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January, 2010

  1. Story #1

    January 14, 2010 by Louise

    I am still very very tired, but I wanted to follow through on the promise I made yesterday about what happened at the walk-in clinic (I am fully aware that there are maybe 2 people reading here once every 3 months but I like to keep up the fantasy).

    So. The walk-in clinic is above the Superstore. It’s open from 10 am – noon, then closes for an hour for lunch. Then open again from 1 til 7.

    I had a prep yesterday morning, so I took off to the Superstore, climbed the stairs, and… got there at 12:00. Which meant I wasn’t surprised when I arrived and the doors were locked. I was looking at the door because I thought the phone number would be on it, since it was closed. All of a sudden the door flew open and there was the receptionist who looked at me and blurted out “We’re closed!” “Oh, I know,” I answered, “I was just looking for a number to call to make an appointment. I didn’t even think anyone was in there!” “Oh,” she answered, still holding the door so that it wouldn’t open any more. “Well the number is 7XX-XXX5″. Then she closed the door in my face. Which is fine, I mean, they were closed. So I stood outside the door, took out my cellphone, and called, watching as she sat by the phone, stared at me and ignored the ringing. I walked away from the doors over toward the vitamins for acne and stamina, and as soon as she wasn’t able to see me anymore, she picked up the phone and made the appointment (I’m not a total asshole who wants to disrupt peoples’ lunch, I was just hoping there would be a way for me to leave a message). I don’t know. I just thought that was really weird.

    I did get to go in after all, and as I mentioned already, the doctor told me that I had to stop getting colds so that I could stop getting ear infections. Okay, I’ll get right on that.

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  2. a warning I’ll be sure to heed.

    January 13, 2010 by Louise

    I’ve known for a couple of days that I had an ear infection coming on. I’ve had trouble with my ears since birth, including surgeries to replace my eardrums, and am pretty well attuned to the little twitches and itches in there. I’ve been really dizzy since Monday, and my left ear has been clicking, which is never a good sign. I tried to call my family doctor this morning during a break at work, but the first appointment I could get was in March. Not great.

    Instead I went to the walk-in clinic after school today (that is a whole other story which I will tell you tomorrow when I’ve rested a little), was told by the doctor in there that I get ear infections because I allow myself to catch colds (I haven’t had a cold since… what, last June? Earlier than that?), and given a prescription for some antibiotics.

    When I finally picked up the prescription (ANOTHER whole story which I will tell you tomorrow when I’m not so tired), the pharmacist told me “Take two of these once a day. If you notice bloody diarrhea while you’re taking this medication, make sure to see your doctor”.

    That made me feel a little crazy. I mean – if I have bloody diarrhea (ew!) AT ALL, I will be at the doctor’s right away – whether or not I’m taking antibiotics.

    (I’ve been awake since 4h45 this morning. It’s now 9 pm. I’m kind of feeling weird. So good night)

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  3. Guess what I was up at 5 am AGAIN!

    by Louise

    I’ve been wondering – does being in close proximity with teenagers on a daily basis cause adults to develop acne? Because holy crap, dudes. And here I was last week complaining when a sample of acne gel came in the mail (we also got a flyer for the Snuggie for Dogs but Rob says that if the dogs end up in snuggies he and I might have a divorce). Now it looks like I’ll need it. The acne gel, not the dog snuggie (okay so I kind of need the dog snuggie but I need my husband more).

    I woke up yesterday morning and thought “Awesome! It’s Wednesday! That much closer to Friday!” Yeah, not so much. As much of a cliche as it is, I have never done that before. I now understand how disappointing it can be. I love my job, but this week has been crazy, and I’d like for it to be over soon.

    And with that, I must go – time to walk the dogs (will be keeping my pants on this time) then head out.

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  4. zombie times in the maritimes

    January 11, 2010 by Louise

    Rob works at 7:30 am all this week. That means leaving the house by 7 am. That means he has to wake up earlier than usual and that, if I want to have my (required) 1.5 hours of wall-staring before leaving the house, I do too.

    This morning I woke up to pee at 5 am. Of course the dogs saw me and immediately thought “She’s UP! She’s AWAKE! TIME TO BE AWAKE!” and started whining for the door. After about 20 minutes of me trying to appease them with snuggles on the couch it became apparent that they weren’t happy staying in and if I didn’t take them out I wouldn’t happy with the results, so I took them out. Where they proceeded to take FOREVER to decide on the absolute best spot in the world for pooping. Then on the way back to the house, my pants fell down. I was wearing my pyjama pants, boots, winter coat… and there were my pants, down around my knees. Luckily my coat goes to about there, but I had to walk the rest of the way home that way, since lifting my coat to pull up my pants would have resulted in me mooning the neighbourhood (actually it was pitch dark so I could’ve done it, but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time).

    When we got in, it was 6 am. I was frozen, the dogs were hyper. I ate breakfast. Did some work stuff. Rob woke up at 6:30. We got dressed, and were out the door by 7.

    Of course that meant I was at work by 7:40 (ish), and that I’d been up for nearly 3 hours by the time I got to work… which made for a very sleepy and very grumpy me all day today.

    It also meant that Rob was done work at 4 instead of 5, so I could leave right from work to pick him up, which is a pretty good tradeoff.

    Tah-dah!

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  5. glass slippers, perhaps?

    January 9, 2010 by Louise

    I usually wake up at around 5:45, 6 am. I take the dogs out (which takes FOREVER – it’s freezing out and they have to find the perfect spot to poop… it takes 15 minutes at least) and then I come inside and start getting ready. Often this includes gathering up laundry from around the house and bringing it downstairs to put in the washing machine.

    On Tuesday morning I picked up towels from the bathroom and my hoodie from the bedroom where I’d left it. I threw them on the floor in front of the basement stairs because I had to run out and stop Doozer from running away with Sprocket’s milkbone (he steals!). Then I picked the laundry up again and brought it downstairs, dropped it all in the washing machine, and started it up.

    Later, when it was time to leave for work, Rob couldn’t find his shoes. Well, more clearly, he could only find one sneaker. Yeah, you know where this is going. I had thrown the laundry on top of his sneakers, and had picked one of them up when I picked the laundry up again. So that went through the wash. When I realized what had happened, I immediately pulled that shoe out of the washing machine but the damage was done – it was soaking wet. Of course he couldn’t wear it to work that day. When we got home from work, I washed both his sneakers (might as well get them clean) and then we put them in the dryer.

    Bad idea.

    When I took them out, the sole had fallen completely off one of them. The other one was half off. Now, these sneakers are something like four years old so they weren’t exactly holding up but it was weird to see how quickly they could fall apart just from being immersed in water.

    Segue/Small confession: Although we live in a place that gets, well, its fair share of snow, neither Rob nor I own a decent pair of snowboots. My boots are ones that belonged to my niece when she was 10 (yeah the girl wore size 9 shoes when she was 10… she’s going to be almost six feet tall like her mom). They used to have some cartoon character silkscreened onto them, but that’s faded away in five years. Rob doesn’t have boots – he’s just usually been wearing his sneakers when we go out to shovel or walk the dogs, because “at least they have grips on the bottom”, not like his dress shoes.

    Well, thanks to my launderous ways, he now had no boots AND no sneakers. I’ve been looking around online for new sneakers for him. I found mbt shoes, which look interesting, except that I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t want to wear something like this (“why is the bottom so thick?!”). I find the premise behind them interesting – that having to balance on them makes your muscles work so walking around in these make you get in shape – but I can already fall over just walking across the livingroom barefoot (balance I don’t has it) so I’m not quite sure.

    We ended up going out last night and looking around. We didn’t find any sneakers that he likes, but we at least bought him a pair of snow boots. Which is great, because it snowed last night, and the driveway needs shoveling.

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  6. loss

    January 7, 2010 by Louise

    This is what I wrote three years ago this week. Today is the anniversary of her being gone. I miss her still, every day. I’ve been hesitant to take down our Christmas tree, because it’s the one she gave us. I know that’s crazy. In a few days it will be fifteen years since my grandfather left us. It never gets easier, really.

    I found out this afternoon that my friend’s grandfather passed away this morning. 99 years and 3 weeks old. It’s always so hard.

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  7. Rob says I should call this post “My beep made me beep”.

    January 5, 2010 by Louise

    I posted about this on Twitter yesterday because I was so surprised and could only muster 140 characters, but now I’m feeling so verbose. Aren’t you lucky?

    Yesterday was my first day back at work after vacation. I was getting ready to put the dogs out first thing in the morning, when I started coughing, and then I threw up. You know how sometimes that happens, where you cough and it makes you gag? Yeah. Anyway, that got me out of walking the dogs – Rob took them out. After that, I drove him to work and got to my work, where I promptly barfed again. And again. I taught my morning classes – although I had to leave a couple of times for more of that business (luckily there was an EA in the room and they were doing fairly quiet work). I emailed the secretary and explained what was going on and asked if she could get a sub for me for the afternoon. When I got home, I was sick for a bit longer, but then I started to feel much better… and I went to the bathroom, and discovered that my period had started. WELL HOORAY. If this is some kind of new PMS symptom I am Not Impressed. I mean jeeze. You get your period as a sign of fertility. I don’t have that. If they’re adding morning sickness to my PMS I’m going to choke a bitch.

    Our friend C came over last night to watch TV, as she does each Monday (I think she does it more to just have time out of her house with all her kids). I ate like, seven pounds of ketchup chips while we watched Celebrity Big Brother (by the way, this year’s CBB house is awesome – from the kitchen that’s meant to look like an autopsy room with its stainless steel backsplash and jars of creepy goo stuff over the range hood, to the living area that looks like a brothel with its red velvet wallpaper — I’m not too crazy about the clowns at the head of every bed though… creepy). Now of course I didn’t recognize half the people in there, but some of them I do. And I mean, if the reason you’re famous is for sleeping with Ronnie Wood… are you actually famous?

    So. My beep made me beep yesterday. And I feel much better now.

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  8. Next time they are probably going to send us a map of Dildo. Or Dildo Island. Maybe South Dildo. Hello, search terms!

    January 1, 2010 by Louise

    I have to mention that Rob’s parents send an awesome care package. They’re always huge, and always have tons of things in them. Often Newfoundland-specific things, although sometimes they just include stuff on a whim that really make you go hmmm (like the time his dad sent me a fox tail. Not the plant, but the actual tail of an actual fox. I do not know why. It certainly made me go hmmm). The things they send are often like certified diamonds – opening the box is like opening a treasure chest. You never know what you’re going to find.

    This time was no exception.

    I’m a little afraid to open this, but I am tickled pink that we have it.

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  9. Happy New Year!

    by Louise

    It’s been 10 hours and the new year is pretty great so far. Of course I’ve spent about 8 of those 10 hours sleeping and I love sleep so I might be a little biased.

    2009 was… well, it was a year. The first half was spent with fertility drugs, tests, more tests, and more drugs. The second half was spent trying to recover from the news that no matter the tests or drugs, we won’t be having a baby. And trying to get over myself and my silly “Oh man how come every person I know is pregnant all at once? It’s not faiiiiiiiir” whining. Because why wouldn’t it be fair? The fact is that 10% of people who want to have kids, can’t. Rob and I are part of that 10%. Do I wish we weren’t? Yes, but that would mean that it would be someone else, and I’m not wishing that on anyone, either. Anyway. We’re doing better. It will always hurt, and we’ll always have this small (huge) twinge of sadness when we think about it, but as they (well, ‘they’ – Ernest Hemingway) say, “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger in the broken places”.

    Of course, 2009 is also the year when a couple of fools came to live with us and for that I will be eternally grateful. They bring joy to us every day (except for the days when they bring crab legs).

    Last night, Rob and I went over to my friend C’s house for a New Year’s Eve “party”. I say “party” loosely – there were us two, C, her husband (until 10:30 pm when he had to leave for work) and her friend E. C’s kids were sleeping in their bedrooms. When we got there, the first thing that happened is that the seven-layer dip I’d made was dropped in the driveway. By someone I won’t mention. Whose name rhymes with Bob. I dropped Rob off and came home and picked up the second batch I had made because I wanted to have some for us for later. There was no drinking or carousing at the party. We played Trivial Pursuit for awhile (and realized that we all suck at 90s trivia, and that that game is boring). C and I realized that we were wearing the same bra (the perils of having only one Big Lady store in our city). We talked and laughed and eventually made it to midnight. It was everything we needed it to be.

    Today, the dogs let us sleep until 9 am before demanding their morning walk. Now Sprocket’s snuggling me and Doozer is all splayed out on their new bed. I’m studiously ignoring the pile of textbooks sitting in the front hallway, just waiting for me to start prepping for work next week. Rob’s actually still asleep but I am going to go and wake him up in a second, and then we are going to clean the kitchen and mess it up again with our turkey dinner.

    I hope that your New Year’s Eve was everything you hoped it would be, and that your 2010 brings to you all good things.

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