I changed yesterday’s hair appointment to this morning so they could block out enough time to give me streaks along with my cut. I rolled out of bed exactly 10 minutes before I was supposed to be there, so it reverted back to cut only, since I was late.

Oh the excitement! A former classmate of Ass Burger Boy’s is now in the Academy of Cosmetology, and she is a sweetie, one who was always very kind to him. She is also the most innovative and creative of the students. I can spot the talent every time, and when I get one to cut my hair, I tell them to have as much fun and be as creative as they wish.

She was so excited that I gave her free rein and she did not disappoint. Her supervisor suggested taking pictures for her portfolio, and brought the owner over to see the results.

I gave her my card, as it turns out she needs a reading, and went home and wasted my new do by promptly getting into my jammies. But I love it, really. I just love free-boobing more.

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Gone Yesterday, Hair Today

She brought another friend, who I had met previously, and while I did the reading in my office, the two others concocted food plans for the day. Her food buddy, Red, is a professional cook, and never cooks for Warrior Woman. Instead, she buys a load of food and schleps it over to WW’s apartment, and entrusts it to her excellent care.

Warrior Woman has a fetish for cookbooks, and by that I mean, get your mind out of the gutter, Knudsey. She collects them. She is a most excellent cook. I always look forward to her needing my techy help because she prefaces the request with an invite to dinner. Yum. It gives a whole new delicious meaning to “Will work for food.”

She hasn’t yet been able to replicate my most excellent homemade pizzas though, and it causes her pizza envy, Oh, be quiet, Knudsey.

So whenever she asks me if I have a hankering for my favourite red wine, I start a batch of pizza dough, because I know that’s what she wants for supper. She doesn’t ask directly for anything, rather she offers something first. It’s a funny little dance we do. The dance is funnier with the larger bottle of wine.

There is an art to making cheeseless pizza. (We both have issues). First, the crust must be thin. I use a rolling pin. And multigrain flour. I’m quirky that way. I also throw a few herbs into the dough.

The sauce is nothing special, just your everyday pasta sauce. I saute my onions and garlic before I put them on. I make sure I add herbs and spices to the mixture while it is frying. I use a mixture of ground pork and ground lean beef, suitably fried and spiced, and the thing that makes it so yummy is the sausage. Oh, the sausage. Sun-dried tomato sausage, fried and sliced up ahead of time. A few raw sliced mushrooms, and Bob’s your uncle.

It’s a lot of work to make pizza at casa witchypoo, but I cook a lot of the ingredients ahead of time and freeze them into pizza-sized portions.

It’s practically a tradition now. We only eat pizza when WW visits. If someone else came for pizza, it would feel like we were cheating on her. I guess you could say about me “Will cook for wine.”

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Will Work for Food, Will Cook for Wine

I was accompanied by Warrior Woman, and on the bus ride I made a few observations, which prompted her to ask if I would blog about it. Since anything is blog fodder, I said not only could I blog about it, but she could too, and they would be totally different in tone, detail, and emphasis.

When she asked me how to set up a blog, I wondered why, because she doesn’t talk a lot. Turns out she has plenty to say. And? She says it well. I like that in a woman.

I have to confess I have a thing about riding the bus. Not a good thing either. I’m a bit of a germophobe, and the bus just makes me want to wash my hands. Immediately.

As we sit down, I notice immediately opposite me a man who is mining for nose nuggets. Of course, he was going to touch everything possible, and he did. He isn’t the only one who I see doing that kind of thing. There are more fools sneezing INTO THEIR HANDS than I care to count. And they all do it on the bus, I swear. Then they touch things.

One thing I like about winter: gloves.

So booger man leaves. Across from me are now two people, not together. They should be, because they both have the same dead look in their eyes. What? Am I the only person who looks in people’s eyes? Dead, I tell you. The woman, well, I suspected by her sniffing that she had more than a cold making her eyes dead. I think a drug habit would account for both affects. Plus she had some growly, hateful vibe rolling off her.

The man didn’t seem to be on drugs. I think the dead-eye action could be despair. As in: Forty years old, and still riding the frickin bus.

There are the crazies, the old and lonely,(they usually sit up front because the driver will talk to them) and then there are the teens. In couples, all snuggly and giggly. In packs of same sex riders, usually a lot of loud, inappropriate talk. They’re kids. Let them be happy and obnoxious. They don’t care, and they’re too young to drive.

But let me tell you. When that bus has puked me up to my destination, I am a happy camper to get off.

And then I go and wash my hands. Immediately.

You can go shopping without going near a bus. Right here. Depending on how disgusting your keyboard is, you may have to wash your hands afterwards.

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Bus driver, once more round the block

• Even though my mom died in 2005, I still avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks. “Step on a crack, you break your mother’s back” I hear her in my head laughing at me when I avoid them. I don’t mind mom in my head at all. Do you find that creepy? I miss her, I’ll take what I can get. *wiping eyes*
• I still eat some form of bread with Jello, or canned fruit, because when I was a kid, mom made our meals stretch by filling us up with bread. “Eat bread with it” lives on, even after she has died. The only difference is I only buy or make whole grain/whole wheat breads.
• I never read for myself, and seldom get anyone to do a reading for me. I like surprises. Except where it involves money. Then I like happy surprises.
• In the summertime, I like to put green streaks in my blonde hair. They’re fun, and make me insanely happy. I don’t know why.
• I can’t reproduce a musical note. When Dances with Shrapnel was about two, I used to sing to him, until he put his hands over his ears and screamed “DON’T SING!!!!” It hurt my feelings because I didn’t think someone that young would be able to ridicule my singing. When I was begged by Ass Burger Boy to go Christmas Caroling with him, I was so humiliated, I had to explain that mom has a very, very, bad singing voice. I wish I had thought of lip-synching.
• I like to make up words, and have my own nicknames for other people’s pets. It drives Warrior Woman crazy that her cats, Salem and Luna, are referred to as Satan and Looney. Another friend who does not want to be identified had two adolescent sibling kittehs, which I promptly dubbed “Heckle and Jeckyl”, a nickname that only old people would get. Sometimes, people like the nicknames so much that they start to refer to their pets by my nickname for them. Score!

Fascinating, I know. Sorry. If there were two of me, I would call myself Lame and Lamer.

Now for the lucky tagees: No need to thank me, really.

• Because I want to know something more personal about her, ALF
• She says that memes fill her with happiness. I am about to become her happiness fairy. I hit Candy lightly bonking her with my magic wand. On the head. Get your minds out of the gutter.
• Of course, Zoe, who really doesn’t have enough to do what with taking her oldest son to medical appointments all the time and looking after three other kids when she isn’t at work. I heart her.
• Because he has the vilest tags for memes, and abhors them, and because if you follow his link, you will most likely see vile images,but lots of funny, I dub Old Knudsen
• He dreams of populating the world with genuine bloggers.Jeremy
• I would like to know more about him. He wrote about bacon. Funny, but not personal. Ten

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Tagged, but no price tag

Warrior Woman is a client who has become a friend. She’s quite gifted psychically herself, but needs some guidance on boundaries. For instance, it isn’t nice to read minds. I do not do it. Not because I can’t, but for the same reason that I wouldn’t read your mail. Because it’s rude.

Warrior Woman likes to check up on her friends to see how they are doing. Instead of picking up the phone, or clicking on her email client, she likes to do what she calls “crawling through their minds” to see what they are up to.

I can always tell when somebody is trying to get into my mind. It is always accompanied by a physical sensation, something like a tingling, but not quite, along my scalp. I immediately put up my shields when this happens. I figure anyone who crosses that boundary line certainly does not belong there.

Shortly after Warrior Woman’s first reading, I felt the crawling through my brain sensation, and put up my guards. When she phoned for her next appointment, I told her that I had felt her being intrusive, and I would not work with her unless she respected my boundaries. It’s too much freaking work to have to keep your shields up whenever someone wants to trip through your tulips.

She apologized and said she did it so routinely with her friends that it had become automatic with her. I gave her a verbal spanking and confirmed the appointment. She brought me a prezzie to demonstrate her remorse. Forgive and forget. Life went on.

She’s a great cook, and we went back and forth with dinner invites. I always got the better of the deal. She has the better food. Plus, she has the coolest kitchen gadgets. And wine. There is much wine.

So Warrior Woman calls me a few weeks ago and asks if I want to attend a Jimmy Rankin concert. She has some tickets and needs a body to fill the other seat.

I have been deep in the bat cave of late, only going out for the necessities. I really like the place I live in, and nothing much outside spins my crank as much as home does. Plus, I need only wear my comfy jammies. My comfy warm, yummy jammies. With socks, no high heels. No instrument of feminine torture bra. What’s not to love?

Warrior Woman has her kitchen gadgets, but she covets my home. Can’t really blame her. It rocks. It was built about 150 years ago by a manufacturing family, and it was since an elementary school, now converted to flats. I have the best flat, where all the mansion-y grandeur still shines. The living room alone is 20′ x 40′, the dining room/office is about half that size, both panelled in old wood reminiscent of a men’s club.

So, the concert night rolls around and I drag my sad droopy butt over the pond to Jimmy’s place. I have always been partial to Canuck music, and The Rankin Family is pure down home, toe-tapping, spoon-clacking goodness.

Jimmy wrote a lot of the tunes the family played and sang, until their breakup a while back. I was kind of thinking I would get to experience some of that Rankin magic in Jimmy’s solo concert.

It was a great venue, with excellent acoustics. We had great seats.

The opening act was a cute young fellow who wrote his own material. As soon as he hit the mike, BOOM! He dropped his guitar. Didn’t bat an eye, just exclaimed “It’s still in tune!”

Wrong.

He soldiered on through the first song, then tuned the durned guitar. My ears immediately stopped bleeding were grateful.

After about three songs, he announced an intermission before the feature act came on.

There was much admiring of all the artfully placed pretty guitars on the stage, and many technical adjustments, people coming off stage and going to the lobby, and all kinds of boring crap entertaining hijinks.

If you are not of the Canuckian persuasion, you need to be reminded that Canadians are a polite and appreciative audience. Really. I know. I’m so very proud. So this polite Canadian audience is rather subdued in the venue with the great acoustics, fixing to enjoy us a little Jimmy love.

Forty minutes later, the majority of the audience is either in a coma, or terminally programmed for politeness, because Jimmy, he hasn’t made an appearance yet.

When the golden boy finally does appear, I am steaming with the disrespect shown the audience. What does he think he is? A rock star?

How many technical adjustments and sound checks does he need? The young fella didn’t keep us waiting and he DROPPED HIS FREAKING GUITAR.

Jimmy’s guitar playing, for all those pretty guitars and many technical adjustments, sucked. Big time. And he does have a loud singing voice, but he was shouting, not singing.

I felt a scalp tingling, gave WW a psychic slap, and figured I had kept her out.

I looked at Warrior Woman and she spoke the words that were running through my mind: “I wonder what drugs he is high on?”

Mind intrusion aside, I was pretty sure that we both thought he was zonked, explaining the delays and the craptastical lacklustre performance.

A few bars into the second song, and we knew we were not in for a good experience, so we looked at each other with the “scramoose” gesture, and out we went.

All I could think was “AND I PUT A BRA ON FOR THIS?”

Yes, that is really what it boils down to. If I am going to endure the instrument of feminine torture, then there had best be some mighty fine entertainment in it for me.

Jimmy, I think I know why The Rankin Family Band broke up. Your sisters were tired of your drug addicted arse unprofessional behaviour.

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Out of the bat cave with Warrior Woman