Letters To My Sister (12)

Wow – never thought I’d keep going on this done to death topic, but I find nothing more fascinating than myself, apparently.  HAHA! 

End of September, 1980

Congratulations!  We are really happy for you!  The kids (especially D.) are very excited about having a GIRL cousin.  Now you can collect little pink frillies like crazy.  Although I’ll try to spare you, as I have an aversion to all things sucky as you know.  I was really surprised to get M.’s phone call – I guess subconciously I was expecting you to be way overdue.  I’m anxiously awaiting all the details – hope you have time to call or write after you get home and get organized. (?)  Times like this I really regret living so far away, but I guess you have lots of family close by to help out.  I can just see Dad (“grinning like a skunk eating bumblebees!”) Something tells me this will be the grandchild he spoils.  Anyway, get lots of rest!  Send lots of pictures!!  Go buy a bottle of champagne to celebrate!!!  Now that you can drink again.  I’ve heard doing so helps a breast fed baby sleep.  Or could be simply that the enebriated mother doesn’t hear any crying.  But it’s worth checking out.

We have all kinds of snow here already.  From the 12th to the 21st our friends from Norman Wells were here with their 18 month old and their two year old.  So that’s six kids, including the two I babysit, but we really enjoyed the time together.  I also finally got my barge order – imagine living here all these years without ever taking advantage of that – it will save us a lot of money.  K. is thrilled that we got a case of ketchup in big 32 oz. bottles.  That should last us until Christmas the way he consumes the stuff.  D. seems to be doing okay at school.  She can write the alphabet, large and small letters, do number sentences with all the numbers frontwards, and read any word that ends in AT.  So that’s a lot of Dr. Seuss words! 

W. has been out every night for weeks checking his fish nets.  The river will soon be freezing and then he’ll have to set the nets under the ice.  With nine pups to feed we need lots of dog food! 

I’ve been going nuts over this dumb pre-school stuff.  The teacher phones me with all her problems and I’ve been doing all her secretarial work, i.e. typing of notes to parents, etc.  We’re having a meeting tonight and I’m hoping I can dump some of the responsibilites onto somebody else.  We’ve already had two drop-outs!!  Not good for a 1/2 month into the school year.

Must appologize for the gorilla.  We had it picked out before the baby arrived.  W. thinks it’s gross to give a baby girl a hairy gorilla that picks it’s nose.  (Sheesh!)  (It also sucks it’s thumb!!)  So, you know, consider the source – sorry! 

October, 1980

Now the letters get seriously mom-oriented.  There’s nothing I like better than to give people (and especially new moms) advice and hints, even if I don’t know what I’m talking about.

What a little sweetheart Alison is!  How come she’s SO CUTE?? The first thing W. said when he saw the pictures was ‘oh no – another Lin-V.-D. baby!’  Please don’t panic though – K. looked just like that too, and he turned out okay.  haha!  W. shook his head a lot, muttering “another McArthur….” and then spent the rest of the time admiring the pic’s of M.’s fish.  Remind me again how we got mixed up with these guys???

I hope by now you and Alison have gone out touring.  For goodness sake get out and go places.  Believe me, I know what it’s like feeling totally tied down.  I remember how great it felt when I was able to zip K. in a snuggly inside my parka and go for a ski-doo ride in Cambridge Bay.  Your situation is a bit better than that, thank goodness.  Keep giving the baby to Jo until she stops offering!!  I just got a letter from mom too, full of ‘grandma’ comments about how wonderful Alison is and how good both you and M. are with her.  Of course if your baby screamed her head off 24 hours a day mom would still think she was terrific I’m sure.  Isn’t it amazing how suddenly the whole world revolves around that one tiny little person?  The reason that she goes to sleep more easily for M. is because a breast fed baby knows mom is her food source - that’s what Denise said anyway – she could never rock her boys to sleep either.  If and when you decide to stop breast feeding, don’t feel guilty!  Because if you’re happier, the baby will be too.  I know all about guilt trips, because I’m still a rotten mother.  I’ve just chosen to ignore that little detail as much as possible.  Aren’t I just a wealth of information?  I’ll shut up now.  End of baby lecture.

The other day I decided to pack up all the Fisher Price toys that were being ignored (play house, circus train, camper & boat and Sesame Street) and the kids have been playing with them with a vengeance ever since!  So when that wears off I’ll get them sent to you.  You won’t be needing them for about a year anyway.  I’ll make sure to include all the little pieces that cripple you when you step on them. 

This weekend is Hallowe’en already.  D. wants to be Wonder Woman.  How in the world do you fit that costume over a parka?  K. changes his mind about what he’d like to be on average 10 times a day.  We bought a huge pumpkin at the Bay for a jack-0-lantern.  Hopefully this year K. won’t be like Linus in the Peanuts comic strip and start gagging when we start ripping the pumpkins insides out. 

We also have a party to go to on Thurs. nite.  There’s a regional Wildlife conference going on, and all the wildlife people appear to be confirmed alcoholics.  So it should be fairly awful.  Last Saturday we went to a birthday party for Sam R. at the Lion’s Den down by Boot Lake.  W. refers to it now as the ‘animal show’.  There were guys litterally crawling around on the floor.  I danced with Sam and nearly broke my back trying to hold him up.  I swear he was falling asleep on his feet.  And I know I’m not THAT boring, so it had to be the booze.  The birthday cake was covered in fish hooks and shot gun shells and 37 candles.  When they brought it in everybody yelled “Speach!” so Sam started blathering away incoherently.  Then people who weren’t totally plastered started to panic, telling him to shut up and blow out the candles before the shot gun shells started to explode.  MAN.  do we know how to party up here, or what?   There’s another conference the end of November in Yellowknife that they’re encouraging the wives to attend.  I think these guys just like an audience. 

There’s a very good chance that W. may be transferred to Pond Inlet (on the northern tip of Baffin Island) (Look WAY UP).  The guy who was there has been transferred to Yellowknife, and it seems like everyone else in the entire service got moved somewhere else this summer.  W. is about the only one left due for a move.  When W. told his mom on the phone she had a hairy fit, then told me she couldn’t believe I’d actually let him take me there.  I can’t see what all the fuss is about.  Plus she said she’d NEVER visit us if we go there, so right there is a big incentive to go.  HAHA!!  There’s a three bedroom detached house for us, a good school, a Bay store and a Co-op.  And it would mean our paid-out trip is to Montreal, which is a lot closer to Toronto than Edmonton is. 

Has anyone sent Alison her “first” doll yet?  We got at least 10 of those for D. (who, by the way, still wishes we had named her Alison.)  I’ve tried to explain that if we HAD, you would have picked a different name for your baby.  But she’s still quite miffed at me. 

More baby advice follows – I really couldn’t stop myself then, but I can now, so that’s enough of that for the time being.  I can’t imagine Ann had time to read it all anyway.  I had forgotten that crazy birthday party – we knew a LOT of party animals.  And I sometimes marvel that Sam is still alive after ingesting all that alcohol over the years.  When we were in Inuvik he had two lovely daughters and a wife who was a saint to put up with him.  I guess she got over that, because Sam remarried a few years ago and now has a son the same age as his grandchildren.  But that’s a whole other story.  And since I don’t know the details I’ll just stick to what I DO know.  Like how everyone else should be raising their children.   And similar b.s.

BS on Idol (2)

After watching the top 10 guys this week I have to say my favourites haven’t changed at all. I’m still really liking Jason Castro the best, even though the judges were a little hard on him this week. He’ll come back and do something fantastic next week. I hope. Without his guitar.  And wearing a nicer shirt. 

David Archuleta I didn’t like quite as well this time around, simply because he cannot sing without smiling it seems, no matter how serious the song, but he’s still awesome. And he’s the judges favourite to win the whole thing. Michael Johns can’t really hit those high notes without yelling them.  But he’s sure easy to look at. I’m not sure how far David Hernandez will get in this competition,  but he had a great performance again this week. He has a great voice.  For some reason or other he strikes me as the kind of guy who will have to work twice as hard as anyone else to get noticed and remembered. Don’t really care one way or the other about Chikezie, Danny, David Cook or Luke, and can’t see them sticking around long. Which of course means that they probably will.

Robbie came away looking like an arrogant jerk and Jason Yeager seems to be the complete opposite and just as equally annoying.  So those two can hit the road.

As for the girls….I really really like Carly with her Irish accent and her Hart obsession.  Plus she reminds me of a girl I used to work with that I miss.  Syesha made a very strange song choice with “Me and Mr. Jones” and the tempo was way too slow. It verged on weird.  Brooke was so exactly like Carly Simon it was eerie.   Ramielle continues to be cute. As well as very good.There’s something about Kristy Lee Cook that reminds me of Kyra Sedgwick…..Amanda was horrid last night. It looked like a very poorly contrived imitation of a rock performance.  Alaina looks and sounds like Carrie Underwood’s less talented kid sister.  Alexandreah’s song was blah, but she’s lovely.

Kady Malloy still has no clue who she is, and I get her confused with Alaina. 

Asia’h is this year’s Mariah/Whitney/Celine wannabe. GAH.

I think Amanda might be on the bottom, along with Kady or Alaina. Very hard to predict. The show was all a bit boring, and I don’t really care who leaves, as long as it’s not Carly. 

And that’s my glorious take on all things idol at this moment in time.  Except for having to say that I think the stupid feud between Ryan and Simon is pathetically childish and that they both need to grow up and get over it. 

February 29th – edited to add:

The four to leave were Jason Y., Robbie, Alexandrea and Alaina.  As per moi – not surprised and not unhappy with those results.  On with the show.

Misc. Stuff

My latest project is to go through our filing cabinet – the out with the old to make room for the new thing I do every year.  The copies of bills and bank statements and insurance papers and tax information for whatever year it was gets moved to the cupboard above the fridge so that the current year’s business can be catagorized and neatly filed.  At some point.  Like when stuffing it all in the front in no particular order gets on my nerves.  Sometimes I don’t get around to doing this paper shuffle until June, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right at this exact moment.  Also because on top of everything else I’m cleaning out the overloaded cupboard so that it won’t fall off the wall, and already I have a garbage bag full of stuff to be shredded or burned.  Now I know exactly how old our cat is, so nobody can say this has been a wasted day.  We were thinking this morning that he must be at least 15 years old, but now that I’ve unearthed the file containing his SPCA adoption information and vet records, it turns out he’s the ripe old age of 16.  That’s damned old in cat years.

I have a very interesting filing system, the intricate workings of which I don’t really want to get into here.  Frankly I’m tired of feeling like I have to justify why I do things the way I do them.  W. asked once where the envelopes were and I told him they were in the filing cabinet under “E”.  He has never asked me that question again – for some reason or other he found the answer to it bizarre enough to remember.  And anyway, he has his own drawer of the cabinet where he can file things any old way he wants.  Today in the ”M” section of my drawer I came across a file folder labled “Misc. stuff worth saving”.  And I think it deserves further classification.  Numerical at the very least.  So here’s a list.

1.  My resume and letters of referral from 1986.  (Because you never know when THAT might come in handy.)

2.  A Christmas card I painted in 2002 with the original intent of painting a different one for everyone on our list.  Then I thought maybe I’d just duplicate the original.  Then I wondered what the hell I was wasting all this time for and went out and bought some cards. 

I suppose I thought it was too cute to just toss.

3.  The rules for the English Solitaire Board game.

It’s fun to play – there’s something very satisfying about the big marbles clunking away, annoying the people around you.  My mom took a real liking to it one time when she came to visit, and I told her to take it home with her.  Well of course she wouldn’t,  so we ended up sneaking it into her suitcase.  Although how sneaky that was I’m not sure,  because she must have wondered about the sudden extra weight.  Eventually my sister bought her a set of her own, since she never felt right about taking mine.  It’s something that has to be put up out of reach when little kids are around.  I don’t want any big marble swallowing going on. 

4.  My resume from 1999 and a copy of my record of employment from when I left the ophthalmologist’s office to take the optical course at NAIT.  I was quite underpayed, in case you’re interested.

5.  A Christmas letter from K., J., and Kale when they lived in Calgary.  Complete with awesome picture.

6.  A yellowed old newspaper clipping with a write-up about our wedding in 1971.  It was sent to us by my sister Ann on our 20th wedding anniversary.  I’m surprised it hasn’t disintegrated.

7.  A twelve page table entitled “Scott Family History” which traces some of my ancestors from 1782 to about the year 2000 I think.  I have a very smart cousin who put it all together.  It’s incredibly interesting. 

8.  Kale and Kenzie’s SIN numbers from when we started education savings plans for them.  I have no idea why I think I need to hang on to these.  They’re written on scraps of paper.  And not even neatly.

9.  A couple of hilarious letters from my youngest sister.  I think I’m going to have to round up all of these letters from all the places I’ve got them stashed and send them back to her.  She has a crazy and delightful sense of humor.  Maybe she’ll use them to write her own memoirs.  Maybe she’ll burn them.  I hope it’s the former.

10.  A picture of our house from 2001.  There’s some crazy realtor who goes around taking these pictures and giving them to the owners on a little one year fridge magnet calendar with all kinds of advertising on it about selling your house.  I cut that all off and keep the pictures, because it’s kind of an interesting record of the sad state of my front flower beds.  Every year they’re slightly different and ever more pathetic.  This was the year I tried to grow dwarf sunflowers.  The very name should have warned me.  They resemble tall gangly weeds.  I wanted to put up a sign saying “Yes, I meant to grow these!  Seriously!  Please get over it.”  Or maybe something not quite so wordy, like “our gardner died”.

And once again I have managed to make an hour long job into an all day time waster.  This is getting to be an art with me.  I wonder if somehow this particular talent could be marketed.  Give me a closet to clean out and I will discuss the contents for a week.  Longer if it’s a double. 

Okay, I have to get back to work.  This place is a mess.  And I haven’t even started in on the folder that contains all the warranty information on every small and large appliance we ever owned.   There’s probably museum pieces in there. 

Letters To My Sister (#11)

In the very early spring of 1980 my sister and her husband flew to Inuvik to visit us!  To this day they still insist that it was a great trip and they had a terrific time.  Ann was newly pregnant with our first neice.   

Before visit letter, March 1980 

We are really happy for you – hope everything goes well, and take care of yourself!  (I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing.)  I REALLY hope you have a girl!  Remember, Dad prefers girls, so if you want to inherit the farm…..haha.  Have you made any plans to take prenatal classes so that Murray can share the wonderful experience with you?  It’s always nice to have someone around to shout insults at.

I spent three hours with the dentist on Monday from 10:00 to 1:00.  The guy was very thorough, but would not win any speed contests.  Then I had to rush home and get K. to his appointment with the same guy.  He needed a crown – which he now refers to as his bionic tooth.  Not sure why this was necessary with a baby tooth, but anyway, he was there until 3:30!  I was a nervous wreck waiting for him, but everyone said he was good as gold.  I checked on him a couple of times, and he was lying back in the chair with his arms flung out to the sides, quite relaxed and happy.  There’s nothing he likes better than to lie around doing nothing.  He had nice long chats with everybody who came by, and seems quite willing to go back.  I sincerely hope you have a K. type child.  If they were all like that people would have them by the dozen.

Today W. leaves for Paulatuk for 10 days or more, depending on the weather, to do some more surveys, of musk-ox this time I think.  He hasn’t been off on a trip for a long time and is just itching to go.  He always comes back in a super mood, so I won’t complain.  The only thing that worries me is looking after the stupid dog while he’s away, since he gets so sulky and stubborn whenever W. leaves. 

I have a friend coming to see me this weekend to talk about having me babysit her two little girls, ages 3 and 4, five days a week from 9:00 to 5:00.  She pays $17.50 a day, and I will likely do it, because 1.)  I’m crazy, and 2.) I could use the money.  The kids (April and Laurie) are really nice little girls, and I figure since I put up with D. having friends in to play all the time (we can put a stop to that) we can have these two here all the time and get paid for it besides.  I will be a rich mental case in a matter of months. 

We have our house plans all drawn up.  What a laugh – by the time we get around to building something we will both be in our eighties.  I have even picked out all the carpeting.  I won’t bore you with the fine details, but I’m including a rough sketch.  Your comments and criticisms are welcome.  Neither one of us knows what we’re doing.

After visit letter, May 1980.

April and Laurie have been screaming and giggling all morning – I’m glad you missed this.  W. worried all the way home from the airport that Murray didn’t have a good time!  (Not sure why he’s not worried about you…haha)  We sure enjoyed having you here.  And I didn’t think I was worried about your flight until you phoned this morning and I was so relieved that you are safely home.  Guess I have a deeply imbedded paranoia about planes and cars and travelling in general.  I haven’t yet started playing scrabble by myself, but it could come to that.  D. wore the dress you gave her this morning.  And I guess I’m going to get roped into buying that doll sooner or later.  Likely sooner.  Like today – like right after lunch.  Little Miss Mouth has spoken. 

 …a few days later…

D. has broken out in spots all over.  So I presume she has the chicken pox full force this time.  Last time it must have been just a preview or something else.  It did seem before to be the mildest case on record.  I guess this is why she has been a little owly and hot, etc.  Now we’re watching K. for further developments.  AND we’re leaving for Norman Wells anyway because Danny has already had the chicken pox.  Now I have to rip around getting Deb’s mail and watering her plants for the final time.  They’ll be back on Sunday.  Isn’t all this interesting???  I hate packing because I always take WAY too much stuff.  I finished reading “The Rosedale Horror” last night.  W. said he was bored out of his mind watching me read, but he refuses to play scrabble, so I have no sympathy.  Here’s our flight info:  CP Sky Bus flight 176 June 10:  leaves Edmonton 2:30, arrives 8:30 (your time) in Toronto.  This way you can check on the flight and not be there.  ha.  See you again soon.

These were not such newsy scribbles as some of the previous ones,  since we’d probably talked eachother’s ears off all visit.  It is possible for sisters to run out of things of relevance to say.  But it is NOT possible to shut them up.

BS on Idol (1)

The BS could stand for Breathing Space ya know.  Not sure how into the show I’ll be this year.  I’m more a Canadian Idol fan for some odd reason, but the American one is a nice warm-up to that.   I always make a point these days of completely missing every single preliminary audition show.  The little individual review blurb about how a contestant came to be in the final 24 is about as much as I can handle on that subject.  And while we’re getting down to the final 12 I don’t pay strict attention either.  Best not to get all crazy about somebody just to have him or her cut in the final group of four to get their walking papers.  And by the time it’s down to the show’s final top 12 my attention span has either sky rocketted to rapt, or dwindled completely.  It’s kind of a toss up.  But this season looks promising, even though there’s already such a glut of idols in America that I’m not sure how they can keep going on with the discovery process year after year. 

Just for the record, here’s who I’m liking after the first four cuts, in the top 20. 

Jason C., David A., Michael, David H., Robbie, and I suppose Danny, if I had to make it six.  Carly, Ramiele, Syesha, Asia’h, Amanda and Kristy-Lee, in no particular order for the girls. 

At the risk of dooming Jason C. to sudden oblivion (where my favourites have been known to end up) I have to say he had the most fun and memorable performance out of the entire 24.  At this point it doesn’t hurt to stand out from the crowd.  It can’t be good to simply be remembered as one of those cute little blondes, or one of those old guys who sang something slow and cheesey.  Like late twenties is old.  But you know what I mean.  So if it takes dreadlocks, tatoos and incredibly cute shoes to make it to the top, so be it. 

Much much MUCH more BS on idol to come I’m sure.  It’s everywhere out there, and I’d like to contribute to the buzz.   

A Thousand Splendid Suns

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was a great book, and this second one is great as well.  He has dedicated this one to the women of Afghanistan, and the story has, as it says on the fly leaf, ‘enormous contemporary relevance’.  It’s an easy thing for us to hear snippets of things that go on in other countries,  and to ‘tsk tsk’ about them for a bit, and then put them out of our minds.  This book puts you in the middle of it all and sheds light on many of the things that we can never hope to completely understand.  There are basic truths about people in general and women in particular when it comes to family and love and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of the history playing out around us.

                       

This one I didn’t get and didn’t like and it left me feeling completely confused and dismayed and bored out of my skull.  I can’t imagine that Oprah even bothered to read it.  A father and his son walk alone through a burned up America, headed for the coast.  They don’t know why.  They suffer all kinds of hardships.  They manage to survive, one of them practically to the very end of the book and one supposedly beyond.  A searing postapocalyptic novel?  I don’t know.  The only really amazing thing about it is the fact that people appear to cling to this life no matter how utterly and completely unbearable it may become.  If I’m ever in this type of situation, somebody please shoot me. 

And this one I think my expectations were just too damned high.  The Lovely Bones was such an incredibly good novel.  This one is good too, and although the story should be much easier to accept because it all takes place on earth as opposed to partially in another dimension, it just – isn’t.  The woman does the most bizarre things for the most demented reasons.  Or maybe for no reason at all.  Primary reason being she’s a nut case, but so was her mother, and perhaps her father as well to a certain extent.  And I guess that’s supposed to explain things, but gawd.  I had a hard time making it through to the ending which was just as weird as the rest of the story. 

There are some books I just have to be in the right mood for I guess.  I have at least three with bookmarks part way through where I’ve stopped reading and picked up something else.  Then I feel bad, because the authors obviously put a lot of time and effort into writing these books and the least I can do is try to see my way through them to the bitter end.  And then there are other books that make me almost weep because they do come to an end and I want more.  I’m very much looking forward to whatever Khaled Hosseini writes next and hoping it will be a sort of sequel where we learn that Aziza’s life is a thousand times better than that of her mother.  I doubt that I’ll be able to force myself to read anything further by Cormac McCarthy.  Unless he cheers up.  And Alice Sebold will only get better.  There’s a whole whack of interesting stuff in that lady’s head. 

Jazz Hands

I’ve made another astounding discovery.  Not that what I’ve discovered hasn’t already been figured out by millions of people before me.  This is kind of like when a baby discovers his hands for the first time, and looks at his fingers all cross eyed before smacking himself in the face or shoving his entire fist into his mouth, while mom looks on and squeals with delight because her child is the cutest and the smartest little thing she has ever seen. That kind of astounding. 

And this is it.  It is practically impossible to do Jazz Hands without also smiling, or at least making some kind of weird face.  Go ahead and try it, looking in a mirror, if you don’t believe me.

Even cartoon characters are not immune.

                   

Clearly, there are days when I do not have enough to do.

Ditto Excuses Part 96b

Alright!  It is now the 15th of February, which means the month is half over and spring is that much closer.  The temperature is on the balmy plus side of zero.  We survived another valentine’s day without doing anything even remotely romantic.  Our granddaughter turned seven yesterday and seems to be quite ecstatically happy about that.  Today is the thirty something birthday of our nephew Dylan, who gets to double celebrate because of the birth of his new baby daughter a week or so ago.  I missed a phone call from Kale, but have listened to his message about fifteen times.  If my grandmother was still alive she would be one hundred and twenty one years old today.  This is only one of the many interesting things I have taken the time to think about and calculate, thus getting absolutely nothing important accomplished.

Another calculation I made involved going to Google Maps and figuring out the shortest route between our house and our daughters house.  Because I believe W. purposely works out in his own mind the longest possible route between two points and insists on taking that course purely to annoy the hell out of me.  Turns out my way is 31.0 km. and his is 32.9 km.  However – he beat me on the time estimation by two minutes, since his way takes roads that have higher speed limits and probably less stop lights.  All that is in theory of course, so when we factor in the reality of how he drives which is a minimum of 10 kms. under the speed limit and then consider that I drive consistently 10 over, then hey – I WIN!!!  So there really is no point for him to tell me what streets we are on and where to turn etc. etc. etc. because I AM NEVER GOING TO TAKE HIS STUPID ROUTE!!  EVER!!! 

I love it when I’m right.  

And now I have to get some sleep so that I can stay conscious tomorrow at work;  being awake all day will make me sleepy, and thus the cycle continues.   My life is progressing at such a mad pace it’s making me dizzy.  (“Grandma, are you being sarcastic?”)  Yes, some days I am the queen of sarcasm.  It’s a gift and a curse.  If I manage to pass along that little talent I expect it will come back to bite me in the butt one fine day.

But probably not tomorrow.  Great things could happen tomorrow!  And if they don’t, I’ll be the one to let you know why they didn’t. 

Excuses, excuses….

Holy.  Four days seem to have blown right by me while I wasn’t paying attention.  But lest anyone think I’ve been doing nothing, let me enlighten you.  I’ve had a little weekend visitor.  We played a lot of games and ate a lot of pizza.  I’ve sent off some valentine cards, and written a couple of letters.  Actually three, if you count a letter of reference for my boss.  I would not have written it for her if she was actually looking for a new job, but she’s applying for an additional position, which will take away from her family and managerial time, although both those things right now seem to take up every moment of her life so I cannot imagine what will happen if she takes on even more responsibility.  I of course could not say that in my letter, since anything negative can be misconstrued as libel and I could get sued.  Seriously, I read up on it.  So I’m not sure what the point of a reference letter is, except perhaps to prove that you can make somebody write one.  There will be nothing bad ever said in them. 

I have complained a lot about the weather, and I have made an extraordinary number of scrabulous moves.  I have started yet another 2 week rotation work schedule, which gives me two short days, more hours, every other weekend off, and I never have to work more than three days in a row.  I’m quite liking that.  However, like all good work schedules in my life it is subject to change, especially if our manager suddenly develops mono which it is quite possible she will do since her son who has just been diagnosed with it has been using her toothbrush for about a week because he couldn’t find his own.  I really don’t know why people keep on having children.  They do the damndest things.

I have seen a lot of contact lens patients and marvelled at their complete lack of concern for the health of their corneas.  I have heard one of them say “I am well aware of the dangers of over-wear and improper care.”  Really, I heard myself say inside my head.  Are you also aware of the danger of putting a loaded gun to your head and pulling the trigger?  And if so, WHY WOULD YOU DO IT?  Doh.  Go stand in traffic for awhile, you appear to lead such a charmed life.  

Our weather has gone completely bonkers.  Heavy snow fall warning, followed by plus 4.  What’s next?  How about a hurricane?  Alberta could use a little moisture in the air.  Who has any clue at all about how to dress to go outside these days?  Pondering things like this have taken up a lot of my productive time.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Plus there’s no time to change it and no ambition whatsoever to aim for sense.  I’ll try harder tomorrow.  Or at some future date.  Don’t go holding your breath or anything.

Aquarius

Today is my son’s 32nd birthday.  I had to do some math to figure out the exact number.  If I can’t remember my own age, I don’t see why I should be able to pick any one else’s personal numbers out of the air.   

      

I don’t know why the bad traits of Aquarius are shown in such a big picture, compared to the GOOD aquarius characteristics, which I could not resize without it becoming one big blur.  Perhaps aquarians are more proud of their negative qualities.  But I seriously don’t get it, because my son doesn’t have any of those bad ones.  I’m his mother, and I would know that, so there’s really no point in trying to disuade me.  La la la ….not listening.  Hope he’s having a happy day that’s as fun as he is himself, and perfect in every way.