Don’t It Always Seem To Go….

Strangle knot (ABOK #1239) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ever had one of those days where so many little things happen to piss you off royally that you just want to strangle somebody at the end of it?

And then the next day in hind sight you realize that as traumatic days go, on a scale of one to ten, yours barely reached a one?  But thank God it’s over with anyway?

Yesterday in the morning the power was off for three hours.  The land line phone wouldn’t work.  The internet connection was gone.  I couldn’t make my protein smoothie without a functioning blender.  I hadn’t yet put my wet clothes in the dryer.  I couldn’t blow dry my hair.  My car was trapped in the garage behind a door that normally opens magically with the push of a button.

But yay me, I managed to get ready for work anyway, albeit in a thoroughly bad mood.  My I-phone and lap top were fully charged and when connected to eachother gave me internet access.  I was able to google the power outage and discover it was due to some kind of scheduled line maintenance, for our street and surrounding area, from nine to noon.  I called work and let them know I’d be there as soon as I could get to my car.

Everything lit back up around 11:30, so I was only a minute or two late.  But it’s still work, right?  Who in their right mind wants to be there?  The air conditioning doesn’t work properly, it’s too hot, there’s too many of us there with too little to do, the carpet is ugly, our chairs are crap, everything is covered in dust from the on-going renovations, people are stupid and their kids are screaming annoying brats.

Wow.  Even I didn’t want to be around me.

But, whatever, you carry on and try to appear normal and cheerful, until there’s that last straw.  The rude jerk who wanders in in the middle of the doctor’s scheduled appointment time, is two weeks over due for his contact lens appointment, makes no apology for never having booked one, demands to pick up his order, grudgingly agrees to wait to be seen until the doctor is finished, and then proceeds to stand around in the middle of everything talking loudly on his cell phone for 45 minutes, telling his buddy, among other things, that this waiting around thing is total bull shit.

I’m so glad someone else finally saw him for his recheck.  If it had been me he might be dead now.  Or at least seriously maimed.

Anyway, the good thing about bad days is that they eventually end.  I came home and used my microwave and watched a feel good movie with a happy ending and no power outages.  I now have a much better appreciation for electricity.  I am showered and blow dried and full of hot coffee and well blended fruit shake and ready to take on the world.  I even feel a bit remorseful about my murderous feelings for jerk boy, who after all is no doubt some mother’s darling child.

I think I will be a much nicer person today.  (Unless some random act of God or nature suddenly annoys the hell out of me, and then all bets are off.)  In the meantime, I’ll be trying very hard to appreciate all the little things in life that make me happy.  You never know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

I Would Maybe Open the Door Wider

I answered the door that afternoon because I was expecting some registered mail. Normally when I’m home alone being a complete slob I ignore the doorbell. I could be in the shower, is what the bell ringers are supposed to think before they wander off to bother someone else with their offers of “buy a ridiculous number of booster juices and get a free pass to the local mud wrestling contest and a chance to win a hot air balloon ride for six .” Things you don’t need or want or even know exist until some stranger is standing there on your doorstep all ecstatically happy to be the one brightening up your otherwise dull existence with this incredible offer. They always look so pissed off when you turn them down.

Anyway, it’s not so much something I’d take back as something I’d add on to the latest door answering episode. It was Roxanne, our Ward 2 Councillor at the door. And no, I didn’t know she existed either, but she turned out to be a very nice lady going around in her councillors area to say hello and discuss issues or questions about council related stuff. It would have been nice if I’d had any idea at all what is going on in our community and could have conjured up some kind of semi intelligent question to ask her, but it would have been even nicer if it had occurred to me to have her come in for a minute, off the cold doorstep and out of the freezing wind. Hind sight is such a beautiful thing.

She gave me a copy of a little two page newsletter, so now I know there’s a co-op community garden somewhere in the area, measures in the works to calm the traffic on Georgian Way (who knew it had gone wild?), and that the Silver Birch Lodge expansion will include a chapel, a library, an auditorium, recreation areas and a green house. I’m tempted to get an application package just to see what that kind of independent living apartment might cost a person. Having a full-time personal aid might just be cheaper.

And the lovely Roxanne, Councillor, Ward 2, also gave me a coupon for Dairy Queen! I do love a councillor who drops by bearing gifts. So I’m going to subscribe to her newsletter by e-mail, and study up on where the electronic driver feedback signs are located, and maybe even get myself to care about the environmental impact of the 500 kV double circuit transmission power lines that are in the works for the county. And the next time she drops by she’ll think somebody new moved in because I’ll be able to blather away about urban and rural property devaluation, or some such important sounding issue convincing her that it’s dear to my heart and high on my list of priorities, instead of drawing a complete blank and saying ever so vaguely that everything seems to be fine.

And a coupon for a Wendy’s salad – I’ll make that suggestion. Anonymously, and via e-mail, but hey, it’s a start in my sudden blossoming pursuit of community awareness.

Spurticles!

Exhibit in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was so excited to see that awesomely weird word!  It just cries out for an exclamation point!  If I had to rename this blog space I think that SPURTICLES would be the perfect choice!!

Except that it means (of all the mundane things) spectacles.   Or at any rate it did in Devonshire in 1891.  In Newfoundland in 1937 they experimented with calling them ‘sparticles’,  probably because of their inborn vowel dysfunction there, but the term didn’t last.

There’s a long blurb about it being Benjamin Franklin’s birthday too, although this being a weekend there are two dates on the same page and they don’t specify on which exact day he was born.  Perhaps at midnight on the 16th.  Destined to invent bifocals once he got old enough to need them and got tired of switching back and forth from his distance spurticles to his reading spurticles.  I wonder why he didn’t call them bispurticles.  Anyway, he claims they helped him learn french.  Because while eating and conversing with the french it is a good plan to be able to see ones food, while also being able to look up and focus on the french speaker who talks with his features and gesticulations as much as he does with his mouth.  If not more so.

Benjamin Franklin 1767 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today it’s only very ancient or very persnickity people who cling to their stupid bispurticles being content to see far away and up close and missing out on everything in between.  The vast majority adapt themselves to progressive lenses so that they have clear vision at every distance.  For these people it’s important to see the dash of their car and their computer screens and the dust on things a little further away than arm’s length where you don’t feel like getting off your butt to clean anything, but it’s nice to be able to see it all just the same.

I wish I had known this word sooner.  Because one day a customer told me he needed to book an appointment with our obstetrician so he could get a subscription for glasses.  I wanted to say Ah!  Well!  Good luck with that then!  Smiling sweetly.  Backing away slowly.  Instead I suggested he make an appointment with our optometrist for a new prescription.  He looked at me as if to say, what is wrong with you, did I not just say that??  It would have been a much more interesting scenario to start blathering away about regular spurticles vs. bispurticles and good old sparticles from Newfoundland.  Making him strongly consider booking with a different obstetrician altogether.  Hind sight is such a beautiful thing.  No spurticles needed to see that clearly.