You just KNOW I’m going to have a whole post about phlegm tomorrow: Random Tuesday Thoughts

Tuesday, Tuesday…la la, la la la…sure like that daaayyy…la la, la la la…

Am I allowed to use god-related exclamations?  Because I’m especially fond of the phrase, “Lord, love a duck,” and I want to use it often, but I don’t want to offend any Christians.  Or waterfowl.  Or…Christian waterfowl.

There is this mysterious series of people that follow me on Twitter.  They almost always only have 15-20 tweets under their belt, but somehow have amassed 1000 followers.  Their tweets always start with a few on the variation of “Can you hear me now, Gillian?” and then continue with a series of completely nonsensical sentence fragments like “It is insoluble riddles” and “condescending conditional mario”.

Is this some kind of treasure-hunt conspiracy theory thing that I’m supposed to be puzzling out?  Do I get a gold bar or a dusty parchment map if I figure it out?  Because it’s driving me crazy trying to decipher what, if anything, these ‘people’ are trying to accomplish.

I mean, nobody can be THAT bored.

I have cleared out my Google Reader.  I read everything.  It’s a good thing I didn’t make any New Years resolutions, because End Times are obviously nigh.

Star Wars pinups.  For the more depraved among us.  (*cough*)

I think I’m going to take one random thought per week and turn it into an actual post.  We’ll call it a “writing exercise” (rather than “my life is really boring so all I have are these random tidbits”).  Deal?  You can join me, if you like.

I mean, you can take one of YOUR OWN random thoughts.  Not mine.  Thieves.

I have had this weird pressure in my throat for a few days, like a lump.  It doesn’t seem to go away when I swallow.

I think it’s a scream.  Though I suppose it’s just as likely that it’s phlegm.  Or that hamster I had for breakfast.

Last week someone told me she’d been criticized for participating in Random Tuesday Thoughts at the same time as a different blog carnival thing.  I totally understand that this is the coolest meme out there, and y’all might get proprietary about that, but it’s really okay to tag-team RTT with whatever other Tuesday thing you like.  If you think you need my permission, which you don’t.  It’s blogging, after all – we’re just making this shit up as we go along.

And looking fabulous doing it, of course.

After the rise of comic book popularity, and movies like Kick Ass, it was really only a matter of time before someone actually went ahead and did it.  While I’m impressed by the…ball bearings…on this guy, I think I’ll stick with being a hero and giving blood the old-fashioned way.

(By shooting it out of people.)

…What?  I’m still working on my career as an assassin.  It’s a slow start, mostly because it’s hard to wait outside for my targets when it’s minus 20 (-35 with the windchill!). 

Maybe I’ll stick with character assassination.

But not you guys, of course.  Unless someone paid me.  Which they probably won’t because you’re doing a fine job on your own, so, you’re still welcome to play along with Random Tuesday Thoughts!

And you should.  You really, really should.

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Really? Really, really.

"Everybody is too busy focusing on their own perceived imperfections to notice yours."

That is my usual Tenet To Live By. I'm pretty good at following it, most of the time. However, when there is an impending event that will involve a lot of cameras, such as a wedding or a birthday or, say, BlogHer, I've been known to have the occasional panicky crisis of faith.

I had one today. Thanks to whacky hormones and lack of time to exercise and sheer laziness on my part, I'm officially the same weight that I was a couple of weeks after giving birth to my son. It's only twenty pounds more than I would like to weigh, and I think I look fine. I feel fine, which is equally important, but since all this extra blubber seems to have settled around my waist like a floatation device, I have this pesky little problem: nothing fits.

Mostly I just kind of muddle along in jeans and hope that some chemical rebalancing of my body will eventually win me my wardrobe back. But for something like the BlogHer parties, where I want to look NICE, and maybe wear something SPECIAL, it's problematic. Today, feeling slightly on edge, I thought I came up with the perfect solution: shapewear. Shapewear would shave off a few sizes. Shapewear would turn me into a svelte, confident, social conquerer who doesn't show quite so much gums when she smiles, right?

While that might be slightly true for higher-end products such as Yummie Tummie or Spanx, due to time and money constraints, what I had access to this afternoon was discount shapewear.

(These sudden fixations on specific items to assuage my fashion fears are...often somewhat deluded. I have some very creepy rubber boob-lifter 'cutlets' that will attest to this.)

I took the butt-and-tummy-firmer-and-smoother into the changeroom with a pair of jeans and a nice (if slightly clingy) top. I changed from my comfy 'weekend' jeans and loose tank into the Lycra armor.

...Huh. I don't think this stuff is supposed to CREATE lumps. Maybe they go away after you put the clothes on over top.

Um. Guess not. Isn't this supposed to make me look smaller?

I stood under the unflattering flourescent lights of the outlet mall for a bit, shoulders slumped, wondering if I really looked that paunchy. Then I decided that 'really' is whatever you make it. The people I meet at BlogHer will still be meeting ME.

I put everything back and vowed to only ever shop at places that are smart enough to provide natural lighting.

Then I went and spent that money on wine.

Maybe if I wish really hard and click my heels together someone will bring me something limey and minty: Random Tuesday Thoughts

Okay, so the post before this Random Tuesday post was another Random Tuesday post. So sue me. Other people do it.

The inspiration, she is lacking.

Anyway. Not sure what a Random Tuesday is? It's like any other Tuesday, except that you get to brain-dump all your little wayward thoughts and call it a post. It would be a thing of beauty, if it didn't have such an ugly button.

It's a long weekend here in Canada. The May long weekend is traditionally when people make incredibly optimistic plans to do things outdoors, like go camping or plant their gardens, and then without fail, Mother Nature shits a typhoon on us. It's Murphy's Law or something.

But I took a day off work and planted my garden on Friday, when it was still sunny. Take that, Murphy, you fat bastard!

Okay, I have no idea if Murphy was a fat bastard or not. It just seems like he should be, somehow, you know? So then I had to look it up. Turns out he was neither, he was an aerospace engineer.

Like you need an engineering degree to figure out that things will always go wrong.

My garden is obliging me by already producing mint for mojitos. In fact, I got all jazzed about having a mojito yesterday, got all the ingredients, and picked the mint, only to realize that very young mint leaves...are not very good. Or possibly it was actually a weed.

At any rate, I still really want a mojito.

World's oldest sex toy. (Totally unrelated to mojitos. Not sure they had mojitos back then. If they did, they were probably lukewarm.)

For date night hubby and I went to go see How To Train Your Dragon. It was cute. When we were child-free, we used to go see kids movies all the time, without feeling guilty or judged. Now that we actually HAVE a kid, I felt like people were staring at us the whole time wondering why we didn't have any spawn with us.

Well, the other 4 people in the theatre, anyway.

Do you ever wish you could Photoshop real life? (I'd probably use the "stretch" tool on my legs and the "fisheye" on my chest. Then I'd copy & paste some friends.)

The other day Pat the Neighbourhood Gossip Information Hub said to me, "I've been meaning to tell you this, but ever since that big wind storm, that second pine on your property is leaning way to the left. I can see it from my study. I bet it cracked halfway up or something, you should get a tree guy to look at it, because if it came down on the house it could kill you!"

Before I could muster up enough sarcasm to thank her for this tidbit (that windstorm was a MONTH ago, Pat, how long were you planning to sit on that information?), she added thoughtfully, "Or if it went the other way, Max & Gertie might sue you."

Home ownership is an endless buffet of possibilities.

You know what else is a buffet of possibilities? Random Tuesday Thoughts.

(Oh, my god, that was the WORST SEGUE EVER. I blame the lack of mojitos.)

So, random up! Do your thing, link up, and be sure to do a few stops around the Random Tuesday Crew. They're the cats pajamas.

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Just a heads up

I am a nervous drinker. I'm a little socially awkward, as I'm sure a lot of bloggers feel they are, and that's what I do when confronted with actual human interaction. I mean, if booze is present, of course. I don't stash a flask in my purse or anything. But if the occasion warrants it, and I happen to be having a glass of wine, rather than open my mouth and say something weird, I open my mouth and put wine in it. And then maybe some more, because, well, that glass is right there in my hand. And the bottle is so close! Right there by my elbow. And then I've had 3 or 4 glasses and I'm saying weird and inappropriate things anyway, but oh well, what the hell do I care? I'm shmammered.

Years ago - like, 9 of them in fact - some wonderful friends of mine got married very close to Hallowe'en. They had the theme wedding but managed to make it nottacky, as they have a fantastic group of talented and creative family & friends. At some point, because the people surrounding them were so clever and articulate, they had an open microphone. Soooo many people got up and said such beautiful things about the newlyweds. I was twitching in my seat. I had been best friends with the bride for ages, surely I should say something too?

But I hadn't lived in the area in several years, and none of their friends were MY friends. So I was nervous. And drinking. And I'm pretty sure it was an open bar, or possibly I had just been helping myself.

I got up anyway and started a rambling speech about how in the beginning it had just been my friend and me, and we had been inseparable, and everyone had referred to us as "Keelyandfriend", or "FriendandKeely", but now it was "Husbandandfriend", and um, that was okay too. I guess. But back when we had met we had bonded instantly over chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, and been inseparable, and what the fuck was my point again?

I think my friend started to get that teeth-clenchy look so I abandoned the microphone to someone else and wandered off to tell the MC how I thought if he moved his plastic stick-on devil's horn from his forehead to his chin that he'd be really popular with the girls, heh heh. My friend expressed surprise when I apologized the next day - "you were drunk?" - but she was just being her very kind self. I still cringe when I think of that wedding.

So, yeah. What the fuck was my point again?

Oh, right. See you at BlogHer.

(Don't say I didn't warn you.)

The other recommendation was "stupid gift game where someone always steals the one you want at the last second" : Random Tuesday Thoughts

So! Here we all are again. On a Tuesday. Twiddling our thumbs, looking around at each other but not making eye contact...

Oh, wait, that was my mumblemumble Anonymous meeting.

THIS is way more fun. Got something to say? A few paltry bits that you can't really tie together, thematically speaking, but that you want to post anyway? Round 'em up with Random Tuesday Thoughts and link up!

Today's beverage of choice is hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps. Hubby received some schnapps in the (insert more politically correct term than 'Chinese gift exchange' here*) at a dinner party Saturday night. Guess who's allergic to mint?

Well, not ME. Heh.

*Google informs me that better terms are "Dirty Santa" and "Rob Your Neighbour". Yes, Google, that makes it sound MUCH more appealing.

(I am so getting Google searches for Santa porn now, aren't I?)

Speaking of which, someone contacted me with a "search engine advertising" opportunity for my blog. Basically, ads would appear for people who get here using a search engine, targeted to them and what they searched for. You, my wonderful regular readers, would never see a thing.

I sent them back a note saying it sounded interesting, but that they may want to have a peek at what Google searches actually get people to my blog, first:

You know what would be fantastic? If they would make my beloved City of Heroes game for the Wii. If I had to actually punch the virtual bad guys in the nads and do flip kicks off their heads, I would probably look a lot better in my spandex.

Um, I mean, I would be looking so good I could wear spandex. Yeah, that's what I meant to say.

So, get on that, NCSoft. My potentially smokin' bod depends on you.

On a totally unrelated note, did anybody read Farenheit 451? Remember those full-wall interactive TV screens that pretty much meant nobody ever had to actually talk to other human beings again?

I don't know what made me think of that. That could never happen.

I told hubby today, "I'm just going to let myself go and get really fat, okay?" He's used to hearing weird hormonal statements from me lately, so he just shrugged.

I'm pretty sure that means it's okay.

My doctor has decided to close her practice and go be a full-time parent. Which is a sentiment I totally get, but I am still a little upset. I mean a) she was awesome, and b) Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a medical professional that doesn't think I'm a nutjob?

Thank goodness there's you guys. Quick, diagnose this lump, will ya?

Here's a thought: Got a cold? Don't lather yourself up with Vicks and then head to bed and expect to get grabby with your husband's stick shift. Or at least don't expect him to appreciate it. Not that this has happened to me. Because I think these things through.

And, on that note...where's the Vicks?

Random up, you guys. Don't make me come over there.

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