The Maven of Christmas Past

Spawnling and Gutsy:
So cute with their claws retracted

Greetings from the other side of the fray.

It was a wonderful, crazy, stressful, harried, mostly enjoyable Christmas. The gremlins were spoiled, of course. We had a large family dinner, then went out of town on the 27th for another family dinner. Gutsy came home with some adorable African dwarf frogs, which I promise to get a picture of soon. They're named Bubbles and Squishee, and I pray every day that they're both males who will never figure out how to impregnate each other. Gutsy is quite smitten with them, and when he's not fighting with his brothers or telling us how bored he is, he sits contentedly in his room and watches them swim around. I must admit, they're rather captivating. Soothing, even. I've sat on his bed and stared at them myself when no one's around. They're my little amphibi-friends.

My husband and I are tired from the crazy, and are sometimes at the point of barely speaking after a long day of refereeing loud arguments and enduring even louder cooperative games, but we're managing. We still love each other, we just love each other from different rooms. It's like this every year.  Nerves run raw and we all walk on eggshells. After nearly a decade-and-a-half of parenting, I've learned that you just. get. through. it. And when you get to the other side, you can safely remove the cyanide pill you've been hiding under your tongue for emergencies and enjoy some back-to-school quiet.

I had my first ever gluten-free Christmas, which was not only manageable but surprisingly delicious. The husband I barely speak to some days went out of his way to make a Maven-friendly version of my dad's tortiere (which, for the non-french, is the most amazing meat pie on the face of the planet). It was so good and much appreciated. Christmas isn't Christmas unless there's half a tortiere in my belly.

I ate everything and anything I could safely manage, stuffing my waist full of artery-ravaging cholesterol and loving every mouthful. I did have to pass on a lot of homemade goodies that made their way to our place, but I expected that. My aunt brought over freshly baked bread, and I stayed away from that, too, as difficult as it was. Instead, I ate some shitty store-bought cheese bread and wished I had taken the time to bake something at home. 

And I would feel sorry for myself for having to pass all that up, except I've lost... oh, about ten pounds.

That's right, kittens: TEN POUNDS in as many weeks. I'm a freaking toothpick! Well, if there were size 18 toothpicks. I guess I'm more of a redwood cedar trunk, but not one you can drive a car through anymore. It's progress.

But how on earth did I lose weight? What did I do? Nothing, actually. I still eat chocolate, chips and the gluten-free varieties of my favourite breads and pastas (albeit fewer servings as they get expensive and some of them just aren't palatable). Still, I'm not exactly training for my next triathlon or anything - unless I can strap wheels and a speedo on the couch. My body just likes that I'm not poisoning it, I guess. Imagine that. 

It's motivating, refreshing, totally awesome. I feel like I'm going into the new year with a healthier mind and body. My energy levels are incredible. In fact, I've even cut my coffee consumption down by about two-thirds. Yep, you heard right. There are paddles to the right if you need to start your heart up again. I figure if I add some exercise in I'll be on my way to some kind of serious hotness. It's hard to believe that exercise might actually result in a decent amount of weight loss now, but my body doesn't seem to be holding on to fat for dear life anymore, so I'm going to tentatively try to nudge it along a little faster.

In short, I'm even more amazing than I used to be. And to think scientists always assumed it was impossible to reach this level of greatness. But I suppose breaking down barriers is what The Maven is all about. I'll be smacking 2011 with a big bag of rice flour and making it my bitch. I will own it, and it will buy me smaller pants because it is afraid to anger me. 

I like where this is going.  I might just get myself a fur-lined trench coat and a cane. Word up.

It's the Most Horrific Time of the Year

A Spawnling-decorated Christmas tree

It's here.

As the Gremlins Three play some insane fighting game in the other room, screaming things at each other like "Thunderbolt!" and "Shadow!" (which is seriously confusing our cocker spaniel who goes by the same name), a thought has hit me:

As of 90 minutes ago, all my little horned ones are off for two weeks.

Two weeks.

Someone hit me with a snow shovel really, really hard. With any luck, I'll lapse into a coma for the entire duration of the season's cruelest joke: Christmas holidays.

If you're giving me that judging mother look, I suggestion you stop wasting your time. I'm all too familiar with it from playgroup, circa 1999 - I've built up immunities. As you bore your eyes into the screen and hope I'll start to feel guilty for having said I'm not exactly looking forward to two weeks at home with my kids, I'm trying to figure you out, too. If I could guess, I'd say you probably fall into one of the following categories:

A) You have no children and think everyone who has them should appreciate every single second of every single day with them (is there a discount on tickets to Never-Neverland if I get a group rate?)

2) You have one child. One perfect little child who has no one to take toys from and spends her days quietly scribbling in a colouring book while you gaze upon the perfection you created. I've been there. It was nice in some ways.

Third) You have two children and your second is a baby. Like me once upon a time, you think this stage of adoration and idolization between older and younger siblings will last forever. But you are wrong. Very, very wrong. This too shall pass, and it will be mourned greatly by you and those who have the displeasure of hearing the bloodcurdling screams coming out your walls. Coming to terms with the fact that your children will tear at each other with their adorable little nails and teeth is a harsh reality, and I look forward to laughing at you as others once laughed at me.

Eleventeen) You are a grandma and you've completely forgotten how dreadful the snowed-in holidays can be. That's okay; like birthing pains, this is Mother Nature's special gift to women who've survived beyond menopause. I forgive you, and I look forward to forgetting this part, too.

Anyway, you can tsk-tsk and shake your head at me all you want, but this ain't my first rodeo. I'm a veteran stay-at-home-mom now. I have fourteen years of holidays under my belt, and the last eight have involved more than one child trying to occupy a space at the same time.  From the moment Gutsy could toddle we've been dealing with conflict. I have absolutely no doubt that the impending vacation will feel like anything but. Case in point: In the five minutes it took me to write the last paragraph or two, Intrepid accidentally whacked Gutsy's loose tooth, which resulted in a lot of loud accusations being flung around the living room like poo in a septic tank full of monkeys.

If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that my kids have conflicting personalities. And the older I get, the more I realize that it's not the end of the world.

Sort of.

I've tried different techniques over the years to try and get the boys to play nice. I scoured the internet and shelves full of parenting books, and tried all the "proven" techniques. Let's take a trip through my list of failures:

I used to run in at the first sign of a fight, get everyone's version of what happened, and try to help them resolve the problem. FAIL. Why? Because I kept having to stop what I was doing every 2.4 minutes just to break up an argument that would start up again the minute I left the room. I have a life, you know.

I tried to run in as soon I heard an impending argument, so that I could calm everyone down before the decibel level climbed to the point of making my ears bleed. FAIL. Why? Because going in before it happens means I have to listen to the slightest increase in tone and be prepared to sprint across the house like a chubby gazelle every time it sounds like there could be a fight. There is no coffee pot large enough to dole out the energy needed to do that. Exhausting.

(Just got back from a writing break. And by "break" I mean sprinting into the living room like the chubby gazelle I am because Spawnling was in a rage after "losing a battle" to Intrepid, and started yanking ornaments off the Christmas tree. But I digress...)

I've tried ignoring the fights. I've sat in the kitchen, quietly sipping my tea while scream bombs explode in the war zone behind me. FAIL. They expect me to be their UN ambassador and streamline the peace process, and will insist - loudly - until I do so. Funny, because I feel a lot more like a refugee who needs to duck under the table for safety. If I don't help them resolve their conflict, they load up on ammunition and race back into the fray, ready for more blood. If anyone's winning the war, it sure as hell isn't me.

I've tried completely tuning out the fight by putting my headphones on - the ones that block out all sound if I just turn the Black Eyed Peas up loud enough. EPIC FAIL. It turns into a silent horror movie: Kids running to me, faces red, tears falling to the floor, pointing at each other, mouthing words I can't make out, toys and fists having already been thrown beyond my peripheral vision. Then I need to check for collateral damage: flatscreen TV, grandma's china, bewildered pets. It's only a matter of time before there's a downed bookshelf. One mustn't let it escalate to that point. Hearing is my friend.

So, what do I do? I have no freaking clue. There is no perfect way to resolve constant fights - especially in frigid temperatures when it's harder to shoo them outside for half the day. I've learned keeping as close to regular bedtimes as possible can help, along with crafts and outings and family movies to keep everyone busy. Happy hands aren't fighting hands: let that be your motto.  I keep the junk food as last resort bribery, and the horse tranquilizer gun strapped to my back--

-- forget I said that last thing.

In short, acceptance and humour help the hubby and I breathe our way through the chaos. Like he said to me earlier "I look forward to Christmas vacation and I dread Christmas vacation. Does that make sense?"

More than you know, darling. More than you know.

The Day we could have Kicked it (or: Montreal in a Snowstorm)

It's taken me a week to write about our harrowing journey to Montreal, in part because of all the media attention, parades and movie deals I've had to deal with since. And by "media attention" I mean marketers at the mall trying to get me to buy hair straighteners for Christmas, and by "parades" I mean the parade of drywall-dust foot tracks along the hallways from the renovations going on in Gutsy's room, and by "movie deals" I mean the free ones on TV with too many commercials that I can watch when my creativity is tapped from sheer exhaustion.

Sadly, the blog - and all things related to it - have been neglected. I'd apologize for that, but it's nearly Christmas and some things need to take a backseat so I can keep my head above water - double chins and all (and no, said chins are not quite big enough to act as a floatation device, alright?!) But since the snow is falling heavily on Canada's National Capital region right now, and people are trapped in their cars along a snowy highway in Sarnia, Ontario, I figure it's as good a time as any to write about the trauma of our epic journey.

Gutsy, my mom and I went to Montreal last Tuesday for an appointment with a psychologist at the Montreal Oral School for the Deaf (Psst! Give them money - they do good work!)  We were offered some free academic and behavioural assessments by someone who understands deaf and hard of hearing kids, so how could we say no? We have a bit of money for therapy with Geekster's work insurance plan, but we don't know when I'll finally snap from the strain of raising three boys full time, so we like to hold onto it just in case.  Initial psychological testing can get really expensive, so theoretically it's worth a two-hour drive and a tank of gas to get it at no cost.

Theoretically.

I had it all planned out: We'd leave before it got light out and beat traffic out of Ottawa. We'd arrive in Montreal at the tail end of their rush hour, but we'd have lots of time to get to the school anyway. With three-and-a-half hours to do a two-and-a-half hour drive, it would be a breeze.

Oh, except for one thing: the fucking snow.

See, when I smugly left my home at the carefully-planned time of 6:30 A.M. and balked at the line-up through the Tim Hortons saying "It's fine, mom. We have lots of time!" only a few flurries had graced Ottawa's roads. Being in a valley, we sometimes avoid the worst of a nasty system as it splits off around us and regroups later as it heads East.

You know, toward Montreal?

I never thought to check the weather outside of Ottawa. In my mind, anything that was going on here was probably also going on two hours from here. How could someone as ridiculously intelligent (and good looking) as I am overlook something that simple?

If I had a MENSA membership, someone would have come to revoke it due to my sheer stupidity that day. And if they were to try and find me last Tuesday, they'd need look no further than highway 40 East, just west of Montreal, where things had slowed down to a crawl. Those exclusive geniuses could have just run up between lengths of cars which were more or less stopped for some then unbeknownst reason. They would have found me looking puzzled and a little... tense. Because, about three quarters of the way to our destination, just as I was feeling like the best road trip planner ever, the highway was suddenly coated with a thick slab of snow. Traffic slowed to a crawl, and I began my steep decent into a panic that wouldn't let up until well after sunset.

"Why are we stopping? It's just a little snow," I whined to The Madre. I ignored the fact that the snow was getting deeper. I ignored the gusting white stuff before my eyes. I ignored all signs that this was going to be a very long drive. I had planned this out, dammit. It was going to go well because I had planned it out. That's how these things work, right?

Instead, I kept glancing at the clock. I get a little obsessed with time when I think I'm going to be late for something. Look at road, look at dashboard clock, back to road again, over to iPhone to see if it's synched with clock, back to road, back to clock again, back to road where there looks to be a barricade along the division strip up ahead. Why is there a wall there? Construction? Back to clock, back to road, over to the strip of wall, back to fretting about how we might be late if this rush hour traffic doesn't let up soon, back to strip of something which is looking a lot less like a wall and more like a... Oh. My. God.

"Mom, you'd better call the school and tell them we might be a little late. Or a lot late. Oh. My. God."

A tipped over tractor trailer. On the side of the road. The road we're driving on right now. We are so dead.

It was then that it dawned on me: we weren't dealing with rush hour traffic. We were dealing with weather pandemonium. How did I not see this coming? How did I - a Canadian through and through - miss that we were driving into a snow storm? The receptionist at the school told my mom to be careful. She said she had heard there was a tractor trailer flipped over somewhere. "Yes, there is," said The Madre, calmly. "My daughter took pictures."

I'll skip some boring details in this part of the trip. There's a lot of panic on my end, a little bit of worrying on Gutsy's part due to my panic, a lot of reassurance from my mom who's trying to get me to calm down, some stalled cars in the middle of the highway, a lot of stressed out drivers, many tow trucks, some very slow commuting, and a GPS on my phone that kept bouncing around to the point where we actually overshot our exit and had to turn around in a highly illegal highway manoeuvre that could have resulted in several lost demerit points and quite possibly an accident if I had been just a hair off (stress can make even amazing people like myself do really stupid things - it was still pretty cool, though. I should have been a stunt driver. A minivan stunt driver.)

When we arrived at our destination, we had been on the road for five hours.

Can I say that again? FIVE BLOODY HOURS.

What should have taken just over two hours took five. When we arrived, we were tired, anxious, and hungry, but mostly grateful. The psychologist had kept her entire day open for Gutsy and took him in right away. The Madre and I sat in the waiting room and ordered Greek food. Naturally, that took about 90 minutes to arrive, and it was lukewarm to boot. But it was the best damn meal I'd ever had, because I wasn't eating it on the highway to hell. It could have been pickled silverfish on a stick, for all I cared. It was just nice to be somewhere where I wasn't constantly making sure rubber firmly kissed pavement.

Later on, I made my way to the convenience store down the road on foot. I had thought it was right across the street, so I hadn't bothered with my coat, mitts or hat (my brain had a serious case of the dumb).  It was bitterly cold, and the sidewalks were as messy as the roads. All told, the city received over a foot of snow. I tromped my way through it, determined to get drinks and chocolate bars for our lengthly waiting room stay, all the while cursing my stupidity for not grabbing my winter gear from the van first. By the time I reached the final crosswalk, I looked like a pudgy yeti, all snarly and shit. A man strolled out of the store, smiled at my preciptation-covered self and said "So I hear it might snow," before smiling as he walked away. It's a good thing he was cute or I would have devoured his soul with my angry. Instead, I laughed and replied with "I heard something about that, too." That man will never know how much I needed that chuckle.

The testing went well, as far as I know. I think we're going to end up with the diagnosis of "bright and anxious," which is pretty much what we figured. She suggested some local places for less pricey therapy, and also said that Geekster and I may need to change our parenting strategies when dealing with Gutsy; a tough thing to do when the other two gremlins are parented in a completely different way. But if it means fewer panic attacks, less meltdowns, and more cooperation, sign me up. I'll jump through hoops of fire if we can have more harmony around here. Furthermore, she told us that this type of behaviour - the need to try and control what he can - is not uncommon in hearing impaired kids. She stressed that we have to remember he has a disability, which we often forget because he's so capable in other ways.

Before we left, one of the amazing ladies printed up a map with alternate highway directions and highlighted our route. She said we'd avoid a lot of traffic that way, and could easily make our way to Boston Pizza for dinner on the West Island (land of the tipped over trailer) before heading home. We headed outside, confident that the uneventful trip back would more than make up for the chaos getting there.

You know those disaster movies like Armageddon or 2012, where absolutely everything that can go wrong does? Yeah...

As we're leaving the parking lot, I tried to give my windshield a wipe to get what the brush missed. Crack! The passenger side wiper, which was apparently frozen to the windshield, broke and started flailing around. My mom and I jumped out to fix it, but I made one fatal mistake: I forgot to turn the wipers off. Wump! The bloody thing got stuck under the driver's side wiper, flipping sideways. A plastic piece flew off.

"Turn the wipers off!" The Madre reminded me.

"Okay, I just have to..." K-thzzzz! The wipers were trying to move away from each other, but still lodged.

"You need to turn them off!" she insisted.

Panicked, tired, and in a dream-like "is this really happening right now?" state, I finally made my way to the wiper controls and was about to switch them off when there was a snap! 

The passenger side wiper splintered, still lodged under the other one.

This is the part where I let out a string of curse words while holding back tears. We were in a strange city on a Tuesday evening in the middle of a snow storm. It was dark, and the roads were so bad that I couldn't drive more than a few blocks without needing to clean the windshield. Now what?

A man happened by with his dog. I asked him if he knew anything about wipers. He said he didn't, but there was a full-service gas station and garage three blocks up the road. He gave us directions, and away we went. I finally fishtailed into snow-filled parking lot, only to be met with several cars lined up for gas, many people picking up their vehicles after getting them serviced, and a disgruntled employee who said he could help us, maybe -  and then went back to pumping gas into cars that were still running. Very safe.

I couldn't help but laugh. Was this actually happening? Unbelievable.

The garage manager hooked us up with a new wiper, ($25 - ugh! Could he smell a desperate traveller or what?) but only after telling me I was crazy for attempting to head back to Ottawa in the storm. But my mom needed her medication before bed and Gutsy had school the next day and I needed a hug from my husband and my very own pillow, so what other option was there? Onward.

We overshot the Boston Pizza, but only because it was off some obscure little road and it was snowy and we were tired. When we did find it, I had the best damned gluten-free pizza ever. Refreshed, we headed home.

We got in at 10 P.M. - nearly sixteen hours after we left. Gutsy took Wednesday off, and I spent most of the day in bed watching Grey's Anatomy reruns. The last time I felt that tired, I had just given birth. Several hours of stress really wreaks havoc on the body. But it was worth it to get help for a little boy we love so much.

I have no idea what I did to anger the Gods of Transportation and Travel, but apparently it was something worthy of only the nastiest of punishments. I've learned my lesson. The next time I see freshly painted lines on the road, I promise not to drive through them so I can leave tracks. And the next time I see a hot construction worker directing traffic, I promise to keep my eyes on on the road ahead of me and not gawk at his beefy biceps.

So today, as I watch the snow fall onto messy roads, you'll have to forgive my hesitation in going out to playgroup, or to get groceries or Christmas gifts. If at all possible, I'm going to stay right here in my warm house. Eight hours in a snow storm is more than my quota for the month of December, thank you very much.

I like to Smell Old Food (a gluten-free update)

Can I confess something in the deep, dark recesses of the internet where no one will ever see it?

I really miss wheat.

Wheat, barley and rye, to be exact. Glutenous substances I have banned from my life - most likely forever. Gods, how I miss them! Every day, I remember something else I can't eat. It makes for an often surly Maven.

On Canadian Thanksgiving in mid-October, I bid farewell to my old friend, Gluten. We had a long history together, but it turned bad toward the end and I had to take a break and see if he was the one causing the problems. I wrote about previously, but to put it in a nutshell, I was falling apart in multiple ways.

My dietary equivalent of  a bad boyfriend:
Yummy, but no good for me.

Mentally, I was both anxious and depressed (neat trick), unable to to focus, quick to anger, and I forgot words and complete sentence more than I'd like to admit. I had writer's block 95% of the time, which is no good when you're, like, a writer. My brain and I all but stopped speaking to each other. Thankfully, she was kind enough to remind me to breathe and keep my heart beating, but not much else. She didn't do the Facebook equivalent of de-friending me, but she pretty much blocked me from seeing her Facebook wall and new photo albums. Bitch.

The rest of my body was not much better. A painful, itchy rash on my hands; pitted, ridged fingernails with white lines on them; unexplained elevated liver enzymes; acne; borderline anemia; the obvious weight issues; fatigue; digestive problems; and likely many other things I'm forgetting. My body was going into shutdown mode, and we couldn't figure out why. Every month was worse than the last, to the point where I thought I must be dying.

(The inner hypochondriac emerges. She comes out when my brain isn't staying on top of the whole logic thing. Hello, nice to meet you. By the way, you're probably dying.)

So, like I mentioned before, I found out through the wonders of the internet that all these scary/annoying things can be symptoms of celiac disease or, some, to a lesser extent, can be attributed to the less worrisome gluten intolerance fan club. They can also be cancer, liver or kidney failure and a few other scary things that might send my inner hypochondriac running for the nearest bar, but first things first: take out the gluten, and see how I felt. So that's what I did.

It's been about a month-and-a-half, so I thought I should do some updating. Status: I feel a lot better. Like, a lot better. I look a lot better. I have a glow to my skin again. I have more energy. I have less anxiety, and no signs of depression anymore. I have creativity again. My hair has shine to it (I feel like a commercial). My nails are growing in strong and healthy for the first time in years -which is a good indicator that my organs are getting what they need to work efficiently. About half my nail bed is new growth from the last few weeks. There are no pits, no white spots in that part of the nail, and they're not brittle anymore. When I eat, I feel energized instead of tired.

I feel alive. My non-medical opinion through a great deal of talk and research, is that my digestive system is repairing itself enough to absorb the nutrients my body has been lacking for a long time. That's why everything is slowly getting better, and why I suddenly feel ten years younger. How frightening, and yet how very exciting. It's worth a damn parade, I tell you.

But I still miss wheat. Not enough to eat it, but I miss it. Soft bread, freshly made bakery goodies, all those other carb-filled calorie killers that used to kindly stuff fat around my hips and heart to keep me warm in these cold Canadian winters. Any bread I make is either too wet or to dry. Buying it at the store costs twice as much for half the amount, and some of it is puke-bucket-worthy from the first bite (I have yet to actually barf, but come on: forcing someone to eat an entire slice of some of this stuff might be considered torture in some countries). All of it needs to be toasted or warmed, or it tastes like cardboard.

When I make pizza crust, there's no stretching or rolling. I mix it in a bowl and slap it on the pizza tray, smooth it out with a wooden spoon, and put it in the oven to "pre-bake". What on earth is pre-baking? It sounds like pre-drinking, but a lot less fun. I then take the hard, misshapen mishap of a crust out the oven, slap some ingredients on it - lots and lots of ingredients so that I can pretend the crust doesn't exist - and put it back in. If I'm lucky, it wont' fall apart the minute I try to cut it, let alone pick up a slice.

I now eat my pizza with a knife and fork. How dignified. I could practically be royalty. Bitter, gluten-free royalty.

My friend Robyn and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. As humans - and especially women - we have attachments to certain foods. So, there's something a little sad and unfair about having to say goodbye to foods that have been a part of our lives for, say, about thirty-four years. I'm going to go through a grieving process over Montreal-style bagels and Honey Nut Cheerios, as lame as that makes me.

Believe me, I know this is for the best. The way I feel today is definitely worth getting rid of what ailed me before. And, if my suspicions are correct, this decision will not only prolong my life, but return a quality to it that I've been missing for years. In the end, this not a huge sacrifice for the sake my of my health.

So, when I make something glutenous for my kids (including Gutsy, as the gluten-free thing had no effect on him whatsoever), I now do something so lame, so embarrassing, that I can't believe I'm even writing it:

I smell it.

I can't believe I just typed that out. As if I'm not a big enough loser. But I'm nothing if not honest, so this honest loser admits to smelling the bread, the cake, the bagel, the cereal, the crackers... anything I can't have anymore. I take one giant whiff, and for some reason that seems to be enough. My brain - who is now on speaking terms with me after some couples counselling - then remembers what it tasted like, and it almost feels like I just had a big bite. I'm relatively satisfied, and I go on with my life filled with shitteous substitutes.

As soon as I figure out how to make this work with chocolate, I'll be a very slim woman.

So, here's my dilemma: I can be tested for gluten intolerance and celiac disease. However, I'll have to go back on gluten for up to three months before the testing, and even at that point may not get accurate results. Is it worth doing, since it's obvious I'm at least gluten intolerant if not full-blown celiac based on the changes I'm already seeing? If I test positive, I go on a gluten-free diet as that's the only thing that manages this condition. But then I have to go through feeling like crap all over again just go to back on the diet I'm already on. I'll need to detox all over again, which was no fun the first time (three days of painful aching all over my body. Yuck.)

My alternative is to see my doctor in a few weeks and get an overall blood workup to see if I'm still borderline anemic and if my liver likes me again. If everything looks good, it's sort of a roundabout way of getting the same answer, but less official and possibly less accurate. So what do I do?

Yes, I'm asking. Give me your opinion. You know you wanna.

Anyway, that's my update. I don't really have time to start a gluten-free blog right now, so a post about my boring ol' dietary issues is going to come up every now and then. You've been warned.

On the plus side, Geekster recently challenged me to write a short children's fable with the title "Horny the Unicorn and the Gigantic Sack." You know how I love a challenge. And you know you're at least a little bit excited about how I'm going to pull that off.

Onward, Horny!