how to not: forty winks

There is a ton of stuff I'm super bad at. Each time I try something for the first time, I go into it wildly optimistic that in this new task lies my heretofore unknown magic awesome talent. Usually I am wrong. (See: bowling, darts, kayaking, scrapbooking, etc etc etc.) However, there is one thing that I am THE WORST AT. If you think you are the worst at this thing, I tell you you are wrong. I am the worst. I have been the worst at this since the day I was born: sleeping.

It takes me a million billion years to fall asleep, I wake up seventeen thousand times during the night, and I'm wide awake ages before my alarm goes off. When I get out of bed my whole body hurts because my muscles are all, "Hey, let's contort into weird positions for hours at a time," and then I'm tired and sore all day. Faulty brain wiring is probably part of the problem, but my own stupidity is at fault for some of it. And because I am a benevolent individual, I am going to use this to help you! You're welcome.

HOW TO NOT: Forty Winks

1. Eat a bunch of food before you go to bed. Preferably chocolate cake. (With real cocoa, mind you. Otherwise why even bother.)

2. Watch television in a reclined position on a soft couch. It won't take long to train your body that this position does not mean it's time to sleep, so don't be discouraged if you still sleep well after the first time or two. Bonus: make sure you're watching really intense murder mysteries and/or creepy scary shows that will haunt you when you turn out the lights.

3. When you're finally in bed, don't close your eyes immediately. Read a book! It has to be a really good one, or it doesn't count. Preferably one that will draw you in, forcing you to continue turning pages long after your brain has given up deciphering the words. If reading's not for you, turn on the good ol' laptop computer. Make sure it's on it's brightest setting. The best websites to look at are ones with lots of images that you scroll through really fast, thus preventing your eyes from powering down. If you want to be a pro, DO BOTH. Read a book and THEN go on the computer! All while in your bed, mind you. That's probably the most important thing to remember.

4. Start sleeping on your back, but after a few minutes or hours change to your stomach. Then switch over to your side, and for a dramatic finish, maneuver so you are HALF on your side, HALF on your stomach. It's the best.

5. Check the clock every few minutes to ensure you know how much sleep time you're wasting. Even better: turn it so the neon numbers are blazing right in your eyeballs.

And that's pretty much all you need to know to be as bad at sleep as me.

which sounds scandalous but is not

Next week I am making a pilgrimage to the book-lover's Mecca: Powell's City of Books in Portland. SO MANY BOOKS. SO EXCITING. My family is going to drop me off and go do other things, and then pick me up with all my new old books. This is what I am going to buy.

Books for Personal Use

- all the Georgette Heyer books that I don't already have

- Indiscretion by Jude Morgan, which sounds scandalous but is not
- Soulless by Gail Carriger

- The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

- possibly books by Patricia Wentworth and Ngaio Marsh, which were recommended as good mysteries but are not available from my stupid library

- anything by Edward Gorey, if I can find it

- The Marriage of True Minds by Stephen Evans 

Books to Further My Knowledge

- Substitute Teacher Handbook K-12 - Geoffrey G. Smith, Glenn Latham, Max L. Longhurst, Michelle Ditlevsen

- How to Build a Fire: And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew by Erin Bried

- How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew also by Erin Bried

- You Are One-Third Daffodil by Tom Nuttall

Books to Bring When Teaching
- The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Olliver Jeffers 

- Strange But True Stories by Janice Greene 

- I’m in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor 

- S is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet by Esther Hershenhorn
- Pop!: The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy 

- Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day by Robin Pulver

Are there any books I should add?

and we were all on it

I'm fairly certain I nearly died earlier this week because I got mad at traffic and decided the rules didn't apply to me anymore. The scene evolved thusly: I was driving home from Harrison Hot Springs. There was absolutely no traffic on my drive there earlier that morning, so I was confident there wouldn't be any on the way home, either. All was well until I got to Abbotsford.

"Why don't I have a listen to the traffic station," I said to myself at that time, turning on the radio. How smart I would feel, discovering if there were any accidents or delays so I could adjust my route accordingly. It turned out that was a smart decision, because lo and behold, there was an accident on the highway I was on, in the direction I was going, several exits ahead of where I was.

"I'll exit early," I said, quite pleased with my intelligence, "and take a different way and miss all the traffic!"

But hey, guess what. Everyone else was also listening to the traffic station, and everyone else decided to exit early, and if you're not taking the highway home from Harrison Hot Springs, there is only one other road you can go on. AND WE WERE ALL ON IT.

There was a point somewhere in Langley when I was stuck behind a Wide Load hay truck or something. It was going so slowly that I'd morphed from Good Driver to Angry Driver with my body positioning. (When Angry Driver is at the wheel, I slouch down and put my left foot on the dash beside my steering wheel, and rest my left arm on my knee. Coincidentally, the same position as Casual Driver.) Then the Wide Load hay truck decided to do the rest of us a service and kind of pull over, but not quite, so it was halfway in the lane and halfway on the shoulder. The two cars ahead of me zoomed past it, and I started speeding up to do the same.

It wasn't until I was ever so slightly over the yellow line that I noticed another truck heading towards me, in the opposite lane. What I should have done then was slow down and stay in my own lane, and wait for the oncoming traffic to cease so I could pass the stupid slow hay truck. But I was TOO MAD. I wanted to go FAST. So I kept going! I veered some more over the center line and it wasn't until the hay truck was immediately to my right and the oncoming truck was immediately to my left that I began to wonder if there was enough room for the three of us.

And there was! But there probably shouldn't have been. Probably I should have died. From now on, I should pay better attention to stuff when I'm mad. Or else I have a Ministry of Magic Car! Now you're all jealous.

will you please start talking

I'm thinking about becoming passionate about something so that I can hold conversations with people! These are some of the possibilities:

- caffeinated beverages
- pros and cons of different types of cheese
- cold-weather sports
- things that buzz
- historical inaccuracies in movies
- homophones
- validity of certain dictionary words
- old railroads
- underappreciated playground structures

I am also open to suggestions.

some letters

Dear Adorable Bunnies,
While I enjoy seeing you take over my neighbourhood because you're so darn cute, please move on to another street because my dogs keep eating your poo and you keep eating all the gardens.

Dear Mystery Boy Who Asked My Dad Permission to Ask Me to Coffee,
Your manners are better than your follow through. Also, very clever to intrigue me with your chivalry.

Dear itunes,
Please put The Oh Wells in your stupid store. I need some good music and you keep thwarting me because we don't like the same stuff.

Dear Sky From Last Night,
Thanks for being awesome. Let's meet up again soon.

Dear Bowl Chair,
I don't care if you permanently destroy the curvature of my spine. I will love you forever. (But actually, please go easy on my spine. I need it for a while yet.)

Dear Dishwasher,
I missed you; did you miss me?

Dear Skin Care Companies,
I will give you my money if you can make a tinted moisturizer with sunscreen that does NOT give me pimples. I don't want to put three things on my face. I want to put one thing on my face. Please indulge my laziness and sensitive skin.

on this episode of "just get over yourself"

I'm in a post-move funk. Yesterday, I realized that I'd reached my cap in regards to Living With Other People, and I longed to be By Myself. (This is not a comment on my family. I have a great family. It has more to do with the fact that the Rug of Independence I was standing on has been whisked out from under my feet.) I moved a bunch of stuff into my room, and started emptying bathroom shelves in anticipation of putting all my crap in them, but I have SO MUCH STUFF. I keep thinking, "In my apartment I had the perfect place for this." I was eating my cereal with a tiny spoon and my mad face on as I munched awkwardly small sized bites, remembering that all the spoons at my apartment were the perfect size for cereal.

How do I get rid of this? Campbell River is over for me - my apartment belongs to somebody else, and my stuff is dispersed among thrift stores, random people from craigslist, and my garage. I live here now. I need to snap out of it and make a list of all the things that are wonderful about being back at home. But you remember that one episode of Friends when Ross was trying to decide between Julie and Rachel, so he made a list of the bad things of each of them, and no matter how many things he had on the list of why he shouldn't waste his time with Rachel, all he had to put on the Julie side was, "She's not Rachel." (Only he said "Rachem," and we all know how that turned out.) There are so many things that are good about this place. Lots of things I love and am glad to get back to. But it's just not the same.

the next step is getting over how weird my knees are

Ever since I started getting chubby, which was around grade three or four, I have extremely disliked showing any part of my body. Legs encased in pants, arms in long sleeves, torso in a jacket, and the best is when face/neck is obscured by a scarf. (Hence one of the reasons I love fall and winter. Summer is not conducive to all those clothes.) This was compounded when in grade seven I got little red spots all over my legs. My doctor said "Shave with the hair, instead of against it," which is dumb because a) then what's the point of shaving at all, and b) the spots persisted even in the winter, when I didn't shave for five or six months at a time. So I remained spotted. Chubby, too, but that was for a different reason. This conversation from School of Rock accurately sums it up:

Anyway. For lots and lots of years, I persisted with jeans through even the hottest summers. The ONLY time I would wear shorts was when I knew I was going to be at home all day and nobody was coming over. That was it.

Then, mysteriously between term 3 and term 4 of this year, I decided that I loved skirts and dresses. Skirts and dresses were my new favourite things. I discovered I could entertain myself during students' boring stories by standing with my feet together and twisting my hips, making my skirts and dresses swish around my legs. Walking down stairs became exponentially more fun, because my skirts and dresses would flip out every time I descended a step. It was fantastic. I didn't wear pants at all for the rest of the school year, except sometimes on jeans Fridays.

I still have spots on my legs, but I've begun to notice that you can't really tell unless you are staring at my legs from a really close distance, and that's not really something people do to me a lot. I haven't lost any weight, because food still tastes really good, but yesterday I bought a pair of black shorts because I have lots of tops that would look really good with black shorts.

So what I'm saying is that I wish this confidence had come to me sooner. I love my skirts and I love my dresses and I might even be on the way to loving my shorts. I'm still a modest girl, and I am aware of what is not flattering on my body, but if you don't like my spots or are grossed out by my weight, then look elsewhere because I feel pretty great. That is what I'm saying.