Appreciating the Appreciative

Know what I don't get?  People who seem like they hate EVERYTHING.  I'm not talking hipsters who say it because they think it's cool to dislike anything mainstream, but people who genuinely go out of their way not to enjoy anything.  Why do that?

I suspect a few people will be staring at this post going, "Mina, seriously?  The hypocritical apple doesn't fall far from the hypocritical tree, missy." Or something like that.  And I am the first to admit that yes, I am a snob.  I am an elitist.  I openly disdain much of the mainstream in arts and entertainment and fashion because I hold myself to a higher standard than fart jokes and dick humor.  But that is my personal choice. 

What I'm talking about are the people that don't enjoy anything for the sake of trying to hold onto some ideals that don't make sense anyway.  Like a "feminist" who cannot enjoy a piece of art work because she feels that it is against her feminist ideals, and so instead of just appreciating the well crafted art which is neither exploitative nor particularly sexual, the feminist has to tear it apart as if it were nothing but a page out of a Hooter's catalogue because the subject is attractive and not wearing a tent.

Why?

What the hell does that prove, other than ideals were kept in a situation when it was unnecessary?  I guess my main problem with it is that we currently live in a society that is okay with this kind of behavior.  In today's world, we are more apt to respect the people that hate everything than those who are able to appreciate things no matter what they are, so long as they are not genuinely bad.  But the people who like everything are called stupid, uncultured, or just plain ignorant.

All I'm saying folks, is give appreciation a chance.  So something isn't your thing.  It happens.  I hate zombies, Nicki Minaj, and Jersey Shore.  But these are all popular things.  I also gave them a chance before I decided that they just were not my thing.  Hell, I swallowed my tongue while trying to read Twilight, and I don't particularly walk around spouting my hatred of it.  But live and let live is a real thing and I believe in our hate-it-to-be-cool society, that is something that is forgotten all too often.

I hate this.  Mostly because it reminds me of something out of Japanese horror.

I personally am going to attempt to practice as I preach.  I am going to give up the hate, and I'm going to go see something I don't think I'll like.  No, it doesn't matter that I'm going to just stare at Chaning Tatum for two hours.  I'm still going to give it a shot.  Because it's easy to hate.  It's a hell of a lot harder to appreciate the good in things.

...Wow this blog post is kinda...preachy.  I swear, back to funny life stories next time.

The Plague

Well I went all last week without a post, and that's mostly because I was stricken down in the prime of my life by The Plague (capitalized, as all my illnesses are).  I went to bed Friday with sugarplums and shirtless firemen dancing in my head (or whatever married women are supposed to dream about) and Saturday I woke up something else.  I was no longer a woman, I was a tissue beast with a voice like an autotuner stuffed with ether soaked cotton balls.  Husband couldn't have been more pleased.

I spent the next week switching between moaning in bed, and moaning on the couch while neglecting hygene, Husband, and cat alike and swearing that I was going to die.  Because I was pretty certain that I had THE PLAGUE AND I WAS GOING TO DIE. 

100% of the time is spent telling Husband how I'm going to DIE.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Healthy and well again, I am quite aware that I am slightly...unhinged when I am sick.  Husband, if he knew I was blogging about it, would probably say that I am unlivable and unsufferable when I am sick.  And I totally, totally am.  I go from a productive woman with books to read and games to play and blogs to write to a lump of misery that can only moan in a grating, glass grinding monotone about how horrible I feel. 

I really do feel bad about how I act when I'm sick, but it comes from having a husband who takes such good care of me when I'm on the brink of death.  Especially when he does things like he did this time, mostly because I suspect he blamed himself for bringing The Plague home with him from work.  He went and got me kleenex (with Kung Fu Panda on the box even) and orange juice.  He made me chicken noodle soup and brought it to me while I was oozing yellow stuff and touched me when the cat, smart creature that it is, wouldn't come within arm's distance of me.  I'm pretty sure she knew something I didn't.

This forest is representative of how many Kleenex I use when sick.  The EPA is why I had to move to Canada.

For some reason I imagine that she thinks that I was undergoing some kind of horrific, The Fly style transformation.  That one night my pink kitty pajamas would split open like a second skin and some freakish creature would emerge to eat her and Husband before leaving on two pairs of wings to mate with men and eat their heads indiscriminately until I was stopped by a sexy scientist and her cop boyfriend who would then celebrate by having sexy movie sex.

Yeah, I'd have been okay with this if it meant my nose wasn't runny any more.

Either way, I think I would have just been happy to not have been sick.  Dead, transformed into a bug monster, I was ready to accept any kind of Kafka-esque future as long as I wasn't dripping things from my nose any more.  I'm pretty certain that Husband would have probably been okay with it too after days of fever-induced dreams and Nyquil naps that lasted ten hours in a row.

Adventures in Self-Torture

So there I was, sweating, breathless, surrounded by men.  We're all breathing hard, the physical exertion enough to keep us glistening and tired.  I only wish going to the gym was as much fun as it sounds in my dirty, dirty mind.

I am a newbie to this whole gym thing.  I have the rhythm down, I know enough to not stare at the guys who have biceps bigger than my head, and to wipe down the machines when I'm done.  I also know enough to take my own water, and that turning up my music is not a sin when the constant clatter and whir of machinery threatens to send me into a paranoid insanity where I'm absolutely certain that they're all living death machines that survive off human pain and suffering.

This is what most people imagine before ACTUALLY going to the gym.  Complete with bustle.

But since the music takes care of that, I'm far more paranoid that someone is watching me at the gym.  Not because I am particularly good looking, but because I feel like I don't belong.  The gym is full of skinny women in spandex that wouldn't even make a tube top for me and men who can bench press my considerable weight without flinching.  Husband tries to reassure me that this is not the case, and conversations generally go in the direction of:

Me:  I hate that everyone looks at me.  I'm sure they're all thinking "How dare that fat girl try to come in here and take responsibility for her physical health!"

Husband:  I doubt they're thinking that at all.

Me:  But they have to be!  I don't belong!

Husband:  Dear, if they're staring, it's because you have pink hair, tattoos, and a five carat wedding ring on your hand.

...Touche, husband.  Touche.

This is fairly acurate.  I swear.

The truth of the matter is that people there are probably more concerned with their own physical fitness and their own training than they are in one pink-haired fat girl.  Nobody probably notices me, and if they do, chances are they only see camaraderie, or someone taking responsibility for their own life.  And if they're thinking something snide and mean, well, what does that particularly have to do with me?  Why the hell do I care about what one meat head thinks?

So I go to the gym and come home wheezing like a beached manatee, making the "Please, dear merciful God, if you exist, push me back out to see" whimpering noise.  It frightens the cat.  Husband has learned to just walk past my melodramatic display of agony and sea creature noises.  He'll have none of my nonsense.  Especially since he knows that in twenty minutes and a shower later, I'll be back to normal.

Today does stick out in my mind though.  Mostly because there was this woman at the gym who literally looked like she was skin and bones.  The kind of person who would benefit from an additional twenty pounds of weight or so.  But there she was, two treadmills away from me.  That wasn't the weird part though.  The weird part was that she had the treadmill at such a level that it was nearly 90 degrees into the air, and she was clinging to the display panel for dear life as she climbed it.

I began looking around, wondering if she maybe needed help, but nobody else seemed concerned.  So I broke my own gym etiquette rules, and I kept an eye on this woman with my peripheral vision.  Mostly because I was absolutely certain that she was going to miss one of her steps and go shooting off that thing like a cat on waxed counter top. 

This was not something I wanted to miss.

This is EXACTLY what I thought would happen.  If I were lucky.

My imagination ran with the news story that would obviously occur to cover a woman flying off a treadmill at speeds that propelled her through the row of elliptical machines and into the wall (oh the humanity), where I would be the only witness, and I could tell them all how concerned I was for her, so I kept an eye on her from the very beginning.  It's entirely possible that I got a little lost in these thoughts, because next thing I knew, she was gone.

I searched all around, and realized that she indeed had not flown off the treadmill, but had obviously finished her work out.  So I finished my own, slightly disappointed, and went down to the locker room to get my things to leave.  I should have never allowed myself to believe that I was going to be left disappointed.  Because there she was in the women's locker room, right as you walk in.  Butt naked.

I love it when things come full circle.

Canada Deprives Me of Debauchery

When I moved to Canada, I was aware that there were going to be some...changes.  I would have to learn to appreciate lumberjacks and moose.  I would have to start caring about hockey.  I would have to become...friendly.  I would live in a land of perpetual snow and ice, where I would chip out a single blade of withered grass from the permafrost when I wanted to do yardwork.  Basically, I thought moving to Canada would be close to my personal idea of Hell.  All that was missing was a job in retail.

For some reason, it wasn't like this at all.

What I didn't expect was that I was going to miss some things that I took for granted in the States.  Not the clashes over religion and birth control and that kind of bullshit.  I get all that medicine stuff for free up here.  It's actually kind of petty and stupid what I miss.  Okay, actually it's Husband who told me that it was stupid and petty what I miss, but what does he know?!  He's still got his supply of Tim Tam and he can't tell me he doesn't!

I love to cook, and this whole metric measuring system just screws with me.  I miss things being in ounces and cups and all that stuff.  I miss not having to convert every single recipe that I find online so that I know what to buy in the grocery store.  I find myself getting frustrated and just buying Hamburger Helper, because I know by sight what one pound of hamburger looks like.  None of this grams bullshit for me.  Hell no.

See?  It even uses an evil font!

What I really miss are the gut-destroying, diet-smashing, artery clogging messes that are available only in America, because let's face it, unless something is trying to get affordable birth control or fair treatment in a prison, we don't give a fuck how bad it is for us.  For those of you disagree, I put before you the Double Down from KFC, Hardees, Four Loko and Easy Cheez.  Because none of these things are available in Canada.  They're ILLEGAL HERE.

All of the good stuff that I hoped one day to be able to triumph over by holding my nose high and saying "I'm better than this, because I don't eat it anymore." is all gone.  I suppose I can still go to McDonalds and order five Big Macs if I really want to do something that bad for me, but it's not the same.  It's not the same as conquoring your personal addiction to Double Stuf Chocolate Creme Oreos because they're not available here!

I hate you Canada.  I hate your desire to make me skinny, and your warning labels on cigarettes that take up the whole package and would be really annoying if I smoked.  I hate your lack of Cherry Pepsi and your inability to provide me with hookers riddled with disease.  ...Okay, maybe not that last one.

But I still hate you for not having liquor inside grocery stores, forcing me to make a second stop and knowing that I'm not going to friggin' do that.  I'm too lazy to even kick the cat off me when she's biting my feet, what the hell makes you think I'm going to drive in my warm, gassed-up vehicle with it's comfortable bucket seats the additional twenty yards to the liquor store right next to the grocery store?!



I make a valid point here.

So shape up Canada, or I'm going to start going to some other country for my hedonistic needs.