Makeup: Why I'm a Hippie

The look of realization that your mother is a
failure because you are on "Toddlers and Tiaras."

In grade eight I started wearing makeup. For three years I suffered under that dictator. My eyes always bothered me but I didn't want to face the reality that I was allergic to mascara. For most girls being allergic to mascara would be like saying you might as well wear a paper bag over your head. As I'm sure most girls know, if I ever went without makeup people thought I was sick. No, that's just me without makeup you insensitive jerk, naturally pale and sickly looking. Then at the end of grade ten I got pink-eye. Yes, folks. Pink-eye set me free. You see, when you have pink-eye, you can't wear mascara. Did someone pass gas into my pillow? Maybe. But all I know is I will be forever thankful for their flatulence. I remember going to school without makeup that first day and feeling like the whole world was looking at me. The whole world wasn't looking at me, but a few people were, and like the other times I'd gone to school without makeup they assumed I must be dying. But, miraculously, after a couple days no one noticed, they were too busy noticing I wasn't dead. And then I just kind of... didn't start wearing it again. For once my laziness was working for me! The next year I went to a different school where everyone just assumed I had always been a sickly child and kept it to themselves. It was like the Faith Identity, like the Bourne Identity, but starring me. I got a hair cut, told people I was an orphan who used to be in the circus and started calling myself by my middle name. Wait, hold up: if you know my middle name then you know you can't trust that last sentence. Unless maybe I shortened my middle name to "Seppy," in which case, the whole thing becomes believable again.

The Adventures of Chompo and Olivia: Downsizing

I'm just in the middle of moving. It's horrible. Don't do it. The worst part about moving isn't how much work it is, or the fact that I am leaving the home I have lived in for my entire life, but that the place I am moving into is even smaller than the place I have now. And that's saying something. Downsizing is always painful, but downsizing to the point where I have to give up my entire collection of stuffed animals? That, my friend, is cruel. You may say I am too old to have stuffies. If you did, I would have to use great self-control not to attack you with angry words. You are never too old to have stuffies, especially if they are the ones you have had for many years and have already pared down as much as possible without losing your soul in the process. How can I possibly say goodbye to such innocent, vulnerable creatures, wholly dependent on my love? How do you tell someone, that you care about deeply, you're going away forever? Gently? With a rose? In a funny way? Like it's a hilarious joke? Or do you just let it go. Because saying it would just make it worse... Probably the funny way.

If you didn't get that it was courtesy of Michael Scott from The Office. Except instead of "how do you tell someone you're going away forever," he says, "how do you tell someone I told you so."

This is how: through the mediation of hamsters. You may know these particular hamsters from Chompo and Olivia's Christmas Adventures in which they first became famous.

The Adventures of Chompo and Olivia: Downsizing

Chompo and Olivia were moving. Pack, pack, pack, chomp, chomp, chomp (oops that was Chompo biting one of the boxes, hamsters are not very good packers), when suddenly they heard desperate, squeaky voices that chilled them to the hamster bone.