Only 1 more holiday to dread .....
New Year's. I hate New Year's eve - the hype, the expectations, the pressure. It's just another day to me. Hip hip hooray - no way. My holidays to date:
- severely depressed by my mother's harsh treatment and bitter tongue
- visiting sister who sleeps until noon
- barfy flu for 1 child; fever flu for the other
- fever flu for me
- ate too much (so much so that 2 pairs of jeans do not fit me now)
- exercised too little (hard to do with the flu)
- no snow

Okay, on the bright side:
- no work
- sister seems much much happier now that she is doing something new with her life
- kids are happy despite their respective flus
- went to Niagara Falls for some good cheesey fun
- actually sleeping in past 8am (I didn't think that my body was equipped to do that anymore)
- saw some good movies

My family is crazy - no seriously. When did my father get so odd and senile? Why does my mother hate everything about me? I would love to have one of those close families who actually enjoy spending time together - do they actually exist outside of the movies? I love spending time with my kids .... do you think that they'll feel like spending time with me when they're older? I hope so. I definitely have a very different relationship with them than I did with my parents. We talk, we joke around, we discuss the world, we even mix martinis together - B is going to be quite the bartender one day, and E thinks it's cool that I'll let him have a drink (albeit a small one). Families .... sigh.

The trouble with email ......
is that it makes people very "brave" in their communication. As an educator, I receive some very rude emails from my students and from my colleagues in the clinical sites. Yet when you see these people face to face or talk to them on the phone, they aren't so "brave" anymore and the point that they are trying to make all of a sudden becomes quite cordial. You have no idea how many fuck-you themed responses I have written to their emails, but not sent. The best piece of advice that I got when I took this position was to compose my response when I'm pissed off - fine - but don't send it. Save it until the next day when I find that I don't need to send it anymore because I'm not pissed off anymore. I think that email is making students very lazy as well - why look for the information that you need when you can just email your instructor and get them to tell you where to look.

I wonder what would happen if we had an official "no email" week ........ Do you think that people would actually talk to each other again?

Taking a Stand - Blog Therapy
Something has gotten into me - maybe it's a good thing, and maybe not. But I'm now more and more able to stand up for myself and tell people what I really think. No matter how uncomfortable it is, or confrontational - I'm opening my mouth. It started at work over the past year - in the position that I'm in I come across difficult situations with not only students, but "educators" who have been in the business about 20 years longer than I have. (I use the term "educators" lightly as these individuals need an entire mental shift to get them out of the 70's.) I have had to put my foot down often, and where I used to be a bit wishy washy with my feedback and instructions, I am becoming more blunt and to the point. Not everybody is happy with the new me, but I'm quite proud of the fact that I am no longer avoiding confrontations.

And now it's spilling over into my personal life. My mother who is convalescing threw me some big BS yesterday and I called her on it and told her that her treatment towards me wasn't fair. Not to diss my siblings, but they have been useless when it comes to my mother's surgery despite the fact that I sent the SOS signal to them months before the surgery. I work full-time in a stressful job, I commute (ie. 14 hour days), I am a single parent, and I have my own health issues to worry about. And yet I am the big fucking disappointment who can't quite please my mother. My brother and sister don't get the guilt trip when they don't call my mother every day, but I do. I tried to visit almost every day when she was in the hospital, and I took her home from the hospital, and I have been to her house almost every goddamn day to see if she needs anything. Yet the "I just thought that you'd like to know how I am and would have called" crap that she threw at me last night .... well you'd think that I hadn't been in contact with her for a month. No more! I've lived my entire life as her punching bag for all of life's disappointments, and I've had to try and grow into a communicator because my family's big dysfunction is the fact that nobody talks and we just let things sit and boil inside of us.

Okay, enough blog therapy for today.

Manchild goes to the Formal
E is going to his very first formal dance on Friday and he is stressing about the whole dancing thing. This evening I had to show him how to slow dance, but because he was too embarrassed to touch his own mother (euw), I had to demonstrate with his brother B. So here's me - the guy - swaying to the music with B - the girl - while manchild took notes. I am slightly worried because the kid has no rhythm. He is very musically inclined - plays the piano and trumpet - but can't move to the beat at all.

Remember those highschool dances? Sigh. He is just getting into the fun part of highschool and, let's face it, the fun part of life. Remember dancing with your first guy, and having a crush on people, and hoping that they'd pass you in the hall at school and say "hi", or how you'd hang out by your locker for hours just to catch a glimpse of him for a nanosecond? Okay, I am choosing to ignore the teenage angst part, and the heartbreak of seeing your crush with another girl (a total hose at that!), and the pressure of wearing the right clothes and having the right hair.

Go manchild go!!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow?

Where is the snow? It's almost the middle of December, and there is no snow here. What happened to the days where winter consisted of snow, and lots of it, from December to March? It's sunny and balmy here today! I actually want snow - give me a nice, crisp, cold day with snow. I love having to put on boots to tramp through the snow to my mailbox. I love watching B play on the big mountains of snow that the snowplow piles on our corner. I love the way Christmas lights look in the snow.

I saw the saddest picture in the paper this weekend - it was a grassy ski slope in the Alps. The ski businesses are suffering in Europe right now because there's flowers on the mountains right now for goodness sake! They say that it's 15 degrees C warmer there than in the past. No ..... global warming isn't an issue worthy of attention at all .......

All I want for Christmas is snow!

In Search of the Perfect Gift ....
There was a comic in today's newspaper that was just hilarious. A guy is at the gift wrapping booth in a mall, and the woman wrapping the gift says, "Nice iron. Your wife will love it. While I wrap it, you might want to go over to sporting goods and pick out a helmet."

This reminded me of a conversation that I had the other day with a friend of mine about the stress of finding the perfect gift for somebody. Christmas has a way of creating unbelievable pressure to give your friends, family, or loved ones the gift to end all gifts. My friend is caught in a situation where his girlfriend of 1 year (ie. first Christmas together) told him that she doesn't want anything ..... well, I looked at him like he had 3 heads when he said that. I pointed out the fact that what she said really didn't correspond with what she really wants. I hope that he gets it now. Anyhow, my kids are relatively easy to buy for - my teenage son even trusts me to buy him some (and I quote) "really pimping clothes". It's my parents that are hard to buy for. Magazine subscriptions are always a good bet for siblings, but what do you buy your parents who have everything? Can you believe that my mother's gift this year consists of mobility products? Nothing like a walker rental and a 2" raised toilet seat to say Merry Christmas! I think that I am having a hard time dealing with the reality of their aging ..... and what comes with that.

But back to the gifts. I am at the point in my life where I don't want somebody to give me something unless they really want it, need it, or love it. And yet I have no clue what to tell people what I want for Christmas. I'm pretty sure that I see things daily that I would like, whether it's in a magazine or in a store, and yet I cannot verbalize one thing that my sister or brother could buy for me. Winter tires? Yee haw. Botox? Hardwood flooring? Spinning classes for a year? (Not so cheap, btw) A maid? A man?

Geez - Merry Christmas everyone!

The world according to Spellcheck
If you want a good laugh then just hit the spellcheck button on your computer. Some of the words that the checker finds as a replacement just kill me! For example:
- I work with a guy named Ezequiel; spellcheck turns this to "asexual" (he now has a new nickname thanks to spellcheck)
- when I spellchecked my last posting, boobs turned into "boobies" or "befog" (what the heck is that? and since when are boobies better than boobs?)
- dosimetry (a word I use for radiation therapy) turns into "dysentery"
- snot becomes "Santa"!!!!!! (ho ho ho)
- Dundas (where I live) is now "denudes"
- even the word spellcheck (okay, maybe technically not a real word) becomes "splices" or "splashes"

What can I say? Little things amuse me. I think I'll go have some chocolate now .....

Peace, love, and chocolate
Oh how I love chocolate. I don't care that it is technically a milk product (which I am not supposed to eat); the agony I may experience is worth it. Yesterday my friend M gave me some chocolate that he picked up when he was in Paris. I was in heaven. I even experienced the first night of sleep without having weird, sexual dreams - all because of the satisfaction from the chocolate. I kid you not! I don't think that men quite understand the hold that chocolate has over women - it's kinda like when men just have to look at women's boobs - women just have to eat chocolate. It's innate.

Random thoughts
Geez, a whole week without my insightful (read opinionated) entries! I was reading the news today and my gosh, this world is crazy! Russian spies poisoned by radiation, a woman who killed her baby by microwaving it, 5-foot high floods in Hamilton from the wicked storm a few days ago, polygamy ...... I truly believe that the natural state of this world is chaos. It will be a miracle if this Christmas season doesn't kill me. Between working 2 jobs (add the commute in and I've got 14+ hour days), my mother in the hospital, and awaiting my surgery I'm feeling quite loonie. (Latest update on my surgery: I was given a date in January but unfortunately it coincided with when I will be in Halifax!) I am sooooo looking forward to some time off!