicholson movie. We end up at some worn out movie theatre, I'm nervous the entire time, then the lights dim. I watch silently in my seat, afraid of the Hippies, but then no more. 

 I am in a new place, a new brave world watching brilliance unfold, dialogue, laughter, hatred, joy & tears. I'm lost in a movie. 

 I tell my daughter this story ~her eyes roll back in disbelief~ then I watch her watch the movie. I tease her "you want me to change the channel, I can if you're not in to it". She says, "it's okay, leave it on". Sabrina cried at the end.

In the City, where I belong.

Collection of odd pictures

Collective Soul - The World I Know

Then I woke up ....

I was dreaming of a little girl who came to daycare, but in my dream she was older yet still cute as a button. I loved that little girl and often told her mom I thought she was the most beautiful baby ever born. Then my happy thoughts fogged over into crossing an isolated stretch of highway in the Arizona desert, high noon no less. I'm walking towards the cafe ~slash~ bus stop. I can feel the sand speckling my eyes and the gun barrel pressing against my groin. When I enter the cafe my memories of the desert vanishes. There are people here. Lots and lots of diners slurping hot coffee beneath Stetson rims. ~I'm thinking "Goddammit I'm in a Clint Eastwood movie"~ And suddenly, he's there, buying a bus ticket. Clint Eastwood is purchasing a bus ticket in the middle of no where and I'm next in line. Our eyes meet and I give him this ~we've met before~ sort of look, and I have a gun.

Paul McCartney invades the Graveyard Shift

It's so bizarre rockin' it in the office, all by myself, filing away ... but then dawn breaks and the office returns to it's slumber self, all quiet and lifeless.

Tina Turner - River Deep, Mountain High (Live in Sopot)

I love Tina Turner. Listening to late night radio with George Noory & Coast to Coast radio show and his bumper music, I hear a lot of songs ~long forgotten~ but loved when I first listened to them years ago, now drowned out by history...or the future, however which way you are so inclined to view things.

Last Wishes ....

Previously, I wanted to have a full burial. Realizing the expense and actual burial plots available these days, I then decided cremation would be best ~ just as long as my ashes were released to the ocean's edge of Victoria Island ~ Tofino to be exact, where I met (of course) my beloved hubby.

So now after reading this FB poster, I've changed my mind. I not only want my ashes flung amongst the Japanese winds of jasmine that have reached Canada's shores in Tofino, I want my ashes to smell like popcorn.  Can you imagine the aroma.  Harmony.

PS: I still want some of me buried in the earth, you know, along with some hair follicle for DNA extraction (like Steven Speilberg did in the movie A.I. ~Artificial Intelligence~). I truly believe this will be possible one day.