The Boatman Invents a New Word

Most of the world is familiar with the verb, "to shart." Sharting occurs when you think you have to fart, and being in a somewhat appropriate location, you let loose. Go "balls out," as Nobel at the Yoga Dragon Den puts it. It isn't long before you realize that the fart comes with a wet, brown stinky surprise.

I had a roommate who once threw his pyjama bottoms in the garbage. I asked him why and he said, "Ya know when you drink too much beer and then you fart and it all runs down your legs?" He was talking about a shart.

It recently occurred to me and the Boatman that sharting had an opposite,  but it didn't have a name. The opposite of sharting is when you think you have to take an enormous shit. Your tummy's brewing and bloated and you know it's going to be huge. Maybe you have to go so badly that you cut in front of the old lady with a walker headed into the stall with her pink-shoed grandchildren. When you finally sit down and it's time for the beautiful explosion, all your poor anus has to offer is gas. The contours of the toilet bowl magnify both sound and odour so that the person who comes to relieve his or herself afterwards will be promptly armed with adamant accusations.

Until just a few days ago, there was no word for this tragedy. The Boatman and I considered the possibilities for at least 3 and a half days. Finally, last Wednesday, just before noon, the Boatman was on the can passing leftover breakfast gas when a breeze of inspiration came upon him and whispered into his ear the perfect word for farting on the toilet.

And the word was: Foop.

Definition: Farting on the toilet, when you think you have to poop prolifically.

Usage: "I was ready to crap out all the Harvey's poutine, but when I sat on the toilet, it was just a foop."



The Boatman, founder of the word, "foop." Once the Boatman wore a Maxi Pad, and it was a big success.
Now he has invented a new word. He's just one big success after another.

If you're a dog, fooping usually occurs on the grass.  For everyone else, it only counts as fooping when you're on the toilet. Just in case you're having a contest and/or keeping track.

The Big Black Dog has had many foops and sharts in his life and we love him very much.



Eliot,the Big Black Dog, pre or post foop or shart

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

Snow Day (contains more invented words from the Boatman,
but do not read if anything about miscarriages is triggering for you)
All the Lonely People, Rainbows, the Big Black Dog, and Sex
Poopy Mango Baby Wipes and the First Day of Christmas 

 

No fucking good for anyone: Me and McGill Frosh

I arrived in Montreal for McGill Frosh Week a seventeen-year old relative kiss-virgin. Never had I ever seen a grown man's penis. It had also been over two years since I'd had a drink. One weekend when I was fifteen, I'd drank three glasses of white wine and proceeded to hotbox a shed out in the country with some friends. The evening led to hideous oversharing of deep psychological issues and how-to bulimia sessions. I ended up traumatizing my friends as well as vomiting several times. Subsequently, I renounced all alcohol and drugs, convinced that I was a raging alcoholic. I have since changed my mind on this matter several times. That said, at seventeen, I was fervent in my angelic ways. An aspiring Christian, I was going to study English Literature and Religion, determined to become a famous writer and find God and/or Jesus. At university I believed that I would study amongst likeminded young people like myself. I was ready.

The McGill student frosh experience began on the campus grass. After taking the subway by myself for the first time in my life, I walked up McGill College, wearing black clogs, a jean skirt and a little pink t. shirt over my La Senza hydralift bra that was meant to augment my ostensibly pre-pubescent breasts. (At the time I did not yet believe in the eternality of my tits.) It was barely 11 a.m. Music was blaring and hundreds of froshees were scattered across the field wearing baggy fluorescent green t. shirts and drinking out of tall plastic fluorescent green cups. I knew that my group was supposed to meet in the far corner of the field at the bottom of the hill. I imagined that we would begin by sitting in a circle, sharing our names, our majors, and perhaps our deepest dreams. This may have all already taken place, but when I got there, the party was well underway. My frosh leader with shaggy blonde hair and smudged make-up stood at the front of a scattered crowd.

"Hey Froshees! I'm Kelly. I'm your leader! Who's ready to get DRUNK?" Everyone except me screeched and screamed. I sat down carefully in my jean skirt so that no one could see my underwear. A guy was walking around applying red facepaint underneath everyone's eyes. I prepared myself to awkardly decline. I was not a warrior. But when he got to me, he went right to the next person.

"Who's going first?" Kelly screeched. She decided that she would go first to show us how it was done.

More cheering.

The guy with the facepaint came to the front and started clapping his hands. A pitcher of beer appeared from the crowd. These memorable words filled the air.

"Here's to Kelly! Here's to Kelly, she's a horse's ass.

Why was she born so beautiful, what was she born at all?"

I watched, horrified and wondering how everyone else seemed to know all the words.

"She's no fucking good to anyone, she's no fucking good at all.

Everyone seemed so delighted except for me.

"So.... drink motherfucker, drink motherfucker, drink."

Kelly started chugging the litres of beer as everyone screamed and clapped. With a quarter of the pitcher to go, the chant went on.

"What are we waiting, she must be masturbating."

At that time in my life, masturbation had never occured to me. On my fifteenth birthday, a few months before I'd written myself off as an alcoholic, I'd gotten drunk and announced to my friends that I'd never really made out with anybody and needed some practice. Lewis, the only single guy at the party (who also ended up in the hot box) volunteered. We made out enthusiastically for much of the evening and apparently I wasn't horrible at it. But we'd kept our clothes on and for me, the practice session hadn't evoked much thought of my genitals or anyone else's. I had been fairly certain that my sexless tendencies were the majority.  I didn't realize that almost everyone around me had spent a great deal of their adolescence considering their own genitals and everyone else's. And this wasn't over yet.

Kelly finished her pitcher and a skinny froshee named Brendan stood up to be the next motherfucking horse's ass. After watching the ingestion of at least seven more pitchers, it was time to go to the Peel Pub. I thought that maybe I would be saved from this, being only seventeen, but Kelly was all ready with a pile of fake ID's. Someone handed me the driver's licence of some overweight 24-year old with long black curly hair and darkish skin.

I felt my face get red and flustered and my heart pound as I imagined myself getting arrested at the Peel Pub for this poor attempt at fraud.

"Don't worry," said Kelly. "It'll work. I've been getting into bars here since I was 14." I considered asking Kelly what she was studying and then opted against it. Peel Pub was dark and crowded. I doubt the bouncer would have been able to see my ID had he decided to look at it. Inside Peel Pub it was more of the same beer pitchers and drinking songs. Someone pulled out a funnel. One by one everyone got pulled up to be sung into oblivion. Everyone but me. Clearly, I wasn't the motherfucking masturbating type. If only they'd seen me in the hot box. (Is that even the right way of referring to it?) I stayed at the Peel Pub for 10 minutes and then I went pee. The bathroom floor was saturated with vomit. It was not yet noon. I went home to my residence where I decided to take a nap. The drink mother fucker song permeated my head as I lay down and for the next seventeen days, at least.

I spent the rest of Frosh week napping, getting ahead on my course readings and exploring grocery stores. I wrote all this because although I am no longer an aspiring Christian who self-righteously abstains from alcohol, I feel that much of Frosh week is obscene and disgusting. People are outraged by the St. Mary's frosh scandalizing sex chant and rightly so. But as reports on the issue have admitted, the distastefulness has been going on for years and years. While the horse's ass motherfucking drinking song doesn't explicitly promote rape, it is hardly empowering for anyone involved. In both 2010 and 2011, students have died playing their drinking games. This is a tragic, shitty, and embarrassing way to go. No fucking good for anyone. As we reflect upon how those involved in the sex chant should be held accountable, I think that we should think beyond the Saint Mary's student union and beyond this isolated incident.

The End.

My Friend, Chuckie.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

My Eternal Tits
List
Slow Dance

The Third International Mammal Day

The First Annual International Mammal Day occurred on September 4th, 2011. It began with the Hedge.





The Boatman trusted me with the hedgeclippers. I am as happy as I look.

Mammal Day is reserved for Mammal Time. Mammal Time is for engaging in all of your favourite mammal things: sleeping, eating snacks, lying on top of your loved ones, and possibly licking them. That's what mammals do. Traditionally and paradoxically, on International Mammal Day, the Boatman and I give ourselves fully to one Strictly Human Task. On the first International Mammal Day, we clipped the Hedge.

On the second International Mammal Day, we painted shelves. First we scrubbed them because they were very dirty. Here I am scrubbing the shelves. I am working very hard. And I'm wearing the same shirt as on the First International Mammal Day.  Like the shelves, it was very dirty.





 
Today is the Third Annual International Mammal Day. I don't think I have that shirt anymore. The Boatman and I and the Big Black Dog are lying around, eating snacks and licking each other. We are no longer fundamentalists, and so we are going to forgo the traditional Stictly Human Task. No hedge to clip, no shelves to paint, no deck to build. Likely, we are even too lazy to bother with a picture.

The End.

 
 

Happy International Mammal Day to You

More on Mammal Time, and the other Six Kinds of Time

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt ($2.99)

Performative Text Messages

Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz

Three Easy Strategies for Feeling Smug and On Top of Life

 

77 Ways I Failed All the Internet Lists

Yesterday every blog post and Facebook status I came across seemed to marvel and mourn over the passage of time. Tempus fugit. The time, it is flying. Look out.

Thinking that every moment is immeasurably precious and irreplaceable is way too much pressure.

I also stumbled over Forbes' ten most important things that 20-somethings should know. And Forbes' twenty things that 20-somethings don't get. In two months, I'll be twenty-eight. Judging from my life so far, despite being more than halfway through my 20's, it seems I don't get or know any of the most important things. I have not devoted myself to a lucrative career or made a very decisive choice about what the fuck I want to do with my life. I have not fretted over my waning fertility. I have tried to calculate my hours of expertise in various things and I am nowhere near 10 000 hours in anything.* Before moving in with the Boatman, I did not vacillate over the implications of co-habitation. After one month of skyping and phone calls and one weekend visit, the Boatman said I could come stay with him as long as I want, and (I wanted to fuck his soul) so I did. More than two years later, we are still together, co-habitating and living in sin. But according to Forbes' ten most important things list, I may have made a huge mistake.

I am failing all the internet lists.

Hate that.

I need to read lists about things that I never fucked up. Things that I will never fuck up.

"50 reasons I regret starring in bestiality porn."

"33 unusual things I wished I'd known before I opened my cocaine business."

I can read these lists and feel no regrets.

Success.

I've mentioned this before but every month just as my vagina is ceasing to bleed, I feel overcome by all the babies I never gave birth to. All the books I never wrote. All the ten thousand hours I never put in.

This is something I call the Vag Time Death.

It is the One Thing I Invented During My Twenties.

The End.

(*For yoga, I have somewhere between 4000-5000 hours depending on whether or not you count meditation, teaching, reading, and geeking out on Youtube and other parts of the internet. Since it has been scientifically proven that getting up a 4 a.m. for a two-hour plus practice results in me lashing out irrationally at other sentient beings, I must reconcile myself to a maximum of 1.5 hours of relatively daily practice. Which leaves me with 12-15 years before I become a 10 000 hour expert... Oh well.)  



Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

What I Learned in India
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Three Easy Strategies for Feeling Smug and on Top of Life

 

Chuckie the Horse and the Day Jack Layton Died

Jack Layton died two years ago today. August 22^nd, 2011. He was the leader of the New Democratic Party. One of the reasons I like him was because he ate granola and blueberries for breakfast. Stephen Harper the conservative prime minister apparently eats something much grosser. Despite the blueberries, Jack Layton died of prostate cancer. On August 22^nd, 2011, I had been living with the Boatman for just over a month. During the afternoons, I often got drunk, tired of pretending I had something meaningful to do before the Boatman came home from work. The day Jack Layton died, I got drunk on gin and diet soda and I thought about Jack Layton and I thought about writing another book.



Jack Layton, our optimistic NDP leader. Source.

 Jack Layton wrote a letter to Canadians and he told them to be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. Filled with gin and other carcinogens, I hardly felt any of these things. I felt mild despair. But Jack Layton said that optimism is better than despair. I should try to be optimistic. And change the world.

So I tried. I tried to write this story about Chuckie the Horse and the Day that Princess Diana died.

The first time I ever saw a horse’s dick was the day Princess Diana died. It was an enlarged version of my father’s and about one and a half times the size of the wooden rulers we used in math class. I was at the Perth fair, watching the equestrian competition with my friend Janine. Janine had long, thick blonde hair that went down to her waist. She’d gotten a ninety-nine percent average in grade seven and she was so good at the piano that she’d been the pianist in the school’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance. Janine used to ride horses too. She knew all the horses in the Perth Fair and we were allowed to go back into the stables to pat their heads and brush them with a shell-shaped comb. The horse show was two days before our first day of grade eight. I was eleven and Janine was twelve.

Chuckie was the horse’s name. Maybe he was a thoroughbread. His hair was dark brown and his back legs looked like enormous chicken drumsticks. I didn’t know much about horses because my family lived in town. Janine and I squeezed into either side of his stall.



Chuckie the Horse and his long dick looked something like this.  Source

 “Yes, Chuckie, yes,” Janine cooed, stroking his nose. It was my turn to use the shell-shaped comb to brush his mane.

“I heard Princess Diana puked up her food,” I said.

“That’s revolting,” said Janine. Chuckie snorted. Janine's always said that her stomach stuck out more than mine did, and that it was softer. I said that she was smart and beautiful she had long perfect blonde hair and so she beat me.

“I think Princess Diana was beautiful.” I sucked in my stomach and rubbed Chuckie`s neck. During the school year, I swam two hours a day with the Perth swim team. In the summers, there was a break and I became intensely afraid of gaining weight. I spent my days walking our family dog around Perth’s perimeters, counting my steps and making sure I made it to at least 6000, or else I did not deserve lunch. While I stood still, I clenched and unclenched my buttocks, in the hopes that it would remain firm. Every night before bed, I performed 1000 abdominal exercises. I looked forward to the fall when swim practices would resume and someone else would have the responsibility of inflicting weight-management strategies upon me.

“I miss riding you, Chuckie,” said Janine. “Good luck.” We walked toward the end of Chuckie’s stall to comb his belly. That’s when his dick went down. Or up, I suppose. I knew very little about dicks at the time. Chuckie’s dick was long. Wide for its length, but still wide. In nine years, a sixty-eight year old intellectually disabled Polish woman named Jadwiga would ask me, “Erica, why men have the long thing?” Alas, I never had no satisfactory response for Jadwiga. Or for me.

“That’s really gross,” I said to Janine when I saw Chuckie the Horse’s dick. Grosser than Diana puking up her food. Much Grosser. Way Grosser. When Janine and I sat down on the bleachers, there were sixteen hours left if we wanted to die on the same day as Princess Diana. There were seven and a half years before I would touch a real cock. Eleven years, eight months until I would touch and suck and vaginally penetrate Simon’s.

The special thing about Simon’s dick was that he could cum from a blowjob and remain hard for a full blown session of intercourse. Shorter than Chuckie the Horse’s, but harder. Hard as wood. I was never thrilled about giving extensive blowjobs before sex. It took too long and by the time he came, I wouldn’t be in the mood anymore.
That’s as far as I got. I didn`t know what else to say. I wasn't in the mood anymore.
The End.



Oh, and here's Princess Diana. Source.
She died before Twitter even started.

Jack Layton's inspiring letter to Canadians

Exuberant Bodhisattva on FacebookTwitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

What the fuck should I do with my life, Part Two
What a Beautiful Face
How I am violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

 

 

 

 

 

What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two

Part Two: Becoming A Princess and/or Having Children 
I could become a princess or a duchess and give birth to my prince and walk out to the world with an uncontracted uterus. 
 
When you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, all the little girls I work with have princess wrapped into some part of their desired occupation.

I want to be a princess chef.

A princess busdriver.
 
A princess policeman.

A doctor and a princess.

 

Little girls see these princesses on their diapers and their wallpaper, and they want to be them

Little girls see these princesses on their diapers and their wallpaper, and they want to be them

This is old news, but over the last couple of weeks, everyone was talking about Kate Middleton's uncontracted uterus. About the nerve she was sporting her "baby belly" to the whole world. Some people judged. Other marvelled at how brave she was. As though the scariest thing in the world is to reveal your uncontracted uterus.

Kate and her princes

I can relate. I fear the uncontracted uterus.
 
From a young age, my deepest fears included getting a double chin and having my stomach stick out more than my boobs. My boobs have always been tiny and so it wouldn't take much for my stomach to extend beyond them. To prevent the double chin, I used to read books and do my homework with my chin propped a pillow. To prevent the protruding abdomen, I was constantly doing crunches and sit-ups.
 
My stomach got hard and and chiselled. It's not that sad a story except once an osteopath told me that if I got pregnant, I would probably have a hard time. My abdominals would split in half and sag forever.
 
I'm ashamed that this terrifies me so much.

I'm ashamed that this is one of the main reasons I am terrified of having children.

One of the other reasons is that someone told me that since having kids, she can't use tampons anymore. They just slide out. As for the diva cup, alas, it leaks.

Apparently this is not that common.

Usually the vag recovers quite well.
 
If not, we all have high vaginas that will never ever desert us.

My High Vagina. Me and Keira Knightley both have one.

Once I wrote that birth was a Hideous Annihilation for someone else.
 
At the time, I think I was drinking too much.

Now I am thinking, What the fuck should I do with my life?

Despite my sit-up frenzies and pillow facelifts, I used to think that I would grow up and become a wonderful mother. I babysat like crazy and imagined that I would be like all my favourite moms, making whole grain banana bread, reading to my children, and having a job that allowed me to be around when they came home from school for lunch.
 
Now I am afraid of a saggy belly?

The saggy stomach, the tamponless vagina, probably these are terrible reasons not to have children. What are the good reasons?

Overpopulation. Climate change. Having children during a tornado or during the end of the world is impractical.
 
A couple of weeks ago I sent myself the following email:

Don't ever have children. No children for you. You are hysterical. Chill the fuck out.

I had just had a mammoth tantrum over whether or not to have a smoothie for breakfast, or oatmeal, or both. It was pathetic. 

27-year-old tantrums may be a good reason not to have children.
 
The other reason is, the kid may end up being just like you.

Fuck.

My friend Fern likes animals signficantly more than people, and children.

I was with her when she learned that someone who she didn't particularly like had given birth.

"Why the fuck did she have a kid? She barely has her shit together herself. What is it that makes people arrogant enough to believe that they are worthy of reproduction?"
 
She went on a rant about people passing on shitty genes and suffering and babies being bad for the environment. Her rant left me somewhat offended and taken aback. At the time, I had just begun to reconcile myself to contaminating the gene pool with my own hideous annihilation. This was before I got my job at the Montessori school.
 
Children are delightful for varying amounts of time. I might never be able to forgive my child if my stomach expanded and then never came back down to the same flat, hard formation ever again. What a horrible burden for the child to bear. It would have to spend its whole life making up for my sad saggy stomach. I tell myself that I would also resent a child if it wrecked my yoga practice, and that probably it would. But then I think, what is a better thing to do, to press into your hands and lift yourself off the ground with one leg behind your head and the other up your ass, or to make a real live person who in twenty years will probably be better at everything you’ve ever tried in your life?

Hard to say.

I guess we'll see how effective the withdrawal method turns out to be and then we'll find out, or we won't.  

The End.

What the fuck should I do with my life? Part One

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

I fired my psychologist

Supersize versus Superskinny

Not That Kind of Girl

 

 

I fired my psychologist and wrote this post to save you 320 bucks and provide you with almost as many thrills as a Stephen King novel

Maybe it's good when your psychologist pisses you off. Probably a lot of psychologists would say that it is excellent. I am firing my psychologist anyways.

Psychologists are expensive. Most of them are around 150 or 160 bucks a pop. And that's for fifty minutes. Not even a whole hour. They use the last 10 minutes of your session to absorb your angst and take notes.

The love of my life from elementary school is a psychologist now. His name is Alex Crampton. My grade one teacher Mrs. Vanden Bosch said that I was a gifted child, and so after grade one, I got to be in Alex Crampton's grade three class. At the end of the year, the school put on an underwater ocean musical. Our grade three class got to be the starfish. Me and Alex got to say the opening starfish line together. I was thrilled.

"They sparkle and shimmer oh so bright. The starfish is really quite the sight."

Our costumes were big clunky stars made out of bristol board. Mine was yellow and covered with sequins and glitter. At the time, Alex had a big black eye from getting hit in the face with a soccer ball. I thought he looked very cute.

We nailed our lines together. Then all of the grade threes did a little song and dance about starfish. "Star light and star bright, We make such a pretty sight."

Mostly the dance was extending our arms at different angles and wiggling our fingers. The wiggling fingers were supposed to make everyone think of shimmering starfish. Starfish aren't very cuddly. I don't think that Alex and I ever got to touch each other. I would have remembered that perfectly.

In grade eight, I remember writing a story on a computer in the home ec room. It was about a character named Martha. Martha might have been a hippopotamus. I'm pretty sure she wasn't a human.

The story began with,

"A very long time ago, perhaps last Wednesday...."

Perhaps last Wednesday, Martha the hippopotamus or whatever animal she was went for a walk in the forest or did her laundry or some other mundane thing. Alex Crampton read the first paragraph and said,

"Wow, you're such a good writer. I never met another writer like you. You're the best writer I know. Except for Stephen King."

My heart glowed beneath my chest, and then it melted. My cheeks got all red. When I was in grade eight, I used to blow dry my long, thick curly hair. Then I brushed it until it grew wavy and enormous and as thick and coarse as a horse's mane. Underneath my overalls, I wore homemade tie-dyed t-shirts. I wanted the overalls to conceal my nipples. I refused to wear a bra because I was too flat-chested and I thought that people would make fun of me if they saw me wearing a bra when I didn't need one. As far as making it or making out with Alex Crampton, I didn't stand a chance.

I think this might be grade seven. Obviously I also played the violin.

Now Alex Crampton has a beautiful baby and fiancee and a PhD.

I limit my Facebook stalking to about once a year.

When I found out that Alex had his PhD in psychology, I was surprised and somewhat jealous. Alex never seemed to like school that much. He was busy with swimming and girls. Meanwhile, I was a mega-nerd. At grade eight graduation, we all made silhouettes of our heads and wrote down what we wanted to do when we grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher with my PhD.

Now I am essentially a kindergarten teacher's assistant with no PhD.

I throw tantrums on my way to work.

At work, I spend hours with bottles of lysol, spraying tables and blocks so that the children won't get diarrhea. They get diarrhea anyways.

I have also been to way more psychologists than Alex Crampton. It takes a lot of lysol spraying to pay for each session.

I'm sure that Alex Crampton is worth your money.

While Alex Crampton was getting his PhD, I was puking in my mouth. Now I'm puking in my head. My most recent psychologist kindly informed me of this during our last session.

At our first appointment I mourned, "I'm a gifted child, but I'm not doing gifted things." He told me that the hallmark of happy people is that they're in touch with their own values and they chase after these values just like my Big Black Dog chases the raccoon he wants to murder.

For our next session, I had written down all my values. Yoga, the Boatman, my dog, writing. External affirmation, physical health. I turned on my Verbal Machine Gun and rattled off the list to my psychologist, whining and blabbering away between every point. The job with the lysol gets in the way of everything. I will never have enough money. Nothing you do can ever make you happy. I ended the long list of sorrows and grievances and money and lysol with "I really wish my mother had never had me. I am angry at my mother for having me."

"You're ruminating," said the psychologist. "Do you ruminate a lot?"

"Yes," I said. And wasn't it interesting? I used to puke in my mouth, and now there's puke in my head and having an orgasm is very difficult. "I'm a writer," I said. "I talk a lot."

"When you talk that fast, I shut off," said my psychologist. I told him that I thought you were supposed to talk a lot in therapy. He said that therapy wasn't just that. It was about creating a mutual relationship. "And when you talk like that, I feel like I'm not a real person."

What real person charges 160 bucks an hour for a mutual fucking relationship? Being a psychologist and not letting your patient blabber away is kind of like being a prostitute and not giving blow jobs. It's unrealistic and guaranteed to reduce your clientele.

"When you're like this with Robbie, does he turn off?" I admitted that sometimes he does, but I don't pay him, and often he finds me quite entertaining. Then again, he could just be lying because I'm so excellent in bed. 

My psychologist suggested that he let me know when I'm ruminating in session. And that perhaps during my day I could have a bracelet that I can look at when I feel like I'm slipping into a frenzy. A Frenzy Bracelet. Maybe the children can make one for me out of painted macaroni. We can market Frenzy Bracelets and sell them for 160 dollars each.

The other thing he told me to do was to pay attention while walking the dog. I pay lip-service to meditation and mindfulness and yoga, but my head is all over the place and I'm apparently not "walking the talk."

I left feeling like I'd failed the session. Maybe it would be very useful for me to discuss these feelings in therapy. Probably it would be excellent. But like I said, I am firing my psychologist anyways. Who can resist firing someone who makes 160 bucks an hour? When will I ever have this opportunity ever again?

If Alex Crampton lived in Halifax, perhaps I could go see him. I could ask him about his beautiful daughter and fiancee, and how he manages to keep fit. But until Alex Crampton moves to town, I think I will focus on being the best writer he knows except for Stephen King. Maybe I can resurrect Martha the Hippotamus into a brand new short story. 

A long time ago, perhaps last Wednesday, Martha the Hippopotamus had a Frenzy. Then the expensive doctor gave her a macaroni bracelet and she fired him.

The End.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

What the fuck should I do with my life?
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two
High School Reunion