Confessions

So I have to admit something. I break the law everyday. Usually more than once. It's true, I'm a common criminal...here's my story.

First: I park across the street from my office. Now, by law I am suppose to walk to the corner and cross the street at the crosswalk. But if I learned anything in high school it was that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So I jaywalk. GASP. I don't even look both ways (it's a one-way). I'm not sure if it's the business person in me (efficiency) who can't stand to back track or if it's the human in me (laziness). I go home for lunch usually so I end up jaywalking about 4 times per week day.

Second: I speed. Frequently. And I get very mad at people who are doing the speed limit or below. Sadly I also get mad at people who ride my ass in a hurry!

So that's my story. Report me if you must. Give me the scarlett letter for Jaywalking or Speeding. But first remember: let he who casts the first stone be without sin.

Being Sick Sucks

Hi All...I've been getting some complaints about not updating my blog frequently (ahem, Kyla) so as I laid in my bed not falling asleep I thought "why not write a blog". The reason I haven't posted anything lately is that I've been busy, also I have been sick. :-(

Monday: I woke up with chest pains. After a while I was a little concerned so I called to make an appointment with my docter. What a surprise she's on holidays (again) so I made an appointment with her fill in for Wednesday...but by after lunch my boss lady (Cynthia) insists that I go to the walk in, stressing that chest pains aren't something to mess with. There weren't too many people at the walk in so I got in to the doctor within about ten minutes. He didn't seemed too concerned & said he'd like to do an x-ray. So off to the basement I go. About an HOUR later I made my way back upstairs, chest shots in hand. The waiting room was now super full. The receptionist insists that she'll put me in the next available room. She calls two names before calling mine (weird, my definition of next must be different then hers). Doctor says he doesn't see anything in the x-ray to cause concern so sends me to the hospital for blood work. Once I get to the right counter at the hospital the receptionist there insists that I take a number than sit in the waiting room. I barely sit down when she calls my number (must be a control issue?). Get my blood work then head back to work. It's now about ten to four so I've pretty much wasted my whole afternoon. Doctor said he'd let me know the results by the end of the day, so at 4:25pm I call the clinic back. They say "yep, he'll call you when he knows", so I asked when the clinic closed: 6pm. Off to home to wait. Needless to say I decided to skip my aqua aerobics as I still had the chest pains. At about 5 to six I call the clinic again as I haven't heard...I get voicemail telling me their closed. Awesome. I go to have a relaxing shower. I'm in the middle of shampooing my hair when the phone rings. So I answer it. Doc says that there isn't any blood clot action but that my white blood cell count is high so he'll write a prescription for anti-biotics. I go pick them help along with some take out pizza.

Tuesday: I wake up feeling no chest pains but a little under the weather. Fairly stuffed up. I have a work conference that day though so off I go. It starts at 8am and goes until about 10pm that night. Got to see and talk to a bunch of co-workers I never see anymore so that was fun.

Wednesday: Wake up with a sore throat and very congested. Can't really taste anything either. I still have the conference in the morning so I go to that as well as work in the afternoon. I again skip the aqua aerobics (I'm feeling guilty about this so if anyone thinks it's okay that I didn't go please leave a comment). Still taking the anti-biotics.

Thursday: Wake up feeling entirely shitty. Call in sick to work. Sleep until about 12:30pm. Wake up and make myself some homemade soup. Makes me feel a little better. Chilled on the couch, watch a Will Ferrell movie off tv (Kicking & Screaming) and went through a week's supply of toilet paper for my nose (we don't have kleenex in the house). Ran to the store and got some ginerale & cough drops. Watched Thursday night TV which lifts my spirits (the Office, War at Home, CSI). Tyler gets home sometime after midnight.

Friday: Drag myself out of bed cuz timesheets are due this morning & I'm in charge of that. People like to get paid, don't like it so much when they don't. And I didn't have time to brief Nancy on where everything went or is. Spend more time at work than I intend, don't get out until 10am. I try to go to Tim Horton's to get some soup/tea...their debit machine is down & I of course do not have cash. I try the other Timmy's and it's super packed. So I hit a convenience store, buy more ginerale & cough drops and head home. Relax at home for a bit and watch TV with Tyler. Then he heads out to run errands and I crashed for a few hours. Wake up in time to make supper and watch more movies on TV. It was a pretty relaxing evening all around.

Saturday: Less snot, throat isn't sore today. I (mistakenly) think I'm getting better. Tyler & I get into a stupid fight. I leave to do some shopping (Scrapbooker's, Reitman's, Megan's b-day present, Safeway) but it doesn't make me feel better. Come home and make Suprise Spread for Tyler's dad's b-day. We go there for supper than I have to leave cuz it's Megan's bday & I signed up to go bowling. My throat feels really sore when I leave. Go bowling (did okay for me, had fun) then go back to Tyler's dad's. Did I mention that it's a half hour drive outside of Red Deer? So I drove two hours that nightl. Anyway, saw my niece. Women beat the men at Sequence (a board game).

Sunday: Feeling like the cold is out of my head at least. Throat hurt a little this morning. I'm still snotty but don't feel congested. I bought "Yoga Booty Ballet" on DVD (www.beachbody.com) yesterday so decide to try it out. I was sweatin'. But it was fun. Now as I sit here typing I have chest pains again! Maybe I just pulled something during the DVD? I had a nice bath tonight using some of my new products so that semi-rejuvenated me. However I am feeling a bit loney cuz Tyler may be out of town for 18 days this time. Could be a long stretch. However this week IS busy: water aerobics monday, massage then dinner with Lorna tuesday, water aerobics wednesday...not to mention my VERY long list of little things to do that I've been putting off for a while, especially with being sick last week.

Dominic Update

I've gotten a few people asking me how Dominic is doing so I thought I'd better post an update. I had taken him back to the vet for a check up on Monday & he was doing swimmingly. The vet was very impressed with his progress to date, and now he seems to be back to his old self. Yeah!

My poor little baby...

So my little baby boy Dominic (a.k.a. one of my dogs) was not feeling good this last week. On Friday he was acting "down" and kept dropping his butt on the ground making a weird thunk sound, but we didn't know what was wrong. Flash forward to Saturday night, Tyler went to pick Dominic up for the couch & he yiped. We looked at his bum and he had a huge swelling on the side of his, um, bum hole (lack of a better term). It was about the size of a ping pong ball. And very gross looking. I called the vet to see if it was an emergency. I described it to her and she said it sounded like a swollen anal gland. She said it wasn't an emergency and to give him some baby aspirin to help the pain. We of course didn't have any as we don't have any babies. She also said that it basically just needed to pop and drain. A little while later there was some blood stuff on the floor so it looked like it had popped, so I didn't worry about the baby aspirin.

Sunday night when I went to bed, Dominic was trembling non-stop. I figured he must still be in pain so I was going to buy him some aspirin the next day.

Monday: came home from work but didn't have time to go to like Wal-mart for aspirin so called the Express 24...they only had baby Tylenol (didn't know if that would be okay). So I called my neighbors (who recently had a baby) to see if they had any baby aspirin. Negative. So I called the vet again to see if Tylenol would be okay. The lady who answered the phone responded by saying that I really shouldn't give him baby aspirin or tylenol as there isn't a lot of confirmed reasearch on the effect it has on the animal. She asked me what was wrong so I explained it to her and told her what the on-call vet said. The phone lady told me that really I should bring him in as swollen anal glands have a tendancy to get infected so I made an appointment for Tuesday morning. She said that for the pain that night I could give Dominic the baby tylenol.

Tuesday @ the vet's: the shaved my baby's boy and inspected his gland. The vet said it was too sensitive for her to fully inspect so she gave me two drugs for Dominic: one for pain and one for an antibotic, setting us back about $100. Then I booked an appointment for next week.

So...I have to give Dominic a pill every 12 hours (i slip it in some wet food so it goes down really easy), and this liquid medicine through a syringe to his mouth every 24 hours. He doesn't like the syringe squirting one but is enjoying the wet food as we usually only give them dry food. Charlie, my other dog, seems to be a little jealous that Dominic is getting all these "treats". LOL But Dominic seems to be getting better now so hopefully he is back to his old self soon.

NYR: January Progress Report

Okay so here I go self-evaluating my progress on those January New Year's Resolutions...

1. Attend water aerobics: there have been 2 classes so far I have am 2 for 2...however it was a close call as yesterday I wasn't feel good. I had went home sick in the afternoon but felt better by the time it was Water Aerobics time. I'm feeling much better physically after only 2 times...

2. Plan at least one social event: well I'm attending a few so maybe that counts? It's my friend Cat's b-day this week so I'm going to her parent's house for fondue. On Sunday one of my co-worker's Cheryl is having a Partylite party. Then next weekend my friend/hairdresser Megan is having her birthday party (glow bowling). I feel like that's busy enough. However, I should get on the ball for my game night that is fast approaching...

3. One Rachael Ray Recipe/Per Minimum: I can cross this one off! Last night I made chicken meatball sauce & rice...I also whipped up some homemade mac & cheese (the cheese sauce is homemade not the macaroni). I'm also watch several episodes and have cooking options for next week.

4. Hit the sack at 11:30: this one I am failing at miserably and thus also making myself very UNpunctual for work each day. In fact I haven't worked a full day yet this week: Monday - nail appointment, Tuesday - vet, Wednesday - Sick...sigh.

5. Minimize in-law rants to Tyler: score. I'm fairly certain I haven't bitched to him yet.

Stay tuned for February's goals!

Blizzard

I took this picture off of the AMA road report camera's. While this shot is closer to Edmonton it's pretty accurate to describing how it looks outside. The wind is blowing like crazy and while I don't think it's snowing per say it looks like it from the wind. The sky is pure white which gives the illusion of sunshine but it's super cold!

Gotta love winter in Alberta, Canada! We've been spoiled so far this year...

Resolutions Re-evaluation

So I am re-evaluating my New Year’s resolutions. Here we go. I still have all those goals in mind but instead I’m going to set up mini-goals for each month, say about five per month, to help me stay on track.

Here is January’s Mini-Goals:
1. Attend water aerobics starting Jan 15
2. Plan at least one social event.
3. Make at least one “Rachael Ray” recipe per week.
4. Hit the sack at 11:30pm on week nights.
5. Keep in-law rants on blog or to friends: not to Tyler.

January Accomplishments So Far:
1. Finished scrapbooking Christmas 2006.
2. Signed up for water aerobics.

Items I’ve scrapped/re-evaluated:
1. Weight Watchers: I’ve familiarized myself with the program and have decided that on the whole it doesn’t work for me. However I will take key elements with me, such as the point system when evaluation food choices.
2. Yoga: I’ve decided that I don’t want to commit myself to Tuesday nights for 10 weeks for $75. Instead I will rent or buy a Yoga DVD & try it out first. Besides, Tuesday nights are the best nights for going to the theatre.

Car Incident #3 (the 10 days of hell overstay their welcome)...

So on Friday morning I press my car starter button & hear my car hum as it turns on. I go about my business and get ready for work. Getting into my car to go I put the key into the ignition, go to put it in gear and the car shuts off. Awesome. So I go to try it again and the car won't start. Now the really fun thing with Saturns (and they'll blame the car starter but I blame the car maker) is that they have a theft deterrant programmed into the car so that if the right key isn't used to start the car is disables the fuel. This translates to sometimes when I used my car starter my key won't turn on the car. The solution is suppose to be to leave the key in the ignition in "run mode" for 15 minutes and then re-start the car. So I do that, which will make me late for work so I call from my cell & leave a message.

After the obligitory 15 minutes I try to start the car, it won't turn over and I get an error message on my odometer that says "PWR STR" (a.k.a. power steering). I'm none to happy about this as my car was in for service just over a week ago. I call Saturn servie department and they say: we're really busy but if you drop your car off and leave it here all day we may be able to look at it. Right, but first I have to get it running. I schedule an appointment for Monday morning instead.

Then I wait some more and try to start the car. Still doesn't work. Go inside, make some "tension tamer" tea & call work again. Wait some more, try again, still doesn't work. Shovel my walk way, wait some more, still doesn't work. Then my odometer flashes "COOLANT" in addition to the "PWR STR" message. I call Saturn again. Get a different person who reiterates what the first girl said.

Wait some more. Try again, still not working. It is now about 45 mintues later. So I'm starting to worry that maybe my battery has died now. I try using the car starter button again. It starts. I stop swearing and thank god. I put my key in, go to put it in gear & it shuts off. I start swearing again. So I call Saturn again & get a third different person. He informs me that most likely my car will not start now and I'd better get it towed to Saturn.

I call AMA (luckily I have a membership) who tell me it'll be up to an hour wait. It isn't. The tow guy is really nice but trash talks car starters a bunch. I get to Saturn about 9:30ish (which is over an hour after I'm suppose to start work). Then I have to wait for the shuttle. So I got to work at about 10am. The shuttle driver told me that it was their busiest day in history in the service department and that she was working by herself.

At about 11am Saturn calls me and informs me that my car starter blew a fuse and so it's my cost. It took them 1 1/2 hours to be sure that was the issue so I owe them $100. Yay. I complain that it's barely been there 1 1/2 hours, he says "oh we started working on it right away." Then I asked if it can't go under warranty. He claims that cuz the code said "ignition interference" he can't. So I'm out 2 hours of work & $100.

Then at 4pm I call Saturn for a shuttle ride back there to pick up my car at 4:30pm. The guy tells me they are running at least an hour behind. So I convince Cynthia that she should drive me there.

After all that, I went to Costco & got an amazing deal on a basket of bath stuff. That helped.

Survey Time

I got this survey in my e-mail today & thought that if I was going to go to the trouble of filling it out that I was going to get a blog post out of it dammit. As time consuming as they are I think they are fun to read & fill out. Here you go:

1. What is your occupation? Regional Administrative Support
2. What colour are your socks right now? Black/Teal/Turquoise Striped
3. What are you listening to right now? Dan’s call on speakerphone
4. What was the last thing that you ate? Scrambled eggs
5. Can you drive a stick shift? Um, I have once before but it would probably get ugly.
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Underachieving Blue
7. The last person you spoke to on the phone? An answering machine at a massage place
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Absolutely, but we need to hang out more
9. How old are you today? 24
10. Favorite drink? Brown Cow
11. What is your favorite sport to watch? Poker, does that count? If not, hockey.
12. Have you ever dyed your hair? I think a better question is when was the last time I didn’t dye my hair, LOL.
13. Pets? Well they’re more like kids: Charlie, Dominic, Persia, Baxter.
14. Favorite food? Old Dutch Ketchup Chips. Or Tyler’s BBQ steak w/ corn on the cobb.
15. What was the last movie you watched? The Black Dahlia last night. Don’t waste your time…boring!
16. What do you do to vent anger? Bitch usually. It only fuels it though.
17. What was your favorite toy as a child? Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe my stuffed animals? I had a few that were special.
18. What is your favorite season, fall or spring? Fall cuz it’s when my birthday is.
19. Hugs or kisses? Hugs. They’re gender neutral.
20. Cherries or blueberries? Cherries, I don’t really like blueberries all that much.
21. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? Yes all the time.
22. Who is most likely to respond? Well I’m mostly just going to post this on my blog so I have no ideas.
23. Who is least likely to respond? Everyone.
24. Living arrangements? Own a house with my husband, Tyler.
25. When was the last time you cried? Sunday. I was really emotional.
26. What is on the floor of your closet? So many things, discarded clothes, laundry hampers, a weigh scale. Lots of dust bunnies.
27. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to? Not relevant.
28. What did you do last night? Well I didn’t go to Yoga as I originally planned. Instead I rented a few movies, cooked dinner and watched one of them plus an episode of X-files. And talked to Tyler on the phone of course (he’s in Fort McMurray).
29. Favorite smell? Fresh, homemade bread.
30. What inspires you? I’m not sure…when I figure that out I’ll be closer to achieving my goals.
31. What are you afraid of? So many things: snakes, spiders, abandonment, killers, rapists, racism, ignorance, horror movies…
32. Favorite dog breed? I don’t really have a favorite but my dogs are Shih Tzu X Pug and I love them!
33. Number of keys on your key ring? 5 – Tyler’s car trunk key, my car key, Tyler’s truck key, house key, mail box key. But I also have my car starter, 2 membership scan thingees, and a bunch of key chains that make it a huge mess.
34. Favorite day of the week? Friday, it has all the potential of Saturday without being so close to Monday.
35. How many provinces have you lived in? One (Alberta).
36. Favorite holiday? My birthday! Then Christmas.
37. Have you ever operated a motorcycle or heavy machinery? Negative.
38. Ever left the country? Twice now, yay! I’ve been to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic and to Manhattan, New York City, New York.
39. Favorite kind of music? Not genre specific, but the kind that gives me goose bumps or makes me want to dance as soon as I hear it. Or that I want to listen to over & over on repeat (Tyler hates that).
40. Last book you have read? I’m currently reading “Why do men fall asleep after sex?” the sequel to “Why do men have nipples?” It’s a trivia knowledge type book.
Your turn, folks! Copy & paste it into a response!

My Week in Hell

So I’ve already blogged Christmas Day & New Year’s but I didn’t write about the 2 crappy things that happened in between. I’m not sure exactly what I did but I think God is punishing me for something. I'm trying to ignore my French Catholic upbringing & purge my guilt instead of wallowing in it. Here it goes...

Incident #1 - Last Wednesday I was shopping in my Scrapbooker’s store and Tyler was waiting for me outside in my car. Completely unprovoked my windshield made a SNAP sound and cracked from the middle out in both directions. I have a giant mustache shape almost clear across my windshield. And it makes noise: we were traveling on the highway this weekend and it was making a rubbing sound. Scary.

Incident #2 – So I think I have come a long way in terms of driving but apparently my parking still needs work. I was trying to park in a spot in the North Wal-Mart parking lot (my arch nemesis: see back-story below) which was a little tight. I must have had my angles wrong and got too close to the truck on my right’s back bumper. Awesomely, he had a hook right in that spot that hooked onto the part in between my back passenger door & the wheel hub. I stopped as soon as I fell the impact, and then reversed trying to get out of it. This action popped a piece of my auto body off about 4 inches by two inches as well as dug quite a nice groove into my door. I was quite impressed with myself as you can imagine. I could barely continue shopping at Wal-Mart. In reality it could have been much worse but I was still pissed off at myself as my car is only a 2005. It was one of those moments where you wish you could rewind.

Back-story – Shortly after I bought myself my first car (about two weeks), a brand new 2003 Saturn Ion, I found myself parking in the North Wal-Mart parking lot. I parked on the perimeter which I rarely do and had my Little Sister (from the program) with me. When it was time for us to leave I decided that instead of backing up in a curve I would just back out straight into the empty lane and then pull out. Bad idea. There was a heavy duty truck there with a bumper that was sticking out. I hit his bumper with my driver’s side back end and my reaction was slow so I hit it for a bit of a long time. I ended up denting in my dent resistant auto body. I called Tyler in tears to come get me. Then Jessica (11) & I waited for him to show up. In her never ending niceness she said to me “if your car was a puppy you would have just killed it”. Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better. The guy who owned the truck showed up & was really nice. He said that his truck was fine and asked me if I was alright. It was good that there was no damage to his vehicle. Tyler showed up and lectured me on my not smartness. When we got home he managed to pop out the dent so all that was left was the two puncture holes left by the screws. It was a constant reminder of my parking inexperience. Especially since I hadn’t even made my first car payment yet. :-(

Happy [insert swear here] New Year's!

So I rang New Year’s in with a delightful bang. Sarcasm. Sometime after midnight I ended up getting into an argument with my brother-in-law. I’m going to lay out what happened & I’d love for you all to weigh in with your thoughts.

So Kira (my 4 month old niece) woke up crying because she needed both a diaper change and to be fed. Kim, her mom, handed Kira to Tyrone (the dad & my brother-in-law) to go change her while Kim got the cereal ready. So Tyrone is a pretty big guy, he’s about 5’10” and weight somewhere near 300 pounds. Kira was crying and we could hear Tyrone shaking the bed (her thus her) to try to get her to stop, which only made her cry harder. This isn’t the first time he has shaken her when she was crying in an attempt to get her to stop & the sound of her interrupted crying was really bothering me and Kim. Kim went upstairs to tell him to get out & she’d change the diaper. I could her him tell her “If she’s going to cry I’ll give her something to cry about”. Nice, especially considering she’s 4 months old. So he comes barreling done the stairs bitching “fine, fucking spoil her then. She needs to learn to settle down before we change her”. Last I checked babies cried as a form of communication.

So when he sat back at the table where we were playing cards (Me, my husband Tyler, and Mary my mother-in-law) I said “it’s not right to shake your baby”. He started arguing with me, saying that as long as the neck is supported it’s fine, that he knew his baby’s limits, that it takes a lot to hurt the baby…etc. I argued back that it doesn’t take as much as you think, that you can’t know the limits cuz even scientists don’t know, and why take the risk? Check your ego at the door and do what’s best for your baby. The arguing escalated until we were basically screaming at each other. At this point Mary screamed at us “Enough. You’ve each said what you have to say now leave it. You’re not even listening to each other. If he hurts he’s baby he’ll have to live with that.”

I was flabbergasted. Tyler, Mary & Kim had all said earlier that weekend that they didn’t agree with the baby shaking and none has spoken up or stepped in to support me when I did. So I said “doing nothing is the same thing as encouraging it”. She says “well I’ve told him what I think and that’s all I can do. So should we keep arguing & just be a dysfunctional family?” Bullshit. I totally lost respect for her there. Why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to convince that person not to behave that way? Especially when your granddaughter’s life is at risk?

I was so mad & frustrated that I was shaking. I had a million things running through my head that I wanted to say, but she had basically closed the book. I started to cry with frustration, and the table was silent as we finished our game. Tyrone went to his room, Mary left for a smoke and Kim came down with Kira wondering what was going on. I tried to explain best I could but was still crying. Tyler tried to make me feel better but it didn’t work.

Mary came back in and pulled Tyrone downstairs where they started looking it up on the internet. I could here Tyrone repeating what he wanted to hear “as long as the head is supported” so I was getting more mad. He’s so ignorant and pig-headed. A long time later we went to bed & Mary and Tyrone were still talking. I have no idea of what conclusion was come to as we didn’t talk about it since then. I just hope he considers what I said. Most importantly I see this act not simple as a single event but as an indication of what may come in the future. If Tyrone can not control his frustrations or strength now what will be done the road?
One site says “Normal interaction with a child, like bouncing the baby on a knee, will not cause SBS, although it's important to never shake a baby under any circumstances because gentle shaking can rapidly escalate,” and another “The repetitive nature of the act suggests a lack of self-control or rage indicating the real possibility of previous or future abuse,” confirming my fears.

If you are interested in learning more check out the following links:

http://www.dontshake.com/
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/medical/brain/shaken.html
http://aboutshakenbaby.com/
http://dawn.thot.net/brain/baby.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken_baby_syndrome#Prevention