I Love a Girl in Uniform!

I went to a private Catholic School. I am not Catholic. Nor were my parents particularly rich. However, my brother got into a lot of trouble in school and my Mom wanted something better for me.

I recently found out that my brother was bullied a lot in school and that is why he has some anger issues. I was thinking about bullying today, as "cyber-bullying" was a topic of discussion on the radio a few mornings ago.

I realized that I too had been bullied in school. To the point where I (quite melodramatically) was on my hands and knees begging my parents to send me to public school.

I claimed that I had no friends in my neighbourhood, and that taking a bus to school every day meant that all the other girls I went to school with everyday live far away.

This was only partially true. The fact was, while I was a nice, smart girl, I simply had no friends. The one token "nice girl" in the class, who didn't bully me became, by default, my best friend.

The other day, the "head bully" called me up for an interview for the event that we did this past weekend. This wasn't the first time that I had encountered her since elementary school, however I simply had no patience for her that day, so I quickly passed the call onto our event partner. The woman of course butchered his quotes and mis attributed some of my company's events to him.

The first time that I ever saw her post- Catholic school was in a summer course that I was taking in second year University. "The Age of Chaucer." I was taking it with a friend of mine, and at the time I was at my thinnest and most flirted with. It was a relatively small class and I saw her sitting alone everyday.

The thought occurred to me to tell her off. When I was 9 years old I had no friends. She bullied me into leaving an entire school. I had done nothing wrong to her other than exist, and she rallied an entire classroom of girls to making my life miserable. I felt strong and righteously indignant. I was the wronged party, and she was in a vulnerable state. She should know how it made me feel!!

Then I decided to just let it go. We were now 19, and no doubt she had grown out of her bullying phase. She was alone. And while I didn't welcome her with open arms into my little group, I decided to just let her be.

A few years later I discovered that she was dating one of my friends. I told him how I knew her, and since we weren't close his behaviour distinctly cooled towards me. I understood, thinking that I probably shouldn't have immediately launched into a diatribe about how his girlfriend used to be a total bully. Perhaps not my most shining moment.

A mutual friend of ours got engaged. I ran into this girl and my friend at a wedding social. ( I tried looking up "wedding social" on wikipedia to give anyone not from Manitoba something to link to and failed. Think of it as a fundraiser for a couple's wedding where people buy tiockets to go, spend money on alcohol, dance to outdated music and enter to win prizes. It's a lot of fun, and a purely local phenomenon). I went out of my way to chat with her and make nice.

Then she married my friend. My friend invited neither me, nor my person. He snubbed us when he saw us, and began to do the same to some of our other friends. At this points all bets were off. She was evil.

Needless to say, when she called me for the interview I couldn't handle it. I can barely stand seeing her face in the newspaper every weekend. As previously mentioned, I don't believe in the word "hate." However, if I had to pick someone - she would certainly be on my list of considerations.

Bullies suck. Young or old.

Lamest Party Ever- Finally!

So last night was the Lamest Party Ever. It was a great time, although I think it may very well be the last party that I ever throw. Party planning is a bit too much like work to me. I do events and promotions, and it all starts to meld together after a while. I kind of found myself being kind of bossy to people, as if I was working - and how much fun is that for anyone?

There were about 20 - 25 people there altogether, which is a nice number. I wouldn't have wanted many more than that. The food went over relatively well- I had a fish shaped jell-o mould, fig newtons, Peak Frean creme cookies, and deviled eggs. I'm really craving more deviled eggs now though. I hadn't had any for a long time...they're really good. I'm sorry that I forgot to take a photo of them- I used a pastry bag to pipe in the yolky part and everything!

As for the lame games? Well, the first one was called "Confessions." When each person arrived I hauled them into a room and had them tell me a secret. They ranged from : I tried pot for the first time this year, to I had a crush on Kirk Cameron growing up, to I called in sick to work, but I was actually in Minneapolis at a basketball game...
Then each guest had to draw a "secret" from the bowl and find out who owned that secret. It was a pretty good ice-breaker game that forced people to talk to everyone.

The next game was musical charades- I had a collection of song titles, and people had to act them out. Then people had to sing the answer...
My dear Anon was psychic last night- D3 proclaimed that his title had 10 words, Anon asked if it was an REM song. Yes. "It's the End of the World as We Know it." Yes!? He didn't even have to do any charades...Weird. She ended up doing that several times throughout the night...

Then groups of people had to act out a movie scene and we had to guess what the movie was. This was so popular that we ended up doing 2 rounds of it...My team of course could have used a bit more rehearsal time. (Anon guess right away that our movie was "Pretty Woman" when she saw me hauling out my hooker boots...)

All this while we played New Kids on the Block, Michael Boulton & Paul Abdul in the background. We also watched Skid Row & Bon Jovi videos. (PS. I got Bon Jovi tickets on Friday- Yay! I can't wait for Dec. 9th!)

All in all, I would say that it was a pretty successful party. I WAY over-dressed in a black halter dress, and my new slutty red sling-backs. "Yes" shoes as Zig calls them.

Then everyone got loot bags as they left. A typical loot bag consisted of: a piece of string, a bobby pin, a safety pin, an outdated flyer, perhaps a calculator, an old bookmark or a button.

I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the night, but I think everyone had a pretty good time...
Thanks to everyone who came!!

xxo

Sex and Veggies

I went to a vegan potluck with K tonight. I felt like a traitor- both to the people at the party, and to myself. I eat meat. K very quietly tried to explain to me the dogma of veganism. She didn't want to get into it there in case they got violent.

Seemed kind of paradoxical to me. People who have such respect for all living things that they won't even eat eggs or honey would get violent if I didn't understand?
So I resisted the urge to say "But honey is bee puke, why can't they eat that? It's not like we, the humans, are forcing the bees into bulimia for the sake of my orange pekoe."
I was proud of my self-restraint.

On the way home K and I started talking about random things, and of course the topic of boys came up. Somehow we ended up talking about my first boyfriend when I was 17 ( "D" of course. Let's call him D the First, or DtF for short.)

I was explaining to K that DtF gave me the sex ultimatum. He calmly explained to me about 2 months into our relationship that if I didn't have sex with him soon I would be forcing him to break up with me. Oh. Well when you put it that way of course I could see how unreasonable I was being. So, being the stupid naive little girl that I was, I put out.

I can't say that I felt much about it either way. I didn't feel used or abused. I just kind of felt like I got it over with. Of course all my girlfriends asked me immediately afterwards "how was it?!"
How should I know? I had nothing to compare it to. I was just pleased that I fit in with the rest of my friends and had accomplished losing my virginity.

He was a bit of a condescending jerk now that I look back on it with a bit more perspective. He would rate my kissing in the beginning. As I was rather a novice at it, he felt that it would be useful to let me know how I was coming along. (N.b. NOT helpful. Humiliating.) He also noted on his calendar "LTC" one day. What does that mean? "Learned to cuddle." Apparently I was coming along nicely in that area too.

I was the only one of my friends in high school to have a job. I worked most weekends, so I missed a lot of parties etc. One Saturday I got a call from my Dear Anon and her friend M. Apparently M and DtF had gone 2 1/2 bases the night before. I could hear M wailing in the background "I'm so sorry Princess!!!" In the meantime DtF had made arrangements to stop by to pick something up on the way to baseball.

I was in shock when DtF arrived from this news of his infidelity. I had put out- what more could I do?
I greeted him at the door with:
"I just got a call from Anon & M."
"Yeah. I figured you would."
*blink blink*
"Well...can you assure me that something like that won't happen again?" (WTF?! Why didn't I dump him on his ass then and there- clearly there were no signs of remorse.)
"I don't know what's going to happen when I'm drunk."

Not the right answer.

Needless to say we broke up shortly thereafter. Even as young and naive as I was, I wasn't a total idiot.

Good Lord, high school boys suck. Anyhow, an amusing memory on the ride home with K that I thought I would share with you all.

xo

My Mom

Tomorrow (August, 23) would have been my Mom's 66th birthday, so this post is dedicated to her.

My Mom passed away on January 1, 1987 when I was 11 years old (she was 45). She went into the hospital early in the morning on Christmas Day 1986 and never came back out. She was only one week in the hospital, and I had no idea at the time how bad it was.

To this day, I am still shocked that it happened. I only went to visit her a couple of times, and asked my Dad if I had to keep going as I hated it there. I do remember her saying while she was there that she was planning on taking an extended leave of absence from work for her health, so clearly no one knew that she had such a short time to live. I think the final analysis was congestive heart failure, but I'm honestly not sure of the exact details.

I was always Daddy's little girl, and viewed my Mom as the "bad cop". She had emotional difficulties, and was not consistent in her moods. I do know that I was a cherished and wanted little girl baby though, and she spoiled me rotten.

There are 12 years between me and my brother, and I certainly wasn't an accident. I know that they were trying for me for a long time.

My Mom dressed me better than anyone I knew. I went to private school for my first 5 years of schooling, and when I finally managed to go to public school I immediately saw a difference between me and the other kids. I wore blouses and slacks vs jeans and sweatshirts. I had little diamond rings and earrings vs jelly bracelets. My family certainly wasn't rich, but my Mom just liked buying me things and making me look pretty.

I remember her sitting at the kitchen table with me going over tests that I brought home. She would go through all the answers that I got wrong with me until I understood. I could talk to her for hours about people at school, and teachers etc etc and should would have completely adult conversations with me about it and never look bored with what must have been childish prattle.

Every year on my birthday she would ask me if I wanted a store bought cake, or her chocolate marshmallow layer cake. Every year I wanted the chocolate marshmallow. It wasn't until my step-mom and K & my person made me the same cake for my birthday on other years that I found out what torture it is to make that cake. Everyone has refused to ever do that for me again, but my Mom would not only do it, but offer to do it year after year.

My Mom would take me on little mini-holidays with her to a hotel in our city. It was just a nice fun little adventure where we could order room service and dress up for dinner.

She was a really creative woman who could cook anything under the sun. One night we would have chili for dinner, and the next night we would all be eating cornish game hens. It was a very eclectic menu.

She also liked throwing parties for me. In grade 5 she invited all my friends over on Valentine's Day for lunch and we had pink heart cookies and sloppy joes and all sorts of goodies. And in Grade 6 she let me throw my first boy-girl party on Halloween. Everyone was dressed up and she bought a zillion decorations and helped me with my witch costume. she lent me one of her black dresses and bought me a cape and pointy hat.

A friend in University told me once that I wear the fact that I lost my Mom clearly on my sleeve. Everyone would know it - I'm the girl who lost her Mom. I don't know how I could have lived my life any differently. I feel the loss of her everyday. I had to become a little grown up so early.

I can't stand it when I hear about people fighting with their parents, or treating them badly. I agree that there are some really crappy people out there who don't deserve to have kids, but I think that most people are just trying their best, and sometimes their own stuff prevents them from doing as good a job raising their children as they would like. Unfortunately it's my one failing as a friend. I don't do well listening to people criticizing their parents, since I would have given anything to have grown up with 2 of them.

My Dad did a fabulous job dealing with a little pre-adolescent girl. I'm sure he had no idea what to do with me, and frequently wished that my Mom had been there to offer a bit of guidance.

I do remember the day she died though. Not in its entirety, but certain flashes with perfect clarity. We were out in the country at my grandmother's. She always had a big dinner on New Year's Day. My Dad never did come, so I went out with my brother. I probably should have found this more unusual since it was my Dad's mother who was hostessing the dinner, but I just accepted it. Then came the phone call.

My Dad called my brother to come to the hospital right away. He hightailed it out of there with his girlfriend leaving me scared and confused. The thought had never occurred to me until that moment that something might be seriously wrong. I mean so serious that she might not make it. I had no idea. I remember crying, and one of my older cousins talking to me. I don't remember what she said- but I do have these vague comforting memories of it.

Then I was taken home by my Grandmother and found a dark empty house. My brother's girlfriend had left a note saying that she couldn't stand to be there alone anymore, and she went to my brother's friend's place to wait.

Then the phone rang.

It was my Dad telling me that my Mom had died. I remember my response was a stupefied "What?" He wouldn't repeat it- he knew that I had heard him the first time. My memories of that night are like jumps in time. First at my Grandmother's. Then flash to my cold dark house. Then flash to an overly bright fluorescent hospital. I was met there by my Dad and brother. I remember my brother asking me to smile for him, and then it's all just a haze.

And after that it's all just a blurry montage of casseroles and Aunts rolling in.

I kept getting told that it hadn't hit me yet, and that suddenly it would. I don't remember any sudden flash of realization, just a slow journey of days following days. I had to learn to adjust. I didn't grow up to be terribly girly, and I was probably mildly maladjusted being raised by two men. I have grown into myself in that aspect (especially the girly part) but it was a long time coming.

It's been 20 years, and I still love and miss my Mom everyday.

An important philosophical debate with my roommate

My roommate (D) and I do not share food. I think I've already expressed my surprise at anyone who would be willing to do that. I am VERY selfish when it comes to my Hagen Daaz.

And avocadoes. It's weird.

The day he moved in, and I was telling him the rules, I found myself telling him that if he absolutely HAD to steal some of my food, it would be OK, but never to touch the avocadoes. I never knew how protective I was of them before. I suppose I never had to be.

Anyhow, we've gone grocery shopping together a few times, and it's all been very amicable. Then the question arose. Since we share condiments, does he have to buy his own peanut butter and jam?

I was struck dumb. In the grocery store. It was comical. I didn't know how to answer his question.

He eventually decided to buy himself some jam, and to my knowledge just hasn't eaten peanut butter all summer (unheard of in the Princess's world).

However, I am still puzzled by this. Is peanut butter (and jam, and even chocolate syrup) a condiment or a food in and of itself?

One wouldn't eat a mayonaise sandwich is my argument, so I say that it's a food. However, you wouldn't want to necessarily eat it alone (although I have been known to eat spoonfuls of peanut butter as a snack, or the syrup when I'm having a really bad craving) so does that imply that it's a condiment?

I looked up the definition of a condiment: A substance, such as a relish, vinegar, or spice, used to flavor or complement food.

By that definition, I would agree that chocolate syrup is a condiment. (I'm still not sure that I'm willing to share it though).

However, what about the peanut butter? It IS the sandwich. Without it, you're just eating bread...

I would like to take a poll: Peanut Butter (& Jam)
Condiment or Food?