How to have a crappy day: a primer

1. Have cat knock alarm clock off bedside table so that battery dislodges, alarm doesn't go off, and you wake up late.
2. Since you are going to be late for work anyway, take the opportunity to drop off cheques for July and August parking (even though it's half-past July, they haven't towed you yet) at the Polish Catholic church in whose lot you park
3. Sing this song loudly while waiting for the church receptionist to buzz you in.
4. Trip on your sandals while climbing the tile stairs up to the church office, dropping your purse and bruising your knee.
5. Try not to blush when the church lady, who has come running at the sound of your fall and is picking up objects which have been jettisoned from your purse, hands you a hairbrush and a business card from Fantasia that you got at a party in February.
6. Go into the office to give her the cheques and hear street noises, which leads you to notice that the closed-circuit TV coverage of the church door includes sound. Remember what you were singing loudly while waiting to be buzzed in. Wonder if the church lady will let such an obvious deviant such as yourself to continue to park on holy ground.
7. Walk to work from the church with sore knee.
8. Get to office and have just enough time to go through email before having to walk back to church (with sore knee) get in your car, and drive to the periodontist to have 'pocket-reduction surgery' on one quarter of your mouth.
9. Realize that nervousness about upcoming surgery has given you ummmm...stomach issues.
10. Drive wildly around periodontist's office parking lot looking for empty spot before pants accident occurs.
11. Find bathroom. Avert danger.
12. Wait in waiting room for 20 minutes.
13. Get shot up with enough novocaine, or lidocaine, or Michael Caine to immobilize a water buffalo.
14. Try to answer the bright and cheerful chatter of the hygenist with your frozen and seemingly swollen mouth and tongue.
15. Wonder if it's being filmed for youtube.
16. Try to relax and find your happy place* through meditation while listening to the periodontist and hygenist scrape, cut, suction, and suture your gums while discussing the quality of ribs served at Montana's Cookhouse vs. those served at Baton Rouge in Kanata Centrum.
17. Spend one hour (not exaggerated for effect) on the phone at the receptionist's desk with VISA because every time the receptionist tries to use your card to pay for it, the message "call for authorization" appears, and you get put on hold each time and then forgotten.
18. Find out that the problem is the magnetic stripe on your card (thus removing the unspoken belief you can see in the receptionist's eyes that you are over your credit limit) and that phone messages recorded on your home voicemail by VISA security staff have explained this, to which you reply that you AREN'T AT HOME, YOU ARE AT THE PERIODONTIST'S OFFICE AND THE FREEZING IS WEARING OFF AND YOU ARE IN A VERY BAD MOOD.
19. Finally pay using VISA once the receptionist enters the number rather than swiping the card.
20. Return to work, and after leaving a long, garbled, barely understandable message on the voicemail of a scientist in Halifax regarding Crown copyright, decide it's best for all concerned for you to go home and claim sick time for the rest of the day.
21. On the way home, stop to pick up some Listerine, which the perio has told you to use 4 times a day.
22. After you get through the checkout, you notice that the skies have opened and it's pouring rain. You are not wearing a jacket. Your umbrella is, you guessed it, in the car.
23. Wait for 5 minutes and then decide that the rain isn't going to stop anytime soon. You're headed home anyway, where you can change into dry clothes, so you might as well just suck it up and jog out to the car through the rain. With the sore knee.
    
24. Get soaked within the first 30 seconds. Realize you don't remember parking your car that far from the store. The flash flood in the parking lot creates puddles so deep that you are submerged to your ankles. You are wearing jeans. They are not flood pants. Your wet birkenstock-like sandal goes shooting off your wet foot and hydroplanes across the giant puddle. Twice.
    
25. Make it to the car, get in, swing the wet hair out of your face, put the car in reverse and the rain stops. Like someone turned off a switch.
    
26. Go home, take some more Advil, and sleep, you're going to need your strength for when the kids are done at daycare.

*more on the happy place meditation tomorrow

Again with the drinking

Was blog-jumping a while back and came across this meme at Whiskey in my Sippy Cup. I filed it away and forgot about it until today. Because I've been on vacation and far, far away from my computer. Well, not geographically far, since we stayed at home, but mentally far, far away, like splashing around in the pool. And playing at the playground. And feeding ducks at the Arboretum. And running around screaming at the splashpad. And sitting on the deck under the gazebo drinking wine and reading.

I'm a classic. Who knew?

You Are a Classic Martini

You are a sophisticated drinker, who knows that simple quality is never over-rated. You're a knowledgeable drunk, but sometimes you're a know-it-all when you're blasted. You should never: Drink and gossip. You tend to forget who's standing right behind you! Your ideal party: Has a real bartender. But no one mixes a better drink than you. Your drinking soulmates: those with a Chocolate Martini personality Your drinking rivals: those with a Margarita Martini personality

What Flavor Martini Are You?

The weekend by the numbers

I ran this same type of post last year at this time. And was reminded when I saw it quite serendipitously on Rude Cactus this morning. So, due to a lack of originality, and without further ado, I present:

My weekend by the numbers:

Number of children with strep throat: 1 (Better than last year, when I had 2 children with chicken pox)

Number of years since my ex walked out: exactly 3 on Sunday

Number of glasses of wine consumed in celebration of singlehood: 2

Number of nights a sleep-out in the tent in the backyard (practice camping) was attempted: 2

Number of nights actually spent in the tent in the backyard: 1

Number of storybooks read by flashlight: 3

Number of silly jokes told and giggled at: 1,583

Number of times I said, "It's only the wind in the tree.": 312

Number of children who ended up actually sleeping *ON* me in the tent: 2

Number of times I woke during the night due to being elbowed: 14

Number of big trucks and heavy machinery that rumbled past the backyard at an ungodly early hour of the morning on their way to the new subdivision being built : 26

Number of Advil taken for lack-of-sleep headache: 1

It must be a sign

The girls bought this at the dollar store:


Rachel keeps hanging it on my bedroom door knob.

Five years old, and already a working knowledge of irony.

I don't think I want to sail on *that* pirate ship

Rachel, running around the house wearing a black eye patch emblazoned with a skull and cross-bones, brandishing a foam-rubber cutlass:

Rae: "Mom, I'm a pirate!"

Me: "Cool. Say something pirate-y."

Rae: "Arrrrrrr, me herpes!"

Me (envisioning a cold-sore-crusted Captain Jack) : "I think you mean 'me hearties'."

Rae: "Are you sure?"

Me: "Yep."

Horror at Make Out Point

You can enlarge by clicking if you can't read the text.

Not all urban legends are false......the Evil Ninja Assassin Cat returns.

Horror at Make Out Point

In theatres Wednesday.

I laughed. I cried. I might even have peed a little. (You know, from the laughing.)

Supposing you don't live under a rock without access to television, Internet, or newspapers, you must be aware of Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt's impending twins.

Go read this. You'll be glad you did. Your panties, maybe not so much.

And it's not even Monday

Back at work after the long Canada Day weekend. Late, because we got up late this morning, because we got in late last night, because we went to Dunrobin for Canada Day fireworks, and didn't get home until after 11. Not sure I'm ready to be at work. How do I know this? Well maybe the fact that I have yet to type a complete sentence (you know, with a subject and a verb and some articles and stuff). Or that I was standing, half asleep, in the corridor outside my office this morning, getting mildly annoyed that I couldn't open the lock on my office door. And then realizing that it was unlikely to happen as I was pointing my car remote at the door and pressing 'unlock' repeatedly.

Bring. Me. Coffee.

*****

And big thanks to all of you for all the kind words about Leah. The first night was definitely the worst. The fact that she had the appliance in on the Thursday of a long weekend helped, since it meant that she did a lot of activities that tired her out, and I let her stay up later than usual, which tired her out. We're not home-free yet, but it's getting better.