Tag Archives: mail

I Saved The World Today

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You’re welcome of course.

Every so often when a package arrives at our house and it’s addressed to my husband,  I open it. Not because I enjoy breaking the law. Although who doesn’t love a good felony? But because I’m checking that the box isn’t ray gun parts.

Not that I’d know what ray gun parts look like. But even so, I try. Also Tex still swears up and down that he isn’t building a ray gun. Which incidentally is exactly what someone who was building a ray gun would say. I’m not so much concerned about Tex constructing it as I am the alleged ray gun falling into the hands of a criminal mastermind. My husband is a peace loving person but sometimes he creates wildly complex, outlandish things just for kicks.

At any rate the world’s is safe for today. Unless of course ray guns are powered by cheese in which case all bets are off. 20190826_141310

Again, you’re welcome.

Is Everyone Finished Grunting In Public and Picking Chia Seeds Out Of Their Teeth?

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You are? Excellent, then let’s talk. I’m a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions, January first is a great time to try and improve one’s self and become a better person. Normally I have about three or four personal goals to start the year, this year is a bit different though, there are twelve. Based on the sheer number of them, we can conclude that I was a pitiful human being last year.

None of my resolutions have to do with dropping pounds or fitness. Losing weight has only ever made me chronically hungry, so I walk around all day feeling like Oprah only with less money. Also chia seeds result in an excessive amount of flossing- there’s no need to make my dentist that happy. As for fitness, if spending an hour or more a day sweating next to people throwing heavy objects about and giving sideways glances to the woman who spends her entire life on the same elliptical is your happiness, more power to you. My personal take on all that is- it’s what hell looks like, only with air conditioning. The music is probably the same though.

I tend to make resolutions for my own happiness, or so that my life aligns better with my personal beliefs. For example my first and biggest resolution was about my phone.

  1. 40 Screen Unlocks a Day And Less Than 90 Minutes Of Usage Including Phonecalls

Ostensibly I was given a smartphone to take photos and videos of my son. While I have filled my phone with videos of Mini-Tex whacking every item in our house with his xylophone mallet, the majority of the time, I use my phone to check what these girls are up to

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Hey ladies, lookin’ good! (Photo Credit : pintrest.com)

and whether this man has died.

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This man is getting on in years, I have little time left to meet him ( Photo Credit: kokosoup.com)

Which is concerning, a little macabre and worst of all takes attention away from the little boy creating a symphony using the kitchen table legs. Initially I downloaded the “Break Free” app, but that only tracks a person’s data usage. Now I’m using the “Quality” app which locks smartphones for agreed upon periods of time. Before anyone gets upset, unless something in on fire, people can wait to talk to me. In addition, I should not be the first point of contact, my firefighting training is limited to the time I ran past the crazy guy in the park making a bonfire.

 

  1. Pinch Tex’s Butt More Often

I spend a chunk of the day carrying, holding, hugging, snuggling and touching my son. This has coincided with a steep drop off in the number of times I hug my husband. So I vowed to hug/grab/pinch and just basically show Tex that I love him more often each day. I aim for about five hugs. I’m managing four on average.

 

  1. Abusing Canada Post’s Good Natured Attitude And Mailing Bizarre Items

Sending cards to everyone and their distant second cousin who I met once at an opening for a hair salon is my hobby. Recently, with my new lack of free time due to raising a child, I’ve become complacent in my environmentalism. To combat this laziness, I’ve decided to reuse all paper, envelopes and wood pulp products that come my way. My personal goal is to reuse and repurpose items to the point that Sula would be mortified by my sending them to the government. She once saw the package I was sending my tax return in and remarked that the Canadian Revenue Agency would take it for a joke. Come to think of it, this may be why I was audited twice in the past year. Moving on.

 

  1. Hug a Homeless Person

Then give him five bucks. I’m on extended mat leave, in other words, I’m raising my son while making bupkis, but the thing is, I have everything; a loving husband, an adorable little baby, a roof over my head and a metric tonne of farm squash grown by my mother-in-law  (Would anyone like a butternut the size of a smart car?). I’d be hard pressed to find a luckier person. Consequently, no matter my means, it’s my job to give back. So sometimes I find a homeless person and hand them whatever is in my pocket, other times I choose an artist to support on Patreon. Whatever the act is, sharing my good fortune makes my life better.

 

So those are my resolutions that are bringing me joy this year, for all of you still sweating it out at the gym, eating kale and chia seed salad like it’s going out of style, good-o on you, someone needs to able to strut the runways and beaches, and it certainly won’t be me. Mostly because I’m a vampire, the beach is an exquisitely painful place for me.

What are your resolutions for this year my Unwashed public? Share them in the comments below!

The Great Unwashed Wants YOU as a Pen Pal Because Who Doesn’t Love Manatees With Facial Hair?

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Recently while searching for my lost passport I found a stack of blank postcards.

And I thought what many people think in this same situation “I want to write awkward messages to distant acquaintances.” Hence I approached my Dad who works with a lot of people, some who have met me, some who have only heard of me.

The Great Unwashed “I want to write to your clients. I’m sure Camilla Parker Bowles would love a postcard of a manatee with a moustache.”

Dad “First off I don’t think you understand what I do- I don’t work with Camilla Parker Bowles and secondly I’m not giving you my clients’ addresses.”

C'mon who doesn't want this in their mailbox?

Even the queen Mum would want this postcard.

Next I went to my sister Diana.

The Great Unwashed “Lend me your address book, I want to send postcards to all of your friends.”

Diana “I don’t have an address book and please stop sending valentines to my roommates. It’s really weird to receive hearts with goofy smiles from strangers in September.”

Stacey's Bad Word. Can Canada Post ever top this?

Stacey’s Bad Word. A new way to express my affection for Diana’s friends.

I was at a loss. Short of distributing postcards to all of Roscoe’s patients which he claimed “Would be a violation of ethics and their privacy” I had no one new to send mail to.

And for a moment I despaired. What would become of Travesty Tuesdays? My beloved series of posts which sometimes appear on the second day of the work week that feature odd correspondence sent to those I know and love. But much like the act of riding an armadillo to work, after a while receiving poorly drawn stick figures and descriptions of falling in the shower becomes the norm over time. My family simply does not appreciate receiving Easter cards about attempting to hog tie raccoons the way they used to. I needed a new audience to send my ramblings to.

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(Photo Credit : doingitdt.areavoices.com)

Thus I am calling on my Unwashed public. If you would love nothing more than a vintage Babysitter’s Club postcard about the bus ride I took with a recently paroled drug dealer who is about to become a baby daddy please send me your contact information.

Fair readers, if you choose to help me tackle this pile of postcards I promise not to share your personal information with anyone. I also pledge to only send you one postcard. Unless you are one of Diana’s roommates in which case I popped yet another valentine proclaiming my undying love in the mail just this morning. I also promise that I’m not a 350 lb women’s prison guard. At best I hover around a third of that size and am occasionally mistaken for an eighth grader.

In the interest of protecting everyone’s privacy please send your mailing address to sarahwritescreativethingshere@gmail.com * rather placing it in the comments below.

Alternatively you can private message me on Facebook by “Liking” The Great Unwashed. Or if you are feeling a little mischievous you could send the address of your arch nemesis.

*My email seems narcissistic until you realize that it’s meant to be a reminder. I also have a post it with the words “Put Food Here!” on my fridge because it’s just awkward to store leeks in your sock drawer.

Based on the sheer number of these kinds of postcards that I found I can only assume I meant to create some sort of miniature paper city of monuments for a tiny Godzilla to destroy. Only possible conclusion.

Based on the sheer number of these kinds of postcards I can only assume I meant to create some sort of miniature paper city of monuments for a tiny Godzilla to destroy. Only possible conclusion.

Travesty Tuesdays

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Some people enjoy watching television, others enjoy playing sports, my beloved hobby is writing weird anecdotes to people. If you are a member of my family, or one of my friends, it is more than likely that you have received this kind of correspondence from me; emails, letters, cards or postcards I send them all.

Roscoe was working on the days when I painstakingly wrote out all the thank you cards from our wedding. Thus my strange may have run a little wild over the paper. I wrote to one dear friend thanking her for the gift of salt and pepper shakers and explained how our previous pepper grinder had met it’s somewhat grisly demise.

On the cream cardstock, I wrote that our old pepper shaker had in a fit of panic, thrown  itself from the top of the spice cabinet to the floor. Roscoe had been cooking a dish with scotch bonnet peppers just below. We think that the little pepper grinder confused the hot fumes coming off of the spicy peppers for a fire and so in an effort to preserve it’s life, flung it’s little shaker  self, grinder and all to the ground. However not only had it misjudged the severity of the situation, it also had misjudged the distance and thus it would season our dishes no more.

These are the types of things my family and friends received in the mail from me. Occasionally I decide not to sign the cards and so they’re left wondering what weirdo is sending them this kind of stuff in the mail.

I debated having mail Mondays, but then I thought some people might get confused when Unwashed followers were like “Yeah! It’s Mail Monday!” So the uninitiated might hear “male” and think that this was a blog where on Mondays we act like men and wear flannel shirts and go chop up bears with axes as manly men are want to do. And I really didn’t want to be responsible for people applying fake beards for no reason because they were trying to support my blog.

Then I thought “Throwback Thursdays” like on Holly Madison’s page. However “throwback” intimates that the material is from some time ago and I’m constantly writing new bizarre stuff and sending it to my family so that wouldn’t work.

But then I remembered a story my Great Aunt had told me when I visited her. She was in an IKEA and there was one of those little Swedish horses that was painted beautifully and it would have looked just like any other Swedish horse if it weren’t for the tattoo of the word “Mom” in a heart on one of it’s flanks. A woman who was also shopping at the IKEA walked by this horse and declared it “a travesty!”

So for the rest of that week my Great Aunt and I proclaimed everything “a travesty”. For those who are very attached to the concept of traditional, polite correspondence my writing could be considered “a travesty”. Thus occasionally on a Tuesday, you might read one of my travesties that I’ve sent out to those I know and love.