Hospital Blues

Last night I took Thing 1 to the mall and had a good hard fall on the ice in the parking lot, and today I have one hell of a sore shoulder. The result is a day off work and a trip to the hospital this morning. (The irony is, I gave up running for the winter because I was afraid that I might slip and fall and have to take some time off work.)The nurse said she figured I would be the first of a parade of such injuries, since it rained and then got cold yesterday.

The hospital was pretty efficient; we have a "sort of emergency" room at one hospital, for people who need attention, but it's not life threatening. I got the Mister to drop me off there on his way to work, because after a fairly painful night, I thought I might have done something serious and we are leaving for Florida in a few days, and the last place I want to spend my holidays is in Orlando General. Not to mention, I spend allllll day with my hands up at shoulder height, anything that interferes with that compromises my paycheque mightily.
After some x-rays and a couple of hours at the hospital, the diagnosis was "you have a sore shoulder", which was fine with me, at least it wasn't a fracture or a torn rotator cuff or Dutch Elm disease.

Hospitals are miserable places, what with being full of sick people and all. But the people watching is truly fascinating...I just wanted so much to be able to ask everyone around me "so, what are you in here for?". (And it does not escape my notice that I would be asking the very same question if we were all in jail.) I did bring a book, but mostly I watched everyone else:

• Naturally, the vast majority of the patient population is elderly. Getting old is not for sissies, and lots of people do it with more grace and humor than I think I am going to muster.
• Being significantly overweight makes your life very much harder. And mobility problems as a result of being overweight makes every little action that much harder still. Note to self: lose ten pounds before it is sixty pounds.
• People who work in hospitals really do care. Every single person I encountered was efficient but friendly, and made sure I was getting what I needed done as soon as they could.
• Sick people are cranky and impatient. It's just as well I'm not a nurse, can you imagine me dealing with that all day?
• The number of pregnant women who smoke is surprising, given all the information on the subject.
• When you have three people in a waiting room with the same first name, hilarity ensues.

My right wing is still sore, but after a nap and some chocolate, I think I'm on the mend. But I'm staying away from that damn mall.

Where I Begin My New Identity.

The Mister got a GPS a few weeks ago, which he loves. I have no idea why he got a GPS, since nearly all our driving in within the medium-sized city in which I grew up, and he has lived in for 35 years....chances are that if we have to go somewhere, we already know how to get to it. And most of the driving we do here is between work and home, no assistance required. But the Mister loves an electronic gadget, and couldn't pass up the chance to aquire one, no matter how useless I think it is.
He and the girls seem to spend the majority of the time with the GPS confounding the poor thing. They tell it where they want to go, and the device figures out a route, and then the three of them proceed to take every wrong turn and round-about journey possible, gleefully cackling when the nice English lady on the GPS repeatedly begs them to "turn right, then turn left" at ever corner we pass. Honestly, I would be in complete agreement if the nice English lady on the GPS started swearing a blue streak and telling us to go find our own way home if we are so freaking smart.

Anyway, I was driving the Mister home from work yesterday afternoon at around 4:30, with the girls in the car, and the Mister was telling me that you can programme the device to tell it when you want to arrive somewhere, and it will figure out the time you have to leave, and even alert you when it's time to go. I said I have one of those already, it's called my watch and my head and a sense of responsibility. But he and the girls argued that this was so much better, because it was electronic and therefore, much cooler, and ergo, vastly superiour to my primitive methods.
I said "isn't it way easier to just look at a clock and think 'I had better get going', than go to all that trouble?", and I got HEAPS of scorn dumped on me, with much more enthusiasm than the situation warrented, I have to say.

Thing 1 said "that's just the sort of thing Grandpa would say. Wait a minute....that's because YOU ARE GRANDPA!". Well, the two of them ran with that for a minute or two, thinking up all the ways in which I resemble a 74 year old man with bad knees. "See? You're Grandpa!" they would happily exclaim at each example. When I objected, they trimphantly shouted me down with more examples.

After a minute or two of silence, I yawned, and said I thought I might put my pajamas on right when we got home and go straight to bed before dinner. And Thing 1 shot right out with "What did I JUST say???"

She's right. I'm Grandpa.

Things I Learned This Year

1. It will get better. Nothing stays the same, and no matter how difficult the situation you are dealing with is, it WILL get better eventually. Sometimes "better" isn't what you had in mind, but "better" can mean a lot of things.

2. No matter how many times I try canned salmon, exercising or wearing high heels, I will always hate them.

3. I don't give a rat's ass about Tiger Woods, Jon Gosselin or Brangelina.

4. Not doing things because you are afraid you will fail at them,or that something might go wrong, is a terrible way to live. This year I tried running, fly fishing and golf, and I'm SO glad I did. I changed the way I approached my job, with very satisfying results, and I accepted all invitations that came my way. It's been great.

5. A cat is never going to change his behaviour. He thinks you should change your expectations.

6. I LOVE going south in the winter. I resolve to make much more of an effort to make that happen in the future, because walking on a plane in cold, blustery weather and off a plane into a full-face blast of hot, humid air is about the best feeling in the entire world.

7. My friends and family are kind and wonderful and supportive and interesting and funny. Oh, my God, are they funny. My friends make me laugh so my stomach hurts, and my children can make me wheeze like an old man, and every gathering of my clan is a hoot, and the people I work with are a riot, I value them all immeasurably. (That isn't something new I learned this year, it's something I appreciated even more.)

8. There is a LOT to be said for patience, shutting up, quitting what doesn't make you happy, apologizing sincerely and being content with what you have.

9. There is no such thing as "too much sleep".

10. Saying something nice to every person you come across makes everybody's day better, including yours.

Things I Learned Today

• Toby thinks that if it is too cold to go out the back door, then maybe the front door will lead to Florida. Worth a shot, anyway.
• My husband is the only person I know who can collide with a moving vehicle by WALKING into it.
• Forget the people who shop at Wal-Mart, the Dollar Store is hosting the Weird-Looking-People Convention. Seriously, Dollarama was entirely populated by the aliens from "Men in Black" this afternoon.
• If you leave a tube of crescent rolls out of the fridge long enough, they sponaneously, and independently, explode.
• Cresent rolls make a lot of noise when they explode.
• When the Christmas tree falls over when four people are decorating it, they spend a good few seconds just looking at it on the floor before anyone does anything about it.
• Even if one is a professional hair colourer, it's not easy to colour one's own hair without making an unholy mess.
• Making reggae or hip-hop versions of Christmas carols does not render them "cool" or "edgier", it makes them even more unbearable than usual. "The Little Drummer Boy" is horrible enough without "me and m' druuuuum".
• Coffee makes everything better.

Labour Day

Today is Labour Day, so I laboured.
For months the freezer room in the basement has been getting on my nerves; it is the catch-all for everything that doesn't have a place to go in the house. Slowly, it was filling up to the point where there was a path from the door to the freezer, and every surface was full of junk. I hated it.
Today was the day. I hate cleaning and organizing, I just hate it. I envy people who love that sort of thing, and who live in clutter-free houses every day, with people who actually throw things away. But I live in this house, and that means I have to clean it.

Yesterday I cleaned out the freezer, which is not a job I enjoy, but has to be done every six months whether it needs it or not. I defrosted it too, I didn't just take out all the peas that had escaped and the freezer jam I made in 2006. I was astonished at how much more room there was when I took out the 4 inches of ice along the sides. Note to self: using a blow-drier to defrost the freezer is an excellent idea.
Today I cleaned out the freezer room: 4 bags for Good Will and 4 bags for the garbage man. Somehow, with all that out, the shelves still appear to be full. How does that happen?

I was on a roll of sorts, so I cleaned out the three drawers in the kitchen that didn't close any more. I guess I really don't need 3 lemon reamers and a bag of twist ties. I tossed out instruction manuals to appliances I don't have any more, and a bunch of cookie cutters that never get used because no one can figure out what they are supposed to be the shape of. (Most of them look like bags of potatoes, and at least one of them looked like Richard Nixon.) Really, I can live a full and rich life without those things.

Then I cleaned out another drawer, a bookshelf and the laundry room. Turns out cleaning and organizing isn't my problem, it's getting started that is.

By the end of my day, I was seriously considering renting a dumpster tomorrow, and starting on the garage. (Big Liver Girl got a dumpster rented for her this summer, and it came on her wedding anniversary. I think that would be the best anniversary present ever, even if she didn't even consider putting her husband in it.)

This evening I have spent wandering around and admiring my work. The Mister made appropriate noises, even though he could happily live in squalor without even noticing. The kids wondered if I threw out anything "important". (The answer? Yes, a Hannah Montana sticker album, and an origami kit that we once tried that was so complicated we thought it might be a third-year engineering exam posing as a craft. Also, a poster of American First Ladies I got from Kelly for Christmas once. All very important.)

Tomorrow the kids get back to school. Then I can really get to the purging, while they aren't here to stop me. They may come home to a perfectly empty house.
I can dream, can't I?

Important Things I Learned Today

1. If you leave a whole watermelon at the bottom of the basement stairs for a week, it will look perfectly good until you try to pick it up.

2. When you try to pick it up, your fingers will go right through the rind and it will explode like a water balloon.

3. Rotten watermelon smells like barnyard, watermelon and death.

4. Those Shamwow things don't work for shit.

5. Eat watermelon the day you buy it.