At the end of last year I was invited to attend an event put on by local blogger Emme Rogers she had organized a party for a Calendar she’d made called Reading is Sexy in support of the Canadian Chapter of The International Dyslexia Association and she’d put her heart into making something that mattered to her and she wanted to share it with her friends and fellow Calendar boys and girls. This was such a fantastic idea, if I were in the position to buy two calendars a year I would have bought one in support alone, but we are not, and therefore this year I stuck with the one and only solid tradition Adam and I have. But before I get to that I’d like to mention that if you still need Calendars get one here and support local Vancouver bloggers and a great cause. I simply don’t feel it is right to do a post specifically on our Calendar stemming from what we fondly refer to as Calendar Wars without mentioning such a great idea when reading and literacy are also extremely important to me and I’m still going to support every year to the best of my ability. Starting with having the post up in time next year!

You may want to read the original Calendar Wars post and the link in the first paragraph. Or I guess you can just take my word for it in my brief explanation to follow the end of this sentence. [this should be good, me trying to give a brief explanation]

It started innocently, no that doesn’t work, it started as a joke, or so I thought. After the Men with Buns calendar was on the wall for a full year of course it had been made clear by me that I should be allowed to pick the next years’ calendar. To say I got him good that year, would be saying I got him GOOD that year. Two words: Jeff Foxworthly. A few more words: You might be a redneck if….  [I am after all a pure bread red neck, Grandmother lived and died in a trailer park]. Poorly written, not even remotely funny jokes, with cartoons of plumber butts, clam slam skirts and shirts, but not hot ones, HOES; twelve months of them.

My husband never one to be outwitted got me back in 2009 with The Big Breast Calendar. This is where some of you are like WHAT you love tits. YES I LOVE TITS! But even he admitted he copped out and went for porn, couldn’t out horrible calendar me so he went for tits. Only backfired on him two months, Ms. September and Ms. December were a challenge for him. There wasn’t enough of the car for Adam in the Ms. September shot, although oddly I found Ms. September to one of the hottest women on there, and Ms. December just should have never happened. You don’t want a description. Both women still had big tits, they were great, it was the photos.

One day I was on Flickr and I saw the side ads which on Flickr don’t annoy me cause they are for cool shit like Moo cards. I saw, or was reminded that you could make a calendar. I wish I could tell you ladies that I filled it up with hot photos of my husband, but where would the fun have been in that? Given that we are both pretty big fans of over the top dorky photos of ourselves it was a no brainer and thus Adam Carlson in Calendar ~ #adam2010 was born.

Cover photo: taken by me up in Prince George over Christmas the last year my parents were still living in Canada. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had the halter on wrong before taking the photo.

Mr. January: If you know Adam at all you know he is extremely calm, he doesn’t swear very often and is basically the complete opposite of me when it comes to that side of our personalities, so the fact that for whatever reason he gave me the finger while I took this was out of character for him and like nice wannabe smurf hat. Neither of us makes resolutions so out of my picks for photos I liked this one for January because it’s sort of a fuck you to resolutions or whatever.

Mr. February: Adam was sick or something so I went out and got him some treats and such and your guess is as good as mine as to why but I decided that we needed wax lips. HAD TO HAVE THEM.

Mr. March: The original photo on Flickr is entitled: impromptu C.J look-a-like contest winner C.J is family to us, he has seen this picture, and has been overheard saying :”it looks even more like me than me”.

Mr. April: This is a mish mash of classic Adam moments, Showerhawk Wolverine face with kittehs, trying to eat cardboard instead of the Pocky, He wore flowers in his hair golfing, and Potato mouth (in our apron wedding gift which states: It Takes Two Socks To Make a Monkey, stemming from a hilarious joke Adam cracked out at a friends place one night).

Mr. May: As a you just had a vas-nipper gift I bought Adam some stress balls two years ago this May 23rd. I didn’t know how much pain he’d be in and thought he’d appreciate still being able to play with some balls.

Mr. June: Last year I commented on how I continually feel ripped off by June year after year in calendars and it is MY birthday month, the 14th every year; it just doesn’t seem fair, it isn’t like I take it personally but I’ve said it once and I will say it again June is continually represented in a prejudice way against awesomeness, in my humble opinion. Again, I’d really have liked to have posted a photo of say this nature but it would have cheapened the entire calendar. This here, is the money shot. This is the day that I bought my husband the worst underwear on the face of the planet it was all my fault they were just, well, you can see the photo. One of those worst wife ever moments. There are two more prime shots that were supposed to be on this page but no matter what I did the program wouldn’t let me upload them so we are all stuck with this one gem instead of three. My sincerest apologies.

Mr. July: Classic Adam, you can see the dedication to his craft of making me laugh in his eye.

Mr. August: The photos here are taken from the day that we started what we call The Creepy Carlsons, now we go out of our way to take creepy photos like this one that Adam took. Two examples of how fun my husband makes our marriage are apparent in his dorkiness in the other two. It is also his birthday month so the photo of the crazy eyes is fitting.

Mr. September: Who doesn’t have photos of themselves pissing in the bushes. There is one kicking around of me in the Dominican Republic I just thought of now, hilarious.

Mr. October: I took this photo the morning after our wedding, he claims he is pretending to be Gus, I say either go on a fucking picnic together already or admit you were trying to run away from the marriage.

Mr. November: This time, he’s being more of a horse. Still wearing the halter wrong.

Mr. December: This photo is entitled Find the Dill-weed. Adam named it himself.

I’m the type of person who can’t buy something for someone without having to give it to them the second I buy it, this was coming via mail and was so hard to keep my mouth shut about you can’t even imagine. I was laughing at nothing constantly, I showed it to a girlfriend who was over via the photos who was very impressed by my selection knowing us both very well. Well shit, that just made it even harder to wait for it to arrive.

The day it did arrive I was doing an interview with the Liquid Inspiration Podcast boys C.J and Daz and was in the middle of telling the story when Mr. 2010 himself walked in the door from work and we were all privy to his “you got me” response right there on the taping. Since seeing it he has mostly been heard muttering to himself about how the hell he is going to top this. *coughs rubs lapel*.

Last week a box arrived from Rhonda, she already spoils us both, although mostly me, rotten to the core. This year for Crimus she sent us a Wii. And with no irony attached to it at all, the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 game that comes with the wee golf club. Priceless, it was bought before the scandal the photo they picked of good ol’ Tiger for the 09 edition is creepier and more arrogant looking than normal, fucking awesome it’ll likely be his last one ever. We stopped buying the Tiger games before we ditched the PS2 and made the switch to XBox because EA kept making weird changes or what we like to call un-provements so if memory serves we stopped buying them after the 07 edition.  We are both really excited about trying it on the Wii though, it is obviously very different. If it is ANYTHING like the Wii Sports Golf, I will suck so bad it should make for some very amusing rounds. The Wii Golf destroyed my skillz score. I’m better at Wii Baseball, these games remind me of my horrible hand eye co-ordination and make me wonder how it is that I have actually become a decent golfer in real life. Almost ten years of practice now I guess.

I started this hanging my hanky out of my pocket thing in Bali and seem to be keeping it up back in my home country. I am not trying to be cool or make any kind of fashion statement, we only allow nose tissue in here if we are really sick and have fire nose and thus have both switched to hankies. I say that wearing a leather belt, it was a gift, so it shall not be denied the awesomeness that is the attached guitar belt buckle. Like my Browns boots I got em before I went as green as we can afford to go.

It is hard when you have Ninja knee high socks AND Unicorns to say that you’ve found a pair that are cooler BUT I did. These socks have red foxes on the feet and happy little mushrooms and little trees and if I ever got a chance to meet Neko Case I would wear them and be sure and show them to her.  It isn’t my fault that they also match the t-shirt I got the first of four times that I have seen her live being the Fox Confessor Brings the Flood tour, the only other group I have ever seen that many times is the local super star husband and wife pairing that make up Mojave [I have their t-shirt too].

Dr. Vegas is taking a huge liberty here in wearing the very naked Hunter S. Thompson’s frames that will be the aviators he is being made.  You will also have a hard time not noticing that this is the first time that Dr. Vegas has appeared without his mask in quit some time, in fact if memory serves the last time he was photographed without it was because he was pretending to be Woody Guthrie.  Adam and I were just saying that Dr. Vegas is on a journey of some sort right now. I wasn’t the only one changed forever by a trip to Bali.

“He hasn’t been completely the same since he got back” said [father] Mr. Adam Carlson just as this was going to print.

Gus was very into the Wii and watched us play a lot.

If you’ve ever wondered if I’m an energetic person even though I claim to be a hermit though I also claim to be a runner and doer of the yoga and a player of the golf, then this video is for you.

C.J do check out the tunage in the Adam bowling videeeeo. Although seriously WTF, she is NOT growing on me AT ALL. We are really into iTunes Genius mixes right now, because I loaded the entire CD library onto the computer and C.J very generously gave us some CDs, Joanna Newsome shows up a lot, and it is never a good ending.

And get this, I’m going to backup all the music, soon.

Tis the season to look wrecked in photos.

While I was away in September, Adam started listening to iTunes radio, when I first got back I sort of scoffed, I’m not a big radio person. But when I started to like song after song after song that was coming out of the computer I asked with a curt voice, “what is this? what playlist is this, is this your Blip“? “no it is iTunes radio” he says. Right. I’m getting old I have trouble letting in new things, I don’t have any idea what the hip kids are listening to, give me my John Denver and take me home down a country road and I’m good.

Just because I have a hard time letting in new things doesn’t mean I don’t listen to good music (I can hear C.J. cringing across the pond). I used to claim I liked a little bit of everything but when C.J, Adam and I discussed the topic of people who say the will listen to anything I discovered I do not in fact like a little bit of everything. Quite the contrary.

50s and 60s Adam and I are pretty much on the same page music wise. 70s we veer off at Barry Manilow. Let’s just say it’s a testament to our marriage that we have no internet on our phones, one t.v., no working MP3 player and one computer, OH and let us not forget I’m an only child and I don’t share good. The t.v. and the laptop are generally in the same room, the only room other than the bedroom.

We had a 50s 60s and 70s station on one day, if we are working on monkeys or cleaning these are the easiest for us to agree on before we come into a situation where our love of music has to be enough to get us through each others playlists and keep an open mind to maybe even liking some new songs. No doubt I end up liking more stuff Adam listens to than he does me BUT I did introduce him to Tool and John Denver, so top that.

Rarely do lyrics the first time you hear a song stop you dead in your tracks. But this deep, sensuous, dirty, am I hearing these words right 70s soul started to embed itself into my cranium and when I looked at Adam I could tell instantly he was having the exact same what the fuck am I hearing reaction.

Ill be the other woman
All your life
Just as long as I am the only one
Other than your wife
Your wife how would she feel
If she caught us together
The same way I would feel
if I caught you with another
Home I know comes first
And second to that Ill be
When youre not there with her
I want you right here with me

Ill be the other woman
Just as long as I know
Im the only other woman
You make love to
Ill be the other woman
But Ive got to know
Im the only other woman
You make love to

The neighbors are whispering
Saying that you dont care
If you cheat on your wife for me
Youll cheat on me for someone else
Ill be your part time love
But thats as far as Ill go
To be your part time fool
Would be stooping a little too low
Loving a married man
This I really dont mind
But a married Casanova
Is a little out of my line

Ill be the other woman
Just as long as I know
Im the only other woman
You make love to
Ill be the other woman
long as I know
Im the only other woman
Ill open doors for you baby
long as I know
Im the only other woman
you make love to
Ill be your part time love
Ive got to know
Im the only other woman
you make love to
Oh yes I will
Yes I will

Here is a YouTube video so you can get a feel for how catchy soulful and awesome it is, but it doesn’t make it any less disturbing.

Now we are both addicted and can not stop listening to this song by The Soul Children and laughing. We aren’t assholes, I’ve even been the other woman but nobody was married so It wasn’t a home wrecker type situation it was a we lived in different provinces, we were both in our twenties and if he wanted to fly out to see me and tell his girlfriend he was going to see his grandmother and other choice lies then let him situation. At that age, I didn’t see the big deal, plus he made me feel like I was the main woman. But when it comes to marriage this song just kills me. When the relationship with his girlfriend ended, she still does not know about me and writing this she still won’t trust me or I would not be writing this, we tried to commit but because I ended up looking at him as more of a fall back guy, while I dated as well, I couldn’t trust him to be faithful to me after we had both been unfaithful from the very beginning. It was an extremely interesting three plus years but when it ended it ended badly. I never want to feel jealousy like that again in my life. In fact I’d have to say that is one of the things I learned the most about myself is how destructive jealousy can be.

This reminds me, I’m one of the lucky ones, if this were the 70s I may have gotten into some real trouble but the only other female I have to be jealous of in Adam’s life is Gus and that bitch better watch it too.

Normally for a cat Gus is fairly well behaved and feigns listening skillz and she knows how to suck up really well when she has been bad.  Sometimes because she is fifteen I will hold eyes with her and rant that she knows that I know that SHE KNOWS she is being bad so WHY are you being bad? She hits me with her tail normally or puts her butt in my face to acknowledge that she knows that I can‘t do anything about it.  And the funny thing is people just regular people like friends are afraid of her because she’s a straight up bitch and likes almost no one she hisses and bites she doesn’t like being touched past her shoulders, particular to the max like she has taken lessons from some stupid outfit wearing dog on how to be a bigger diva than mommy.

I know where she got the hissing from, the biting, not so much, if she hasn’t stopped attacking you if you get up in her face on say your third meeting with her she hates you, she is a much better judge of character than I am and once she starts only hissing and snapping at you occasionally, you’re in.

One day Adam caught her trying to relax, sleep, take a bath on the router, we’ve had said router for a while now and this was her first attempt at abusing the warmth it exudes. Like, why now it is hot in here, why not in the winter?

Naturally, we got Dr. Vegas on the job right then and there and appointed him a Router Guard.  Of course we don’t want anything on top of it but a black masked sock puppet is lighter and doesn’t envelop the thing. I know that busting out the camera and taking photos of her being bad is hardly going to lead to the correction needed to her behavior but it also isn’t often I  catch her and she ignores my patented scary face, finger snap twist hand back yells get down routine.

These incriminating shots were taken on two different occasions BOTH after we got a router guard who was either pushed off the router or bribed off with bananas, knowing Gus she just pushed poor Dr. Vegas off the router.

Around Christmas time I needed some red tights and I went to American Apparel and I had an issue, I came home I mentioned it on the good ol’ Twitter machine and BAM. Emails. I felt so important. They were on it pretty fast.  Problem with the internet is that sometimes things happen too fast and I ended up with two people trying to help me and two different but very tantalizing offers to handle the issues with apologies included of course.  I could have been an asshole and collected off both offers, too bad I’m an honest little member of society and I brought both offers to the attention of the person I deemed by the emails was the higher up of the two and attempted to negotiate.  So I would just like it clear that I did not just nab a free bodysuit, don’t go off yelling foul service GIVE ME A FREE BODY SUIT NOW or anything I used my own math skills and discovered that even though there had a been an error made in two people contacting me being honest about it was cheaper for them because I was all well instead of taking this and this and then taking this percent off of whatever how about I just go with this here bodysuit.

What happened next is what happens to every person who gets a bodysuit; you end up listening to Olivia Newton John and dancing around your apartment to Physical. Oh right I am pretty out of my mind right now and going through a seriously serious family crisis, it’s just me.  So I ended up taking some photos, Adam liked said photos, that was Friday.

Yesterday I ended up playing my Blip.fm list which now contains Physical and decided to do a play by play of how I ended up in the bodysuit the day before. But by this time Adam had put the Physical video on YouTube and I was reminded that there are headbands worn in the original so I made sure to include them in mine as well.

So OMG I was just at Blockbuster because no I don’t get Netflix off my Xbox we only have a silver membership and shit and I was renting my regular new release I’m obsessed have to be there on release day BS and I was about to leave with my picks and then I saw it on the table I dove like a dove to grab it, caressed it, inspected it, read it, called my husband and said,”Hi baby wanna buy me a present that costs $24.99?” *insert seriously silly giggle*

He said yes and I didn’t tell him what it was he said it was ok to keep it a secret until he gets home and it is THIS:

THE NOTEBOOK LIMITED EDITION BOXSET WITH TWO BOOKMARKS YAY!
*plus other really cool silly giggle I love The Notebook stuff*

Adam’s favourite part is when Jimmy Garner cries.

AND it is true, behind every great love is a great story.

So basically we don’t follow the rules and we only have one tradition it started innocently enough with a Nuns Having Fun calendar, it was deemed Adam’s pick and then the next year brought forth a gift of a calendar making it technically my pick and then the calendar that changed everything, the calendar that meant war.  Need I say more than Adam’s pick and Men with Buns? Oh and click this link now for some Men with Buns action, you want to trust me.

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