Author: Diane Henders

Home Free

/ Diane Henders / 24 Comments

I made it!

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I was worried I might be on a no-fly list somewhere.  (That would be a “don’t-let-this-woman-on-an-airplane” list; not a list that prohibits flies from being in my presence.  I’d be delighted to get on an actual no-fly list – then I wouldn’t need fly diapers.)

Anyway, it turns out I’m on neither of those lists.  Last week I successfully completed a trip to Las Vegas to attend a wedding.  I even had fun.

The last time I flew to the States was about eight years ago, and the U.S. Customs guards, while not exactly hostile, were definitely Not Friendly.  Thanks to sponge toffee, I have issues with authority figures at the best of times, so slinking into a foreign country under the disapproving stare of Uncle Sam was a traumatic experience for me.  And I hadn’t even been doing anything remotely suspicious at the time.

This time, with my guilty browser history searing my conscience, I was distinctly anxious.

What if they turned me away and wouldn’t let me get on the plane?  Or worse, what if they didn’t turn me away, and instead dragged me off to an interrogation room, never to be seen or heard from again?

Clearing airport security has been a worrisome experience for me ever since they stepped up the screening requirements.  My waist pouch always contains a number of items that are either overtly weapons (jackknives), or could be construed as such by paranoid security personnel (nail file, screwdrivers, a vial of hand sanitizer, etc.)

So every time I fly, one of the items on my to-do-before-I-leave list is to audit my waist pouch.  Problem is, I have a lot of crap stuffed in there, and I either forget it or overlook it.  Twice, they’ve confiscated corkscrews from me; once it was scissors.  Each time, they write down my name on an ominous-looking list, and then give me the hairy eyeball until I shrivel to the size of a garden gnome and creep away trembling.

This time, as usual, I wrote “Take out weapons” on my to-do list, and then immediately glanced over my shoulder to see if Big Brother was watching.  Honest, I meant “take weapons out of waist pouch”, not “lay out weapons to be packed and smuggled aboard”.

To my surprise, everything went without a hitch in the Calgary airport.  The border guard barely glanced at me; I hadn’t forgotten to remove that stick of dynamite from my waist pouch; and amazingly, I wasn’t even selected for the “random” physical search (for which I’m chosen ninety percent of the time).

Coming home, Vegas airport security took some more nudie pics of me (I should have asked them for copies, come to think of it), but they didn’t tell me to bend over and pick up the soap, for which I was profoundly grateful.  Once I had removed my epidermis and superficial musculature and tucked it all into the little plastic bin to be X-rayed, it was clear sailing all the way.

Customs on the Canadian side lifted an amused eyebrow at my $20 declaration, and that was that.  Home free.

Little did they know I’d cleverly smuggled a prohibited item across the border:  a living creature carrying a communicable disease.

Yeah, I caught a cold while I was there.

But other than that, it was a perfect trip.

They Lied. As Usual.

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

Calgary’s location in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains makes the weather so changeable, it’s virtually impossible to predict.  In fact, the stats show our weather forecasts achieve approximately 40% accuracy.  So we use this easy rule of thumb:

weather

Today they promised sunny and 15 (that’s 59 for you Fahrenheit folks).  It’s 9 (48F), windy, cloudy, and spitting rain.  But the other thing you’ll always hear about our weather is “If you don’t like the weather, stick around for 10 minutes”.  It’s early in the day – there’s still hope…

Colour Me Psychotic

/ Diane Henders / 45 Comments

Even though I’ve mostly recovered from my ill-fated career as an interior designer, I’m still fascinated with colour.  You’ve got to be impressed by the way something that simple can drive people to the brink of psychosis.

This isn’t just my usual hyperbole – studies show that while most people become agitated and anxious when enclosed in a bright red room, individuals with some forms of psychosis actually become calmer when surrounded by such an “angry” colour.  (I’m not going to speculate on the meaning behind the bright orange-red walls in the last interior design office where I worked.  They were probably trying to tell me something.)

But my favourite form of colour psychosis can be observed in paint stores.  I’ve seen couples nearly come to blows over whether their walls should be painted “Prairie Light” or “Paper Lantern” – two off-white swatches that look slightly different when held side by side, but will in fact be indistinguishable once the entire room is painted.

Maybe that’s why I never did well as an interior designer – I could clearly discern the differences between the colours; I just couldn’t discern any reason why it mattered.  If I painted their living room without telling them, that couple would never be able to tell which paint colour I’d used, and within a few months they wouldn’t remember either of the names anyway.

I don’t understand why paint manufacturers give their colours such ambiguous names.  What colour is “Wayside Inn” anyway?  Red?  Brown?  White?  And who’s going to remember it when it’s time to buy more paint?

They need more memorable names, like the one my dad used to describe an unpleasant murky brownish green:  “Shitbrindle”.  (My dad never used vulgar language.  Ever.  This is another example of colour psychosis.)

Or my step-mom’s name for that particularly nasty shade of green that was popular in the 70s:  “Goat-Vomit Green”.  Or my neighbour’s comment when he first laid eyes on the nice bronzy yellow I’d chosen for our entry walls:  “Baby Shit”.  (Da Blog Fodder more tastefully names it “Calf Scour”, which is essentially the same thing but you have to be a farmer to get the joke.)

There’s even an (unintentional) app for generating memorable paint names.  Here are my favourite autocorrect colour translations from DamnYouAutocorrect:

Fuchsia = Fuckweasel

Persian Red = Period Red

European Sunrise = Effervescent Shitstain

Smoky Ridge = Smoker’s Teeth

Periwinkle = Period Tinkle or Pussywrinkled

Any time I’m out with my friends, somebody is sure to point at a fuchsia blouse and whisper “fuckweasel”.  And seriously, who wouldn’t want their walls painted with “Effervescent Shitstain”?

I think the paint manufacturers are missing out on a huge untapped market here.  They should print up their swatches with the colour formula on the back, and skip the naming entirely.  Then they could maintain a database where they record the colour names their customers provide.

‘Cause let’s face it, you’ll probably forget “St. George Island”, but “Atomic Vomit Green” will stay in your brain forever.

Here’s my attempt at naming a few colours. C’mon and play – any other suggestions?

Hooker’s Lips

Hooker’s Lips

Month-Old Bread

Month-Old Bread

Baby’s Bum

Baby’s Bum

Don’t Let Dad Barbeque

Don’t Let Dad Barbeque

Radioactive Algae

Radioactive Algae

Shouldn't Have Eaten That Burrito

Bad Burrito

A Nudie Pic From My Sordid Past

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

All the major celebrities have nude pictures lurking somewhere in their past.  They pretend to be embarrassed about them, but in fact it’s a clever marketing ploy to drum up some sensational news articles and garner more publicity.

I figure I could use some publicity, so today I’m going to unveil a nudie pic from my own misguided youth.  And no, I’m not talking about baby pictures.  I was twenty-two at the time, and old enough to know better.

I have to warn you, this is not a tastefully-done boudoir photo.  It’s a tawdry snapshot from a time when someone who shall remain nameless (and whom I’ve cropped from the photo) convinced me to expose myself in public.

I knew at the time that it was a bad idea.

I protested, but I was young, and peer pressure is a terrible thing.  And I believed in the power of friendship.  A true friend would never ask me to do anything humiliating or potentially damaging to my reputation, right?

Wrong.

Here’s the proof:

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Believe it or not, I am actually wearing a dress in that photo.  (For the record, Camille was a fellow martyr, not the bride who strong-armed us into this disaster.)

The bridesmaids’ dresses were flesh-coloured taffeta.  Low-cut and strapless, they had an inadequate wrap-around skirt secured only at the waist.  I’m sure I mooned half of Winnipeg just trying to get in and out of the car while the wind whipped that skirt around.

But the top was worse.  Much worse.

When the dress arrived the day before the wedding, I refused to wear it.  The top was so loose that one false move would’ve given the girls far more freedom than was advisable (or legal, for that matter).

So the seamstress altered it.  She was obviously vindictive about the last-minute change.  When I got the dress back the morning of the wedding, it was so tight I couldn’t draw a full breath.  My assets were attractively portioned into four boobs:  Bisected by a tourniquet of fabric, two naked bulges overflowed the top of the bodice, while the sadly flattened remainders were viciously crushed against my ribcage.

It was the 80s, and back then, cleavage was usually concealed in church.  You should have seen the poor minister’s face when I shuffled up the aisle clothed in little more than the tattered remains of my dignity, my half-exposed boobs burgeoning over the bodice with each humiliated breath while I tried to keep that slit-to-the waist skirt closed.  He probably wondered if I was inside the dress trying to get out, or outside it struggling to get in.

Trust me, it was the latter.

Somehow I got through the day, but the damning photographic evidence is preserved for all time:   Me, apparently stark naked in public, smiling for the camera.

So do you think that’s enough to make me famous?  Or just mortified?

Murphy Strikes Again

/ Diane Henders / 16 Comments

I forgot to schedule this to post automatically in the morning, but I think there’s still time for a Sunday funny.

We just spent the entire weekend harvesting the garden, and my car came back groaning under 700 lbs of potatoes, onions, carrots, pumpkins, and assorted other goodies. I was afraid this cartoon might turn out to be a little too true, but my car made it.  Guess I was safe because I haven’t won the lottery.

luck

Hair Today…

/ Diane Henders / 38 Comments

The other day I was cutting my husband’s hair when a memory made me smile.  Since it seems to make him unaccountably nervous when I smile for no apparent reason while wielding sharp objects close to his jugular, I hastened to explain.

First, a bit of background information:

I haven’t been to a hair salon in years.  I cut Hubby’s hair, and he trims an inch or two off mine whenever I feel the urge to part with some split ends.  This works well for many reasons, not the least of which is that if there are any latent hostilities in a marriage, letting your spouse snip away at your ‘do while you sit defenceless in a chair is certain to bring them to the surface.

Also, we’re both cheap and lazy, with no discernible fashion sense.  Cutting our own hair saves time and money, and as long as there are no visible chunks missing or sticking out, we figure it’s good enough.

But pre-Hubby, I went faithfully if grudgingly to the salon to get my hair cut.

Apart from the layered big-hair era of the 80s and a brief fling with short hair after donating my long locks to the Cancer Society, this is pretty much what my hairstyle has been all my life, plus or minus a foot or so:

Just before I cut it off and donated it about 10 years ago. (The ends look weird because I had just taken it out of a braid.)

Just before I cut it off and donated it about 10 years ago.

Back to the memory in question…

I love my hair, so (cheapness notwithstanding) I decided to spend whatever it took to make it look good. I experimented with various salons and price ranges, reasoning that an expensive haircut should be better than a cheap one.

That may be true if you have a complicated hairstyle, but I didn’t.  It was pretty much “just lop off a few inches and make sure the ends are straight”.  Other than the time I lost six inches because the stylist kept cutting it crooked and then trying to correct it, there was no discernible difference in the quality of the cut.

There was, however, one commonality between all the salons no matter how cheap or expensive:  the snotty stylist.

You know the one.  When you go into a salon, they put you in the chair, tie the cape around your throat so you can’t escape, and run their fingers through your hair with an expression of pained distaste.

Then they ask “Who cut your hair?” with not-quite-concealed disdain.

It didn’t matter whether I had paid $50 (which was a lot of money for a haircut ‘way back then) or $10, the haircut was always disparaged by the next stylist in line.

But once, and only once, I got my own back.

The stylist plopped me into the chair and ran contemptuous fingers through my hair before drawing himself up to haughtily inquire, “Who cut your hair?”

And I replied in complete honesty, “You did.”

It’s one of my most treasured memories.

The Sound Of Dementia

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

I really hope it’s not dementia, but my rate of misreads has increased considerably since I found the kiss-ass typo back in April.

Soon after that, I read ‘in my whorehouse’ over on Murr Brewster’s blog.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if she actually had written that, but she didn’t – it was ‘in my wheelhouse’.  (Murr is one funny blogger – go see for yourself!)

A short while later, I thought our Chamber of Commerce was mixing sacred with secular when I saw their poster advertising  ‘Holy Sponsorships Available for Play With The Presidents’.  A second reading revealed they were actually advertising hole sponsorships for their annual golf tournament.

My dirty mind kicked in when I saw the following tweet:  ‘I’ve ordered myself some Golden Snatch earrings…’  It took me a few moments to figure out that it was a Harry Potter reference and the earrings were actually little-bitty replicas of the ‘Golden Snitch’.

And I guess I wasn’t sufficiently recovered from that when I did a double-take at a condom ad trumpeting1 ‘GET UP TO ASS IN SAVINGS’.  It was in all caps with a sans serif font, which is always harder (I said ‘harder’… *snicker*) to read than mixed case (that’s my excuse, anyway).  After I’d finished giggling, it took me a couple of tries to decipher ‘GET UP TO $5 IN SAVINGS’.

Another ‘say what?!?’ moment arrived in my email when my Meetup group invited me to enjoy ‘Lesbian food and belly dancing’.  I’m a major foodie, but I’ve never heard of that cuisine before.  Turned out it was ‘Lebanese’ food, which didn’t seem quite as exotic, somehow.

Even business headlines weren’t safe.  I read ‘Things Sales Winners Deformity’ instead of ‘Do Differently’ and ‘get back to bananas’ instead of ‘back to business’.  And I discovered a cabinet company that offers ‘customer insults’.  Or possibly ‘customer installs’, though insults are well within the realm of possibility.

I can’t remember which community site entreated ‘Looking for a spare cowboy to borrow for a few weeks’.  But it turned out they were only looking for a spare ‘carboy’ to brew a batch of beer.

My mind was clearly on bodily functions the day I read ‘Fanfart’, which sounds like something to avoid at all costs.  The article was actually referring to ‘fanart’ – art done by fans of specific books.

But by far my most disturbing misread happened when I was perusing a music website.  I’m a huge Bob Seger fan, and I was indignant to discover they were snidely referring to his upcoming concert tour as “The Sound of Dementia”.  So he’s in his late sixties, so what?  Seger is amazing, and that was completely rude and uncalled-for!  Closer inspection revealed that the site was in fact a list of upcoming concerts: “The Sound of Dalmatia Tour”, “Bob Seger”, and “NeYo”, among others.

So I settled my ruffled feathers with the knowledge that the dementia was all in my head.  I didn’t know dementia had a sound, but in my case it’s apparently rather empty and echoing.

* * *

1 Would you believe I misread my own words while proofing this?  I saw “humping” instead of “trumpeting”.  Please… somebody help me…

‘Scuse My Bear Behind

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

Gardening season has been exciting this year.  I had a feeling my impromptu pole dance in the spring would lead to a stellar career, and I was right.  This week found me head-down-ass-up in a tunnel of pea vines, belting out Broadway tunes at the top of my lungs.

A number of factors converged to produce this one-of-a-kind entertainment extravaganza.  In the first place, I didn’t plan my garden well.  In spring when there was nothing but tilled soil, it looked as though there was all the room in the world between rows.

There wasn’t.  The peas overran their trellises and joined hands in fellowship above the (now obviously inadequate) space between the rows.

Fine.  It’s awkward to pick peas, but lush growth is the kind of garden “problem” I can happily accept.

The second factor is that our garden is out in the middle of nowhere, only a couple of miles from a vast forestry reserve.

Last week I was out there when a cloud of dust and loud rattling announced the approach of a vehicle.  Moments later a truck appeared, towing a large cylinder on a trailer.  In block letters on the cylinder were the words ‘BEAR TRAP – KEEP BACK 10M”.

Last year a grizzly killed two horses on the farm north of us.  And I thought, “This can’t be good.”

The truck paused at our corner before continuing west.  That road dead-ends only a couple of miles past our place.

This really wasn’t good.

So when I went out again a couple of days ago, I was cautious.  The path to our garden winds through heavy spruce and aspen forest, and after I parked my car in our campsite clearing, I let out a few shouts of greeting:  “Hello, Mr. Bear!  I’m going to the garden now!  Yep, down this path!  Through the woods!  Scary human being here!  Time for you to move on!”

I strapped on my canisters of bear spray and stood debating whether it would be less embarrassing if the neighbours caught me loudly talking to myself in the woods, or singing really badly.  Singing won by a small margin.

I don’t know how rock stars manage to sing while jumping around on stage.  Granted, I have a crap voice, but I thought I was in pretty good shape.  Singing nervously and strolling through the woods to give the bear an opportunity to get out of the way, I was pathetically out of breath by the time I got to the garden.  Which made me sound even worse than usual.

The 8-foot deer fence around the garden won’t repel a determined bear, but it should prevent him from accidentally wandering through, so I went inside and promptly shut the hell up because even I couldn’t stand my singing by then.

That is, until my neighbour drove over to warn me they’d caught one grizzly a mile west of us, were fairly certain a second was still at large, and there had been a number of black bears in the area, too.

Hurray.

I abandoned all pretense of dignity.

And this happened:

bear behind

I’m not proud of my performance, but I didn’t see a bear, either.  If there was one in the vicinity, he was probably too incapacitated by laughter to maul me anyway.

Anybody else have a bear tale?