Just a few items …

So, what’s been going on with me lately (besides the fact that I haven’t been posting any blog entries)?

Well, for starters …

The water pump on my car died, leaving me stranded in the middle of an intersection trying to turn left. I eventually got the car started long enough to actually park it in the carpark that I was trying to get to. Later, I managed to limp home to my garage. I had to get the car towed to my dealership for the repairs – that was a first for me! And after four days of driving my mother’s car, my car was all fixed and I was 1200$ poorer. Yes, you read that right: the towing charge and the repair costs came out to just under 1200$! I had no idea that water pumps for BMWs were so spendy. Now my brakes are intermittently squeaky, and the service advisor told me that the best was to get rid of the squeaks for once and for all was to replace the brake pads and maybe the rotors. Uh – no thanks, not at this time. I’ll put up with the noise for now.

I decided that I wanted new glasses, despite the fact that I wear contacts all the time. I’ve just seen so many cool frames on so many different people, so I thought that I’d like to have the option to wear some nice glasses sometimes, particularly in the evenings after I remove the contacts for the night. Well, my optometrist informed me that I was now in progressive lens territory, and those can cost a fair bit. I found a pair of frames that I absolutely love, so I decided to go for it. That “fair bit” ended up being about 800$, which I didn’t really mind, because at least now I’ll have them for many years (my prescription hasn’t changed in like a decade, so I’m thinking positively!). But wow, am I ever having a time getting used to progressive lenses! I’m trying to wear them for a few hours each evening, and they’re so weird! I can’t seem to situate the frames in the correct spot on my nose so that the distance part of the lenses is right in front of my eyes, then when I figure that out, I have trouble finding the right area for close-up vision. Then I’m having issues with turning my head to look directly at whatever I want to actually see, because if I don’t, the image is kind-of wavy and distorted and a bit blurry. They did caution me that even with regular nightly attempts of at least several hours, that it would take me around two weeks to adjust, but I just don’t know. I intend to persevere, but I only have 60 days if I want to return them. I hope that’s long enough for me to get used to them!

DD had her 28th birthday early this month, and to celebrate, I booked a downtown hotel room for us one Friday night and then I took her shopping for clothes – her birthday present from me – on Saturday. We had a blast, as usual, and she was quite satisfied with all the clothes she chose. Except for the shoes. She only got two pairs. Apparently ALL her shoes are in tatters, so really, she needs more than just two pairs. And a new bag for her laptop. She REALLY needs one of those, as her current one is also in tatters and she’s afraid her laptop will one day fall out of it. But the one she REALLY wants is from an American on-line shop, and the shipping charge to Canada is almost more than the cost of the bag, so she hasn’t ordered it. I guess she was hoping I would?

DD got her first year law exam marks back. She did well – I think. She’s a little disappointed, because she was hoping to do even better, but realistically, she said she scored pretty much where she thought she’d be. However, she had to defer one of her exams because she was so sick the day she was supposed to write it at the end of April, so she’ll be writing that one in July and still has a chance to increase her GPA. She tells me that even these first year marks are extremely important for her future standing in terms of articling offers from big law firms upon graduation, so she’s quite motivated. Okay, DD – go forth and study!

DD also got one of the summer jobs that she applied for – the one that is located at her university and was apparently quite coveted by many law students. It wasn’t the one that paid the most of all the jobs she applied for, but it seems to be the one with the most cachet, something that she can proudly add to her résumé. I’m so happy for her, because over the past four years, she’d applied for SO many jobs and had SO many interviews, but she was never hired. She was frequently told that she was the “back-up” candidate for the job, meaning that she was well-qualified, but someone else had a little something extra, so if that someone else turned the job down, it would be offered to DD. Unfortunately, that never happened. But she’s now making decent money for the whole summer – along with taking one course. She’ll be busy, but she’s happier when she has a lot to do. And when she’s happy, I’m happy (it’s a mom thing!).

And recently, I’ve developed some pain in my left shoulder. It’s starting to feel the way my right shoulder felt two years ago before I had countless hours of chiropractic treatments and therapeutic massage and dry needling to help it move without pain again: it’s always stiff and painful to lift my left arm out to the side, it hurts big-time to do a yoga plank, and sometimes, when I’m not doing much of anything, it’s just plain achy. I’m getting concerned, and I don’t want to leave it so that it gets as hurty as the right shoulder eventually did. So I have made an appointment with the physiotherapist who helped me so much with the dry needling back then. Unfortunately, she can’t see me and my sore shoulder for another two weeks. I guess a lot of other people think she’s good, too. So I’ve cut way down on working out on the machines at my gym and I’m trying to regularly do a few of the exercises that she gave me to do last time. I just don’t understand why this shoulder thing is happening again. PG says it’s how I sleep. I say, don’t you worry about how I sleep, Mr Salmon-swimming-upstream-in-his-sleep!

Yep, that’s some of what I’ve been doing when I’ve not been writing here.

Now, aren’t you glad you know???

A little irritated here …

So, yeah. Then my life happened and I forgot to blog about it.

But there are a few things that have been pissing me off lately …

… like twenty-somethings who text while driving on the freeway – well, not actually driving, more like wavering left and right in their lane, coming perilously close to the centre median, forgetting to use the gas pedal and slowing down to 50 kph, speeding up and coming perilously close to the vehicle beside them, etc. I have only one thing to say to you: enjoy your accident and pray that you don’t take anybody else out with you.

… like self-centred parents at schools – okay, I can’t lie, at my school – who assume that just because they have a particular teacher’s work email address, that they can email said teacher about stupid and unimportant little things any old time they feel like it, such as during a teachers’ strike action, and then get a little miffed when the teacher doesn’t respond. Hey, what part about “on strike” didn’t you understand? The part where the workers are on the picket line and not working?

… like next door neighbours who decide that when they bring their garbage or recycling bins inside, that they will carefully place mine in front of my garage door, right where I need to drive in, instead of just leaving the bins where they originally were: to the side of the driveway. Why, why, why??? Have I ever neglected to bring in my bins? Have I ever moved yours? Have my bins ever impeded your access to your garage? Do you honestly think that this is helpful? No, no, no, and no. Quit it already.

… like people with whom one is acquainted (I would say friends, but I’m not sure that truly applies any more) who either simply don’t respond to an invitation to meet for a drink after work one day, or occasionally do respond, but at the very last moment with a breezy “Oh, sorry, too busy this time – and too busy to meet the next time, and the time after that”. And then when they actually do deign to attend a social gathering, which is maybe twice a year, they try to impress you with how very very busy they are , but how very very much they miss the company of you and the rest of your crowd. Yeah, right. I don’t care. A question for you: have you noticed that the invitations are getting rather sparse these days – or have you been too busy to notice that too?

… like a friend’s boyfriend who appears to be saying all the right things to her, but doing all the wrong things. Hey, buddy, haven’t you ever heard the one about actions speaking louder than words? No? Well, how about the one where your lady friend, who happens to be my friend, tells me all about what you’re saying and doing – and lemme tell you, she’s NOT happy. And I also know that she’s told you exactly how she feels and exactly what you are doing to upset her so much, so you have no excuse for treating her that way. I’d like to tell her to kick you to the curb, but despite her unhappiness, she seems to be convinced that you are The One and that the love you share is exquisite and eternal and perfect. So because she is my friend and I like her, I can’t tell her that, she has to figure it out for herself. But I sure don’t like you!

Sigh.

I hope I’ll be less touchy tomorrow.

Hilariousness

My good friend Meshka sent me this e-card. She said that when she saw it, it totally reminded her of some of our conversations, and she absolutely HAD to share it with me.

And the thing is, she’s right. She and I do have some of the craziest, funniest, most interesting conversations ever. When we’re sober. It’s about eleventy-million times crazier, funnier and more interesting when we have had a glass of wine each. (We are both tremendous lightweights, so one glass pretty much sends us over the edge.)

The other thing is, I have conversations like that with BFJ too. And she and I have been having these conversations for 34 years now. You would think that we would have nothing left to say to each other by this point, but no. We seem to keep finding more topics to discuss. And we laugh and laugh and laugh. We actually went out for lunch with our daughters three weeks ago and we had to go hide in the bathroom, just the two of us, to laugh till the tears fell. We just HAD to. We were embarrassing our daughters at the table.

And another good friend, R! Holy CRAP, do R and I have conversations! At the speed of light, we veer from debating which is the better colour, pink or yellow, to why the hell her husband would give her a raw potato in her lunch bag, to the merits of the glorious multi-coloured rubber cowboy boots that she found in Texas on vacation one year (all completely true stories, by the way. Do you see those boots???). I don’t see her quite as often as I’d like to these days, but I sure do enjoy talking and laughing with her when we do get together.

Then there’s PG. One of the things that first attracted me about him was his amazing ability to converse with absolutely anybody at absolutely any time – and make them laugh. I am not kidding. I keep a file of “PG-isms” on my phone, a list of some of the weird things he has said that have tickled my funnybone over the years. Of course they are taken completely out of context, but to me, that makes them all the more hysterical. Gems such as: “If the bear kills you, you’re dead” and “To eat, you need to destroy” and “Do you really want to hit this temple of bad-ass that I’m gonna open up on you?”. Honestly, when I’m ancient and on my death bed, I expect to die laughing with this guy right beside me.

And the conversations that DD and I have are very often side-splittingly funny too. She and I have spent quite a bit of time together over the years (I am her mother, after all), and we have had a fair number of conversations. The best ones are usually when we are travelling, and often occur when we are ensconced in our hotel room for the night and can safely mock all the people with whom we came into contact during the day. In fact, DD once wrote a manual on how to travel with me, which she presented to PG the first time he and I went to Vegas together. I remember sitting in the airport, the two of us reading it, and both of us just howling with laughter. It was all incredibly funny because it was all incredibly TRUE! For example, some of her advice was:
“Eat as much breakfast as possible as quickly as possible. Sustenance is needed. Statistically, you have until the end of Pinklea’s second cup of Hot Beverage (generally café au lait) to accomplish this.”
“Waiting for the pedestrian light is not a part of Pinklea’s routine behaviour. Adapt.”
“The guidebook provokes extreme antisocial tendencies in Pinklea. Do not place yourself between the two.”
“Pictures are to be taken sparingly and efficiently, by Pinklea standards. Mocking those who choose to take pictures when Pinklea has no intention of turning on her camera is another good bonding initiative.”

So yeah, hilariousness. I seem to have surrounded myself with it. And that’s good, because I like to laugh. Even at myself. Apparently.