My One Wish

Can I have a day where I can say whatever I want to people without altering their perception of me?

Concerned for my Mental Well-being...

I'm not sure what's wrong with me. Maybe I'm overly stressed or have too much on my mind or something, but for the first time in my life, I'm not dreading winter.

I'm actually (dare I say it?) looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to cross country skiing, taking some snowboard trips, continuing our new holiday traditions (I may be excited, but I'm still not going to say the name of the holiday that starts with the letter "C" before November). I'm looking forward to going to Smithers for Thanksgiving in 17 sleeps, and for the NKOTB concert with Vassy in 63 sleeps, and for going to visit my family again in the new year, and for Mare coming to visit me in the new year as well. There's lots coming and for the first time it doesn't feel like a big bleak winter is looming.

As someone who adores summer and hot hot weather, I pose this question: WTF changed?

Well, something must have changed because this morning, for the first time since I started driving, when I went out to my car and scraped the frost off of the windows I wasn't uttering a steady stream of four letter words under my breath.

I guess I shouldn't give it too much thought just in case thinking about it makes me revert to my previous hatred of winter...might as well enjoy it, it's inevitable afterall.

NOOOOO!!!! Not yet!!!!

I was running a teensy bit late this morning heading out the door for work at 4:30...ok, 4:40 is more like it. I got into my car, locked the door (a habit I picked up in PG and haven't been able to break...I always lock my door when driving in the dark), and turned on the windshield wipers to get rid of the condensation on the window. But they swiped past and didn't move any water. Because it wasn't water. It was ice.

Ice.

NOT what I had hoped for this morning. So I grabbed my scraper and destroyed the offending ice. Unfortunately I accidentally locked my door when I got out of the car. So I had to run inside, grab Brad's keys, and come back to unlock my door. Thus making me very late. Just adding insult to injury.

I hate goodbyes...

My dear friend Vassy has accepted a job with Global Saskatoon and will be starting there in one week (Congrats Vash!), and so, clearly, everyone who knows and loves her in the city came out on Saturday night for an evening (and early morning) of misbehaving. We started at the Brew Pub and ended up at the Shack.

Me and Vash
~ Vassy, Jon and Me at the Shack
~

The Kindness of Strangers

I know you're not supposed to talk to strangers, but I think there are circumstances...

Vassy asked if I could come to Saskatoon with her on Sunday to help her apartment hunt (and tell her which areas to absolutely avoid at all costs). So we spent the day running around the S'toon until around 6 when we decided it was time to head home. About 15 minutes south of Rosetown, her car started shuddering horribly so we pulled over to the shoulder immediately and sure enough, the back drivers side tire had completely shredded. Seeing as I am a woman of the world, I went to the trunk of her car and found the donut, jack, and tire-iron. I was getting ready to be a big tough girl (rawr!) when a very nice family pulled over in their van. The father and young teenage son came over to help us. Feeling like I had already prove my toughness, I handed the tire-iron and jack over and the pair went to work. They removed the lug nuts (with what was likely more muscle power than I possessed) and went to work removing the wheel. Regardless of what they tried though, it would NOT come off. The poor guy couldn't get it to budge at all. He tried everything from pulling, to kicking, to trying to use the tire iron as a lever before we called Roadside Assistance for help. Only after he knew they were on their way did he and his family leave.

So Vassy and I bunkered down on the car and waited for Roadside to get there. A few people pulled over and we told them what was going on and they went on their way. A little while later a man in a pickup truck with a trailer of tools pulled over. It was getting dark, so I told Vassy that we should just stay in the car and roll down the window a little to talk to him. We explained the situation and he asked if we would mind if he gave it a try. We told him to go right ahead, so he pulled, kicked, and tried the tire iron too. Having no luck with these methods, he went a step further and brought the biggest prybar I'd ever seen from his trailer. Sure enough, the tire popped off and we cheered! He then put the donut on, and told us he would follow us the whole way back to Swift, going 80k (max speed on a donut). We made it back to Swift just about 2 hours later, safe and sound, and very very grateful to the wonderful man who decided to stop and help us.

Not Quite a Convert...

Those who know me, know for the better part of my life (roughly the first 25.5 years) I have had a heavy hate-on for ABBA. I lived by the motto "Better Dead than Disco". Ok, maybe I didn't live by it, but suffice it to say, I was not a fan. When we got out little budgie Peet, I was horrified to hear her start chirping and singing whenever ABBA would come on the radio (no accounting for taste).
So it will probably come as a surprise to those who know me to find out that I went to see Mamma Mia! last night.
Allow me to explain: I'm a sucker for musicals. I love any movie that I can sing along to the next morning in the shower. Perhaps even more powerful than my love of singing in the shower is the fact that deep down in my soul I truly wish I could spontaneously burst into song and have a troupe of highly talented dancers back me up in a perfectly choreographed routine during the most mundane points in my day.
So I went to the theatre (on cheap night, mind you) and soaked up the song and dance. It was definitely laugh out loud, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. At times I found myself deeply embarrassed for the characters, but at the same time loving that they were bordering on psychotic in their jubilation at basically everything that happened. Each time Meryl Streep sang, her voice reminded me strikingly of Susan Sarandon in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (a nice change from the average female singing voice). Poor Pierce Brosnan cannot sing to save his life. He tried, and I'll give him credit, but whoooo...it was a struggle. Occasionally he looked as though he was yawning through the lyrics. Colin Firth did a decent job on the vocals, but I was surprised to hear how high his singing voice was. I have a big soft spot for him though, and frankly he could have croaked out the tunes and I would still have felt as endeared towards him as ever. The storyline was fun, but I have to say, I was mortified by the way Donna (the mother) behaved. She reminded me of some of the ridiculous melodrama I could only pull off as a pubescent teen with a huge crush on my older brother's friends...and even that cost me some dignity.
I guess the bottom line is that it was catchy, fun, and I left humming some of the songs (and hating myself just a little for caving to the draw of ABBA). If you're looking for a chick flick...well, why not? But please, don't force your boyfriends to see this. They may never forgive you.

It was not a good day.

I received some very sad news on Saturday afternoon. My Grandpa passed away during the night on Friday. Mum has gone to Vancouver to be with her sisters and her Mum.
I've wanted to write something and have been thinking about what I would say for the past several days, but somehow I still can't put it to words. I guess the best thing to say is that we all miss him terribly. I have so many great memories of his wonderful silliness, and cheeky sense of humour. Of visits to Parksville and Vancouver Island, of Christmas Eve get-togethers watching for Santa through their New West apartment window, his amusement at me saying he was like RoboGrandpa with his titanium ankle, and of course, being totally grossed out and bewildered at his offer of smoked oysters ("You like smoked oysters, Jess?").
I had hoped that when I sat down to write this the words would just come, but I still seem to be coming up short.

Battling my Low Motivation

I haven't been updating a lot lately for a few reasons:

1. I'm exhausted...I've had the start of a cold coming on for over a week now, and it never progresses or disappears. It just sits there

2. I have a new puppy. This gives two sub-reasons for not posting:

a. I'm afraid this blog will turn into "cute things Oliver does" if I'm not careful, and

b. He's adding to the exhaustion. Turns out our little furry friend has a decent case of separation anxiety and as soon as we leave the house he goes and poos in either the kitchen, the livingroom, or the spare bedroom. Then he goes into the recycle bin and tears into the cardboard, destroying it all over the house, and then he attacks the kleenex box, destroying that too. I'm beginning to cringe when I think about what kind of surprise I might come home to each day. I've done lots of research online though, and everything says it takes a long time to break that anxiety...not terribly encouraging, but I guess that's all there is to it. It's tiring though.

Other than that, not a lot is new. That's why I haven't been updating in such a long time. Not much to say. I go home after work, take Ollie outside, come in, have some lunch, lay down for a nap, take Ollie out again, do the dishes and maybe some laundry, debate on supper for a long time, watch some Sex and the City, go to bed. That's my day. I figure it will pick up once I don't feel like I have a cold anymore. Then there will be some updates.