can you get sick for missing someone?

Today, I swear, is going to be a good day. Daisy has not ralphed, nothing has broken, I have not started weeping uncontrollably and there is very loud music surrounding me right now.

Relatedly, I would like to make sweet, sweet love to Jay-Z. And it is my personal opinion that the Jay-Z/Linkin’Park album is one of the best all-time albums for making me dance around. I say this for no reason other than I’m currently listening to said album and it’s making me happy and I like happy.

Today is Friday. And? It’s the Friday before a long weekend. Sweet, sweet long weekendy goodness. I can hardly contain my glee.

Last weekend we dyed my hair a fancy new colour – a special Coffee-blended mix of my usual “Pimpin’ Purple” and Coffee’s usual “Electric Blue” – and the result is a very dark shade of india ink. Deeeeeeeeep indigo. It looks pretty good now that I’ve gotten over the shock of the shade, but I wake up every morning with a blue-stained face. Yargh. And so, every morning, you can find me in the bathroom with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some mushed up kleenex..

The neighbours are currently loading up their belongings – sans movers – and getting the hell out of dodge. The amusing part of this is listening to them yelling at each other, swearing and otherwise being miserable about the process. After experiencing the joy of hiring movers the last two times we moved, I swore that I’ll never move again without hiring professionals to haul everything for us – and listening to the neighbours’ angst is just reaffirming that position.

Speaking of people I’d like to hire for things, I would love nothing more than to hire a gardener to come and whip our backyard into shape. Just once, and not regularly. Sadly, this is not something in our budget at the moment and, I think, we’ll just rip everything out at the end of the summer. Right now it looks rather jungle-like and totally chaotic.

But this morning while I was chasing the dogs around said yard, listening to them bark and sniff, I was nearly attacked by the tiniest little hummingbird I’ve ever seen. It zipped past my head, causing me to nearly fall over, and ohmygod, that’s just so cool. I LOVE KITCHENER. Yesterday I saw (the same?) a hummingbird at the neighbour’s house – prior to that, I hadn’t seen one in YEARS.

I’m on track for getting a black squirrel to take peanuts from my hands. It’s a slow process of establishing trust, but the closer she gets the harder it gets for me to not shriek with glee. I totally miss Baxter and her exuberant consumption of my hand-peanuts…

The only part of today that I’m not particularly looking forward to is heading out to get groceries. Meh. And, speaking of that, I should probably start trying to de-dye my cheeks so I can hit the road shortly.

2. Are you ticklish?
As a child, I was very much ticklish. For many years I worked to eradicate it and was ultimately sucessful. Now I’m only randomly, rarely, unpredictably ticklish. Coffee, the World’s Most Ticklish Guy, thinks this is unfair.

3. Favourite Magazine?
Just one? No way! I love Bust, Bitch, $pread, Adbusters, Utne Reader, The Walrus.. and many, many others.

4. Most annoying noise/sound?
The sound of fluorescent lights in most offices. It makes me want to scream after about 10 minutes and many people claim there’s “no noise” at all coming from them. Yargh!

5. Current song on repeat?
Today it was a couple of Dido songs (because her voice is soothing) but I’ve moved onto my “happy” playlist (on repeat). It features NoFX, Jarvis Cocker, Jay-Z, Peaches and a bunch of other upbeat people/bands.

6. Who do you email/call/visit when you need comforting?
Coffee comes first, of course, since he’s usually got enough of the inside info that I don’t need to provide any background. The immediate and very close second would be my dearest friend Michelle because I LOVE HER and she makes me laugh and gives The Best Advice and totally “gets” me and oh, god, she rocks.

7. Cutest thing in the world?
When Daisy brings me her “squeaky hamster” – the first dog toy we ever bought her – I pretty much melt into a puddle of goo. Offhand, however, the only thing I can think of is simply due to recent exposure: a baby hippo. I have a serious soft spot for hippos as a general rule.

8. What colour is your bedroom?
An extremely boring shade of cream. We’re not repainting anything until we have the kid(s) and know who’ll be sleeping in what room – no sense painting it the colour I want (lime green!) if we’re moving to another room and the kid hates limes. Right?

9. If you could have one thing right now, what would it be?
To have the same sort of friendships that I had in high school – a big clan of people that I love and see regularly without it being a Major Event. I am working on this. Being in touch with some of those friends from high school is also helping a bit!

10. What do you regularly forget to do?
Put the garbage and recycling outside on Thursday nights – that’s probably the biggest one since it annoys the hell out of me when I discover we’ve missed putting it out before pickup and see the truck going past. GRRR!

“White Power!” the Nazis shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazis angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily. – Raise The Hammer

And to top it all off? Here’s some video..

(c/o my beloved husband)

Hear, hear!

I drank too much last night, got bills to pay
my head just feels in pain
I missed the bus and there’ll be hell today
I’m late for work again
and even if I’m there, they’ll all imply that I might not last the
day
and then you call me and it’s not so bad
it’s not so bad and

I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life
Oh just to be with you is having the best day of my life

Push the door, I’m home at last and I’m soaking through and
through
then you handed me a towel and all I see is you
and even if my house falls down now, I wouldn’t have a clue
because you’re near me and

I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life
Oh just to be with you is having the best day of my life

I fucking quit.

[Edited to add: And then she puked again, on the patio, and the beagle tried to bite me when I dragged her away from eating it. NOW I quit.]

[Edited again to add: And now that she's ralphed up everything in her gut, she's RAVENOUS and thus feels the need to whine and whine and whine and whine. And if I give her food at this point she's just going to ralph it back up again. So my choice is to listen to the whining or clean up puke again.]

This morning, on waking, I decided that I’d simply put my mind toward being in a good mood. Breathe-in…breathe-out… and let it all slide off of me. I can do that!

So far, however, the rest of the world is not cooperating with my desire to be zen about the day.

It started with Daisy being a jackass, then Coffee left without doing a minor task for me (which I didn’t notice until it was majorly inconvenient for me – still not the end of the world, however) but then the beagle turned into an asshole, then I couldn’t get music playing and then the mailman totally skipped by our house.

Did I mention that I’m pretty sure my ulcer is back again? So I’m also not feeling very well and I’m on the cusp of PMS and I’ve got a headache.

Then I got an email from Coffee that made me cry (because it made me feel both stupid AND a jerk) and that was kind of the beginning of the end. (And, making it even MORE FUN? I can’t seem to STOP weeping now that I’ve started.. Pretty!)

It’s not even 11am and already everything I’ve touched has kind of crapped on me. THAT’S NOT FAIR!

I’ve decided to revise my plan of “being zen” and, instead, simply avoid all contact with humans. Possibly avoid all contact with dogs, too, if I can convince them to walk themselves and pick up their own poop. Because, um, picking up poop is probably not going to improve my mood in the slightest today.

Stupid bad mood.