The first photo is one that Coffee will giggle about the moment he sees it. It demonstrates the trusting nature of Canadians. What? It’s an important thing? Well, we’ll just ask you to behave, then.

Thank you to the woman at Subway who called me “Hon” yesterday. I didn’t know I was feeling grouchy but after you made me giggle and then called me “Hon”, I left feeling a lot more cheerful.

Thank you to the driver of the big black SUV that let me into traffic yesterday when my lane suddenly ended in construction. I was grateful not to have to sit in that closed lane forever.

Thank you to the woman at the store who told me my pink hair was “beautiful!”. I felt very pretty after that.

Thank you to the roofer who left a message this morning. It’s such a relief when companies call you back, leave coherent messages, and seem very friendly. One less thing to worry about.

Thank you to my fans blog readers who leave comments and email me and even those of you who just read. It’s nice to know my deranged ramblings have even a small audience. It’s good for my ego, really.

I have a sore throat, phlegm!, a hearty cough, a drippy nose and a general feeling of malaise.

I say that I am:

- healthfully-challenged
- a little under the weather

But I am not sick. NOT SICK. DO YOU HEAR ME?

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As I write this, my left eyelid is twitching like an out-of-control butterfly make-out session. If I took this eye to a bar, I could totally pick up people just by looking in their direction.

After I picked those people up I could also infect them with the burning throat, dripping nose and incessant coughing that I’m also carrying around.

What I need now is a big scab and uncontrolled arm flailing and, for good measure, some toxic stomach gas and this coming weekend will ROCK!

I am So! Pretty!

First: I seem to have a serious like for the new Coke Blak. You know, the tiny little glass bottle that’s filled with a mixture of Coca-Cola and coffee? Yeah, that. I feel like a tool while drinking it, and I feel like a bigger tool when I buy it, but it’s .. good.

I figure this new love affair will last about a month and then I’ll be finished because I can only handle feeling like a tool for brief periods of time.

In the meantime, I can totally (ab)use the caffeine.

I’ve got stuff to do here, people!

Like, say, panic!

I am panicking for no good reason, as usual. It’s just that we’re in a rough financial spot. We used all our spare money to put a downpayment on a house in addition to all the minor (but stupidly expensive nonetheless) improvements to our old house in order to sell it – painting and landscaping and carpet cleaning and..meh. Then we had to have work done on Coffee’s car. Then there was an unanticipated dentist appointment.

So, in short, we maxed out all our credit and drained our bank accounts in the short term, and, a little over a month from now, it will all come back to us in the form of cash. No big deal, right?

In the meantime, however, I’m moving what feels like the same $5 from account to account trying to figure out how the hell we can afford X and Y and oh, we need to pay the movers..

I’m exaggerating on that $5 thing, by the way. We’re not even close to hitting overdraft. It just feeeeeeeeeels bad.

Being a grown up? Sucks.

Yes, that’s a Canadian $5 bill…
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Putting some perspective on it, though: I spent a good number of years playing the real Debt Game and this ‘situation’ doesn’t compare in the slightest. I can still afford our usual groceries, to order a pizza on the weekend if we want, to put gas in my car and to mail out a bunch of packages and blahblahblah.

I know I’m being anxious for no good reason here.

In university, for example, (and the lean years that followed) there were times when I’d have no groceries and no money for the subway and snot pouring out of my nose from allergies that I couldn’t afford to medicate and I’d borrow $5 from a friend to buy cat food (while trying desperately to make the scooping litter last way longer than it should have) and I’d be a complete and utter mess of panic about the lack of money. I’d walk to work in the slushy freezing rain, ducking into stores along the way to ‘browse’ (and thaw) and then I’d come home and cry while rolling all my spare change in notebook paper to exchange for rolls of quarters so I could do some laundry.

I am not in that position. I’m not even in the same WORLD as that position. And I thank the baby jesus for that, really, I do.

Worrying for the sake of worrying is kind of retarded, isn’t it?

I have a whole other blog post about worrying – not about the various things I fret about, but about the difference between worrying for a good reason and chronic anxiety.

In the meantime, please pass me a Coke Blak and your chequebook and I’ll get back to you. Like I said above, I’ve got stuff to DO today.

(And no, the subject line has nothing to do with anything at all.)

1. I returned my PO box keys to the post office.
2. I mailed a package (for Coffee).
3. I mailed a package to Kelly.
4. I finished putting together a box for my Secret Pal on WNET.
5. I fed and walked the dogs. Twice.
6. I emailed Coffee about 427 different things, including squirrel taxidermy.
7. I went to the grocery store to buy soup.
8. I picked up a diet Coke at McdietCokeLand.
9. I visited Zellers to search for a specific game-related toy.
10. I finished the book I was reading and started another one.
11. I played two rounds of SudokuCombat and stopped.
12. I snuggled with Ninja for a long while.
13. I made and ate a cabbage sammich.
14. I read your blog (most likely).
15. I wrote in this blog.
16. I visited the local craft store.
17. I made the grocery cashier laugh.
18. I sat outside on the porch for a while this morning.
19. I snuggled with Penny for a few minutes while feeding her.
20. I tormented the beagle.

Tomorrow I’m aiming for 22 things. Let’s get CRAZY!

Added:
21. Wrote, stuffed, addressed all “moving!” notices
22. Vacuumed the first floor fully.
23. Washed leftover dishes in sink.
24. Washed stove top.
25. Chased beagle up and down stairs a few times.
26. Brought recycling bins inside. Filled partially.
27. Logged into my FTA site and smiled a lot.
28. Made lists of moving-related tasks.
29. Wrapped package for mailing tomorrow.
30. Smiled at tiny little skunk in garden while hastily running inside.

The fifth annual Blogger Boobie-Thon for Breast Cancer will be kicking off in a few short days! (That link is perfectly safe for work.)

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Is your schedule too rigid to allow magic to seep in? Then mutate that schedule, please. Is your brain so crammed with knowledgeable opinions that no fresh perceptions can crack their way in? Then flush out some of those opinions. Is your heart so puckered by the stings of the past that it can’t burst forth with any expansive new invitations? Then unpucker your heart, for God’s sake.

FreeWill Astrology

I fully intend to continue faking said funk until we move in 28 days because otherwise I am going to run screaming out of the house.

Here is a list of things I am (conspicuously) avoiding eye-contact with:

• My email. If I open the inbox, I have to acknowledge that there are a lot of messages in there. Then I have to reply to them. So for now, I am pretending I have no email. Email? What email?
• Packing and anything related to packing. Less than a month in which to get everything ready to move? WhatEVER.
• Cleaning the house. We’re moving anyway, right? Why scrub the tiles NOW?
• Autumn. I can already feel the tendrils of “fuck THIS season” creeping in. AUGH.
• The dogs. I can only ignore them for – at most – an hour at a time but I can totally do it.
• Our elderly neighbour. Only because I feel such a strong compulsion to back over her in the car and now that I’ve confessed it here in my blog I know the authorities will not accept my “oops! tee hee! my bad!” defense. She was so busy weeding my garden for me this afternoon that I had to WAIT to pull into my own driveway so as to avoid squishing her beneath my little car.
• The recycling and garbage pickup is tomorrow which means I need to put it all out at the curb tonight which means I need to get my ass off of this sofa and start collecting it up and y’know, I just don’t feel like doing it. We need to buy a goat who can, like, hang out in our yard and eat our recyclables.

I’m pretty sure there are other things I’m avoiding eye contact with, but one of the dogs is now licking my foot and making it hard for me to ignore her. I don’t know WHY we got such fancy dogs that require twice-a-day feedings – not to mention walks and attention and someone to scratch their itchy spots.

As part of my avoidance, I was going to ask you to email and tell me what YOU are avoiding lately but then I remembered I’m not reading email at the moment anyway.

So, y’know, whatever it is you’re avoiding eye-contact with, please carry on and make me proud.