One Giant Crapshoot

by Camille Posted on November 3, 2009

Today I waxed my own eyebrows.  (At the encouragement of my friend Genevra, without whom I would’ve never even CONSIDERED taking such a huge leap of faith in myself.  Thanks, friend!)

Here’s a really awful before-and-after comparison. {You’ll be a gem and excuse my atrocious pictures and my atrocious face?  I’m in bed right now and I’m only typing this because I accidentally took a nap earlier this afternoon and therefore ruined my chances of coming even remotely close to achieving REM any time before midnight tonight.  Foiled again by my own good intentions.  I’ve got to stop doing that.}

Eyebrows beforeThis photo was taken a few weeks ago, and if you think the fuzzy centipedes hovering over my eye sockets were bad then…well, you can trust me when I say they were only getting worse.

Eyebrows 1…and here they are today.  I know, you can hardly tell a difference because you’re so distracted by my unkempt hair and emotionless eyes, but I, at least, can see the difference.  I’ve been walking around all afternoon caressing that unnamed piece of skin between my eyebrows, going, “Smooth…smooth…so smooth…”  Because it had been a while since the last time I’d defuzzed.

Eyebrows 2And here’s a close-up.  For your convenience.

Anyway, I learned two things from my personal eyebrow-waxing experience.

First, I learned that sometimes we just need to TRY something new, even if we’re pretty much certain we’ll fail.  Was it scary to wield that sticky toothpick so close to my eyebrows?  Yes, most definitely.  But at the same time, I realised that eyebrows are just a tiny collection of little hairs, and if I totally butchered mine, they would grow back, and if they didn’t, I could always just tattoo some fake ones in their places.  That would be awesome in absolutely every sense of the word.

And second, I learned that salons are making a killing on this stuff. $12.00 to get my eyebrows waxed at a fancy salon, when they buy their product in bulk and probably only spend twenty cents’ worth of wax per eyebrow?  That’s like, a 99% profit.  I totally want in on this.

And so, after one trial run, I’ve decided to go pro.  I’ve been looking for ways to make some extra money without getting a real job (which I’m still not allowed to do), and I’ve finally found something that does not involve scrubbing my neighbors’ toilets or selling homemade salsa door-to-door (though I’m still considering that last option).  Anyone in the local vicinity who would like me to run amok with the body sugar and some muslin strips, just go ahead and give me a call.  I’ll only charge three dollars per brow, and throw in an upper lip for free.  I mean, who wouldn’t put their appearance in the hands of a complete amateur who has already professed to know and care very little about all things fashionable?  It’s a great idea!  I’m not licensed; not even a little…but doesn’t that make it more exciting?

That’ll be my company slogan…

Camille’s Cosmetic Crapshoot: We’re not licensed…that’s why we’re so cheap.  100% satisfaction guarantee, or your money—wait, never mind about the satisfaction.  You get what you pay for, and all sales are final.

Come to think of it, reading this blog is kind of like shooting craps with your time every day.  You never know what I’m going to write about; some days, you might be forced to read about my eyebrows and my business schemes and my hair follicles and the like.  Some days, reading my blog is a total waste of your time.  Some days, you just get majorly gypped.

Good thing it’s cheap to read.

Posted in change, Cutting Back, I hate change, It's All Good, oh brother what next | 12 Comments

The Gimme Kid is Ruining My Life

by Camille Posted on November 2, 2009

So how was all ya’ll’s Halloween?  Did you get a visit from The Gimme Kid?

What?  You’ve never heard of The Gimme Kid?  Oh, I’m sure you have—you just didn’t know that was his name.

Gimme KidThis is just one of many possible depictions of The Gimme Kid.

The Gimme Kid comes in all shapes and sizes, which makes it difficult to recognise him at first glance.  It could be anyone’s kid—it could be your kid (*shudder*).  It’s hard to pinpoint who he is simply by looking, but unfortunately, there’s no mistaking him once he opens his grubby grubby little mouth.  He says obnoxious things like, “GIMME!” and “NOM NOM NOM CANDY!”

I hate The Gimme Kid.  I hate ingrates, and The Gimme Kid’s most striking feature is his ungratefulness.  He pounds on the front door instead of ringing the bell politely, and instead of saying “Trick or Treat” like he’s supposed to, he just stands there waiting for his handout.  I hate when kids don’t even say “Trick or Treat.”  I mean, the candy’s already free—can’t you say three little words to make the mooching official?  How hard is that?

The Gimme Kid’s newest favourite Halloween tradition is the Trunk or Treat.

Oh, the Trunk or Treat—how I loathe your existence.  When I was a kid, Halloween was something noble—I spent hours and hours cavorting through the streets of my neighborhood, RUNNING [not walking] from house to house, trying to hit as many jackpots as possible.  It was hard WORK.  My sister and I thought we were brilliant and lucky the year my mom agreed to actually drive us across town so we could finally see what it was like in the neighborhoods full of big houses {it was amazing}.  By the end of the night on Halloween, we were too exhausted to do anything but lay limp on the living room floor and separate our candy into piles and sub-piles.  We even had to pay the Parent Tax on all our earnings, because without them, we wouldn’t have had costumes in the first place.  It was work, I tell you.

Halloween used to be a noble cause, but these days, kids go down to the local church parking lot and saunter gaily from trunk to trunk, open their pillowcases and wait for their windfall.  They fill up half their bag without even breaking a sweat.  Trunk or Treats are destroying the work ethic of the future (right, like Halloween was teaching such good lessons in the first place, but you catch my drift).

Although I’ve never lowered myself to attending such a hoax as a local Trunk or Treat, I can only imagine The Gimme Kid’s little under-exercised heart palpitating at such an easy acquisition of free candy.  Little bastard probably doubles up and makes the rounds twice.

Man, I really hate that kid.

Anyway, this year Poor Kyle and I gave out full sized candy bars from Costco because we wanted to be the awesomest house, which, in my day, we totally would’ve been.  But in this day and age, only one or two kids exclaimed our awesomeness—most of them stared blankly ahead, seeing nothing, wishing they could be back at home in front of the Cartoon freaking Network.

Not only did we not get proclaimed “Awesome!” as much as we were hoping, but half of the kids barely even mumbled out a “Thank You” for the full-sized candy bars.  Perhaps they were disappointed we weren’t a KING-sized candy bar house.  Perhaps they just don’t know how to verbally communicate now that they all have cell phones with texting capabilities.  Perhaps we should’ve set up a keypad next to our doorbell so they could’ve texted us “trk r trt” and “THX” and been on their way.  Maybe we’ll change a lot of things next year…maybe we’ll just go out of town.

Halloween used to be my favourite holiday, better than Christmas, even.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m away from home, or because of the vast increase in population of The Gimme Kids in general, or perhaps just the fact that I’m not the one getting the free handouts anymore…but I’m totally switching my loyalties over to Veteran’s Day.

Posted in Canada, failures, fiascos, Married Life, mondays suck, oh brother what next | Tagged | 21 Comments

Fox in Dog’s Clothing

by Camille Posted on October 28, 2009

So this one day, I was taking a walk through the streets of Mayberry (the town where I live), minding my own business (although I may or may not have been peeking into people’s uncovered windows as I walked on the sidewalk past their houses, so I guess technically I really wasn’t minding my own business…in fact, I’d venture to say that half the time I claim to be minding my own business I am actually nosing in on other people’s…) when I started to get chased by an unidentified species of animal.

It was really strange, being chased by an animal without knowing exactly what was chasing me.  Very Alfred Hitchcock.  Eventually, I decided it was a fox.  I’ll describe the animal for you, and you can tell me if you think I was right:

Smallish; its head reached the middle of my calves; pointy ears; golden fur; long, bushy tail with white fur on the bottom; sinister, beady little eyes; and a wide, toothy grin that said to me (if foxes could speak English, that is), “I am very sly, as foxes are, and I would like to eat you for a snack.”

See?  Totally sounds like a fox.

But then, I couldn’t be sure it was a fox, because one, I grew up in Arizona, where there is an abundance of desert coyotes, but a stark shortage of foxes, and I had therefore never seen a fox in my life; and two, Mayberry is a town located in the flat prairie land of Southern Alberta, Canada, and I was pretty sure foxes were more of woodland creatures than farm pets.  So why should a fox have been chasing me?

Nevertheless, the facts were these: I was walking home after picking up my mail at the local watering hole, and a few blocks away from our house, this FOX! sneakily approached me from behind a hedge.  He was following me with that sly, greedy look on his face, and he wasn’t at a very safe distance—when I say he was following me, I mean he was right on my heels, nearly in the same square of sidewalk as me with every step I took.  He was not very shy, that fox.  When I slowed down, he slowed down, acting all, “What, lady?  You’re walking slower, thinking I’ll get bored and chase somebody else for dinner?  Okay, I’ll just meander over to this tree here and act like I’m not picturing you dead in a bloody, dismembered mess at my feet…” When I sped up, he would have a mini-heart attack, thinking I was getting away, so he’d frantically run in front of me and stop, facing me on the sidewalk, just daring me to pass him.

He was menacing.

By the time I got in front of my house, I was really worried that he wouldn’t let me through the door.  Luckily, I made a mad dash for the garage, and since I had longer legs than him, I reached it just in the nick of time.  I hurled myself over the threshold and SLAMMED! the door behind me, almost smashing the fox’s wily nose in the process, but I didn’t care.  Because you know me: blogger by day; renegade vigilante protector-of-the-neighborhood-kids by night.  All the better to smell you with, Mr. Fox…

Anyway, when Poor Kyle got home from work that day, I told him how close I had come to being the main course for a fox’s feast, and he laughed.

“No way,” he said, “there aren’t any foxes here.  That’s insane.”

Smugly, I whipped out my cell phone, with which I had furtively photographed my perpetrator during the harrowing experience, because we all know that if we don’t take pictures of events, they never really happened, and here is what I showed him for proof {and I do apologise for the poor quality of these photos, but you know, when one is being pursued by a carnivorous beast, one can’t really focus the camera phone as well as one normally might}:

FOX18Totally a fox.

FOX7Right?  It’s a fox?

FOX8That bushy tail?  That hungry grin?  Fox?

And Poor Kyle looks me dead in the eye, and says, “Camille…that is a dog.”

Posted in failures, fiascos, It's All Good, Married Life, mediocrity, oh brother what next | 25 Comments

Return on Investment

by Camille Posted on October 27, 2009

My favourite part of being in school is the day I get assignments graded and handed back.  Even if I don’t get the grade I was expecting, I am always relieved to know that I got a grade.

It’s the same reason I thrive on comments with this blog—because feedback is so satisfying.  Even if it’s negative, at least it proves someone read what I wrote.

I’m pretty sure that’s been my problem these past few weeks, both with school and my blog: I wasn’t getting any feedback.  I’d wake up and go to school and read read read and write and study and take exams and submit papers…but up to today, I had not received even one grade back for any of my assignments.  Likewise, with my blog, I was putting so much effort into writing daily posts, but not receiving the quantity of feedback I expected [though you’ll never catch me saying that the quality is poor—I value my commenters!], and apparently, such lack of feedback is detrimental to my psychological health.

I guess that means I have a feedback complex.  My character is weak that way.  I should really work on that.

At any rate, today has been a good day, because I got over myself and re-opened comments on the ol’ blog, and ALSO, I got a paper and a midterm back.  Graded.

The midterm grade was an A-, which was not great, but also not bad, considering I completed it in one hectic morning—and anyway, it was just for extra credit.

But the essay—the ESSAY, my friends!  I got a really good grade on it.

I’m not going to brag, because everybody knows how rude that is (although I’ve been accused of starting this blog for the sole intent of  bragging in the first place, {but I secretly suspect that comment came from my lifelong rival Becca Flunt, who may or may not be reading this but if you are, Becca, I WANT MY MONEY BACK!}), so instead I’ll give you a hint: My grade rhymes with SLEIGH—SLEIGH FLUSS, if we’re being specific.  And we always are.  Specific, that is…

Sleigh FlussExcept for when we’re vague…

Anyway, the joy of my Awesome, Astounding, Astronomically Amazing grade (ahem) was further compounded by the professor swearing that she marks her papers brutally, and that nobody should worry when they saw their grade, because they could make up lost points with extra credit.  (Also, I may or may not have seen a few fellow students rush out with flushed cheeks and tears streaming down their faces {which I do not make light of because that was me just last semester, and could very well be me again in a couple of days.})

So yeah.  Sleigh fluss.

Just last week, if you had asked me whether or not I was happy to be in school, I would have asked you an equally stupid question like, “Were the Jews happy to go to the ghettos?” (although that might have come off as callous and I could have gotten in a bit of trouble saying that, but of course I don’t mean to make the Holocaust a joking matter—it’s just how I feel about school).  Today, though, if you ask me whether or not I’m happy to be in school, I’ll still look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Not a chance,” but I might get a little twinkle in my eye and smile, adding, “No, I’m not happy to be in school; but at least I’m not wasting the money my parents and Poor Kyle have invested in it.  Sleigh fluss.”

And who knows—maybe someday they’ll actually see a return on their financial backing.

Posted in my edjumacation and me | Tagged | 7 Comments

The Junk Drawer

by Camille Posted on October 26, 2009

All my pre-married life, I lived in a house that had a junk drawer.  It was always in the kitchen—why is it that we never have enough cupboard space, but we have drawers in such abundance that we fill them with random junk just so they can have a purpose?  I don’t know, but that’s how it was in my family.  The one time we moved, we packed up the kitchen cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer, and, while the cups and plates and silverware had to share one box between them, the junk drawer stuff got its own box, ready to dump into the appointed drawer in the kitchen of the new house.

Years later, when my parents decided to completely renovate the kitchen at the second house, we once again packed up all the contents of the existing cupboards and drawers, and, once again, the junk drawer stuff got its own box.  When the two-month remodel was finally complete and we were at last able to use the kitchen sink instead of the bathtub for washing dishes…you’d better believe the junk drawer junk came back with a fervor.  Over its time in exile in the living room, the junk drawer box had accumulated even more junk than it had ever known before—living room junk, bedroom junk, it was all there.  When the remodel was finished, the junk drawer had to spill over into not one, but two other drawers—THREE JUNK DRAWERS!  Luckily, my parents had planned for such overflow, and the new kitchen layout was perfect for such an arrangement.  We were so rich, with our three junk drawers.

To this day, if my mom says, “Can you grab me the so-and-so?  It’s in the junk drawer,” it takes three times longer to find than ever before.  I firmly believe that junk drawers are a status symbol of the middle class.

What was in the junk drawer/s that made it/them so special?  Junk.  Naturally.  But not just any junk—good junk.  Anything that any family member came across which didn’t have any designated place, but was nevertheless too useful to be thrown away.  Stuff like rubber bands, paper clips, random batteries of every size, pencils without erasers, half-petrified sticks of gum, pennies encrusted with a layer of bread crumbs, rolls of Scotch™ tape that had long ago lost their spools, cough drops enveloped in tattered wrappers, and maybe—just maybe, if we were lucky—a watermelon Jolly Rancher™.

There was so much hope in a junk drawer.

It got so that the junk drawer was no longer the place for place-less stuff, but the actual place where stuff belonged in the first place.  (Huh?)  That is to say…at first, we just stuck the scissors in the junk drawer because we didn’t have a home office, and it was the only place we could think to put them.  Eventually, though, the junk drawer was the designated holding place of the scissors—all hell would break loose whenever they were misplaced.  “HAS ANYBODY SEEN THE *@#!!! SCISSORS?”  “I put them in the mug of pens next to the computer.”  “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT WHEN YOU KNOW THEY BELONG IN THE JUNK DRAWER?”  So obvious—duh.

Now that I’ve moved out and live in a house of my own, I’m sad to say that I don’t have the luxury of a junk drawer in my kitchen.  As it happens, we actually need every drawer we have.  Trust me, though: If we ever find ourselves with excess money and a hankering to overhaul our kitchen, adding in a junk drawer will be my first act—even before stainless steel appliances or subway tiles.  It makes me sad to know that next time I need a double-A battery, I’ll be able to walk straight to the office where we keep them—no searching necessary.  Gone are the days of fumbling through the kitchen junk drawer, asking the person on the phone to hold on just a sec, this pen is out of ink, wait, here’s a pencil—no, the lead is broken, dammit—can you just call back later, please?!  I liked the treasure hunt that accompanied the junk drawer at my parent’s house—I could whittle away hours of my day looking for one single needle or a pocket knife or paintballs.  I really miss that.

Good thing I have an entire room devoted to junk in my basement…it may not be the kitchen junk drawer of my youth, but it’s the next best thing:

Basement junk roomI spent an hour down there yesterday looking for the wrapping paper I knew was in there.

That sort of under-productivity is just the sort of boost I needed to gear up for another week of university.

Posted in change, family, I hate change, It's All Good, kitchen failures, short stories/vignette | Tagged | 22 Comments

And So it is Written; And So it Will Be.

by Camille Posted on October 25, 2009

I had an epiphany.

I was reading this book for school called The Englishman’s Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe, and I noticed that printed on the cover was a boastful announcement that the book was a winner of the Governor General’s Award, which is pretty much the highest honour a Canadian novel can attain in its lifetime.

The Englishman's Boy

Governor General's AwardSee?  Not a word of a lie.

I kept that image in the recesses of my mind throughout the first half of the book, thinking about every page I read, considering if it was a page worthy of such an honour.  I’m only halfway through with the book so far, but I’ve already decided that I could write something just as good.

Enter my epiphany.

See, all my life, I’ve only ever wanted to be a prodigy. I didn’t care what kind of prodigy—musical genius, child star, world-renowned painter by the age of four—it didn’t matter.  I just wanted to be one.  However, the time margin for becoming a prodigy is rather narrow.  I wasn’t that brilliant at the piano, and my mom wouldn’t take me to L.A. for commercial auditions like I begged, so I was pretty much S.O.L.  Child prodigies can’t very well take a cab to California, now can they?  They’d miss the school spelling bee (which, by the way, I didn’t win, so there went the dream of being a prodigious speller, too).  By the time Lindsay Lohan completed filming the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, I knew I’d missed my chance.  At the age of twelve, really good musicians are just…really good musicians.  By the time they’re fourteen, child stars are just early bloomers.  Nothing spectacular about that.

BUT.  (There’s so much hope in a “but,” don’t you think?)

But, that was before I knew I wanted to write a book.  Now that I’ve got a new goal in mind, it’s like I’ve been born again—I’ve got a brand new lease on life.  By novelist’s standards, I’m just an infant!  I figure I have until I’m 27 or 28 to be a young author; any time after that, and I’ll just be an author in her 30s.  No biggie. But if I start NOW and have a manuscript ready by next year, I’ll only be 24, and that’s still pretty young to be getting books published.

So there it is.  My newest purpose in life.  Starting today, every spare minute that I’m not writing for school or for this blog will be spent writing my manuscript for my very first novel.

You can hold me accountable to that.  One year from now, if I don’t have a deal signed, I’ll be starting a new manuscript.

And so it begins.

When I’m famous or even dead, my Wikipedia page will note this as the beginning of “The Prolific Years.”

Posted in Book Reports, change, It's All Good, mediocrity, mondays suck, oh brother what next, self-actualisation, thisandthat | Comments Off on And So it is Written; And So it Will Be.

Killing the Art

by Camille Posted on October 23, 2009

Do you ever find yourself obligated to say something even when you have nothing to say?

That’s me and this blog right now.

This week has been intense, between school…and really, only school.  Every day I wake up and head off to that hellhole and think to myself, “Someday…there has GOT to be a point in my life when I will either stop hating this or just be graduated.”  I can’t see that day, though, is the thing.

That’s always been a problem for me: Visualization.  I don’t work well with algebra, for example, because I can’t make all those equations come together in my head.  Geometry, though, with the shapes and the line segments and the faces and planes that I can put together out of construction paper and see and touch and feel?  I get it.  I need concrete.  Not abstract.

And so when I’m enrolled in three upper-level English classes whose professors all think that THEIR subject is the Holy of Holies of literature {which I can understand because if I wasted my entire life writing a dissertation on a huge pile of nonsense that is stuffy elitist literature, I would be inclined to take it pretty seriously, too [which is why you will never see me set FOOT in a graduate class, and that’s a promise]}, and therefore assign biblical amounts of reading for their course, and not only the reading because if it was just the reading it would be like an extended vacation, but no, we mustn’t forget the writing—oh, the writing—the papers, the essays, the midterms, the research, the effing MLA format.  All of it combined has a peculiar way of making me want to pull out every strand of hair from my body and mourn the passing of my life as I once knew it.

See how I get dramatic when I read too much Modernist literature?  It’s unhealthy.

And I know, I know… I want to be a writer and so all this writing shouldn’t be a problem, but don’t you see?  CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS DOING TO ME?  It’s sucking the life out of me.  Forcing myself to write all these research papers which I don’t care about—not one lick, truth be told—on subjects I won’t ever discuss again as long as I am living and discussing?

It’s killing the art.  Charles P. Wiggins the Third is dying, dying, dying, a slow and torturous death.  He wishes he’d never taken up smoking the cancerous English language in the first place, and how could he be so stupid?  With the FDA warning labels, he should’ve seen it coming, but he got addicted—not to nicotine, but to rhetoric—and mark my words, my friends: IT WILL BE THE DEATH OF HIM.

And so it is with much sorrow I announce that, yet again…

…I got nothin.

Posted in my edjumacation and me, sad things, woe is me | Tagged , | 1 Comment