Wow, though I had just written about how I was feeling better, I totally pulled a roo and somehow deleted it. Calm soothing breathing...
Okay, I am feeling slightly better and have lost most of the breast tonnage. Pickle and I cuddled and read together last night and he got me a couple of my favourite kids books: Captain Underpants! and a new series by the same people Super Diaper Baby!
The highlight of SDB is when his enemy accidentally turns himself into a piece of poo and gets stepped on by a passerby.
Speaking of poo, onto my job situation. I had been planning to pull the retail resume out this term. The thought depressed me greatly as though I am the retail queen, these jobs have a "this pays shit" aspect to them that I just don't dig in part-time. However, from the heavens a new tutoring job has flown and I am now tutoring 3 teenage girls in French. So, with my ESL tutoring, I will be making $100 a week for 5 hours of work. If I were good at math, I could tell you how many retail hours I'd have to work for a $100, but I think it works out to about a jillion, right? Too many in any case. Everyone cross their fingers as I've also applied for some hours putting books away for the uni libraries, which I think would be a nice way to make some cash.
And everyone with their little "careers" can stop laughing now about my joy over making $100 a week. Stop it I say! :)

Here I sit with massive breasts. I kid you not.
Over the last few months, my premenstrual symptoms have been increasing greatly and I've chosen to ignore it, but yesterday I just had to face facts: I've become one those girls you really can say "it's her time of the month" about.
My poor puppies won't even fit into my bras and they're tender as hell (not sore though, I mean they aren't overly sensitive to fabric) so I've resorted to squeezing and strapping them into an uber sports bra and avoiding stairs. Shoulder shakes in belly dancing tonight are going to be interesting. I've literally gone up a cup.
As for the mood swings...many of us girls have memories of taking the wrong birth control pill and going around wanting to stab small kittens. I didn't stab any furry animals, but I did snap at Kate because she wanted to lie on my lap. I also snapped at poor Pickle for the two very good reasons that 1. he was trying to help me and later on 2. he was eating dinner. I won't even tell you about my crowded bus ride home from the university.
I'm not a moody girl. I don't like this loss of control and since I've never really had pms symptoms (not even cramps really) before, I'm curious as to why it's starting now. However, not to worry I've got plenty of homeopathic stuff that I'm going to try. But how do the rest of you who have these symptoms deal every month? This is insane.
And yes, though my male readers don't usually comment, I expect you to comment on this one :)
Boys, you may not want to read on. I am going to be graphic here.Some of the natural cures for this are:-excercise!-cutting salt and sugar out of your diet as much as possible
And the one not many tell you about:-shoving acidophilous up your twat twice a week for about 3 months. many doctors tell you to take it orally for yeast infections. However, putting it up the yapper is much more effective for yeast infections. Acidophilous also helps with the sloughing and so can often really help if you bleed intermittently throughout the month, and with cramps. And, for some reason - I believe it has some relation to the sloughing - it has been known (I have tried this before) to help with tender breast syndrom. I'd recommend doing the shoving at night so it just dissolves peacefully up there, though you can expect a bit of a mess when you pee in the morning.
Just thought you might want to know. Am probably wrong, but hey I can be excused because IT"S MY TIME OF THE MONTH. Yeesh.

Okay folks, Kanga has fixed the blog problems I created so all should be reading well at this point. No one panic.
Where to start...
Yes, I put some new sites up. I have the new Ooh La La section which is all about...well I'll let you all figure it out, just be warned that I am a small pervert. I also put up a new Tribal belly dancing website which has some great costume ideas.The site teaches you how to make certain things (oh I need a sewing machine!), but also has some cheap outfits for sale. Tribal is what I used to do and the outfits are generally less cheesy than the regular stuff.
Girls night was great, Siren/Turbo ending the night by saying "you got to know more about me than you ever wanted to" (Untrue! I enjoyed hearing about all of it) which is always a good thing to say to someone she'd only really just met 4 hours previous. Always the sign of a good girly night - when the talk is cheap and easy just like us :)But seriously, though Vixen was missed terribly, the night was great. I was especially impressed that Alleycat managed to keep Kanga from slugging the Poor Skater Boy with the $80 brand name tocque on. She would so make the best porn director, you know, she's sexy and a little mean so everyone would listen to her...
anyhoo
I've been feeling a little more productive since then and I'm trying to catch up with all the work I missed during my delusional "I can do my MA while watching half a season of Simpsons everyday" phase.
Yesterday I armed myself with longjohns, jeans, a t-shirt, a sweater, a top o' the line fleecy winter thing, and my Marks Work Warehouse winter jacket and do you know what I said to the cold? Pshaw! Which is not quite what the two idiots at the bus stop wearing hoodies and tocques were saying. They looked like they were seriously considering getting a little homoerotic just to stay warm.
I believe I'll go think about leah's tongue for awhile, she's just really having too much fun on my comments.

Okay, just must tell everyone it's -45 out today. I cannot see out my window as it is covered in ice and I think the pipes have frozen as there is no water coming out of them. Woo Hoo pass me a tocque people, I am Canadian again!.

I'm doing a paper on Slash Porn for my "From Pulp to Porn" class. Slash porn, for those of you not in the know, is a form of written erotica. I only started reading it about a year and half ago. It is written predominantly by women for women and it was started in the 1970's with Kirk and Spock stories (Kirk/Spock or K/S which is where the name "slash" came from, though I'm sure we all get the double entendre). Women started writing stories wherein Kirk and Spock were lovers. It expanded to Starsky and Hutch and is now a major form of fan fiction. There is now tons of it and if you want a good intro to it go to the Good Girl link on my blog and go to Back Issues and scroll down until you get to Volume 2 "all things sexual" and then to the article "How Slash Saved Me"
It's almost always homoerotic, and you can find stuff written on many shows - Due South has Ray and Fraser going at it and you can find crossovers like Highlander and Xfiles and shit. There's a lot of badly written stuff out there, you can find quite a bit online, though many many fanzines are dedicated to specifically slash. The best stores are obviously the ones which really capture the tone of the series they are writting about and make is seem like a plausible story line.
Since I know I have many Buffy fans out there, if you're interested in a little Spike on Xander action, please check out one of my faves truthordare it's called Truth or Dare. It's long, but if you've got some time on your hands...

New discovery about myself:I discovered today that I can't study when the person sitting across from me in the library is inhaling snot like a vacuum on a mission.
Woe is me, the mittens are gone forever. I'm trying to think about it in the sense that only someone who really needed mittens would take a pair they found on a dirty bus floor, so the mitts are in good care. But I really loved those mittens, I'd had them for 6 whole years so we had a long time to bond together.
An on to yet another highly disjointed subject, I saw Kanga going into her first Level 1 belly dancing class tonight. I hope she enjoyed it! She looked rosy and refreshed from her night with everyone's favorite senior citizen singer. Apparently, he's still got it.
Interesting note: Belly dancing was brought to North America by a burlesque dancer named Little Egypt (of unknown origin) and the Texans proceeded to re-name the dance the "Hoochie Cooch" - gotta love those Texans. This may have contributed to why the dance and its outfits have always been more hoochie in North America than abroad.
I think I'll stop now before I stray to any more varying topics. I am a bird of weird flight patterns.

So I was right, I am more off balance than usual because of my ears. I have an ear infection. I went to the walk-in hours at the Justik and went to talk to yet another one of their cute, young, male doctors (methinks I'm starting to like that place - ooh my breasts have been feeling awfully sore, could you do a breast examination doctor? :) and he was very kind and quick. And he said the words I have longed to hear from a doctor all of my life "I would hate to put you on antibiotics, lets try something else first." I almost swooned! He's not a pill pusher!Sadly, he's not accepting new patients so I'll have to stick with the cuter idiot I have, but at least I know this guy's walk-in hours.
In other news, I've lost my mittens. I've had these mittens for years and I'm calling up the transit lost and found to see if they were returned. If I find them, you'll all be the first to know. No rock shall remain unturned!

Okay, I think I've changed the colour scheme about 40 times now. How's about I wait until I see what Kanga cooks up for my banner before I settle on anything. I'm sure that will help me decide. Can everyone read this okay? Wasn't sure about the mustard type. Okay, I'm off to start doing work I actually need to do. God these blog things are good time wasters.

My poor little kitty is in a wee kitty cast right now. She is highly disturbed by this. The vets are trying to get us to spend as much money as possible to fix her, while I'm more of a "it'll heal" kind of person. But certainly all will be done to get her well again.
Belly dancing occured today. First day in the level 3 class, on top of a month of not having moved my ass off a couch really took its toll. Not to mention that my workout pants are quite a bit tighter than they were at the beginning of December. I got home and had to take a nap. I'm such a wimp.
Speaking of dancing, can anyone tell me what's up for this Saturday with the girls? I'm just trying to encourage people to comment on the new blog site - perhaps the red is scaring people off? :)

January is an odd month, full of "getting back into the swing of things" energy as well as "Crap! I have to get back into the swing of things" energy.
Not to take away from Kanga's feelings, I've also been feeling slightly out of sorts lately. I'm going to get my ears cleaned out on Wednesday in case it's a wax build up thing (which, no joke, has happened before - the stuff that can be found hidden on greasy italian girls ain't pretty). And I started to write this really nostalgic blog about my past, and I realized once again that I have been one luck fuck.
I've moved a ton of times, and as much as I would like to give my amazing social skills the credit, luck and the amazingness of others are really the cause of my having made such incredible friends over the years. I have little communities all over the place and they are all the coolest people ever. And now, here in Edmonton I am apparently already invited to a girls night on Saturday with some extraordinary chicks all because I made friends with a girl who was on a date with my boyfriend.
Really now people, who else is lucky enough to have a situation like meeting a girl your boyfriend is having sex with turn into a good thing? A great thing, no less? Though in Kanga's life I am one of the less weirdly met associates of hers, in my life I find our friendship further proof of the horseshoes in my rectum.
I was reminded a few days ago of another lucky/seamy incident. Years ago, I also managed to turn sleeping with a taken dude (yes, yes, very bad, I will never do it again - unless he asks ;) ...no no, slapping my hand. I will never do it again!) into some really good times which, though it may make me sound like a perfidious whore, I don't regret in the least. Hell, you know you're having good sex when you set off the automatic fan in your apartment that goes off when your humidity levels get too high.
I am also coming up on 4 years with a boy I met through an internet personals ad on the website for Blind Date - you all remember that stupid television show. I met the man of my dreams by answering a personals ad. I picked (actually Philandrea did) the right guy out of 260 that fit my qualifications. And he's a hunglikeamuleM.A. inphilosophymakesmedinnereverynight hottie!
Okay, I'm going to stop looking at all these moments because it's starting to creep me out. Have I made some pact with the devil that I've repressed? Stranger things have been known to happen.
I'm starting to wonder

Perhaps all of you cultured and web-friendly people have been doing this for years, but I just discovered the Louvre online. It's a little convoluted, but you can basically see every art work they have online. You can even have info tours on some of the more recent exhibits! You can get the site in English too, though I didn't check out if it had the same amount of information, but it seems like a pretty comprehensive site so I'm guessing it would. Anyhoo, I thought this was just great for art dummies like myself. It's under Culture on the side bar of this new and wonderful blog o' mine.

you know you've been crapping for a long time when, by the end of your stint on the can, your bladder has refilled and you need to pee again.

If you want to read about my latest shenanigans go to
http://www.pluckthepetal.com/blog/smallperversions

kanga has graciously allowed me some space on her domain and has designed an absolutely gorgeous layout for me, for which i will love her always (as if i wasn't going to anyway :). She is probably going to re-direct from this site, so eventually you'll be automatically directed to my new blog from this one, but she's a busy girl and I don't want to rush her. So I though I'd put the link up.

Sorry about all the confusion folks, my computer just doesn't want to go to this old site. Yeesh.

Ooooh, do you all see this? It's my new blog site. Kanga is a wonderful, wonderful person. She set this whole thing up, colours and all, for me on her domain so I could stop dealing with my stupid blog problems. Oh it looks so pretty, I could cry. I will blog better after the initial shock of how great this is wears off a little. Thank you doll!

Well, strangely all of you will be reading this but me. My computer still doesn't like going to my site - interestingly I can access all other blogspot blogs, just not mine. I tried getting rid of my comments this morning to see if my computer suddenly didn't like those, but that doesn't seem to have helped. It always wants to send an error report and then closes.

Oh well, I can access it from the library computers. I'm not sure what's going on with the comments. And I'm also not sure how to fix this. Or why it started. Two days ago it just stopped letting me go to small perversions. Yeesh. I really don't want to have to change sites just because my stupid computer suddenly had a meltdown.

Wish my luck!

This week has been a learning experience. I've been trying to find the in between, the middle ground.
This has always been a problem in my life. I think I've learned my lesson about something so what do I do? The next time I'm in a similar situation I do the exact opposite and guess what? That doesn't seem to be the answer either.

I've either been an A student (rarely) or failing half my classes. I've either been with guys who would make Professor Frink (simpsons) look like a wild and crazy party animal, or I've gone with those who want to rival Keith Richards. I've either worked myself to the point of heart failure (hey, in my defense that's only happened twice :), or I've sat on my ass until I've gotten bed sores (a more common occurence).

I'm getting a little wiser about these decisions. Pickle is a nice in between kind of guy, though he is tempted by a life of coke and whores but that's really my fault for putting the idea in his head in the first place.

School and work on the other hand is still out of control. I went nuts last term. I got straight A's (everyone breathe a sigh of relief), but I went nuts. I'm in a bit of a burn out phase and feel I must seek counselling. You see, I don't want all the lessons I learned about paper writing and graduate school politics to not get used because I'm too burnt out to do anything anymore. So this term will be about getting good grades, but perhaps not trying to be the uber student who gets straight A's and heads every committee known to man. This girl needs to go dancing, she needs to make some new friends and go out with them, she needs to go out with old friends, she needs to go out for coffees (well...steamed milk). She needs to go on dates with her boyfriend. She needs to find time to write, lest her blog go sadly neglected as it did last term.

We'll see how this goes. I've agreed with myself to only do a minimum amount of work this week, and thus far that has not been a problem. I've read some of Pickle's plays, which I've been neglecting for far too long. He's a very talented boy and I didn't even have time to support him last term. Talk about priorities going out the window. I've watched some Simpsons, read some Terry Pratchett (which is actually kind of school work because I plan to do a paper on him this term, but still!). And I shmoked a little (another thing this girl needs to do more of) and watched my first ever episodes of The Sopranos with Kanga last night. I was quite pleased. It's amazing how all Italian families are that disfunctional - it's no wonder we make such good fodder for movies and tv shows. My mother is constantly shocked that she has managed to survive being married to one for so long. I'm constantly shocked that I'm not more fucked up than I am.

Oh and I saw two lovely movies! The Barbarian Invasions, which I positively loved! and 21 grams, which was also extremely well done though I preferred the first of the two. But between Amores Perros and 21 grams, that director is impressing me.

Anyhoo, enough about my boring life. Hope you all had a good weekend.

I just realised that with all this make-up and femininity talk of my previous blogs I forgot to mention two important little bits of information:
biore is a company that tests on animals.
try not to support bic products in any way because they test their razors on animals. may sound dumb but I don't even buy their pens because it goes to such an evil little company.

anyhoo..

Okay, yes I like the japanese rope tying. It wouldn't be right to call my blog small perversions without listing some on it. Thereby do I justify my general crass and open entries. Thank you all for forcing me to fuck polite behaviour and put the link up. A girl can never have too much rope, it comes in handy when you have to move pianos and bathtubs too!

I've put a few more links up on the side: the first is a link to my old belly dancing teacher's site. It's all in Czech, but if you click on Rena's picture, you should be able to see pics of her in the fotogalerie section and get some great ideas for costumes. Make sure you have the sound on because the music is part of the experience. I have also added the link for the site that helps find belly dancing teachers in Canada. It's been most useful for me. The last addition is the belle de jour (which just bothers me because it should be belle du jour, but whatever) because it is just great fun to read. It in fact won the award given by the Guardian (reputable English newspaper) for best written blog.

I also wanted to send a wee message to Highness that I found some tribal belly dancers in Toronto. Now I don't want to insult Highness, as her research skills are far greater than mine, but I thought I'd list them just in case she hadn't found them. The first one has a website http://www.badiastar.com and the number is 429-3208 and the second one: her name is Zahra and her number is 727-7896.

fine!
here:
http.www.japanrope.com/home.html
you all spend way too much time on the computer!

i like the rope. nuff said.

Well a cold shower wasn't so bad after all. Landlord didn't make it today. Despite the fact that many do, greasy italians really shouldn't go more than two days without showering, and today made four for me, so I sucked it up and took a cold one. I even shaved my legs and gave miss thing a little trim (Pickle comes home tomorrow).

Feeling fresh as a daisy now, thanks in part to the Highness in my life. This Xmas, I decided to splurge a little in the femininity department in order to keep Highness' lessons fresh in my mind. Plus, I'm getting to that age where looking good while not wearing make-up is taking more of an effort (not much more of one, but a little). So in order to stay make-up free I bought some nice little cleansers for my skin (Roc's gentle exfoliator is very nice) as my pelt has not been faring so well in Edmonton's water. I also spent a teensy bit more on my under eye concealer (the only makeup I usually wear) which I must say has made quite a difference. Cover girl can kiss my ass in that department, I'll never go back. And if I can't look good, I'll at least smell good as I got a nice little Gucci Rush package from my dad for Xmas. These items, plus all the pink I now own show me that I am coping well with small changes in my life.

Really I am.


Pizza is coming now. Mmm... pizza.

Sitting here in my own filth. Have a leak in the hot water tap, which causes all my hot water to be wasted which leaves me with no hot water. Would replace the washer myself, however there is no way to stop the water to the bathtub. Had to call landlord. Must hide evidence of existence of cat before he arrives tomorrow morning. Oh good, am now covered in the fine dust of cat litter and cannot shower. Well, could shower but then would be cold.

Luckily have rented the first disk of season 3 of Sex and the City and so have been able to revel in feeling dirty. However am starting to get that insecure feeling that comes from watching the show that my wardrobe is disturbingly inadequate. Come on marxist values, don't fail me now!

Well hello again! I'm back in Edmonton, fresh from a walk to the Save-On Foods in -38 degree weather. Invigorating stuff.

Hope the holidays treated everyone as well as they treated me!

Christmas was way too relaxing, I'm finding it difficult to start preparing for this term. It was a snuggly vacation, spent much time snuggling with dad, snuggling with girls, trying to snuggle more with Big Red but as he belongs to another I refrained myself. Hard to do with such a snuggle bunny. I did nothing. Literally, I sat on my ass. My ass is a little larger, but much happier for it.

The whole thing started off with the massive 12 hour LOTR movie bonanza with Pickle and his mom in Vancouver. I loved it! And, having never seen LOTR 2: the special edition, I must say I was very glad that all that problems I had with the original release were resolved with the added scenes in the special edition. And the crowd was so enthusiastic about everything that I even got into the liv tyler scenes. LOTR 3 was great - my hats off to everyone in the films. It was an emotional rollercoaster that lasted all day. I was fully exhausted and satisfied.

Then I was off to Ktown to do the sitting. Dad made me wonderful dinners, I watched reruns of Taxi, I did the Buffy marathon on Space (except for the movie because I didn't like it), I watched PMK (popular mechanics for kids - it's great stuff). I hung out with Kim and Big Red (they do such a good job of baby sitting me when I'm there), hung out with the girls...it was just really cozy and warm there this year. New Year's was great, except that it ended with me stoned while Corr told ghost stories and then me having to sleep with the light on. Dad and I went to the Kelowna Art Gallery, which had some really great exhibits this year, and I think that place is just the right size. I'm so sick of huge galleries, honestly I can only appreciate art for about one hour, maybe two, before my mind gets tired.

I got lots of loot. Many, many books, including the latest in Stuart Mcleans Vinyl Cafe series from Dad. A couple of DVDs. Pickle came through with shining colours this year and found me the elusive "I'm what Willis was talking about" t-shirt. It is the pride of my t-shirt collection. He also got me "I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is" which I found highly amusing given the incident with my parents awhile back. Kim gave me a turtle necklace which I totally adore - she has such good taste, if it wasn't for watching her I'd still be wearing skin tight acid washed jeans. Kanga gave me the gift of narcissism, which lets face it I already had in spades, with a beautiful collage of painted canvas and pictures of my bellydancing performance. Corr gave me some great homemade soaps and lip balm, I'm so impressed with her plans to make her own line of the stuff. The products she made for me this Xmas are superb. Philandrea gave me some fantastic cookies - that girl knows how to make cookies, I have honestly never tasted better. And Highness gave me...well I'm not sure I should say cuz I don't know if Klara has gotten hers yet, but it brought both a tear to my eye and a smile to my lips, especially remembering a certain hoochalicious dance that Highness performed for us. Baby does got back.

I'm sorry I didn't get to see my Vancouver peeps this year but I'll be back again soon.

Okay, it's time to try and get back into work mode. A little Simpsons is in order first though....