They have weak borders, too. You don’t even need to show your passport to enter Vatican City!

We are through the looking glass, people

If I were Edgar Linton, I would simply have my daughter and Nelly Dean to move to an actual town, instead of planning for her to participate in the incestuous bi-family local marriage economy that has destroyed everyone I love. But what do I know.

Sometimes I feel like I’m so boring on here now. For the sake of my stupid mental health, I’ve tried to buckle down & not e.g. debate politics with other people. My beliefs are the same as always, but having these discussions just felt increasingly fruitless (and fraught for me, a crazy person lol)

Picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to me, but a lifetime of practicing has made me pretty ok at it. The one exception is niceties in work emails. I forget embarrassingly often to put stuff like “hope you’re enjoying this nice weather” before “can you get me that quote you promised me”

15yo, eyeing my meal while he eats a bowl of pasta: what’s that? Me: Potato, cauliflower, and white bean soup. I wanted to use the rest of those potatoes I bought the other week. 15yo: you used up the potatoes??? Me: yeah but we can get more 15yo, wounded: but I had plans for those potatoes

Made this last night and it was extremely easy and delicious. I managed to score a $2 head of cauliflower on the cheap-because-ugly vegetable shelf, and I had leftover potatoes, so the whole thing cost around $15 for a huge batch (the chips were the most expensive ingredient). Def a keeper.

Hard to believe that this guy now sends me endless texts about the Knights Templar. Everything I’ve learned about their beef with the French king and their ingenious banking system has been against my will, and yet I’d listen to all of his rants all over again because I think he’s just that cool.

It’s funny how sometimes nicknames resist any attempt at planning. Like, when we got our cat Benedict, I absolutely thought I’d call him Eggs for short. How fun and clever! Instead, I call him Benson and Hedges or Sweet Bonnaroo or Mister Benny-Bens. Go figure.

When the white smoke came out of that Vatican chimney and they announced that the new pope was American, my first thought was “oh great, that’s just what we need”. I was so mad/sad about Francis’ death and I worried this was some MAGA pope. Anyway, turns out that he kind of is just what we need.

It happened to me: my kid asked me to take him to Warped Tour this summer and now I feel a thousand years old

Sometimes reading the comments on a recipe is its own reward

Did Tom Ripley write this

If you ever get itchy pus-filled bumps that make you look like you have the bubonic plague, it may be dyshidrotic eczema. Ask me today what your options are when it comes to dealing with the coolest skin condition of all time! (Jk your options are hydrocortisone cream, moisturizer, and prayer)

I volunteer once a week at a soup kitchen (though I would describe it as so much more than that). A few weeks ago, I revealed that I love baking, and now I’m the official Monday cake maker. This was my effort from this past week (baked in a repurposed catering tray)

Keister has to be one of the top three funniest ways to say butt. I know because I’m an expert.

One of those days where I feel like all I ever do is fuck up and fail at every aspect of my life: work, parenting, assorted sundries (for example, I’m bad at cleaning??)

I guess “maple flavoured nun’s farts” would have sounded slightly obscene in English, but it’s funny how this translation skates around the original French meaning. (Also, the American spelling of “flavored” here is a hate crime)

Canadian Christian children, confidently: Christ died on the cross at Calgary

A fun fact about me is that I used to work for Gerry Adams’ niece. (She was a great boss and always brought Baileys and assorted treats for the office on St Patrick’s Day)

Juniper has been my baby for the entire 18 years she’s lived with my family. When I was pregnant, she would lie across my belly while 15yo kicked. When he was born, she went into a period of jealous depression during which she pretended he didn’t exist. Amazingly, she absolutely adores my kid now.

In the spirit of “food costs so much these days” and “I only want to make things in the slow cooker because I hate rushing to get dinner on the table at the end of the day”*, here are my ratings for some meals my family has eaten over the past month *that might just be me tbh

It happened to me: I was sitting in mass and the priest was talking about Holy Week, then suddenly the opening guitar riff from Heaven On Their Minds played in my head. I knew it was time to go home and listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack on repeat.

I needed to buy carrots this week, and my local supermarket had a bag of “ugly” ones. Anyway, please enjoy this selection of sexy leggy carrots.

It’s Monday and your coworker says, “Did you hear about that Air Canada crash?” Do you respond with: A) yes, how awful! B) yes, it was the first fatal accident in a long time! C) yes, they hadn’t had a fatality since 1983, which was the fire that killed Stan Rogers Anyway, I said the weird one.

After I posted this last week, someone very kindly sent me money to make my grandmother’s stew. But I don’t have her contact info or Bluesky handle! If you’re seeing this, Anna, THANK YOU. That was seriously so nice of you! I made the stew tonight and it was amazing.

I was going to make my grandmother’s Irish stew for St. Patrick’s Day this week, but all of the ingredients were so unbelievably expensive that I put them back and got a frozen pizza instead. Then I thought about Mark Carney puttering around his house, not having to even think about how much …

15yo: I asked my friend if he liked punk music and he said yes so then I asked him what bands he liked and it turns out he doesn’t even listen to punk. He lied! Me: huh, that’s weird 15yo: he’s a poser! 15yo: but for real, if you want to like something, just learn to like it! Don’t lie about it!

do you guys ever have intrusive thoughts like you enter a place where there’s no cell service and your brain is like “someone you love might die while you’re here and you won’t find out for hours” and then that plays on a loop in your head the entire time you’re there, blocking out everything else?

Catholic girlhood is draping a towel over your head while you pretend to be the Virgin Mary and then realizing you will never be the pope

25 year old Galileo Galilei, a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa: You know what the problem with forcing professors to wear academic robes is? None of the brothels in town will let you in, and then you have to masturbate, which is a sin 😡

If you’re looking for a podcast to listen to today, the greenest of all days, may I recommend the @apocrypals.bsky.social Life of St. Patrick episode? It contains a D&D discussion that regularly gets cited in my household. That guy sure did love to battle wizards!

This is one of the funniest corrections I’ve ever read

My psychiatrist retired at the end of December & now I am rawdogging life bc neither of us could find a psych who was taking on long-term patients. Anyway, during weeks like these — when I am getting a max of three hours of broken sleep per night — I just want someone to tell me I’m doing a good job

15yo and I were chatting about our trip to Spain tonight and I mentioned how much I appreciated what a great traveller he is - always eager to try new things, flexible in how the day plays out, generally fun, etc. Then he said, “And I appreciate what a great trip planner you are.” Anyway! Crying.

Going to confession just to feel something* *guilt, shame

Please enjoy this video I have been obsessed with for the past few days

I’m so glad that Doug Ford is doing his best to gut the revenue the province makes from the LCBO so that his pals can make $$$ off of private alcohol sales. I used to often think, “Wow, the LCBO is so inconvenient, I wish I could buy beer at this supermarket that has exactly the same opening hours.”

There is no parenting handbook for the period when your teenaged son desires to grow a patchy mustache and look like a little scuzzbucket

Made lentil soup in the slow cooker yesterday. For some reason the grocery store was completely out of red lentils, so I used green lentils and just cooked it for a bit longer. It tasted really good but between the lentils and the spinach, it kinda looked like dystopian green slop. Yum!

Saw Hamnet with my mom this week & towards the end of the movie she wordlessly passed me a tissue because we were both silently weeping. I read the book in the early pandemic days & the movie was just as devastating. But also I think this video of the cast dancing to Rihanna might have healed me.

BREAKING: A STORE IN MY NEIGHBOURHOOD HAS JUST STARTED CARRYING TAYTO CRISPS. MY GOD THAT CHEESE AND ONION GOES DOWN SO SMOOTH, I FEEL LIKE IT’S A CRIME TO BE EATING THESE DURING LENT.

I’m so tired of this effing weather that I’ve been (self-indulgently) looking at photos of our trip to Spain last fall. Anyway, here are a few of my favs of 15yo: giggling over dinner on the first night while super jet lagged, entering the Italica colosseum, thumbs up for Alhambra, alchemy museum

sometimes I get on my own nerves so badly and it gives me a tiny glimpse of just how annoying I must be to other people

15yo, oozing into my room at 10:39 pm while trying to avoid bedtime: so, like, why do you believe in God?

Today I learned that tempura originated from Portuguese missionaries in 16th century Japan, who brought their tradition of breading and frying foods with them. The name apparently comes from the Latin phrase “ad tempora cuaresma” (in the time of Lent) because it was popular Lenten food.

Among my many, many complaints about February is that I’m so tired of wearing winter clothes. I’m done with hoodies and jeans. Please, I just need a cute little sundress or something. For my mental health.

Oh! Kind of a weird thing — so, Simons has this line of hoodies and sweatshirts called Destination bc they show popular travel destinations. I look at them every time a new set come out because I like seeing what places they’ve chosen (a fav example from this year was that they made a Shediac top).

Great episode of 99% Invisible this week about dental tourism in Mexico. Absolutely baffling to hear an American man describe himself as a “dyed-in-the-wool capitalist” who opposes socialized medicine but also can’t afford dental/medical care and thinks costs should be lower. Cognitive dissonance.

15yo: I’ve heard that liking pineapple on pizza is a sign of a weak bloodline Me: Hawaiian pizza is Canadian, actually! It was invented in Chatham, Ontario. 15yo: … and what other heresies happen in Chatham? Is there a satanic temple where they leave pizza offerings?