I'd Like To Take A Moment To Tell You All How I Sprained My Thumb

Indeed. Today I proudly wear a thumb splint, a little something I picked up at the behest of the emergency doctor less than 12 hours before heading out on my vacation-that-will-not-die. It is a shiny metal, four-pronged contraption, covered in virgin-white velcro straps. It has bright blue padding on the inside, and nevertheless cuts into my chubby little digit. It is my thumb splint and it prevents me from doing again what I did before.

And what did I do before?

Well, I'd like to preface this by saying that I've been hitting the gym pretty lately, and that despite uping the weights on my flies and incline flies... that thumb stretching has never been my #1 priority warm up. I have recently made a return to competetive thumb wrestling after a prolonged absence to hitch-hike across the country to raise money for thumb research... Oh, and I'm so positively lately, every movie, play, standup show or psychology convention I've been to recently has recieved an overly enthusiastic two thumbs up! My thumbs are exhausted... Really, it's no surprise that what happened happened.

I pulled up my tight jeans too hard.

That's when I heard the snap echo throughout the washroom at the movies, and I felt the pain of someone stab the appendage that seperates me from the animals with a rusty knitting needle. I did scream. (No one came to my aid...) And the knitting needle assailant must have run off because when I looked down the blood from the puncture must have been cleaned up and my thumb was still, miraculously, attached.

Now, I've never given birth to a human child who was 4 months overdue. But I imagine that what I felt is exactly like having a 30lb screaming infant pass through a small hole that someone has dug out of one's thumb with a small push pin. I have been punched in the face by a grown man. I have been hit by a car while (helmetless) on my bicycle. I have been forced to projectile vomit out of my own nose due to an abcess on my tonsil. But I have NEVER felt pain, physical or emotional, that even came close to rivalling this.

It also makes it very hard to type on this tiny netbook keyboard. But I will never be silenced, Dear Readers. However, I do think I'm going to lose 5lbs before trying to haul my ass into that particular pair of jeans again.

Now to find a bedazzler to trick this MF out! Oh, and figure out how to drive with only my left hand!

I'm Tired Of Making You Laugh

Every time I re-commit to not taking responsibility for other people being "okay," I realize that I'm doing it again. One of the biggest ways that I do this is by not allowing any emotional tides that I am going through to affect someone else. They say that the Asian countries are super-polite in and overly communally focused in that people shove down their own feelings in order to not bother other people. Well, they ain't got nothin' on me, sister.

I had a shitty birthday. Not like absolute gorilla shit that's been licked off of a baby gorilla's arse and then re-shit by its mother. Not THAT bad. There were some kernels of undigested banana in that simean poo. But by and large, it was poo. My parents FORGOT my birthday. This is something that has happened several times since I was a teenager, with my Dad forgetting almost every year, and my mom only forgetting up until it's that day, and then somewhere between breakfast and bed realizing that she has forgotten and making some lame attempt to make me feel better. Once, this involved unceremoniously thrusting a cheque at me in the line up of a MacDonalds. No card... just, "here." My brother did his best impersonation of EYORE on my voicemail, and chose to repeatedly comment on how my husband was laid off recently. My partner, who is a delightful person, who genuinely tries at these things and knows what a touchy subject each trip around the sun is for me, was actually really sweet. He gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift that I love.

Wanna know what it is?

It's a t-shirt with a picture of the middle child from The Simpsons, and it says quite simply beneath it: "I am Lisa Simpson."

This simple phrase sums up how I feel on a day to day basis. In fact, change the rampant alcoholism for smoking in Homer, and you've pretty much got my family down-pat. For while there, I suspected that Conan O'Brien and the others were sercretly filming childhood in some creepy direct- psychological-observation-to-cartoon conspiracy. The similarities are EERIE.

Anyway, I had some people over on the weekend, and with the exception of one guest that I insisted on seeing so badly that I bought her a bus ticket, I wasn't really feelin' the love. Have you ever hosted a party only to realize that absolutely none of your guests has asked you how you are doing, or inquired about your life in any meaningful way? I feel like I spent the night babysitting introverts who couldn't figure out how to play duck-duck-goose while all the cool kids went in the kitchen to drink. "Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck... you know Jimmy, you need to actually say 'goose' at some point or the other toddlers won't have any fun."

The next day, I went to a petting zoo with my partner, and I could feel myself getting antsy... I was a bit hungover and feeling VERY thin-skinned about things... little things that don't normally get on my nerves were lighting fire to every last one of them. And when we pulled in to the farm, I saw lots of families carrying grocery bags of lettuce, celery and apples to feed the animals. I looked around the car. No veggies. I got out of the car. I looked around the farm. No veggies... I walked over to a goat and heard a daddy ask his little girl, "Do you want to feed a carrot to the pony?"

And that's when I started to cry...

Not only did my daddy not have anything for me to feed the pony, he didn't even call me this year. And my partner, wonderful as he is, had dropped the veggie ball on this one. I could tell that HE could tell that I was upset, and he immediately went into damage control...

So I made a joke. "Hey, are you kidding? These are the chubbiest bunch of geese I've ever seen. It's not that they won't fly away, it's more like they CAN'T!" Ba-dum-bum- CHING! Hey don't worry about ME... I'll make a joke so I don't have to worry about YOU being made to feel uncomfortable that I'm upset.

That's what I've done my whole friggin' life. Oh, don't worry that you forgot whatever incredibly important and special to me thing, family! My birthday, my graduation, that time at camp when everyone's families jumped out from behind the curtain to surprise us and you didn't even bother to show up. Don't worry about it! We can't have you feeling guilty or sad just because your little girl is down in the dumps. Besides, she'll get over it.

Wow, I'm a downer, aren't I?

Good.

I don't have to make you laugh all the time.

You Take The Low Road And I'll Take The High Road

Sometimes taking the high road is very unfulfilling. Like, someone insults you and you have the world's greatest zinger at the ready, but you hold off to let the other person save face and address them in private. It takes calm, cool, collectedness. It means being unflapable and trusting that other people can see their idiocy without you having to point it out.


Unfortunately, I just don't have that high of an opinion of other people. Too many "other people" are idiots. Half of the population of the world, by definition, is below average - and I don't like those odds.


Psychologically speaking though, we're ALL idiots. We are terrible at accurately recalling what we have just seen or heard, emotions cloud our judgement, and apparently we spend more time shopping for key chains than we do for car insurance. Our eyes are easily fooled by optical illusions, we can't inhibit our responses... hell most of us can't even remember where we put our cars keys (behind the orange juice?)


I guess that's why I'm simultaneously understanding and annoyed beyond all bullshit when one of my fellow human beings (or ME) does something that betrays our all-too-human idiot-ness. Recently, I started taking a class for people who wanted to try their hands at standing before an audience of people and attempting to make them laugh. It's obvious from day one that the instructor couldn't organize their way out of a wet paper bag. Classes start late and finish early. There is always some excuse. They have to perform at another show. The rest of the students aren't here yet. In fact, InstructorB does very little instructing at all, preferring instead to have us talk our ideas into a small camera and give us "notes" along the way. So less than 6 hours before our last class, InstructorB emails us all to ask if we want to go on a $field $trip and have class at different bar/comedy club than the one we paid to have our classes at.


Uh-oh.


They say that majority will rule and since everyone else is agreeing, I reluctantly go along with it, despite the club being a much farther trip for me, and not really wanting to stay out late, since I have work responsibilities in the AM. Then after closing down my computer and heading out, InstructorB emails the group again to say that the commedy place we were supposed to meet at doesn't open until half way through our class time so we'll meet at another bar.


Let me get this straight. You're taking a bunch of students who paid Bar 1 for classes to TWO OTHER BARS for their class? Uhm... does the management know that you're taking a sizeable group of customers to what is essentially a competetor for the class you are supposed to be doing there? Uh, I'm a therapist, so I'm going to ask a very cliche question: How do they FEEL about that?


Oh, but wait. It gets better. Of course, a bunch of people were late, because they didn't get the 11th hour emails and went to Bar1. But then InstructorB can't REMEMBER if they have downloaded their other class's videos of their camera, so they can't record our bits and give feedback. Cut to Classmate6 trying to film us with an iPhone in a noisy bar with honkey-tonk playing over the speakers and using a table candle for a spotlight. Half way through this "class" we have to leave to make sure we get seats at the other comedy club/bar. The performances were meh, and the MC was so mean to almost be Yuk-Yuk's worthy. I realize it is getting late and decide to head out between sets. Of course, I get picked on by the MC, but I expected that. What I didn't expect was for the InstructorB that I am paying good money to learn something from would insult me in front of the entire crowd. "Where are you going?... Aw, you guys SUCK!"


Of course, InstructorB denies this particular verbal characterization of the events... and I DID have two glasses of wine over the 4 hours I was seated in a bar that evening. I don't know how many double whiskey's they had.


This person has left a class I paid for half an hour early so that they could go work in another show. They've changed the class schedule so that we'd finish on the same day as another class despite people having booked off certain nights at work. And more than halfway into the course, can still not get their head out of their own genitals long enough to tell us when the performance night is... or where. They are starting to rival StoopidClassmate.

JournalistHusband keeps telling me that organization is not the strongsuit of the average comic. That there are huge problems with publicity in particular. He can't understand why they complain about not getting any publicity and why no one comes to their shows! After all, they did send out an email blast on $facebook 3 hours before the show started! Shouldn't everyone have dropped what they were doing, left their dinners half-eaten, their babies without sitters, and their coitus interrupted to run across town to sit in a dank hall with pissy, unwashed waitstaff to listen to them tell the 108th variation on why men and women are SO different (back me up ladies!) to the same crowd of mutually masturbating other comics? There's a real Peter Pander syndrome thing going on here... I'm not convinced that if you can make an audience (populated largely by other am-comics) laugh at one of these things that you can make an actual audience laugh. And why the hell are MCs so often SO mean?

Don't get me wrong. I really have no idea if I could even make a bunch of really nice drunk people laugh. It's not so much a judgement as plain old scientific bewilderment. I want to know why...

Also

I dreamed that I was testing a kid who sneezed directly into my face at close range. So I hand-sanitized his face.

Comedy Ain't No Joke

I've been taking a comedy class and last night our "teacher" had us go to see a show (great way to not actually teach for the money your class is paying you). But I had to leave before the show was over. I knew I would get reverse-heckled for getting up to go, so I waited for a break between comics and went for the door. At this point, the MC totally started digging at me, which hey, I expected. But then, when I was about to leave, the stand-up comic teacher of my "class" yells out to everyone, "You suck! You're stupid! Where are you going?"

Uh, I'm going home to bed so I can get up in the morning and go to my big-girl job.

Douche.

Urge To Kill... Rising...

Today sucks.

Basically, all I had to do was go get my eyes checked and go to the U to get my advising worksheet signed. Not too difficult, huh?

Except for the fact that I must have driven under a ladder to avoid a black cat and accidentally crashed into a mirror warehouse, knocking over a salt silo, in a previous life. Because the luck is something I do not have.

I left with plenty of time... but I took transit. And that was a good clue that my day was going to suck right off the top, cause really, it demeans us all. Got on the bus... oh great, no juice in the ipod, so that means I get to listen to the winners of the city's "Definitely Not Our Best And Brightest" Contest listen to Justin Bieber at 90 decibels and have domestic disputes on their cellphones all the way downtown. Awesome! My pen broke, leaving me unable to finish the crossword ("way out" is an "exit" you witless baby-boomer across the row, not "cool.") Apparently B vitamins make me nauseated if I don't take them with food -- add the gentle and graceful lull of the city bus lurching like a horny jackrabbit every 15 seconds, and you have one very pukey Psyche. So I get downtown, find a place to eat and try to order something somewhat healthy. I get a quinoa salad (a VERY expensive quinoa salad) and some quiche, only to discover that the salad is full of parsley. Seriously? People actually eat that shit? [One time my brother was told by his girlfriend's father that if he finished his entire plate of food he would pay for anything on the menu, so Brother ordered the most expensive steak in the house, and an hour later finished it in great pain. When the cheque came, father of the girlfriend said he wouldn't pay because Brother didn't eat the parsley garnish... so, Brother got the plate back, ate it, and then barfed in father of the girlfriend's trousers.... it was awesome.] So I paid about 10 bucks for a quiche... dammit. Then I head off to the Optomitrists, only to discover, I've gone to the wrong mini mall. I'm now going to have to get back on transit and be late. As it is, I got there only 3 minutes behind schedule... but only after sharing a bus with 20 screaming teenagers here on some sort of cultural dumbass exchange. I seriously pitty the country who got our dumbasses, btw... And take solice in the idea that somewhere in Eastern Europe, there is a stressed out grad student dealing with Canadian teens screaming nonesense about Kraft Dinner and beavers in her ears. Now the eye appointment is done and I have precisely enough time to get to the U to meet Dr. Supervisor who just needs to sign my advising worksheet. That's all.

I get there, I rush over to the office...

I sit down, get out my paperwork...

I wait patiently...

I get bored and decide to check my email...

Oh, there's an email from Dr. Supervisor...

Oh, they just realized that they told me to meet them at the U when really they were going to be in their home office. But that's okay, because I can CALL them. Really? I can CALL? Well that's just fucking great because I need your SIGNITURE, and the last time I checked it was impossible to send your John Hancock through 25 kilometres of fibre optic cables!!!

Ok, Psyche? Maybe you're overreacting? It's not that big a deal? No... I suppose not. It's just the sooner I get this signiture, the sooner I get in line to register for courses which fill up very very fast. And for once, just once in my life, I would like to get the decent course, with the prof that everyone likes, instead of the demonic succubus masquerading as a purveyor of higher education. It's complicated... I'm trying to get into a course with very limited enrollment, and I just figure... hey... it's not gonna happen, not because of anything I did, but just becuase the path of life is mine field of dogdo.

Gonna go meet a fellow slave to other people's idiocy now for an herbal tea or something. Bitchiness loves company...

Pinching Out A Loaf

I knew that title would get you.

Look, I like Meat Loaf. A LOT. Okay? You're just going to have to get used to it. Meat Loaf helps me cope with life's little annoyances and injustices. And it reminds me of what was great about being a teenager, which wasn't much if I remember correctly.

I dreamed about my teen years last night and had one of those hypnogogic wakings in which I actually decided to pinch myself to see if I was still dreaming (I wasn't) -- and there you go folks, We have a title!

As you know, I've been doing a lot of driving back and forth to another city these days to do giftedness assessments with grades 4 and 5. I'm averaging 1.5 hours commute in the morning and about 2 hours on the way home. While cars have many advantages over public transit, one advantage they do NOT have is being able to read while travelling. My sign language has got better due to the abundant numbers of douche-drivers I encounter on the road. But other than that, I'm falling behind in all manner of reading, both school and pleasure... and email related. As a result, I did not know that there is a fun party to go to tonight. But that's okay, because I also didn't get the email from Dr. Supervisor telling me that I need to do another rewrite on a proposal EVEN THOUGH THEY'VE PUT THE MARKS IN ALREADY because they want me to have the "learning experience of the process." Please note that no one else in the class is being directly supervised by this prof, hence, I am the only person who is engaging in this learning process by staying home from a fun party on her Saturday night to rewite a paper for the umpteenth time. I feel like a dog that when all the other dogs are out on a beautiful day chasing birds, cars, and cats, is stuck at home practising the violin. It's not fair! Arf! Arf! Howl!

Umpteenth... huh huh huh... that's a funny word.

Anyway, it kind of feels like being a teenager (the not so awesome part) when I had to stay home and work on something boring when all of my other friends who didn't live in ultra fundamentalist christian wannabe households were out partying, experimenting with catnip and being disappointed by the sexual prowresses of teenage boys. But I digress... like in my teen years, Meat Loaf is making it all better.

And now that I have a car at my disposal, I realize that I can make my very own Meat Loaf Mixed Tape and listen to Paradise by the Dashboard Light by the dashboard light. And I will... as a way of procrastinating and not doing my assignment until it is too late for me to get a decent night's sleep and I've already missed the party anyway! Teen angst rumination -- here I come!

Come to think of it, the last time I had a car, I was in highschool. I did love and listen to Meat Loaf with my barely 17 year old boyfriend, although I was far to modest to be barely dressed.

Oh! Oh! Another thing I have to tell you about is that while I was driving to work the other day, I saw, and I'm crapping you negative on this, a liscence plate number that read: 911 KKK. I'm not even making this up. It was a super old plate, all beat up and clearly from the days that predate vanity plates and vanity plate censorship. OMG, I tailed the truck for a while, but didn't have time to follow and find out WHO owns such an unfortunate auto-moniker! But I wish I could have. I mean, really? This person... there can only be 3 possible scenerios:

1. They are too elderly/sheltered/out of touch/stupid (not that elderly people are stupid) to realize the horrorhilarity of their liscence
2. They DO realize the connotation of their liscence and LIKE it for some reason -- which is really the most horrifying possibility... or
3. They DO realize the significance of such a plate and are just too tired or don't care enough about the visiting Americans with "God, Guns, and Glory" bumperstickers that pelt them with trash from White Castle (if they're LUCKY) enough to stand in line at the DMV to change it.

Wait. There is a 4th possiblity... that the DMV won't let them change it. That they've visited the endless liscencing line up on several ocaissions with their tail-pipe between their legs, and practically BEGGED some Patti and Selma look-alikes to please let them trade it in for a vanity plate that reads "USA OK" or "NOTAH8ER" or even the Canadian classic "SRRY."

Oh well. That's my time. I'll be enjoying crazy piano licks and multiple references to fenderstrats and car engines for a few hours now. Have a good night folks!