Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Canadian Tire and reading out loud

As expected today was slightly crazy.

  • work 9-1
  • doctor appointment re: back
  • psychiatrist re: crazy
  • last minute shopping re: Christmas

In between the doctor and the psychiatrist I met up with two seriously pissed me off awesome situations.

I needed to go to Canadian Tire because there is a product on the telly that I want to get for my parents.

Actually, wait, let me be more specific, there is a product advertised on the TELEVISION that people watch, it is a commercial and at the end of the commercial it says available at these stores and one of them is Canadian Tire. I have seen it oh perhaps twenty times in the last two months maybe more and I work now so I watch less t.v; let us not forget that.

I think if it hadn’t been for the information desk that was available to customers at the front of the store I may have let this one go but an information desk says to me that you have information. On products. That YOU sell.

There was no information at the information desk, even after my elaborate story with description of product, name, and the mentioning of the commercial at least six times.

I moved on to the next guy at the paint desk, I was just going to search the whole store because I had close to an hour but he made eye contact with me so I thought HEY why not, I’ll ask him. This guy at least tried to look it up in the computer but I couldn’t see what he was actually doing so for all I know he was watching midget porn.

I wander around and find nothing. I find many similar things, I find things I end up buying as gifts for my parents but no go on the televised product they sell that so far two staff plus the staff they yell out: “HEY HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ______” can’t find, no one has even heard of it.

One more try, finally, someone wants to help me, and guess what folks, together we found the product but not in the store in the computer, they were sold out so I went with a gift card and I will print out a picture of it for my parents and if they don’t want it and buy something else FINE but I am never buying anything off of the t.v that looks cool from Canadian Tire ever again. I’m not kidding you in a store called Canadian Tire I questioned myself as to whether it was at all possible that I had seen the commercial on an American station.

Now for the psychiatrist’s office. I intentionally sat down in the chairs directly outside of the reception area so that I could read 1984, it is a bit quieter out there. I am trying to read this book super fast because we are having another family book club meeting and because my dad and Adam have read it and my mother and I haven’t [I can not believe I have never read 1984] we are discussing it. This happened last time too when we went up to visit, everyone was done the chosen book but me and we had to wait on the meeting until I was done. Bad me.

I was trucking along, just starting to get into it when a woman in the reception waiting area started to read out loud to her child. For about two seconds I was cool with it, I was all, I love reading and kids should read and parents who read to their kids are rad and BLAH I couldn’t bloody concentrate at all on my book so I started to make sounds and hand gestures and I slapped my book on my leg. I think she might have noticed because her voice lowered and I was able to digest the words in my book again.

The reception lady wanted to close the doors so I had to move inside. I sat down and began to read my book again but I was so close to the woman and her child that there was no possible way to block out her reading of the Berenstein Bears and because it involved reading and not say an obnoxiously loud cell phone call in a public closed in waiting area where I would have NO PROBLEM telling you to SHUT IT I was torn because it was a kid and it was reading so I myself decided that I would then read my book out loud to myself and so I did and I know she heard me because when she would stop reading out loud, I would stop reading out loud also.

I find it insane that this woman was so thick she didn’t get the point and SHUT IT or AT LEAST lower her voice.

I had all these thoughts running through my head whilst trying to read to myself and of course exploded the second the door was closed. Turns out the shrink was happy that I had the balls to read my own book out loud because he agreed that it IS a small waiting area and that there was no need for her to be reading the book out loud and the only thing I could have done better would have been to POLITELY tell her to shut it by reminding her that it is a public place you don’t own it and I’m trying to read in relative QUIET please.

Really, I should have known

In the wee hours of last Sunday morning it finally hit, almost like I had been waiting for it, but I clearly wasn’t because just hours before I had stated that I was very proud of myself for making if this far into the ‘season’ with just regular old depression nothing major, and then I went to sleep some heavy bricks fell and I woke up later in the day with that feeling of weight bearing down on me.

Getting out of the city can simply not come fast enough. Tomorrow is going to be a bloody hellish day and then Saturday we leave. I really hope that once I get up north this nasty cloud of depression, anxiety and inability to see anything without negative attentional bias [aka paranoia] passes because it is starting to wreak massive [extra] havoc already.

My back is not getting better and I am finding it extremely stressful, I was able to go out and get many missions done today but not without arriving home and realizing how much was left to do and how much pain I was in and how much ass I felt like and I crashed onto the pillow until Adam came home. I am seeing my actual Doctor tomorrow instead of the Chiropractor because I’m concerned I have never had back pain of any kind for this long before and I’m a clumsy bastard so I want stronger drugs is basically why I’m going.

Flying up north on its own is EXTREMELY stressful in the winter or really any time of year for that matter. The airports of Northern British Columbia are notorious for canceled flights due to weather because the planes simply can not land.

I am sure everyone is feeling their own level of Christmas and/or seasonal stress right now whether you love or hate the holidays, I just could have done fine without the crash in depressionville with it, thinking everyone hates you and is out to get you at Christmas it feels EXTRA good.

should be vs can’t stop & am

I should be:

  • making sock monkeys
  • AT LEAST mailing cards and writing letters to our Grandparents
  • sending cards period
  • light cleaning
  • reading Nineteen Eighty-Four
  • reading The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • returning DVDs
  • getting the Christmas box out of storage
  • catching up on my iGoogle blog feed
  • compiling a detailed list for packing
  • contacting the Greeper sitters
  • compiling a detailed list for the Greeper sitters

I can’t stop:

  • eating seedless mandarin oranges and sweet and salty peanut butter bars
  • playing Guitar Hero III. I FINISHED ONE, Metallica ON HARD TODAY
  • watching Dr. Phil and Hot Topics on The View
  • loading my pipe with Christmas cheer
  • playing on TWITTER. I have asked C.J to pimp my Twitter, it will be awesome, I know it
  • playing on Facebook, even though I am sucking at responding to Facebook mail lately
  • being hyper
  • being in a good mood
  • being excited about going TO THE LAND OF COLD AND SNOW next weekend

I am:

  • slowly catching up on my blog feed
  • going to watch Blazing Saddles tonight

Almost Better

I just got back from my third Chiropractor visit and I am for sure going to go in again on Monday after I work as I’m thinking I’ll be working Monday. Yesterday’s test trek had positives and negatives in relation to the healing of the back.

I’ll regress a bit:

Most of you are familiar with my constant comments I make about my headaches, I have yet to do a post actually explaining them, but they are partially related to my neck and back. The majority of the time I suffer chronic head pain and it leaves my back and neck alone but due to three crashes, one at three years old, one at around twelve and another at twenty my back isn’t right. It isn’t right at all. I also do not handle stress well and tend to hold the extra that isn’t making my head pound in my upper back and neck. It often feels like I am being stabbed with multiple knives all throughout my shoulder area. This pain has all been on the left side lower to middle back and left side of my head.

Yesterday I was slightly disappointed that I was able to still feel pain when I went on my mini shopping trip because I had been told to do NOTHING and so I have done nothing to the point where we are washing dishes to use them, Gus could make a nest with my fallen hair, her hair and dust and we’d not see her till spring and I don’t even want to THINK about the bathroom or the laundry situation. Once I got home and stopped moving it settled down but that doesn’t sit well with me because I really need to get this place cleaned before we leave on a jet plane, not to mention get through shifts at work without customers asking me if I am ok.

I’m glad I didn’t make it worse yesterday and I made the right decision not going to Adam’s Christmas party. I am pretty old school that way, If I am off work I don’t feel it is right to be gallivanting off to some party, [testing my back on a two hour trek up Robson in the pouring rain is rather far from heals and free food and drinks on a boat till 10:30pm] I had the camera on me because I thought he wasn’t going out till 8pm-ish and when I phoned him from Payless around 5:30pm to ask: Napoleon Dynamite style moon boots or rip off Uggs when I already knew what he’d say, he was on his way out the door. He looked super dapper when he got home, he’d worn a suit. He has this really sexy brown pinstripe one from Club Monaco, I’d have taken his photo when he got in but I was tired silly. The man has style though, and he approves of the top I bought for the Saturday Christmas party. It is 100% husband approved!