Theme Thursday: Blogging is a lifeline

 

If you had asked me 4 years ago if I ever saw myself starting a blog, I probably would have laughed in your face. I've always liked to write but my idea of blogging was posting all your private thoughts on a public forum, where people could find out exactly how much of a fucking weirdo you really are, which I thought would be sort of horrifying. Turns out that's pretty much what blogging is, putting your shit on display for the all the interwebs to see...I've just learned to embrace my inner weirdo, not give a shit if strangers question my sanity and/or intelligence and found out there are a LOT of other people equally as insane and just as willing to display it in public as I am. .

I try to focus on humour on my blog. Partly because anytime I try to write something serious/compelling/insightful/inspirational, I come off sounding like the ShamWow infomercial guy...like I'm trying way too hard. Partly because I do believe that laughter is the best medicine out there (tied for first place with Valium and Nyquil). And partly because there are times when if I don't find something to laugh about, I'm going to end up a sobbing mess who can't get out of bed in the morning.

Laughter is a lifeline for me. I suffer from depression and sometimes trying desperately to find the funny in something can briefly take my mind off how truly dark and shitty I feel. And when you're way down inside that black hole, a moment of levity can lift you up just enough to keep you from drowning. Some of the funniest and most talented bloggers I've read suffer from some form of depression or have experienced some kind of horrible trauma in their lives, and most have said the same thing: blogging helps them keep their sanity because their blog is a safe place to vent, cope and a place where they know they are truly not alone. Maybe we hide behind a humourous facade, but it's a hell of a lot better than being mired in non-stop despair.

I believe great things can come out of emotional pain and suffering. Blogging is an outlet where we can take all that negative shit and use it to not only make ourselves better people, but better writers. And I can tell you in the last 4 years blogging has helped me keep my sanity. Plus it's a hell of a lot cheaper than therapy.

Magical WD40, moldy fame and wtf did I just get myself into?

I had a strange dream last night. I was on the Starship Enterprise, but it looked more like a futuristic cruise ship similar to this:

I'm guessing there was some kind of invisible shield around the pool so the water doesn't slop out during deep-space travel

Also, we weren't in space, we were hovering over Granville Street in Vancouver. Suprisingly, none of the pedestrians thought there was anything unusual about a flying cruise ship, so I'm thinking we must have been in the future, where cruise ship fly around city streets with impunity and no one worries getting crushed by a falling lifeboat or some glutton who slips into a sugar coma and falls off the ship after their 6th trip in a row to the chocolate buffet.

Anyways my mission was to find out which people and part of the ship had been secretly taken over by something like the Borg but not the Borg. I had a magical can of WD40 that I ran around spraying on anything I suspected was compromised...the WD40 gave off a blue glow when sprayed on anything infected and also reversed the effects. I was a fucking hero and Captain Picard was so impressed he gave me unlimited access to his personal "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." machine.

Exactly what I was wondering. Because EVERYONE already has access to tea on the Enterprise. Where the hell is my Starfleet medal and a free pass to the planet of DisneyLandWorldUniverse (opening date TBA in 482 years)

In other news, my stupidity has apparently paid off because I was asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview for a  consumer webshow regarding my ignorance in how to deal with mold (FYI: "bleaching the shit out of it" is not the answer and you can read about my dumbassery  here ). I am truly honored that someone would ask me to admit to my domestic failings in a public forum...although given my email reply, which contained the following sentences:

"I was worried about all the potential spores and fuck-knows-what kind of toxins I breathed in but thankfully I remembered that chances are my lungs have an impenetrable coating of hairspray on them from 20+ years of hairstyling, so I figure I'm immune. At least that's what I've been telling myself to keep me from going on WebMD to find out I have mold-induced lung plague."

I would not be surprise if my invitation was revoked. So we'll see.

Finally, I decided to hop on the band wagon and participate in this and if you're feeling up to posting 26 times in April, you should do the same

Monday morning Pinterest hangover

I seem to have developed a pattern on Sundays of whiling away far too many hours on The Pinterest. I have no interest in smiling babies, puppies doing cute things or 438 pins of the DIY centerpieces you want for your wedding...but I do enjoy rednecks, duct tape and food that I would never allow to touch my lips in this lifetime, and I'm assuming there are other people out there who enjoy the same...and we all know that sharing is caring. So I present to those people some of my best (or possibly worst)  pins I found this week:

Dear Fashion: I just don't get you. At all.

I do love bacon but maybe not this much

This shows exactly how I feel about Valentines Day. Except on Feb 15 when all the chocolate is marked down

I'm kicking myself for not saving my uterus after my hysterectamy so I could make it into a lamp...WHAT WAS i THINKING???

My brain just melted from the confusion

 

Mmmm....Spaghetti-O aspic topped with Vienna Sausage. My favourite, said no one

Handling plutonium would have been less horrific

I decided to be all domestic and shit this morning and all it brought me was a possible death sentence.

I should probably explain that statement.

In the middle of cleaning my apartment, I took the full garbage bag out of the garbage can. And noticed something at the bottom. In my defence, the inside of the can is black and I tend not to notice if there’s anything stuck at the bottom…which will never happen again because what has been seen? Cannot be unseen.

I’m assuming it used to be a piece of pizza, because it was triangular in shape, but that’s where any resemblance to actual food ended. It was grey and green and whatever the fuck had colonized on it had spread all over the bottom of the can. It looked like a science project about mold had gone awry and taken on a life of it’s own. After a few choice curse words and throwing up in my mouth, I put on an oven mitt with a plastic bag over top of it and gingerly eased it into another plastic bag inside a second plastic bag. I’m pretty sure people who handle plutonium transport it less carefully than I moved this alien creature. Then I realize I need to clean out the can itself, so I hauled out my trusty jug of bleach.

I should have thought that through a little more first.

Because you know what happens when you spray bleach into a mold colony? All the fucking mold spores react in horror and attempt to make their escape in a cloud of powdery dust, which caused a lot of shrieking and resulted in me tying a dishcloth over my face for protection, because at that point my thought was “sweet raptor jebus, how much of that shit did I just breath in???? My lungs are full of fucking mold spores! MOTHERFUCKING SPORES!!!” Which also made me realize there is an untapped market for home hazmat suits and respirators and why has someone not gotten on that shit???

Needless to say, once I finished the mold removal from the can, I spent the next hour bleaching every single surface of my kitchen, and another half hour in the shower scalding myself and scrubbing off the first couple layers of skin. I kind of felt like Meryl Streep in Silkwood, minus the radiation. But the hysteria was pretty close.

I’m really hoping all the bleach fumes I breathed in counteract the mold spores. Because I really don’t want to die a horrible death brought on by old pizza and my lack of good housekeeping skills. That would just be embarrassing.

Theme Thursday: My boobs could have won a 4-H competition

Before my son was born, I made the decision to breastfeed. Mostly because it’s convenient and free. I was lucky because my son took all of one feeding to figure out how it worked which was a good thing because I sure the hell didn’t know what I was doing. The first time,  the nurse at the hospital basically grabbed my boob and positioned it the right way, which was something before childbirth I would have objected to (having a strange woman grope me, that is). But after pushing almost 9 pounds of human being out of my body in front of various medical professionals who saw way more of me than I’m sure anyone has ever seen, or WANTED to see, getting my breast and nipple pawed and adjusted was really no big deal.

Fortunately, my son took to breast-feeding like a fish to water, and he was very efficient about the whole thing (10-15 minutes, start to finish). Unfortunately he was hungry ALL THE TIME and he ate so fast you could hear him gulping and snarfing down milk from the other room. I had been warned that babies usually spit up a little after a feeding but I was not prepared for the metric ton of breast milk he’d happily hoark up on me after every feeding. I walked around with 3 layers of burp cloth permanently attached to my shoulder, but I should have just worn a garbage bag to save on laundry.

I mentioned the frantic gulping and the tsunami of subsequent spit-up top the nurse at the breast feeding clinic…I liked taking him twice a week because I got all OCD about how much weight he gained (lots) and what size percentile he was in (always at the very large end). She suggested I feed him in front of her, so she could see what the deal was, and did I think I could get him to breastfeed right then. Not a problem, lady…it’s lunchtime in his world every 45 minutes or less.

So I fed him and he gulped and snarfled and belched like miniature sailor who just pounded back a six-pack of baby-beer and we ended the performance with a spectacular display of spit-up, which partly landed on the nurse’s shoes. After a brief moment of silence that I think was a bit of shock and awe, she asked me a bunch of questions about my milk supply (massively abundant) and his feeding habits (all the fucking time) and concluded that I was producing enough milk for twins, possibly triplets. And the milk was coming out so fast that my son had to gulp frantically to keep up, which was why about a third of it ended up all down my back every time. Also, my kid was a glutton and the reason I was producing so much milk was because he was sucking so much out at a time. It was a vicious circle. And it also explained why my boobs ballooned up 2 cup sizes and why I could shoot milk about half the length of my house.

Thankfully the milk production eventually slowed down and I could stop worrying that I was going to drown my son with an unstoppable wave of boob-juice, or that he would weight 500 lbs by the time his first birthday rolled around.

Come to think of it, at 13 he still eats like a starving person…just minus the spit up.

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Payback isn't always a bitch. Sometimes it's a trumpet

I've never met my downstairs neighbours but I am well aquainted with their kid's feet. Specifically, their kid's feet that pound up and down the length of their apartment for hours on end and it sounds like a herd of rampaging elephants with bricks strapped to their feet. It's not really loud as it is horribly thumpy and annoying as fuck. Last night, after about 2 hours of thumpthumpTHUMPthump (seriously, are you letting that kid mainline Red Bull? Because who runs non-stop for that long without chemical enhancement or a hyperactivity disorder??) I was seriously ready to take a roll of duct tape downstairs and do this:

See the smile on her face? She's enjoying her duct tape cocoon

However, despite the fact that the kid might actually like being duct taped to a wall, the parents may not agree. So I jumped up and down on the floor as loud as I could to signal my displeasure.

Tonight is payback time. Because my son has one of these:

It's a trumpet. A very loud trumpet.

Normally he practices at his dad's house because even with a mute, it's still pretty fucking loud and I try to be a considerate neighbour. Not tonight though:

If they don't fear it yet? They will in about 10 minutes

Enjoy the free concert, asshats

You need healthcare. Even without the danger of polar bears.

Dear America:

While I’m happy on your behalf that today is Inauguration Day (or is it Re-inauguration Day because it’s Obama’s second term), I do question your government devoting an entire day to car parades, speeches, dinners and fancy-dress balls. You’re the only first world country without universal health care and you’re dangling on the edge of a fiscal cliff (which I will admit I’m not exactly sure what that phrase even means…I’m assuming it has something to do with a shit-ton of debt and both parties spending far too much time arguing and bitching over whose fault it is instead of…I don’t know…FIXING THE PROBLEM???), yet you’re ok with spending eleventy million dollars (note: that may be a slight exaggeration. It’s probably only tenity million. My accountant is on holiday, so I don’t have the figures in front of me. Fine. I have no accountant and can barely do math on a calculator, and only when I’m forced to), on what amounts to a bunch of blah-blah-blah, a (probably overcooked) steak dinner, and some singing by a bunch of celebrities who you know are only performing because chatting with Michelle Obama about her dress and discussing how to sneak past your security team when you have a secret craving for 6 Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes is the ultimate star-fuck, especially when you’re already a star and usually the fuckee.

Let me tell you, in Canada, when our Prime Minister is sworn in, it’s a 3 minute ceremony followed by beer, poutine and drunken karaoke featuring Celine Dion tunes at the local pub. It’s casual, relaxed and most importantly, costs $1057.44. And the majority of that is for the beer tab. Because we prefer healthcare to expensive pomp and ceremony. Also, it’s too fucking cold up here for ballgowns, which look stupid with thermal underwear. Plus running from polar bears is difficult in high heels. Those assholes are fast, you know.

Anyfuckingways, in the future, you may want to consider making some economic changes to where your hard-earned tax dollars go. Especially when it’s for a party you’re not even invited too, which is almost like shades of high school. Seriously people…you don’t even get a piece of cake out of the deal. I’d bitch if I were you.

Yours sincerely,

Your northern neighbour who has healthcare. And needs it due to all the rampaging polar bears

You have to admit this shit is way better than some stupid chair cover in ribbons and toile

I’m always in awe of  DIYourselfers. No so much the people who can sew a quilt out of old concert t-shirts, make their own all natural deodorant or build a hairband holder out of an old wooden frame. Those people piss me off because when they post a pic of some craft they completed with “Nailed It” written as a caption, you just want to punch them in the esophagus for their smugness, especially when you know full well that if you attempted to knit your own candle cozies there would be a lot of swearing, vodka and furniture-kicking…and would likely end with an unlucky family member getting stabbed in the thigh with a knitting needle when they had the audacity to ask ‘what the hell is that supposed to be??”

No, the DIY people I admire are the ones who stray far away from what would be consider normal in polite society and create shit like this:

Beaver Babies (by http://www.oneclassymotha.com/ ) Because what better way to teach you kids about the facts of life than with felt vaginas? I particularly love the pubic hair detail...inspired!!

While I'm really not sure if this is supposed to be a viking helmet or a Satan mask, who gives a shit because IT'S MADE OUT Of BACON!!!

Huge props to whoever came up with this costume idea...it's takes massive balls(or is that ovaries??) to walk around  a party dressed like a giant used maxi pad

Not only is this underwear, but it's an emergency snack! Or a sex toy for  the beef jerky fetish community

Responsibility is overrated

What I SHOULD be doing right now: Going through all my education material so on Thursday, when one of my students asks me a question, I sound like I know what I’m talking about. I’m a firm believer in the theory that every time you learn something new, something old falls out of your brain into some anti-intellectual abyss. And I’m pretty sure that abyss is full of important information that I need to shove back in. Before Thursday. Which is soon, in case you don’t have a calendar handy.

What’s worse is I’m pretty sure a whole bunch more stuff fell out of my head today thanks to my boss, who is forcing me to read “A Short History Of Nearly Everything”, which as he pointed out I promised to read (because he read it, disagreed with about 97% of it and wants me to read it so we can spend the next 6 months arguing about it between clients. Hence the promise part) about 2 months ago. My excuse then was I couldn’t because I was in the middle of rereading a series of 22 mystery detective novels all in sequence and I could not start reading anything else until I finished. Which was a lie because a) I have at least 3 books on the go at all times, b) I finished that series before Christmas and had read at least 10 other books since then, and c) I don’t want to read a book about the origins of life and the universe (even if Bill Bryson wrote it, who’s books I happen to love) because while I believe in science/evolution, I can’t think about it too much due to my rampant paranoia about the fact that there is no reason our universe doesn’t suddenly implode back into the nothingness we started out from with no warning whatsoever. And I don’t want to implode with no notice. I have an awesome pair of boots I haven’t worn yet, plus I still haven’t watched all the seasons of Lost on DVD.

So what was I forced to learn today? That Pluto is considered the redheaded stepchild of the universe and that if gravity doesn’t stay at the exact level it is, we’re all fucking doomed. The former I don’t give a shit about (and let’s face it…who claims Pluto as their favourite planet? That’s right, no one in the history of ever, that’s who) and the latter gives me an anxiety attack. And to top it off, some kind of information that was likely of vital importance got kicked to the curb to make room for a lame-ass hunk of space rock and the worry that falling off the face of the earth could be a reality instead of just some overused expression. Which is why I should be reviewing and preparing like a responsible adult. Instead of googling DIY sites for magnetic gravity boots.

Pinterest for serial killers

I want to give this bathmat as a present. And neglect to inform the person that water shows up as blood on it...surprise, you really aren't mysteriously bleeding out!

Hannibal Lecter for Pottery Barn

I hear the theme from Psycho playing in my head

This blood spatter is really too tidy

Probably the least disturbing. Which is sort of disturbing in itself

Not sure what is more disturbing: the fact that Serial Killer Décor is an actual “thing” on Pinterest. Or that I gleefully pinned all this shit to one of my boards because it’s fucking cool in a Dexterish kind of way

Recycled roadkill is the new black. Or something.

So far, it's been a productive day...my bathroom is so heavy with bleach fumes it could likely kill you (but it's fucking SPARKLING clean!), the Mt Everest of laundry has been reduced to a mere hill and I've told my gym to basically go fuck themselves on fb ( I see your total incompetence and I raise you one blocked bank account and two upraised middle fingers. I win, motherfucker)

I got a second job, teaching part-time at a hairdressing school...YAY!!! I start next week, so between there and the salon I'll be working 6 days a week, so I'm trying to spend today getting caught up on a bunch of shit to prevent myself from pulling my hair out in frustration when my schedule gets a little insane. In December I decided to make 2013 the year of my career, and devote this year to working my ass off, building and marketing my business more, and to spend more time educating myself because in this business, the minute you decide you know it all and there's nothing left you could possibly learn? Is time for you to retire. Because this industry evolves constantly and learning new shit keeps you enthused, which keeps your clients coming back.

Before I go get on with my day, I leave you with the above pic

Because re-purposing roadkill into bottle holders is fucking genius. And green.

And I still can’t find the “any” key

Being a hairstylist often means you’re a low-tech person in a high-tech world. We don’t need a bunch of fancy electronic gadgets to do our job and in my salon, we stubbornly insist on remaining in the technological Dark Ages…client records are recorded on cards and kept in recipe boxes and appointments are written in an actual appointment book made out of paper and everything. No computer, no computerized client database, no online booking system, no receptionist walking around with a Bluetooth stuck in her ear that makes her look like she’s a crazy person talking to herself. My boss and I are old school technophobes, and we like it that way, thankyouverymuch.

My boss shuns technology. He takes great pride in not having a cel phone, nor an email address. He thinks social media is a complete waste of time and has declared the internet to be a “fad”. I, on the other hand, am a technology fence-straddler and have a love/hate relationship with technology…a perfect example is I own a blackberry and enjoy being able to text, check my email and see who’s following me on Twitter, but I have no idea how to use any apps on it, no idea how to use the speakerphone and no fucking clue where the mute button is (which is a source of massive annoyance because my phone likes to lock itself for no apparent reason and to unlock it you have to press the mute button. Which I can’t do because I still cannot find the fucking mute button after 3 years of blackberry ownership. And have to resort to turning the phone on and off). Also? It took me 2 years to figure out how to clear the cache on my laptop. And I have a couple videos I downloaded and have NO idea where they are (apparently hidden in the bowels of some kind of laptop no-man’s-land, never to be found again). How can someone who spends half their life blogging and searching google for shit like bacon art and nose porn still be so technologically inept that when the laptop tells them to “press any key” they spend 5 minutes searching the keyboard while yelling “Where the hell is the any key?? WHERE?????” It’s a fucking conundrum, I tell you.

Lately I have decided to somewhat embrace technology for work-related stuff. Partly because we now have 2 other co-workers who are young and wise enough to see the value in using social media to market themselves, and since I’m already on Facebook 10 times a day, maintaining a page for the salon seems like a smart move. Our boss, despite his aversion to all things internet, agrees this is a good idea…even though he’s never even looked at the page and has no plans to ever look at it. Which means we could post some pics of him at the staff Xmas party and he’d never know unless one of his clients happened to see it. But then he’d probably take revenge by getting his wife to put the video of certain staff members trying to drunkenly belly-dance on you tube and trust me, NO ONE needs to see that video. And I’m pretty sure drunk belly-dancing videos are not the way to build your client base

I see your blog troll and raise you a faked death

Here’s the thing: I blog here and I blog somewhere else (actually 2 somewhere elses, but I don’t really count my tumblr blog because it’s basically a repository for my funny/stupid/gross/fucked-up pic collection so it’s not taking up massive amounts of valuable real estate on my hard drive…more of virtual storage container, full of virtual boxes, some that require eyeball bleach upon opening. And no, I’m not talking about porn, so get your mind out of the fucking gutter, I’m as pure as the pristine snow on the mountaintop. Ok, not really, but I am sneaky enough not to actually store porn on my computer. Not when there’s a billion porn sites you can just click on and no one is the wiser, especially if you clear your browsing history right after. Not that I do any of that. It’s just what I hear from my porn-wise friends. Those dirty perverts.)

Ok, where was I going with this??

Oh, right. Blogging. Not porn.

Anyfuckingway, I have noticed a difference in the quality and quantity of blog drama here as opposed to the other site I blog on and I must say, I’m a little perplexed. And vexed. And have a slight craving for a nice gouda cheese. Which has nothing to do with blogging or drama. I just like cheese a LOT, ok?

But where is all the drama?

Where is the religious fanatic that declares you’re all a bunch of godless sinners who are going straight to hell because of your outrageous blasphemizing? Where is the narcissistic bitch who views all other female bloggers as a threat to her popularity, so she publicly picks a fight, waits for the inevitable response and then immediately cries that she’s the victim while making a series of posts about the horrors of cyber bullying? Where is the asshole that gets cyber-wood by calling all women fat who are larger than a size 2 and then basking in the resulting feminine outrage? Where is the woman who complains about her shitty relationship in excruciating detail and then gets all huffy and pissed off when any of her readers suggest she might be far happier if she ended said-shitty relationship?

Where are all the men posing as hot women? Where are all the women posing as hotter and more interesting women? Where are all con artists with detailed fake backgrounds? The eventually-outed criminals who’s mugshots and criminal records still aren’t enough to make their most loyal sycophants admit those people were REALLY not who they claimed to be? The liars? The constant complainers? The psychos?

And for fucks sakes, where are the faked deaths? Because there is nothing like a death within a close-knit blogging community that turns out to be a huge elaborate hoax, just to get everyone grieving and in shock, which quickly turns to supremely pissed-off outrage, which then turns into a cyber lynch mob, which then causes a rift in the entire community which ends with people giving up blogging completely due to all the stress and bullshit and insane people who fake their own death.

Seriously, this place compared to my other blog place seems so calm and normal it’s creeping me out a little =))

Tampon crafting brings people together like world peace. Sort of.

This is what I love about blogging: one minute you’re discovering new-to-you bloggers that share a similar sense of humour/insanity and the next you’re on all forms of social media discussing tampon crafts. Where else can you find other people who appreciate the fine art of tampon toupee-making? It brings a fucking tear of gratitude to my eye…good thing I have my tampon hanky at the ready in case of unexpected crying due to cyber-happiness.

I decided to delve a little deeper into the vast unknown that is tampon crafting because I think it’s fucking genius (possibly the mentally disturbed kind of genius, but that’s often the best kind) and also I’m kicking myself for not discovering this back in the spring when I had a hysterectomy and no longer had a use for lady plugs (and trust me, trying to figure out what to do with a box of tampons was a fucking conundrum…throwing them away seemed like a big waste, giving them away seemed weird, because would you not be a little freaked out if some stranger asked you “hey, want some tampons?”. I also debated leaving them in the building lobby in the spot where people leave free stuff. I once found a box of about 50 extra small condoms there, which lead me to believe Frodo the hobbit is a tenant in my building and apparently he’s decided to stop being a horny little whore and choose a life of celibacy. Hence the tiny-condom giveaway. Also, Superman is my next-door neighbour. I know this because I saw him smoking on his balcony on Xmas Day wearing his outfit, including the cape. Did I mention I live in the best apartment building in the history of EVER? Fuck yes I do)

Anyfuckingway, I’m bummed about this tampon-crafting-discovery because now it’s way too late to throw myself a hysterectomy party with a uterus cake, tampon party favours and games like Uterus Hacky Sack and Fallopian Tube Sword Fighting.

Sigh.

Grocery amnesia

Apparently I have a condition that causes me to buy groceries during what I can only guess is some kind of food-fugue state. Because that’s the only explanation as to why I would own a can of bamboo shoot tips. I’m certainly not an adventurous cook and for the life of me have no fucking clue what the fuck kind of recipe requires a type of wood in it…perhaps I was feeling rather Iron-Chef-like at some point, with dreams of presenting a daring recipe of Vanilla-infused Bamboo Shoots poached in a brandy-based demi-glace so delicious that all of Kitchen Stadium would be weeping in culinary pleasure. Except for Morimoto, who would so ashamed he was beaten by a rank amateur that he’d flee in embarrassment. However, the Bamboo Battle was unlikely, due to the fact I couldn’t poach anything if my life depended on it and I have no fucking clue what demi-glace is either. So what the fucking fuck is this shit doing in my kitchen cupboard?

Also, what the fuck am I doing with 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup? I fucking hate mushrooms, because mushrooms are fungus, fungus is mold and there’s no fucking way I’m voluntarily eating something that looks like it sprouted up in the toilet of one of those insane Hoarder people’s houses  (and don’t start in with me about cheese, which I love and also happens to be edible mold, especially the kind that’s so stinky and runny, it looks like a fucking science experiment gone horribly awry, which is the best fucking kind. Because cheese is totally different from mushrooms. In the way that it’s fucking delicious and mushrooms are not). I would never buy mushroom soup because I certainly wouldn’t eat it, yet there it is, sitting in my cupboard.

And cornmeal. What the fuck do you make with cornmeal? I’m sure there’s lots of cornmeal-based recipes, but since I am not from The South (and no, I also have no fucking clue what grits are, or why you’d want to eat something named after the shit you vacuum off your carpet. However, bbq and deep-fried pickles more than make up for the whole grits debacle, so you Southerners are off the hook), nor can I ever remember preparing food where cornmeal was an ingredient, I have no fucking idea why I own a fair-sized bag of it.

Now since I’m sure I’m not the only person with grocery amnesia, what’s the weirdest thing in your pantry that you have zero recall of purchasing?