So I changed the title of this blog the other day, partly in a fit of rage and also because I want it to be less localized in this fucking shithole city of Toronto that I plan on escaping as soon as the kids leave and the dog dies…and be more of a citizen of the World Wide Internet, to attract a broader audience who gets me. I started it a few years back as a real estate blog…you know, showcasing pretty little over-priced pimped-up houses and twee local businesses destined to fail in the gentrified Stepford neighbourhoods that no one can really afford to live in because of our modern day fixation of wanting the same shit as everyone else, GRANITE COUNTERTOPS, I’m looking at you. Over the years, the blog evolved to something else entirely, which has been me talking to you about every else besides granite counters. Fuck them and their stainless steel appliances. Heated floors, seriously?

Onward: Last month I had my annual checkup, and while everything was reasonably A-OK, my doctor did call me to say she wanted to retest my “bad” cholesterol because it was “borderline.” She gave me some number that I promptly forgot. Yes, I can remember my old crush, Sweaty Man’s, license plate number from 1998 but I forget the important ones, don’t even ask about my chequing account.

“What does that mean, borderline?” Me, clutching my wine-stained blankie, like suddenly my world has come crashing down for having too many nuggets of cholesterol in my bloodstream that I didn’t even know I had two seconds earlier.

“It’s a tad higher than I would like to see. Did you say you’ve been eating cheese over the holidays?”

“Yes…,” I have been eating cheese constantly, not just to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, c’mon.

“Well I’d like to get you re-tested in a couple of months….also, how many drinks would you say you’re having per week?”

Of course I lied. I don’t even remember what I said because you can’t really toy with that doctor, my lie crushed me. You know the old joke about how you’re only an alcoholic if you drink more than your doctor, who drinks like a sailor on shore leave…that joke is from the 1950s when your doctor kept a bottle of Canadian Club in his drawer and smoked a cigarette while he gave you a prostate exam. Well my doctor is a Lilliputian size triple 0 (she shops at Gap kids!) who would probably throw up if she drank my Monday intake.

I lied to her then but I am on a mission now. I’m down to 5 units a week! No more bacon! And cheese! Also, I looked up on my beloved Internet ways to improve one’s health all around. I am super sceptical when people tell me about herbal remedies. Like some crazy bitch told me to take Primrose Oil when I had a case of the sadz. Fuck, I am depressed because I am unemployed, celibate by circumstance because nobody in this bullshit city gets me and I am all alone AND NO AMOUNT OF EXPENSIVE URINE WILL CHANGE THAT. Come on.

Although one thing that did stand out was the power of Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV fo’ short from here on in). I know, I know, junk science, old wives’ tale blah blah blah. But! as I transform into a wise old bat, I am more and more into the folk remedies and a simpler way of life. You know, lots of things are making me sneeze and giving me patchy rashes these days and I have that daughter who nips at me in righteous socially aware buzzwords that are sounding less like gibberish each day: GMO* MONSANTO* ORGANIC* LOCALLY SOURCED* SUSTAINABLE* SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION WHORE.

ACV (apple cider vinegar! did you forget already?) is supposed to help lower cholesterol, decrease belly fat (Dr.Oz says so it must be true), help alkalize the body (do I care? so does red wine by the way), and helps decrease the appetite because it’s so fucking foul, you want to pucker up your pie hole and run out of the kitchen, never to return. It’s supposed to promote all over good health which is worth a try, especially since it’s cheap, and all you need is a couple of tablespoons diluted in a glass of water to shoot back first thing in the morning.

So I’m on Week Two of ACV regime. You have to get the organic, raw cider, Bragg brand, because it contains “the mother,” with all its enzymes and living bacteria. I know it sounds very “Alien” but I just do what I’m told, I don’t question. Contrary to what those bitches on the Internet say, I have not gotten “used to” the taste. Every morning it is a tortuous swallow-ordeal, I’m not a gulper but I am learning to be now (dudes, call me!). It burns going down but I will say, I feel virtuous afterward, like I have sedated all the screaming candida and stifled out their raging inflammation shindig for the day.

So far, ACV has made me pee a LOT, like a ton. This is good, I am a water hoarder. We live in the first world where clean drinking water comes out of taps in any given lavatory…Evolution, I’m talking to you, why do you bloat us so? Don’t answer that, sodium, you troll motherfucker. Salt, too little and you get goiters, too much and you blow up. Whatevs.

Also ACV has made my poop stellar, according to the Bristol stool scale. Every morning, rather than plopping out angry inconsistently messy clumps, it slides out stealthily in the shape of a snake. If they weren’t my own babies I’d be afraid of them.

I’m trying this out so you don’t have to, I will let you know next month if my cholesterol count goes back to a proper lady-like amount.

More crazy ACV action, and I am diffident (don’t judge just yet!) to tell you is that I have joined the “no-poo movement.” WTF? is that, you ask: It turns out there are people in the world who don’t use shampoo, of any kind, any time, any how. Shampoo and styling products, with its sulphates and silicones, tampers with the hair’s natural ability to be its own magnificent crowning glory. Half the time my hair is lank, limp, and stringy, and when it’s not, it’s out-of-control and flyaway. And then I have to put shit on it to make it look less puff-tard. It’s a vicious and frustrating cycle.

My son Freddy is a card-carrying member of the “no-poo movement” since last summer. Aside from the fact that he is lazy and hates showering, his hair is curly and needs a place to go that only styling product can make happen, or so we thought. A few of the kids at his summer camp job are on the no-poo bandwagon, not because they are savages but because they are neo-hippies, and their manes are soft and shiny. Yes, they are young and swim in fresh water lakes, but there still must be something to it. Freddy’s hair is in a perfect natural pompadour that you can run your fingers through and mess up a bit and it still looks good.

So I googled: Should I bother to use shampoo? And I got all the answers I wanted from The Hairpin’s dirty hippie, Lauren O’Neal “How To Quit Shampoo Without Being Disgusting.”  For cheap and lazy hos! In a nutshell:  Wean yourself off shampoo by washing your hair with a paste made of baking soda and water and then rinse with ACV (apple cider vinegar, you forgot again?), a couple of teaspoons diluted in a bottle of water. There is a period of 2 to 4 weeks where you suffer through a period that looks like you have bathed in Kraft Italian salad dressing but soon enough your natural oils will come through in a more tempered fashion and you won’t be such a greasy, frizzy mess, and you will be shampoo-free and no longer a slave to the system.  Huzzah!

What’s with the picture of Mona Lisa, you ask? Those eyebrows are a vast improvement aren’t they? Just a reminder that we will never let the inner hippie overtake our aesthetic sensibilities because that would be just awful.