Let's Try This Once More

 So I was trying to post just from my phone yesterday from Collette's cottage and neither I nor my phone were entirely successful, it seems. 

Every November we go for a girls' overnight at Collette's Dad's cottage, about an hour and a half away. We go for lunch at the place next to the giant magical Narnia store.

Then we go to the giant Narnia store, which just keeps going and going, and where you can buy fancy soap and lotion, old-fashioned chocolates and fruitcake, 

Really expensive shoes and boots,

really expensive, ugly-ass Ugg flip-flops (why?), 

Le Creuset cookware and bougie kitchen gadgets,

(I almost bought that because I always just use coconut oil, and then I looked at the ingredients and it's basically...coconut oil),

and this abomination, which Collette professes to like but I think she just buys it so she won't have to share (just kidding, she actually likes it, the freak. She's not even Finnish. Wth?),

We usually do some Christmas shopping (I am desperate for stocking stuffers for Angus, since stuff for Eve just leaps into my arms everywhere I go. I found a few good things) here, and in the next town.

Then we go back to the cottage and play games and have dinner (everybody brings stuff - I made this soup and I think it's the best it's ever turned out, it was amazing, although I never even make the coconut pesto), 

We used to play Cranium every year, which was good because the different categories play to different strengths. Just FYI, it's REALLY DIFFICULT to figure out a song just from someone humming it, and also to spell a word backwards, no matter how good you are at spelling. The one where you had to model something out of playdough was always hugely entertaining. But I think the playdough dried out and we retired Cranium at some point.

A consistent favourite the past few years is Telestrations - it's kind of like the old telephone game except with drawing. You each have a notebook and a dry-erase marker, you get a prompt and have to draw it. Then you pass it to the next person, they look at your picture and write down on the next page what they think it is, then pass it on and so on. It's the most fun when people CAN'T draw (thank goodness for me), because it gets progressively more inaccurate and unintelligible. "A bun in the oven" ends up as "goat pizza". "Corn dog" ends up as "tree donkey". 

I am very, very poor at drawing. The thing on the paper never bears the slightest resemblance to what is in my mind. I don't mind being bad at drawing, I am just mystified at how absolute the disconnect is between my brain and my hand (explains how I play volleyball also, I guess). So when I had to draw Amazon River, I was pretty sure it was going to be a shitshow. I drew what I thought looked like a river, and then I tried to draw an Amazon, maybe Wonder Woman, kind of, and I dunno, did they do archery? 

I know. It's tragic. But Collette got it.

Grand Canyon didn't go as well, but the final result was Desert Gorge, which isn't totally inaccurate.

The next game was new this year. It's called Anomia. I'm not sure I can explain it well, it took me a while to figure out the rules. There are cards that have a category on them (Tool, Beauty Product, Noun, Jazz Musician), and a symbol in the middle. Everyone takes turns drawing cards, and if you draw one that matches someone else's symbol, you have a face-off.

(I told Susanne and Cynthia to look intense and face-offy)

In a face-off, you have to shout out an example of the category on their card before they should out an example of the category on your card. 

Sounds easy. Is not. You end up flailing at their card stammering, trying to spit out "arm!" or "Chatelaine!" or "drill!" before they spit out "rat!" or "French!" Cynthia got in a face-off with Margot and yelled "Euro!" because she thought the category said "European Currency" when it actually said "European Country". Then she yelled "Asia", and hilarity ensued. Being people who mostly need reading glasses just adds an extra element of difficulty. I got in a face-off where I had to name a religion. I could have gone with Judaism or Buddhism. I yelled "Zoroastrianism" instead. Brains are weird.

This morning I finally looked up the definition of Anomia, which is "a form of aphasia in which the patient is unable to recall the names of everyday objects", which means the name of the game is devastatingly accurate and also ableist as fuck and should probably be changed.

And finally, this:

1. 

I run warm. I have almost as long as I can remember. Well, I think in university I could still wear sweaters in the normal course of things. My thyroid can be a little wonky and my hormones are weird, but for whatever reason, I am almost always uncomfortably warm. I never, ever wear a coat in the car no matter how cold it is outside because the three to five minutes I spend being cold are worth not feeling queasy and gross once the car warms up. So we were walking around shopping, not very far between each store, so I didn't bother with a coat because I would just end up having to take it off in the store.

And yes, I constantly get asked "aren't you COLD?" The answer is often no. Sometimes it's "yes, but I would rather be cold than hot". My favourite question was from the woman in Life is Good, who asked "how many times have you been asked if you're cold today?"

I love this week-end. If laughter is the best medicine, we all get amply medicated. We're not just talking a little gigging, we're talking the bent over, wheezing, tears flying off your face, probably quite unattractive kind of laughing. 

Also, someone did this to my glasses.

These are the glasses that I lost at one point, which caused me to say "I can't find my glasses, can someone call them?" And then I thought maybe I didn't need another gin fizz after all.