They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end.

Nothing like the bible for nailing drunkeness on the head! No, not me. I did not get drunk, cause...well, why start now?

Anyway - a few months ago I made some home made liqueurs. Creme de Menthe and Vanilla Cordial. So last night I decided to make a grasshopper (I had a bottle of Cacao from Christmas baking) using the Magic Bullet*.

I made it, and took it into the living room to watch some TV show. And then the phone rang. Leaping to my feet (which is not my normal reaction, but it MIGHT have been the "you're an aunt" call). I bolted into the kitchen to get it before I missed it. I didn't miss it, and I'm not an aunt yet.
After that I decided to do the dishes before returning to the relaxing portion of the evening. I know myself too well: once out of the kitchen I might not have returned to the dishes at all. Dishes in the dishwasher, china washed and in a rack counters cleaned I was ready to go back to the aforementioned green goodness. And it was gone.

I now know what happens if Big Puppy has too much to drink. She gets sleepy, walks into things and then looks around with great confusion and shakes her head. Repeat as required. Hmmm. I think I know some people that do that.

Christmas was great, by-the-by, and I'll blog about the cow herding in filmy trousers on Christmas eve event later.

*I have a lot of strange and interesting kitchen gadgets. Some useful, some not so much. I'm going to review them all in the new year, so y'all can decide what your next kitchen gadget purchase should be.

The lining of the cloud

Silver...no, gold...lining to the cloud of having someone run into the back of my car:
through a tale too long to relate, an in with the Rough Riders that will make it simple for Alec to get Maddy's Christmas present signed by many many of the players. Yeah!

Good times, good times.

I love Christmas, yes? What I don't especially love is:
Burning a tray of tarts
Being crashed into by a sled, and slammed into my own car.
Being rear-ended, when I've no time to go get an estimate
Having my skirt fall off...not down, OFF...in Walmart

On the up side:
I had spare tarts
They were very very sorry, and although I have a bump I didn't actually bleed
Accident minor, and not my fault
No one...ok, no one I knew, there were actually LOTS of someones...seeing me in undies* in the kids section of the store. And I high tailed it out of there before security came to arrest the undressed perv.

*I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the undies in question were Mrs. Claus undies; red satin shorts with white fluffy trim. At least the were shorts, and not oh, a thong or something. Thank heavens for small mercies.

How many people does it take?

So we're finally getting a sink in the break room. For the past three months we've had to do our dishes in the bathroom. Very awkward under any circumstance but made worse by the placement of the paper towel machine.

How can that be a problem, you ask? Well...it's like this: we used to have a regular grab-the-towel type machine. It was replaced with a hands free dispenser. One of the anti-swine flu measures the building managers installed. The problem is that they put it so close to the sink that when you're washing dishes, or hands or whatever else you care to wash the thing keeps dispensing towels. So by the time you're done there is a pile of p.t. on the floor. You can make it run a bit less if you perch partly on the counter and lean at an uncomfortable angle. Which, I can say from experience, makes people new to the building look at you strangely when the walk in. Or, as happened to me, it will make them walk in, look at you askance and then back away slowly out the door. I'm not sure why with such a look of alarm, and slowly- I was not doing anything that looked dangerous. It just looked at little....odd.

Anyway, back to the story:
They booked six guys and three days to put a sink in. They're putting it in on the same wall that backs onto the bathroom sink to make the plumbing part easier. I did wonder why it would take so many people, and so much time. Here is what has happened to date:

9:00 am Wednesday. Six guys come in and partially cut a hole in the plaster. Then they all stand and stare at it. After some serious staring they come to my office (I'm the only one on this side of the building) and say they'll be back.

11:00. They return. And finish cutting the whole. Then they go into the back of the building. Turns out the pipes are there. They stay in the back for half and hour and then come and say they're leaving for lunch.

2:00 They stop by to say there is a problem with the water supply. Then they leave again, and don't return the rest of the day.

9:00 am Thursday One guy, not one of the original six, comes to the door to be let in. I let him in and he says "I'm here to hammer something. I won't be long". True to his word his is not long. Loud, grant you, but not long. This is where things still stand. A big hole in the wall and plaster dust on the floor. And a general perfume of glue. Smells like super glue, actually. I really really hope it isn't super glue.

I'm beginning to think that three days wasn't long enough.

Well. Forget it then.

So that post? About how to do something outside of your comfort range? Don't worry about giving me advice, as it will clearly not help. I thought it I did that which I was thinking of doing I might possibly puke.

I almost did what I was thinking about. Didn't actually do it, but the reaction to just the maybe was to puke. So clearly actually doing it will never ever be a good thing.

Undoing the training

Suggestions welcome, if you have any thoughts on the current predicament. Although it is more of a quandry. Anyway:

There is something you don't do, not because it is wrong but because it just isn't something you do, backed up by years and generations teaching you it just isn't proper. Not that I aspire to proper, but you get the idea.

How does one do proceed? (Here's the point where insight/suggestions would be welcome). Do it anyway and throw up later? Give up on the whole thing as a bad idea?

Omnes paucis annis prosedae erunt

The above title is for Dr. F. For the rest of you....nothing. I have nothing as accurate as that. So, on to the blog:

Yes, young one winter is upon us
The cold that chills the spine
Is here and all hurry to warmth and comfort
Run, run if you are able at all
To do more than balance on those spikes
But wait! As you come within my compass
Where I patiently wait for my own girl
I see your long uncovered legs
Blue against the snow,
Bare midriff white as wax
And I think mayhap I have it wrong.
Is this not, then, a school?
Is it perhaps a place for high flyers
And you a barque of frailty?

Oh Frabjous Joy!

You missed the happy dance that I just did, so you'll have to do a little one (even if only in your head, I don't want anyone to get into trouble at work) on my behalf instead.

Why all the merriment? Did I win the lottery? No, but then if I did I'd tell y'all in person, money in hand, if that happened. So not that and not a home makeover win either. But this is just as good. Better, even. The Boy is not going to be going to university in Alberta. For almost certain. He's going to try for the same program in the local U. Which is mere minutes from home which is awesome! I had him stay with his dad whilst The Girl had swiney sickness. What an eyeopener, I really missed him and that was just over a week. I ended up going over to drop stuff off as an excuse to see him and get a hug.

Yeah, I know - they have to leave the nest at some point blah blah blah. I'll deal with it when it happens. I'm just happy that it doesn't appear to be on the agenda for next September.

The Girl is in driver training, The Boy is in his last year of high school, so I know time has passed but where did it go? I feel exactly the same as I did when they were four and six. Now if I could work out how to look the same as I did years ago then...well, I wouldn't need a lottery because it would mean that I had access to the (or a?) fountain of youth.

I get it. Finally.

I like to say, with alarming frequency, that one should be careful of what one mocks. Or denies the existence of, or feels superior to. My theory is that you will then be granted an opportunity to experience first hand whatever it is that you mock/deny/feel superior to.

I am in that situation, or close enough to, at least. Not something I mock but something I don’t completely understand. I’m talking about anxiety. Not the everyday garden anxiety that everyone gets now and then but the overwhelming anxiety that affects how you live your life. I know it is real – family and friends suffer from it and yes, suffer is the correct word – and I know that it isn’t something that one can “snap out of”, as people with serious anxieties are often told.

But I’ve never really had to deal with it on a personal level. I get anxious about bills, house repairs, The Babies and all the things regular people do, but that’s about it. Until this month.

In a few weeks it will be Christmas. Whee! I love Christmas, as I’m sure we’ve discussed before. I don’t like it quite so much on the years – and this is one – that The Babies are at their dad’s. Still love, just not quite as much. My usual antidote would be to be somewhere else.

BC would be awesome. Sister almost ready to make me an aunt, nice weather, (nicer than today’s -30!), good food and various other enticements. The problem is that when I travel The Boy is the house sitter and if he is at his dad’s it really wouldn’t be fair to ask him to look after the house as well. If it were my year to have them I certainly wouldn’t want one of them to be at a different house for the majority of the holiday, so leaving for days isn’t a great plan.

There is something I would really really really like to go to, for reasons both well, reasonable and illogical. But… and it’s a BIG but (make all the jokes that you feel like making, but keep them to yourself) it would involve driving. In the winter. At night. Taking my own car means all of that with the additional minus of a difficult location to get to and no winter tires. Getting a ride means having no control over whether it is safe enough to drive, and having to watch others die slowly if I’m not the first to go.

And now you see where the non-garden variety anxiety crops up. I was in a terrible winter accident years ago. So long ago that I was off work on maternity leave with The Girl, who is now 15. So a long time has passed. But here I still am, terrified of winter driving. So terrified that I will miss what I sincerely don’t want to miss, just to save myself from an imaginary burning car wreck of a death.

Smoke and Fire

This one is for you, Lindsay. The only thing that the rest of you need to know is that I've had a bit of bad luck vacuum cleaner-wise. Three of the vacuums I've owned have caught on fire mid-use. The Girl says four, but the last one was all smoke and no fire so I don't think that counts.

I used to think that it was all a strange coincidence. I mean I didn't do anything odd with the vacuums, unless not using it often enough is considered odd. And I suspect that people who own them and don't use them as often as they should are so common that there is no oddness in it at all.

I'm beginning to suscribe to the theory (held by the kids and maybe Lindsay) that perhaps it is me. Because I had another appliance fire issue. Not the vacuum this time. Something else. Something that had a fire (flames and all) whilst in use. And that something is so odd, so bizarre and yet so easily explained that I guess maybe I do have a problem with all things electric.

Oh, sorry, did you want to know what appliance? Ok, then: the dishwasher. Yup, and it was on. Water swishing and all. Which I would have thought would be the best place for a fire to be - I mean instant out, yes? No, as it happens. I had to turn the dishwasher off and dump a big bowl of water on it. All is well in the end but IS this the end? I mean...if I can have a fire in the one thing a fire shouldn't be able to thrive what hope is there for me? And if something is going to burn, why can't it just be the house itself? When we're all out and well alibied, of course.