Things I've Said Lately

 One woman in our friend group has a birthday two days before Matt's, so we often celebrate them together - neither of them is big on birthdays, so sometimes we have to push a little. There was the time I threw them a joint party and accidentally made it look like I had six-year-old twins. This time we went out for dinner the day after Matt's birthday because he flew in from a two-week trip to Asia and Mexico the morning of his birthday and we wanted to leave a time cushion.

Eve Facetimed about twenty minutes before we were going to leave, so we were dressed and ready, and I was at the kitchen table talking to her while Matt puttered in the kitchen. He picked up a coffee cup and then fumbled it and dropped it in the sink and I said "What are you doing?? Why are you doing that while you're dressed up? Go and sit on the couch until we leave and don't get dirty!" And then Eve was laughing so hard she couldn't even say good-bye.

I only took one picture of them and it is very bad, I'm sorry. I think they were happy enough. 

Last night we went out for dinner with my mom and dad for Matt's birthday because it was the one night between him coming home and leaving again that worked. Except I realized a few days before that I had triple-booked myself for the night because I have lost my mind and time has lost all meaning. I switched my plans with Collette to tonight and figured I could join the other gathering a bit late because my parents like to eat really early.

In fact, I nearly got to the other place before the start time. I was meeting the moms of three of Eve's friends, and one of her friends was also in town because her boyfriend broke up with her and then we found out he was seeing someone else and now she is home until she gets her new apartment so we took the opportunity to play several rounds of Fuck That Guy, You Can Do So Much Better (also, as Jody says, "he ain't cute, he's just tall"). 

Then we were talking about how Jody (Davis's mom, who talked me through the snowy drive when I almost died) manipulated her brother into having a Seder on the proper day to placate her mother so she could have one a couple of days later so Davis could be there. Di (Marianna's mom) said "oh, it's like how they say the man is the head of the Greek household, but the wife is the neck, so she turns the head whichever way she wants", and I said "kind of, except Jody generally has her boot on the neck of the whole situation". And Jody asked me to blog that, so here we are. 

No trust me, she's very scary

Mildly NSFW

 When we moved into our house my mom sewed a blind for the ensuite bathroom window. I think the fabric matched our bedspread at the time. It was impressive work, with a cord that accordioned it up and down. A few years after we moved in the cord stopped working, which wasn't that big a deal, it's a bathroom, we don't spend a lot of time in there with the blind raised. A few years after that, it was obvious the blind should be replaced, but 1. we are procrastinators 2. there were other house improvements that were more pressing and 3. it's the kind of task my ADHD brain just freezes up at: How does one obtain a blind? I don't frequent blind stores. How do I know what kind of blind to get? I probably need to measure...something? Now it is starting to tear in the middle from humidity, and will soon just be half a ragged blind covering half the window, which probably means I should take some sort of action. 

Yesterday I was brushing my teeth before bed and Matt was in the bedroom. I yelled that I really needed to do something about the blind. I was really just verbalizing it to help me remember and maybe spur me to do something other than keep noticing it. 

My husband called something back from the bedroom.

Me (surprised, faintly outraged but willing to negotiate): "You'll do it for WHAT?"

Husband (also faintly outraged, but resigned to his fate because he's used to my bullshit): "I SAID that it could be a BLUE job."

Happy (Weird?) Things Friday

1.  The way my various school admins WILL persist in sending emails to the school conference about sports equipment with the subject line "Balls". Am I the ONLY juvenile? Are they testing me? Come ON.

2. It was the Hunger Games day for trying to reserve sites at Sandbanks on Sunday. I was convinced it was going to be a shit show (even more than usual) because an entire campground is closed this summer to upgrade facilities. Everyone else seemed adamant that it would work out, and in fairness to them, I am quite often certain and also wrong. However, in this case I was correct. Collette admitted afterwards that it was perhaps overly optimistic thinking we could reserve a third of one of the remaining campgrounds (many of the children come and book their own sites now because, you know, they big). 

They kept freaking growing

So we were all a little unsure about whether we should try to camp somewhere else, or do something else for the August long weekend, or just let it all go. Sandbanks definitely has the nicest beach, and a lot of the other stuff we do at camp we could do in our backyards, but there's still something nice about the enforced togetherness for a few days, and I think it's not a bad thing for me to have to survive without my perfectly adapted bed and bathroom at least once a year.

Last night I was on Facetime with Eve upstairs, folding laundry and getting ready to go to bed. Eve was on my iPad and I was seeing activity on the WhatsApp, so I picked up my phone and saw that Margot was proposing Voyageur Provincial Park as an alternative. Matt was in the air and not contactable, but I figured we were probably good to book - it's not hugely expensive and usually possible to adjust the reservation later. I was feeling a little panicky about trying to do it by myself, though, because my ADHD brain just does not deal well with that kind of thing - reservation websites, campsite maps, clicking all the right buttons (yes, I was a disaster during pretty much all of my online courses for my library tech diploma - I felt like I needed to get someone to stipulate to the program coordinator that I actually am quite intelligent in a lot of ways, because that did NOT come across). 

Happily, I am advanced enough in years and life experience that I have less of a problem admitting this, so I asked Margot if she could tell me precisely which site to try for like I was a literal child. I came downstairs to the computer and had Eve on my iPad to the right and Margot and her husband on my left on my phone, which was nice because then they could talk to each other. With my emotional support technological circle I managed to book a site - we were able to all be much closer together than usual, and didn't even have to do it at seven a.m., so clearly it will be inferior in some ways to Sandbanks, but it still feels right that we have a camping option.  

3. While I was at the computer I bought tickets for Eve and her friends to go see Wuthering Heights because I have a Cineclub Membership and I had so many free tickets banked. Naturally the website kept doing that thing where it asked for my location and I kept saying Shut UP Website, they're not FOR me, and then this note popped up and absolutely took me out for some reason (perhaps the fact that I had my cervix scraped and a painful physio session earlier in the day and I was just out of an Epsom salts bath and feeling a little loopy)

4. Eve had a Baby in the Lab day yesterday - these happen on a fairly regular basis. There is a toddler that loves her and it's always fun when he comes in, but there is also a six-month-old now who is Peak Chubby-and-Adorable baby.

A post-doc in the Lab was supposed to have a zoom call with the supervisor who is technically on paternity leave, but she texted him and said obviously she couldn't because there was a baby in the lab. So he Facetimed and put his own baby up to the screen so the babies could Facetime. Can you even stand it? Goddamn, if this lab was closer I would be there all the time, I would bring cookies, it would be terrible, they would hate me. 

5. Camille, the colleague of my husband's who drove me around San Francisco, sent me a picture of him on the last day of his trip - it's his birthday tomorrow. I'm not sure I should share it. Let me ponder for a moment. 

Okay, pondering done.

Camille is the best thing to happen to my marriage in a long time. 

Random Crap

 I just threw some laundry downstairs to the basement and pushed the door closed, but then realized as I was walking away that it didn't click shut and was too lazy to go back. So tonight when I'm up in bed alone and I hear a door on the main floor click shut, can someone remind me that that happens when I leave it open, and that it's not a serial killer coming upstairs to kill me serially? 

I'm in the middle of two husbandless weeks, and I'm getting weird. I'm at the part of winter where it's still winter but I have remembered that I need to get out of the house every day even if it's really, really hard. It got stupid cold again, but today is better - not so cold that Lucy won't walk but cold enough that the ice is frozen and not slushy and gross. 

I resisted the temptation to hermit on the weekend. I went to a movie on Friday (Send Help - very good. Amazing to me that they could make Rachel McAdams unattractive for any length of time. Dylan O'Brien has never struck me as a great actor, but he embodies the Ultimate Sleazebag Douche flawlessly.). Saturday Eve's friend Davis was coming home on the train for her study break. The last of the five friends moved away from Ottawa this winter, and Davis's mom (my friend Jody (not my sister Jody)) was in the Dominican for a couple more days, so I jumped on the opportunity to pick Davis up and take her out for dinner with almost unseemly enthusiasm. She is not only as Eve-adjacent as I get to be until March Break, but she is hilarious and adorable and smart and fun to hang out with (they all are), and it was lovely.

Sunday I had went to my mom and dad's for dinner. Nance asked if I always take Lucy there when I work to be dog-sat, and for the most part I do. Especially since Covid, Lucy does not love being left home alone, and I try not to leave her for more than a couple hours. My parents live close by and I feel like it's good for them too, and then I get a short visit in after work. There is a fun little moment every time where I open their door, which they often don't hear because they are both in their eighties and their hearing is not the best, and then I hear Lucy hit the floor from her perch on the top of the couch to wag her way over to the front door to greet me, and then I hear them both start laughing. My 83-year-old mom still shovels off the back deck so Lucy can get to the stairs and go run around in the yard, and takes her for a long walk when it's not too cold or snowy. My dad does not have great mobility, so she snuggles beside him on the couch and sleeps for most of the rest of the day

This post has been sitting here all week now and I can't figure out how to finish it, so I'm going with... not. Just got back from the doctor - is it just me, or once you turn fifty is it just a constant round of getting your boobs squished and your cervix scraped and that's just the infrastructure, not even body work (haven't decided on that yet.)

Back Up the Truck

 I was wondering how I would title this post and then this phrase floated through my head and I was afraid it meant something dirty, but when I googled it it actually means "signaling an extremely bullish sentiment to purchase a large amount of a stock or asset, often when prices are low" which, okay, "extremely bullish" sounds a little pervy but finance stuff is actually the opposite of sexy, to me at least. Except then I accidentally caught sight of another search result which was a Reddit post that said "Anyone else get turned on when they see their truck?" and, well, that was unfortunate. 

Anyway, Nancy was talking about backing in to parking spots (in your car, to be clear) and saying it usually seems useless to her, and is often done by men showing off. One of my very dear friends (who is a man) always backs into parking spots and, upon some fairly short and not very deep reflection, I would have to conclude that it is, largely, for purposes of showing off: I don't believe he actually think she'll have a pressing need to make a rapid getaway from bar night - his days of chucking ice at other patrons are a couple of decades behind him, after all. Honestly, I don't have a big issue with it, because people who can swiftly and effortlessly back into places is impressive to me.

I don't think I ever backed in anywhere before we got a vehicle with a backup camera. I decided I would start with our driveway because we live on a very quiet street so I would have privacy and not hold up anyone, and in the winter when leaving for work early in the morning (this was before we cleaned out the garage so I could park in it) if there was snow and ice it was nice to have the driver's door right outside the front door so I could just get in and go. The driveway often gets slippery and gross, and getting around the car to the driver's side was sometimes a perilous adventure.

The first time I tried to back in I looked at the backup camera the whole time, which resulted in vertigo and nausea. I realized that I should use it as a check rather than a comprehensive guide. 

A couple of times it has been pretty much necessary to back in to a parking spot. When we go to the National Arts Centre there are often parking attendants that direct you to which spot you are to park in, and there are multiple pillars which make many spots very tight. My eye doctor's office has limited parking and there is often weird construction going on which also makes for limited spots. I had to look this up as well, because sometimes I instinctively feel that backing in will be viable while driving in forward will not - apparently backing in allows the front wheels to guide the car which makes for better precision in tight or narrow spots. 

So I'm happy that it's now an option for me, although I still don't find it second nature. And if the parking lot is curved rather than straight, forget about it. For some reason my brain cannot process how to angle my vehicle between two straight lines within a curved space. The seniors center parking lot we park in for Bluesfest is like this - the outer spots are around a curved radius. Once I drove with Eve and Zarah, and tried to back in, and by the time I realized I should not have there were two other patrons trying to help me, which of course just made it all worse, and we all ended up in hysterics. The parking lot was up a hill from the Festival grounds, and much later when we were all walking around Bluesfest the couple saw us and pointed and laughed at me again - it was that bad. 

All fun and games until you have to park in front of strangers

I would not have guessed I could write this many paragraphs about this issue. I am an anxious person and I do not love driving or any of the associated tasks, and I am sort of grateful that technology has made this available to me. When I used to drive Eve places and then pick her up, if I waited in the car I would back in so I could see when she came out of basketball practice or whatever, and she would always compliment me on my backing-in job. Once Matt worked late so we took two vehicles to bar night and he said that watching me back in made him fall in love with me all over again. And that doesn't even hold a candle to GPS, which means I've been able to drive all over the province on my own or with Eve when Matt and Angus were occupied with baseball, without having a nervous breakdown or having us disappear never to be heard from again. 

It's still Fjebruary, Right?

I have been bad at blogging the Elisabeth's Figs (Finding Joy in Gratitude) this year. I am feeling grateful, but also not very organized. On the positive side, I haven't been able to make any terrible jokes about the tortured acronym yet. 

I am grateful for our friends. We have a funny friend group, most of you know this. On Monday morning when I woke up feeling queasy I texted our WhatsApp to ask if anyone else was feeling unwell, because I had only been with that group in the past few days, for our Valentine's Day Guys Cook dinner party. Everyone said they were fine. Collette asked what was going on with me and when I hadn't answered in ten minutes said if I was dead she had dibs on my shoes. Margot and Janet asked if I needed anything. I said I thought it was just a stomach bug and I would be fine and Collette said 

Eve had tried to Facetime me while they were loading me in the ambulance. Matt answered and told her I had the stomach bug and talked to her for a few minutes - we knew she would freak out if she knew the truth, so he wasn't going to tell her anything before we knew what was going on, with which I was in total agreement. When we were back in the waiting room waiting for the CT, so hour 10, I said "okay, but once we know that I'm okay or I'm dying you have to tell everyone this happened so they worry about me and Collette feels bad for what she said" - kidding, you know, mostly. I mean, I would have preferred to be languishing pale-ly and attractively or perhaps have been lightly stabbed, rather than being there with something diarrhea-related, but you get what you get. This was pretty much the first time I could sit upright and put a coherent sentence together, so although he rolled his eyes, Matt was relieved.

(Collette came over with soup and flowers the next day. Not because she felt guilty but because she likes to pretend to be a hardass while actually being warm and squishy.)

I have been reading Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning - am still on the part where he is in the concentration camp. I had already said that there was nothing like our ER episode to make you appreciate your dumb, normal little life, but I was aware that one night of excruciating pain was not that huge a deal compared to what some people are dealing with. Reading about all of the daily pains and humiliations that occurred in the camps, on top of the whole fact of the whole terrifying, dehumanizing phenomenon hammered that home even more. 

I was exhausted and achy for two or three days, and only doing gentle stretches. I looked up some 'yoga for fibromyalgia' etc. videos, and came upon the suggestion to try lying on my back with my legs up on the wall - something I had seen but never tried. I figured it was worth a shot.

First of all, HOW does one get that close to the wall? I feel like I would need handle grips installed in the floor. There is only so much scooching you can do, you know? I got as close as I could, and put on some spa music and covered myself with a blanket and used Eve's corgi Oodie for a pillow. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply and it felt pretty good. Then I heard some tippy-tappy paws and felt a little whump beside my head.

It was quite relaxing until the alarm I had set to make sure I did at least ten minutes went off and scared the hell out of me. 

I thought cool, not life-changing but feels good. 

The next day I got up and rearranged the entirety of the kitchen. 

I always forget to take Before pictures which is really unfortunate because the contrast is significant but also fortunate because if you saw the Before pictures any respect you presently hold for me would be in grave danger of disappearing. I have come to the conclusion that traditional kitchen cabinet design is useless. There's no point in putting anything behind the first row (if you have ADHD) because it might as well be gone forever. I don't feel like I am using the space efficiently, especially in the spice cupboard, but at least I can find Mexican Chili Powder or Cumin without having to pull out literally everything. Also, everything has to be in a jar, not in a package, or I will forever be buying packages of onion powder and paprika while I already have fifteen packages of onion powder and paprika already. 

I am grateful for being pain-free for now, having a pretty deep bench in terms of support (because my husband is in Korea and Japan and California for the next two weeks), weird spring-cleaning energy in February, and the amusement I am feeling at thinking about Matt coming home and cursing my name when he can't find a single thing in the kitchen

What is Your Emergency?

 (I'm fine).

Monday was Family Day in Ontario, so schools were closed and I didn't have work, which is fortunate, because halfway through the day the queasiness I thought was a normal stomach bug escalated into screaming, crippling, unrelenting abdominal pain that my pharmacist sister said needed to be checked out. I couldn't stand up to get in the car so Matt called 911 and paramedics came. The 911 operator could hear me and asked if I had asthma and needed an inhaler and Matt said "um, she has an inhaler", and I said I just can't BREATHE because of the PAIN. I had managed to put on pajama pants and a t-shirt (rather than the pajama shorts and tank top I was wearing), tried to put on a bra but couldn't, and I realized how much pain I was in when I didn't manage to feel self-conscious about all the prodding and EKG stickering and shirt-lifting. My chief concern (beyond feeling like I was dying) was that they wouldn't be able to give me any pain meds while they didn't know what was going on. They did, though, give me fentanyl and morphine (which made me barf, they always do) which didn't kill the pain, but made it so I could form sentences.

The paramedics were funny, and thought I was funny, which clearly meant that they were very intelligent. The rookie asked me some questions and then looked me seriously in the face and said "how young are you?" and I said "oh, fuck off" and they laughed. One said "I heard your husband got it wrong on the call" and I said "yeah, but he went younger so he's good.". 

One guy apologized for investigating my bookshelves, and (between hyperventilating and snotting  prodigiously) I said I didn't fully trust anyone who didn't. He asked how Yellowface was. I told him I was done and he could take it, but he demurred, even though Matt said "no, she means it."

They described fentanyl and morphine and I acted like I had never heard of them (does everyone do that? I didn't know what to do, say "oh no, heavy painkillers and I go WAY back"?). They injected the fentanyl and asked me something and I answered in oddly specific detail and then said "oh, now I'm doing that thing where I'm talking as if I've just had a beer or two, like you said, is that what's happening?" and one laughed and said he felt like we should go out for actual beers some time. Then I barfed because I always do when I have IV painkillers, and that was less amusing.

I had some morphine and they started talking about extraction and I started giggling because it made me sound like a foreign asset. While they were loading me in the ambulance Eve tried to Facetime me and Matt answered and told her I just had a stomach bug and couldn't talk, and when she found out later she was like "oh my God, that makes it so much worse that I just kept talking" and "I guess he did sound a little weird, in retrospect." 

In the ambulance they said it looked like I was still in a high level of pain, so they gave me more morphine, which meant I barfed again, but managed not to pee myself at the same time, so I had that going for me. 

At the hospital we were parked in the hallway waiting for the triage nurse and being weird some more, and they took my blood pressure with the Life Pack again and then one of them (I only know one name, Trevor, and I don't know which one he was) said "imagine if we could just do all this by voice commands" and I said that sounded like the beginning of a Black Mirror episode, and then they ended up saying things like "Life Pack, you're my only friend" and "Sorry Life Pack, I only like you as a friend" and I said "have you guys been awake a really long time?" and they looked sheepish and said they had actually just started. I mean, no judgment, it's a tough job. They guessed that I was a teacher, and said school librarian was close enough. 

Anyway, I am fine now, just tired and crampy and headachey and still don't really know what was happening, but I haven't blogged in days and I just wanted to take a stab at making an ER visit funny. How did I do, out of 10?