Things that will be different when I rule the world: a short list

1. Winter. It is dark now by 4:30. This is simply not acceptable. It makes me grumpy (well, more grumpy).

2. Marking. I brought a big box home for the weekend and didn't touch it. I hate marking.

3. My dental coverage says it's 100%, but it is only 100% of what the insurance company figures it should cost, not what it actually does cost. The next time I take the car for an oil change, I'll tell the dude at the garage that, while he figures it should be about $50, I figure it should be about $20, so that's all I'm paying. Wish me luck in that.

4. Christmas. It is stressful and expensive, and because it is, in fact, a religious holiday, it's a little too... churchy for my taste. When the boy is grown up and gone, I am going to check myself into one of those luxury hotels in the mountains for the whole week and not hang a single freaking ornament.

4b. Also, it starts too soon. I can see three lit trees in the complex next door from my window. This is not okay.

4c. And I just finished a bit of deadline knitting, and I hate deadline knitting. Knitting is what I do to relax, dammit! It's the one thing in my life that doesn't have a timetable attached, and that doesn't charge by the hour. Deadlines take all the fun out of it.

5. I will be able to get my Master's degree and they (that's the imaginary group of "they" which is responsible for things like dental coverage and Christmas) will pay me.

6, All books will be as good as The Time Traveller's Wife. And all spellings will be Canadian.

7. Everyone will be equipped with an "undo" button for those moments when something unkind or careless or stupid comes out of one's mouth without warning, and hurts someone. I could have used one last week, actually.

I think I have a slight touch of that Seasonal Affective whatsit. Perhaps I should spend a few weeks in Mexico on a beach in an attempt to get better.

Or I could just wait and see what happens when I rule the world.

A Poem for Saturday

This be the Verse
- Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Warm!

As the Flying Spaghetti Monster is my witness, I'll never be cold again!

Dear reader, I have had a bitch of a week.

Boy and I got our flu shots on Monday, and Tuesday I felt awful. The lady on the help line said, essentially, "there there, dear, just drink lots of fluids and take it easy."

As bloody if. The only fluid I wanted by then was gin, and I don't think that's what she had in mind.

I called the furnace repair dude on Wednesday morning, when the furnace refused to miraculously heal itself and was blowing out cold air for hours on end. (I've come to the realization that I'm in the wrong business - furnace repair dudes charge $84 an hour, which is (ahem) quite a bit more than I make. Also I don't get overtime.) One new part later, it is once again warm in my house! (I know, 18 isn't that warm, but I just got home and had to take the picture before I realized how silly it is to take a picture of your thermostat to put on your blog. I have some postmodern angst.)

And to top it all off, I am having one of those weeks, when I'm behind on everything, struggling to keep up, and feeling like I'm really very bad at my job and should be sent back to wherever it is I came from.

On the plus side, though, there are 16 more working days until the Christmas break.

Do you think if I told him I was, after all, doing my very best, Santa would bring me one of these?

Maybe next year.

Life IS pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

This seems like scraping the bottom of the barrel, blog-fodder-wise speaking, but the other night as I was ready to go to bed (about 7:35, you know) I was in my bathroom washing my face. I'd taken off my glasses, and I was squirting a bit of soap into my hand (one must cleanse one's T-zone, even at this age). I always forget that the soap pump has a tendency to clog, so when the soap didn't squirt out I got closer, and pushed harder, and ended up with a jet of soap (tea tree oil and something else organic) straight into my right eye.

It. Really. Hurt.

Then my eye swelled up and turned all red and burned for a while, before returning to normal.

Which is all a really weird story which has nothing much to do with anything else, except that I got my flu shot today and now my arm hurts too.

It's a world of hurt, is what it is.

Might as well face it, you're addicted to knitting.

The stripey scarf stripes on....







... and on....






.. and I find myself smitten. A friend looked at it and said "No offense, but the beauty in this scarf isn't the knitting, it's all about the yarn." I think that's the fun of it - you keep knitting not because knit one, purl one is so freaking exciting, but because you want to see what the next colour change will be, and how it will look with the row you're just knitting. Riveting, I tell you. Riveting.

Here's the baby hat....



The little one should be born any day now. I love the colour - that's Debbie Bliss Cashmerino I got on sale; less than one skein. Good choice, I think, for a little boy born in November.




The furnace seems to be working again, the anxiety is slightly less, and a Sunday of doing Not Too Much of Anything beckons. I think I'll knit.

In which I appear to have lost my blogging mojo

Some things that have kept me from Le Blog lately:

1. Work. Lots of it.

2. An actual social life. Very small, but visible nonetheless. I suspect that this "social life" (please picture Dr. Evil saying "laser beam" while making those little quotation marks with his fingers) will continue up to and including Christmas, after which it will fizzle out.

3. Knitting. Still haven't finished those mittens, but made a baby hat for my long-lost cousin Liz, and am in the midst of one of those stripey Noro scarves that are said to be highly addictive. Seems to be true.

4. Worrying. About my furnace blowing out cold air today, and having only one of its two blinkey lights flashing while it did so. And then suddenly fixing itself. Who knew that home ownership was such a pitfall of anxiety? Also worrying about global warming, my parenting ability, and whether I'm too hard on my students.

5. Riding. Have ridden over jumps and not died! Also, am "canteriffic." (I made that word up just for the occasion.)

6. Reading. I finally figured out the do it yourself holds feature at the local library. This resulted in my boy and I placing holds on 3,465 books, and then in the library calling us 3,465 times and having to make 3,465 trips to pick up the books. (Today they called me to come and pick up the copy of The Arabian Nights which I had placed on hold. This might be part of the space-time continuum issue I am having (see the Spontaneously Self-Repairing Furnace Debacle as evidence) because I did not actually place a hold on The Arabian Nights. Could I possibly have an evil twin who goes around impersonating me and generally messing things up? Or am I in fact doing all this in my sleep? The questions, they pour down like rain.)

7. Worrying. About Christmas, and how I will afford it, and if something really is wrong with my brand new, highly expensive, very efficient furnace. About my friend whose grandmother died, and who is sad right now. About the noises my car makes, which may be related to the Flux Capacitor or the Canooter Valves. Hard to say which. Also worrying about whether my reluctance to put up Christmas decorations of any sort means that I am really a bad person.

8. Hiding under my rock. I am having an overwhelming urge to become a hermit.

9. Worrying about the Wonder Dog, who has started coughing. Unfortunately, she is not coughing into her sleeve in the prescribed Alberta Health and Wellness manner, despite my in-depth coaching on the issue. A coughing dog is very weird. Perhaps I could slip her into the vaccination clinic when the boy and I go? Do you think they would notice?

10. Also, last but not least, blogging inertia seems to feed on itself - I feel guilty about not blogging so I don't blog. It must work for me on some level, or I wouldn't do it.

And that's all. I sure hope the mojo comes back soon. (But I'm kind of enjoying the social life.)