Meme Monday with Hannah and Nicole: It's ITSY-BITSY, GODDAMMIT

So needless to say, I really should have added "blog readers" to "friends and family" on my post last night. *sniff*. You all get me. You all say the exact right thing. If my doctor wrote me a prescription with the precisely perfect words needed to make all my troubles seem less burdensome, your words would be on it. Oh my gosh - you're all like GIANT HAPPY PILLS. Dancing in my head. No, I haven't taken any strong painkillers, I just finally thank-the-good-lord don't have a fucking headache anymore and it IS actually making me feel a little high.

I made up the questions for Meme Monday (with my preciouses Hannah and Nicole and anyone else who needs a post idea and a laugh, and with fond remembrance of Shan and her Knowing Me Knowing You meme, which I always loved - wait, that sounds like she's dead, she's TOTALLY not dead, she just doesn't do the meme anymore, or hasn't for a while, or something, she does a lot of volunteer work, she's very busy, I'M SORRY SHAN!.). I knew when I threw in the spider one that I was playing with fire.

Photo by Scott Akerman
1. What was your favourite subject in school?

I knew Nicole was going to say calculus, I KNEW IT (let's just skip over how patently unfair it is that Nicole is good at calculus, can write really well AND has perky boobs). I have a calculus story, although it doesn't actually involve any math. I was fine at math until high school, although I never loved it. In high school, I kind of hated it, although I was never in actual danger of failing, or getting less than an 85 or anything, plus my boyfriend was allowed to come over more if he was tutoring me in math, so that was cool. But when I put calculus and OAC physics on my timetable for Grade 13 (yes, we had grade 13, I'm ancient, let's move on), leaving no spares, because I thought I should take them, as character-building or penance or something, the guidance counsellor (who knew me pretty well), called me to her office and said HAVE YOU LOST YOUR BLEEPING MIND? And said I didn't need them for what I was going to do in university, and they'd only drag my average down, and frankly, the teachers were afraid it would precipitate a total psychotic break and result in damage to school property and a lot of paperwork. So I switched to drama and a spare and had a perfectly lovely senior year.

What? Oh, my actual favourite subject? Dunno. You'd think it would be anything where I could just write, so it probably was, but I think mostly anything that had a funny teacher. I hated school, it made me anxious. Duh.

2. How did you meet your spouse?

He lived on the other wing of my residence floor in first year - the druggie wing, which is hilarious since he can't even inhale. The guys next door to him came in on the first day, moved all the furniture out of their room, filled it with futons and Persian carpets and a lizard cage, and had a giant blowtorch named Mr. Toker. He was seventeen and a little out of his element. He was also an engineer, and the first few times I met him I thought he was an obnoxious little twerp. Then he dated one of my friends for a while and I thought he was a fairly entertaining obnoxious little twerp. Then he moved in with my BFF Zarah in third year, so I couldn't avoid seeing him a lot, and he'd broken up with my friend, and we always kind of enjoyed arguing with and insulting each other, and I went over one night to watch the Blue Jays play for the pennant and we drank a bunch of beer. And we lived happily ever after.

3. Coffee or tea? 

Diet Pepsi. I think coffee is vile. I like tea, but I'm like Nicole with the laziness over boiling and steeping, unless I'm trying not to snack in the evening and then I try to use it in place of snacking, but now if I drink it too late in the evening it gives me heartburn or makes me have to pee in the middle of the night. So I drink a lot of water. I'm not like Hannah with the tea snobbery - I don't think I can tell Red Rose from Earl Gray. I recently learned that you're not supposed to actually boil the water for green tea, which is an earth-shattering revelation, since I often drink green tea because it's supposed to be 'good for you' (character building, penance - HAVE I NOT GROWN AT ALL?) but it always tastes like dishwater. I haven't actually tried making it the new way (I gave up on it, because it tasted like crap), but I'll keep you posted.

4. Public speaking - no big deal, or would you rather die?

Until I was finally medicated for depression and anxiety, I would have undergone any manner of torture to avoid public speaking. I did senior debating for a while because some teacher said it would look good on my résumé (plus, character buil- fuck, I want to smack MYSELF at this point) and after that year, my parents asked me to never do it again, because in the lead-up to every debate I was making them wish they'd never had children. Every presentation I had to make in front of the class seemed like the actual literal end of the world, or made me wish for it. I would hyperventilate. I would shake. Sometimes I would throw up. Afterwards, I would sleep for thirty hours and then feel like I had cured cancer or discovered a new planet, which was nice, but it never lasted long, and then I'd start getting anxious for the next one.

Photo by tuneful87
After I started taking anxiety meds, I didn't LOVE public speaking, but it was no huge deal. The first time I did Blogging Out Loud, I FELT like I should be nervous, but I really wasn't. Neither of my kids has any problem with it, which makes me just want to cry with gratitude.

5. That spider crawling up the water spout - is it 'eensy weensy' or 'itsy bitsy'?

Itsy-bitsy! Itsy-bitsy!! ITSY GODAMMNED BITSY!!! (When I try to type 'bitsy' really fast, I keep typing 'bitchy', which is kind of appropriate). I don't know WHY I feel so passionate about this, but I really, really do. When Angus was little, he would say he wanted to do "Bitsy Bider". That might have something to do with it. If the Blues Clues tape where they do the Itsy Bitsy Spider had said eensy-weensy, I would have thrown Steve out on his ass. I'm giving Hannah a pass because she's cute, and we hardly ever do song games when we're together at Blissdom anyway.

Comments

Deb said…
Itsy bitsy all the way!
StephLove said…
Wait, there's no grade 13 any more? That was one of the things I thought I knew about Canada, based on Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye, I guess, which come to think of it takes place in the 1940s and 50s for the most part).
StephLove said…
Well, the in school part is then, I mean.
Sarah McCormack said…
Gym

White Water Rafting (which is similar to your husband being in the druggy wing!)

TEA!!!!!!!!!!

love it too much

Itsy Bitsy
Julie Leclair said…
ok, you are on your game girl. this was awesome sauce post! your little schpeal about Shan made me laugh.

1. what level of school are we talking about here? elementary it was probably drama. high school, well nothing in particular. i just liked school in general. CEGEP, geography. University any of my anthropology classes. I'll stop there because people will realize i did way too much school.

2. set up. i like your story much better.

3. coffee is gross. i can't drink tea after 5pm or i am up peeing all night too.

4. love public speaking. and i love dropping the fact that i was the very first reader at the very first BOLO. my claim to fame really.

5. who the fuck says eensy weensy? they jacked!
Hannah said…
Let's promise not to get drunk at Blissdom and start doing song games, OK? Because it'll end in a throwdown and Nicole will have to separate us by sexily saying "calculus" over and over again.
Nicole said…
I was going to say maybe Itsy Bitsy/ Bunny Foo Foo is an East Coast/ West Coast thing but you're closer to the East Coast...

Don't think I won't talk calculus at Blissdom if you and Hannah start fighting!

Maggie said…
Well I've already made clear on Hannah's blog that it's itsy bitsy and little rabbit Foo Foo, but it's tearing my family apart! OK I grossly exaggerate. Husband and I just occasionally insist the other is wrong and must have had a disfunctional childhood...
Kim said…
The spider is a sore spot for me because I was taught eensy-weensy and when I went to nursery school and started to sing along and was corrected by my teacher I CRIED. Note: My teacher's name was Buttons so it's not like she had room to talk about things with bad names.

I think it is genuinely hard to just get into green tea because it doesn't taste great until you develop a taste for it. I do have one or two that I crave, but (a) they are blended with other things that taste better (b) have a medicinal kind of thing going on that soothes me mentally way more than tasting good. If you seriously want to try, go to David's on a quiet early morning (the one in the Glebe isn't usually too crowded) and tell the chick at the counter I want to learn to like green tea, halp and let them earn their commission. OR Stash makes a sampler with a bunch of different green varieties and you can experiment over a few weeks. I will stop giving advice now.

Shan said…
You pretty much made my day once again! Love it! I actually forgot about KMKY. I should bring it back i think! Also you totally need to move down the street from me. For real life!

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