Hot Thai Food, A Sticky Offhand Comment, And The Postal Service

The Palinode has been out of town working for a couple of days, and, as is my usual bachelorette style, I am living like a hobo in my own apartment. I am right this second drinking out of a coffee mug that shows three days of old coffee rings, which I am telling myself brings out the full-bodied flavour. My front right jeans pocket is pulled inside out. I just ate a sandwich made out of peanut butter, the grainy scrapings of old honey I found in the back of the cupboard, and the leftover heels of an old loaf of bread.



Because I am magically chaotic, I managed to turn our kitchen into a deplorable mess in less than 36 hours, so I picked up some Thai food on my way home last night. I ordered it hot, because that's how we usually order it, and because the Palinode likes to sweat where he's bald when he eats. The food turned out to be so hot, though, that I found myself sitting on the couch and contemplating sucking on sugar cubes to kill the heat.

"Ho, baby!" I called out. "Is this Thai food ever hot!"



The Palinode, being 257 kilometers (that's 159.7 miles) away, did not answer, and then I felt instantly lonely, and then I felt depressed about my loneliness, so I took my computer to bed in a small fit of faux-lovelorn drama. Of course, not being actually lovelorn and knowing that the Palinode would be home in less than 24 hours made it a very short fit, and as I lay back against my pillow waiting for sleep, I remembered something my mother told me 23 years ago.

I was lying in bed, home sick from school with the flu that day in 1988, when my mother came in to the room to see how I was doing. She looked like she had something serious to say, but as soon as she saw my face, she started laughing.

"What's so funny, Mom?" I asked.

"The way your face looks right now when you're lying down [hahahahaha], you're going to [hahahahaha], you're going to [hahahahaha], you're going to have to have sex in the dark when you grow up," she said.

She was referring to the fact that I have a naturally round face that changes shape a bit when I lie down. Strangely, her comment, although it has followed me for 23 years, has never made me feel awkward about having sex with the lights on, but I do think about it like a knee jerk reflex every time I recline even slightly.

I lie down on a beach towel. You're going to have to have sex in the dark. I kick back in a reclining chair. You're going to have to have sex in the dark. I lie down in the bathtub. You're going to have to have sex in the dark.

The only time I don't think You're going to have to have sex in the dark when I lie down is during sexy times. You'd think I would, but I don't. That's how we know I don't have issues.

And then I turned out the light and didn't have sex in the dark, because the Palinode was 257 kilometers away.



And then I woke up this morning, very excited yet again about the mailman, because I am nothing if not excited about the mailman for some reason, and then I was suddenly not so excited about the mailman, because I remembered that ours hasn't bothered to deliver magazines to us for months, and our postal workers might be going on strike, and all I really want is for my Etsy orders to arrive so I can wear my dorky punctuation earrings and tinted lip balm.

I'm sorry Mr. Mailman if your job is sucking so much that it requires a strike, because I was once a striking worker myself and feel your pain, except that my pain was much worse because my stupid union called a strike during a cold snap and I had to march around for four hours straight every day in -40°C (that's -40°F) weather. Really, though, I'm not that sorry, because I'm the selfish sort of person today who just wants her earrings and tinted lip balm and magazines already. You are stifling my ability to foster my inner gender slave, goddamnit.

The End.

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Three Examples To Illustrate The Miracle That Is People Ever Having Sex Ever

I brought a shopping bag home filled with the following items:

1. a container filled with jingly cat toys,
2. water bottles for spraying bad cats, and
3. a bottle of herbal mood remedy pills.

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"I called dibs on that," KidB said.

"No you didn't," KidA said.

"I did. You just didn't hear it. I called it in my head."

"That doesn't count."

"Yes, it does. I can call dibs on anything I want to in my head."

"It's true. He can," said KidC. "He's got dibs."

The above conversation was had on a city bus by a trio of boys who looked to be about seventeen years old.

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Have you taken a good look at human genitalia? I mean a really good look? Their appearance flies in the face of all else we find aesthetically pleasing.

I think I can safely say that evolution was not expecting us to ever want to look at that mess.

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PS.  That photo up there is a picture I took of the cat toys I bought.

Sex: The Devil's Instrument That Leads To Dancing

I come from Mennonite ancestry on both sides of my family, and it's definitely not a culture known for its fun factor. When I was growing up within a church community, we ate a lot and we sang a lot — I could pick out my alto line in a four-part harmony by the time I was seven — but we had very little in the way of physical expression. Outside of the staunch ethic of hard work — be strong like bull! — physical expression was largely frowned upon.

Sex was fine as a concept within the bond of marriage, but it was so bound up with intellectual issues of morality and social unacceptability that understanding it as an expression of anything other than slutty or parental and, therefore, kind of disgusting, was beyond me until my twenties.

Sports were an acceptable outlet, if you were interested. I was not. The all-capsed rule with three exclamation marks that was posted in the gym at my Mennonite boarding school was AND NO DANCING!!! Want to pick up a quick game of basketball? Fine. Want to wiggle your butt to Pour Some Sugar On Me? You'll hear about the pressure from school donors and the fate of the school.

Dancing was definitely verboten. I was allowed to go to school dances, although I know my mother struggled with letting me go, if only out of angst over tradition rather than concern about the corruption of my soul, but it was not considered generally acceptable among everyone in my church community. I learned not to mention dancing in polite company.

My physically conservative background is why I love this video, and it is why it makes me tear up when I watch it.



I never got to see physical joy from my older relatives when I was growing up. They were all trained into relatively physically sedate lives. We ate heavy food, and we sang Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow, and we would go so far as to whoop at a curling bonspiel or a hockey game, but no one ever danced aside from stamping out the rhythm to keep the choir in line.

To this day, when I am at a show or some other kind of music-related event, I feel like the aging aunt with the thin lips that you catch wiggling her elbow to a tune when she thinks no one's looking, because you know why Mennonites don't have sex standing up, don't you? IT MIGHT LEAD TO DANCING.