We had a gorgeous day today. Rob and I both woke up early (me at 7ish, him at 9ish — IT’S EARLY FOR US especially on a Saturday. Don’t judge!) and got all our Saturday out-of-the-house stuff (grocery shopping, bill paying, etc) done before noon. Then we came home and hung around in the backyard for a bit, until his freckles started multiplying.

I went over to my brother’s house to bring them some tomato plants; I had too many for our garden and thought they could just keep them in pots and see if that worked. That idea sure didn’t fly ’round those parts – the youngest nephew insisted that they had to be planted in the ground so my brother had to take out the shovel and dig a little garden plot. At which point the mosquitoes came out and started eating my flesh so now I’m home covered in various creams and trying not to scritch myself to death

I’m also trying to get through my email; I use gmail which has a really good spam filter but for some reason every now and then a huge glut of ads telling me where to find cheap diet pills online (do they have some kind of sixth sense? Yes, I *am* fat, thank you for pointing it out, stupid spam emails!) and today was one of those days.

Still a good day. And tomorrow’s supposed to be just as beautiful.

For the first time all… month? Year? I don’t know… I’m actually hungry in the morning. Of course I have no food (and no way of acquiring food) here but whatever. MMMM, water.

You know, I’ve only ever been outside of Canada once in my life? To Minot, North Dakota. When I was 12. For two days, with my parents and brother. We went to JC Penney. It was awesome. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that at some point in the next 5 years, Rob and I need to take a vacation. A real one – not for visiting family, but for just travelling and seeing sights. One of my best friends really recommends New York City travel but I’m not sure that’s the way I’d want to go. I’d probably want to go places people don,t usually go.
Or, you know, maybe a cruise. With massages. That would be nice too.

Still starving.

Not including today, I only have 10 teaching days left. Holy schnickies.

Not including today, there are 18 days left til my birthday. Again, holy schnickies. 32.

Um okay. That last fact has blown my mind, so I’ve gotta go now.

(holy crap 32)

Everyone knows true ladies don’t ‘sweat’, they ‘glow’ (thank you, Blanche Devereaux). Anyway, I’ve been glowing up a storm lately, and (since I’m literally allergic to perspiration – yes I KNOW is there ANYTHING I’m not allergic to? I think maybe I’m not allergic to… um… yeah I’ll get back to you on that one) it makes me all itchy and blotchy. Which is gross. I’ve been resisting the urge to just scratch the skin off my neck but I swear, I spend more time with an ice pack on there than I would if I had injured myself somehow.
A coworker said that she does a (monthly? bi-annual? I don’t remember) liver cleanse to help with her allergies. After having read up on all the wacky things you do for one of those… I think I’ll just stick to the Benadryl.

Because the weather is heating up and the humidity is rising, I’m enjoying being one with the air conditioner. Therefore the laptop has migrated up to the bedroom. Which is fine, except that sometimes I will leave the laptop on the bed, and then go to sleep. And wake up nearly strangled by HDMI cables. And Rob tries to come to bed only to find the lappy has taken over his side of the bed (along with various books and other accoutrement).

Also, I want to send all the good vibes I have to DJ and her family. They’re going through just a really stressful time right now.

Questions I have received since beginning Sex Ed (via the anonymous question box) (yes I realize that the askers would probably DIE if I they knew their questions were posted here but it’s ANONYMOUS, you don’t know them) (original spellings kept intact)

- all manner of questions about whether diet pills can have an effect on someone’s reproductive health (I’m a little nervous – these are 12 – 13 – 14 year olds)

- “Can it get stuck?”

- “Why does it taste so weird and salty?”

- “What is misterblaction?”

- “Can the girl’s egg go into a guy and make him pregnate”

- “Do you gat ades from masta madster mis FROM PLAYING WITH YORSELFE”

So I have to go through and answer these, although yeah there are some- “What’s a rimejob” , and I don’t remember the exact wording but there was a very … interesting… one about popsicles and “misterblaction”- that aren’t part of the curriculum so I just say “If your question wasn’t answered, and you want to know the answer, see me after class”. No one’s stayed yet.

… it’s alright though.

In order to help myself to calm the hell down after work (because I worry, worry, worry about EVERYTHING, BTW everyone please pray that our car starter makes it to my next pay period so that we can get it fixed because after its little hiccups a couple of weeks ago, it was better, but tonight it made a weird noise… blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah stress), I recently purchased four needlepoint kits from this etsy shop. Tonight I spent about an hour and a half working away at one of them, with my tongue firmly clenched between my teeth, and my headlamp making a dent in my forehead. All the counting and trying to figure out the colours (“Is this ‘pale lemon’, or ‘very light canary’?”) took my mind off of other things.

Here’s what I got done tonight:

Here’s what it should look like, at some point in the future, when it’s finished:

Hopefully my ADD doesn’t kick in and make me leave it sitting somewhere for the next three years, now that I’ve gotten a good start. Actually I hope to finish this one in June.

And since I’m ambitious, here are my plans for …
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What a warm day it’s setting up to be… and it’s only 9 am as I write this.
It’s actually only 12C right now, but we have 97% humidity (not rain… humidity) and wow, my breathing is already getting bad. High of 17C is predicted – again, not bad, except for the fargin’ humidity. Other people here at work are wearing capris and short-sleeved shirts; I’m having a horrible eczema breakout (when am I not?) and would rather not expose my leperous-looking limbs (yay alliteration!) to the world.

When I was a kid, and we lived in Saskatchewan, the school I was at didn’t have air conditioning or anything. And during my grade 6 and 7 years (I’m not sure if those were just freak years or if it’s still like this), temperatures in the afternoon were getting up to the mid-30s in May (30′s Celsius which would be in the 90s and 100s F I believe). The school board sent home a letter saying that if their child’s school wasn’t air conditioned, and if the temperature went above 90F (32C), it was up to the parent to decide whether their child should go to school.

My brother and I went home for lunch every day. I remember pretty much every day from mid-May on to the end of June, going home at lunch, turning the TV on to the weather channel (although we didn’t have the weather channel in 1988… it was just a community channel that had the weather on it) and *praying* for the temperature to be at or near 32 degrees. I loved those days; our house in Saskatchewan had central air conditioning so we would spend our afternoons lying in the livingroom, reading and watching TV and absolutely not thinking about school (there were days, our teacher told us, that the teacher would be in the classroom with 2 kids). We had other friends who lived closer to the community pool or whose parents would drive them… I always thought they were lucky but I also just liked kicking back and watching Bob Ross do his thing. I remember watching one episode of his show and he had a squirrel running around on his shoulders and such. I was positive it was going to build a nest in his ‘fro.

I doubt the temperatures here will even make it above 25 until July, so I don’t have to worry about dying of heat exhaustion (I think! Although wearing this wig is sometimes like wearing a tuque), but I can almost guarantee that as the next three or four weeks move on, this building is going to get emptier and emptier.

Ah, youth.

I’m finding lately that I’ve really been wishing that we had an animal living with us (and I’m not just talking Rob ha ha ha). All our pets have died over the past few years, and I think I’m about ready – not to replace them, because no one would be able to replace crazy old Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson – to move on. And we all know that what I want is a dog – more specifically, a schnoodle (a mix of the two breeds that don’t cause me to puff up with allergies). It might be awhile though.

Still, if/when we do get a new pet, I’m wondering if it would be worthwhile to join a pet social networking site. I was looking at one today, called zootoo, that seemed pretty interesting. I mean, I know my future dog wouldn’t be using the computer, but this site is meant for pet owners to be able to communicate, share tips and hints, put up photos of their pets, etc. There’s also a handy feature that lets you “adopt a shelter” – the more you use the site, the more oints you earn, which will go toward helping a shelter neear you (you enter your zip code when you register). The one problem I’m having at the moment, as I test it out, is that it’s only really working for United Statesians at the moment – although they say they will be fixing that soon so that people in Canada and around the world can also use it.

Speaking of pets, we were at my brother’s house today and their two dogs are just adorable. My nephew has been “training” the second dog (keep in mind my nephew is four, and the dog is incorrigible) to sit. He showed me today how that works. He says “sit!”, the dog runs around in circles, my nephew tackles him and pushes down on his butt, the dog’s butt touches the ground for a millisecond, and my nephew says “SEE HE KNOWS HOW to SIT!!!”.

Doggie charm school it ain’t (and yes my brother and his wife are also training the dog, the proper way… the dog just thinks that the smaller humans want to play so he doesn’t quite accept the orders from the little ones).

One of our favourite authors is Terry Pratchett. His Discworld novels are hilariously funny, and manage to incorporate social commentary, and just generally poke fun at things we humans consider to be “essential”. Rob had been a huge Pratchett fan for years before he met me; I must admit that I started reading his books out of sheer desperation when I was off work for a year and there was nothing left in the house to read and I am ever so glad that I did – so thanks depression, for that!

In August 2007, Pratchett was misdiagnosed as having had a minor stroke in 2004 or 2005, which was believed to have damaged the right side of his brain. While his motor skills had been affected, the observed damage had not impaired his ability to write.

In December of 2007, Terry Pratchett released the following:

AN EMBUGGERANCE
Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I
expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet )

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should
be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as
will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell.
I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I
would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

Since this announcement, Terry Pratchett has donated US $1 million to Alzheimer’s research, and has been making appearances in the media highlighting the low level of funding allocated to Alzheimer’s research.

Match It for Pratchett is a grassroots, spontaneous campaign put together by Pratchett fans worldwide, in an attempt to match Terry’s $1 million donation on behalf of various Alzheimer’s foundations around the world.

Alzheimer’s is not a disease that affects only the person stricken; it touches family, friends, and, in this case, complete strangers. Having spent years watching a family member lose all sense of reality through the ravages of this disease, I can only support any extra funding possible for research. It’s going to be a long, hard road, but hopefully within my lifetime there will be some significant discoveries to help rid the world of this horrible disease.

“Without memory, we are hollow persons, not only empty of a past, but lacking a foundation upon which to build the future”.