Randoms

Our cleaner is upstairs vacuuming. Eve is working on a history summative on the couch, and Lucy is lying on the back of the couch growling because of the cleaner. I just shushed her and she gave me this look that says "SORRY for caring about your SAFETY".

A couple of weeks ago I helped with the book fair at my Wednesday school - this would be my twelfth or fourteenth or somewhere around there. At one point there was a lineup of students waiting to pay and as I was getting out a poster for one I said in conversation with the V.P. "do you know how many times I've said 'the posters are five dollars each' in my book fair career?" A little girl in the line said very seriously "HOW MANY?"

I walked around Dow's Lake looking at tulips with a couple of friends on Friday, then walked around the mall for three hours with Eve on Sunday and walked Lucy when we got home and could still walk on Monday, so I think I'm pretty close to back to normal. This doesn't mean my feet are pain free, but I can walk without limping or being in agony, which is a win at this point. One of those frustrating wins that is just getting back to baseline rather than making any advances. Well, that's not true, it's an advance that came after a regression. Now I'm confused, but overall I'm counting it as a win.

My keyboard is disgusting but I'm resisting the urge to clean it without turning off my computer, because I did that once and accidentally changed the keyboard to Swahili or possibly some alien language, and had to hook up a whole other keyboard for a while until it went back to normal. But once I turn my computer off it takes forever to start up again, and my keyboard is really disgusting. Okay hold on, folks, we're doing this.

Hello? Okay. Whew.

Last Friday we were planning to leave for Toronto in the afternoon. Matt came home at lunch and picked up Eve from school on the way. I came down when I was almost ready and he asked what time I wanted to leave. I said "I don't know, whenever we're ready". He said "one-thirty?" I said "whatever, we're driving, it doesn't have to be on the hour or the half hour. Have you even packed?" He said "Well I can go pack in ten minutes." I said "so go pack! What the hell, can you not get ready without a deadline?" and then it dawned on us "oh my god, you can't get ready without a deadline, can you?" When you spend your life on an itinerary that includes frequent air travel, apparently "when we're ready" doesn't really cut it.

I discovered a really good bagged chopped salad with sesame dressing (I have come to the end of the fantasy that I am going to buy greens and ingredients and make my own salads). I ate it for dinner, and I packed it for lunch, and I thought it was going to change my life. I was going to eat it every day, with protein, and lose a million pounds, and feel amazing, and the salad people would hire me to make a commercial and sell their amazing salad.

None of that happened. I bought it two more times. The first time was great. The second time I suddenly found even the thought of it completely revolting.

Cleaning lady is gone. Lucy is looking very smug because she thinks she made her leave. 

Invitation to My Small Pity Party

This winter has been really difficult - mainly physically instead of mentally, which I guess is kind of a nice change? Just after my fibroid surgery I was offered a surgery leave at a school that was a longer commute, and I accepted it just before I got the worst flu of my life. We were supposed to go to Florida for March Break to visit my mother-in-law and her husband at their summer house. I ordered Matt and Eve to go without me and said I'd be fine.

Narrator: She was not fine.

In retrospect, this was not the smartest. My parents are nearby, and my mom sent over chicken soup. But she sent it with my dad, who, being a lot like me, assumed I wanted him to come in, leave the soup on the counter, and leave without checking on me. He was right. I did want that. But I was so delirious with fever that I thought I was doing inventory in a really cool warehouse for most of one day, and too weak to lift my phone at one point, so it probably wasn't a great idea. My sister, when she heard, was not impressed.

It's okay. I survived. Matt and Eve got upgraded to first class because, I don't know, they clearly missed me so much, and Eve felt terribly guilty (not too guilty to eat her warmed-up cashews, fortunately). But just as I was barely recovered, we started five week-ends of travel, to Elmira to see Angus and watch baseball, to Vegas for a friend's fiftieth birthday, to my sister's for Easter, and then more Angus and more baseball. This was all great, but didn't give me any down time. At the same time, the bone spur inflammation in my foot got worse so I was hobbling around in pain and off balance for months.

It takes a toll on a girl, ya know? I'm mostly enumerating this because this week I was so happy that the sun was shining and it was book fair week, and I was hanging out with the super-fun and funny principal and V.P. at my Wednesday school who are just so lovely and have the same twisted sense of humour as me, and we were selling books and stupidly-shaped erasers and five-dollar posters to excited kids, and then I'd come home and be weepily exhausted and unable to face cooking dinner, and I couldn't figure out why. Until I figured out why, and Hannah comfortingly confirmed my theory.

I have a great life. I have privilege out the wazoo. I get frustrated with myself when I can't work a stupid part-time job and at least do the bare minimum at home. Turns out my body doesn't care that I need to demonstrate my love and gratitude by cooking and cleaning and that I'd like to demonstrate my love of fitting into my jeans by walking around the park once in a while. I finally found a good chiropodist and my foot is slowly improving thanks to being horrifyingly jackhammered with a taser wand once a week. Sorry, the technical term is "extracorporeal shockwave therapy". I wonder what would happen if they used it intracorporeally - bet it would make a good horror movie. I've been able to properly walk Lucy a couple of times in the past week. Other than that, I guess I just need some rest.

So I've learned my lesson. This week-end we're.... going to Toronto.

Oh well. Store-bought quiche and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner next week.