Contributed - Aug 22, 2014 / 5:00 am | Story: 121414
Shhhhh…if you’re reading this, please don’t make any noise. I’m hiding in my bedroom right now, typing very quietly in the dark and trying not to draw any attention to myself. Don’t make any sudden movements or they might hear you. They’re just outside the door and down the hall.
Who are they, you ask?
They are two of the scariest, meanest, angriest, most unpredictable and dangerous creatures on the planet: My teenage daughters.
Now before you pass judgment on that statement, let’s be clear: I love them both with all my heart. I’d do anything for them, and until my dying breath I’ll do everything I can to support them in every way imaginable.
But some days I seriously don’t want to live in the same house as them.
Perhaps you think I’m being melodramatic, but there’s no other way to describe it – teenage girls are a terrifying mix of inconceivably powerful and totally uncontrollable raw emotions. On any given day, you have absolutely no idea which of their multiple personalities you might be dealing with. In one instant, they are your best friend, the cute little girls you knew as giggly pig-tailed toddlers, all sugary, spicy, and everything nicey. Four minutes later though, when they’re in the kitchen and suddenly discover that good old dad forgot to buy chocolate milk like he was asked (again), the storm clouds roll in, the sky turns blacker than Johnny Depp’s eyeliner, and those lovable little girls are suddenly more irritable than a Siamese cat stuck in an ugly Christmas sweater.
Even the simplest of conversations with them leaves you feeling like you’re playing Russian roulette with hollow-point character-assassinating bullets. Ask them any question – or just say “good morning” for that matter – and here’s what you’re going to get:
Photo: Contributed
As you can see, there’s a remote chance you’ll get a civil response, but some days it’s just not worth the gamble.
My personal favorite is when you don’t get just one hostile response, but rather a special combination of them. My girls are experts at mixing things up just to keep you on your toes. Youngest Daughter, for example, is fond of the painfully labored eye roll accompanied by a sarcastically rude comment (often including the words “Duh” and/or “Whatever” for maximum effect), while Eldest Daughter has honed to a fine art - the classic combo of a ridiculously loud sigh with simultaneous angry death glare. Both have equally mastered the use of slamming doors as a form of sentence punctuation.
Sometimes they turn on each other. When that happens, your best bet is simply inventing a reason to go into the office to work on a Saturday just to avoid the carnage. Right behind “I want to see the world,” and “I want to serve my country,” the third most popular reason men join the French Foreign Legion is “My daughters have just become teenagers.”
But don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to sound insensitive. I’m smart enough to know that these mood swings are not their fault. I completely understand that teenage girls are still learning to deal with indescribable hormonal fluctuations and Himalayan-sized emotional peaks and valleys, the likes of which a regular non-female person like me could not possibly comprehend.
I also realize that teenage girls haven’t yet had time to gain the same perspective on things that an adult has. As a grownup, I’ve got way more practice at not sweating the small stuff. To a 16-year-old girl though, mundane matters like property taxes and utility bills pale woefully in comparison to the really critical issues in life, like “For Pete’s sake, how come nobody knew that I wanted my favorite hoodie washed?” or “Are you seriously telling me that you bought the green bottle of hair conditioner when I specifically need the blue one?”
But perhaps the most important thing I know is this: I don’t need to read a bunch of Marie Claire articles to understand the obvious. When those black storm clouds roll in, the best thing to do is simply find a secure hiding place safe from flying debris and just wait it out. Things will always be less dangerous in a day or three.
In the meantime, if you see me alone in a Wal-Mart at 10:30 at night buying a gallon of chocolate milk and a blue bottle of hair conditioner, I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t make eye contact.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Contributed - Aug 1, 2014 / 5:00 am | Story: 120185
Hello, my fine friends, and welcome to August in the Okanagan, where the days are long and the living is easy. There are a hundred wonderful things about summer in the valley, but the one bad thing is that, when you live here and have a job, you don’t always get to enjoy it as much as you’d like.
It’s unfair, I tell you. Sometimes all you want to do is kick back, relax and enjoy the sunshine. As I write this, I realize that there’s no better person to learn the fine art of relaxation from than our household’s champion canine, a Japanese Chin-Shih Tzu cross named Superdog, who right now is laying at my feet, snoring loudly, quivering his paws in his sleep and drooling.
He doesn’t have a job to go to. He doesn’t care what day of the week it is. He doesn’t care if the dishwasher needs to be emptied. He’s just ignorantly happy and ridiculously content. His day is always the same.
Photo: Contributed
6:27 a.m. – Superdog is sleeping in his custom made dog bed, no doubt dreaming of licking himself obscenely, when suddenly he hears a noise. His head snaps up. Somebody is awake! Time to swing into action! Superdog races down the hall and, skidding on all four paws, turns to look into the bathroom where he sees, to his total shock, the MASTER! This must be some sort of miracle! He has not seen the master since LAST NIGHT! YAAAAYYYY!
Superdog: Bark!
Me: Get DOWN.
Superdog bounds down the stairs and heads to the back door, just in case the Master is going to take him outside. It is a slim chance, he realizes, as the Master has only taken him outside for the past 3,568 consecutive mornings. But just in case, Superdog is ready!
Superdog: Bark!
Me: All right, I’m coming. RELAX!
Can it be? YES! This is unbelievable! The Master is going TOWARD THE DOOR! Looks like Superdog is going outside! YAAAYYYYYY!
Me: Get DOWN, dammit!
Now the Master has opened the door approximately three-eighths of an inch. Superdog realizes that, at this rate, it might take Master a ONE WHOLE SECOND to fully open the door. There is no time to lose. Superdog uses every ounce of his strength to charge face first into the door, exerting approximately 300,000 PSID (pounds per square inch of dog) to force the door open.
Me: What the…?!
Door: CRASH!
Now Superdog is now fully outside, eagerly panning left and right, his finely tuned canine senses absorbing every detail of his new environment. He’s looking for… YES! THERE IT IS! THE YARD! And it’s in EXACTLY the same place it was yesterday! This is UNBELIEVABLE!
Superdog: Bark!
Superdog is troubled, his mind suddenly confused. There must be some reason why he is outside, but what could it be? Scattered thoughts rattle around in his tiny brain like a marble inside an empty mayonnaise jar.
Superdog: Sniff, sniff, sniff.
Me: TODAY already.
Superdog: Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff….(*pee*).
Me: (Sigh) THANK you.
What was that? Superdog’s head pops alertly. Was that a voice he just heard? Suddenly he sees…the MASTER! Has the Master been outside this whole time? This is FANTASTIC! Maybe they can both run around in circles together! YAAAYYYYYYY!
Superdog: Bark!
That was a few hours ago. One dog cookie, some drooling, ten minutes of advanced body-part licking, and it’s time for another nap. No guilt. No shame. No remorse. Just pure, unrepentant summertime bliss.
Lucky bugger.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Contributed - Jul 18, 2014 / 5:00 am | Story: 119312
Photo: Contributed
Maybe it’s the heat, but lately I’ve been finding myself a bit short-tempered, especially when random salespeople call me to infer that, financially speaking, I must be a moron.
They always start with telling me how much money I can save by increasing my monthly cable and Internet bill, and it ticks me off.
In fact, every time I see a commercial advertising some new bundle that comes with cheap rates, no contracts, free babysitting, and a no-obligation Volkswagen as a signing bonus, I immediately get infuriated.
You see, I’ve tried to find myself better deals, but they never seem to apply to me.
Me: Hello, giant cable and Internet mega-conglomerate? I’ve been a customer for sixteen years and have never missed a payment. I just saw one of your ads that said new clients can get one-hundred-and-sixteen high-definition channels for only eight dollars per month, plus they get a free supercomputer as a signing bonus. I currently get a total of six channels, two of which are in French and another is that one with nothing on but parliamentary debates, and I pay eighteen-gazillion dollars each month, so I was wondering…”
Cable Company: Are you a new client?
Me: Um, no, but…
Cable Company: Then stop phoning us.
Click.
That might not be verbatim, but it’s pretty close. Then they have the nerve to have their telemarketers phone me once a week to offer me “free” additional services with a hidden catch that will somehow make my monthly bill even BIGGER.
Unfortunately, the real underlying problem – and I know it must be hard for you to believe judging from my stylish $14.99 haircut – is that I’m not independently wealthy. I don’t have a Roman numeral after my name, I don’t have a fully-crewed yacht in the Caribbean, nor do I lament the annual inflationary increase in the cost of my country club membership dues.
What this means, then, is that whenever someone wants to tell me a new way of saving a bunch of money I don’t have, I always end up feeling like the perennially elected mayor of Fiscal Incompetence City.
I get the same feeling any time I flip on the television and see one of those talk shows with some money-management expert fielding calls:
Caller: “Hello, Bill? This is Albert calling from our weekend home. Reception isn’t always that good out here on our private island, but my wife and I love your show. Our problem is that we’re 28 years old, semi-retired with no kids, we have a combined household annual income of $414,000 and we have $635,000 in accrued investments and matured bonds becoming liquid next week, and we’re not sure exactly what to do.”
I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear someone talk about a “problem” like that, I sigh heavily and flip the channel to a program that’s showing videos of people falling down stairs and getting hit in the privates a lot.
Dealing with my banks is just as hard. I think I’m the only person left in the world who keeps his money in one of those accounts that pays interest in such a way that my money actually gets smaller and is always on the verge of disappearing because the bank keeps taking out ridiculous monthly “service charges,” as if a teller has to take my money out for daily walks or something.
Still, stupid as I am with money, I guess it’s a bad idea to complain about these big companies. After all, you never know when one of them might be, say, monitoring my Internet and decide that if I say too many bad things about them, they should just go ahead and, without warning, cut off my serv....
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Contributed - Jul 11, 2014 / 5:00 am | Story: 118848
Remember when you were a kid and it seemed like you had too much time?
I can remember being eight years old and having so much free time that I didn’t know what to do with it. Sadly, those days are long gone. According to the birth date on my driver’s license, society now legally classifies me as an “Official Grownup,” which means my days are filled with boring and time-sucking official grownup activities like going to work, misplacing my car keys, and responding to important consumer surveys from telemarketing companies.
In an effort to increase my spare time, I’ve decided to analyze my typical daily schedule to see where things are going wrong:
Daily Schedule
6:00 a.m. – Alarm goes off.
6:07 a.m., 6:14 a.m., 6:21 am, 6:28 a.m. – Alarm goes off.
6:35 a.m. – Wake up and stare at ceiling while mentally reviewing today’s to-do list.
6:42 a.m. – Alarm goes off.
6:43 a.m. – Commence shower and assorted bathroom activities, including six-minute depressed cursing at obviously-malfunctioning bathroom scale.
7:17 a.m. – Prepare quick, easy-to-make breakfast consisting of maple syrup and frozen waffles. While eating, ponder possible connection between questionable nutritional value of breakfast and the aforementioned obviously-malfunctioning bathroom scale.
7:39 a.m. – Ride bus to work. While on bus, use time productively to review current events on smart phone, carefully avoiding news stories that include the words environment, economy, Prime Minister, Canadian dollar, Middle East, election, nuclear, and “Fox News Reports.”
Photo: Contributed
7:51 a.m. – Arrive at work. Plunge into the absorbing task of getting coffee.
8:27 a.m. – Meet with co-workers to discuss random but important topics concerning the current depressing condition of reality television and the approximate size of forthcoming weekend lottery draws.
9:12 a.m. – Refill Coffee
9:19 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Complete various work-related tasks that ensure job security. Occasionally pause to brainstorm potential topic for fresh Castanet column. Possible first line: “A funny thing happened to me today that I’m sure you all will be very interested in was…”
12:00 p.m. – Lunch
1:01 p.m. – Work some more, while subliminally awaiting further inspiration for column topic. Make mental note of revised possible opening line: “Don’t you just hate it when…”
3:12 p.m. – Coffee break.
5:02 p.m. – Knock off work and catch bus home, carefully avoiding eye contact with the crazies. En route decide on strongest column opening line yet, which now includes an exclamation mark: “Hey everyone! Have you ever had this happen?”
5:31 p.m. – 10:36 p.m. – Engage in the completion of fatherly domestic responsibilities, including such things as driving to store to buy grocery items as directed by Loving Wife, driving Youngest Daughter to tap class, driving Eldest Daughter to ballet, driving to pick up Youngest Daughter from tap class, driving to pick up Eldest Daughter from ballet, then driving back to store to pick up grocery items accidentally forgotten while at store the first time.
10:37 p.m. – Take laptop to bed and attempt to expand Castanet column into something longer than one sentence. Get depressed about how everyone in the entire world is funnier, wittier, and just overall more productive than I am.
11:27 p.m. – Turn off lights.
11:28 p.m. – Sex life.
11:29 p.m. – Commence falling asleep. Use last minutes of awake time to mentally redraft opening line of new column that I will “for sure” get around to writing tomorrow: “Coming up with things to write about in your column is hard, so it’s a good thing that a funny and interesting thing happened to me today, which was…”
11:32 p.m. – ZZZZZZZZZ
I honestly don’t know where people find the time.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
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