MONEY.

Let’s talk about money. How do you feel about it?Myself, I’ve mashed together a hodgepodge of gut reactions and moral judgements and half-remembered quotes from that time I read The Wealthy Barber when I was ten.

I was a criminally boring child.

Part of me loooooves spending money, because shiny things!! Look at all those things that I could buy: I could buy kitchen gadgets or computer gadgets or hair gadgets; I could buy fancy cheeses, specialty meats or elaborate liquors; I could buy mini skirts or maxi dresses or tea-length gowns (spoiler alert: don’t, they’re hideous). I could buy every pair of shoes. I could buy CDs except then everyone I know would make fun of me. I could buy linens and décor for my home and weird art pieces that would be impossible to dust. I could spend several thousand dollars on a vacuum cleaner. I could spend several thousand dollars on a pen.

This pen is worth more than my education.

 Sure, it’s not like I actually have all this money, but I could easily get a few credit cards and then I could pretend to have money. I could own the appearance of having money, and isn’t that the most important thing? Nobody but me (and my mom) care what’s in my savings account. There is no outward marker of how fiscally responsible I am, and unfortunately the stuff that would mark irresponsibility in my own life would merely signal greater competence (or luck) for someone with twice my income.

 For some people, buying a car shows that they are settled and solvent and able to make payments on time and plan for the inevitability of oil changes and license renewals and surprise deer damage. For others, a car is something that they want but can’t afford and will only serve to make them miserable since now they don’t have the money to go to any of the cool places their car could take them.

Problem is, it’s the same damn car. One person’s manifesto to financial independence is another’s giant steel albatross, but nobody looking on from the outside can tell the difference. We can’t tell if your car or house or new dress or fancy dye-job is a good, life-affirming thing or a cry for help.  

Do these highlights make my insolvency look fat?

 So part of me wants things things things, and part of me desperately wants to never buy things again. People have written books about spending a year without shopping, and the two things they seem to discover are 1) everybody has different ideas about what constitutes a ‘necessity’, and 2) it makes them feel really free and sane to not constantly spend money. Weirdos.

I don’t like how much of our selves and our worth we tie up in having the appearance of affluence. I don’t want to set the bar too high because I’m just going to end up being disappointed with myself. I don’t want to care about having the nicest or newest or coolest thing because I can’t afford that anyway, and all my life my family has been beating it into my head that there is no point in wanting what you can’t afford. Doesn’t that seem really depressing though? ‘Prioritizing’ and ‘budgeting’ and ‘setting goals’ sound like the kind of bullshit things that grown-ups do. Gross.  

Determining what’s comfortable or important can be extremely hard, at least for me. Some days I hate myself for buying a coffee and some days another pair of sunglasses that I will lose in two weeks makes perfect sense. Some days I’m wracked with too much guilt to buy lunch, and some days I’m like “a pair of skis would actually save me money” (true story).

Pictured: pure profit.

I’ve also been talking with a lot of people about relative value, and how while many people can tell the difference between something that is poorly-made and something that is well-made, most people can’t tell the difference between something that is well-made and something that is made by the greatest artisans of our time!!! Even if you think you can, you probably can’t; there have been a number of studies done, especially with food, that show for example that people who are told that they are drinking expensive wine will rate the wine as tasting better than those who are told that the wine they are drinking is cheaper, even when the two wines are identical. We aren’t that smart, kids.

 Sure, an experienced sommelier would probably call shenanigans on this little stunt, but how many of us are the equivalent of experienced sommeliers and not just pretentious jerks?

In my case, definitely a jerk.

I don’t know what my point was with all this, except to say that money upsets me, and I keep thinking I should be making more of it, and also feeling depressed about it, and feeling depressed that I’m feeling depressed that I don’t make more money. The layers of neurosis are literally endless, you guys. Hopefully this will once and for all dispel any notions that I am a chilled-out hippy love child. I am not. I am emotionally invested in RRSPs, and I don’t even have any yet. This is my life. 

In case anyone is curious, at this point I save about 25% of my income, but none of that will matter long-term because it all gets spent going back to school and travelling. Which makes me think that I should be making more money, so that I could save more money, so then I think I should get a part-time job, which I don’t have time for because I’m going back to school and travelling.

Well poop.

I don’t suppose any of you want to pay me to mumble incoherently about vague, impractical worries I have? No? Yeah, fair enough.

Have you ever had a panic attack when you spent too much money? I used to get them every time I went grocery shopping because I had this irrational, anxiety-invoking fear that I would never be able to eat all the food before it went bad and this made me want to cry and throw up at the same time. Plus, the first time I spent more than $100 in a clothing store at one time I almost passed out. For reals.

 I dealt with this unfounded terror by, well, ignoring it until I got a comfortable job in a stable environment. That and occasionally calling my mom when I couldn’t afford the rent. Not my proudest moment(s).

 How about you? Do you find yourself sickened by consumerism even as you lust after some designer purse? What are your money weaknesses? Assuming you don’t make wads of money, how do you deal with all the pressures without going totally nuts?

Thanks in advance for your wisdom and guidance,

Love,

Leslee.

If you’re happy and you know it, then what?

So, lately I have been amazed and, frankly, kind of embarrassed at just how good my life has been. It sounds like bragging and I could understand why people would hear it that way, but I really don’t take much credit for how phenomenally happy I am. It’s mostly luck, and circumstance, and timing.

It’s also why I haven’t been writing much, because being happy is not particularly interesting. Maybe you guys want to read about how many cupcakes I’ve been eating or how my gentleman caller and I went to a concert for my bff’s birthday and it was awesome, but I doubt it. Or how about how excited I am that I bought a new vacuum? GRIPPING SUSPENSE.

Anyway, I digress; the point is, I have a lot of happy right now and I don’t entirely understand why.

Sure, I try to be a decent human being and treat people with respect and kindness, but so do lots of people in shitty situations and it doesn’t do them any good. The other day my boyfriend called me to tell me something nice, and then my mom called me to tell me something nice, and then my boss emailed me something nice – and I was just overwhelmed. Why are all these people so nice to me?

Part of my happiness comes from being financially comfortable for the first time ever, and living on my own for the first time ever (both of which I highly recommend), and part of it just comes from generally being one superbly cheerful mofo. And it’s not like I walk around with one of those inferiority complexes, secretly thinking that I don’t deserve this much happiness. Of course I do! Everybody does!

It’s just that I’m kind of at a loss as to what comes next. Before, I could always look at my life and find real, meaningful changes that I could work towards that would produce real, meaningful happiness. Remember my post about doing all the things? It worked! Focussing on what I could do to expand my world and feel good about myself totally did the trick. I’m stupid happy, you guys.

But, uh, now what?

Maybe this has something to do with my belief that I need to be constantly striving for something bigger and better and tastier and deeper-fried (nacho hat, anyone?), but I am kind of uncomfortable being this content. And yes, I’m sure this makes me sound like an asshole. Being happy all the time is hard, you guys. Waaaa waaaaaaaah. No, of course not. It’s not hard at all, but it’s also not inspiring or very interesting.

Perhaps the solution is to do even more things!! But I’m pretty sure I’m already kind of overwhelmed and committing to anything more complicated than drinking more water or flossing semi-regularly would be a stupid mistake. I don’t want to have a joy-induced breakdown, because that sounds even stupider than complaining about being happy.

I guess part of the fallout from the “more-now-faster” aesthetic that has informed my life is that I’m constantly thinking that I could be doing something else, or I could be doing something better, or I could be making more money; happiness is a competitive sport and I’m going to win, damnit, and I’m going to win by packing so much delight into every waking moment that I barely have time to shower.

Obviously, this is doomed to spiral wildly out of control.

Happy about your new job? I just got two part-time jobs petting kittens, chump.

Experiencing the blissful first few honeymoon-months of a new romance? Four different boys just proposed to me. On yachts. Full of cookies.

Thrilled with your new baby? I just surrogated triplets. For a blind lesbian couple. Fuck you.

…

See how ugly this competitive happiness is going to make me? I know I just need to learn to relax and enjoy the good things in my life without obsessive-compulsively trying to be even more satisfied, but it’s hard. I’ll get it eventually! Eventually I’ll figure out how to just appreciate what I have now, and be easy with it, and not startle like fat squirrel every time it looks like my level of contentment might be shifting.

Until then, I’ll try to think of fun things to write about besides pastry and housework. Suggestions welcome!

 

Yours,

Leslee.   

Perfume, or: What’s with you people and smelling weird?

WHAT’S WITH YOU PEOPLE AND SMELLING WEIRD

My mostly unsuccessful adventures in perfume.

So, guys, one of my favourite websites which I totally don’t surreptitiously read at work while trying to fax things is stuffiputonmyself.com, done by Natalie Dee of the webcomic of the same name. She talks about makeup and moisturizer and nail polish, and while I acknowledge that it is pretty mindless garbage I also really love talking about eyeshadow sometimes, probably for the very reason that it is mindless garbage. Let’s discuss concealer and forget about gender inequality for fifteen minutes. Terrible, but here I am.

Anyway, she recently put up a post about perfume, which was mostly just “here are things that make me smell different, and I like it, with bonus list of things that smell bad” and it had hundreds of comments within the first few hours. Now, obviously popular blogs are popular and people comment on them, but the comments themselves were literally just “yeah, I like smelling like things too! Here are the things I like smelling like” over and over and over again.

I mean, I’m not judging people for wanting to talk about what they smell like, but I do find it fascinating. Seriously everybody? You guys are really this into smelling like things? That’s neat!

Most of the time I smell like coffee and laundry and rum and deodorant, and I think that’s pretty fine, generally. I mean, it’s not alluring. There are no crisp notes of lavender or whatever. You aren’t going to walk past me and pick of subtle tones of amber and rosewood unless you are maybe a little psychotic. I’ve always been fine with this, but have I been wrong? Sure, I work in a setting that is supposed to be scent-free, and perfumes used to give me splitting face-hugger migraines, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t maybe give them another chance. Y’all just love smelling like things. By the process of science, I must be wrong here.

With that in mind, I took an adventure into perfume. It wasn’t a long adventure because I wanted to be able to get drunk on a weeknight and still make it to bed at a reasonable hour, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

Step one: Gather the troops.

I made Emily come with me because I’m actually a huge coward unless I have somebody standing behind me with expectations. Then I turn into Lookatmelookatmelookatme Leslee and everything gets better (or worse, depending on your worldview). Also I needed someone to take embarrassing pictures of me and my gentleman caller was probably busy doing something useful. Okay, so I actually have no idea. Whatever.

Point is, I had plans with Emily anyway, she’s a lady so I trust her instincts on lady-things, and she agreed to be a part of these shenanigans

Step 2: Have a plan

We went out into the big wide world with three challenges, which honestly have less to do with a real exploration of perfumery (that’s what it’s called, you guys) and more to do with my inability to focus on any damn thing for longer than twenty minutes.

1.  I wanted to find the most ridiculous perfume ever. Price was no object (since I wouldn’t be buying it anyway), only insanity.

2.  I wanted to find the most expensive perfume ever, because I really want to know what people are willing to spend on smelling like things.

3. In the same vein, I wanted to find the cheapest perfume ever. Bonus points if it was under a $1.

Step 3: Adventure!

So, first off, let me just say that we smelled a lot of things. I don’t know why, but for some reason I really didn’t expect this to be part of the adventure. But it was. Obviously. Sorry, I can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes.

From what I can tell after smelling lots and lots of perfume, most perfume smells like fruits or candy, expensive hairspray or Vicks vapo-rub. Why do so many of you want to be reminded of strep throat every time you get a whiff of your own cleavage? This makes zero sense to me.

That being said, it didn’t all smell awful, which is what I expected. Some of it was kind of nice, and didn’t immediately trigger a pressure headache behind my eyeballs like the Hoover damn was about to break out my tear ducts. So. That’s cool.

As for my lofty goals, I did okay. First off, none of the perfume was expensive enough to be really exciting. I mean, I think the most expensive one we saw was $140, which is a little stupid, but I think it’s stupid to spend any money on a product that does literally nothing except have a smell. So I did what any self-respecting blogist would do in this situation and googled “most expensive perfume”. But I got to this:

HOLD THE PHONE

 

And then I spent thirty minutes looking at the most expensive Pokemon cards. Just keepin’ it real, kids.

Apparently the most expensive perfume is some $2000 thing with a giant diamond on the bottle and it smells like bergamot and ylang-ylang or something. Whatever. Who cares?

The most expensive Pokemon card is the Pikachu Illustrator Card, of which only four (or six, there was some disagreement) were ever made. They were given out as part of a magazine contest where kids designed their own Pokemon.

I might be the wrong person to write this post. But I digress.

Finding ridiculous perfume was super easy; the challenging part was picking out the most ridiculous perfume. Eventually, though, one clear winner emerged:

That gold necklace says “Nicki Minaj”, in case those weren’t obviously her creepy glass boobs

Because apparently, there are women out there in the big wide world who want to smell like Nicki Minaj’s chest. Or something. What the hell, ladies?!

You can see the second and first runners up below, because What is wrong with everybody, why is there more than one option of headless/armless lady-torso perfume? No, really. Really. Why? How does this happen?

 

I call this one “Classy lady-thorax”

And I call this one “Beach Party lady-thorax”, which is why no one will ever hire me to name perfumes

Cheapest perfume went to the Apple Blossom body spray we found in the dollar store, which retailed for a grand total of $2 (literally one thousand times cheaper than the most expensive perfume ever). I didn’t take a picture of it though because my phone battery was dying and frankly I think you can all imagine what dollar store body spray looks like. What it smelled like was apple-candy vomit and mouldy skittles.

Anyway, that was my adventure in perfume. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did! I encourage you all to go out and smell things and decide if maybe you want to smell like something else! I know I don’t, but maybe you’re more interesting than I am?

Love,

Leslee.

Ladies love irony

I’m taking a french feminism class this semester because I like women and I think French is kind of sexy even if I did deliberately lose my Becherelle every single year of grade school as a passive-aggressive backlash against the Immersion program.

Let me start again.

I’m taking a Women’s Studies course, and it’s actually very good. But I have been sitting beside these two girls – ahem, young women – and I hope they don’t read this, but I really wish they wouldn’t sit beside me. I am going to name them Snooki and JWOWW (no offense to anyone named Snooki or JWOWW. I’m sure you have enough troubles).

They are both very pretty. They are both heavily tanned. They both wear a lot of makeup and tight clothes and have expensive, fancy nails. They have iPhones and matching Notebooks, with cute sparkly cases. Snooki got a text last night from Mommy Janey. Grown-ass woman, getting a text on her sparkly iPhone from someone named Mommy. This is a problem.

Okay, none of this is a problem. You do you, I’ll do me. I’m trying not to be a bitch about it. No, really. Remember my last post? For reals.

But there are moments that I just need to share, because they are so, so precious.

Like, when we were watching a documentary about how our obsession with body image triggers eating disorders? JWOWW, maybe that was not the best time to obsessively log your food intake and activity for day. Also, the reason you couldn’t find elliptical in the exercise database is because you spelled it wrong.

And, remember that documentary we just saw about how kids, especially young girls, spend like 10 hours a day ingesting media? It was really funny watching you both text on your phones while simultaneously checking Facebook on your computers. You were so busy being bombarded by media that you weren’t paying any attention to the video we were watching about how young women are constantly bombarded by media. Do you see why this is amazing? I hope so.

Although I could do without your constant chatting all the way through every class, ever, it was also really funny listening to you bitch about some chick in some Facebook photos while the documentary we were watching highlighted the importance of women supporting other women.

I think you might be a present from the Universe. Thank you.

What I would like most of all would be to see you not eating exactly 15 almonds and ten raspberries or trying to figure out how many calories are in a frappuchino. I would like to glance over at your Facebook and see zero duckfaces. What I really want is for you to feel good about yourselves, and maybe you do, and maybe (definitely) it is none of my business. But the irony is really wonderful. So, thank you.

You are fabulous. I know it sounds like I’m judging you. I am a little. But don’t worry about it. Don’t let it bother you.  And stop worrying about your frappuchino. Also, if you read this, please don’t beat me up.

Love,

Leslee.

On Being an Asshole

Hey all,

So, this may come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but I can be kind of an asshole sometimes. I mean, not always – I don’t go around peeing on cars or yelling at children, even if I sometimes want to. And I do sincerely, totally believe that we should all treat each other with kindness and sensitivity and respect and so on. This loving-kindness, this gentleness towards each other - I do think it’s very important.

But that doesn’t stop me from getting really, irrationally angry when I see guys with bad neck beards, or ladies with their bums hanging out. I want to be one of those chilled-out hippies who sees people doing stupid things and thinks that it’s lovely and that everybody should be able to do what they want, but it just doesn’t always happen. Half the time I’m on the bus, silently screaming at that weirdo middle-aged lady who’s taken her shoes off for some unknown reason.

Here is a recent example: I was at swing, and there were these two kids – these two babies – maybe like nineteen years old, and they were altogether terrible. They were dancing, and sometimes they touched while they danced, but they were not dancing together. It would be better to say that they were dancing at each other, in the same general space. It really looked like they had watched far too many movies with Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, and the girl was like “I’m going to do these things!” and the boy was like “I’m going to do these things!” but they didn’t really have the understanding that it was supposed to be, you know, a partner dance.

Anyway, the entire time I was watching them, I was struggling with this possibly psychotic internal monologue, and it went something like this:

Nice Leslee: Awwww, aren’t those two cute?

Mean Leslee: They look ridiculous.

No, they’re just happy and enjoying themselves.

Stupid. They look stupid and wrong. They’re doing it so, so wrong.

C’mon! Look how happy they are, dancing together!

They are not dancing together. They are ruining everything that is beautiful about dance. And that lady needs a damn haircut.

Be nice. Be nice be nice be nice be nice…

DON’T TRY AND STOP I AM ON A RAMPAGE.

Anyway, then I got up and got a bottle of water. So, maybe not that exciting. I mean, I don’t usually verbalize all the terrible, mean things that I’m constantly thinking, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t save me from being a terrible person. I’m pretty sure that every time a lady with a stroller gets on the bus when it is super packed and I secretly start wishing that she’d burst into flames, that’s just awful. That is a bad thing and I am a bad person for thinking it. I get it.

At the same time – and here’s the secret – the thought of being friendly and nice all the damn time kind of makes me want to rip my fingernails out. Ugh. It’s just a painful, empty and ultimately meaningless existence if we can’t be sincere. And I’m not trying to imply that sincerity or being yourself is any kind of excuse for poor behaviour, but still. There is a reason that the stereotype of the Stepford wife refuses to die. There is a reason why we wildly resent being told to shut up, sit down and play nice – sometimes, we just don’t fucking want to. Sometimes, I just want to be an asshole, even a secret, not-very-effective asshole. And sometimes I really just want to tell people to put on their big girl-or-boy panties and get the hell over it.

See, here’s the thing: if my mom or one of my very dear friends came up to me and said “Honey, those pants need to die in a fire”, I wouldn’t take it personally. I would want to know the reason that my pants should be consigned to flames – I’ve worn some painfully bad things, no lie – but I wouldn’t be offended. I would listen, and then I would decide whether to toss my pants from a high tower or continue to wear them even though my mom thinks they’re frumpy. I guess part of that is that I love my friends and family and respect their opinions, but at the same time who gives a fuck what anybody thinks of anyone else? Who cares if some bitch on the bus glares at you for taking your shoes off? No skin off my back, no skin off yours.

I guess I just don’t give shit what people think of me. And I guess I don’t think anybody should give a shit what I think. So who cares if I snark?

Why give fuck?

I’m trying not to be a jerk to everybody all the damn time. I’m also trying not to push down all my evil human cruelties into a little ball of hate at the bottom of a hollow and hopeless facade. It’s my ultimate goal to do something in between. I’ll tell you how it goes, and if anybody tries to punch me along the way.

Best of luck on your own journey of maybe-not-being-a-complete-jackass.

Cheers!

-Leslee

Yep, Everything.

Lately I’ve decided to do every single thing ever. You might be wondering what would posses someone whose preferred mode is “in a heap” to take on so many things. Well, there is a reason, albeit a squishy, poorly-defined reason.

If you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs then you know that first comes air, then comes food/sex/love, and then comes the desire to have a life that is about more than internet memes and really nice shoes. According to Maslow (that sexy bastard) you have to fulfill these needs sequentially, but once you do, you keep getting unsatisfied because you still have higher-level needs to fill. Unlike most of what I learned in first-year psych, this particular theory has actually been useful in my life, because despite living a really happy, wonderful life, I find myself feeling a bit unsatisfied.

Hierarchy of AWESOME

 Now that I can feed myself usually and have a job that I love and friends that put up with me (you sexy bastards), I am starting to think about the very tippy-top of that hierarchy, which Maslow termed “self-actualization”. Self-actualization is, to use filthy hippy terms, “finding yourself” – pursuing creative endeavours, expressing talent, looking for meaning in your life. I don’t know if I’m really trying to find myself – I’m not really even sure I believe in that stuff – but I do no that I need something more. Something else. Something fuller, rounder, whole-er; something with fewer nights spent alone, wondering why I ate so much cheese. 

And it’s not even that I’m having all that much of an existential crisis; it’s more that I’m bored in a really vague, ambiguous way and I’m trying to think of what might soothe my savage nature. Or something.

Cheese: not actually a cure for my existential crisis. Apparently.

With that in mind I’ve gone back to school (spoiler alert: University is still really annoying) and also I’m learning to play guitar and doing badminton and living like a big girl with Responsibilities™. While these things are neat (and sometimes terrifying; for example, on Wednesday I got hit in the eye) the part that really makes me feel good about myself is the process of sitting down and trying to figure out what I wanted, what would make me happy and what would be really satisfying and wonderful for me.

It seems kind of selfish and self-involved and narcissistic (and lord knows I am all of those things) but I think it is really important to take the time at some point in our crazy, topsy-turvy lives and actually think about what will make us feel good. Not just “this is the cutest handbag EVER” good, but “I’m excited for tomorrow” good. Not just “I never want to stop eating this seafood pasta” good, but “when I think about who I am and what I stand for, I know that it’s good and kind and important.”

Every blog eventually just becomes an excuse for food porn…

I’m not saying that you should go back to school or take up a dorky sport or do anything, really, but I am saying that you should at least think about it. Our lives are as wonderful as we make them, and I want to make my life superb. There are plenty of things that could keep me from this searching – for example, my altogether crippling fear of failure – but I have resolved to face those challenges and live enormously. I believe that everyone has the capacity for whatever they want, unless it’s something like winning the lottery or having X-men powers.

I know, I’m a little disappointed too, but I’m pretty sure we can still make awesome lives for ourselves. We’re just that good.

-Leslee

Learning How to Be Alone

I used to be really excellent at being alone.

I used to sink deep into myself for hours; I found my mind a quiet, pleasant space where nothing could harm me. My imagination was better than any movie. I was addicted to pretending, because reality was mean and spiteful and filled with people I didn’t want to talk to.

Now, it’s different. I am constantly looking outside, going outside, reaching out; practicing talking to people, practicing kindness, trying not to be a complete asshole to literally everybody.

Some dudes just have neckbeards and some ladies don’t wear pants, and that’s none of my business and I should probably stop being such a dick about it.  

And part of that has been really amazing; namely, not everybody I meet thinks I’m a stuck-up bitch. Probably some of them still do, but the numbers are dropping. I love my friends. I am grateful that I finally got through the really arrogant portion of my life and now I can go to a party and be pretty much guaranteed to have a good time.

Also I’ve dated some, and that was nice, and sometimes not so nice, but definitely interesting.

Unfortunately, all of these people have made me weak. Not on purpose, and I’m not mad, but I used to be fine alone, but then I stopped being alone, and now I’m rusty. Apparently it’s a thing you have to practice, like anything else. And it can be really, really hard.

I also don’t have the internet at home. Or cable. So I spend a lot of time sitting quietly, or reading, or cleaning my kitchen. It sounds really boring. It is kind of boring. But it has given me a lot of time by myself, and it is forcing me to get comfortable being alone.

Who am I, when it gets quiet? What noises does my mind make when no one is around to fill the silence?

Hopefully not someone too awful. I’m trying, anyway.

And I’m getting better, slowly. It gets easier all the time. And in the silence I am forced to think about the stupid shit I do, and maybe not do it again. Maybe get a little better.

We’ll see. Life is long, hopefully, and I’ve got some time to get the hang of it. The trick, I think, will be getting used to my skin, to the quiet, to the one person I’m stuck with forever.

Don’t let the confidence fool you, I have no idea what’s going on.

 

Good luck, everybody.