I'm usually not a girly girl and I hate doing girly things like baking cookies and being delicate. Usually I prefer doing man-ish things like telling crude jokes and punching people.

But there's only one exception: personal hygiene. And by personal hygiene I mean getting rid of the dead skin on your feet.

So I have weird feet. I'm not that tall, and recently I found out I'm a few millimeter's shy of being 5'5 (when this entire time I boasted of being exactly 5'5), but I have big feet for a girl. Growing up I took pride in this, since this meant I had to buy new shoes every year, worn out or not. However, as with all things, having big feet is not always beneficial because I can't wear new shoes unless I want my bunions to suffer.

Also, during the summer time I don't wear socks (because I hate socks) so my feet suffer considerably. Walking through China Town attracts dirt, going to the beach gives me cuts, flip flops give me bad tan lines, speed walking makes them sweat, and at work I don't wear shoes or socks so I develop calluses. As you can imagine, I have ugly feet.

Thankfully, because of Annabelle's birthday and because we both happen to be going to a wedding, we decided to go for a pedicure and manicure. I've had pedi's and mani's once before and all I can remember from that experience was that it was expensive, so I didn't have high hopes this time around.

But this time, I was in feet heaven (as odd as that sounds). After soaking my feet in warm water with a constant jet stream of water to massage them, the woman doing my pedicure complained that I had too much dead skin on the bottom of my heel. So she took this nasty looking scraper and scrapped away the dead skin. Then she took what seemed like a cheese grater and used it to scrub away on my foot. You could literally see your dead skin being peeled away.

She finished it off with a foot massage and applied at least ten different kinds of oils and lotions and applied a hot towel on top after. I couldn't be happier. After months of agonizing over ugly feet, my feet looked brand new!

Anyway, this entire experience has taught me that I don't have to take care of my feet, I'll just get a pedicure each time it gets too ugly looking. So that's it, I hope this will last me long enough for the wedding next week. I'll have to limit my speed walking urges until then.

For the past month and a half I've been teaching English. Everyday after lessons, the kids pull out their lunches and I hover over them examining their food since they have the most amazing and creative lunches, which are all of course, Korean.

While I wait for Amy Tang to finish eating and call me back so she can rant to me over the phone, I will blog.

Today was a blah day. I closed my account with CIBC - after years of being underhandedly charged a ridiculous $5 a month for having a bankbook I never use - so I can switch over to RBC. I thought this would be a particularly emotional moment for me, especially since I still remember opening up my CIBC account as a 12 year old kid with my grandparents, proudly depositing the $50 I made through illegal child labour at their Filipino grocery store. But it wasn't.

So the reason I had to switch to RBC is a long one, which is why I'll skip over to my conversation with Sean, my now financial advisor whom my mom tricked into buying a Costco membership card (like I said, it's a long story).

Sean was trying to persuade me into opening a mastercard with RBC, especially because a lot of places are apparently making you choose between Visa or MC now, which I think he was making up because I have not noticed this. In fact, Tim Hortons recently started accepting both VISA and MC, which made me distrust Sean. Throughout our appointment, Sean just talked on and on about finance, which is good I suppose, since he's passionate about what he does. I mean, I'd want to be passionate about my job as well.

He also suggested I open up a TFSA, which sounded like a solid plan and would have been done in a minute if he didn't talk so much. I zoned out of what he was saying halfway through his example of why a TFSA account has been beneficial to him, his sister, his manager, and his car and began thinking of what I could be saving for: i.e. my own condo, a vacation in Korea, or going to Russia for the Winter Olympics.

Ok Amy Tang is calling. Maybe this post was a bit useless.

[Dear Faithful Blog]

Matty recently bought a dog whom I've unofficially named Charlie Chopstick, despite his protestations.  Charlie is a shihpoo - part toy poodle part shi tzu, although he looks more like a toy poodle to me. He won't grow to be bigger than 12 inches, which is perfectly fine to me because that way he won't grow ugly.

Having a puppy is a lot like having a baby in the house. Since Charlie is only 7 weeks old, we have to constantly be with him, feeding and making sure he poops. In return, he licks our toes and sleeps for 15 hours a day.

Random facts about Charlie:

1) He doesn't shed because he's half poodle.
2) He has small poop because he's tiny.
3) He doesn't bark because he's awesome.

Anyway, that's basically it about Charlie. I can't say too much about him because he's technically Matt's dog and we just got him a few days ago. Part of the reason as to why we got him was because of Aaron, who has recently been admitted into the hospital when he started to show symptoms of psychosis. To make him feel better, Matt got a dog.

Aaron is ok though, he was admitted two weeks ago and will be coming home tomorrow, much to the relief of my mom. I'm relieved but worried since he will need in home patient treatment and might relapse if he doesn't take his medication.

This entire situation has been exhausting but I felt like it was necessary and had a good outcome since it made me rethink what family means to me. When my parents got divorced I didn't care, but having a sick brother is entirely different. All the sudden I felt regretful for everything that went wrong and for all the moments that I let tick by without helping Aaron out. I realized that what's in the past is in the past though, and that I should just work toward being there for him in the future. It will be a long process though.

A lot of changes have taken place in the past little while, and I have a feeling a
lot more changes will take place.