Category — Uncategorized

…not me. Well, not officially, anyway.

The Driven to Quit Challenge announced their prize winners today. I am not among them. Which is actually a good thing, because as I last posted, I had that little slip up a couple of weeks ago, which would have shown up on my urine test. Wouldn’t it have sucked to have been called up as a winner, only to be shamed by my momentary weakness? That might have sent me right back to the weed.

So anyway, no new car for me. No paid vacation and no $2000 gift certificates for Crappy Canadian Tire. But what did I win? Most likely a cleaner bill of health than two months ago, a calendar full of cute stickers, $63 dollars in scratch’n'win loot—which I put towards the new Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer/Kyle Cassidy book, Who Killed Amanda Palmer—a pretty strong sense of accomplishment, a few pounds, a stronger commitment to my gym membership, and this shiny little blog. I didn’t do too badly, after all. And I’m still sticking to my guns. So it’s been a good challenge for me!

Yesterday was lovely, simply lovely. I worked all morning, very early, so I was done work by early afternoon, with plenty of time to take in an afternoon stroll to the bank in the springtime sun. Then I returned home and baked a cake!

It was a day worth celebrating and I wanted to have something special with which to celebrate! Two years ago when I made it to Non-Smoking Fools’ Day I baked a cake and made some really messy, cement-coloured icing that caused me such strife that I very nearly broke up with my girlfriend, who was laughing at my pain over the phone. We laugh about it now, but it was hell at the time!

It ended up being a really ugly cake. I mean seriously ugly. I am no baker and I am certainly no cake decorator. It’s kind of hilarious, how bad it was, really. Witness:

Ugly as it was, it was actually really delicious. So much so that every time we have had some birthday or other cake-worthy party to celebrate since then, Kabuki requests the special coconut icing. I have since adapted it to make it not only even more delicious, but also less sloppy and ridiculous. And a more appetizing colour. Live and learn.

So this year I wanted to make that yummy cake again, complete with the miraculous, if trying, coconut-mascarpone icing that has gone from being my bane to being my specialty. However, this time around I wanted to do something a bit different with it. A few weeks ago I had rewarded myself with a trip to Kitchen Stuff Plus, one of my favourite places in the universe. I went in for a spatula and came out with a haul, including these nifty little guys:

They’re cupcake cups, but made of silicone so you can bake the cupcakes right in them! So cute and colourful. I was itching to post this find on here before, but wanted Kabuki to be surprised on NSF Day, so I kept my mouth shut until now.

The Ugliest Cake In History, however, had become something of a nostalgia by now, after all of our struggles, so I still wanted the cupcakes to reflect the old cake in some visual way. So I adorned each one with one of my ridiculous decorations from the old cake. And since my decorating skillz are so…interpretive that it may be difficult to tell what any of these illustrations are, I made another funky image map to explain them! To view it, click on the image below:

After enjoying a delicious meal that Michelle so kindly brought home from Chipotle, we sauntered over to Kabuki and the Good Doctor’s place to share the cupcakes and congratulations on all of our hard work. The cupcakes were a hit! I am really proud of the both of us.

And I have a whole cake left at home yet to be decorated… There may be more ridiculousness in that department still to come.

I made it through March!!

I have officially made it through the contest period. I expect that phone call telling me I have won my car any day now. I’ll settle for dinner at Chipotle, though, which is what my darling Michka is going to get for me tonight. Yum!

I am also making cake. I would have someone make cake for me but the truth is that my icing is the best icing and I won’t settle for anything else. It will look like it was decorated by a five-year-old, but it will be EPIC in flavour, I promise. I am going to pop by Kabuki’s place after dinner with some kind words and cake to share, and then it’s back home for a nice quiet evening in for two (well, and Punky makes three) with movies and red wine. Sounds like a winner to me!

Let’s have a closer look at that calendar.

I’M A NON-SMOKIN’ FOOL!!!!

So everyone I have spoken to who has quit smoking has had dreams about smoking. I am no exception. I am in my mom’s living room and a bunch of my friends from high school show up and start smoking and I bum a drag just as my mother walks in, or I’m out at a club and craving and craving and end up stealing/borrowing/buying a smoke and lighting it up just as Michka shows up, or something like that. Sometimes I am smoking already when I suddenly notice that I am doing so and remember that I have quit, so what am I doing? I had the same kinds of dreams when I gave up meat, but of course substitute the cigarette with a cheeseburger and my mom with my former girlfriend, a vegan. It’s pretty normal I think.

The thing that is cool right now is that I have now had not one, but two dreams in which others around me smoked and I rejected it! This may seem unexciting to anyone who has not experienced these dreams, but for me it is a big step.

In the first dream, which I had a couple of weeks ago, actually, I was at a party at someone’s house. The someone was Charlotte Gainsbourg, now that I recall, although in my dream I think she was a mixture of Gainsbourg and my friend A. Anyway, we were talking at the kitchen table and she went to light up a cigarette. I said, “Oh, you’re going to smoke? Then I have to leave.” She asked, “Why?” I answered, “I just quit. I can’t be around smoking right now.” She shrugged and lit up her cigarette. I was pissed and hurt because I thought a good time with me was worth a bit of time without a smoke. But anyway, I prepared to leave without saying anything about it. Michelle walked in and asked why I was leaving. When I told her, she said, “Okay, just give me a minute.” And she lit up a smoke! Which is funny because Michelle has never smoked in real life, smart girl. Anyway, I was so angry, and part of me was like, maybe I should just give up and do it, but the other part was like, no fucking way! I’ve worked hard for this! So I didn’t smoke and went home very angry.

The second dream was last night. I was staying at this sort of shared villa thing in Venezuela that I inherited from someone somehow, I forget. It was run by these hippy Americans who would dress in strange costumes to scare the hammerhead sharks away from the smaller animals on the shore. Poor sharks. Anyway, I was talking to some of the Americans outside, including this girl who looked like Mary Stuart Masterson circa Some Kind of Wonderful (which was on TV last night, go figure). She started going through the pockets of my jacket, and I got a bit defensive. “What are you doing?” I asked sharply, to which she responded, a bit put out that I seemed suspicious, “I’m looking for cigarettes.” I replied, again rather forcefully, “There aren’t any in there; I don’t smoke anymore,” and took my jacket back from her. She looked miffed, so I explained that it was a recent quit so I was sensitive about it. I didn’t want Mary Stuart Masterson to be mad at me. Then her friends started chiming in about how it’s fine for me to say that I don’t smoke now, but I’ll give in sooner or later, or that they will never be able to quit, so good for me, in this really sarcastic, condescending tone. Those hippies weren’t very loving, if you ask me. I got pissed and argued back on every stupid point, at one point even restraining myself from getting really nasty in response. I can’t remember exactly what my nasty response was going to be, as dream language sometimes makes less sense when I’m awake. And again in the end I didn’t smoke. I didn’t spend much time with them anymore, either. Mary Stuart Masterson lookalike be damned!

The point of highlighting these dreams is that even in my subconscious I have quit smoking, am adamant about succeeding and resistant to peer pressure. It’s a big deal to me because it means I am not taking this journey on lightly, convincing myself that I am really committed while secretly making plans to fall off the wagon later. My brain says we’re in it for real—yay for my brain!