Category Archives: Friends

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Pre-wedding hilarioty

OK so my lovely friend Jen has finally caved is finally getting married!  By finally, I mean if you ever met these two you would throw up in your mouth a little at how truly awesome they are together and after years of convincing, nagging and pleading (that was mostly me) with Jen, she finally decided that life was too damn short (because it is) and finally said YES!  I am certain that I wasn\’t the only one who said its about damn time!

Here\’s le happy couple:

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Yeah Clint never smiles, seriously never.  I have however seen the guy laugh so its not all lost right?  Anyway Jen has some major health issues and while planning this wedding, any thoughts of a wedding shower/bacholorette party somewhat got flung to the wayside because we were all far too busy being worried sick about her and stuff.

So in the end we decided we were taking her out for dinner, then as her cousin Corina said dessert.

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Clint\’s comment was my favorite 😉

Dinner was FUN, our server must have thought we were on crack or something because strange things happen when you put 11 woman together in one place.  99% of them not being prudish…  No impromptu bacholorette party is complete without a blinking penis pacifier and these which ours were clear and may I add, not the best thing to be drinking daiquiris out of either…  I didn\’t realize our server was behind me as I was jamming my fork into the tip of this thing and when Corina asked me what the hell I was doing, I promptly replied:\” The hole is too damn small and no matter how hard I suck on the damn thing, nothing\’s coming out of it.\” Then Alex said to me, well that could be taken out of context in a number of ways.  He was fun, our neighboring tables, not so much…

Of course pictures to capture moments of sheer debauchery at best 🙂

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After dinner wrapped up, we headed off to club 281 for dessert as Corina stated or more so I\’m thinking a killer headache and a slight waste of money.  Although it did have its moments I must say.  Since its May and spring and summer weddings are hugely popular there was several bacholorette parties in the works that evening.  Upon our arrival Jen\’s look of horror as to where we were taking her was priceless!  Then things didn\’t get much better when some random dude tried to get in with us.  WTF?  Men are allowed in, pending they have a woman to accompany them.

This guy obviously didn\’t have one and tried to hone in on our party.  I told security at the front that he wasn\’t with us and glared at the French tard that tried to con a way in.  Needless to say, he got kicked out before he even got in the door.  Having never set foot in the place prior to last night, I didn\’t know what the whole deal was.  Coat check girl (Marie-Piere)  was a total, epic bitch.  Yeah obviously your pissy about the gaggle of screaming 20-somethings in their stilettos and tiara\’s but no need to be such a twat because you can\’t ogle over naked men.  Cos honey let me tell you, you ain\’t missing much.    We got there somewhat late so the place was already packed and our seating arrangement was less then ideal to say the least.  Here\’s a picture jacked from 281\’s facebook page just to illustrate how sucky it truly was:

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We were in the upper level off to the far side, couldn\’t really see much from that point of view.  Not to mention all the stupid bitches that kept standing in our way.  To add insult to injury, we were directly positioned in front of the spotlights that were pretty much blinding 90% of the time and in order to keep your seat your required to buy at least one beverage, alcoholic or not.  WTF, their prices BLEW my freaking mind!  I know bars aren\’t cheap but 6 bucks for a 250ml bottle of fancy water?  Yeah I know…  Here\’s their price list if you think I\’m exaggerating a little.

Speaking of which, our server was MIA and trying to track him down to pay our bill was a chore in and of itself!  We could have totally pulled a drink n dash but were honest people and paid up.  Hardly worth it, seeing as how it cost so damn much.  Anyhow all was not totally lost…  Seeing as how it was a bacholorette party and all, well a lap/table dance is pretty much mandatory right?  The look on Jen\’s face was EPIC to say the least!  Too bad camera\’s weren\’t allowed because that was a Kodak moment and then some.  So here\’s the guy that Corina being the good cousin she is picked out for Jen:

\"\"In case you haven\’t had enough, here\’s another one 😉

\"\"Jen was dumbfounded and speechless for the most part.  Although she did comment on how nice his tattoo was, and when it got to the point that he pretty much looked like this:

\"\"her facial expression wasn\’t nearly as joyful as the woman in the picture!  She looked so totally grossed out I thought she was going to vomit and to top it off, when he started flashing his ass in her face and smacked it hard enough to make quite the amount of noise she jumped half a foot out of her chair!  Jen\’s mom had her face buried in my arm, Corina and I were debating if we could get away with the whole \”no touching the dancers rule\” is we just smacked his ass with the whip and everyone else seemed to look away.  I mean really, way to suck the fun out of that ladies!

So to their credit, they do make an effort to put on a decent show, which is considerably better then Huggies, which might be closed now for all I know.  I\’m not into the whole strip club scene, having only visited one previously in my hometown I thought I would at least make an effort to keep an open mind.  I guess full on nudity is an option because I along with my guests seen a whole lot of pretty boys running around topless and flashing their butt cheeks but only 2-possibly three of them actually bared it all.  I might go again, I think my mom would get a kick out of it.  I am however going to go on a Thursday when the admission is lower, and earlier so I don\’t get a migraine and a sore neck from trying to get my money\’s worth 😉  Besides I\’d rather see him naked, its a whole lot more appealing, well to me at least!

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Depression, a boy & his puppy, oh and art.

\”Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn\’t permanent.\” – Jean Kerr

Couldn\’t have said it better myself.  Which is precisely the feeling I\’ve had pretty much all of last week.  As in, I hope this goes away, you know like yesterday?  So its been

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Since Jason died, but hey, who\’s keeping track?  Most days I\’m pretty much OK.  Wed April 21st? Not such an OK day, nor were the days leading up to it either.  As a matter of fact, those (the days leading to) were the worst.  A few years ago Jason asked me what it was like to be 30.  I simply & honestly replied \”Dude the first 6 months of being 30 were the best 6 months of my life\” and they were.  On. So. Many. Levels.  He replied with something to the effect of:\”I hope mine is just as good, gives me something to aim for/look forward to.  Except Jason didn\’t make it to be thirty years old.  Wed April 21st 2010 was Jason\’s 30th birthday.  That was a hard day.  A dark day if you will.  That whole week?  Hello depression!
I shut pretty much everyone out, I really didn\’t bother to correspond with anyone if I could help it and it sucked balls.  I\’m not going to lie.  You see, I had a conversation with someone not so long ago that sounded a little something like this:
Them:\”I don\’t ever say I\’m depressed, just \”sad\”.
Me: \”See, that pisses me off.\”
Them:\”Why?\”
Me: \”Because I am SO sick of the stigma around depression!  Sometimes you get depressed briefly, usually after a period of grief, its very common.  Also depression is a disease that affects so many people and those people sometimes don\’t get help because of statements like that!  Either they\’re afraid of the \”social stigma\” or too embarrassed or something along those lines. \”
Them: \”Well since you put it that way, you have a point\”
I at least like to think that I do…
Jason was a diagnosed manic depressive.  It made him suicidal.  Hence my burning desire to start Jason\’s memorial foundation.  These people who are suffering either briefly, or for the long term need to know that we are NOT afraid of how they feel!  Its human instinct to try and \”make someone feel better\” however I now know that its impossible.  Support them? Yes!  Make them feel as if they\’re less alone? Absolutely!  However \”feeling better\” in its truest form takes time, love, support and a whole lot of patience.  I hit an all time low last week that scared the shit out of me.  Not suicidal low, just OMG I haven\’t ever felt this \”dark\” inside in my entire life and it freaked me out.  I sought immediate help.  After doing a quick Google search I found  GROWW: Grief recovery online while this site is a bit of a pain in the ass to navigate, it was well worth the effort.
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So i\’m really

not so down with the sickness.  As a matter of fact, I hate being sick period.   So. Damn. Much.

I\’m one of those stubborn pain in the ass types who will still cook you dinner in spite of the fact that I\’m vomiting.  Yeah for real, that was last weekends lovely gastro incident.  I just couldn\’t give in.
Being sick makes me want to crawl into a whole and die, want my mommy, wonder how dare germs even think its OK to invade my body.
You see I was blessed with bronchial asthma.  So while most people will only get the common cold, mine travels south and takes up all the precious space in my lungs.  Its like a free-loading house guest that has over-stayed their welcome and refuses to leave.

I also hate being one of those people who runs to the doctor every time they have a runny nose.  So I generally suck it up and spend copious amounts of my precious hard earned money on OTC pills that I damn well know I\’m not supposed to take.
Oops my bad!
I still do it anyway because I need to work & I can not work around food while coughing up gobs of goo from anywhere in my body. Although this time around was quite the learning experience! Did you know that snot also comes in orange? This was news to me, believe it though. I seen it, it came out of my own nose.

Most of that crap has Dextromethorphan in it.  Asthmatics and people with various other diseases aren\’t allowed to have anything with DM in it because it gives you a false sense of wellness while its really hardening the goo inside your lungs.  I know, awesome right? Coughing to the point where you vomit is even more awesome, trust me on this.
So there I am thinking that I was finally starting to get over this abundance of crap & out of no where my sinus infection made a not so triumphant return. I was a little bitter needless to say.

So like every other damn time I get a cold, I get deathly ill.  Awesome coughing spasms that made him & my mom cringe.  After being damn near nagged to death several suggestions from concerned individuals to go see a Dr. which I relentlessly refused to do.  I caved.  Mostly because I promised him that if it got worse, I would in fact go see a Dr.  Because my Dr. Lambert\’s cough syrup just wasn\’t cutting it (also not nearly as effective as an inhaler according to him).  Well it was to a degree, because after two days even though I was coughing non stop, the phlegm was coming up with the force of a freight train on speed.

So was my dinner.

However on Easter Monday after having to bail not only on him (twice), but my friend Jen as well I said fuck it and went to the clinic.  Mostly because when I woke up that morning my sinuses were blocked like no one\’s business & when I made a lame attempt to breathe through my mouth I sounded like a coffee maker when its almost finished brewing.  Yeah I know, healthy isn\’t it?  That was a little disconcerting.  So after waiting three hours to see a Dr. for all of oh I dunno maybe 7 minutes I scored some heavy duty antibiotics & much to my chagrin a damn inhaler.

I must say that my 10 pills for the price of $30.00 dollars (co-pay) have started to work their magic.  The infection itself is gone & I now have the energy to dance around my living room in my underwear work, do some housework and you know function.   Ah but this inhaler and I are going to be BFF\’s for the next month.

FUN!

The infection may be gone, the inflammation however is sticking it out.  This inhaler scares me.  I was told by Dr. Converse there (he was wearing Chuck Taylor\’s, I respect that) that failure to rinse out my mouth after using this inhaler would lead to tongue fungus.   AKA Thrush or  even better: a yeast infection in your mouth. That sounds about as much fun as having one between my legs.  Although it just sounds so much sexier don\’t you think?  Mmmmmm  I can see it now: \” What do you mean you don\’t want to kiss me?  It was you who suggested I get an inhaler honey.\”  That\’s a total turn on right there!

At least this Dr. didn\’t have a \”sweater\” and sitting in the clinic for three hours wasn\’t nearly as amusing as sitting in the ER with Carly Cakes    for at least 8 hours after pulling a muscle from coughing so hard.  That time was even better, I was sporting a mask listening to her say wait for it, no, no, wait for it and then bust out singing the chorus to easy lover, dancing in the chair while we ate crap out of the vending machine out of sheer boredom, as I tried not to cough to death from laughing so hard.  At least she makes being sick fun & she brought me Arahova\’s (from the WI location, one of our favorite places) and that\’s one of the many reasons why I love her & miss her so! <3

I attacked my apt. with gusto using Lysol wipes, and other disinfectant things to kill the germs.  Now that I finally get to see him again, I just might spray his ass down with Lysol as well.

Just in case 😉

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…

\”Beauty is in the eye of the beholder means that different people will find different things beautiful and that the differences of opinion don\’t matter greatly.\”

So I was reading a post over at her bad mother .  Strangely enough I was talking to him about the time that my psycho ex boyfriends mom was and the time she said to me:\”You know Stephanie, you have a really nice smile.  Oh Thanks!  Although you could stand to loose a few pounds off your thighs.  *come again?*\” At least I know where he got it from.  I was maybe 15 or 16 at the time.  Anyway, hearing comments like that at any age is somewhat damaging, hearing it when you\’re in your early teens?  Damn near suicidal.   You see I had a really awkward time growing up.  I always looked different, growing up in a small town made my red hair that much more of a rarity, not to mention my freckles and my last name pretty much made me a prime target for being teased.  Oh yeah lets not forget I was the only one in my grade four class that wore a bra.  A real bra, not one of them training bra deals.  I was sassy but brutally shy on so. many. levels.  Cambridge was a bore, I grew up a little, learned to appreciate myself for who I was to a degree but I wanted more.  I got the utmost thrill from being bad (Sorry mom! I love you), rebel without a clue essentially sums it up.

I met Garnet when I was 15. He lived in Guelph which was a considerably bigger city that Cambridge and was everything that I wasn\’t.  We broke up after a few months, although we still had a few mutual friends in common and to make a long story short ended up getting back together later that summer at a friends birthday party.  The abuse started when I was about 16.  I was (and still am) a very stubborn, independent person with too much pride.  I should have ended it after his first attempt to kill me that day, but for some reason unbeknown to me at the time, I stayed.  Looking back on it now as a rational adult, I can see it so clearly.  At that age, its not so blatantly obvious.  He constantly berated me for the way I looked, the way I dressed, what I ate, how much I weighed, how much time I spent at the gym (too little for him apparently).  Essentially he took my self esteem and destroyed it.  I allowed him to control me and how I seen myself.  I. hated. myself. a. lot.  Case in point.  I obsessed over how I looked, what I ate and essentially had a borderline eating disorder.  I look back at pictures from that time period and of course I would kill to have the body I had then.  I however have since learned to accept myself for the person I am and I like me.  Now.  However back then, I loathed myself on so. many. levels.  Especially when you hear things from someone who claims to love you that they\’re repulsed by you, they\’re not physically attracted to you and so forth.

There\’s a huge correlation between an abusive relationship & how one views themselves.  I\’ve been asked countless times why I stayed.  That\’s a valid, yet totally loaded question.  Like I\’ve said on numerous occasions, its hard impossible to comprehend when your on the outside looking in.  Its something that you know in your heart is wrong, yet your so destroyed inside, mentally and emotionally that you don\’t have the courage, strength or the will to leave.  Your life is no longer your own, its dominated by the skewed way you view yourself, fear and having it drilled into your head time and time again that no man will want you looking/acting the way you do.  After a while you start to believe it.  Really it boils down to control, an insatiable need for it at all costs.  That is one key component to the mindset of an abuser.  I have since learned that its them who can\’t live without you, them who feels that they will be nothing if you leave.  God forbid if you try and obtain a mind of your own, the strength to stand on your own two feet and live your life the way you choose to.

I\’ll never forget the day we broke up.  I called him, he was crying and carrying on saying that I should have been upstairs with him (we lived in the same apt building) not waiting for my date to arrive.  I said no to him for the first time ever.  The cry stopped immediately and he said what?  I said no, no I will NOT come upstairs to be with you.  He then says to me \”Stephie, you finally stuck up to me, that\’s all I ever wanted you to do.\” Right, so that gives you just cause to beat me down on so many levels?  Anyway needless to say, the euphoria I felt at that moment is still to this day indescribable.  I finally felt for the first time that I and I alone had gained some control of my life and that was and still is to this day the best feeling ever.

I still on occasion have moments where I hear his voice in my head when i\’m having a bad day.  Every once in a while, those damn image issues come creeping up on me and I try to ignore them and most of the time I succeed.  I am who I am and while I am not perfect, I am perfectly flawed and in spite of it all; I have learned to not only accept myself but love myself for who I am.  I refuse to obsess about it, although I do know that I should pay far greater attention to taking better care of myself overall.

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