We still got it

Eric and I went to bed late last night. We were both extremely exhausted, me from staying up late on Friday night making spraying penis cakes for a gay wedding shower, and him from staying up with me to consult on the spraying penis cakes. We got into bed and groaned in exhausted unison.

Carol: Oh god, I am sooo tired.

Eric: Meeee too.

Carol: I don't think I have been this tired since Dylan was just born.

Eric: Yeah, I want to sleep for a very long time, I hope Dylan doesn't want to eat tonight.

Carol: Yeah.

Pause

Carol: You wanna do it?

Pause

Eric: Yeah okay.

Pause

Carol: I call bottom.

Eric: I call not doing anything.

No one moves.
5 minutes later.

Carol: Maybe we don't do it.

Eric: Okay.

Dada Is So Inappropriate

Dylan has been teething for about 3 and a half months. It blows because he's basically been soaking every adorable overpriced outfit with drool for that entire time, with nary a tooth to be seen. But a couple weeks ago, Eric put his finger in Dylan's mouth and felt two little pearly whites poking their way through his gums! So cute!!

Dylan loves to snatch at people's fingers and hands and haul them into his mouth for gum-relieving gnawage. This was cute when he only had gums, and all that would happen was that saliva would run down your hand and pool on the floor beneath you. That, and I would bark you with your finger ensconced in my son's pie-hole and demand to know whether you had washed your hands with soap for 15 seconds.

But now that he has these two little teethies, it's a whole new ball game. Those cute little lower incisors are effing sharp!! They're like tiny thin jagged blades, thrusting up just enough to pierce the skin and release small rivulets of blood.

The other day, Eric was playing with Dylan. Dylan had snatched up his Dada's hand and was having a grand time cannibalizing a juicy finger.

Eric: Ow!! Oww oww!! Aww, little guy. You know what would be really bad right now? Putting a penis in his mouth.

Carol: .......

I will end with a haiku that expresses my feelings regarding this story:

Oh my effing god
Please don't call Child Services
He sucks only boobs

Good Mother

Last night we were at the gym with our friend Chris Robb. In between half-hearted attempts to eliminate my sagging wrinkled paunch, we talked about the gathering to come the following night at our condo. We are holding a How I Met Your Mother tv marathon night, and most people are excited because we have episodes that no one has seen as a result of our filthy downloading. Chris was pumped about the wild tv-watching times to be had, and we shared this conversation:

Chris: "I could bring margarita mix!"

Carol: "We have some margarita mix in the freezer."

Chris: "I see. Well I could bring the tequila!"

Carol: "Hmm, I'm pretty sure we have tequila too."

Chris: "I see. Well then I will come and drink your margaritas and tequila!"

I got home and checked our ridiculously well-stocked liquor cabinet (I have no idea how we got such a well-stocked liquor cabinet. My theory is that the bottles are having babies.) and it turned out we did not have a a single drop of tequila in there. So this morning I loaded Dylan into his stroller and off we went across the street to Bayview Village.

Bayview Village on a weekday is a positive mecca for two distinct types of people: mommies with babies, and the elderly. However, no members of either population tend to frequent the LCBO. I picked up a large bottle of tequila and grabbed two bottles of wine while I was at it. At the checkout, the cashier looked at me, looked at my booze, then at my baby, then at my booze, then at my baby, then at my booze, then at me.

Carol: "Yeah, we're gonna get shmammered."

And that, my friends, is what it means to be a good mother.

Happy Anniversary! To Us!

Hellooooooo Blogosphere!!

So wow, my last post was just over six months ago. Huh. Well when you put it that way, I can understand why people have been writing this blog off as dead.

All I can say is that I pushed out a new human, tearing my vagina in the process (about an inch - "not too bad" according to the nurse. Eff you, nurse!!), and have since been occupied as the primary careprovider for said new human. It is difficult to get up the energy and motivation to blog! Rest assured though, I have thought of you many times. Like the time I was sleeping in my own bed and was awoken by the sound of the baby taking a giant crap over the monitor. And like the time he crapped all the way up his back to his shoulders, and all the way out one leg down his calf and then put his hands in it while I was trying to clean him up. And like the time he vomitted in my mouth. And like the time I had sex with Eric for the first time since the birth, but only did it because it was his birthday and I had forgotten to get him a present, but then realized after I put out that I had promised to let him get laser hair removal on his butt, but it was too late cause I had already let him do it. You can now consider youselves caught up!

But wait, formal introductions: Readers, meet Dylan Luke Johnston. He is a boy. He is cute as hell. He was not named after Beverly Hills 90210. It was an unfortunate coincidence.

But today! Today is an important day, and seems to be an appropriate day to blog. For today is our 3-year anniversary! Later I will be dropping Dylan off at my parents' place, and Eric and I will be going to a seafood restaurant to get shitfaced on oysters.

I am taking this opportunity to change the name of the blog. I feel that three years of marriage in which a baby has been manufactured no longer qualifies as a "Newlywed" stage. "In the Life of Newlyweds" will henceforth be known as "Keeping Up With The Johnstons". Geddit? Geddit??? As in you check the blog to "keep up" with events in our lives!! Clever, yes? Bwafwafwafwafwa!!

And that's all for now! It's a lame post, but it's just the beginning! The beginning of a new beginning of great things to come.

I will end with a pair of haikus that summarize the last 5 months:

"Push", the doctor said
Thus my genitals were torn
Eric says it's fine

"Wahh", wee Dylan cries
Nectar spurts forth from my breasts
Poo, my baby, poo

Hottest Sex Ever

Today I am 35 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I had a doctor's appointment this morning, where a resident swabbed my vagina and bumhole for potentially lethal bacteria. Eric came with me and watched while my anus was violated. Then we went and had breakfast. We came home and each checked our emails, then cleaned various parts of the condo. Eric got out his two hair trimmers and trimmed all the hair off his body. I used the precision trimmer and helped him to shave his bum and inside his bumcrack and marveled at the new smooth hairlessness of his buttocks. We opened our new Dyson vaccuum cleaner and marveled at its truly impressive suction abilities. I played some Zack and Wiki on the Wii. We had an afternoon snack of tapenade and oiled toasted baguette slices. Eric cleaned the kitchen while I played yet some more Zack and Wiki on the Wii. Then we decided to take a nap.

We proceeded to the bedroom where we closed the blinds, stripped to our undergarments, and turned off the lights. We slipped under the covers and sighed at the comforting bliss of smooth cool sheets against our bodies in the mid-afternoon. We snuggled and chatted about inconsequential things.

One thing led to another, and soon we were having afternoon sexy sex. Now, afternoon sexy sex used to be much more sexy. When we were both younger, lustier, more energetic, these mid-day romps were feats of acrobatic prowess and porn-like theatrics. These days, considering the large and prominent dome of extra human on my torso, sexy sex is much less sexy and much more practical. We need to do it so that Eric's balls don't fall off, and so that I feel mollified that I am still a sexually desirable woman, despite the fact that I fart every four minutes and that I have no idea what my pubic area looks like because I haven't bothered to look in over two months. This means it probably looks like a tropical rainforest of hair.

However, this round of sexy sex looked to be promising. Eric was feeling hot because of the new smooth hairlessness of his buttocks. I had showered an hour earlier and my vagina felt minimally leaky. We got adventurous and engaged in multi-position sexy sex. We did pregnant-woman-on-top, pregnant-missionary, pregnant-doggy-style, and the one that ruined it all: pregnant-doggy-style-with-vibrator.

Pregnant-doggy-style-with-vibrator seemed like a good idea at first. Lately, the sequence of sexy sex events consisted of Eric getting his groove on first, then Carol getting her groove on with a vibrator. Therefore, if Eric could get his groove on from behind his pregnant doggy wife (there is a bitch joke in here somewhere), and Carol could get her groove on at the SAME TIME with a vibrator out in front, then everyone wins and all parties involved can proceed to the napping portion of the event that much faster. Excellent situation all around!

Unfortunately, this is where the sexy sex became awkward sex. I found it immensely difficult to hold myself up with one arm/hand while clutching the vibrator to my genitals with the other. However, since I had announced that I was going to get out the vibrator, and Eric had enthusiastically agreed, I felt obligated to make this work. So as he grunted along behind me, I lay with my face smushed against the bed, one arm futilely trying to support my upper body, swollen belly pushing against the bed, while the other hand held the vibrator. As this went on, my legs started to slide apart further and further until I was spread facedown, on my knees, balancing on my unborn child as though it were an exercise ball, and numbing my vagina with incessant vibration.

What followed was a blur of sexy sex activity, where the vibrator wasn't being so helpful, so we abandoned that idea, and Eric ended up satisfied, collapsed at the end of the bed. I hopped out to go pee, having learned my lesson about not peeing after sexy sex, and Eric got in the shower to soap up and rinse off.

I headed back into the bedroom to possibly lounge in bed and doze off a bit, when I noticed a large wet spot on the bed where all that sexy sex had just occurred. It was a very large wet spot.

Carol: "Oh my god! Eric!!"

Eric: "What??"

Carol: "Did I PEE during the sexy sex?"

Eric: "No, of course you didn't."

Carol: "But there's a BIG WET SPOT on the bed!"

Eric: "Maybe that was...you know, me?"

Carol: "It does not look like you."

I went back to investigate the wet spot.

Carol: "ERIC!!"

Eric: "What??"

Carol: "DO YOU THINK MY WATER BROKE??"

Eric: "No! No, I'm sure that's not what happened!"

Carol: "BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

Eric: "Well, I think there would have been a lot more water."

Carol: "But SOMETIMES it comes a little bit at a time! Or at a constant trickle!! Did you poke a hole in my uterus?? Oh why oh why did we have sexy sex??"

I had now gotten my hands on a large wad of toilet paper and was frantically swiping at my vagina, trying to see if there was more water coming out. However, I had also broken into a cold sweat, so it was difficult to tell what the moisture was. Eric suggested we go to the hospital to check, and I thought this might be overkill. He agreed, and said that it probably wasn't my water breaking. I countered that by asking HOW DID HE KNOW?? He said he didn't know. That's when I came up with a great idea.

Carol: "Can you SNIFF the wet spot and see if it's pee?"

Eric: (sigh) "Yes."

So I watched as he leaned over the bed and took a great big sniff of the wet spot.

Eric: "Euuuuuueeaaaurrrghh!!!! Yes, that is pee."

Carol: "OH YAY!! YAY!!! IT'S PEE!! You didn't poke a hole in the baby!!"

Eric: "Yeah. Haha, you peed on the bed!!"

Carol: "Even better, I peed on your CROTCH in the bed!!"

Eric bent over and sniffed the bed again.

Carol: "Ugh! Why are you doing that again???"

Eric: "Euuuuaaaeurgh!! Oh yeah, that's pee."

Carol: "You're gross, why did you smell that again??"

And that is the story of the hottest sex ever. Eric is now washing the sheets.

Why not?

I am writing Christmas cards today. I am very late with Christmas cards this year, but I do have all my shopping done, so I figure as long as I get them in the mail by tomorrow morning, they will arrive in time for Christmas, and no one will be too put out.

Just now, I finished addressing the envelopes. My hand is crampy, and I am exhilarated with my accomplishment. Eric and I have an arrangement where he'll lick the envelopes after I'm all done writing the cards and addressing them. So I picked up my big stack of enveloped, addressed cards and went to look for Eric.

Carol: Eric!!

Eric: Yes?

Carol: Where are you?

Eric: I'm in here.

Carol: Where? In the washroom?

Eric: Yes.

Carol: Are you pooing?

Eric: Yes, don't come near here, it doesn't smell good!

Carol: Are you in the hall washroom?

Eric: YES, go away!! I can hear you coming closer!!

Carol: (covering nose) It's okay...here, while you're doing that, can you lick these envelopes?
(rounds the corner to see Eric half-squating on the toilet with what appears to be his hand up his bum)

Eric: NO!!!! GO AWAY!!! I will NOT do that here!!

Carol: Why? Because the cards will smell like your poo?

Eric: Yes!! And....OTHER REASONS!! Go away, I'm wiping my poo!!!

Carol: Oh. Okay.

He's also not happy that after months of NOT blogging, I've decided that I would blog this.

Happy holidays!

Eric is a Good Negotiator

We're looking at getting a new car for the baby. We currently drive a 1998 Nissan Altima that my parents gave to us for free. Free! My mother had fit of overconcern last week in which she demanded that we buy a new car because a 1998 Nissan Altima is apparently a death trap for babies and/or pregnant women. Who knew?

While not looking forward to having car payments again, I was happy to agree to her demands. I would feel safer with my new baby in a new car. Also, the Altima is stinky, despite many professional cleanings and steam cleaning of all surfaces. We decided we may as well get a bigger car, something with more heft. We went the way of my parents and settled on a Toyota RAV4. It has a ton of cargo room and an optional V6 engine! Plus it's very very roomy inside. And it's not weirdly ugly like the new Honda CRV.

We are just in time to get the very last of the 2007 models before the 2008 models come out. This may be a good bargaining situation. Our friend Luke's mom is apparently an animal at bargaining for cars. We got Luke to ask for her advice, and she said to decide on exactly what you want, decide exactly what you want to pay for it, and then just keep asking. Eric took this advice very literally.

As reference, the little Mazda Protege5 we used to lease cost nearly $400/month.

A 2007 RAV4 Limited model with a V6 engine (according to the website) costs $525.74/month to lease, with $5000 down.

Eric got on the phone with a salesperson who had this car on his lot.

Eric: I want to pay $300.
Salesman: ...I'm sorry, what?
Eric: I want to pay $300 a month for this car.
Salesman: Are you serious?
Eric: Yes. I am serious.
Salesman: (punches in some numbers on his calculator) But you'd have to put down $14,000 in order to pay $300 a month!
Eric: Yes, I don't want to do that either. I just want to pay $300 a month.
Salesman: Umm...
Eric: I stand firm at $300.
Salesman: (punches in some numbers on his calculator) Okay, no way. You're asking me for like a $10,000 discount. We only make a $3059 profit on this car. Call me back when you've thought about it.
Eric: Okay.

Eric thought about it overnight and decided he still wanted to pay $300 a month for the car. He just called the salesman back, and is once again trying once to get our car for $300 a month. His one concession is that we don't need the V6 engine.

We'll see how that goes.

Pregnancy Update: Second Trimester Fun!

Everyone says that the second trimester of a pregnancy is the "honeymoon period". I have no effing idea what they're talking about. It's better than the first trimester for sure, but it's NOTHING like my honeymoon. For starters, I could sleep comfortably on my stomach during my honeymoon, and I could have sex in full parallel positions without feeling weird in my belly. But in any case, here are some fun pregnancy updates!

1) I Pee Funny
You know how when you hold your pee for a long time, and by the time you get to a toilet, it feels painfully good to release it? And then there's usually so much pee built up, that if you want to stretch your urethra a bit, you can push out and increase the force of your pee stream, and that feels good too? And then you might alternate the force of your pee to keep it from spraying in a weird direction and getting on your under-bum? Okay.

Lately, every time I go pee, it feels like I've been holding it for ages, even if I only got the urge to go 5 seconds ago. And every time I sit down and start peeing, it feels painfully good. Nothing wrong with this, no one is going to complain about consistent orgasmic urinating experiences. But the weird part is, when I now push down a bit to increase the force of the pee stream, the pee NO LONGER COMES OUT ANY FASTER! In fact, it consistently comes out in a non-satisfying near-trickle. This results in pee on my under-bum, and sometimes pee on my under-thigh. And if I push out on the pee, I can feel the force of the push against my own organs, but the pee stays the same near-trickle. It makes me feel impotent.

2) I Brush My Teeth Funny
I do this thing when I brush my teeth where I'll end every session with a vigorous tongue-brushing. Often, when I brush too far back on my tongue, I'll gag. This is not a big deal for me, and I'm used to it. It sounds gross, because I make a huge gagging sound, but all in all it hurts no one.

One of the biggest trademarks of the second trimester is supposed to be acid reflux. The baby is pushing up on my stomach or something, and so it makes it easier for the acid and stuff to spill back up into my esophagus. I've never had issues with acid reflux before, and I was having a pretty easy time of it until last Sunday when I made lasagna for dinner. I ate a lot of lasagna at around 6:30pm, and then at around midnight I was brushing my teeth for bed. At the end of my toothbrushing session, I brushed my tongue. Vigorously. I gagged.

And barfed lasagna right on my toothbrush, into the sink.

I wouldn't have even realized right away that I had barfed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes in the mirror. I've never watched myself barf before. It was gross. And then it tasted like lasagna barf in my mouth, and there was barf all over my toothbrush, and in the sink all mixed in with the toothpaste foam. It was really nasty.

3) I Burp Funny
On Monday I went up to Markham to have dinner with my Mamee and my brother. We went to a Chinese place where I ordered Malaysian Beef Curry with rice. It was delicious. It was a really large helping, and I ate it all and I felt wonderful.

And then as we were driving away from the restaurant, I started burping a little. Just normal post-dinner burps, they weren't huge belches, just small discreet little burpies as air bubbles made their way back up my food tube. Unfortunately, due to the acid reflux described above, these little burps resulted in little mouthfuls of Malaysian Curry Beef Barf being squirted up into my mouth each time. And then I had to swallow it, because it's not like it was a large mouthful, and plus we were in the car. I wish I could say that it just tasted like the Malaysian Curry Beef that I had just ingested mere minutes earlier, but it tasted like curry beef barf, with extra garlic. I don't know where the extra garlic came from. It was really gross.

I will now end with a pregnant haiku:
I eat barf for you
Please don't grow to be a jerk
I will kick your ass

Five Thousand More of These and I Can Make a Jacket

I like to peel the skin off my feet. I used to peel from my big toes, as well as that fleshy underpart on the outer side of each foot, as well as sometime right in the centre of that front pad area. These were the areas I would sometimes get hard callousy skin that eventually got kind of itchy and bothered me. Instead of going to a pedicurist and having these areas sloughed off with professional tools, I would sit down with the spiky fold-out part of a nail clipper, create a starting cut, and start peeling.

My goal would be to peel off the largest single piece of skin possible without causing bleeding. Oftentimes, I would get carried away and end up bleeding anyway, and then my feet would hurt, and it would be difficult to walk, and I would have to wear bandaids for a few days. Like a perverse tribute to my ancestors who had their feet bound for reasons of perceived beauty.

Anyway, I have gradually phased out the peeling of foot skin in the past several years so that now, it's pretty much strictly toeskin peeling. Only the hard skin on the outer-under edge of each big toe. I had decided that peeling from the other parts and making them bloody was too painful, and so now I only peel the big toe, and only on occasions where the skin has gotten way too thick and hard for any sort of comfort, and only when Eric isn't looking.

Eric HATES when I do this. It grosses him out more than any other thing that I do. This includes popping all forms of pus-filled growth on either my own or his body/face, picking all forms of scabs on either my own or his body/face, and farting everywhere due to pregnancy. It's possible that the main reason he hates this particular habit is because I like to save the large pieces of toeskin as triumphant trophies, and I leave them lying about the condo. They sit and dry with each passing hour, turning into hard scratchy pieces of skin-sheet-rock. I leave them on the coffee table, on my nightstand and if he's really lucky, on his nightstand as a token of my love and esteem. He will get angry and loud, and gather up the toeskin sheets and flush them down the toilet, while I scrabble after him trying to pry them from his fingers, begging to be allowed to keep them for just one more week.

He has been so strict in the flushing of my toeskin, that I have taken to saving them in my pockets. Not any pocket in particular, just any pocket of what I happen to be wearing. This usually means the pockets of pyjama pants, pyjama tops, jeans, or the pockets bathrobes. And then I forget about them.

When Eric does my laundry, the pieces of toeskin will reconstitute in the washing machine, rehydrating into soft supple sheets of what could be the soft virgin skin from an innocent child. It's really quite lovely. Unfortunately, when Eric finds these large, soft, rehydrated sheets of skin, he gets ESPECIALLY grossed out and throws an otherwise even bigger fit than if it had just been on his nightstand.

Earlier today, I did a load of red and purple clothes. As I pulled them from the washing machine, out tumbled one of these pieces of reanimated toeskin. And not only had it been given new life, it had been DYED PURPLE!! It was one of the coolest things ever!!

Since Eric didn't sleep all last night and stayed up working, I've left them on his nightstand as a special present, to show him how much I love him. I think he's going to like them.

He shoots, he scores!

After copious amounts of the sexy sex, one of Eric's sperm have made it to my fallopian tubes where it invaded a brand new ovum, breaking down its barriers, thrusting its way inside, thereby creating life!! LIFE!!!

I'm pregnant!!

We're both extremely excited, and it's one of the reasons I was unable to perform on the blog for the past two months - every time I tried to sit down and write about anything, all I could think of were pregnancy-related tales. My friend Jennifer got married to my friend Christopher, and there were hilarious things that went down at that wedding, and I still couldn't bring myself to concentrate. But hopefully, this is the start of a new chapter...maybe once I get all this pregnancy gold out of my system, I'll be able to blog properly again. And so begins The Pregnancy: More Than You Need To Know.

Where Do Babies Come From?
Let's start at the very beginning; a very good place to start. This was a planned pregnancy. Eric and I had decided that we wanted to aim for an early-in-the-year baby so that it would have an edge at school in beating out the other kids. Even before conception, we were setting this child up for a life of high expectations and enormous pressure, resulting inevitably in disappointment and low self-worth. So in May, a week after my last menstrual period, which started on Sunday May 13, we started humping like animals twice a day.

For those of you who recall my last two blog posts, you will remember that I came down with a very nasty UTI just after this time period. That was a direct result of the aforementioned humping a la animals. I didn't look it up beforehand, so after sex, I would stuff tissues between my legs to keep the good stuff in, and then fall asleep like the lazy whore wife that I am. If it was the nighttime round of babymaking hump, I would sleep all night. If it was the morning/afternoon round of babymaking hump, I would sleep for an hour or two. This lack of peeing after sex twice a day for a week apparently caused my vagina to marinate in enough unsavoury juices to bestow upon me a mighty mighty UTI. I have subsequently learned that when attempting to get pregnant, one should lie down in a sperm-filled state for 10-15 minutes at most, and then get up and pee like any normal vagina-respecting woman.

After the many bouts of fever and sweating out in bed, and soaking my sheets like I had peed them up, I was convinced that even had there been a little fetus in my womb, it would have baked to death. Here's a nugget of help for you people who may require the use of disposable pregnancy tests: First Response stinks like a cheesedick! (not literally) You know the one? It has a commercial with a pretty healthy looking brunette who says "There is such a thing as being a little bit pregnant". That's total crap! First Response is supposed to detect the pregnancy hormone up to 3 days before your expected period or some crap like that. I took it the NIGHT BEFORE my expected period, mere hours really, and it told me negative. It looked me right in the face and showed me one pink line instead of two. So I assumed I wasn't pregnant, and I went to the pub and had me some sweet sweet alkyhall. The next day, I missed my period.

And the rest my friends, is history.

Morning Sickness
Zero, zip, nada! Our friends Lindsey and Jordan are two months more pregnant than we are, and from the sounds of it, Lindsey has been puking her innards out for months. She's experiencing aversions to various meats on a rotating basis, and barfs almost daily. I know nothing of Lindsey's pain, because my baby will eat anything. Just like mommy! Baby is a food slut.

Anal Sickness
Here is where the first trimester kicked me in the anus, literally. I was so constipated, I thought I would never poo normally again. I have never ever, in my entire life, experienced this kind of constipation before. My bowels seized up and simply decided to stop moving. Upon reflection, I'm not sure I can decide whether I would have wanted to trade in the constipation for the morning sickness. Pooing is one of the most joyous parts of my day, and while the universe handed me the most precious gift of all in the form of a child growing in my belly, it seems it took away something nearly equally close to my heart.

I noticed it just a couple days after I took a non-retarded pregnancy test (ClearBlue). I wasn't pooing! So when I went to see my family doctor, I mentioned it to her, and she said that it was a typical pregnancy thing. I was horrified. Most laxatives were out of the question, in case they induced labour and flushed out the baby. I went and stocked up on prunes and oranges and Benefibre. The prunes worked best, but I had to be careful; 3-4 prunes would bring out a non-stellar but passable poo. 6 prunes would give me farty farty diarrhea. The farty farty diarrhea would spray the inside of the toilet bowl with such force that it took a couple of flushes to clear it out.

Even so, the prunes were not the life line I had been hoping for. While it did cause me to poo, I noticed that my poo was about two days backed up. I like to purposely put markers in my poo. For example, I will intermittently eat things that will be identifiable in poo form, such as corn, or spicy food, or lots of spinach. This is so I can observe the turnover time for food to become poo in my system. From past experience, I know that the corn eaten at noon on Monday should appear by bedtime the same day, or worst case scenario, Tuesday morning. What I noticed was that the corn eaten on Monday would not appear until AT LEAST Wednesday, and only with the help of prunes. Without prunes, it wouldn't come out at all. While this was disturbing and frustrating, the worst part of this situation was that my poo became the STINKIEST POO EVER MADE!

I think that it makes sense that the longer poo has to fester in your intestines, the more it will break down and decompose, and the more it will get stinky. But SWEET LORD, the smells that came out of my body as the prune-induced poo exited my godforsaken anus were pure evil! Gone were the days when I could sit on the toilet with a book or magazine or supermarket flyer and slowly, leisurely enjoy my poo. Now I had to quickly sit and expel my gas and nasty unsatisfying little logs of poo, and then hold my breath, depriving my little one of any oxygen whatsoever while I wiped up my Bumhole of Satan, and flushed that accursed poo down. I would have thought that once the lid was down and the Poo of the Damned were riding their way down to Lake Ontario, I would be able to breath. But as I would exhale and start breathing normally while washing my hands, the smell would linger in the air, thick as smoke, assaulting my nostrils, causing me to literally choke and gag and dryheave as I soaped up and rinsed. One time, I even made a poo that smelled like farm animals.

I'm currently 13 weeks pregnant, and I'm relieved (get it? Relieved? Haha...) to report that the constipation has dissipated. In fact, the drippy little plinky poos of yestermonth have been replaced by some of the largest poos I have EVER made! Earlier this week, I think it was Monday, I made an enormous poo, and I mean ENORMOUS. It was thick and luscious, but not too wet, and it came out easily with what appeared to be a force of its own. It wiped up clean, and it smelled like NOTHING!!

Farty McFartfart
I'm only just entering my second trimester right now, and this is my first pregnancy. As a result, I shouldn't be "showing" very much yet. My in laws seem to be looking forward to physical signs of my pregnancy, and are definitely on the lookout. More than once, I've had this conversation with my mom-in-law.

MIL: "Ooh! Is that a little bump I see?!"

Carol: "No, it's just gas."

I have so much gas, that usually by mid-afternoon, I look very very pregnant. My belly sits high and proud, giving all and sundry the distinct impression that I am great with child. In actuality, I am great with gas. Much much gas. My child is only just the size of a jumbo shrimp this week. It's no reason for me to look like there is a large balloon in my shirt.

In the past, I drew a strict line with passing gas. While Eric would liberally fart in bed and at mealtimes, I personally never felt comfortable tooting in his direct non-toilet related presence. If we were watching tv, and I felt some gas coming on, I would retire to a bathroom to release said gas. Eric came to believe that I was physically unable to fart unless I was on a toilet with my pants pulled down.

I am now so bloated that all bets are off, and if I can feel a fart, I will do it anywhere. I do it on the couch while watching tv. I do it on the couch while watching tv and eating. I do it in bed. I've lost all censorship abilities with my gas. I feel that if the gas is sufficient to make me look 7 months pregnant, then I really owe it to my body to just let it out whenever I can.

Two days ago, I cleaned out the cupboard under our ensuite sink. We had lots of bottles of stuff we don't use anymore, and the bandaid drawer needed organizing...stuff like that. Well, I sat down on the bathroom scale to tend to this chore, and sometime near the end of my cleaning, I stood up to get a plastic bag. When I came back, instead of sitting back down on the bathroom scale, I chose instead to squat down in front of the cupboard as my buttcheeks were feeling a little sore. As I settled into my squat, the longest, loudest, most obscenely sustained fart RIPPED out from between my buttcheeks. I squatted there, frozen in utter horrified curiosity, as this mighty mighty fart echoed against the bathroom walls and tiles. The force of this fart cannot be overestimated. I was wearing full bum underwear and pants. And as the fart continued to liberate itself from my bowels, I could feel the warmth of the forced air as it whooshed past my ankles. I could feel my fart on my ankles! And the best part? This fart smelled like nothing!! You could have pressed your face against my butt and wedged your nose between my cheeks and let this fart travel straight into your nasal passage, and I don't think you would have smelt anything except the Dove bodywash I used that morning.

In fact, none of my many many farts smell. I swear to god. If you don't believe me, come over and I will fart on you.

Hmm. In conclusion, I never really intended for this to become a poo post. But it seems it became a poo post of its own accord. Ah, this blog is like my child; it may not turn out the way I expect or intend, but it's perfect just the way it is and I love it. Poo on, my blog child. Poo on.

The Newlyweds Blog Game - Results!

Firstly, I know I said the results would be up by the end of last week. It turns out I suck pickled ass and I'm sorry that some of you had to wait for the results. Secondly, thank you to those of you who sent me threatening messages regarding the absence of said results. That was nice.

And now, the results:

Two weeks ago, I got a urinary tract infection. I'm quite sure that this infection was caused by the increased amount of sex-making that occurred this month, possibly brought on by the unbearable sexiness of my best friend Peggy's boyfriend, who we finally met at the end of May. There is no way of telling for sure, but no one can deny that Ryan is sexy to the max, and Eric for one was enthralled with his charms.

I chose to leave this UTI untreated; I had never had one before, and many of my friends had, and they just drank lots of cranberry juice and peed it out. Gloria, if you recall, was urinary tractally infected every week by her boyfriend's stinky cheesedick, and she got through without antibiotics. So I stocked up on lots of bottles of Ocean Spray 100% Pure Juice Cranberry, plus Gloria brought over her extensive stock of cranberry extract pills, plus some crazy Chinese herbs which looked like dried cat hair and baby rat droppings. She boiled these in water and made me drink the whole pot.

One week later, I experienced two days of intense abdominal pain, and decided something was amiss. Since it was Sunday, Eric called Telehealth at which point I got to describe the feeling in my bowels, stomach, vagina, as well as the state of my poo to a nice nurse. I enjoyed that experience immensely. Within an hour, I had me a prescription for antibiotics to treat my UTI that may have started down the path to a kidney infection. That same hour, the fevers started.

Amidst great throbbing headaches, I would suddenly feel freezing shivering cold, while my body temperature went up. I would put on two layers of winter pyjamas, with a hand towel laid against my skin at the front of my body, and one laid out on my back under the pyjamas. I would lie in bed under two down duvets and a big fleecy blanket made by my Aunt Angela, folded in half, with two large hot microwaved bean pouches in the blankets with me. I would pop two extra strength Advil and try to fall asleep.

The abdominal pain wouldn't go away no matter how I lay down:
Eric: "Just lie on your back, that's the best position"

But it didn't help:
Carol: "It hurts"

When I finally could fall asleep, I would wake up 30 minutes later with my clothes and towels drenched in sweat. Eric would come to help me:
Eric: "Let me take that off for you"

The towels would be hot and wet against my skin, and I wanted those taken out first:
Carol: "Oh my god, pull it out"

Eric would pull the towels out of my pyjamas and they would be hot and drenched in his hands:
Eric: "Oh baby, you're so wet"

Once the towels came out, all I could feel was how wet my sleeves and my pants were. The sweat was still dripping down my arms and legs and between my non-boobs, and I couldn't get the clothes off fast enough:
Carol: "Faster!! Faster!!"

Eric would take the drier parts of the clothes and wipe me down, to make sure the sweat didn't sit on my body:
Carol: "Wipe my bum, too"

Then he would bring out two more sets of winter pyjamas and bundle me back up before I got too cold. He also replaced the towels:
Carol: "I need another towel"

After I had sweat out two or three times like this, Eric would decide it was too many times, and that no matter how much he wiped me down, I wouldn't be clean enough to be comfortable:
Eric: "You have to shower again"

And he kept track of when I was supposed to take my antibiotics and fed me more Advil to help me battle the fevers and abdominal pain:
Eric: "Swallow it down baby"

And those, my friends, are the results of the Newlyweds Blog Game.

I have learned 3 things from this experience and I will end by sharing these with you:
1) The easy way to lose 4 pounds is to get yourself an infection and sweat out fevers in your sleep 12 times in a day and a half
2) The peeing-after-sex rule should be very stringently followed - never again will I pass out directly after orgasm like the oversatisfied whore wife that I am.
3) Dried Cat Hair Baby Rat Poo Tea will not cure a UTI, no matter what Gloria says

A Newlyweds Blog Game!

Here are some phrases exchanged by the sexy Prince Eric and I in the past few days. The game is this: What do they mean and what do they refer to?

(Also, if you know what they refer to - you know who you are - you can't play! If you do, I will cut you.)

And now, The Game:

Eric: "Just lie on your back, that's the best position"

Carol: "It hurts"

Eric: "Let me take that off for you"

Carol: "Oh my god, pull it out"

Eric: "Oh baby, you're so wet"

Carol: "Faster!! Faster!!"

Eric: "Swallow it down baby"

Carol: "I need another towel"

Eric: "You have to shower again"

Carol: "Wipe my bum, too"

A follow-up blog post will come by the end of the week. Happy playing!!

Carol Finds a New Snack

I had to write a new blog post, just to get the scary picture from the last post from being the first thing people see when they check the blog. The eyes! They burn my soul!!

I know I promised posts involving Egyptian poo and farts and smells and camels, but those are not for today. Today we talk about H&A Natural Bars.

I love H&A Natural Bars. They are sold in the concourse under the building where I work. They contain all natural ingredients, and unlike most granola bars, are not fried in oil. They are sweetened with honey and orange blossom water. They are thick and chewy and a little bit sticky, and feel substantial in my belly. They really hit the spot at 3:00pm, when I need a pick-me-up. They cost almost $2 each, and they are bleeding my (Eric's) wallet dry. They are made in Ottawa, so I feel like I am supporting the Canadian economy.

My favourite H&A Natural Bar is the Seed Bar. Seed Bars contain pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, honey, orange blossom water, and lemon juice. And that is all!! That is literally the entire ingredient list!

Discover H&A Natural Bars today.

Delilah knows how to pick 'em

A few weeks ago, my old roommate Delilah got dumped. It was a painful dump (haha!) not because she was in love with the guy and he was "The One", but because she didn't really like him in the first place, and was only keeping him around for convenience. So of course, when our boy Lyle decided they weren't right for each other and ended it, she was upset.

What I love about other people's breakups is that once the relationships are through, all bets are off, and secrets come pouring out like diarrhea from a corpse. What I PARTICULARLY love about the end of THIS relationship, is that I already had enough reasons to be thoroughly convinced that any friend of mine shouldn't be dating this guy, and then it got horrendously, exponentially, gleefully worse. And now, two lists:

Reasons Why I Think You Should Not Date Lyle:
1) He didn't get Delilah a birthday present, and she paid for her own birthday dinner. And we are in our late 20's.

2) He expected her to pay for everything, all the time. He is a mooch. And we are in our late 20's.

3) He didn't open doors, and didn't see why he should. This point can be debated; with gender equality as a springboard, many people feel that men shouldn't have to open doors for women if women are going to make a big fuss about being able to vote, and go to work. I don't care what anybody says, guys will still get points for opening doors for their women regardless of gender equality. It's the same way girls will still get points for baking cookies naked, then bringing their men cold beers while they watch TV.

4) He has uncool tattoos. In what is probably the lamest tattoo story ever, Lyle has a tattoo of the roman numeral VII somewhere on his god-forsaken body. Why? Because he thinks the number 7 is cool. And every seven years, he plans to get another number 7 tattooed somewhere. That's like me saying "I like the letter R, I'm going to get it in different fonts all over my body!"

5) He was not originally friends with us, and he came to our home twice, and I made large amounts of food for him each time (not naked - I don't need points that badly). Not once did he even bring so much as a bottle of wine or a bunch of grapes. The first time it happened, we overlooked it. The second time it happened we had made a full dinner, plus an afternoon full of snacks, Eric and I looked askance at one another and thought "Hmmm". But when he went so far as to request a homemade chocolate cake for his "next visit", we stopped inviting him over. Obviously, he was raised by bears in a cave.

Reasons Why I Think You Should Not Date Lyle - Insider's Edition:
1) He has a hairy penis shaft. Like, not just normal pubic hair at the base of his penis, but actual forests of hair growing about halfway up the ACTUAL SHAFT. And once, he shaved it, and then it grew back stubbly, and then Delilah was the unwilling owner of an exfoliated vagina.

2) He is not circumcised, and does not regularly pull back his foreskin to clean underneath. The bears must not have shown him how.

Does anyone know what smegma is? I literally did not even know this word before now. It's also referred to as "dick cheese", or "shaft yogurt", or "prickorino romano". Much to my horror, I learned that smegma is a mammalian secretion, a combination of exfoliated epithelial cells, transudated skin oils, moisture, and bacteria that can accumulate under the foreskin of males. And if allowed to accumulate, will stink.

Lyle maintains a large malodorous accumulation of shaft yogurt under his uncircumcised foreskin. Delilah could SMELL it. She never went down on him because the STANK of his genitals made her dryheave. And he did not see a problem with this. In hindsight, it's not surprising that Delilah got a urinary tract infection every time he came to visit.

3) His penis is deformed. The uncircumcised foreskin, due to unknown circumstances, is actually permanently fused to his glans. So even had he felt the compulsion to pull it back and clean underneath, he would not have been able to pull it back all the way. Our theory is that the dick cheese buildup got so intense in his childhood, that it just became a part of his body, forming a bridge of solidified cheesy stank, connecting his foreskin to his mushroom cap.

4) And finally, he once paid a whore to have sex with his hairy deformed dick of cheese. Seriously, he once went out, and paid an actual prostitute to take his oozing fused prickly shaft into her disease-ridden tunnel. Which is so many levels of dirty, I can't even wrap my head around it. I mean, I've known people who have slept with some dirty people. I personally know some dirty people themselves. But none of those people, to my knowledge, have ever gone out and paid for the use of a professional splooge receptacle.

Apparently, he was in Europe with a friend, and his friend wanted to go see strippers. But this wasn't a normal stripclub, no. This was a stripclub with PACKAGES. Something along the lines of:

Package A: a drink and admission
Package B: a drink, admission, and a lapdance
Package C: a drink, admission, a lapdance, and a 10-minute penetrative humping session with an in-house whore, and a complimentary towel for your use

The friend opted out of Package C, and stuck with Package B. But upon learning that Package C only cost 20% more than Package B, Lyle decided this was a deal too good to pass up, and he asked his friend to wait outside as he contracted all forms of European V.D. as his own special souvenir.

I will end with a haiku expressing my feelings about how Delilah should not be allowed to make decisions for herself:

Del, your judgement sucks
Oozing cheese dick poisons you
Shudder shudder, barf

I am the worst blogger ever

It's been nearly a month and a half since my last post. I am the worst blogger ever, and I understand that I've likely lost most of my audience. You've all turned your backs in disgust and dismay, and found new things to read in order to fill your time and that gaping pus-weeping void in your soul. That void which until now I had hoped to straddle with my large thighs and poo. But here I am, on my knees, begging you to come back and read my blog again. Because I swear this time I'll try harder. I'll make it work. I need you. You have to understand, I had one very very good reason for my absence It was a force greater than both you or I, one that could not be denied.

You see, a month and a half ago, I joined Facebook. Facebook is my Allah. I pray to Facebook five times a day or more, and it has given meaning to my life. I can't stay away from it, it brings me so much joy. Find me on Facebook, I'm listed under Carol Johnston.

Anyway, I wanted to write something quick in here, and express my intent to maintain this blog at the rate you have come to expect. I wanted to apologize. And there is lots to catch up on!

Here are some coming attractions in the life of newlyweds:

• Carol quits her job; regains part of soul
• Eric is regularly touched by a magical man
• Trip to Paris
• Trip to Egypt
• Cheese in Paris
• Falafel in Egypt
• Poo in Paris
• Poo in Egypt
• Farts in Egypt
• Smells of Egypt
• My new heavy periods and super absorbancy tampons
• Muslim mens in Egypt
• Camels
• A poo story I heard in Egypt

Please stay tuned, I need you.

I'm a bad blogger

I know how long it's been - it's almost a full month since my last post. I'm very very sorry. I realize that I promised just a few months ago that this would never happen again. Sometimes I lie...flat on my back! Zing!

What does that even mean? I don't know. I think it has to do with sex.

Anyway, I am here to update you on the happenings in the last month. I will try to be as brief yet thorough as possible.

Happy Birthday To Me
On Saturday February 10th, I turned 27. For the past few years, birthdays have been a bleak affair. The year I turned 21, I had been dating Eric for two weeks. He sent me flowers, got me a little beanie lion, and topped it all off with an "over the hill" card. I almost started crying on the spot. Then he propositioned me for sex, and when I suggested we hold off, he told me he wasn't into commitment, just wanted the sex, and wasn't planning on staying with me long term. All I have to say to that is "HAHA!! SUCKA!!!!"

Last year, I turned 26 while 26 pounds overweight. There was some poetic tragedy in that, and I spent two weeks on the couch crying, as Eric invited over a steady stream of visitors to watch me wail about how I was old and had accomplished nothing. It was shameful and humiliating.

This year, we were determined not to let my birthday suck. After all, 27 is the youngest I am ever going to be for the rest of my life! So we booked an all-inclusive trip to Varadero Cuba, with big plans to lie on the beach for a week and drink slushy slushy rum. Five days before our departure, I came down with a nasty nasty flu! I even got a note from my doctor saying I should stay at home all week and not go to work. So I spent the week, flat on my back - zing! - hoping that I would get better for my birthday.

As it turned out, my fever was under control, but I was still sneezing and coughing up liquid boogers and phlegm constantly. I was That Woman on the airplane, who wouldn't shut up with the nasty sick noises. And then I was That Woman on the beach who had to sit up to cough out her viscera every few minutes. And then I was That Woman by the pool who sneezed into her towel at regular intervals and made it wet with boogers. But by the middle of the week, I was feeling mostly better, with only the occasional coughing fit to alarm and annoy fellow travellers.

Then I got a big sunburn, and have been peeling since we got back. Right now the patch above my yoohoo is flaking. Cuba, you are good times.

Jamie Fraser Is My Newest Obsession
While in Cuba, I read a book that Eric's aunt Sandra gave me for Christmas. Sandra is a poet/writer/tv producer/superstar and she gives me the best books. This one was called Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. What a HELL of a book. Nothing like the incest-ridden perversions of yesteryear, this book was a shining beacon of action-adventure-historical-fiction-scifi-romance. It had wars and time travel and sword fights and huge castles and lairds and spies and gay rape and flogging and witchcraft and murder and the hottest most heart wrenching sex ever. And I've read my share of sex, let me tell you. These sex scenes fill you with yearning.

The man of the book is a tall, gorgeous Scottish highlander named Jamie Fraser, and I am fully in love and in lust with this man. I have no greater passion in my life. I have added him to my list of men for whom I would leave Eric without a thought. He's in the top three. Everyone needs to go out and read this book. It has changed my life. Let it change yours.

Let it change yours.

Chinese New Year Sucks My Married Butt
The weekend we returned from Cuba, it was Chinese New Year. Growing up, Chinese New Year was like a second Christmas. But instead of presents, we would get pure unadulterated cash. The loot came in red paper envelopes, and served to make us rich little bastards for the rest of the year.

The two happiest moments in the life of a Chinese kid born in the 80's occurred when
1) The government got rid of the one-dollar bills and replaced them with loonies. This meant that in every red envelope, there would be a MINIMUM of $2!!
2) The government got rid of the two-dollar bills and replaced them with toonies. This meant that in every red envelope, there would be a MINIMUM of $5!!

At one point, we heard a rumour that they were going to do away with the $5 bill as well, and replace THAT with a coin. My brother and I almost shit ourselves thinking of the possibilities. But that never came to pass. I count it as one of my life's biggest disappointments.

Then I got married. This is the biggest bum deal in the all of Chinese history. Once you get married, you stop collecting the Chinese New Year Cash Settlements. All the grownups (except your parents) cross you off their lists, and laugh maniacally into their siu mai. Not only that, you are now responsible for GIVING AWAY money to all your younger relatives. You make your own lists, and the unmarried children in your family laugh maniacally into their cha siu bao.

This was the second year Eric and I had to prepare stacks of $5 in red envelopes, and give them away. This is possibly the biggest motivation for us to start having babies. So we can collect through them while they are still too young to know what's going on. We plan to steal their money. Every Chinese parent does it. Not one feels ashamed. Every Chinese kid is outraged when they're old enough to learn what's been happening. Not one gets compensation.

We are a sneaky race.

I Got a Yeast Infection Anyway
Remember how my doctor said that antibiotics wouldn't help my flu (obviously) and would only give me a yeast infection on top of everything else? Well I got one anyway. Canesten 3-Day is what my doctor tells me to use for that, and it's quite convenient. I just really hate how the next day, I'll be at work, and the dissolved pill will start running out of me, and I can feel it coming out, and it's all pasty and gritty in my underpants, and makes it feel slimey when I wipe after going to the washroom.

Just Can't Get Enough
Something happened with my hormones, and I can't get enough of the sexy sex. This might be how it feels to be a teenage boy, because I can't concentrate on much of anything, and I'm practically useless in most settings where I'm not engaging in the sex. You would think that this has improved and spiced up our marriage, but it has actually served to add a lot of stress and violent expectation. My vibrator is working overtime, Eric can't keep up with demand, and we've already had two big fights over the lack of service (and the fact that Eric doesn't do me the way Jamie Fraser would), causing me to angrily banish him to the second bedroom. Two nights this happened.

If you think I sound unreasonable, then eff you!! I will rape you!!

We're Not Trying To Have a Baby
There are rumours going around that we're "trying". I just want to put this out there - we are not "trying". We're just "practicing". And while we're on the topic again, we're not "practicing" "enough".

How do I like my eggs in the morning? Unfertilized! Ba-dum boom!

I will end with a long-overdue haiku.

How to write a poem
When topics are so varied?
This will not be great

Stealth

I'm very sick at the moment. My doctor says that antibiotics won't do me, since it's a flu, and in addition to not helping, antibiotics will probably just give me a yeast infection. I don't want a yeast infection. I've been passed out in bed for the past three days, and I'm hoping very hard that I'll get better by Saturday, because that's a) my birthday and b) the day we leave for Cuba (for my birthday).

Earlier tonight, I was lying on the couch, coughing my lungs out and watching American Idol. Eric walked past and farted.

Carol: "Did you just fart?"

Eric: "No...I made a fart sound."

Carol: "...with your butt?"

Eric: "No...with...my mouth."


(Eric just now: "I DIDN'T FART!! I MADE A FART SOUND!! WITH MY MOUTH!!! DON'T BLOG THAT!!!!")

Feel Dirty

**This post is descriptive and gross, but it is not about poo**

I am reading the worst book right now. It's called Wideacre by Philippa Gregory. Don't read it. Or you know, read it and share my feelings. That would be nice too.

I love Philippa Gregory, she wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, a very popular retelling of the Anne Boleyn fiasco through the eyes of her sister Mary. It's sexy, it's enchanting, it's propelling, it's a great great read. She's also written other books that all take place surrounding The Other Boleyn Girl, about Katherine of Aragon, and Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth I...while not as good as TOBG, I still enjoyed each one immensely and would read them again. Which is a good and economical idea because I own them.

So I thought I would check out some other books by this author, not from the Tudor England era, and I found the Wideacre trilogy. I went and bought all three books, and they were on my big "Books For Carol To Read" pile. I finally got around to starting it. I was eager to get into the story, because it was a period piece, about a girl in Georgian England, and how she loves her home and the land, and she fights to stay there despite the land being entailed to her older brother who has no knack for being a squire, but that's the law. There's supposed to be love and lust and murder and betrayal. Wonderful things, all.

This book is savagely raping my mind.

The murder and betrayal? It's pretty horrible. So far, she's murdered and betrayed her father, and then this guy she was banging when she was 14. Actually, what happened was that she was angry with her father, and so she told her bang-buddy that he could kill him. And so he does. And then she got angry at him for doing that, so she murdered him herself. Or at least, she THOUGHT she did, but it turns out he escaped, bloodied and broken, and is presumably out there plotting his revenge. That's all generally disturbing and kind of creepy.

Okay.

The love and lust? It's with her BROTHER!! She's having sex with her BROTHER!!! Her BROTHER is inserting his PENIS into her VAGINA and EJACULATING in it!!!!!! The whole deal is now that her father is dead, Wideacre has been entailed to her brother, and he's the new squire. And she's obsessed with the land, so she starts lusting after him. And he's kind of a big pervert who likes to be beaten and whipped, and gets off on pain. And he lusts after her too. And so they start having hot and heavy incest sex, and she has his baby! Unbeknownst to everyone, she tricks his wife into adopting the baby and pretending its hers, and then her brother tries to end the sex. And so she puts together an S&M room, and leads him there and dominates him until he's sobbing with lust! She whips him until he bleeds, and then she gets on him and bounces on him till he's about to come, and then she gets off and SLAPS his penis and CUTS it with her ring, so that his sperm sprays out all mixed with his blood on his stomach.

SO SICK!! The last thing I read was their mother accidentally walking into the parlour while he was humping and grunting on her, and so some shit is about to go down. The last thing you want if you're being humped by your brother is for your mother to walk in and see his pasty white buttcheeks flexing so he can put his brother-rod into your sister-hole.

I can't handle this book. It's making me ill. I can read really fast, and usually a book will last me one or two evenings. If I drag it out a lot, and only read 20 minutes before bed or something, I can make it last a week. But I am loathe to read further in this book, and so it has put a complete stall on my reading schedule. I can't decide whether I should just stop the book altogether and burn it along with the remaining two books in the trilogy, or if I should just push through the nasty incest and horrible patricide and predictable matricide, and just finish the damn thing.

I will now end with a beseeching haiku.

Brother sister love

Shouldn't involve genitals

Don't put that in there

This is going somewhere

When I was in grade 8, our school took us on a trip to Quebec City. It cost maybe $150, maybe $250 per student...I can't be sure anymore. But I remember I was very excited to go. There was a big buildup to the trip, and we did fundraising by selling very large boxes of microwave popcorn. I remember when the shipment of the popcorn came in, we stored it in a supply closet on the main floor of the school, and when you walked past the supply closet, you would be hit with the unmistakable aroma of fake salty microwave popcorn butter. As a bright-eyed eager beaver and Student Council Vice President (coming in second to Kim Russell who blew me out of the water with her KFC - Kim For Council campaign, but ahead of Kevin Poon who was a very good friend and extremely well-respected brainer who walked to the high school to take grade 9 math every day), I actually think that I participated in the distribution of the popcorn boxes after school.

In Quebec City, I roomed with Nina Nayar, Karen Gaettens, and Jenn Rees. I think the third girl was Jenn Rees. I'm fairly certain. In any case, our room was one of the best, it was huge, and very very comfortable. My mother bought me a black purse that converted to a fanny pack, so that I could safely store the $50 she had given me for spending money. I remember that one night we went to have a nice dinner, and Nina ordered fettuccine alfredo, which is one of her favourites. But there was egg in the dish, maybe in the noodles. And Nina is allergic to eggs, it makes her tongue super itchy. That's why every year for her birthday, her mom would make ice cream cupcakes. So she sadly couldn't eat her dinner. After dinner, I got a tea with milk and sugar.

I got a caricature drawing of myself in Quebec City. It was the first comical caricature I had ever had, and I got hooked. I would later go on to have caricatures drawn of myself in any city I visited where I could find caricaturists. This particular drawing turned out to be the most racist one I would acquire. I had tiny slanty eyes, and huge - nay, gargantuan buck teeth, and the only thing that caused it to resemble me were the glasses and the little mole-freckle I have on my upper lip. The drawing also depicted saggy breasts and large saggy hips. I was only 13, and I was very skinny, with no boobs to speak of. But I loved the drawing...I had long since developed the ability to laugh at myself. Aware of my awkwardness, I wanted to be the first to laugh, because that way no one could make me feel bad.

On the bus ride home, Liz Reynolds got sick on the bus and threw up in the coach toilet. (I'm quite sure that this was the trip - there was another trip we took in grade 7 to Ottawa, and that could have been the actual vomit incident, but I am fairly confident that it was the grade 8 trip to Quebec City when this occurred). Liz Reynolds would go on to become the first of my friends to lose her virginity. She had sex with Steve Potter in grade 9. It was all very gleefully shocking, and I clearly remember her telling me that they knew they were young, but it "just felt right". I also remember that Bon Jovi's Always was their song. Maybe two months later, the relationship had degenerated, and it was "all about the sex". So they broke up. Liz owned a cream coloured sweater that I always admired.

The smell of Liz's puke on that grade 8 (or 7) day was really terrible. It was several degrees beyond sick, and I'm surprised that no one else started yakking in response to this odour. It's all the worst things you can imagine about the smell of vomit, times a hundred, because you're on a bus for 6 hours driving home from Quebec City. Plus you're only 13, and the days of puking weekly on a university building after 20 drinks at Alfie's and humping some horny dude on the dance floor who tried to put his hands in your pants while you gyrated in his face were still far in the future. The smell of the hot sticky vomit in that stuffy cramped coach was beyond anything I had experienced before. And I was trapped.

Everyone else on the bus agreed, and some of the girls got out their aerosol cans of some cheap underage whore fragrance. This was the kind of thing you can buy at Shopper's Drug Mart for maybe $4. I want to call it "Malibu"-something, but I can't say for sure, because my strict classy Chinese mother would never in a million years let me buy something so trashy. As much as I wished that she would. The girls emptied their pre-teen stripperwhore fragrance cans into the air in an attempt to mask the odour, while poor Liz sat on the floor of the coach with her head between her knees.

The result was a sickly sweet tropical perfume smell, with strong, occasionally overpowering under notes of vomit. It was a sickly sweet tropical vomit smell. The perfume smell was a relief, but the vomit smell underneath could not be ignored, because you KNEW it was vomit. The entire ordeal lasted for a good long time, and the scars are still on my soul.

Okay, this is where I was going with this:

I didn't have to go the washroom all morning today. Usually I'll go about twice in the the morning, and one of these trips will involve poopie. But today, nothing came down the pipes until after I had eaten my lunch. This is unusual, but no matter. The important thing was that stuff was indeed moving. I walked down the hall to the washroom and pushed open the door.

THE WASHROOM SMELLED LIKE MALIBU-SOMETHING AND LIZ REYNOLDS' VOMIT.

The nasty smell hung in the air like a thick moist cloud, and as the odour met my nostrils, all these vivid memories of that Quebec City trip came rushing back to me, and suddenly I was a 13 year old girl again sitting on a bus trying not to breathe in the stench surrounding me.

The assault left me so disoriented, I didn't even think to turn around and use another washroom. I confusedly found a stall and went in and lined the seat with tissue, and sat down. I sat, pushing and waiting desperately for the smell of my own feces to travel up to my violated olfactory area. When it hit me, the relief that flooded through my body made the blood rush to my head. I was gratefully sucking in lungfuls of my poo smell, just to avoid the nightmare smell of Liz Reynolds' vomit.

Of course, as my pooing came to an end, the Malibu vomit smell came pushing back in, persistent, insistent, and all-pervasive. I held my breath and wiped my bumbum and pulled up my pants, and flushed the toilet and ran out and washed my hands, and staggered towards the washroom door. Upon stepping out into the hallway, my stomach gave a great great lurch, and I stood there gagging and coughing, trying to expel the malodorous gases from my poor besieged body.

It was horrible. Horrible.

I don't have anything else to say. I'm physically and emotionally drained.

Hold me.

Conversations at Bedtime

Eric and I were snuggling down for bed last night. He lay on his back and I cuddled my head into his shoulder, slinging my arm over his midsection. He had one arm behind his head, the other around my shoulders. Eric clearly was feeling lazy and tired. I clearly had the closest access to his crotchal area.

Eric: "Adjust my balls...pull them to the left..."

Carol: (pauses...adjusts balls...pulls to the left...)

Eric: "Ahhhhhhhhhh okay. That's what I want to do all the time."

Carol: "...pull them to the left?"

Eric: "No, move my balls around...all over the place...constantly..."

Carol: "....."

Eric: "Having a ballsac is so annoying. Balls."

Carol: "....."

Eric: "....."

Carol: "This is so going to be blogged."

Eric: "...yeah it is."

I will now end with a balls inspired haiku.

Testicular sac

Grab the scrotum, pull it good

O futility!