I love Canadians. I know absolutely nothing about their politics or their history which is probably why I love them so much, I wasn’t forced to learn all about them in middle school. I don’t love the Germans, or the Prussians, or any of the other European countries because their borders and names kept changing. Who can keep all that straight?

I’d be hard pressed to name the locations of the different provinces and territories. If they called them states I might have an easier time. It’s not as if there are that many of them. From what I can see on the map there are only 12 and their borders are pretty well laid out on a grid rather than the mess of borders we have down here. I could name all of them, though I would probably get their location wrong, except for Ontario, which I can see from my backyard. I could probably place British Columbia too. The ‘Columbia” part of it would be a big hint for me since I know the Columbia river is on that side of the continent. However, the ‘British’ part would make me think it was on the other side. I’d have a 50/50 chance though, eh?

I love Canada because I can speak their language, not the French part but the English part. I can use the word “eh?” just like they do. It’s really very easy. Just make every statement a question by throwing it in at the end. It’s confusing to Americans because we aren’t used to people questioning everything we say or do but since we don’t listen to other nations all that well, it’d be easy to ignore.

Who doesn’t love Canadian bacon?  Nobody, that’s who. Canadian bacon doesn’t have the same kind of following that regular bacon has, they aren’t making shoes out of it yet, but they should. Canadian bacon is the perfect size and shape for English muffins and bagels. It isn’t as greasy as American bacon and it doesn’t have to be cooked since it has already been cured. American bacon has to be broken into pieces that fit on a sandwich, Canadian bacon is already sandwich sized. Why Canadian bacon hasn’t caught on I will never know.

I suspect it has something to do with all things Canadian. Their currency is fucked up. Their coins are normal enough but their paper money is all rainbow colored and has pictures of the Queen of England on it. Yes, I know they have pictures of Prime Ministers on them too but I can’t identify any of them.

Canadian coins are just like ours except they aren’t worth as much, or they are worth more, I can’t remember. I do know that vending machines will not take them down here so I have an ashtray full of them in my car. The Canadians are sneaky too. They design their coins to be shaped just like ours so there are probably a lot of blind people selling pencils who have nothing but Canadian coins.

The Canadians give their coins cute little names like Loonie and Toonie. No one will accept them here but how cute is that? I was surprised to learn, during my extensive research of Canada, that the Loonie and Toonie do not have  pictures of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote on them.

Some of my favorite bloggers are from Canada.

Buggering Crap Monkeys, the mullet just cracks me up.

No Name Dufus, Go and give Dufus some love, he starts radiation treatment today.

Schmutzie, Schmutzie likes bacon, what can I say.

Mom’s Cafe,  I get all my cooking info here. She likes bacon as well, something called peameal bacon. I have no idea.

Mom to the Power of Three, She’s all over the place on her blog, something I can totally relate to. However this mom talks about interesting topics, topics that have relevance, unlike me, and she likes bacon too.

We Work For Cheese, Nicky and Mike crack me up. They epitomize Canadians in my book. Who else can marry cheese to current events and do it so well. Nicky and Mike remind me of Wisconsinites with thier constant talk about beer, cheese and sex, they’d fit right in Wisconsin.

Blue Collar Bliss, Katie has been dealing with the chicken pox lately, she hasn’t posted much lately which is perfect because it gives you time to catch up on her older posts. I didn’t notice anything about bacon.

Simply Stacie, If you want to know about giveaways this is the place to find out about them. Right now Stacie is having a giveaway for Happy Goat Soap, the best soap in the world. Go and register to win it.

I’d Rather be Blogging, who wouldn’t be? Anyone who has Gumby and Pokey on their keyring has got to be funny.  Nothing about bacon.

There is just something laid back and fun loving about the Canadian. They gave us Rick Moranis, Alex Trebek, Michael J. Fox, Jim Carrey, Dan Akroyd, Dave Thomas, Mike Myers, Pamela Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, The Kids in the Hall, Celine Dion (they should have kept her), and Phil Hartman. Seems to me all of them live in the US now.

The Canadians in general just don’t take themselves very seriously. In addition to Celine Dion and Alannis Morrisette, who do take themselves very seriously, there are the Bare Naked Ladies. Everytime one of their songs comes on the radio, except for their new one which is kind of a downer, I can’t help but laugh. Their songs are just plain fun. They managed to put song after song out during the 90s without any angst. That takes talent.  There is something mellow about being Canadian, maybe it’s just a state of mind, I don’t know. But I do know if you want to be just like the Canadians you can start with Canadian breath.  It probably smells like bacon.

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Not just good, but great.

Most of you have not read my saga with Hewlett Packard. I wrote several posts about my struggle with their tech support, bad customer service and my desire to get my 4 month old computer repaired or replaced. It started here and ended here. There are 16 posts all together chronicling my struggle with Hewlett Packard but if you really want to get the feel for my frustration read this one. I’ve bitched about bad customer service a fair amount in these pages but by far the worst I have ever experienced was with Hewlett Packard.

I hate outsourced customer service. I cringe when I reach someone who has a thick accent that is not American. I get upset when they try to tell me their name is Joe or Bob or some other very American sounding name. I’m not buying it. When did ‘Bob’ become the nickname for Muhammad? It didn’t. I might be American but I’m not as stupid as they seem to think I am. Tell me your real name for crying out loud, I might just believe the rest of the stuff you tell me if we start out being honest with one another.

Don’t get me started.

Last week was a craptastically bad week for me financially, and it should have been a pretty good one. I was expecting my tax refund but hadn’t seen the direct deposit even though it was supposed to be processed by the 26th of March. It wasn’t a huge refund, only $600 but it was big to me and I had budgeted for it. I was counting on the refund. I needed the refund.

Imagine my surprise when I received a rather cryptic letter in the mail stating my refund had been “recaptured”. WTF? I called the number on the letter but the office was closed. I had to wait until the next morning to find out what was going on.

I had a hunch what was going on so I called one of my exes. He had been working with the IRS for some time to pay off back taxes, taxes he didn’t file or pay while we were married. Ten years ago. We never filed jointly but apparently the IRS doesn’t care about that.

The next morning I logged into my bank, probably hoping there had been some mistake, and noticed that my car payment had been taken twice. In 24 hours I was down $1000 and I was pissed off. More than that I was scared. I had bills that had to be paid, bills that were automatically drafted. The bills that were automatically paid would put me severely in the red because of the tax issue and the double car payment.

I called about the taxes first. I got some smug government worker. I asked why they took my money and he said it was for taxes from 2000. I had gone in prepared, I had a copy of my 2000 taxes, showing a refund back then. The government worker actually said to me “you have a copy of your 2000 taxes?” he couldn’t believe I actually had files from TEN YEARS AGO. Hell, I couldn’t either. He wouldn’t give me any specifics over the phone, said he would mail information to me. He had an old address which I corrected. I wasn’t sure he got the address right since I was crying, screaming, and using the word ‘fuck’ many times. I’m pretty sure I screwed myself there.

I will say this, the government worker or agent, as he called himself, was American. There was no sign of an accent. I don’t remember his name but I bet it was something like Larry or Walter. In my minds eye he was on the late side of middle aged, balding and fat. He wore a white, short sleeved button up shirt that you could see through because he wasn’t wearing an undershirt, it was a cotton poly blend and he wore ill fitting polyester navy blue slacks. I’m sure he was wearing black socks. Larry or Walter was no Muhammad. Muhammad would have dressed better.

After slamming down the phone and crying for a few minutes I gathered myself together and called the car payment people. I called too early but left a message. A short message but a nice one, at least I didn’t swear, saying my car payment had been processed twice. I left my name and number.

A few minutes later I get a call from my agent Nick. I have talked to Nick on many occasions. I like Nick. In my minds eye Nick is young, maybe mid 20s. He wears slightly faded, properly fitting jeans, a t-shirt or sweater depending on the temperature, he has light brown hair that has just a bit of a curl in it. He is clean shaven but on the weekends he sports a little bit of stubble. He likes to barbecue with his buddies on the weekend. I’m pretty sure Nick has green eyes. Nick is just a little taller than average, where Larry is short, and he works out so he has a nice physique. Larry spends his free time eating Cheetos and has a hard time keeping his forms from getting orangish yellow smudges on them. Nick’s paperwork is smudge free.

Nick asks me how I am doing, I start blathering on about Larry. Nick lets me vent for a few minutes, he even tells me how much it sucks that Larry is such an ass. Nick doesn’t use the word ‘ass’ but I know he is thinking it. Then we get down to business.

My car payment is made through Equity Driver. They split my payment up and take half every two weeks. This does a couple of things. First, it makes the payment easier to stomach, and by taking half the payment every other week, I pay my car off sooner.

Nick tells me that indeed they made a mistake and that they will replace the funds as soon as possible. He tells me that it will take 24 hours for the transaction to post. We both know that in 24 hours other checks are going to hit my bank and that there will be charges. Nick tells me that they will cover all charges.

I’m dumbfounded.

“Really?”

“Yep”

I declare my love for Nick and Equity Driver, much like I did with my mechanic. Nick tells me to have a nice day and to call him as soon as the bank starts charging me overdraft fees. He apologizes, for the 7th or 8th time and hopes my day gets better.

Nick is great guy and he works for a great company.

The bank did charge me, several times. I sent a screen shot of the over drafts to Nick and he reduced the amount of my payment today to reflect the charges.

I can’t tell you what a difference it makes to have good customer service. I have only talked to Nick at Equity Driver so I don’t know what the other agents are like but I bet they joke around throughout the day, maybe all have lunch together on Fridays or go out after work for a drink now and then. I’m sure they are all young, healthy and happy people. I’m sure none of them are named Larry and that none of them wear polyester blends of any kind.

I was asked to write a guest post about the top ten things men do that drive women crazy. I came up with the standard ones, leaving the toilet seat up, farting, hands down their pants, that kind of thing, but I couldn’t come up with ten and my post went horribly in the wrong direction. The post was rejected and I was given a different topic to write about.

Since I do not live with a man anymore, at least not at present( and the 17 year old boy doesn’t count because I am raising him not to do those things, though he does anyway), I wasn’t able to come up with any more than those three or four. And they all seemed really petty to me now, though they did drive me crazy then.

But I wonder what things men and women do that drive each other bonkers.

Here is the original post:

There have been a million articles written about the things men do that irritate their women. We all  know that leaving the toilet seat up, clipping their nails anywhere but the bathroom, spending the weekend on the couch with their hands down their pants and performing  Dutch Ovens are things that drive women mad. Which is probably why men do these things.

Let’s face it, men, specifically married men, have gotten a bad rap in the last decade or so. They are usually portrayed as big dumb oafs on sitcoms and television commercials.  They stumble through life not knowing what to do. Thankfully they have their smart wife to steer them through life’s challenges.

I’m not going to perpetuate that myth. I love men. I do. And my track record of two marriages and two subsequent divorces proves it. At present I have been single just long enough to appreciate all the great things about men.

Now that I am single I have to kill all the icky things myself. If a toilet gets backed up I have to plunge it out. My last ex husband was a phenomenal cook, I ate well when I was married. So what that he couldn’t put a dish in the dishwasher to save his life, I had a three course meal prepared for me every day we were together.

If something needed repairing my guy could do it. Sure I had to nag all the time but isn’t that what he wanted me to do?

Even though I am divorced I haven’t lost the ability to look and act pathetic when something goes wrong. I can convey that ineptness over the phone and my ex husband will come over and fix just about anything. As long as I have cold beer in the fridge.

Not too long ago I was given a glimpse of what a great guy my ex husband really is. I was having surgery and he offered to hang out at the hospital and wait to see that I was okay. He took the day off of work, drove me to the hospital, waited for hours while they prepped and performed the surgery and then waited in recovery with me while I came off all the drugs they used to put me under. He didn’t even bring a video camera to capture all the bizarre things I was saying.

It gave me great comfort to know that someone was out there waiting for me, that someone cared enough about me to take a day off of work and watch game shows while I had surgery on my girlie parts.  He wasn’t obligated to do any of that. When he stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the necessary feminine protection products and purchased them himself, I was reminded of what a great guy he really is.

We women forget that about our men. We complain to our girlfriends that all they do is hang out in the garage, go fishing with their friends, never spend enough time with us, never stroke our egos enough and all those other top ten things they do to irritate the hell out of us. When they do the little things like buying tampons or plunging out that backed up toilet we often take it for granted.

I’d take nail clippings and Dutch Ovens any day.

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I won a contest over at The Maaaaa of Pricilla! I won three bars of the most wonderful soap on earth. Happy Goats Soap is so wonderful I can’t even come up with words to describe how great it is but take my word for it. Patty has a few new soaps, one of which is called Monkey Farts and that is the one I chose as my winning soap. Patty tells me it is the fragrance of all the things monkeys like to eat like pineapple, banana, and mango, and why their farts smell so good? I don’t know about that but I do know if it is like her other soaps it is going to make my skin feel soft. The name is just plain marketing genius.

My birthday is this Sunday. I am finally going to be 44. Since I was only 43 for about three weeks I’m not sure I should really be calling myself 44 yet but the DMV isn’t giving me a break. I have to renew my driver’s license by Sunday. We all know I won’t but it’s on my list. I’m actually looking forward to getting a new picture taken since I have been saddled with the worst picture ever for about four years now.

Because my birthday is coming up I am going to treat myself by heading on down to Stormsister Spatique and picking something out for myself. I know I have to get the Galen Labs Shea Cream because it has pot (reefer, mary jane) in it. That’s not really true, but it does have hemp in it. Becky gave me a sample of it before Christmas, a big sample that should have lasted a week, I used it in a day. My feet and elbows never looked and felt so good. I also want to pick up some INtelligent Nutrients Anti-Aging Serum. Becky gave me a sample of this magical serum and I swear I look five years younger. And she only gave me a weeks worth. INtelligent Nutrients is made by Horst. Horst is the guy who created Aveda products. Horst is a local legend in Minnesota even though he now lives in Wisconsin. His products are organic and have the aromatherapy shit going on. They smell fantastic and they come in really cool recycled packages. Both of these products are a little spendy but it’s my birthday and dammit, I’m worth it. And if I don’t get it for myself no one else will. The daughter thinks I need a Build-a-Bear. I know, it’s the thought that counts but really I don’t need a Build-a-Bear.

In addition to winning soap and treating myself to some girly things, it is also Friday, the other Friday. Which just means that my kids are at their dads for the weekend and that means I get to watch TV if I want to and I get to have peace and quite if I want to talk on the phone. I can sleep in and I don’t have to nag for a whole 48 hours and there is no better birthday present than that.

My 44th year is starting off awesomely.

It is Girl Scout Cookie season. Daughter is a Girl Scout which means I get to peddle cookies for her. She wants to sell 200 boxes this year because if she does she wins a stuffed panda bear. A stuffed panda bear that will be played with for a day or two and then forgotten under the pile of other forgotten Build-a-Bears and Barbies. But who am I to dash her dreams? I can’t officially take orders for cookies until tomorrow but I can let every one know. If you are local and want to order some cookies please email me at redheadshesaid[at]gmail[dot]com or leave a comment here.

Speaking of comments and cookies I am going to have a contest myself. From now until the end of February (because that’s when the cookies arrive) I am going to give away two boxes of cookies each to the top three commenters. Your choice. You can see all the great cookies here as well as finding a source for your cookies by entering your zip code. You can comment as many times as you like on a post. No spam, make it meaningful.

That’s all I got. I’m off to enjoy the last few hours of 43. Have a great weekend.

*None of these endorsements were paid reviews and therefor the opinions were mine and mine alone. I wrote about these people and their products because I really dig them and they make me happy and I wanted to share the feeling.

**I’m not on drugs, just looking forward to a quiet weekend.

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When I was a kid we had four channels on the television. We had the three networks and public television.  Most kids today have no idea what that is like, nor what it is like to get up and have to change the channel by hand.

Even though there were only four channels I still managed to spend most of my free time watching tv. I didn’t care what was on as long as there was something on.

We were rarely allowed to watch tv before school but occasionally but for some reason I have a very vivid memory of watching this while eating breakfast. We must have had a snow day or something.

Casey Jones was a local kids show. It played for years. It wasn’t considered educational, just entertaining.

Notice the Scandahovian accent. This is the same accent used in the movie Fargo. We pretty much talk like this.

Yesterday my daughter was talking about her birthday. She is already making a list for what she wants for her birthday this coming February. I don’t know if she realizes that she is skipping right over Christmas of if she simply realizes that she won’t possibly get everything on her Christmas list. Of course she still believes in Santa so she probably was just mentally counting all her bootie.

Usually the conversation starts out like this:

“Guess what’s after Christmas, Mom”

“New Years” I say.

“Do we get presents on New Years?” Daughter will ask.

“No, but it’s really important to be quiet on the first day of the new year, in fact it’s a great day to spend with your father.” I tell her

“Guess what’s after Christmas?”

“What’s after Christmas?”

“My Birthday!” Daughter says excitedly.

“No, my birthday, then your brother’s birthday and then your birthday” I remind her.

She doesn’t really care about all these other birthdays but since daughter and son both have a birthday within four days of each other, and her birthday is after his, we are caked out. I still make two cakes but there is always half of his left over. Last year I got balloons for son’s birthday, I would have gotten them for her too but his were still up and they said “Happy Birthday”. Yeah, I know, but he didn’t care to play with them, she just wanted more.

Anyway, I got to thinking about my birthday. Mine is in January and usually by December I have already aged myself. I suppose it’s just easier to start getting used to that higher number a month or two in advance.  I never used to do this but my ex#2 always did and the habit stuck.

So I am in the shower yesterday thinking about my birthday and I realized I wasn’t sure how old I was.  I thought I was 44 and was fine with that number except I knew I was not going to be 45 next month. That just wasn’t happening. It seems like yesterday I turned 40 so there was no way 45 had already snuck up on me.  Also my brother had just turned 45 or 46 last month (I’m not really sure about his age either) and he is two years older than me so it didn’t seem possible. So I had to do the math.

I was born 1/17/1966

That makes me 43 for the moment and not 44 like I have been telling everyone, for nearly the last year, who asks.

They don’t usually ask, that would be rude, but I do because I like to compare myself to them if they are the same age as me (only if I look younger).

I have been nearly high on this information for the last day. I don’t usually care about my age but I am still surprised to find that things like Live Aid or the fall of the Berlin wall was 20 years ago. It seems like they just happened. Even 9/11 was almost ten years ago. Time flies and it seems to speed up as we get older.

Realizing I am a year younger is like finding a $100 that had been tucked away and forgotten about. It was always there but I had forgotten about it and now it is like free money.

I got a free year.