Hey Mom!

Hey Mom! So I know it's been awhile (I'm sure you're all relieved) but I'm back (sorry) and this is the 100th post on this blog which I thought was special until I realized I probably posted 100 times on my first one within the first year (I was really lonely and also not taking real courses). Also I think it's important to note that I also have 34 drafts... do you know what that means? It means 34 times I had the discretion to say this... this is actually too much. You're welcome. Today I'd like to tell you a Christmas tale of peril and triumph... of despair and relief. My family decided to head to Calgary for a few days. So I loaded up my red Christmas-mobile and hit the road. The roads were bad. I knew they were bad. I knew I would have to leave early and drive slowly. I knew that my hands would hurt after from gripping the steering wheel. And I knew that even my hilarious podcasts could not provide sufficient merriment to drive the unease that had

Hey Mom! So this week everything went off the rails... my room is a disaster, my backpack is a disaster, the counter is a disaster, the floor is a disaster, my notes are a disaster,  and my desktop is a disaster. This is just what you can see from the door way but it's pretty much a minefield. What you can't see is the pound of crumbs that cushions all my books with greasy tenderness Please note to 2 dozen minimized windows. Basically I'm like a slug except I leave disaster in my wake instead of slime (although I've been sick all week so that's not untrue either). Now, I know what you're thinking: Mack, how can you live like this?  Well, sometimes I walk around with my eyes closed so I don't have to deal with egregious nature of my mess making. I know it's weird but sometimes I find messes comforting, it's like an extension of my internal stress. So I take a look at the mess and think Yep, that's how I feel... finally a clus

Hey Mom! So if you don't know, I've been in the process of rehabbing my back (again? or lately? or more differently? I don't know). I've been getting better at doing the exercises... which is great. My back has been feeling really good and I'm not limping as much as I used to.... also great. Until today. In case you're wondering, I've spent the better part of the last hour staring at my ceiling whilst choking on my own snot and tears ->Which is humiliating, by the way.  Not only am I disgusting, I'm essentially waterboarding myself with my own bodily fluids. Now I know what you're thinking Mack, please stop talking about your bodily fluids on the internet! Fair enough but I'm going to get a bit preachy here in a second and if you'd like to check out now is the time. While doing homework lying on your back is difficult and lying on the floor is uncomfortable. My friends offered to take notes for me so I could go home.... which is gr

Hey Mom! Happy Thanksgiving! That time of year where we eat too much, take naps and wear wool socks. You know, I sat down ready to write this and now I've completely forgotten what I wanted to write about... OH YEAH... ok I've got this... ok. So there was no update last week because of long and boring reasons that neither of us care about BUT this past week I've been feeling really introspective which is Mack-Code for kinda sad and very tired. If you don't know, I am a highly  emotional being but I'm the weird kind of emotional where I'm also fairly private about it (I realize how hypocritical this sounds given that this is my blog where I talk about my feelings but bear with me here): I was watching a movie with another mortal this weekend. Firstly, I was in a weird mood because I was grappling with the fact that I really enjoy one of my classes but I had a begrudging attitude towards it on Thursday and that wasn't fair and how privileged and ungra

Hey Mom! Well, it's Sunday and I know you've been waiting allllll week for this update. Well boy-oh-boy do I not know what's going on in the whirling dervish that is my life. But why don't we just start at the beginning(ish) and see where we end up? I went to physio this week to find out that my glutes and a handful of my back muscles are not firing ... now I'm no doctor but this is what I took away from that: All the squats and lunges I've been doing at the gym were for NOTHING. That's right, all the pain, all the farts I've had to hold in... for nothing . #BootyOffDuty I dressed up as a hippy anthropologist to do a presentation for my advanced grammar class. Figure that one out. I tried swing dancing AGAIN.  Now I know what you're thinking It almost killed you the first time!  True, but I like to live my life on the edge. I realized (while swing dancing) that when I'm not expecting someone to spin me I make a Serena Williams-esq

Hey Mom! On Saturday night I was young and wild and free. Now, I know what you're thinking Mack you wore your Darth Vader shirt outside of its Tuesday-Thursday rotation? No, don't be ridiculous. On Saturday night at 6:30pm my friend Hope (who is also young and wild and free) and I decided to drive 2.5 hours to go to a swing dancing event.  That's right no laminated itinerary, no 48 hours waiting period to emotionally prepare myself for the newness, we threw caution to the wind (except we didn't, Hope drove very responsibly) and drove to Calgary. I was thrilled. I like road trips, I like Hope, and I certainly like late-evenings. What I don't like, however, is dancing.  For those of you who have been around this part of the internet for awhile you'll know that dancing usually leads to the injury of both person and pride... may I present exhibit A : So when the idea of swing dancing was presented to me (multiple times) the following thoughts ran through my

Hey Mom! I've been feeling really sane lately so I thought "Hey, why not take an extra class?" I know what you're thinking Mack, people take extra classes all time. Welllllll what I didn't realize is that since most of my classes are in french, most of my readings are french which takes me exactly 600x longer to read.  Not only does it take me longer, but I usually have to read them two or three times... I've provided a timeline below for your convenience: Reading 1: I don't think I actually know how to read in french because none of that made sense. Reading 2: This is the DUMBEST thing I've ever read... halfway through his sister was killed by a priest for NO reason! Reading 3: Oooooh she didn't die... she became a nun. That explains the response question about the convent. Now that I'm slowly blending my mind into a grey-matter soup, I'm realizing that I might be unpleasant to live with during this time. I've also realized t

Hey Mom! HAPPY BLOGGIVERSARY! Let us take pause and recall last 5 years...the laughter, the tears, all those times I had diarrhea and told you too much. Good times. September. A new start to an old beginning. Still working on an undergrad degree and guess what this is my last year of the aforementioned degree (providing I don't smash my face through a car window and forget how to read or, you know, get distracted). So what should we expect during this fine September? Excitement? Sure! The thrill of learning? Absolutely. The icy grip of depression that crushes the sun into the horizon line until winter arrives and daylight ceases to exist? You bet! But you know what? After a summer of acquiring adult abilities (ALLITERATION 4x MULTIPLIER) I've learned that all the things you thought were the end of the world are not, in fact, the end of the world. When I was 13, the end of the world was my sister wearing the same colour denim as me. When I was 16, the end of the world

Hey Mom! So this is probably going to have a too-much-information vibe.  It might not surprise you that I am not a trained dancer. I have all the grace and coordination of a dizzy octopus.  I do, however, do a zumba style workout once a week in the privacy of my home in order to expand my arsenal of sick moves.  More specifically, in bathroom with the door locked, in my underwear (told you it was too much information).  The reason for this is that I know what I look like dancing and if someone saw me stumbling around, 14 steps behind the youtube lady and her class of spandex clad super humans, I would die. The reason why I do it in my underwear is because I'm already in the bathroom and then I don't have to wash workout clothes... your typical lose-win situation. Now before I get into the rest of this story I would like to inform you of the following: I WAS STONE-COLD SOBER THE ENTIRE TIME. It was late, we had some music on and I thought to myself You know what would be

Hey Mom! I'm posting this a little later than usual because I was waiting to see if the banana bread I made would cause projectile vomit and emotional trauma.  Since that didn't happen I had to pick something equally unpleasant: running. So as I'm sure you are sick of hearing I PLAYED A SPORT THAT ONE TIME... great now that we've got that out of the way.  Recently, I've been running again because I was operating under the assumption that I  love  running.  Turns out, I  loved  running.  You want to know why? Because I didn't need to run. Nowadays running is an integral part of my fitness routine.  So in honour of this epiphany I have decided to present you with the following juxtapositions: Running: Then and Now Then: I'm bored I think I'll go for a run. Now: It's cardio day? Again? Well I think I love running. I just need 45 minutes to emotional prepare myself. Then: Well I guess I better fuel up... I'll just eat 4 tacos on my way o

Hey Mom! So I decided to pour all my momentum from my un-victory reversal into another adult related hurdle which is sleep. I am really good at getting up at the same time every morning (6:15-6:30) however, I am AWFUL at falling asleep at the same time every night.  Now before you go and give me a bunch of logical, level-headed suggestions like Turn off your phone 2 hours before you go to bed or Try melatonin or here's this breathing thing I learned that is supposed to put you to sleep in SECONDS know that I have tried all these except melatonin because I'm not a billionaire and vitamins/supplements are a complete RIP OFF... Listen,  I'm sure you used an essential oil once and it put you right to sleep but it's just more economical to pop a couple benedryl and catch your zeds that way (that's right I said zeds because I'm Canadian as fluff). ***IF THERE ARE ANY MINORS READING THIS DO NOT USE BENEDRYL AS A SLEEP AID... you'll probably pee the bed AND the

Hey Mom! So this week I knocked another item off my Things-All-Adults-Should-Know-How-To-Do list which was learning to drive a standard.  Every adult should know how to do this because in the case of a weird emergency where someone is slightly maimed but not maimed enough to require an ambulance an adult-type person might have to drive a car with a manual transmission (also for those of you who are all yeah but what if the adult is blind? You are making a pretty hasty generalization when you say all adults... I would say the following: Don't be dumb). I've made a previous attempt but if I am honest (and with the amount of bowel related information I share, you should know that I am nothing if not honest), the only successes I had were: 1. Successfully stalling the car six times in a row 2. Successfully having someone give up on teaching me. See kids? When you put successfully in front it looks like you didn't fail miserably (thumbs up!). I would like to take this

Hey Mom! The adventure continues! So far this summer has been a summer of learning to adult better. However, I am finding more and more that this is a sort of two steps forward, one step back situation.  Here is my one step back: I got stuck in a jacket for at least an hour at work last week. Now for those of you who don't know... I spend almost no money on clothes (the outfit I am currently wearing cost me $6) so you can imagine that spending 5 whole Canadian dollars on a jacket was a BIG deal.  Some of the folly involved with buying clothes at a reduced cost is sometimes they have flaws intrinsic to their construction. The flaw with the jacket is that it has a sort of flap that fits under the zipper. Now I've had the jacket for awhile and as far as I can tell, the flap serves only one purpose: getting stuck in the zipper.  What this means is that I get temporarily stuck in the jacket every time I try to zip or unzip it (which is really embarrassing because even Franklin

Hey Mom! LAST WEEK: Mack, Wizard of Fish, was down on her luck as she ate expired fish and proceeded to have an out of bowel experience. THIS WEEK: On Thursday night (or Canada Day Eve, if you prefer) I made fish and chips: Marvel at the light flakey exterior, look in want at the crispness of the chips In the interest of being honest I feel you should know I burnt the first two... badly... really badly Now there are a few pieces of knowledge I'd like to impart upon you mere mortals (the fish wizard is immortal, in case you were wondering). 1. I know absolutely nothing about beer. Neither of my parents drink and I played sports for so long and feel strongly that athletes shouldn't drink (unpopular, I know). So I walked into the liquor store looking for a single can of beer (firstly, WOW you can buy a single can of beer?!?), I gazed upon the wall of single beer cans and thought  does lite beer mean it's diet, like it's got a bunch of aspartame in it? S

Hey Mom! So as promised this week is my dumb, bad, dumb cooking disaster... in fact it will be my final cooking disaster. I didn't think anything could be worse than the descaler incident  of 2014, I was wrong... very, very, VERY wrong. In an effort to expand my culinary skills, I cooked fish for the first time.  I thawed the fish in cold water because apparently that's a thing that people do for reasons that don't matter.  I cooked it until it was opaque. It was delicious.  I served it with rice. So all this goes off without a hitch so I think Finally! I've found a cooking thing that I can do! I must be a fish wizard.  With my newfound confidence, I got myself a goodnight's sleep and decided to try my hand at yet another piece of fish. Fish Wizard reporting for duty! What kind of magic will I work on this protein today? As the fish was thawing I noticed some fine print expires March 23rd 2013  Not a problem for the Wizard of Fish, because as everyone knows

Hey Mom! I was originally going to tell you about the straw that broke the camel's back aka the bad, dumb, bad thing I did that is my official retirement from the cooking world but I'm saving that for next week because it is GRAPHIC and you need a week to prepare yourself. So yesterday I learned how to change the oil in my car.  And let me tell you, it was a DISASTER... but like a fun disaster. Now this is something that I always thought every adult should be able to do this. And then I realized that I am, in fact, an adult who doesn't know how to change the oil in my car. Clearly I know exactly what I am doing.... Fast forward to me lying under my vehicle (station wagon because I am #SunglassesEmoji) unscrewing a bolt that is the only thing between myself and an ocean of motor oil. My brother opts for a hands-off teaching technique: "Make sure you have a tight grip on that bolt." Great! Instructions! I love following instructions. I make sure I have

Hey Mom, I hadn't planned on commenting on the shooting that took place in Orlando.  Not because I don't care, but because sometimes when something awful happens it is best just to say nothing.  Say nothing and stop.  Stop and recognize that at least 50 people lost their lives. But we want answers. We want a solution and so we don't stop.  We point fingers at gun regulations and religion. Not only do we point fingers, but we want to debate those issues now. In this moment. Social media has become a war zone of blame. In a time when we should be coming together we are falling apart. Did the shooter ascribe to a very extremist religious group? Yes (emphasis on extremist, having been denounced by many muslim groups across North America and Europe). Did gun regulations make it easier for the shooter to acquire weapons? Yes. Should there be further debate about gun laws? Yes.   But now is not the time.  Because it doesn't come down to gun laws or extremist groups.

Hey Mom! I'm just going to say it cooking is emotionally destabilizing. I know what you are thinking Mack, you are so hilarious and funny and insincere. I AM BEING SERIOUS. It's demoralizing. I go from zero to questioning my worth as a human being faster than you can yell G rease fire!   Now, as a grown real-live adult, I realize that I need to have this skill. But the least the cooking world could do is HELP ME! Firstly, recipes say to add oil... oh oil? That's a super useful piece of information.  Is it canola? Olive? Motor? What on earth is vegetable oil?!?! Olives are a vegetable? Aren't they?!? Secondly, people (and the internet) keep feeding me bad intel! I give you the tale of the egg noodles (complete with photographic evidence). My coworker (Vern) told me about making homemade pasta... "It's easy." he said.. "Anyone can do it!" he said. So I thought I'm anyone... I can do it!  So I carefully write down everything he said.  An

Hey Mom! Is it wrong to offer a stranger Pepto-Bismol? I've been thinking about this a lot over the past two days... mostly because this girl was yarfing in the bathroom and I said to myself I should offer her some pepto!  Don't get me wrong I wasn't like Yo lady, want a swig o' the pink stuff? They are chew tabs that I happen to keep in my backpack (for reasons that don't concern you...I am after all a lady). On a completely unrelated note, sometimes ladies get diarrhea. Aaaaanyway, I was standing there (post whiz) thinking about whether it's weirder to offer good ol' PB to a stranger.  I mean it's definitely weird to pass chew tabs under a bathroom stall but which is weirder?  In the end, it didn't matter because while I was standing there musing about the nature of anti-nauseant exchanges she left. So to recap: 1. I am an awful human being who didn't even ask this woman if she was alright. 2. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD IN T

Hey Mom! So as you are well aware I wrote the DELF exam today which is basically just a series of tests to judge what level of fluency one has.  I know normally that these are for you, Mom, but today I'd like to write an open letter to the poor soul who has to mark my exam... thanks for understanding. Dear Poor Soul, I just want you to know I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that I used "gagner l'expérience" 17 times in a 150 word response.  I know that I put the accent on the wrong e (I've corrected it in this letter to spare you further agony). I also know that adding accents to english words does not magically turn them into french words. I won't tell you about the grand ideas I had about reforms to the post-secondary system (but I did).  I won't tell you that halfway through one of the recordings I started imagining that part of the Simpsons movie where he gets money upon moving to Alaska (but I did). And I won't tell you that after reading the

Hey Mom! I'd like to start by saying that nobody wanted or asked for this.... You're welcome. Thoughts at 4:30am this morning: So I have 3 back to back to back midterms tomorrow and I haven't slept yet.  I've stopped blowing my nose because I can't tell whether there's more blood coming from the outside or the inside.  Whatever I have has moved into my chest and I think breathing makes it angry.  But you know what? I am the coolest I have ever been. Sure I look like an Animorph Rudolph that probably crawled out of the same hole as the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth, but you know who goes to bed after 4:30 am? Rockstars that's who!  Yeah, I didn't choose the celebrity life but it appears one very specific aspect of that lifestyle which also technically applies to nightshift workers chose me. Boo-to-the-YAH.  I think it's also important to note that I have a tattoo, own a guitar (which I can play 5 chords -- 2 of them are C's) AND have

Hey Mom! I'm writing this while I lie on the bathroom floor. Why are you lying on the bathroom floor? Full disclosure, I'm waiting to throw up. I've been fighting it for an hour but I know it's a losing battle.   Why don't you just throw up? Well because I feel like someone just ripped a waxing strip off the inside of my throat so if I order a street pizza it's going to burn like a ginger in direct sunlight.... Ugh close call. Mind if I bare my soul for a sec? I am deeply conflicted because I'm going to go to all my classes this week because I have 5 midterms in 3 days.  So to all my classmates: I am sorry for making you sick. But I want you to know:   I am hitting the handsani harder than a crafty person to Pinterest.  I'm not a barbarian so I don't cough directly into my hand.   I'm trying my best not to breathe near you but the truth is I can't help it.  UUUUUUUUHHHHH that time was really, really close, I'm on the preci

Hey Mom! So first if you haven't seen Breathless or the Making of Breathless, I'll just leave this riiiiiight here. I wrote Breathless in September and thought it would be hilarious to post part of it on instagram with a really heartfelt caption.  The plan was to post a video a week later revealing the true nature of Breathless.  It would've been mildly funny. But after I met Marcela and she offered to produce the track it became over the top, pee your pants funny .  We took pictures and wrote artistic posts about the journey of music and how much we had learned (which I mean, I definitely did but all with in the context of being madly in love with my car).  She also kept me calm when YOU GUYS were so supportive and kind and all I wanted to do is phone you all crying and admit that it was just a silly song that you shouldn't take seriously.   Now even though she doesn't understand why I don't own a black blazer and resents profile pi

Hey Mom! So it's three weeks into the semester and we are about to head into the 1st worst week (rhyming adjectives bonus x 1000) .  Midterms are coming, papers are about to be due and we are starting to forget about all the hopes and dreams we had at Christmas.  Part of this is because we are all in school, working, making futurey-adult decisions and applying for summer jobs (except me I have a job... I think).  But the main reason is that our profs keep asking us, stupid, stupid questions thus slowly driving us insane. It's been awhile since I've done a top ten list (I'm still bitter that BuzzFeed took off while my private shaw webspace blog went unnoticed), but I'm back and ready to participate in the generation of numbered lists. Top Ten Inappropriate Questions to Pose to a University Student What are your plans for the future? Well I've forgotten what human food tastes like and I haven't slept in two days but somebody  keeps giving us assign

Hey Mom! So I am sitting in a room full of brightly coloured plastic chairs on wheels and I think that I may have truly lost my mind. Look at this chaos:    A few key features of what I am calling "The Crayola Disaster Unit": slide out cup holder ooooooh Wheels that do not lock in place  aaaaaah Weird penguin armrest things uuuuuuh? For those of you who are not aware, I was (am) that person who needed (needs) to sit in the same seat every class (also I should clarify that by needs I don't mean in a medical condition kind of way -- i.e. OCD-- I mean that I'm a very tightly wound individual and I find solace in assigned seating arrangements).  Anyway, now I can't even sit in the same seat every time because the seats are not fixed, so I have to settle for getting a red Crayola Disaster Unit every time but guess what? That sounds really infantile!  So now I have to pretend like I don't care what colour chair I get (even though I fluffing do!) A