Good things come to those who wait to clip their toenails until after noon.

by Camille Posted on March 9, 2010

This morning I clipped my toenails, and as I was sitting there clip clip clipping, I had the strangest feeling that something was wrong.

I couldn’t pinpoint it, not at first, but finally I figured it out:

Who in this great wide world clips their toenails in the morning?

I know I never have before; clipping one’s toenails seems like a very night-ish sort of thing to do, does it not? I usually clip my toenails after a long bath (I rarely take long baths, though, or any baths at all, for that matter), or a good warm shower; maybe after slathering my skin with coconut oil or a good, creamy lotion. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I have ALWAYS clipped my toenails at night, before bed. Usually when I clip my toenails, I dab a quick coat of clear nail polish on them, since I’m bent over anyway (no need straining the same muscle twice when it only takes once to ruin my day). And for some reason, quick little pedicure routines like that have always seemed, to me, best suited for the night.

In fact, the only reason it even occurred to me to clip my toenails at 6:30 this morning was because I noticed last night at yoga that they were looking a little grubby, but I was so exhausted after attempting some of the craziest headstands known to yogi that I came straight home and flopped into bed without even taking off my sweaty socks, let alone remembering to trim my toenails. So this morning I remembered, and it just seemed prudent that I should not let them grow even a millimetre longer before I trimmed those puppies down, and so I did.

But it was weird to be doing it in the morning. In fact, it was weird to be doing anything in the morning; at least, doing anything so early in the morning.

I did lots of other things this morning that I don’t usually do because I don’t usually have four extra hours of being awake before 10 a.m.: I stretched out in bed and took my time getting up, instead of frantically reaching for the nearest hoodie and running out the door like I usually do; I left for school before seven; I sat for thirty minutes in front of the university library because, as it turns out, neither it nor the computer labs on campus open before 8 a.m. SO WHY DID I EVEN BOTHER; I realised that waking up early truly IS for the birds, and wished I was still in bed.

My whole day is probably going to be weird and off-skelter since I just HAD to go and clip my toenails before 7 a.m.

Though, really, the issue isn’t the clipping my toenails before noon part so much as it is the waking up before noon thing that’s throwing off my groove. It is problematic, and, yet again, I am reminded of all the negative repercussions of trying to be something I’m not (a morning person).

Posted in change, health and vitality, I hate change, mediocrity, oh brother what next, woe is me | Tagged | 6 Comments

Gas permeable might not be so bad; when it comes right down to it, I’m really just a lot of hot air anyway.

by Camille Posted on March 8, 2010

All my life, all I’ve ever wanted has been Lasik™.

Okay, not really. When I was a kid, I really really wanted glasses, so much so that I might have even lied on the eye exam (foolish, foolish girl). Mom? Dad? I’m sorry I lied on the eye exam and made you buy me glasses that you probably didn’t really have the money for and then wrecked my eyes and made it so I have to get the most expensive of all contacts available and if I had it to do over again, I would have lived my life so very differently.  I’m sorry.

I’m more sorry now than ever before, because I just talked to my optometrist the other day and he said I might be a good candidate for Lasik™, but there’s a real possibility I would still need glasses even after having the procedure done. Sad. Then, he told me he wouldn’t recommend it right now anyway because if I’m still in school (which I am and probably always will be), doing all that reading and writing and staring at a computer can continue to affect my prescription (great, I’ve chosen the one field in the world that will probably progressively destroy my eyes every day until I die), so I should wait til I graduate.  Ugh.

After that, he told me something I had never thought about, ever:

What about wearing hard contact lenses, he asked.

Say what? Hard contacts? Me? But…hard contacts stopped being cool decades ago! Hard contacts are for grannies! (This coming from a girl who was told as a teenager that she had the eyes of an eighty year-old woman {I’ve been a granny for years, really.})

The only thing I really knew about hard contacts was that when I first got contacts in the seventh grade, the optometrist recommended I go with soft lenses because I was active in sports, and soft contacts posed less of a risk of SHATTERING INSIDE MY EYEBALL if I got elbowed in the eye or something during basketball scrimmages.

All she had to say was SHATTERING INSIDE MY EYEBALL and that was the end of it—I never gave another thought to hard contacts. I knew they were not for me. I never met anyone who wore them (until years later). I just deleted them from my mind—pretended they never existed. The end.

Except it was not the end, because here I am, with the eyes, now, of a NINETY year-old woman, having just seen a new optometrist who told me quite frankly that he couldn’t believe none of my previous eye doctors (I’ve had several over the years) have never recommended hard contacts. He said he couldn’t believe I had been using the last kind as long as I had (two years), and that hard contacts would give me clearer, crisper vision than I’d ever enjoyed. He said they would change my life.

Immediately I went into shut-down mode, because that’s what I do in the face of authoritarian figures who tell me things I don’t want to hear. Because to me, hard contacts didn’t even exist. I didn’t even consider it. I couldn’t have tuned out the man better if I had stuck my arthritic fingers into my deaf little eardrums and sang, LA LA LA LA LA.  I just said, No, I’ll stick with soft lenses until I graduate and then I’ll get Lasik™; it’ll be fine.

It’ll be fine, I said, all reassuring-like, as if I knew better than the doctor. I’m so stupid.

I walked out of the exam room, feeling like my world had been turned upside-down: Hard contacts? Me? Nah…that would never happen.  But…clearer vision than I’ve ever enjoyed? That would be nice. And supposedly they don’t shatter much anymore, especially not with people as sedentary as me—I don’t think I know anybody who stays away from strenuous exercise more than me. And they’ll let my eyes breathe so much more. But I’ll only have one pair and if I lose a contact, there’s no backups, so sorry, that’ll be another three hundred dollars. GAH! Three hundred dollars! That’s insane! Actually, though, three hundred dollars is about what I’m paying for my soft contacts now—maybe even less. If I don’t screw it up and lose my hard pair, they’re supposed to last up to three years.  And…clearer vision than ever before? I can’t even imagine how nice that would be.

And that’s how it came to be that I talked myself into trying out a pair of granny contact lenses, for which I will be fitted this week, and I really hope I will like them, because clear vision sounds more delicious to me right now than a large bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and I’ve been sugar-free for the past several weeks, so pretty much NOTHING sounds more delicious to me than a large bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

But even though I’m looking forward to the mythical good vision…

…I really wish I hadn’t lied on my first eye exam all those years ago.

Kids, let this be a lesson to you.

Posted in change, failures, health and vitality, I hate change, mondays suck | Tagged | 14 Comments

Scott Hamilton: Without You, I Am Nothing.

by Camille Posted on March 5, 2010

***This post is in conjunction with the sports-themed Spin Cycle over at Sprite’s Keeper. Click here
to read more of the sportiest spins on the internet.***

It’s not often that I notice huge cultural differences between Canada and the United States, but on the rare occasion that I do, they come as glaring slaps across my face.

In the three years I have lived in Canada, I have never experienced a Winter Olympics here until last month.

So, until last month, I never knew—never even entertained the idea—that it would be so devastating to watch figure skating without Scott Hamilton’s commentary.

Scott Hamilton, you may look like a creepy pedophile (note: Scott Hamilton is NOT, to my knowledge, a creepy pedophile) but you were a dadgum good figure skating analyser.

Yes, my friends, CBS does not broadcast in Canada, which means Scott Hamilton’s assessment of figure skaters does not play over the airwaves in this country. ‘Tis a sad, sad truth.

You know the adage, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?” Well, that applies to my relationship with Scott Hamilton. See, I grew up watching the figure skating during the Winter Olympics—my mom never let me miss a routine. And inasmuch as it was two years before I was born that Scott Hamilton won his gold in the most perfectly skated routine ever seen by man, by the time I was old enough to watch the Olympics, he was the commentator (and has been ever since).

So I’ve always had a Scott Hamilton to call my own, but when I was a kid, I didn’t realise just how much that would mean to me. I distinctly remember getting so angry with the voice on TV telling us all what to think about the performances going on. I mean, I thought they all looked good (except when they fell—that, I could tell was bad), but there was this faceless voice on the TV telling me that, nope, that triple lutz was incomplete, and was it just him, or was that girl’s form getting sloppier each year.  One time I exploded at my mother: “WHO DOES HE EVEN THINK HE IS? Why does he get to be so mean about these routines? I think they look great; what does he know?”

“Camille,” she said in a sage, motherly voice, “that man is the best male figure skater ever to walk the earth. He gets to say those things because he knows.”

Oh.  I felt dumb.

From that point on, I never doubted Scott Hamilton’s expertise. I’m sorry, Scott Hamilton, that I ever doubted you.

So last month, I waited for the figure skating routines with my usual anticipation, and when the big day finally rolled around, I went to the store and bought a new case of DDP for me and some chocolate bars for my mother-in-law (all the usual preparations for a television marathon), and drove over to her house to watch my favourite sport of the entire Olympic games…

…but something wasn’t right. It took me a routine or two to figure it out, but when I finally realised that Scott Hamilton was not and would never be a commentator for the Canadian Television company, I fell into a deep, unprecedented depression.

“How can I live in a country like this, with no Scott Hamilton to tell me what to think,” I asked myself. “How can I exist in such a state? This is no way to live. These announcers don’t even get critical; they don’t even try to sound like experts. They’re so nice! Where’s Scott Hamilton? I miss him! I love him!”

True, declaring my undying love for a man who reached his peak two years before I was born (a man I’ve never met, by the way) might not have been my proudest psychological moment. But it was how I felt. Without Scott Hamilton, the Olympics were just another prime time television show. I stayed and watched them all, of course. I took them all in. But it wasn’t the same.  I tried to be my own Scott Hamilton, asking myself when the USA girls skated if, out of the entire American country, that was really the best we had. I even cheered when the Italian girl fell not one, not two, not three, but FOUR glorious, glaring times, but without Scott Hamilton, I could feel no real joy.

After my DDP had been consumed, and the days of figure skating were over, I pondered my unexpected predicament: What am I to do? How can I live in a country where the announcers sit quietly, respectfully, as we all watch in awestruck horror at the Italian girl’s exceptional failure? How can I suffer through another Winter Olympics without my dear old pal, Scott Hamilton?

I don’t have an answer to that question. All I can think is, I had better be living in the USA four years from now, or I will probably have an existential meltdown.

Wait for me, Scott Hamilton. Just…wait for me.

Posted in Canada, change, failures, fiascos, I hate change, mediocrity, oh brother what next, sad things | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

I’m too young to be such a geezer.

by Camille Posted on March 3, 2010

Today’s question comes from my good e-friend Amanda (also known as the world’s most amazingly in-depth commenter; everyone should be so lucky as to have an Amanda to comment on their blogs).

Q: What is your favorite outfit to wear? Is there a reason you like it so much?

A: My favourite outfit to wear is a pair of jeans and a T shirt. I like it so much because it is easy, comfortable, and layerable.

What I mean by “easy” is that I have lots of T shirts and several pairs of jeans, so on any given morning I can find some combination that suits my needs (my needs being something clean-looking and more or less odor-free).

What I mean by “comfortable” is that the T shirts don’t cling to my fat rolls when I’m sitting down, and I like that in a shirt.

What I mean by “layerable” is that I can start with a pair of thermal underwear and a T shirt…

…add a pair of jeans…

…throw on a hoodie over my T shirt…

…and finish it off with a coat, a scarf, a toque (beanie), and mittens…

…and I’m set for the day.

I do not dress professionally for school because I do not care to, and also, because I’m scared. I hate being cold (I live in the wrong country, by the way). My biggest wardrobe anxiety is that I will leave the house under-dressed for the day’s cold, and I will have to suffer the chill the whole time I’m at school. I have a ten minute walk from my vehicle to my classrooms every day, and being exposed to the elements like that here in Canada makes survival my number one priority. Although I’m trying to start dressing more like a grown-up and less like a teenager, I still haven’t found a way to work that style into a college student’s life.

So on the days that I don’t have school, and the only time I spend outside is from my house to my truck and my truck to the door of whatever business I am running errands at that day…that’s when I try to step my outfits up a notch (however tiny and pathetic that step may be). But so far I haven’t been brave enough to go to school without donning a good, thick hoodie I can shove my hands into for warmth on my way through the parking lot.

And since I’m moving onward and upward with trying to look more like a woman and less like a sloppy-joe teenager with greasy hair and a fear of underwire bras (for reals, I never wore my first underwire until I was a freshman in college. They terrified me. They still do—how do they even work? {And if they are as successful as everyone claims, why hasn’t anyone invented underwire underwear? Not only is the phrase delicious to say, but just think of all the saggy bottoms that could benefit from some extra support down there! Wearing underwire underwear would be every bit as unnatural as clamping wire under one’s breasts, don’t you think?}), here’s what I came up with for today:

I thought I liked this outfit when I put it together, but looking back at it now (as with the Sun Devil disaster from the other day), meh, not so much. I kind of look six months pregnant in this shirt. I am not six months pregnant. I am not even one month pregnant. Sad.

Anyway, the shirt: thrift store. The sweater: Roots™. The jeans: BKE™. The shoes: Payless™ circa 2005. Hair clip: Vendor on Canal Street in New York circa 2006. The necklace: leftover from my wedding circa 2007.

This getup would have looked better with my darker pair of jeans, but those jeans are too long to wear with flats, on account of whenever I find a store that sells long jeans, I go crazy with the extra-extra-long inseams because it’s such a rare occasion, and also JUST BECAUSE I CAN, but then it’s annoying because the jeans only work with tall shoes, and I have lots of dress heels, but I’m too shy to wear them with jeans, and so I can only wear my long jeans with tall boots and I only have one pair of those, so, disaster.

The point is, I should’ve gotten my dark jeans in the length two inches shorter, but even then, this outfit probably couldn’t have been salvaged.

The other point is, Amanda, et al: don’t take fashion advice from me.

Ever.

Posted in ask me anything, Canada, change, failures, fashion people, mediocrity | 16 Comments

That would be a cool trick.

by Camille Posted on March 3, 2010

Imagine if you worked really hard to make good things happen in your life. Imagine if you set goals, and trudged away, day after day, through the tedium of hard, boring work, to finally accomplish those goals, and when all was said and done, your successes were only marginal at best.

Got that?

Now imagine that I am a big fat jerk who comes up to you and says, “What? You work really hard to accomplish your goals? Well, I set the same goal, and I never worked a day in my life to meet it until the night before the goal was due, and that night I smoked a joint and had a total breakthrough of brilliance and the next day when I woke up, I found I had achieved my goal in my sleep. And on top of that, all my pimples had disappeared. Also, when I was through with my morning sit on the toilet, I wiped my bum just to find that I had started pooing enormous diamonds.”

What would you say?

Have you ever met a person like that? I have—lots of them.

For some reason, those kind of people at school seem to pick me out of a crowd just to brag to me about stuff like this. Why? I have no idea; perhaps I have a sign across my forehead that read, “Picture of Mediocrity; Easily Annoyed by Others’ Easily-Won Success.” Whatever the reason, though, I just keep finding myself stuck in classes with jerks like this. The other day, for example, I was walking out of my final class and this guy sidled up to me and started making small talk, and this is how our conversation went, not a word of a lie:

Him: So, brutal class today, eh?

Me: Yeah.

Him: I know. Professor So-and-So seemed overly harsh, eh?

Me: Yeah.

Him: I know. [If you know so much why do you keep asking me about it?]  She seemed especially grouchy at your comments, Camille.

Me: Yeah. I guess I’m on her bad side.

Him: I know. It’s not easy to get in good with her.

Me: Yeah. [Do you sense a pattern in my responses? I was trying to convey the message that I was disinterested in our conversation topic. But he didn’t get the hint.]
Him: It was funny, though—out of all the kids she snapped at today, you would think she would’ve snapped at me. But she didn’t. Even when I said that totally idiotic thing about the word she wrote on the board…she just sort of gently skirted around it.

Me (thinking that this has probably been one of the most blatant fishings for compliments I’ve seen since Sadie Saget used to hover around during senior year of high school and talk about what outstanding scores she’d gotten on her latest test and badminton game): Yeah. She must really like you.

Him: I know. I don’t know why, though. But you’re right. She does seem to like me. And you know what else is funny? She just keeps giving me high grades! I don’t even deserve them—the last paper I wrote, I started at four in the afternoon and submitted it at midnight, and I got a 97% on it!

Me (I couldn’t take it anymore): That’s ridiculous. I hate people like you.

By this time he had followed me practically to the parking lot, so I was glad when he chuckled (pleased with himself at finally annoying the living daylights out of me, no doubt) and slithered away to harass some other unsuspecting hard-working student with detailed accounts of his glorious glories and jolly good luck, ho, ho!
I always try not to be bitter when I am faced with people like this, but I inevitably fail. I understand the compulsion that we, as humans, feel to brag about our successes (however deserving of them we may or may not be {and sometimes the undeserving successes are the most delicious to flaunt}), but those are the sort of conversations we should have with supportive parents and spouses—people who are by our sides every step of the way—not fellow classmates who are secretly wishing every other student to get a worse grade than them on last week’s midterm.

It irks me. He irks me.
My only consolation is that he probably doesn’t really poop diamonds.

Posted in failures, my edjumacation and me, oh brother what next, watch out or I'll blog about you, woe is me | 14 Comments

The one where I break a promise.

by Camille Posted on March 1, 2010

I am not doing the gallon challenge.

I promised Cristin I would do it as my second official act of Project: Proxy.

But I can’t.

I don’t take my promises lightly, and breaking this one has been a difficult decision for me, but ultimately, it came down to one simple thing: to attempt the gallon challenge would be to go against nearly all of the ground rules I set for myself when beginning Project: Proxy.

Namely, those rules deem that the gallon challenge is:

a) immoral

b) illegal, and

c) seriously life-threatening.

How, you ask?

a) immoral: One gallon of milk cost some poor mother cow a lot of pain and misery. It’s bad enough I utilise their babies’ milk for my own nourishment; can I really allow myself to waste an entire gallon for a passing fancy? How many pregnant cows must lose their babies and stay in a permanent state of lactation for me to have my laughs? I cannot condone such wastefulness.

b) illegal: It goes against my legal code to waste $5.00 on a gallon of milk just to purposely vomit it back up again. I should be arrested for even thinking of committing such an heinous crime.

c) seriously life-threatening: The gallon challenge is a very dangerous, possibly even life-threatening practice. Well, according to this guy, anyway (but that is enough proof for me). And anyway, even if participating in the gallon challenge didn’t pose the risk of exploding my esophagus or screwing up my body’s electrolyte levels and killing me instantly, there would still be the unsettling fact that I’m almost guaranteed to throw up, and for me to willingly enter into such an unpleasant ordeal would be seriously damaging to my psychological health, because I really really hate throwing up.

For reals. I would be such a bad bulimic.

So, I’m sorry, Cristin. But I just can’t do it.

Submit something else, if you feel you can ever trust me again.

How about you ask me to draw a picture of what it would look like if I had fulfilled my promise?

Sure, I’d love to. Thanks for asking:

As for Lent, we’re still golden. (I learned this week that we aren’t supposed to tell what we gave up for Lent; it’s supposed to be a personal act of faith between God and ourselves. Oops.  Sorry to the Catholics. I didn’t mean any disrespect.)
Posted in blogger finger, failures, oh brother what next, Project: Proxy, woe is me | 9 Comments

It’s Not Good Lookin’ But It’s Lookin’ Good

by Camille Posted on March 1, 2010

In an attempt to look a little more fashionable (an attempt, by the way, also known as The Most Hopeless Cause Known to Man), I have decided to put some effort into my daily appearance. I figure, I’m getting to be kind of an adult, and it might be in my favour to look the part.

But then, that’s all it really is, isn’t it?  A part—a role? Because anybody with the tiniest bit of perceptiveness could see that I really am a toddler in a woman’s body.

But anyway, I’m trying. This decision has mainly been inspired by Niki’s weekly outfit report, Kate’s inspiring finds, and Angela’s always-lovely vignettes. I want to build a vintage vibe (mostly because thrift store shopping is cheap, but also because the aforementioned girls thrive on vintage and always look so lovely, so put together). I want to develop creative ways to accessorise. I want to go out of my comfort zone and see what happens. But mostly I want to figure out something to wear to school besides jeans and hoodies that will still be warm (that’s another thing to consider; I rely so much on hoodies because the weather in Canada sort of demands it {but there are lots of girls at school who still look really cute even dressed for winter, while I sort of end up looking like Frumpgirl five days a week}).

So I put on four different outfits on Saturday and this was the best I could come up with:

I didn’t realise it til now, but it looks like I’m the world’s biggest ASU fan (which I am not). Also, I didn’t realise it til now, but I didn’t look very good at all. I just don’t know how to put clothes together beyond the basic T with a sweater over it. I tried on three different belts in three different ways—over the T shirt but under the sweater, over the T shirt and sweater both, and around my head like a hippie (that last one was a joke)—and none of them looked good.

It’s no secret that I don’t know how to accessorise any other way than with a necklace or earrings. Even my hair doo-dads are booo-ring.

(Although I did try my hand at putting a tiny braid in my hair before I pinned it up, as I’ve noticed is popular today. I thought it looked passable, but when I went to see Poor Kyle, he took one look at it and laughed. Sad day.) (You can see it looping out on the right side of my head, in the middle. Fail.)

Anyway, the point is, I need help. I have decided I own way too many clothes to be looking this shabby all the time (by “this shabby” I mean I rarely wear anything besides jeans and a T shirt/hoodie anywhere—school, errands, appointments, wherever).  I’m going to go through my closet aggressively and get rid of anything I haven’t worn in the last year, and then rotate the remaining clothes in creative ways until I can afford to get a new wardrobe. It’s a bit extreme, but something’s gotta change.

What are your staple items of clothing? Do they bore you, or are you pleased with your current duds?

Posted in change, failures, fashion people, I hate change, mondays suck, thisandthat | 21 Comments