I went to Ikea the other day. I know, I know – but I actually enjoy going to Ikea. Every summer I wait for the yearly catalogue with unbridled enthusiasm, and when it arrives, I am transfixed by its offerings. When I get to the store, I am in my glory and can wander joyfully for hours. I may not buy anything, but I get lots of ideas for home decorating projects that I’ll get around to someday.

Well, this was someday. I decided that I absolutely had to purchase a plain navy blue carpet for one of the rooms in my house. I had seen such a carpet the last time I visited Ikea last summer, when I picked up a few items for DD. I didn’t buy it at that time, because I wanted to think about it, to turn it over and over in my mind to make sure that I really wanted it. (I do this. It’s kind of the antithesis of impulse buying. The problem is that sometimes I ruminate for so long that the item I wish to buy is no longer available, but at least I’m usually spared the ordeal of returning something that I bought in haste.)

It was very nice to drive out to the store in the middle of the week, rather than on a weekend. Much less traffic. The parking lot had plenty of available spots. I was able to wander through the store at will, without bumping into fellow wanderers and their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags.

I quickly found the carpet I was looking for, and picked it up. It wasn’t too heavy or bulky, fortunately, so off I trotted towards the checkout.

I passed the candles on the way. I also grabbed a couple of packages of tealights, since I was completely out of those and I do like my candles. I was feeling pretty good about things, particularly about my efficiency and how single-minded I was being. No aimless meandering for me that day, I was on a mission. And my mission was very nearly accomplished. The checkouts were in sight.

Except that only four of the twelve checkouts were open. And each had a line-up snaking waaaaaay back, at least ten people plus their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags. It was going to be a loooooong wait.

My question is this: on a weekday, with the parking lot and the store itself half empty, where the hell did all those people at the checkouts come from???

So what’s the real story with the H1N1 flu anyway?

I’ve been trying to make an informed decision as to whether or not I should get the vaccination against it, but the stories are all so conflicting. I just don’t know what to believe.

I have heard that if you are born before 1957, you only have a very small chance of catching H1N1, so to me, that says that the shot would not necessarily be worth it. But I wasn’t born before 1957 anyway, so this argument doesn’t apply to me.

I have also heard that it’s far more severe in young adults 18 – 30, an age group where most of the deaths are occurring. Well, that’s not me either.

BUT … older people (presumably those of us past 30 but born after 1957) are apparently having very severe symptoms should they become ill. A larger proportion of this group is ending up in hospital and dying. I guess that’s where I come in.

There is a priority system in place right now. The risks have been evaluated by the powers that be (according to which information, though?), and only certain groups of people can get their vaccinations at the moment. I am not in any of those risk groups. I am not a child aged between 6 months and 5 years, someone with a chronic illness (particularly asthma), pregnant, a health care professional, or someone who lives with or works with any of the listed groups. So I would have to wait, in any case.

I do have a number of friends and acquaintances who do fit into one of those risk groups and who have had their H1N1 shot. Every single one of them reports that their arm hurt like hell. Some of them had huge welts, some didn’t, but all said their arm ached really badly for up to a week. Some couldn’t lift their arm for several days, some couldn’t even bear to have their arm touched. A couple of people actually had noticeable flu symptoms for a few days and “felt like shit”, to quote one friend. Everyone who normally has the seasonal flu shot claimed that this shot was much, much worse.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?

Now, I have never had a flu shot, despite them being available for free for anybody working in the public education system here. And I have only had the flu twice in the past 23 years. I am certain of this because I know I had it when I was pregnant with DD, who is now 22, and I was unable to take any meds. (Fortunately, I really only had one day where I was flat in bed.) The other time was in February 2002, when I missed a whole week of work. I am certain of this one as well because once I could crawl out of bed, I lay on the couch in front of the television watching the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City, USA. Vancouver is almost the same time zone as Salt Lake City, so I watched it all live. (Do I remember much of it? Just the Canadian men’s and women’s hockey teams winning the gold medals. Not much else – I was sick, dammit!)

Well, based on information I have gleaned thus far, I think I’m leaning towards not having the vaccination.

But the Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver in February 2010, so maybe I should. Seems as good a reason as any.

I’m a word person. I like words very much. I seem to learn languages very easily. I like to read, I like to write. I like to do word search puzzles, but not crossword puzzles. I like to talk. Probably too much.

I also have a list of favourite words. (I bet you don’t have a whole list of favourite words. Actually, there are a number of websites devoted to favourite words, so maybe you do.)

The words on my list are words that I simply like. I like the sound of them, the way they trip off my tongue, the musicality of the syllables. I don’t particularly care what they mean, and I don’t particularly use them a lot in my everyday speech or writings. I just like these words.

In no particular order, here are some of the words I like:

ubiquitous
undulate
sibilant
willful
paleontologist
serendipity
plethora
mellifluous
colloquial
quintessential
anomaly
discombobulate
effervescent
entomologist
loathe
heinous
facetious
onomatopoeia
lugubrious
pontificating

Do you have any favourite words?

I awoke this morning in pain again. In my sinuses again. Crap, I thought. Better head off the migraine right away by taking some Tylenol.

I rolled out of bed to head into the bathroom to dig out the Tylenol. As I did, I looked at my bedside clock radio. It was some ridiculous hour like 4:47 am. Well, pain will make a person wake up at a ridiculous hour, won’t it? I still had an hour and 45 more minutes to sleep.

I took the pills, peed, then padded back to bed. I wasn’t sure if I’d drift back to sleep, though. I knew I needed to, but it just didn’t feel quite right. Besides, my sinuses hurt.

I tossed and turned for an hour. The Tylenol wasn’t kicking in. I got up and took another one. I turned around and around in my bed like a chicken on a spit. At 6:15 am, my clock radio alarm went. I have it set to a talk radio station (yes, I am that old and boring). I listened idly to the weather and the traffic and the whatever else they broadcast at that time of day, waiting for the 6:30 news. That’s my cue to get up, sinus pain or no sinus pain.

The traffic reporter said something about 7:20 am. It vaguely registered in my foggy brain that she’d given the incorrect time.

The announcer soon intoned that the news to 7:30 was coming up. Another mistake, I thought.

Wait. Another wrong time?

I sat up in confusion and looked carefully at my clock radio. It showed 6:29 am. What?

I grabbed my cell phone. I’d turned it off the night before so I stabbed frantically at the buttons to turn it on. The time on it? 7:29 am.

WTF?

I jumped out of bed, throbbing sinuses and all. I clattered downstairs and checked the wall clock, the stove clock, the microwave clock. They all showed (by now) 7:30 am.

BIG WTF!

Somehow, my clock radio lost exactly an hour. I have no idea how this happened, but I suspect something to do with the daylight saving time button. Did I inadvertently push it as I was setting the alarm the night before? How could I possibly have done that – it’s a tiny button at the back, not exactly front and centre.

Still, I managed to pull myself together and I got to work by 8:15 am, which was about 20 or 25 minutes later than usual. Not too bad, all things considered. And my headache eventually disappeared, too.

But I am a little concerned about tomorrow morning. I think I might need a rooster.

I’m not exactly blue, but today has been kind-of a “meh” day. I think I have an end-of-daylight-savings hangover. That extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning has me feeling rather sluggish and unenergetic.

I washed my car yesterday. So today, naturally, it rained. But I also have one new windshield wiper, so at least I could see very, very clearly on one side. Why just one? Don’t ask me. PG was in charge of that. Ask him.

At work, one of the volunteer things I do with the kids is organize and train our morning PA announcers and our MCs for our assemblies. Two new PA announcers started today, one of whom has come to see me about five times in the past week. She was so excited and bubbly and full of questions. She didn’t show up this morning. So much for enthusiasm.

Also on the subject of those announcers, another girl whom I have scheduled in and who is due to have her turn in December came to talk to me this morning. She has now decided that she doesn’t want to be a PA announcer after all, but if I really need her, she’ll still take her turn. Good of her. I told her we’d talk closer to December. I think I’ll still make her do it. I’m just that mean.

I had to change my own classroom clock back to standard time. I didn’t even notice that the time hadn’t been changed till almost noon. Ohhh … that’s why I was hungry! And I also didn’t go get the stepladder to do the climbing. I hopped on a chair. They don’t like that around here. We’re supposed to be all about safety. I was all about speed right then.

Am I the only person in the entire school who bothers to make coffee??? Well, yes. Yes, I am. Asked and answered.

Our school computers have been completely out of commission since last Wednesday, because all the schools in my district are going on this new centralized system. I have no idea why. I thought our old system worked just fine. We were given some training after school this afternoon on how to use the new system. The training lasted an hour. I figured it out in under five minutes – and I am most emphatically NOT a computer expert. And teachers are just the worst group of people to try to teach! We don’t listen, we continually make random comments just to hear ourselves talk, we don’t even look at the speaker – and after an hour of instruction, at least half of us are still wandering around saying, “I don’t get it. What was that first step again?”

And once again, when I finally got home, the recycling guy had thrown my emptied recycling box right in the middle of my driveway. I had to open the garage door, stop, get out, pick up the box and place it in its spot in the garage, get back in the car, drive into the garage, close the garage door. I must have wasted at least two extra minutes doing all that!

But the rain had stopped by then. And there was leftover Halloween chocolate to snack on. I’m feeling better now.

PG and I traded cars one day last week so he could take my car in to get winter tires installed. I’ve never bought winter tires in my entire driving career – this is Vancouver, after all, and it mostly rains here in the winter and doesn’t get super-cold.

Except last year. We had enough snow last year to cover our quota for about fifty years, and it lasted longer than our snow here has ever lasted. And there I was, in my brand new car with my all-season tires, stranded at home because I couldn’t get out of my driveway. And if I could have gotten out, I couldn’t have driven too far because we have no idea how to clear roads here. Oh, the excuse was that it was snowing so much that they just couldn’t keep up, but I’m not sure I believe that. Cities like Toronto or Montréal, which regularly have copious amounts of snow, seem to keep up fairly well. Those cities don’t shut down in the snow. But Vancouver? Wah, there’s snow, let’s all go hide under the covers!

But anyway, I don’t ever want to go through another winter like that – me and the other million people who live here. We’re all frantically buying and installing winter tires this year. It can be hard to get the tires you want, so many people are purchasing them. The first set of tires that PG ordered for me were sold to somebody else before they even were delivered to the shop, so he had to go on to Plan B. Fortunately, he is quite knowledgeable about tires, and loves doing the research and phonecalls to track down the best deal, so at least I had somebody with the time and expertise to do that for me.

The big issue, apparently, was that the all-season tires that came with the car are run-flats and the winter tires I ended up buying are not. When one of them is punctured or flat, run-flats can be driven for about another 100 km, at a reduced speed (whatever THAT means – is it 50 km/h? Reports I’ve read vary.) to safely get somewhere to get the tire replaced (most likely) or repaired (occasionally). This means that my car did not come with a spare tire or a jack. This means that now that I’m running regular tires, I still have no spare or jack.

The tire dealer was quite worried about this. PG reassured the poor man that I have both BMW Assist and BCAA, both of which can come to my rescue if ever I have a flat tire. And really, I’ve only ever had a flat tire twice in my whole life: once was from hitting a pothole in the dark in a construction zone and the other was when I was forced into the curb by the car beside me deciding to change lanes without checking to see if another car was already there. So I think the odds are pretty good that I’ll be just fine for the five or so months that I’ll be driving on my new winter tires.

It better snow like crazy this winter. I didn’t spend all that money for nothing, ya know!

I woke up this morning with an ache in my nose. Well, it was actually in my sinuses. I took some sinus medication and carried on getting ready for work.

The medication apparently did nothing. The pain spread to my forehead and around my left eye. I had a small breakfast and felt faintly like vomiting. Which should have been my first clue, really.

I went to work. The pain got worse. I took another sinus pill. I started to see faint lights at the periphery of my vision. Ah, I thought. I have a migraine.

I told the office staff that I had to to go home while I could still drive. I spoke to the other teachers with whom I usually work on Wednesdays. Then I went home.

Normally, when I have a migraine (admittedly not very often), a couple of Tylenol and a good nap works for me. I’m lucky that way, I know. I’ve only ever been really incapacitated by a migraine maybe once or twice in my whole life, but I know many people to whom this happens quite regularly, like once a month or so. I know people who have very strong prescription medication for their migraines. I also know a couple of people who don’t take their medication in time and end up suffering for an entire day and a half.

Anyway, when I approached my house (which is actually a triplex), half the driveway was blocked by one of those lift trucks. There were several signs posted along the driveway stating “Caution. Men Working Above.” There were hoses snaking all over the place. There were a couple of pressure washers parked near the house itself. Oh, I thought. Now I remember. Today is the day they start cleaning all the gutters, exterior siding, and windows. With pressure washers. Noisy pressure washers.

So I squiggled my car around all the cleaning paraphernalia into my garage, went into my house and popped my two Tylenol. However, a nap will be out of the question today. It’s just too noisy. But at least the Tylenol has done its job and although I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy two hours later, the pain has abated.

I guess I’ll just lie on the couch in front of the fire and gaze out my newly-cleaned living room windows, listening to the dulcet tones of pressure washers.

The story of DD’s efforts to interview a PR professional for school is continuing, it seems. In a good way this time.

She, of course, had explained the whole situation to her program coordinator, complete with righteous indignation and accompanying dramatic body language. Her coordinator, of course, was very sympathetic and reassured DD that she would try to work something out, perhaps with a willing graduate of the program, in time for DD to complete the project. But before she started to make those phone calls, she fired off an email to an acquaintance of hers, who just happens to be on the board of some PR association in the province. She wanted to let him know that some of the members of this association had treated some of her students very unprofessionally and they needed to understand that a student’s time is just as valuable as theirs, that students have deadlines just like they do, and that students are deserving of just as much respect as they are.

This gentleman (and you will see why I call him that in a minute) replied very quickly. Basically, he was astonished that some of his association members would behave so disrespectfully. Their behaviour was unacceptable, according to him, and he would certainly bring it up in a general way with all the members in the future. And as for this poor student, he’d like to help her out. Would she like to interview him?

The coordinator quickly passed on this information to DD, who could not quite believe it. This man is one of the top PR people around, and is in charge of the PR of a number of very large, very well-known companies in the Vancouver area. He is a board member of a huge association. He is kind of a big deal. And he was offering to give her an hour of his valuable time, if she was interested.

If she was interested??? Hell yes, she was interested!

After a few emails and phone calls, the appointment was set up for Saturday afternoon. Yes, this lovely man is going to take time out of his weekend to help out a student who is thinking of entering his profession. And he has laughingly promised her that there is no way that he will blow her off, because he was once stood up on a date when he was teenager and he still remembers how awful that felt, so he has made it a point to never, ever do that to anyone else.

Now THAT’S good PR.

I’m feeling very irate on behalf of DD. She’s feeling quite livid on her own behalf. Why? Read on …

DD’s major assignment at school this semester is to research a career in which writing skills are used and to interview someone who actually works in that career. This is not necessarily a novelist or journalist, though it could be. There are many, many ways to earn a living that involve writing, and after much thought and deliberation, DD decided to research a public relations career.

What she learned excited her – particularly the fact that if a PR person works for a large company, it is very possible to earn scads of money. This really interests DD. So, she found a woman who runs her own PR company, contacted her, and arranged to meet her for an interview.

DD rehearsed all her questions many times, figured out the most efficient way to get to the appointed location on time, practiced with her digital recorder, carefully planned her clothes, hair and make-up (must look professional, you know!), and headed off early so that she wouldn’t be late. She texted me when she arrived, way too early.

Then she phoned me. In the middle of the morning. You don’t phone a teacher in the middle of the morning. We are busy teaching. So when the phone rings, we immediately assume that it’s an emergency and we answer in a panicky voice.

It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but DD was pissed. Her interviewee didn’t show up. All that preparation for nothing – not to mention a big project that revolved around this interview.

But DD did make contact with her MIA interviewee later, who was full of apologies. So sorry, she wailed, I forgot! One of the casualties of running your own business is that you don’t have secretaries making your appointments and keeping you organized any more, it seems. The woman offered to meet DD another day, but that didn’t work for DD. So, she offered to set DD up with another PR person who lives in our area. DD agreed, thinking that this would be the very least this PR person could do to make up for the missed meeting.

So, after a few emails and phone calls back and forth, DD ended up making an appointment to meet with this second PR person today. She even emailed her yesterday, reminding her of the time and place of their scheduled appointment, concluding with a friendly, “Please call or email me if something has changed and you’ll be late or won’t be able to make it after all.”

I was getting my nails done late this afternoon. My phone rang. Luckily, one hand was done so I could answer. It was DD.

“Mom,” she said flatly.

“Hi DD,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“I have a question.”

“Okay.”

“How long is it appropriate to wait for someone when they don’t show up on time to meet you?”

“This one didn’t show up either?!” I sputtered.

DD’s voice was cold. “No, she didn’t. I’ve already left her one message saying that she was fifteen minutes late and I was wondering if she was still on her way or had I gotten the day or time or something wrong.”

No, DD, you didn’t get anything wrong. You did everything right. It’s just too bad that some people can’t keep commitments to those who are counting on them. And five hours later, this woman still hasn’t had the courtesy to call DD back to explain her absence. I hope it’s not death or destruction, because that’s all that could possibly excuse this lack of manners. Possibly.

And DD still has to interview someone who makes their living by writing. Someone who will actually show up to the interview.

Halloween will be upon us in two weeks. This is a huge event for kids. I don’t especially like it myself, but seeing as how I spend my working life with kids, I do have to suck it up and “enjoy” Halloween for their sake. I’m just that altruistic.

The school at which I am currently teaching has a Great Pumpkin contest every year. Somebody (the principal? a teacher? the parent group?) gets a really big pumpkin and places it on a table in the front hallway near the main office. Kids take a good look at this pumpkin and guess how much it weighs. They write their guess on a piece of paper and stuff it into a box beside the pumpkin. On the afternoon of Halloween or the day closest to it, somebody (again, the principal? a teacher? the parent group?) looks at all those slips of paper, and the kid whose guess is the closest to the actual weight wins. Something. I don’t know what. Maybe the pumpkin itself? As is by now obvious, I’m not a huge Halloween fan, so I haven’t honestly paid a lot of attention the the Great Pumpkin contest.

But I do pay attention to the kids. And one little kindergarten boy had what I would definitely say was the best guess ever. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the contest should just be shut down right now, because this youngster should win, no question.

His guess?

“At least ten hundred feet.”

Oral guesses count, right?