Wee! I’m back in Halifax. I actually made it home last night (err, it’s past midnight now, but whatever). My dad is slightly better, in that he’s not barfing anymore, but my mom tells me that this morning he broke down crying for no reason whatsoever– although I would probably attribute the crying to stress, because he had to go through a whole rigmarole to get paid for the time he has to take off. I haven’t seen my father cry since 1994 when I went off to university (and even then he went and hid in the car to do it), so this is very bizarre to me. But. Crying is good, sometimes, right? RIGHT? Just say yes. Yesterday before I left he even got dressed and drove his truck over to visit with his cronies. Of course he only spent 20 minutes there and it’s only a 5 minute drive, but hey, it’s a start! So YAY DAD! YAAAAY DAAAAAD!!!

While I was at my parents’, my sister did my nails. Of course, today, I pried them all off (I know, not good– but they were half falling off anyway). It was immensely satisfying.

Another thing that happened while I was in PEI– we found my wedding dress. Okay, we found a pattern (remember, my mom and sister are making my dress– they are seamstress ladies like you wouldn’t believe) and are going to make a few little alterations, but basically, yeah. However I refuse to put a picture up here, in case someone should decide to take a peek (can you believe that he honestly DIDN’T KNOW that it’s not NORMAL for the groom to see the wedding dress? “I just thought I wasn’t supposed to see YOU the day of the wedding– I didn’t know it meant the dress, too”). If you want to see, leave a comment with your email address or something and I will send you a link? Of course, remember that I’m nowhere near the skinny model lady wearing the dress in the pictures, but I still think I might look okay in it. If you think I will look like ass, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I don’t want to be walking down the aisle and suddenly hear someone say “Hey! She looks like ass!”.
We’ve also decided on our theme colours– I am laughing my head off thinking about having THEME COLOURS, by the way… A THEME! Oh my GOD!– well, maybe we have.
See, the deal is this. I have basically been pretty much railroading my dearest love on all wedding details. “Rob, what do you think of having a buffet at the wedding?” “I hadn’t really thought about it” “WE’RE HAVING A BUFFET AT THE WEDDING!” (said in a “I’M BRINGING REX HIS LUNCH!”-type voice). I never really realize it, either. It’s very very bad. I’m the Wedding Nazi.
But anyway. Thinking blue and green. Monet-waterlilies-type-thingie-dealie maybe kinda? Yeah. We shall see. It’s early days yet.

A fun thing that happened was that when I got home from PEI last night at around 6:00, I was very very itchy all over, sneezing, and my eyes were bright red, as if I was some sort of crackhead or something. I was having a humongous allergy attack– but reacting to what? I’m not allergic to anything in our apartment; I mean, I’m more allergic to my parents’ house (huge german shepherd with the hair that shoots up my nose whenever I go near her) than here, and yet it started when I got home. So we had our tearful (on my part, because my eyes wouldn’t stop watering) reunion, and then we ran off to Shoppers’ Drug Mart for benadryl and eye drops. When we got home I stripped off all my clothes (oh yeah baby… PICTURE IT PICTURE IT) and Rob rubbed cortisone cream all over my hive-ridden body, then put Claritin eyedrops in my eyes, I took 3 Benadryls, and slept until probably 11 this morning.

And today? Today I’m crampy, cranky, and mainlining Midol.

But… BUT EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

Because… um… Because today? Someone gave me a chance.

To do a hip-hop dance.

- I’m here. My dad looks terrible. He was skinny before, now he’s like a walking skeleton. What he eats, he throws up, mostly. Today he’s done better and had one egg, about half a potato, and a piece of bread, and hasn’t thrown it up. He either stays in bed, sleeping for an hour then waking up for an hour, or he comes into the living room and is wrapped up in a blanket or two, because he’s freezing (the house is warm). But everyone keeps telling me not to worry… I worry though. I over-worry. I guess when everything turns out to be okay it’ll be an extra relief then?

- This house is CROWDED. My parents bought the house after my sister had married and left home, so the most people who ever lived here were four (my parents, brother, and I). Unfortunately the furnace at my sister’s house broke last week, her ex husband hasn’t sent any support cheques in… months, and she won’t be able to afford to have the furnace fixed until Monday or Tuesday and so she and her three kids are staying here as well. I’m sleeping in a room with one of my nephews, my sister and her daughter are in one bed in my old room, and my older nephew sleeps on a fold-out cot in the hallway. It’s all very… cozy? Well, waiting for the bathroom in the morning is lovely– thank God there are two, at least. Oh and today when my brother and other nephew were here, that made nine people. Plus three hamsters, one german shepherd. I know, I know, some people live in a house with tons of pets and kids 24/7 but this house is not large. At all.

But. The kids are all really well-behaved, are always washing dishes or doing laundry, so they haven’t given too much extra work to my mom, which is good, because she’s stressed out.

Also. Gee. This post has not been all that cheerful. Hm. Well, I’m going to wal-mart later! There you go!

AND! My niece? She’s 10? She baked cookies yesterday that are the best. cookies. ever. Oh my GOD. She’s amazing. And with absolutely no help.

So I have to leave soon and I miss Rob already even though I’m at home (but he’s at work).
I’m going to PEI to take the trip that I missed last week– Rob’s staying here, obviously, because he has to work this weekend. I’ll be glad to see my father and make sure he’s okay. I’ll also be glad to finally be bringing everyone their Christmas gifts (hey, I’m making the season last, okay?). Oh, and show ‘em my engagement ring of LOOOOOOOOVE.
It’s 3 pm. Why haven’t I left yet? Mainly because I’m lazy. Also because I have Many Things To Do before leaving, and I’m not done yet. But mainly? Lazy.
Okay so. Send me some good juju that there be no mishaps this time on my way home, car or otherwise. Also, the email thing is back on (louise.m@gmailDOTcom). WOO!

An open letter to…

… the SUV driver who cut me off this morning even though there were no cars at all behind me and seven million cars in front of me and just because you’re driving an SUV doesn’t mean it doesn’t dent if you crush my little Corsica;

… the elderly gentleman in Wal-Mart who looked at the food I had in my cart (I was there getting a tire changed and figured I should buy some treats for Robbie since I’m going away this weekend and he will be all alone with only food and the boys for comfort and I didn’t want him accidentally scarfing down Judd Nelson in a moment of anguish) and then made a snide remark regarding my weight (fucker I don’t even EAT that crap);

and
… the other elderly gentleman in the parking lot who yelled at me for putting my cart beside my car (at least three feet away from his minivan) to unload my groceries because “it’s gonna scratch the paint job on my new van! Don’t you know anything?” and then stood there watching after I moved the cart and unloaded the rest of it (my cart was now at least 10 feet away from his minivan but he had to keep watching to make sure I didn’t have some spasm attack and shove the cart into his van I guess).

People. You all suck. Go eat a bag of dicks.

Sincerely,

Louise

Let me preface this by saying I know it’s gonna get a certain someone all het up about how crappy health care is here– well, know what? It isn’t always, but in this case, I think it pretty much is.

My dad is home now. Which is good. He had a good night last night, just had Tylenol-3 with codeine instead of the morphine or whatever it was that he’d been having the rest of the time. He had an ultrasound today (and no, the results aren’t in yet).

And no, they still don’t know what’s wrong with him.

The only result they’ve gotten so far is that when he was xrayed yesterday they saw that he was getting a lung infection (totally unrelated to the pain he was in) so they’ve put him on antibiotics. They’ve also put him on a blood thinner, because he has an irregular heartbeat, but they don’t know why (they ruled out a heart attack first thing). So he’s going to be off work for awhile, but he’ll still be paid so he doesn’t need to worry about that.

At least he’s out of the hospital now. My father has a serious hate for hospitals. It all harkens back to him being about 9 years old, going and visiting his grandfather in the hospital, and the guy in the next bed was talking to dad (it was one of his neighbours or something), then all of a sudden threw up and died. Ick. ANYWAY. Dad does not like hospitals. He’ll visit for maybe 20 minutes or so then he has to go outside for a walk then come back in. Being there two days must not have been a picnic for him, morphine or no, especially since he had to spend two days (and two nights) on a gurney in an exam room in the emergency ward. Yeah, all the beds were full (hm, some brand-new hospital they’ve got there, it opened in September and it’s already overcrowded).

Anyway. Good thing. He’s home. He’s resting. He’s had a shower and some soup and according to Mom is acting like a big baby. Just the way it all should be.

Ta gra agam ort, athair

Everyday, around 10 am, my mother and I have a grand old chat on msn messenger. When she hadn’t showed up by 10:30 today, I thought “Well this sucks, at 11 she’s going to go off to watch the Young and the Restless, so I won’t get to talk to her all day and I want to ask her how to get this stain out of my sock”. I remembered that my sister and her kids are staying over at my parents’ while their furnace is broken so I sent my sis a text message asking if they were home. No response, but 10 minutes later the phone’s ringing. My mom’s telling me that they had just gotten back in the house, that Ann had gotten my text message while she was driving and they figured they’d be home soon so they might as well call then. Bizarre that mom would call long distance during the day just to tell me that– why not go on MSN?– but whatever. Thinking they’d been shopping or something, I asked where they’d gone.

The hospital.

My dad was at work last night (5 pm – 5 am shift), and started getting awful pains in his back and stomach at around 3 am. Eventually he couldn’t even stand anymore and called the other guy who was working with him to call the ER. Now he’s in the hospital. Mom told me it was nothing, they thought that it was probably acid reflux or an ulcer (there’s been a lot of stress in his life lately, what with me going wacko and her other daughter getting separated after 13 years of marriage and 3 kids), and that he would be released today around 4pm after they’d given him a few more tests.

Yeah, well. I called home at 6:00 because I hadn’t heard from anyone. My sister told me that Mom and Dad were still at the hospital, no she hadn’t heard anything, maybe the tests were taking longer than usual, you know how it is with doctor shortages and all. Finally near 8:30 Mom called back; they’re not releasing Dad, they don’t know what’s wrong with him. They have had him all doped up since last night. He hasn’t been able to eat (which for him is rare– he’s the skinniest man alive, but eats like a horse, every half hour he’s snacking, I swear), and they’ve been doing all kinds of tests on him including one that sent a tube down his throat and into his stomach, blood tests, xrays… Tomorrow there’s more testing– mom wasn’t clear on what, beyond an ultrasound, would be done but the doctors who told her yesterday that he would be out today said today that now they couldn’t be sure when he’d be released.

This is not fun. I worry for my mom who is being all bright and cheery and “Oh everything’s fine” but this man has been her partner and the love of her life for over 30 years and I can hear in her voice that she’s terrified. Let’s hope that it all blows over and there really is nothing wrong. Please.

So what can one do at 2:19 am when one is completely unable to sleep because one forgot to take one’s medication today and now it is too late?

Blog!

Hi guys! Thank you SO much for all your congratulations in comments and email. Rob and I are VERY excited. As are our moms and dads, and pretty much everyone else we’ve told except perhaps for Emilio and Judd who, respectively, tried to eat the ring, and ran away from the ring. Oh, would you like to see the ring? I have a (good) picture of it from the catalogue, and a (really crappy) picture of it on my hand: Read the rest of this entry →