Pretty hexy way to say goodbye

So, I wanted to write this while I was inspired, and I got the spirit in my veins, baby.

I've been spending the weekend with my brother and sister-in-law and my favorite person EVER, my bunny niece Evie, and we talked a little about Hex in the City. Talking about out this blog makes me realize it's dead, and it's time to move on. Let's face it; Hex has been out of the city for longtime now sweet Satan!

Thannngss could not be more diiiffferent now

Sweet Satan! 

(You gotta read that in a televangical preacher voice to make sense, there you go)

What can I say? I traded a glass slipper for perogy smorg boots and gardening gloves, but I truly haven't been happier for quite some time. If ever, really. Hex don't live in them city parts no more; it is time to truly acknowledge that with one last profanity strewn post.

This blog both terrifies and amazes me; I never truly understood the power of words until I learned something profound from my own. I learned that I can be a real bitch, my gratuitous use of the f word is incredibly unladylike, and I will never stop giving a fuck. 

That's deep. 

Preach! 

I'll never be able to keep not blogging; my opinion on trivial bullshit will always matter to someone! If not, hoardes of gossips, surviving off the lifeblood of schadenfreude. And occasionally you get to say, what an articulate, well meaning, train wreck. 

To me, that's ok. I started this blog because I was an angry young lady, with the need for an outlet, and I have no apologies for that. It was my cyber soapbox that hardly reached the masses, but it wasn't really for the masses anyways, I never gave a shit what y'all thought. Even my mom. Love you mom but yeah, you too. I just figured if people were going to read this, it was on them. You clicked the link. You surfed me out. I gave you multiple warnings, for starters, the name isn't exactly Sally Suburbs. I also believe there is a disclaimer AND a snarky line about not giving a fuck; if you're offended, it's on you man. This blog isn't powerful enough to ruin reputations (which some snake oil salesman accused me of once apon a time.) Newsflash: No one gives a shit.

For fucks sakes, I will ruin my own out of my own self-deprecating humor that most don't even get. I haven't apologized for this blog, and goddammit, I will kill this thing dead myself, in front of the world, and it's last words will be:

 

IDGAF

(If you're not internet enough to know what this means, go to your search engine of choice and enter those letters. I promise you it's ever so enlightening.)

I like to wrap things up in neat little bows when it comes to my creative outlets. There is something just wrong about me to use this blog for the next chapter in my life. It is just truly a narcissistic work of self-indulgence that has served it's purpose as a time capsule to me, and for the sake of documentation I need to close the lid on the capsule. I need to separate the chapters of my life in my mind, and having it on here would mess things up for me. If you are truly a fan of my work, don't you worry , I just can't keep my mouth shut, and since I articulate my overly harsh opinions best through writing, I just can't abstain from cyber preaching too long. 

If you cyber stalk this blog, at some point, I may post a link to the next atrocity. Because, you've got nothing better to do... And you also LOOVVVEE ME! 

I want to thank all of my loyal readers. The ones who stood by this thing no matter what I said on here. You people, are special. You all could also be said to have enabled my blog behavior these last 4 years. So thank you for being my blog enablers. It wouldn't have gone this far without y'all. Give yourselves a fist bump.

Shine on pearly orcs, shine the fuck on. 

"One expects poetry, if it is poetry, to offend. It is the right of art." 

-Madame Morrible 

HEX

I'm just going to put this here.

-E.

New Year, same old bitch

Allow me to sum up my holiday season for you with these videos, that pretty much show what I did for ten days, pour/mash/shovel everything in my pie hole. I did a great job of maintaining and not overdoing it, as I most often do at Christmas time. I didn't gain a single pound! Amazing compared to the 12 pounds I had to practically puke away last year. I had a couple Bailey's every couple days, baked like a stoned stepford wife, got so tired of eating it felt like a chore, oh, but the memories we did create.

Party on, 2015.

-E.

4 years of melanoma matrimony

Well, here I am. 4 years post diagnosis. It feels like forever ago but also like yesterday. I'll never forget that day, the day my life changed more than ever before and the day that life became so much valuable to me than ever before. 

Let me get one thing straight: I do not post stuff about my melanoma to garner sympathy or to dwell on all I went through, I only post out of obligation to keep a dialogue of awareness amongst all who will listen, and think about their skin. When I was diagnosed I still didn't believe that melanoma could actually kill me, and I believed that because I was young I was immune to death, and I felt like most people thought the same way about the disease, which scared me into wanting to raise awareness. I did what I wanted to do, and felt like I made my difference, and to be honest it's hard to stay active when all you want to do is just move on, forget a little about it all, be "normal" again. Which I never will be but that's ok. Either way, at least once a year I will share bits of my year and a half experience with actively fighting the illness with surgery and treatment, and hopefully my experience is enough to scare other young people out of using tanning beds or baking in the sun without SPF. Yes, I'm trying to scare people out of those habits, because I've noticed that you can "raise awareness" but if you don't also "raise fear" people are less likely to stop tanning. 

I like these four pictures because they say a lot of the physical side of melanoma. Surgery. Nurses. Tubes. Blood. Sores. Pain. Melanoma hurt. There was a lot of physical hell during that year and a half. My body had turned against me, and living in it was utter hell. After my surgery I came down with lymphedema, which is a buildup of fluid in a limb, in my case my leg. I didn't walk normally for almost 6 months after, and in my dreams sometimes I still limp. It's amazing that the body can return to almost normal with time and healing, and all that is left is the scars to remind you.

Melanoma hurt. I remember the second week of treatment, I had every weekend off so Saturday came and I wanted to join some friends at a movie at west ed. I got out of the vehicle at the mall and my legs crumpled beneath me, I felt like a marionette. I could not stand on my own. I went home, feeling defeated, feeling like I was dying, like I couldn't even keep my eyes open and wondered if they would ever open again. I wondered how I was going to get through a year of this medicine that might improve my chances of survival. I wondered who I was going to become as a result of this, and who I was going to be now while in the haze of this illness. I felt like I was trapped inside of a shell. The reality of what I was going through hit me just then. 

I got sicker and sicker that weekend, and it went beyond the typical side effects for the drug. I truly felt like I was going to die. Every second felt like agony and my body was angry. So tired, I slept all the way trough that weekend.

Monday comes and I go to the cross cancer institute to see my oncologist. I saw him every Monday for months. Mondays are clinic day, so the halls are filled with sick people waiting to see their doc. It's the worst place in the world to me. I remember feeling so horrible I considered asking for a wheelchair because walking was hard, both from lymphedema and just general weakness from the drugs, but I didn't, because one thing I hate is looking like a pussy. Ha.

I got my blood checked and they told me keep up the water but they'd delay my next infusion until they saw my lab results, so go home a while. I remember my dad picking me up, going to my parents and my brother was there, and I lay on the couch while they ate lunch, and I may have had one or two bites. Then a while later the cross called me and said that I had zero liver enzymes and zero white blood cell count, so I was really very ill. Take a week off they said, and next week we will resume at half the dose.

I found out later that this dose they were giving me was the same they start everyone at, no matter if you're 350 pounds or 100. I'm quite certain you could kill a horse at that dose for a month or two, it was that awful. 

That week off was really hard. I decided I might quit. I couldn't see myself doing any more of that. It was just too much. I spoke with someone who did interferon the whole year, and it sounded bad, but also thought, maybe I'm speaking to this man now because he did the whole year... What if I quit and then die next year? 

Obviously I had to suck it up though, because showing weakness doesn't work for me. I didn't want to have any regrets. I haven't gotten anywhere in life by quitting, and hiding. So I did it, and over the course of the year I became used to being sick, so I got a little more normal in that I just went on, and if I felt really bad I just went home and slept. But lying around sick got old, and I was bored, and still only 27/28 years old, I had a life to live. I had to get up and out even if my body wanted to stay on the couch. 

I don't feel like a hero for what I went through, it was something that happened to me out of circumstance, family genetics, and just some kind of fucked up "luck." I had been a bit of a hypochondriac since high school, a closet one, where I didn't really share that I feared I would get cancer, any kind of cancer, the one I dwelled on was actually lymphoma! I know that sounds nuts now. I spent years on and off thinking that I had to have lymphoma because I was tired, and had swollen glands, a cold that wouldn't go away, ect. Well it hit me one night, looking at my mole that ended up being malignant, I looked at the mole and felt nauseous. There's something very wrong with this mole and me. I didn't feel sick but I didn't feel right. Something had changed, something was off, my insides felt heavy. They felt burdened. I had to go to the doctor. 

One lesson I learned the hard way having melanoma was that we must all be our own advocates for our own bodies. No one knows your body better than you. The doctor I saw for the mole looked at it and said "it's a little ugly but I wouldn't be concerned about it" he said he would refer me to a dermatologist to remove it, if that's what I wanted. I remember his lack of concern. 

I ended up waiting two weeks and calling three times to make sure they put through a referral. The nurses at this clinic had to remind doctor idiot. Finally I got an appointment but couldn't believe it- I had to wait two months to get this mole off. 

I didn't think it was right, but I didn't do anything about it either. I was still naive about doctors and thought, well he's the expert. They wouldn't just let me die... Would they?

The day came and I sat in the dermatologists office really just thinking, ok, everything is ok, you are feeling fine, you're not dying, this might be a superficial skin cancer but it's "probably not" melanoma. This was my denial working at full capacity. I spent those two months in full denial. If I wasn't being rushed to the mole man, I must be ok.

Well only a few days later, 5 to be exact, on December 15th 2010 I got the call and my life has not been the same since. It was eerie, it was shocking, I didn't know what to do with that news. I went to work after I got the phone call. My ears were ringing all day. It was as if I had just been propelled into a dream world, where I was literally hovering over my body, pensive and feeling a dark force beyond my control looming. Overall, the loss of control is what is hardest. Your body controls you when you are sick. And that is a very scary thing.

Looking back, as my own advocate I SHOULD have pushed for a faster referral. I SHOULD have sought out a second opinion. I SHOULD have, but I didn't, and I don't live regretting those choices but I sure have learned from them. One thing I've learned is that the doctor is not god, he is not all seeing and all knowing. They COULD leave you to die. If you don't fight for your own life you could lose it. My oncologist later told me that the doctor I saw SHOULD have and COULD have gotten me an appointment sooner, because as doctors they are obligated to care, and if the patient is concerned, they should be too. I learned that I must always fight for my own body, and if something isn't right I must make it right on my own. And it's ok to tell the doctor, no, there IS something wrong.

Is it funny that after all this shit, pain, sickness, and utter misery I wouldn't take it back? I know people say that sometimes but don't totally mean it, but I do mean it. I just couldn't take it back because I love myself more than I ever did before all the craziness. I see things in a way that others just can't, after facing death head on everything changes. I no longer have bad days. I have days that didn't go my way, that were frustrating, or just weren't awesome, but no bad days. None. Why would I have bad days? I have days! That's all that matters to me. I have less physical issues than I thought I would, and that makes me thankful. I notice the shape of snowflakes. I notice the size of the moon. I see the difference a little kindness makes. I get to see my niece smile and hold her in my arms, and hear her call me auntie. I get the love and affection from my amazing man, best friends and loving family, and feel true unwavering support. Being a part of life, that's all I want, and I appreciate every single second of it. 

-E.

Hexy life hacks volume 1: Snoring.

Hex in the city isn't exactly known as an advice or "life hack" blog, but I'm thinking it's time I share some of my very own unique hacks that help me out with the little annoying bits of life, like your boyfriends snoring problem. Ok, like my boyfriends snoring problem. Maybe don't tell him about this entry, leave that to me. 

I hear so many women and gay men bitch about their mans snoring problem and it seems obvious that men are way worse than most women, but then there's that one woman who's log sawing sets off car alarms and knocks paintings off the wall. So not just you guys, but you know, men are most likely to be heard snoring loud and clear from across a house. Here's my learned tips and tricks to quiet a snorer. You're welcome.

1) Grow one toenail long and keep it that way. Let it grow beyond the free edge of your toe. Now, if you're worried about ingrowns I'm also an esthetician and I'm here to tell you you're better off with longer toenails to avoid ingrowns. Anyways. Grow it out and use it as a weapon against night time nose noise. Don't be too violent about it, slowly poke him in the lower calf, thigh or anywhere fleshy, and just push a little. The trick is to push until he rolls over to his side, that is the goal to all my tricks really. He will eventually wake slightly, thinking he must have rolled over on to a sharp object that shouldn't be in the bed, but he will be too tired and out of it to look for that object, it could be as simple as some kind of washer, screw, shit, even a nail, but if your guy is less handy it could just be a rogue potato chip, and he will roll over and deal with it tomorrow. But whatever you do, you mustn't let him know that you keep one toenail sharpened just for him, or he might just cut it when you are unsuspecting, say, sleeping. 

2) The slow yet persistent kick. This ones the most obvious; kick him until he moves! But it's not as simple as it sounds. There's an art to it. At least an art in being gentle about it. I like to start my kicks light, and do it with the inhale of each snore-producing breath, rhythmically and consistently with an end goal of him rolling the fuck over. My favorite technique is the "pendulum". Lie with your back facing the snorer and slowly kick your leg closest to the snorer forward (away from snorer) then bring it back so you have a little momentum. Control your speed and force, and up both if this fails to move snorer within a minute or two. 

3) The tickle. I like personally the ear tickle, because like the toenail trick it makes the snorer think there's something annoying on one side so they move to the other. Use whatever you want to give snorer a little annoying tickle, a feather would work splendidly if you have one near, but you do run the risk of being busted with a feather in your hand in the middle of the night and there will be questions. So use anything handy, like your own hair if it's long enough to reach, but if the snorer has long hair themselves you can use their own hair as a weapon against the snorer. I recommend being subtle about this too, you don't want to wake them suddenly holding a lock of their hair. Questions there too.

On a bad snoring night I may use one or all three of these tricks, but once you get the snorer on to their side you are going to need to keep them there or they will just roll back over and start up the sawing again. Here's my methods:

1) Knee behind butt. Or how about bones under butt. This is exactly what it sounds like, if they roll away from you which they most likely will since you are trying to create one inhospitable side of the bed for them, immediately bend one leg and put your knee just under snorers butt. They will try to roll over but will immediately be forced to not. Cause, uh, you're sleeping there man. I repeat, "you're sleeping there." You must never give away the fact that you're awake. Snore a little if you have to, you must make them believe you rolled into that position and are sound asleep. It doesn't have to be the knee, it can be any body part but the more bony, the better. 

2) Sew a tennis ball in the back of his nightshirt. K I've never tried this, mainly because I prefer to be a sneaky bitch over an obvious one. And the poor, broken and defeated man that puts this hilarious looking shirt on, my best guess is the snoring is just the foamy head of a tall beer of deep seeded marital issues, but I still think it is a hilarious and most likely effective tool against snoring. 

3) The "earthquake". If he's on his side and starts to turn back to a supine position, immediately start shaking the bed violently. I like to stay as still as possible while rattling the bed from my knees down. Again, don't give away the fact that you are awake. Stop the rattling as soon as he's even mildly roused, and again fake sleeping. Lie still. All he will know is that he must roll away from whatever is shaking over there, or it will backfire he will spring up in a panic thinking you are having a seizure, you must yourself decide if it's worth looking crazy or not, if it's 2am you're wide awake and work in the am, I would say it is worth it. 

Like I said, you're welcome. I hope that you'll think of these tips the next time your snorer is keeping your eyes glued open and annoying the shit out of you. 

BUT if these tips sound too mean, you can always grab some earplugs, go lie on the couch and read a nicer persons blog. 

Nighty night sweet translucent angels.

-E.

Pumpkin weigh off

K so this is a little late, but better late than never! Plus it's still October, it counts.

Here is the day me and my pal Jessor went to the glorious PUMPKIN MOTHERFUCKING WEIGH OFF!!! 

I found out about it and immediately told all my friends and family that would listen, and anxiously awaited a good month and a half for this day, had pumpkin socks all ready to wear and a party planned after, because watching people weigh off giant freak vegetables really gets me thirsty for a good beer drinking binge with my buddies, who can all appreciate a big beautiful pumpkin. 

Jess and I arrive in town and it appears there's no where to park, why? Because half of fucking Alberta is here to get in on this pumpkin party! It was fucking ridiculous. Searched for a spot for 20 minutes and once we did, we got out and started walking to where we saw people, but there was people everywhere. We asked a couple of bitchy locals (never ask an angry looking woman for directions, especially in a small town) where was the actual weigh off happening, and one nasty looking witch goes "Wayyyyyyyyyy on the other side of town in the agriplex, hurrrumphhh." Let me just quickly point out she was probably 300 pounds. Made it sound like we would have to get back in the car and drive a ways, but this is a small town, how far would we have to go? 

Well we start walking back towards the truck and see a friendly looking firemen, and I say "Excuse me, where are they weighing off the pumpkins?" He says "follow me ladies I'm heading there right now!" Well Mrs. Mean fat and disgruntled meant 3 blocks when she said "across town." But what more can you expect from someone who probably drives the block distance to the grocery store? 

We arrive at the pumpkin weigh off and this shit is NO JOKE. There's a Ferris wheel outside with food stands and a farmers market and we get inside this building and there's people up to the ceiling in there, farmers and kids, weirdos like Jess and I, I see my parents neighbors and a women we went to high school with, people dressed in all orange and even some kind of creepy pumpkin clowns, like I said. No joke. 

We were a little late so I think we missed the heaviest watermelon and longest gourd, but fuck that, we came for the pumpkins goddammit! And pumpkins we got! 

The boys in the orange jumpsuits carried some of the pumkins on stage with a moving blanket, up to about 600-700 pounds worth of pumpkin! 

The bigger ones were lifted on stage with a forklift.

Shitty pic, but you get the idea.

Best part: we got to go pose with the freak gourds afterwards!!!! It was basically a dream come true.

Now here I am with the heaviest squash, she weighs a hefty 700 pounds or so. 

JESSOR WITH SQUASH

Jessor with the runner up. This fucker weighed around 850 pounds of glorious pumpkiny deliciousness. But in the pumpkin world bigger is truly better, more to love. And I lovvvve me these huge ass pumpkins.

GIANT PUMPKINS ARE SO METAL!

Note the look on that child's face behind me. I was so excited I probably yelled something that offended her little ears and she probably didn't understand how an "adult" could get so excited over a huge pumpkin. Stupid kids.

Another big'in, this guy had to be around the 700 pound mark as far as I remember. The look on my face gets stupider and stupider as I get more and more drunk off the sight of these gigantic beautiful gourds. 

Jessor creepily stroking the winner pumpkin. She weighed a hefty 1210 LBS!!!!!! That's right, over 1200 pounds of pumpkin! That's a real BBP or big beautiful pumpkin! Quite the sight to see in person.

Me and the winner. I live for moments like these. We went home with a deep sense of satisfaction. Them pumpkins did not fuck around. It was truly beautiful. I cannot wait for next year. If you want to come the more the merrier, next year I would love if someone wanted to drive me so I could partake in the beer gardens, where there was apparently going to be pumpkin moonshine. I left smiling knowing that there's a town that values pumpkins as much as I do. A town dedicated to pumpkins. The pumkin capital of Alberta, and it's right down the highway from where I live. 

My life is fucking awesome.

-E.

I'm so much cooler on the internet

Oh jeez I've been a tewibble tewibble blogger.

If you didn't know me you'd probably think I was a flighty bitch, who doesn't really have any real direction in life and the attention span of a small animal... and you would be almost correct.

What the fuck is this blog about anyways? It's got so many personalities if I ever end up in jail for some sort of atrocity they'll use this as a profiling tool.

Last year I barely blogged all summer too, because, well I had better things to do quite frankly. I'll admit that the majority of what you read on here is only written because I was fucking bored, probably stoned and needed to get up on my soapbox, I probably called all my friends and got no answer, left them creepy messages spoken in foreign languages about chicken delivery or threats to carve their name into my arm and make them watch me bleed unless they picked up the phone, and lawd knows when I smoke a doobie I need my microphone, I can talk up a motherfucking tsunami! This blog is that microphone, ok now you know it.

Did you really think that I could rant like that without any assistance to blind my judgement and unrestrict my word-flow?

Also this blog has become somewhat of a lie. Hex no longer resides in the city, she lives in the middle of nowhere, and life has changed a great deal. Hex on the farm is obviously what this blog should be renamed, but who changes the name of their blog after 3.5 years?

But really it wouldn't change that much as a blog because Hex is still Hex. You can take the Hex out of the city but you can't take the City out of the Hex. It's funny because though I lived the young adult city lifestyle for the last decade, I come out here and love it so much it feels like I belonged here all along. And what "here" means is THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Not in a city or a town, no neighbours, solitary. I of course have my man and my kitties, but solitary with them.

People have let me down so much just in general as a society I no longer want to be living in close proximity to any. That is bad. But it's the truth. I couldn't just live in the middle of one of these towns out here because that to me would almost be worse, no anonymity, everyone will know your story and what you buy at the drug store, if you drink too much, that you had chlamydia, and if you write bad cheques. No really, theres a list at the grocery store by here on the tills that reads "DO NOT ACCEPT CHEQUES FROM THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE:" With First and last fucking names.

The further you go off the highway, the more it starts to resemble scenes from The Hills have eyes, the weirder the people, and the intelligence level takes a fucking nose dive. Common responses to questions posed to Sales clerks in these towns are:

"Huh?"
"I have no idea"
{stares into space} "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

What baffles me is that with this many dumb dumbs everywhere I call or go for any reason, I can't get a fucking job to save my life. WTF is that about? I have decided I am not inbred enough, theres no other reason. Oh maybe because my last name is not one of 5 Ukrainian names from 'round here neither.

Life is different out here. It's slower paced, you dump your own garbage at the dump, you burn the rest of it, and there are tire piles up to the sky. There's big fuzzy caterpillars that you don't see in the city anymore.

You can shoot a gun or blast fireworks, burn whatever shit you damn well please or crank the death metal to 100 and roam around in your underwear, which I prefer to do all simultaneously. Love it.

Everything for me has been dandy out here except the job hunt situation. I worked briefly at a golf course 30 minutes away but had to quit that nonsense, and then been on other interviews after repeated emails to the same employer, haven't gotten those, it's enough to make you very discouraged, look at yourself like WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? Why can't you get a fucking job?

Well I have decided to go back to school for Medical Transcription. I can do that from home. Plus I get to decipher medical jargon all day, love it. That actually is fun for me. I've seen so much of my own I am really practically a certified doctor without any certification! Next best thing is data entry of doctor speak. And guess what.... you can do it from home! Thats right, I wouldn't even have to go out and work side by side with some idiot that only got the job cause she knows so and so's cousin uncle.

I am starting school the SECOND my books get here. I couldn't be hungrier for information and knowledge since my last shitty job, working with the public just is not going to work for me ever again. I am done letting people crush my soul slowly but surely through all my years of serving the public and no more my friends, no more. I need to be using my brain more than just figuring out the best way to deal with a jerk with a chip on his shoulder demanding money back. I'd like more of a challenge than smiling for the public offers me.

Don't think I haven't found my ways of getting even with these soul crushers through the years though. If you're sneaky you can at least have yourself a little bit of satisfaction. I had a couple of shitlists, wrote down the name or even just a description of the asshole, something like "Ugly crotch nosed piss face, your dicks so small it's an innie, may your wife cheat on you and your house burn to the ground." Those things I really wrote down. It helped me to just let go, instead of taking home all that shit and letting it destroy my evening, I'd get a list of 5 or so shitty people and my wishes for them, and leave work and burn the list or flush it down the toilet.

It always helped me go back to work day after day and endure the assholery.

Take that how ever you want it, if you think it's crazy you really don't know me do you.

Hey, that was fun, ever so random, and kind of hurt my fingers from typing since it's been so long. I will leave you with this equally random tune, because I am totally on a Scorpions kick right now.


http://youtu.be/GY3BTyLh8vQ

-E.