Some days around this office my professionalism gets tested. And when I say tested, I mean TESTED.
No one is here right now, so there’s no point in even stifling my frustration. However, I hope no one walks into the office mid-F-bomb.
No, it’s not a co-worker or even my boss that pushes me to the edge… It’s that piece of crap we call a PRINTER. I’m currently this close --> <-- to ripping it off the table and pinning it to the wall in a headlock, smashing it’s little plastic face in, pile-driving it into the floor, jumping up and down on it several times and then drop-kicking the thing out the window... Then all of the lives that have been negatively affected by it will gather where it lands and join me in a crazy-ass printer-burning party of epic proportions (Office Space style).
Ah, even imagining that made me feel much much better:)
I’m watching Oprah... and Orlando Bloom just showed up at a fan’s house unannounced and surprised the bejeezers out of her. As an aside, I recently heard the word ‘bejeezers’ again for the first time in ages, and thought it appropriate here. I dunno, is it one of those archaic words that only old fogies use? Wait, I haven’t heard ‘old fogie’ in forever either. Whatever. Oh geez, I’m tired and prone to rambling right now. I apologize. You can click 'next blog' anytime ya know...
Anyways, I got to wondering... When they surprise fans like that, do they actually give ANY forewarning? That is, do they warn these people that perhaps they should primp a little because there’s a surprise and that they might be on TV??? Maybe I’m weird but there are days when it’s 2pm, I haven’t washed my face, brushed my teeth or deodorized, don’t have a stitch of makeup on and am wearing the raunchiest clothes ever. Those are the days I’ve probably visited the fridge so many times that I win the “I can hold more food than you” contest with it, and generally just look like I've been hit by a big white van and dragged for half a block under the axle (not unlike that Asian dude in Crash).
If Orlando or any other hottie celebrity showed up (and don’t forget: the TV cameras) at my door THAT DAY, I'd most definitely crap my pants (adding insult to injury). After losing complete control of my Turret's and swearing REALLY LOUD, I’d have to go against every hormone in my body (at least temporarily) and shut the door in his face so that I could spend at least an hour a la transformation. I doubt he’d wait outside my door that long and the surprise would be moot and I wouldn’t get on TV either.
It’s good thing I don’t get cool things happening like that very often because it’s the losing what you could have had that really smarts.
One of these days my roomie is going to lose it on me. She hasn’t told me outright that my singing grates on her last nerve, YET. It’s building though, I can tell. And when that last straw lands, she’s not going to say a WORD. She’s just going to quietly walk into the kitchen, grab a heavy pan out of the drawer and bonk me on top of the head throw-mama-from-the-train style.
I’m waiting… In the meantime I’m singing my little heart out. I admit, when I’m working on my computer at the table and she’s behind me in the kitchen, I get a little skittish.
I don't get much work done around here.
I struggle through life at times. And although in general I live a pretty charmed life that I love, shit happens. Grad school. Relationships. Everything. It can be tough. This blog is one way of coping. I vent, joke, ramble about nothing and overall keep it light here.
Another way I cope is music. I’ve been listening to a song lately that makes me feel stronger. It’s called "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects. (The rest of the album is pretty good too.)
For those of you who may not know, I’ve hopefully set the date for my thesis defense… September. God knows there will be rough days ahead and I’m going to have to just move along.
I’ve included the lyrics below and here are links to the song and video…
And when you need to move along just to make it through, give it a listen. It will cheer you up, I promise:)
Move Along
Go ahead as you waste your days with thinking
When you fall everyone stands
Another day and you've had your fill of sinking
With the life held in your...
Hands are shaking cold
These hands are meant to hold
Speak to me, when all you got to keep is strong
Move along, move along like I know you do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through
Move along
Move along
So a day when you've lost yourself completely
Could be a night when your life ends
Such a heart that will lead you to deceiving
All the pain held in your...
Hands are shaking cold
Your hands are mine to hold
Speak to me, when all you got to keep is strong
Move along, move along like I know you do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through
Move along
Go on, go on, go on, go on
When everything is wrong we move along
Go on, go on, go on, go on
When everything is wrong, we move along
Along, along, along
When all you got to keep is strong
Move along, move along like I know you do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through
(x3)
Move along
Go on, go on, go on, go on
Right back what is wrong
We move along
Right back what is wrong
We move along
Too bad when I was a kid there wasn't a guy in our class that everybody called the “Cricket Boy”, because I would have liked to stand up in class and tell everybody, “You can make fun of the Cricket Boy if you want to, but to me he's just like everybody else.” Then everybody would leave the Cricket Boy alone, and I'd invite him over to spend the night at my house, but after about five minutes of that loud chirping I'd have to kick him out. Maybe later we could get up a petition to get the Cricket Family run out of town. Bye, Cricket Boy. - Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey.
Many times I feel like Cricket Girl. Someone thinks I’m cool and wants to hang with me and I start digging him or her too… but the next thing I know, my incessant chirping ends up getting me run out of their town.
Over the years I’ve learned how to disguise or stifle the chirping for a while, but eventually my head explodes and the chirp cannot be stuffed any longer...
I've come across the odd person who either has the talent of tuning out the chirping or seems to like the noise. And to those people I say THANKS FRIENDS... and I love you too!!!
I learned a new word today... it’s a word that sounds like an insult: pulchritudinous.
I have an insult program on my computer that randomly puts witty quips together for me. Even though I do just fine on the trash talk without any help, it’s kind of handy at times when creativity is lagging… and pantloads of fun!
Anyways, I can substitute pulchritudinous for almost any abusive adjective and it works like a charm!!! For instance:
You pulchritudinous blob of nauseating sinus clots.
You deranged vat of pulchritudinous maggot brains.
You pulchritudinous pile of stenchy parrot droppings.
You revolting vat of pulchritudinous pig bowels.
Actually, it adapts to almost any adjective-worthy situation:
Holy shat, that’s one pulchritudinous zit you’ve got on your forehead!
It was a loooong, painful, one could even say pulchritudinous exam.
That rocked my world. That was totally pulchritudinous man. (in Cheech & Chong voice).
Oddly enough, the word is actually a compliment.
pulchritudinous adj.
Characterized by or having great physical beauty and appeal.
So you could sound like you’re insulting someone, when you’re actually being nice. (Hmm, I usually have the opposite problem… anywho…)
I find your face so damn pulchritudinous that I just can’t stop staring at it.
Or you could tell someone off, while slipping in a compliment on their butt at the same time:
So take that and shove it up your pulchritudinous ass.
Very very clever indeed. I like this word. I shall incorporate it into my daily lingo.
Now go forth and spread the word my pulchritudinous friends!
I’ve been doing statistics on my data for a while now. OH, did I say “doing”??? Actually, I meant “struggling through”. The stats program we have here is exactly that, a program… i.e. programming. And apparently it tells you if your whole grad career was worth the paper you wrote up the research proposal on or not.
So I’ve been leafing through my old notes from the grad stats course I took a few years ago. Looks like that course was good for something, though not much. It was the course from HELL. It's legendary in our department as a "right of passage". Thank God someone came to their senses (shortly AFTER I took it, hmmm). Maybe the suicide contemplation of their students YEAR AFTER YEAR finally convinced the nutrition profs to send their students to another department for statistics.
This course was designed for crop and animal scientists and one of the profs who taught it was a total moron. He gave us partial example problems (never a whole problem worked out from start to finish) with mistakes in them ALL THE TIME, and there was too much time spent doing fricken math equations to apparently ‘learn the theory behind the stats’ (which is BS if you ask me) and definitely NOT enough instruction on the practical end-- the stats "program” I mentioned earlier.
In class, Rose and I would get bored with the moron prof and entertain ourselves with what the geeky grad student were wearing (usually pleated pants yanked all the way up to their manboobs, thick glasses and greasy hair) or some other observation we’d made. Sometimes we’d play this game where we’d pose a question such as: If there was a nuclear war and the people in this room were the only survivors, who would you procreate with to repopulate the Earth? Funny thing is that we both picked the cute short dude in front of us, and Rose’s future husband, unbeknownst to anyone at the time of course, sat at the back of the room. Sorry Des! You’re cute, REALLY… Oh man, in retrospect that’s just too funny. During labs we'd get on msn messenger and try to make the other person laugh out loud. It was challenging to stifle it at times!
Between class, lab and the weekly assignments, the course took 30-40 hours per week to do. This is on top of quasi-normal life and other courses and teaching and seminars… you get the idea. Rose and I would spend ALL WEEKEND on the homework. The times when we tried to start earlier in the week, we’d find out Friday that there was a mistake in the assignment question we’d worked on and all the hours we spent trying to figure it out were a total WASTE. Yes, we would spend HOURS on a single question, not having a clue as to how to even approach it.
I’d just started dating my now ex-boyfriend about a month into this course. He’d always ask me to do something on the weekend and I’d say no, that I had homework. He started to suspect that I was blowing him off. So he informed me one day that he’s really good at math and statistics. Yeah, he took UNDERGRAD stats, which I also thought was EASY. But hey, if he was actually good at math, why not let him help? He came over and we gave him Question #1 from our weekly assignment, plus the textbook for the course, and sent him into the other room. An hour later he came back and said he had NO IDEA how to do it. We laughed, not at his stupidity, but at the utter stupidity that was the stats course.
It was during this time that Rose and I went crazy. We were seriously NORMAL before that period. Seriously. Err, well perhaps it just brought out the crazy already lurking within. Either way, we needed a stress release… There were several coping mechanisms that helped. The first was laughing… It was over this time that Napster was big and we were diving into the joys of free music and, that’s right, wav files. We must have downloaded every fart sound effect file out there! There was Beethoven’s Fart Symphony, well you can imagine that… it was a total GAS! Oops, my bad. We’d giggle to no end listening to that one. There was also a whole jig of toilet farts, and our favourite, the single fart sound effect that we’d secretly slip onto music CD’s we’d make for friends and family. Wah ha ha ha! Yes, totally juvenile but just what the doctor ordered.
Rose also developed this noise she’d make out of the blue as a stress release. It was like a groan-grunt (I think she described it as her “retard noise”, which is so un-PC that I didn’t want to say it… uh yeah, since I’m so PC in the first place…). In the middle of something stressful, she’d release the noise and we’d both totally crack up.
Finally, we used to sing... at the TOP of our lungs. There was one song that we’d play during particularly frustrating times, and we’d belt that one out LOUD. This could be partly why the downstairs neighbours, the lovely people that they were, might not have liked us too much. The song was called “Stash Up” by a band called OPM.
The part of the song that was particularly stress relieving went like this:
Put your hands up
This is a stash up
Pull the trigger and you're gonna get mashed up (4x)
Now I dont give a f*#@
Not a single f*#@
Not a single solitary f*#@
Cause I don't give a f*#@ mother f*#@er (2x)
Nope, definitely NOT popular with the neighbours… but it stopped us from slitting our wrists or downing some tranquilizer pills with plenty of gin chaser. I’m 100% sure of it.
And I have no idea HOW I would have gotten through it if I’d not had Rose to go through it with... I would have snapped. I’m 200% sure of that.
It’s Roll-Up-The-Rim To Win (RUTRTW) time at Tim Hortons (oh man, it’s tough to write that without an apostrophe). This is the time when non-garbage sifters jump into dumpsters to search for the treasure: empty, unrollen TH cups… the ultimate find. It’s also when the non-coffee drinkers succumb to the pressure and flock along with the junkies to Timmy Ho’s. It’s true that thousands of these TH teetotallers get addicted to the Black Death every year at this time (thus adding TH addiction to their existing gambling problem). I’m sure that’s part of the TH corporation’s plot, pretty ingenious actually. Especially since it’s always been my suspicion that they put some sort of addictive substance in their coffee, as if the caffeine vice wasn’t enough for our sleep-deprived society…
Here’s part of a conversation I had with a friend of mine on this topic of the suspected added substance:
Ross: I just had a Tim Hortons coffee and I'm feeling pretty wired, I think you are right - they must be putting something else in that stuff. I'm thinking I should go buy a large coffee, concentrate it, and run it through our GCMS or LCMS and see what shows up... maybe we can write a paper / file a class-action law suit... that's probably ALL you need right now.
Mich: Controversy in research... I like it! However, you realize we could never publish. If the results showed that there was indeed an addictive substance in the TH coffees that had to be removed, we would have to go into the witness protection program! Our lives would be in danger from both TH and the masses of people going through extreme withdrawal symptoms. This is sure to include tremors, debilitating headaches, mood swings and violence... A bad combo for our personal safety.
Ross:
Anyways, the other day on the ski trip, for the first time in forever, I had a TH coffee. I forgot to bring my travel mug and well, I was outnumbered as to where to stop and didn’t protest since I had TH gift certificates on me! I’d gotten them for Xmas (for some reason… whatever, I’ll takem) and this was the perfect opportunity to be a big spender and treat my fellow ski-trippers to a coffee in the spirit of generosity (all 3 bucks worth). In the past, I just didn’t like Tim’s. It gagged me. It was strong enough but tasted weird to me. However, on this occasion, my medium-double-double was just sweet and creamy enough to cover up the weird taste and it was actually drinkable! I got nothing on the RUTRTW though. Dammit!
I’m so ANTI-RUTRTW I can’t even believe it. Uh, if I’d won a TV though, I wouldn’t send it back!!! Ahem. Actually I think it encourages wastefulness. I totally agree with Rose on this issue (see Roll up the opportunistic greed). I mean, can you believe how idiotic that fight over the car is??? Holy schnikes!!!
In fact, I’ve been known to buy a $30 travel mug in order to avoid the dreaded paper cup (DPC). And I hate it when coffee places automatically give you the DPC, unless you specify, “It’s to STAY please!” I’ll have a hissy fit in the place if I’ve had a momentary brain fart and forgotten to mention it and therefore end up with the fricken DPC.
So today I didn’t have my travel mug on me after my meeting across campus with my supervisor. I had two choices on my way back… go to Java Jive (sketchy coffee sometimes and no RUTRTW) or Tim’s. There was no doubt I would need a coffee to prevent head-bobbing in my seminar later. I was going to have to do the DPC anyways so I made the fateful decision… I shyly entered the building where TH is and eyed up the huge line. After fighting the urge to bolt, I timidly approached the Tim’s kiosk… looked both ways, and hesitantly got in line. I hoped no one I knew would see me there as I sheepishly ordered a medium-double-double, my second one in days.
At least it would be fresh.
I was aware as I headed back to my office, with my TH RUTRTW DPC in hand, that this was a rare event. I swiftly made my way up the stairs and to my desk. The coffee was ok, too creamy actually, but drinkable. I found I was unskilled at drinking from the paper cup with the plastic part peeled back and fought with that for a bit. Following a mostly successful consumption, I even let it sit there for a second before I rolled it up.
PLEASE PLAY AGAIN.
How anti-climactic.
I doubt that I will, though, thanks. I definitely Timmy Ho'ed myself out for that one.
I looked at the weather forecast that always pops up on my computer whenever I log on… it says one word: “Haze”. That’s exactly how I feel today. Uncanny. How did they know?
How do cords get so messed up? Today I put my mp3 player, my camera cord and another adapter cord in my bag, separately, and they all came out in one big tangled clump. What the hell happened in there over the last few hours, some kickass game of ‘cord twister’???
I have weird odds and ends in my fridge right now… so for lunch I quickly grabbed a piece of leftover frozen pizza and some peas. Strange, I know. Hey, why is it that TV pizza looks so disgusting? I’m not talking about the Pizza Hut ads, even though that looks pretty gross to me and I loooooove pizza. I’m referring to the pizzas they have on sitcoms… looks like soggy cardboard with some tomato sauce slapped on it. Freakin’, why not just get a real pizza? Then the actors wouldn't have to act so hard when eating it. You can tell they're trying not to actually bite into it, if they even eat it at all. Most of the time it's a happy scene too, they're passing around the pizza, laughing and chatting and having a grand ol' time. I certainly wouldn't be happy, I'd be pissed. Who the hell ordered the tomato sauce flavored cardboard??? Which one of you bastards told them to hold ALL the toppings please?!
Speaking of ads, I can’t remember where I saw it… maybe SNL, where they say, “Who were the ad wizards who came up with that one?” In fact, it's Adam Sandler’s voice saying it in my mind. Anyways, that quote goes through my head a lot when I watch or hear commercials. A LOT. One in particular comes to mind right now, that stupid fricken' maxipad pinball commercial. What the?
Jen came by before the seminar today and was waiting for me to finish up. “I’m coming, I’m coming!!!” I cried, to which she replied, “You aren’t coming fast enough!” I just can't let that sort of thing go. “That’s what all the boys tell me… so then I have to fake it.” Her reaction, as always, “Why why why do you have to do that every time?” Aw, sweet girl she is. She says I should have a sign on the office door that says “PG 17.” Jen, perhaps it should be PG 25?
I told her that I wrote a blog before the seminar… I got an idea and just had to get it over with so I could focus on work after that. It’s kind of like that whole chocolate cake or tub of Haagen Dasz... you know, the one you decide to wolf down in its entirety just to get it over with and therefore not be distracted by it anymore. Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket...
I sit down in the seminar and look at the desktop of the girl beside me. Of course there was scribbling all over it. One 'scribble' in particular caught my eye and as offensive as it was, I still had to laugh. It said, "Big Hairy Vagina-->" and pointed straight at my lap. Ahem. Uncanny. How did they know?
I’m trying to figure out how to pick up Deneen’s boots for her at the shoe repair place. You see, I was doing her a small favour by dropping her boots off, at least it started out as a SMALL favour! How could I have predicted that the old Peruvian shoe guy would totally talk my ear off?!? I had no options for escape and at least a ½ hour later I finally made my break for it!
Let’s check out the gamut of topics he covered in that time:
The lady before me kept coming back for zipper repair
It was a long coat and every time she sits down, her legs naturally spread and wear the zipper.
She refused to listen to him about opening the zipper BEFORE sitting down and so of course she was back with another zipper to fix.
I wondered if it was worse with men because they spread their legs even more when they sit down.
He agreed and said that they had to protect the family jewels.
Joke about penis/vagina size (what the?)
Not going to get into that one.
Joke about what the word for peeping Tom was in Inuit… Tukaluk (took a look).
Curiosity about how the hell Deneen had ripped her boot
Inspected it and offered possible ways to fix it.
Asked, “Did she trip or something?” “Did she kick her boyfriend, look at the pointed toe on that…”
Did I knit my own toque?
Apparently they were selling Peruvian toques in the mall before but now you can find them anywhere.
Peruvians in their toques get really red cheeks without wearing any makeup, due to the wind and sun exposure.
Israelis didn’t want to give up their land because it has aquifers on it.
With aquifers you can grow strawberries up a tall pole, really high, the water comes up from below and they’re easy to pick.
Water is worth more than petroleum if you take the price of a bottle of it.
Found out that I’m in nutrition.
A diabetic guy he knew as a kid changed his diet and lived healthy a long time.
Hasn’t had a Coke since Junior High Chemistry class when the Coke chewed through the nail that soaked in it overnight.
The chinese guy across the way eats junk food all the time and is always tired and has to have dialysis every other day!!!
Finally, "…Nice talking to you, come back and talk again, anytime."
Uh, I am supposed to graduate this year…
Either Deneen has to get her own boots from that guy, or I have to figure out a strategy for escape. I have until Friday to come up with something…
Distress can be defined as “To cause strain, anxiety, or suffering to.” My brush with it began when I skiied down “The Exhibitionist” at Marmot Basin in Jasper in January 2002. Shortly afterwards I wrote this about the experience...
It was my first time skiing in a few years. There was 4 of us traveling from Edmonton to Marmot Basin in Jasper… My friend Nancy, my boyfriend Scott and a fellow PhD student David. It was exciting to get on the slopes after so long! Skiing is an expensive sport, and as a long-time student it had been difficult to find the time or money for this activity. I had also injured both knees hitting the dashboard in a car accident a couple of years earlier, so it was nice when I got cruising down the hills and my knees withstood the punishment.
It was later in the afternoon and I decided to follow Scott down “The Exhibitionist”, a black diamond run covered in these huge moguls. They were ‘do-able’ moguls though and I like to challenge myself, so I decided to follow while the others chose another run. It was near the start of the run when I was rounding a mogul, one ski succeeding in doing so and the other… uh, kept going straight down the hill. The rest of my body also went straight down the hill and I landed face down in the snow. My left leg twisted behind me. An incredible pain gripped me. I wanted to cry it was so bad, and I’m no crier!!! (At physical pain that is…) It took a few minutes for me to get my breath back and regain my bearings. Scott helped me up. I tried to put weight on my left leg and couldn’t, it kept collapsing. I really really wanted to just finish the run on one leg but I couldn’t. There was no possible way. So Scott set up the ski’s in the “skiier down criss-cross”, and went for help. Some people above me on the chair lift were nice enough to ask if I needed help. Yes, I had done this with and audience, hence the name of the run I suppose.
It seemed to take forever, but help arrived. I wasn’t sure how they’d get me down the hill, on the back of a snowmobile? But after checking my leg out, they lay me down on a tobaggon layered in blankets and plastic. They zipped me up so that I had a small space to peer up at the sky, and then a skiier pulled me “horse and sleigh style” down the steep hill. It was a long haul to first aid but we got there ok.
I couldn’t believe the state of my leg. I had never had an injury so serious before, nothing that left me so helpless and in pain. I fought back the tears. I couldn’t straighten it, bend it, or put weight on it.
Later in Edmonton, I lay on Scott’s couch as he ran to the store for crutches, Advil and a bag of frozen peas, bless his heart. He even helped me with difficult tasks such as getting in and out of the shower which is impossible on one leg.
I spent the whole next day in the emergency room and the following day I returned to school, wearing baggy pants that fit over my knee brace, and hobbling around campus on crutches. I had no idea that crutches were so hard to deal with. My arms were so weak by the end of the day that I couldn’t even hold myself up any longer.
The specialist told me that week that I had torn my ACL – anterior cruciate ligament. It’s the ligament that stabilizes the knee, running down the center and keeping it from bending too far one way or another. Once it tears, it never repairs itself. Hearing the doctor tell me that my knee would never be the same again was extremely HARD. Surgery was an option, where they take a tendon from another place and form an ACL from it. Being the surgiphobe that I am, I hoped this wasn’t necessary.
Anyway, after my first few days on crutches, I went on David’s suggestion to rent a scooter. I found out that the Office for Students with Disabilities rents them out for $2 a day. I had hoped to get stronger on the crutches, but the scooter offered an opportunity to get around farther and faster, particularly on campus, while not exhausting me by the end of the day.
The scooter ended up being very useful, except that there were some drawbacks. First of all, any friends or colleagues who saw me trying to get around the school got quite a chuckle at my expense. Bastids!!! Rose wanted me to wear my “special friend” helmet and old glasses to complete the look. This was probably not the most politically correct, but they thought it was funny sight either way, meanies! Other people looked at me differently too. I have to say that I learned a lot about what its like to have a disability, even if it was only for a short time. It was like they were looking at the disability, not the person. The worst part was that EVERYTHING you do is a chore. I swore A LOT. The simplest thing like making dinner is a major task, hopping around the kitchen and hopping and hopping around the kitchen till dinner is made. Then you sit down to eat and something needs more salt, you forgot your knife, or you need to get up again to get a drink. Hop hop hop!!! F*&% F*&% F*&%!!! Not to mention carrying anything like dinner and a drink on crutches or while hopping is quite a unique challenge. I already mentioned getting in and out of the shower with only one usable leg, or doing anything around the house for that matter. Out of the house, I couldn’t drive because my car is a stick shift and my left leg for using the clutch was useless. Rose had to drive me to school every day.
Around school, the scooter really helped, but driving it was almost more painful than helpful. I can really empathize with people in wheelchairs. Just learning which buildings had handicapped access ramps and doors, and where they were was quite a task. My office was in an old building called Newton Research. Luckily it has a ramp, however the front door opens toward the ramp, so that in order to get through the door, I had to drive past it and then somehow reach back to get it open, and back the scooter up while trying not to tumble down the stairs to the immediate left of me. Not easy by any stretch. Sometimes a nice man outside smoking would open the door for me, sometimes I would get off the scooter and somehow try to hold the door open and drive it in from on one foot. Elevators were another story. One day I had to get across campus for a meeting ASAP, and left early as always to make sure I could get there on time. After waiting and waiting outside the elevator to get down from the 5th floor, I finally abandoned the scooter and got my crutches out. At least I COULD get the crutches out, some people don’t have that option. I struggled but gained a new respect. What a helpless aggravating feeling. I found out later that the elevator was out of order.
Another thing about the scooter was that it would stall for no reason. Sometimes this was simply annoying, and sometimes it was downright embarrassing! For instance, back to the need for elevator use… well, people would hold the doors open for me and as I went to enter the elevator, the scooter would just STOP. They would wait while I tried to get it going again and finally I would get so embarrassed that I would just wave them on and say I’d catch the next one, hoping the scooter would come back to life in time and not pull that shit again. But by far the worst scooter stalling times were when I was crossing the street. I would enter the crosswalk with my fingers crossed, praying that it would go smoothly and sure enough, it would stop right in the middle. I would sit there like a dork, trying to get it going again while drivers and other pedestrians looked at me like I was nuts. I’m sure they wondered to themselves as to why I would possibly stop in the middle of the road… like I thought hanging out in the crosswalk when the light was about to turn was a good idea!!! One particular time David was escorting me to a seminar where I had to give a presentation, specifically so I could get there on time and avoid any unforeseen obstacles. Sure enough, I went to cross the street and the scooter stopped. Around the corner a bus came upon us while David tried to push me across to no avail. I got off and we both tried to get the scooter across while a busload of people watched. Eeesh.
Anyways, there were countless other little mishaps, but I got through it… pretty distressed. The mishaps built on each other, and I got really cranky throughout the whole thing and even completely lost it on a couple of instances. It finally got so that if something went wrong, I would just say, “it figures”. However, in retrospect I am very grateful. I learned a lot about what its like to have a disability. However, my brush with distress was just that, temporary. I guess its like that old saying about walking (or in this case not walking) in another’s shoes. My knee may not be the same ever again, but it’s not a permanent disability. There are people who deal with these difficulties every day of their life, and have a good attitude about it… that’s the key, a good attitude. Also good friends to help you out! The truth is that you may not be able to change your situation, but you can change the way you deal with it… in between the all the crying and swearing and throwing of things!!!
I’m complimenting people on their hair today. I’m totally noticing how great people’s lids look. Maybe it’s because mine looks like such crap. That’s why everyone else’s looks so good, cuz I’ve been colouring AND cutting my own lately… yikes. I want a new do. That just made me think of that Huey Lewis and the News song- I want a new drug... Hmmm...
I want a new ‘do
One that won’t make people sick
One that won’t make me smash my mirror
Or make my head look three feet thick
I want a new ‘do
One that won’t mess my lid
One that won’t make me look like a guy
Or make my hair look too helmet
One that won’t make me red-faced
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I might be kinda cute
Like I might be kinda cute
I want a new ‘do
One that won’t make me over the hill
One that don’t cost too much
Or require too much gel
I want a new ‘do
One that won’t get all frayed
One that won’t look like I’ve been up all night
Or like I had sex all day
One that won’t make me red-faced
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I might be kinda cute
I might be kind of cute
Kinda cute maybe
I want a new ‘do
One that doesn’t scream ‘boo!’
One that won’t make people water my chia head
One that won’t make me look Motley Crue
I want a new ‘do
One that's not too green
One that won’t need me to style it too much
Or make me look like it's Halloween
One that won’t make me red-faced
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I might be kinda cute
Like I might be kinda cute
