And I Want That Twist Tie BACK!

I grew up all over the place as a child. my parents found Jesus in the 70's and soon after believed they were called to the "mission field" to spread the good news. turned out to be bad news for me. we left our new home in a quiet safe neighbourhood and sold everything we owned at bargain prices. i was pulled from my grade 2 class where i knew everybody and everybody knew me and we shipped out to hawaii. yes hawaii... not the best experience. i was beaten up every day at school for being white. a year later we moved back to Canada and up to the yukon (beside alaska) as god had now called us there. several years were spent in different towns and settlements, building churches and spreading the 'good news'.

now being a missionary kid isn't all its cracked up to be... who i am kidding? it was never cracked up to be anything! for us it meant waiting on the Lord to pay the rent, secondhand clothing and powdered milk. times were tough but i suppose we were happy. it was easy to hide poverty in the yukon. almost everyone had the same reliable type vehicles, parkas and snow boots. even better for my sister and i as we were home schooled for much of our stay up there. no public school clothing competitions to worry about for us.

of course our time "serving the lord" in the yukon came to an end after a few years. why? guess. the lord had called us to the sunny okanogan - Kelowna to be exact. we packed up the cabin and loaded it all into a U-haul type plywood box on two wheels that my dad had made, hooked it up to the back of the van and said goodbye to the wilderness of the north. a 2 week camping trip ensued till our scruffy caravan bumped into our new hometown.

right off the bat we stuck out like a sore thumb. kelowna was a beautiful city on a lake in the okanaogan - the 'california' of canada they call it... gag. everywhere you turned were wineries and orchards bursting with fruit. there were beaches everywhere, covered with soft sand and scantily clad teenagers. the water was alive with high power speed boats and the roads filled with convertible jeeps - all driven by over muscled drunk boneheads. a stark contrast to our tan coloured Ford van and massive plywood box in-tow, both COMPLETELY covered with 2 weeks of highway mud. WOW! i thought... i'm really going to fit in here! i would learnt to hate this town with a vengeance one day.

our drive finished in the richest part of town where we would be shacking up with another christian family till we 'got our feet on the ground'. it all seemed normal to me! nothing was strange or out of the ordinary when you've moved as much as i had. this was the 14th house id lived in by now. up until this point in my life id say i was pretty happy. i didn't know we were poor. i didn't know what 'name brand' clothing was. i didn't know what pre-packaged processed food was. i thought everyone lived like us i guess? i don't know, but i was about to get a wake up call.

"let's get the girls enrolled in school!" well theres nothing like entering grade 6 two months into the school year. you know, after everyone has and knows their 'place' in the classroom hierarchy? that left a very uncomfortable spot for me at the bottom of the ladder. my clothing didn't help. i was a tallish gangly girl with long legs that grew an inch a day it seemed. it was impossible to find a pair of pants that fit me lengthwise and in the waist, so my mum just opted for the waist. "we can't have your pants falling down!" that left me with highwaters. as for shirts and sweaters - i'd spend the next 6 years of my life searching in vain for a Benetton or Esprit ANYTHING at the '2nd Time Around' used clothing store.

but aside from the clothing there was something i felt that really made me stand out... lunch time. to be more precise - my lunch verses their lunch. now i had food, i never went without at school, but there was a very distinct difference between the lunches my classmates brought with them and mine. 1st on the list?

Wagonwheels - not only was i astounded that they had somehow put all those yummy things together into one round chocolaty serving, i was unnerved to see kids giving them away because they didn't want them! this just made NO sense.
My Equivalent: a completely browned oozing banana.
Frozen Juice Boxes - not only did they have a drink box, they had a frozen one... so they basically had a Freezy at lunch. the girls would seductively suck on their little boxes of ice juice for 45 minutes... i was so jealous.
My Equivalent: unfiltered apple juice in a tupperware container.
Ichi Ban Noodles - japanese soup noodles. you know, you lived on them in college? well they would bring these to school and eat the noodles dry... strange i know. i wouldn't even contemplate asking to have this in my lunch... i already knew the answer and 30 minute explanation of why asking was so ridiculous.
My Equivalent: egg salad sandwich, that upon pulling out everyone yells "WHO FARTED????!!!!??"
Fruit Roll Ups - basically candy... My Equivalent: homemade fruit leather and and no mum its NOT THE SAME.
Halloween Candy - kids had this stuff in their lunch like it was going out of style for like 3 MONTHS after halloween!! unfortunately celebrating Satan's birthday didn't make it into the christian holidays.
My Equivalent: NUTS
Paper Bags or Lunch Boxes - I've save the best for last... this is the one thing that has really stuck with me - the fact that i never had one. there was NO WAY my mum was going to go buy little paper bags that i would throw out every day. NO WAY. so what did i use to carry my lunch in? A BREAD BAG. thats right. a see-through bread bag. and maybe if it had been some kind of cool bread (like white wonder bread?) it wouldn't have been so bad, but it wasn't. it was the store made whole wheat loaf bag with a big bright orange 'DISCOUNT' sticker on it. my lunch was up for inspection upon entering the school yard. peanut butter banana sandwich (browned bananas and homemade chunky peanut butter look like a 'shit-sandwich' by lunch time) cut up apple also turns brown by lunch, mixed unsalted nuts floating freely on the bottom of the bag... that sort of stuff. and to top it all off the bread bag was held closed as most bread bags are - with a twist tie. and every day just before id leave for school i'd hear my mother yell... "dalyn? be sure to bring back that bag!! i MEAN IT this time! oh and dalyn?? DALYN?!" "WHAAAAAAT!!!?" "bring back that bag! And I Want That Twist Tie BACK!"
grade 6 through 11 lunch hour was mortifying to say the least. looking back i know such experineces have given me character and a sense of humor. i have a feeling i may end up doing the same thing to my kids one day... is that so bad? surely you all have some embarrassing lunch contents or memories to share?? do tell!

Afghan Fughawi

my husband sent me this so uploaded it on youtube... we keep watching it over and over and it just gets funnier!

ive had similar experiences? has anyone else? *d

Just For The Record...

this is in reference to the yummy delights posting. i made my hubby take me to the chinese food/donut shop last night. we got some donuts and the tapioca i saw in the little fridge cabinet thing looked goooood so i grabbed one. what could you possibly do to tapioca to ruin it? i cracked it today for a snack and LOW AND BEHOLD! ITS CHALK FULL OF??? CORN! GIRRRR!

Bullet Berryman

this post is a tad long, but the read is worth it just for the last few paragraphs! trust me! OK so these last few months have been a rollercoaster ride of too much work, christmas holidays, van breaking down constantly and my Aunty Carol mysteriously dying. The last in the list has taken over my families life since december 8th in a way that i wouldn't wish on anyone. i had only just gotten to know my aunt about 3 years ago. she is my fathers sister and upon their dad (grandfather i never met due to him being a crazy alchy) dying they had to resume contact to deal with a small inheritance. my dad just let his sister have the whole thing, not wanting anything to do with the money. why the need to 'resume' contact with his sister? well my parents became 'born again' in the 70's, right around the time when aunty carol 'came out'. last time i checked born again christians don't deal too well with having a lezbo in the family, so we just never got to know my aunt. plus we moved around so much we were never near where she lived anyways.

well aunty carol wanted to get to know her nieces. i was OK with that, but my sister didn't really want anything to do with her as she had no memory of her at all. carol and i talked alot on the phone and i went out to visit her a few times. we talked every two weeks for about a 2 years. we would have talked more but i knew if i got a call after 5pm she'd already taken a plethora of medications and drank 2 bottles of wine. you can imagine the conversation with all that stuff involved. the last time i saw her was at my wedding last summer...

long story short (and its a long one!) carol had gotten a disability settlement of $70,000 and the $35,000 inheritance 2 years ago. she had me come to her bank and co-sign on a safety deposit box and investment, so that when she died the government wouldnt take a huge chunk of the money. she also said i was the executor to her will.

dec 8th i get a phone call from a corener telling me my aunt had died. i was astounded. i seriously thought shed live forever. i was also informed that her 'husband' was in great distress. HUSBAND??? WHAT??? yes shed gotten married, not told anyone. his name was ART and he was gay as well. he has been homeless before their marriage and had 2 more months to live with termanal liver cancer. they'd gotten married so that carol could get his pension check after he died. i could go on and on about how complicated this gets... any and all wills made before they got married were useless, so i was not the executor if there was a will. when i and IF went up to look for it in her tiny apartment (that this Art guy was still living in) i found that carol had stolen mine and my fathers identity (had our info from the co-bank account and inhearitance transfer) and opened up credit cards in our names (this kind of broke my heart cause i really thought she cared for me). she was in major debt and her bank account had $78.00 in it.

after finding out our family had no legal right to do anything, we quietly stepped away and let time take its course. it did and Art died just after christmas. the government then got involved in the estate but because she/he were in so much debt it wasn't 'worth it' for the government to take care of it. so it fell back on my family. well my mother, father and i went up last weekend to start emptying out the place... and what a mess!! 20 garbage bags full of clothing, a full dumpster of garbage (not even joking) tons of boxes of junk for the secondhand store.

while going through all of the stuff my mother was DYING. she had never liked carol, regardless of her being a lesbian. my mum is kind of prissy i guess. VERY clean and VERY organized. carols apartment was the exact opposite.

comments like: "oh DAVE! this is just DISGUSTING! how can anyone live like this!???!" or "UNBELIEVABLE just unbelievable that someone can have THIS MUCH STUFF! WE dont even have this much stuff and we live in house not an apartment!!"

well as my dad was unhooking the cheap ghetto blaster and i was empting out a coffee can of nails and half burn candles, my mum says, "Dave? dave what is this? is this something you can use? it looks electronic." i look up to see my mothers puzzled face. in her hands she is holding a hot pink plastic bag in which she has pulled out a small device. my dad also puzzled, looks at it as my mum is turning in around for inspection. i start yelling... "MUM! NO! PUT IT DOWN!" "wha-at?" "DON'T TOUCH IT! ITS A - (should i say it???) JUST PUT IT DOWN! ITS ITS... its a VIBRATOR!!!" "vibrator? for what?" "A VIBRATOR! DILDO!!!??"

now cue slow-motion - it registers in my mums brain what she is holding in her hands. she looks up with horror in her eyes. a complete physical flip out with distorted slowmow screaming "NOOOOOO!! -AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and the vibrator goes flying in the air!! but not before the cord gets hooked around my mums finger! franticly shaking it off of herself, we all duck hoping to not be in direct line of being hit by the flying bullet. "DAM IT DAVE! I CAN'T HANDLE THIS!!!!" another 30 minutes of similar comments followed.

the last few months of crap we've gone through were acually worth it just to witness my mum holding that vibrator. shes probably still scrubbing her hands of it! *d

P.S. i will be guest hosting/commenting on a fellow blogers site this Friday. he has a great weekly post called "It's Friday, I need music!" lots of people post all types of music. i will be the guest commentator. check it out if you can!

Yummy Delights?

i like to take pictures of stuff and then turn them into fridge magnets. this post is about one of my more well known magnet collections. i MIGHT whip you up a fresh batch of 'yummy delights' if you are having a house warming AND i think you're cool enough.

let me explain what 'Yummy Delights' are... i lived in Taiwan for 3 years teaching english. i inhabited several dingy apartments, but one in particular inspired a photoshoot. it was above a chinese bakery. 'oh wow! living above a bakery would be awesome!' you're thinking. well its not in taiwan. pretty much everything in one tastes the same or isn't what you thought it was. there is nothing more annoying than believing you've bought a simple french bagette to have with pasta at the dinner party - and find out upon slicing it up its jam-crap full of disgusting RED BEAN CURD PASTE.

well aside from misleading loaves of bread there are the chinese versions of what we call a 'danish'... no custard, no blueberry, raspberry... no drizzled icing on top. no no, think a little more hmmmm, i guess savoury? take a look at these 1st pics taken in the store. (all future words in quotes insinuates that food mentioned is not real or tastes NOTHING like its suppose to)
top left - 'tuna' salad with 'ham' on sweet sugar roll.
top right - 'weiner' on sweet sugar bread drizzed with mayonaise.
middle - 'mini-weiner' with 'chives' on sweet sugar bread drizzed with mayonaise.
bottom left - 'chicken' and 'ham' salad on greasy sweet sugar pastry.
bottom right - 'weiner' with cucumber drizzled with sweet ketchup/mayonaise in sweet sugar bread.

anything that was suppose to taste like chicken or tuna only ever tasted like very very sweet mayonaise. they put the shit on everything over there. (along with chocolate sprinkles... seriously)
as for the 'weiners' - i really can't say what these babies where made of. i dont mean to grose anyone out too much but they reminded me of a male dog lookin' for some lovin'. they wer this unnatural hot-pink colour and had the chewing consistancy of a rubber ball. i won't even go into how they tasted.
the bread always had a chemical-like flavour and left a waxy scum on the roof of your mouth after eating.
also, there was 'pork floss'. it looks like fluffy brown hair/sugar, and thats pretty much what it is. dehydrated pork cooked in refined sugar. it was in/on EVERYTHING.

can you imagine how hard it was to not buy several of these a day? luckily enough the school where i taught served these delights for snack or as "lunch" when we went on field trips and saddly being a hypoglycemic - ive had my share of all of them.

well i broke down and bought 4 beautiful specimnes one day. i set them up and got some good shots. my vegitarian roommate came home and wreithed away in horror from my purchase. the following are a few of my faves taken that day. the magnets dont look like this exactly... today i added the names for fun. what fridge is complete without a set of these?

FURTHER - Van #4

my hubby loves ebay. he's been a dedicated junkie for years now and i have to give him credit, he never runs out of things to search for. i'm tapped out after 5 minutes, it's just not my thing. he's great at selling things as well. i'm not sure how he comes up with the wording that makes someone buy a 'vintage' (used) toothbrush - but he does! so, he looks - he sells and yes... he buys. id say it kind of all equals out in the end so i don't really care. let me rephrase that... i USUALLY dont care.

last spring, mid-afternoon i jumped on ebay for some reason. in the myEbay summary section of our account is saw the sum of $500 in bold green. (that means you've won/sold something) there was no visible thumbnail of the won item so i clicked on it. id already seen the title... LE TOYOTA VAN 1985 something-or-other... now before i go on i should fill you all in a bit on the present 'LE Toyota van' situation at that time.

WE ALREADY HAD 3 OF THEM.

yes 3. they look like little footballs on wheels as the engine is under the front seats. all made in the 80's, they run forever, super cheap on gas and my husband just has a thing for them. the 1st one was bought over 2 years ago (also on ebay) and its a 4x4. it has some major rust issues we hope to deal with one day, but until then its a storage unit with a flat tire out back. the 2nd van (we call her 'penny' due to her bronze colour, my friend IF calls her 'little miss sunshine' due to her faulty starter and broken gas gauge...) was bought 2 years ago and is my source of transportation (when she works... a WHOLE other post will be dedicated to penny, god love her!). 3rd van was a recent impulse buy. it was a cargo van - good price, knew we could resell it easily... but just hadn't got around to doing that quite yet.

soooo... you can now imagine me shaking my head upon discovering the recent ebay purchase that afternoon. i clicked on the title of the won item to see our new ride and i can definately say i was NOT prepared for what i saw...
in a monitone voice, "oh my f$%#@!ing god. nooooo waaaay." it had a name. 'FURTHER' it was a 'cargo' LE Toyota van and it was completely covered in hmmmmm... shall we say 'artwork'? some sort of strange space scene with an alien in a spaceship holding a flaming planet/moon thing... i was immeadeately trying to visualize myself driving it around town. it just screamed BURNER! and i am about as far away from being a hippy as you can get!!

so after surprising hubby with a phone call and my knowledge of his latest purchase... ("oooohhhh ya - that. i didn't think we'd win it...") we went and picked it up. turns out the exaust system was in need of a replacement so it was super LOUD. acually set off car alarms while driving down the street! but you could drown out the noise inside with the CD PLAYER! our other vans just had crappy tape decks and shitty speakers, but FURTHER was set up with a sweet deck and big speakers drilled into the ceiling! i was starting to fall in love... it also had a comfy pull out bed, every single map you might need to get to 'Burning Man' every tool/fluid to get yourself out of a sticky mechanical situation, hardhat, shovel, insulation - this baby was hooked up. as soon as possible i went to pick up IF at his swanky downtown apartment. he just about pissed himself laughing when he saw it, and almost choked when he heard the horn...

AAAAA-WOOOO-GAAAA--AAAA-A-WOOO-GAAAA!

we espeacially got a kick out of watching peoples reactions when they looked at us through their rearview mirror... yup, she was a real beauty! we only kept her for 3 months and then sold her to her 'soulmate' (imagine what type of personality the van would have if it were human... and a psytrance DJ - thats who we sold it to). good times with FURTHER.
i defineatly recommend this type of paint 'treatment' if you a.) love attention b.) like scaring old people c.) have a problem with people tagging your car. d.) have trouble finding your car in a parking lot.

i don't recommend this look if a.) a perspective client might catch a glimpse of your ride. b.) you get the occasional case of road-rage and like to lay on your horn c.) you want to do any crossborder shopping.
*d