A serious but necessary post about suicide

It has been more than twelve hours at this point since I had to unfriend someone for making a post stating that Robin Williams did a selfish thing. He said that staying alive would have been the "more noble route". That he purposely left his children without a father. He even went so far as to suggest that he should have hosted a benefit event instead, and that it would have cured him. Clearly, he thinks that suicide is the result of a weakness in character. I am so not okay with that.

I don't feel upset about the mere fact that I now have to remove this individual from my life because he was kind of annoying anyway and I only had one class with him in grade nine. It takes a lot for me to unfriend someone, though, and I rarely ever do it. I'm much more selective about my real life connections than Facebook. Needless to say, what he said was not something that can just be brushed off.

Come to think of it, it wasn't a real class, it was homeroom.

Let me start by saying that while the causes of clinical depression are largely unknown, weakness in character is definitely not one of them. Weakness in character does not result in suicide. You know what it does result in? Hate crimes. Ponzi schemes. Elder abuse. Animal cruelty. Get it? These are all acts whereby someone selfishly takes out their personal problems on the vulnerable citizens of our planet whom we have a duty to protect from harm. Those are the kinds things that someone with a weakness in character does. Suicide has nothing to do with that.

This is not to take away the legitimacy of the feelings that the surviving friends and family of suicide victims experience. They are 100% right to be upset, shocked, angry and everything else about it and to continue through life afterwards in the way that they feel they have to. It is a terrible thing when someone dies from suicide. Depression is not a rational process (no illness ever is), but to say that people who are suicidal are unaware of the effect that suicide will have on those who love them is to suggest that they are intellectually and morally deficient. This attitude could not be more wrong or offensive.

There is a memorial group on Facebook for a young woman from my high school who died from suicide. I only remember her by name, really, but I know, even if only in a small way, what she struggled with. Her mother often posts a poem she wrote. The line that always stands out is "If love could have saved you, [name omitted], you never would have died." When I try to think about the state of mind you are in when you are about to take your own life, that is how I picture it. You are so overwhelmed from fighting the internal monster that love won't save you. It doesn't mean you don't know, at least at a deeply hidden level, that people love you and will miss you.

So here are the things I would like to clarify:

The only reason we know for sure why a person commits suicide is that they lost their struggle with a terminal illness.

Guilt trips are not in any way a cure for depression. All you can hope to do through guilt trips is to make a depressed person feel guilty and stupid. It is discouraging, not motivating.

Suicide is a very bad thing and I want people to find a way to live happily instead, but it is not a selfish act.

Mental illness is not a weakness in character. Mental illness is a legitimate illness. Whether or not it can physically be measured is neither here nor there.

That is all I needed to say. Have a great day.

My brain won't let me sleep yet, so here's a sub-par update on things.

Wait a minute, shouldn't sub-par be a good thing? You're supposed to get a low score, right? Anyway.

The bhut jolokia peppers were a success. I dried them out. It was easy enough to do; they're so spicy that mould won't even eat them.

My cousin had a baby girl on New Year's Day. She is a cutie and has such a happy face. I can't wait to go to Vancouver and see her. I've already knitted her a blanket, a hat with a flower on it, and a pair of bunny-shaped booties, and my mom picked out an adorable outfit for her. She is going to keep my knitting needles busy for years.

I have had two colds since my surgery and the difference between before and after is insane. Before, it was absolutely miserable. Now, it's just a nuisance. I also find that I only need to take my allergy spray twice a week, which is great because I don't have drug benefits.

My nose is big news, folks.

If anyone is ever unsure about going through with an adenoidectomy, I suggest that if your doctor says you're a good candidate for it, just do it. Even if you think you're okay to leave them there, you're not. They're inhibiting your ability to breathe through your nose (you are used to it being harder and you will feel the difference right away), they're trapping allergens and germs and other air pollutants between them, they're making it more difficult to deal with upper respiratory tract infections, they might contribute to a deviated septum, they are making your voice sound nasal, and they could potentially cause you to have sleep apnea down the road if they haven't already. Perhaps they are having other effects on you that they didn't on me. It's worth all the misery, eating nothing but goo, and morphine-induced constipation in the end. It's only a week of your 80-ish-year life and it leads to the latter years being a whole lot better.

The main ingredient in U-No-Poo is morphine.

I am applying to a few graduate certificate programs at Centennial College. I decided it would be better to accumulate a bit more student debt and be able to pay it off faster with a better paying job than to make tiny payments with a low-paying job, accumulate an unreasonable amount of interest and not be able to save anything for law school anyway. My first choice is Paralegal, followed by Project Management and Financial Planning. Paralegal would be great, because in Ontario, that's just a few steps short of a lawyer, and would be an awesome thing to have on my law school application. It will be amazing to be finished with fast food for good. Seriously. I've had all I can take of it.

I ordered some leggings from Modcloth. I got plain black ones, sparkly black ones with zippers, and a pair with a space print on them. I am liking ordering clothes online a lot better than I thought I would. In comparison, going to the mall is a pain in the ass. There is no guarantee that I will find something in the entire mall that I will like, and it is much more important for me to wear clothes that I like than to keep up with fashion trends no matter how much I hate them. Online, I don't have to go anywhere and spend an hour walking around. If I don't find something I like on one site, I can go to one of hundreds of others in seconds. Mind, I have yet to have that problem with Modcloth.

In conclusion, this is the end of my post. Goodnight.

Now I Do Not Adenoid Forever - The Story of How I Goodbye Adenoid

One important thing that nobody tells you before you have surgery for the first time in your life is that when they gas you out, you burp up some of the gas after you wake up. Also, they don't tell you that the hallway leading to the operating rooms is designed to look like you are not supposed to be there. I guess that's because unless you are the patient or a member of the surgical team, you really aren't supposed to be there. But seriously, it's creepy. The walls and doorways are flat.

The first thing I noticed after waking up, aside from the oxygen mask, my neck and ears being sore and my arms being numb, was that my breathing was instantly better. It didn't feel as though I was straining to breathe before, but that's because I had been breathing like that all my life and it just felt normal to me. Now it feels like I'm diverting the trade winds with each breath. I'm also sleeping a lot better as a consequence - I feel refreshed when I wake up now because instead of snoring like a jumbo jet trying to fly out of a black hole, I get an adequate amount of oxygen.

I feel much better two weeks later than I did for the first few days after the surgery. Adenoidectomy is rarely performed in adults (in the 25 years my surgeon has been practicing, I am the third adult he has done it for), but when it is, it is a very different recovery. It wasn't as bad as, say, breaking an arm - that is, if I remember breaking my arm correctly - but the only thing that helped at all (and even still not a lot) with the pain was morphine and cold water. Other pain medications wouldn't touch it. Talking and swallowing were agonizing. I'm thankfully off it now, but even two weeks later, if I miss a dose of ibuprofen, swallowing gives me the sensation of my soft palate driving a nail into the bottom of my cranium. Knowing all of this, though, I would do it again if I had to go back. I don't miss my adenoids at all.

Yes, this means that a part of my body was cut out and incinerated and I am happy about it.

Also, I started my job this week. It's part time, so I'll likely need a second job. I already have been selected for a phone interview for another job. Hopefully I'll get it and finally have enough money to sustain myself.

And that's it. I'm done. Don't make me write any more.

The Stylish Surprise

So, right out with it - I got this dress, but with red stripes instead of white. I'd say it was worth it! I actually prefer it with the red stripes. I will definitely order another stylish surprise.

I had a dream the night I ordered it that I got a dress with the same colours, but a different style. It was a cotton dress with lace trim on the top and clearly made for someone with a larger bust, but because of the neckline I was still able to wear it without exposing my entire bra. Then this awesome lady from this awesome video told me, "Are you sure that dress fits you? Girl, that dress is way too big on the top." Fortunately, the dress I got fits me perfectly.

In case she ever reads this: Your fortune-telling skills in complete strangers' dreams are not up to par. You should work on that.

My future was rewritten just over a week ago and my surgery has been moved to TOMORROW. I am very happy about this. I am not necessarily excited for the procedure itself, but the results (i.e. breathing better and not snoring) will be awesome.

Also, as of today I have a job stuffing pitas. I start training on Tuesday. Yay for not being piss poor anymore!

How I Met Homer and Bart Simpson in Real Life

For my thirteenth birthday, I went on a cruise with one of my childhood friends and her mother. One morning as we were heading to the elevator, I witnessed an exchange between an overweight, balding man in jeans and a white t-shirt and his blond son wearing a t-shirt and shorts. They might have been blue and orange, but I guess I can forgive a ten-year-old boy for not wanting to wear the same outfit every day, especially on vacation, in case I do not remember correctly.

Anyway, they were having a conversation about how the son knew where all of the "old people" were staying. The dad asked him, "How do you know?"

He answered, "I knocked."

I was expecting the dad to teach him a lesson in manners, but instead, he replied, "Let me try!" and proceeded to knock on a complete stranger's door just to see if the occupants were old. That's where the story ends. I never saw Homer and Bart again. Not in real life, anyway.

Now for the updates, since it has been a while.

I am scheduled to have my overgrown adenoids removed in the middle of December (finally). I cannot wait. The thought of breathing and sleeping better is simply amazing. I don't even care that I will be sore on Christmas, I just want them out.

I ordered one of Modcloth's Stylish Surprises. I have been meaning to try it out for a while, but I keep missing it every time. Not this time! I am excited to see what I get. I paid $15 for either a skirt, top, dress or jacket in my size that will be worth $30-300. Based on some blog posts and Facebook posts I have read, it is usually worth it, although some people get something totally horrible like this snake dress. I may or may not post a picture of what I get when it comes.

And now to plow through the rest - still no job, coloured my hair brown and got a new hair cut, harvested some dwarf sunflower seeds yesterday to plant later, tea seeds rotted again and are being eaten by worms but I will try again indoors when the bugs are away for the winter, successfully grew ghost chilies in Canada on the first try, started knitting curtains for my window but one of the needles went missing and hasn't resurfaced so I can't finish it yet, had the best grapes of my life today, can't fall asleep before 3:00 anymore.

That's it for tonight. I leave you with this awesome article about welfare.

The text in the second/broken image meme reads, "Oh, you spent your welfare check on the new iPhone and now you're broke? Better ask Siri where you can get a job like the rest of us!"

I's gone done graduated AKA if Whitby were an operating system, it would be Linux

Convocation was on the 5th. I got hooded and was given a very pretty piece of paper. So that's it. I officially have been conferred a bachelor's degree in music history and the responsibilities, privileges and magic powers thereof.

I think it means that it will come in handy when McDonald's runs out of paper towels in the kitchen.

It's bittersweet. It's a reminder of what I have done and can do, which I really need every once in a while because like the rest of us who have been aware since childhood of having a higher level of intelligence than most, I have an existential crisis whenever I can't do something. I can look at it and remember all the fun I had along the way and how the handful of things that pissed me off didn't ruin it all. But it also signifies, or at least it will for the duration of my rut in the suburban level of Sartre's Hell, that those times are over. That really hit me hard when we had to rush home after the ceremony because I had to leave without saying goodbye to anyone, and that really hurts. I don't know if I will have the opportunity to go back and visit or get to see any of my friends and professors again because it's such a hardship to travel to Waterloo without a car.

True story: it is easier and cheaper to travel to Whitby from Waterloo via Greyhound/public transit and it takes less time.

People who say that only boring people get bored never had to live in Whitby. This joke of a list of events is what I mean. I can tell you, several decades in advance, that even as a senior citizen, I will not participate in Seniors' Month. Earth Week, Earth Hour and Family Day are not unique to Whitby. The outdoor events, including the ones that are less boring than the others, are always ruined by screaming kids and chain smokers.

If I have to keep living in Whitby until I am a senior, I most certainly will become a crazy bird lady and I'll be known as that crazy old lady who wears an ugly Christmas sweater covered in bird shit all year round.

I'm aching to get out of Whitby (the whole Durham region for that matter) for good. I have no attachments to the place. It was never my home. I have never been fond of it. Its infrastructure is garbage - there are easily more than thirty salons but less than ten grocery stores and the current state of public transit is such that a ten-minute drive takes an hour by bus. If you want to do anything fun, you have to leave the city. There are no special places and there is no culture. I can't think of anything I will miss about it when I finally leave. If I had the means, I would pack up and leave tomorrow. Whitby is the result of a derpy city planner turning a small farming town into a suburb. It's the best place in the world for people who are content to spend all of their free time in front of their computers because that way, they don't have to feel like they're missing out on the outside world.

In other words, Linux users.

That's it for the night. Even people in ruts have to sleep once in a while. Who knew?

Impotent Impotables

I awoke this morning to a weird smell in the house. It was very different from anything I have ever smelled. Nobody could figure out what it was. It was obviously not gas, definitely not food, and resembled burning and chemicals. It spread rapidly throughout the house. We wanted to make sure the house wasn't going to catch fire, so we called the fire department. It took them a few minutes, but eventually they figured it out and they pronounced our fridge dead. Thankfully, we have a spare fridge in the garage and my mom was able to bring her mini fridge back from her office, but it's nowhere near enough room for all of our crap. It was a good excuse to get rid of our rotten stuff, at least, but now we need a new fridge.

My Doberman puppy swallowed a cooked chicken bone whole yesterday. He's made it a day and a half without any problems, so chances are he will be okay. It's just a matter of waiting until he passes the bone.

Two of the sunflower seeds have sprouted, the radishes are sprouting like crazy, the green onions are just sprouting and the spinach seeds have been planted. We also got a cucumber plant, which will go in a pot tomorrow, and some peas because the Doberman ate my pack of pea seeds.

Purity balls are the creepiest thing I have ever come across. Young girls wearing the same white dress dance around a cross and pledge TO THEIR FATHERS to stay "pure" until marriage. That is just wrong and gross and barfy. If this practice isn't abolished in my lifetime, I will at least suggest changing the definition of "purity balls" to a clean-shaven, shiny, smooth, perfectly sculpted ball sack. That way, these creepy dads will have to face their gay sides for a split second and be too uncomfortable to think about purity balls because they threaten their precious masculinity. Maybe it will make them finally want to take the truck nuts off of their pickup trucks.

In the mean time, I will invent truck ovaries.

So, what does any of this have to do with the title of this post? Well, most of it has nothing to do with it. As a result of downsizing the fridge, I had to throw out what was left of my cappuccino martini and a third of a bottle of Gewürztraminer. The latter is my favourite wine, so I had a final glass of it and helped finish off a bottle of St-Remy a la creme. It is a sad day for us lushes.

Spewing out my thoughts before bed

The garden is planted again with the exception of some spinach seeds, but I'll see to that tomorrow. My mom and I are growing peas, yellow beans, Swiss chard, lettuce, red and yellow tomatoes, strawberries, some flowers, some spices, bell peppers, carrots, green onions, radishes, naga morich peppers, and bhut jolokia peppers. We're mostly growing the last two as a joke, but we might make an intense hot sauce. I'm growing dwarf sunflowers again and making another attempt at growing tea. I soaked the seeds longer and weighed them down so that they'd stay submerged and cracked the seed coats this time, so hopefully they won't rot before they germinate.

I am ever so delighted at the way Jon Stewart blasted Rob Ford tonight. What a useless mayor he has been! I'm not going to miss him when this is all over.

News article for those out of the loop: http://read.thestar.com/#!/article/5195ab2e7b1eac38c806a9de-rob-ford-in-crack-cocaine-video-scandal

There's a lesson to be learned from all of this: if the fourth-largest city in North America is stupid enough to elect you as their mayor, don't get caught on video smoking crack and don't get photographed with a drug dealer who will be murdered some time after the picture is taken.

When Psy performed at the finale of American Idol, my mom and I couldn't tell if what he was signing sounded like diarrhea, gonorrhea or pyorrhea, so I renamed the song Psyorrhea. I don't care to remember what the song was actually called. That basically sums up my opinion of Top 40.

Call me old-fashioned, but I must say I really don't understand this fashion trend where women buzz a patch out of the sides of their heads. It just looks so ugly. I understand it for people who have had brain surgery, but if I ever had brain surgery, I would feel compelled to shave my whole head to make it even because the patch would bother me so much. Maybe it's the greatest thing ever and my disdain for it can only be attributed to my irrational need for symmetry. Either you have that or you don't.

Bach did. Handel didn't.

I'm no Star Trek fan, but I have a hilarious idea for a parody of the last two movies where William Shatner plays Captain Kirk's future self warning everyone that they're in grave danger and nobody believes he's Captain Kirk from the future.

Those are my thoughts for the night. I'm sure I'll have plenty more to keep me from sleeping until ass o'clock.

The show so far...

Obscure Monty Python reference for the win.

I bulldozed through my eight-course semester with much better grades than expected. I thought I'd need a very long break, but after having been out of school for less than a month, I'm already going crazy because I am currently doing nothing with my life. I am looking for jobs, though, and I'll take the first one I get. Even if I hate it, I can keep looking while making money.

I finally decided on law school. I will apply at Windsor, U of T, York, UBC and UVic. I'm not sure which kind of specialization I want, but I will most certainly not be a defence lawyer. Whatever I pick, I eventually want to be a judge.

I took off for Vancouver on the 21st of April and I finally adjusted to Vancouver time on the 30th. Unfortunately, I came back to Ontario on the 29th, which is why I am once again writing at a ridiculous hour. It was hard to leave this time because most of my family lives there and I realized that I have gone my whole life without getting to know them. That, and it's much more fun than any city in Ontario I have experienced.

I treated myself to an iPad mini and I do not even remotely regret it. I even knitted a case for it. I can use it to prepare for my upcoming LSAT and look for a job for my year off, as well as waste time with games and fun little apps. It made the recent plane rides a lot less boring.

Time to sleep and hopefully wake up early and get my sleep back on track. Goodnight, internets.

Lessons Learned

When you get a free used slow cooker, make sure it wasn't recalled ten years ago because the handles keep breaking and two people had to be hospitalized for severe burns. If the handles are garbage, the rest of it is probably garbage, too, and it might do things such as burn your baked beans on one side of the cooker while leaving the rest raw. I'll be tossing my free used slow cooker in the dumpster when I make my way to the bus stop tomorrow morning. Hopefully the Zellers that's closing down in the mall will still have some cheap and decent slow cookers left!

Also, when refilling your stapler, make sure your thumb is far enough away from the edge when you close it or your stapler will bite you. It only hurts when I put a lot of pressure on it or touch hot stuff, so I'm not concerned.

Going to bed and waking up early is so much better than doing it late. I'm so glad to I can do it this semester and I am not changing back. I'm still trying to push it earlier so I can get more stuff done in the morning.

Princess is an amazing TV show for wasting time. It makes me feel better about my financial situation to know that I don't have tens of thousands of dollars in consumer debt and I don't behave like those girls do with my money. Not that I can; my only credit card has a very low limit and I want to keep it like that.

And I'm tired. Goodnight, world.

This might be my favourite post so far

So much has happened since I last posted. I finally got a KitchenAid mixer as a Christmas gift and have started making my own bread again since I no longer have to knead it by hand anymore. My sleep schedule has become more human-like since I quit the gay bar and had to register in some early classes. Speaking of which, I am registered in eight classes this semester, two of which are full-year. So yes, you guessed it, I won't be doing a lot of posting here until I finish the semester.

On Friday, I missed my Greyhound to Toronto by a minute. I waited too long inside the terminal for the next bus and found myself at the end of a very long line. When I was three places away, the two girls ahead of me who were travelling together were told that there was one seat left. Since I was travelling alone, I got it. Clearly, I was meant to ride this bus. I noticed that the passenger across the aisle from me had a service dog, but like I do with all Greyhound passengers, I paid no more attention to him and crocheted a doily for the rest of the trip.

Apparently I'm an old lady now and I crochet doilies.

The bus normally stops in front of the Royal York Hotel, but had to stop across the street from it due to construction. The guy across from me was blind, and because all the traffic had been rerouted around the construction, was not able to find his own way to Union Station. The driver asked me if I would lead him there. Why wouldn't I? I take the GO train from Union anyway. Turns out he graduated from Music Therapy at Laurier not too long ago. We naturally talked about our professors the whole way there. The overall experience was pretty cool - I've never led a blind person anywhere before - but even better that we had something in common. I'll be looking for his picture on the wall of composites this week.

What else is going on... I now own The Sims 3 (with Pets), I am planning a recital in February with a friend, there will be a Wind Ensemble concert earlier in February, and I'm trying to find a job to start after I finish school. I'm hoping for admin work at a law firm, but I'll still spam my resume all over the GTA and see what happens.

Winter is icumen in, ludhe sing Goddamn!

I ordered Swiss Chalet tonight, thinking in vain that not being hungry would make it easier to study for my musicology exam tomorrow morning. I ate the whole damn thing with an extra side of Chalet sauce and after several hours of getting nowhere, I finally finished. I'm really not enjoying the subject of new musicology and it doesn't help much that one of my music history profs told a wonderful story last year (twice, actually) about how the fucking pioneer of new musicology called Tosca a "shabby little shocker" and never lived it down. I can't take him or anything about him seriously.

If I ever start a band, I'm calling it Shabby Little Shocker. I've got dibs on it.

It's easy enough for me to put together ideas for this one-page outline we're allowed to bring, but actually typing stuff on it is another story. Waking up for it is also going to suck, seeing as it's going to be tomorrow at fucking 9:00 in the morning. What fun that's going to be. The weather is going to be gross, too. Cold and rainy - the worst weather in the world. I'm not looking forward to it at all. On top of that, I have other things to do tomorrow before I go home. I have to pick up music for the next concert, mop the kitchen floor and clean the tub.

I should really stop writing and sleep.

The semester is almost over!

This is just another set of updates. Nothing particularly interesting, but read it anyway if you like.

Today, I tried wild rice. I had it with some green lentils, butter, and salt. I shouldn't have done it. It has more flavour, a nicer texture, and is just better overall than every other rice I've ever had. The only problem is that it is 10x as expensive, even if you go to Bulk Barn on students'/seniors' discount day. I guess I can still eat the other stuff; I'll just save the wild rice for special occasions. What a horrible idea this was. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be this awesome. Holy shit. I'm so sad that I'm full now because I want to eat more.

I bought an electric razor and I haven't looked back. It doesn't provide the best possible shave, but for the lack of razor burn, I wouldn't ask for more. I can now shave more than once a week! Next summer is going to be great.

Blue cheese is starting to grow on me. No, I don't mean that blue cheese is growing on some part of my body. I'm starting to be able to tolerate the taste of it. I made a tortellini casserole with spinach and blue cheese sauce. I already like the taste of blue cheese in a sauce, because for some reason it's amazing in a sauce and horrible on its own. When eating the casserole, sometimes there was more of a blue cheese flavour than others, and it didn't absolutely gag me. Maybe it helped that I used a very mild blue cheese for this sauce. Ciel de Charleviox, if you're curious. I was even able to take a small bite of it while cooking without having to set my mouth on fire. I might not end up liking the stuff, but might become okay with it.

I have nothing more profound to say tonight, so I'll wrap this up. Goodnight, world.

The Feminism Fridge and Other Updates

First of all, I have a shiny, new wireless keyboard. It's the Logitech K360 in black, in case you give a shit. I no longer have to reach over to get to my laptop keyboard! My desk has a keyboard drawer, which until now I had been using for my pen tablet, pennies and cups. If I had lots of money I would have bought the solar-powered one, but I don't. It's hardly an investment anyway, seeing as two AA batteries will last for three years in this thing and the keyboard itself will probably last just as long as the solar-powered one would. It's a bit weird typing with it and having the tablet all the way to the right of the desk, but I'll get used to it soon enough.

Second, I had allergy testing a few days ago. I am no longer allergic to trees except for a mild allergy to birch, but I should really stay the hell away from horses and ragweed. I might get allergy shots, but I'd like to see an ENT before I do that.

If I may toot my own horn, I kicked this dude's ass in the first letter to the editor on this page. The editing they did to it is atrocious, but it looks half-decent in print. As you can see here, I write more than one sentence in each paragraph, but I guess that can look a little awkward when shoving it all into newspaper columns. I'll also add that it should be Margo Maine's "Body Wars," not what they wrote. Anyway, my feminist friends who came across it enjoyed it very much. One even put it on her fridge, where she and her roommate post feminism-related items. I must say, though, that the second letter is pretty damn awesome as well.

The comments on the original article are also awesome. I'm glad that everyone agrees, and I am happy to see that the majority of commenters are men.

So, yeah. Nothing else worth noting is really going on right now. Hopefully the weather won't suck too much this week. Goodnight, world.

On legislating biology

I've recently been thinking about how the IAAF is banning female athletes with abnormally high amounts of testosterone and forcing them to undergo hormone therapy or gonadectomy in order to compete again. I recognize that sports mean a lot to many people, but I don't care for sports at all myself and I'm a horrible athlete. However, I don't have to get any enjoyment out of athletics in order to see the problems with this.

Part of the reason I suck so hard at sports is that I'm mildly asthmatic, so when I run even short distances, I find myself out of breath. Tomorrow, however, I will have an epiphany and decide that my true calling is to be an Olympic runner. All the non-asthmatic competitors are going to have an unfair advantage over me, so to level the playing field, I propose that they each smoke a whole pack of cigarettes before every race.

I'm not actually going to have any epiphanies tomorrow.

Let me be the 1837563q03476rd person to say that this would be a horrible idea. Why should I force the other competitors to damage their bodies for my sake? The same goes for women who have high testosterone levels. There are so many scientific reasons against this new policy - women respond differently to testosterone, so having high testosterone means nothing for a woman whose body does not react to it; the normal amount of testosterone in high-performance female athletes is not known; hormone therapy and gonadectomy can potentially be dangerous; there are countless other medical anomalies such as large hands that give an athletic advantage that cannot be corrected; etc. That, and it's clearly sexist. Why not test men for abnormally high testosterone levels? Would that not give them an unfair advantage? The obvious answer is yes. Do I need to say that ten more times?

Wait a minute. The answer is no, for both male and female athletes. It's not an unfair advantage, just an advantage. Abnormal does not mean the same thing as unnatural. Anabolic steroids are unnatural. Intersex disorders are abnormal. I believe that those who have any sort of abnormality should never have to live in shame because of it, so if it ultimately becomes someone's greatest gift, leave it the hell alone.

That awkward moment when you find out your bra size is 30D when you've been wearing a 32B for three goddamn years

I had a very weird experience today. La Senza now carries bras with a 30 band size, and since 32 feels a bit loose on me, I thought I'd try on a 30C to see if it would fit me better. It didn't. It was too tight across the bust, meaning I needed to go up to a 30D. This had me a bit confused, because until that point I was convinced that I'd never reach a D cup in my entire life. I found the same bra in 30D and it fit perfectly. I just stood in the changeroom and stared at the mirror for a good 20 minutes. My boobs disappear if I put my shoulders back far enough. I can't hold up a pencil with them unless I slouch. There's no way in hell I should have to wear a D cup, but apparently I do. Once it sinks in a bit more I'll be back to buy more bras, since I now only have one that fits me properly.

I imagined that a 30D figure would look unnatural until today. When I heard "D cup," I thought of something more substantial than what I have. It seems I'm horribly mistaken. This is weird. It's a lot to think about. I was envious of people with D cup breasts. It seems so wrong that I have them as well, but that's the way it is. Once I get past that, I'll probably freak out about all the money I spent on bras that don't fit.

I wear a 30D. D for Dick All.

On the plus side, I won't have to worry about the good 32B bras being picked over by slutty preteens. They can have them.

I still maintain that they are too young to wear more than half the bras in that store.


That will be it for now. Goodnight, world.

Thanksgiving and such

I went home last weekend for the first time since the school year started for Thanksgiving. I made a sweet potato pie for the occasion, and believe me, it was awesome - the first pie I ever made, too. I always thought pie making would be difficult because my mom would never do it and she's the best baker I know, but the hardest part is the crust and I didn't have any difficulty with it. The trick, which I gleaned from all the pie crust recipes I looked up, is to underwork it just prior to chilling it so that you can't overwork it when you roll it.

I guess you could still manage to overwork it, but there's an easy solution to that: use a rolling pin, not a wrecking ball.

I'll post the recipe for those interested, because it was surprisingly difficult to find a sweet potato pie recipe that didn't seem disgustingly sweet. I found the one with the least sugar and modified it to my liking.

Filling:

2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp of soft butter
2 tbsp of sour cream (or creme fraîche if you have it)
1/2 tsp of salt
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste

The mashed sweet potatoes are pretty straightforward - wash, peel, cut, boil - and the amount you need depends on the size of the potatoes, so it's best to make a bit too much, set aside 2 cups and save the rest for dinner or a snack or something. Just stir it all together and put it in the fridge.

Crust:

1 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 cup of cold butter
1/4 cup of ice water

Cut the butter into cubes and put it in the freezer for a few minutes. It has to be cold. If you don't have a pastry cutter, don't cut the butter into cubes - grate it with a cheese grater (the side with the bigger holes) and put it in the freezer for at least an hour and stir it into the flour. If you do have a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour down to pea size. Stir in a tablespoon of the water at a time until it just comes together. You might not use up all of the water.

Run your hands under cold water and work the dough into a disc shape. Like I said, underwork it. Put it in a bowl with saran wrap and refrigerate it for at least an hour, up to a day. When it's chilled, carefully dump it out onto a well-floured surface. You don't want so much flour that the dough will dry out, but you don't want to see the countertop, either. Flour the rolling pin as well. Cool off your hands, roll it into a 9-inch circle and carefully place it in a 9-inch pie pan. Press it down with your fingers until it fills up the pan - a bit of overlap is fine. Pour in the filling and bake at 350°F for an hour.

For those wanting to use creme fraîche instead of sour cream but can't find it, you can make it easily. Just stir 1/4 cup of plain yoghourt (I like Astro Balkan style because it only has milk, cream and active bacterial culture - gelatin and powdered milk have no place in yoghourt) in 1 cup of whipping cream and leave it out at room temperature overnight to thicken. You'll have a lot more than you need, but you can whip the rest with a hand mixer with a bit of icing sugar and vanilla extract to make the perfect topping for the pie.

Man, that pie was good. My parents wouldn't even let me take the leftover pie back with me. My dad, who doesn't even like sweet potatoes, loved it. Seriously, give it a try. Or if you don't want to but know me personally, buy one from me or invite me to your next potluck.

For those in search of the perfect bowl of oatmeal

I'm in a generous mood, and since I have no money, I'll give my oatmeal recipe. I'll admit I just eyeball my ingredients except for the water and oats, so hopefully this will taste the same for anyone who tries it. This makes one serving.

1 cup of water
1/3 cup of rolled oats
2 tbsp of table cream (or 50/50 2% milk and whipping cream if you're like me and that just happens to be what's in your fridge, but you can probably substitute just milk if you want)
1 tbsp of honey
1 tbsp of brown sugar (heaping)
Cinnamon to taste

Boil the water in a small pot. Once the water is boiling, add the oats, turn down the heat to medium-high and stir often. Once the oatmeal looks about 3/4 done (thicker but still runny), add the cream and/or milk, brown sugar, honey and cinnamon. Keep stirring until desired thickness.

Best of all, it's pretty damn cheap. A pound of rolled oats is $1.20 at Bulk Barn and provides 15 servings, so add up all the other ingredients and it's just over a dime for a meal.

If you wanted to be supremely cheap, you could even get your honey and cream from the bins of honey and cream packets at the coffee shop.

I've been knitting a lot of socks lately. They're much easier than you'd think, and I even developed a way of casting on using the magic loop method that doesn't create an ugly ladder in the middle. I just wish I'd known already how horrible wood needles are before I bought my circular needle with bamboo needles. It makes the most disgusting noise, the ends are sharper than they need to be and there's way too much friction. I might put some mineral oil on it once my OSAP finally comes in, provided it won't stain the yarn. From now on it's either metal or plastic, but I'll save it in case I'm ever crazy enough to buy silk yarn.

And that's all for tonight.

What's going on now?

Since I last posted, I've started classes, I'm playing in wind ensemble, I've perfected the recipe for non-instant oatmeal, two of my tea seeds rotted and I figured out how to crochet a multitude of things as well as knit hats and socks. My next knitting project will be an ugly Christmas sweater.

I'm taking two musicology courses and I am not particularly thrilled with the subject. I like subjects where I am either right or wrong and can draw upon factual knowledge to prove I am right, not where I have to pull an answer out of my ass and draw upon something that came out of someone else's ass to prove that I might possibly be right but it's a bit of a grey area. It's very much philosophy-based, and while I can respect anyone who studies philosophy, I find it becomes less profound as the subject progresses because the publish-or-perish mindset that plagues the scholarly world has resulted in a lot of (at least seemingly) pointless hair-splitting. I can understand these ideas, even if it means taking a brief look at the Simple English version of the Wikipedia page, but why exactly do the most minute details of human experience have to have all these fancy Greek and Latin terms attached to them? Why do these negligible aspects of our lives have to be defined at all? If you're a philosopher, you might already know that I'm ranting about phenomenology. If you're not a philosopher, I dare you to look it up. It's difficult to understand the different aspects of it, but once you can put it in terms you understand, it seems so basic.

Before I forget again, I forgot to mention last time that I packed up my balcony garden and brought it home. It's probably withering away because of the temperature/my parents and brothers don't water it, but when I was home at the end of August, the plants were doing better because they get better sunlight in my south-facing backyard than my east-facing balcony. I still have the peppermint and the remaining tea plants under a fluorescent light behind my laptop. I might end up ordering new seeds and starting over, but this time I'll scarify them before they've been planted for three months.

And that's my life right now. Tomorrow I have classes all day and on Wednesday I'm going to look through the discontinued yarn at the craft store for yarns that I can incorporate into my ugly sweater.

Where have I been?

I had to cut my intergalactic journey short because my Heisenberg compensator blew a fuse. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find one with circuit breakers, even if you pay over three million credits for it. I was expecting not to come back until the next galactic cycle, but at least I got to see Jupiter before I had to turn around and go back.

It's even harder to find fuses for Heisenberg compensators. With the trouble you go to find a replacement and the cost of paying the mechanic, it's almost better just to buy a new one.

If you're wondering how I managed to get to Jupiter and back in two weeks, it actually took a day each way, but there was roughly a 7:1 time dilation because I was traveling so close to the universal constant. Micro deuterium uranium reactors are the way of the future in space travel, man.

I hope you've figured out, and not based on the conclusion that the time dilation resulting from traveling to Jupiter and back in two days would be something completely different from 7:1 after your horribly time-wasting calculations, that I'm full of shit. I decided to go home (as in Whitby) for the last few weeks of the summer holiday and forgot my laptop charger, brought it back after my shift at the bar on Saturday, bought new knitting stuff when I got back and forgot all about my laptop until just now.

You've just caught a horrifying glimpse into my brain. How does it feel?

I've learned that the cable stitch is super easy, but I wish I'd known about slipping the first stitch before getting a third of the way through my scarf. I'll just sew along the sides when I'm done and hopefully that will cover it up. If it doesn't work, the sides are stockinettes and will curl inwards and cover it up anyway even though I did a garter stitch border. Oh well. I still like it. I'll have to get a crochet hook, double-pointed needles and a circular needle so I can make fancier things, and perhaps go back to Zellers and get crazy amounts of half-price yarn before the good stuff is all picked over.

So that's it. That's where I've been all this time. Now you know.