I wheelie don't care

It's hot and I'm grumpy.
Wheelies on a main road. Man, woman, or child. I don't care who you are, or what kind of bike you are hanging off of. If you are doing a wheelie, I won't look at you. You are doing this for attention. You will not get it from me. I will turn my head so far in the opposite direction, that if there was a face on the back of my head, it would be looking at you. And it would be unimpressed. There is another reason I will not look at you. YOU ARE DOING A WHEELIE ON A MAIN ROAD IN THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC. This activity can go so very wrong. As much as you annoy the bajinkers out of me, I do not want to see a you salad scattered on the road. The bike has two wheels. Use them. Here's a thought....buy a unicycle. MUCH more impressive, and way cooler(/nerdier). I will drive off of the road watching you on a unicycle.

A little known fact about me is that I dig used things. (ok, so maybe that's all some people know about me). Now it's called "thrifting", and sounds cool. I've been doing it before it was cool. After driving on this and many other sweltering Saturdays, keeping my eyes peeled for balloons and flourescent bristol board, I have formulated a very strong opinion about something. I think there should be laws governing yard-sales, and a special police force to enforce said laws. You have signs printed from your computer on every light pole and staple-gunable surface in a 10 mile radius. An overly complicated network of arrows that smacks of marketing genius. Your sale? One table. One table. What's on your table? An unopen pack of blank cassette tapes, a dusty rose plastic tissue box cover, a plastic butterfly with an unknown application, some Christmas snack trays, and vacuum cleaner bags. A $200 fine ma'am! You make people get out of their air-conditioned vehicles to see this? Did you clean out your junk drawer, and fancied talking to (annoyed) strangers, while sitting in the ungodly heat? Surely you're not only wasting the time of 20% of the people driving by, but your own as well. Even if you sold everything, your profit for one day would be $12.50. That's awesome! 60 years ago. The next offensive yardsale? The "Zero-adder". This is a yardsale, that at first glance seems promising. Then you notice the price tags (which, btw have been printed from a pricing gun). These prices would be very reasonable....except for one little thing.....an extra zero! No one is going to buy your used bedding for $150, or your run-of-the-mill salad bowl for $20. If you honestly feel these items are this valuable, keep the friggin' things! You're not going to convince people (that have just climbed your unreasonable amount of stairs) of their inflated worth. That's a $500 fine sir. You're just plain insulting and a time-waster.
Next yardsale? Wait....this all seems very familiar.....aha! It's the "Multi-family, Never-ending Sale". Let's have a sale together neighbour. Ok. Wow, this is a great way to spend a Saturday. Looks like we have some stuff left. I know! Let's do this again tommorow. Wow, this has been a great Sunday. Let's try to sell this exact same stuff next weekend! I'm actually free every weekend this summer. Let's do this! Let's also advertise "new items added" in the classifieds for the people that are on to us. Ladies! $1000 fine. Stop messing with me.

Playing With Weirdos

Haven't had much to blog about lately. I start a blog, my life gets painfully normal. Nothing particularly inspiring has happened, so I decided to try something different. We all get phishing scam emails. We delete them, carry on. I wanted to see how far these scammers go. I received this laugh out loud attempt, stuck it in junk, then reconsidered....

ESTEVAN NORBERTO CHAMBER
FROM THE DESK OF
BARRISTER ESTEVAN NORBERTO,
143 STRAND, LONDON WC2R 1AP,
ENGLAND ,UNITED KINGDOM.
Good Day,
I was the attorney to Late Engineer Hamilton Grant.And I hereby attempt to
reach you again by this same email address stated on the WILL as my
previous notification to you was returned undelivered. I wish to notify
you that late Engr.Hamilton Grant made you a legatee to his WILL. He left
the sum of three hundred and sixty thousand Great Britain
Pounds(GBP£360,000.00) to you in the codicil to his last will and
testament.
Being a widely travelled man, he must have been in contact with you in the
past or simply you were recommended to him by one of his numerous friends
abroad who wished you good. He was a very dedicated Christian who loved to
be involved in charitable projects.Until his death he was a member of the
Rotary Club International.And he died on the 12th day of July, 2007 at the
age of 75years, and his WILL is now ready for execution.

According to him this money is to support your humanitarian activities and
to help the poor and the needy in our society.Please if I reach you this
time as I am hopeful endeavour to get back to me.I look forward to hearing
from you as soon as possible.
God Bless,
Barrister Estevan Norberto,Esq
Email: estevan.norberto@hotmail.com
Note You're to reply To This Email : estevan.norberto@hotmail.com
Johnson, Dennis
Secretary..

So I write back.....

Mr. Norberto,
I am deeply saddened to hear of Engineer Grant's passing. I was wondering why I had suddenly stopped receiving correspondence from him 3 summers ago. I tried not to fear the worst.
I first met Engineer Grant 5 years ago through the Rotary Club. We had both been attending a meeting in Mozambique. I never forgot the very valuable life lessons he taught me in those 4 days. "You must try to do it." "You can do it." And my personal favourite "Just do it." These 3 pearls of wisdom have guided me these past 5 years in my extensive humanitarian work. I would give anything to be able to let him know that I did indeed just did it.
The amount of money he has left me is of such great consequence, for he once told me "there are 360,000 steps on the stairway to fulfillment." Just beautiful.
I look forward to receiving these funds, and putting them to good use. I am anxious to hear from you, and please accept my apologies for not responding sooner, I just didn't want to accept the possibility that he was really gone.
Sincerely,
Lenore Batista

btw, my name is not Lenore Batista. Let's see if this goes anywhere, shall we?

the white witch of whatever

So a guy in a bar in university told me I was a witch. A white witch to be exact. A "healer" to be more exact. If I am indeed a healer, then I really suck at it. My kids have had flu symptoms for the better (pretty much all) of 2010 so far. Perhaps I channel it at strangers that remain oblivious (along with me) to the cause of the sudden disappearance of all their ailments. Possible I suppose. However, to test this theory, or to pursue proof, may result in me coming off a little odd. "Hey. How are you feeling? Better than like 10 minutes ago? Yeah. That was all me." So instead I like to think about things that have always seemed a bit.....off about me. Perhaps my witchiness has manifested into other, more.......non-life-altering powers.
I have weird luck. Not like "OMG! I just won a trip to Hawaii!" No, I mean like "Holy crap. My watch just bounced off the toilet seat without going in." Yes, when it comes to my witchly powers, one of them is creating an invisible force field over an open toilet bowl. I cannot recount the long list of objects that have bounced off a toilet seat and fell to the side of the toilet. The ONLY thing that has gone in the toilet (against my intention) has been a quarter, which was stuck to me after a sweaty night of dancing. Even then the toilet just had clean water in it. I've dropped hairbrushes, hair ties, deodorant, and countless pieces of jewelry and watched in awe as they simply bounced and landed on the floor. I like to think perhaps the shield malfunctions when suffering from dance fatigue. I have yet to test this theory by hurtling an object towards the toilet. I think my powers are for unintentional use only.
Another of my spine-tingling powers is what I like to call "The Narrow Escape". I have been stopped by the cops more than once, while never being ticketed (I'm very good at apologizing). One crazy incident (that I still, to this day do not believe was an accident) happened back in university. My roommate and I both had illegal pets in our dorm rooms. She had a rat, and I had a guinea pig. NOT cool as far as the school was concerned. We had been very good at hiding them at a moment's notice. However, one day we were given no notice. A man arrived at the door to change a light bulb, and he was on his way in. Suddenly he dropped the bulb! It shattered and he had to go find a new one. This gave us the perfect opportunity to hide our furry little friends. How else could this be explained? I, the witch, broke that poor man's bulb. "The Narrow Escape" is sometimes mean-spirited.
My next power is "The Boomerang Effect". This too has been with me all of my life. I cannot think of an important object that I have lost without finding it again. Oh I lose PLENTY of stuff. Don't get me wrong. But it always comes back to me. Like my bracelet that I took forever picking out, and bartering for in Mexico that I "lost". My husband found it in the parking garage at work. Sure. Of course it would be there. My "lost" items have boomeranged back to such locations as my purse, between couch cushions, under the seat in our car, and my favourite......the cuff of my pants. We're talking car keys, cell phones, credit card, shoes (alcohol was involved) rings and bracelets throughout my clumsy life.
Only the power of true love can extend this power to another. We once spent about 20 frantic minutes inside and outside the grocery store, after getting to the car and realizing my husband had lost his wedding band. I panicked (my husband is far too hot in my opinion to let out of the house without it). Underneath the panic, there remained my normal, calm mantra of "nothing is truly lost". Sure enough, while calmly rifling through our grocery bags, I found his ring.....of course. I have not yet tested whether this power extends to him outside of my immediate vicinity.
So, on the whole, if I am indeed a witch, I am totally unimpressive. I've got no parlor tricks to show for it. No healing spells. Heck, I can't even be in the same room as scented candles or incense without breaking out in a rash. So, I'll just have to settle for a bunch of stuff that I'll apparently be lumbered with forever, along with a sometime guilty conscience.

The saddest grocery store trip ever

So I had to go to do the grocery shopping yesterday. Could not put it off, as I have the 3 kids, (ages 3, 21m, and 2m) with me for pretty much the rest of the week. I have wicked allergies. I did not want to leave the house to subject the public to my face. Yesterday I looked freakish. We're talking scaring the children, Hunchback of ND freakish. My eye was nearly swollen shut and weeping, and my face was broken out....badly. So I wear my hair down, glasses on, frumpy frumperson clothes, keep my head down and enter the store. The A/C is only making my freak eye worse. I'm just trying to get on with it. I start piling groceries into my cart. I have about 80 litres of milk in the cart, and then it decides to develop the worst wheel squeak the world has ever experienced. I decide to press on. To go back now and transfer my groceries into another cart would just attract attention, and I did not want to attract attention, right? So the squeaking is so loud that everyone is staring at me anyway. My freak eye is watering uncontrollably, and the song "All By Myself" starts playing...for real, not just in my head. I have the whole store to get around yet. People are laughing. A woman trying to talk on her cell phone is wincing and scurrying past me. So now it looks like I'm so embarrassed I'm crying? So I try to lift the cart inconspicuously, without it looking like I'm lifting the cart. Now I'm the crying girl with the weird bulging biceps and shaky arms. In my attempt to steer the cart in this manner, I succeed in hitting every corner I tried to turn round. At this point I should have been selling tickets.
So this is why I felt the need to blog. Stuff like this happens quite often it seems, and Facebook updates just aren't long enough to convey the craziness that is my life.