Can You Hear Me Now?

It’s Friday. You know what that means?? Tomorrow I see Rob Szabo and Peter Katz!!

I’ve had a pretty busy week. Monday evening my cousin Sherry and her husband Scott picked me up and we drove out to Strathmore for dinner at my mom’s. Scott and Sherry flew out this way to attend a Murder Mystery weekend at the Banff Springs Hotel, which they said was a lot of fun. My poor mother… she is such a perfectionist and worked tirelessly to make her spotless home and dinner look like an effortless affair. It turned out something happened with the oven and the dinner that was supposed to be ready around 6:00 wasn’t served until closer to 9:00. It was fine, we had ribs, salad and buns while we waited for the chicken and vegetables. No one minded, these things happen, but I know my mother and she will always think of this as a disaster and never forget it!

On Tuesday I worked at the Pub, where my own perfectionist tendencies (of which I have no clue how I got them) were put to the test with the new menu. The week before I had looked over the menu with Christine and helped her fix a few font and formatting changes she couldn’t figure out how to do and caught a few typos. They were going to print the menus there on the inkjet and then get them laminated. I offered to print them at my place, since I have a laser printer and it would be fast and not use up an entire cartridge. So, I e-mailed myself the menu and when I got home I printed 50 copies without checking it over first because I was in a hurry and figured it was fine after having checked it earlier. Well. Somehow the font changes I had made over on their computer didn’t show up when I opened it on mine, and now most of the prices on the menu are in a different font than the rest of it. But some of them have the correct font, which only makes the others stand out more. ARGH! Also, I realized “tzatziki” is misspelled. As soon as I fixed these I called Kevin, but too late… he had laminated the menus already and they were on the tables. I told him about the mistakes and he said “no biggie”. But I will, forevermore, see numbers formatted with Times New Roman where Comic Sans MS is supposed to be and feel bad.

When I got home from the Pub, my brother arrived for his weekly help-your-sister night. This time we had a big project… to empty out my storage room and organize it in a way that will make room for the cat litter boxes and a chair for me to sit on while I scoop them. It was Darren’s idea to do that awhile back, it was just a matter of time. I really didn’t think there would be room, but it would certainly be better for me if I could keep the cats out of my office when I’m trying to work and stuff. We put a lot of boxes in my office closet where the cat litter used to be, and I threw out a lot of junk in my storage room I really don’t need. Now I have this great little “poop room” and can keep the dust, fumes AND cats (when necessary) out of my office. Yay! I just have to keep that door open a bit at all times, although Darren wants to put in a cat door. I don’t think my building management would allow it, but I just might ask one day since I am NEVER MOVING EVER NO MATTER HOW MUCH THE RENT GOES UP… We also made our mandatory trip to the mall for Dollarama and Wal-Mart so I could get my bottled water and stuff, and buy us dinner in the glorious food court. Yogen Fruz has opened in there now. Whee! Perfect timing, as I am just about to cut out dairy products. Buggers.

Yes, I’m cutting out dairy products. And wheat and sugar. For REAL this time. A decision has been made. More on that another day.

On Wednesday, I was off to get my hair cut and a pedicure. I really need my highlights touched up too, but the ‘ol credit card can’t stretch that far this month. So I had to settle for just a cut before I ripped my bangs out of my head in frustration, and my toenails had become unregistered weapons so they were in great need of work. Now I’m a much happier person and safer to play footsies with.

Shortly after I got home from the salon (Access ride from hell, 90 minutes later…) my friends Jay and Katrina called to see if I wanted to head out for some wings. We haven’t done that in ages and I haven’t even seen them since August, so I said yes! We went to a nearby pub for some food and then we came back here so they could see how much Pita and Pepper have grown and play with them. They had lots of fun… cats and humans alike.

So two busy days in a row like that meant I rested yesterday. I actually did quite a bit of work for clients from home, and got 6 months worth of my own filing done before I settled in with a latte and TV. Today I have so far caught up my own month end books since before I broke my wrist. I have been shoving all my receipts in a folder and haven’t organized myself since then. So now I was forced to get caught up because I need to file my annual report with the government for my disability benefits and get back to faxing them my monthly statements.

Now I am waiting for a client to drop off some work and then I’ll go get a latte before I tackle the housework around here. Rob’s staying here tomorrow night and my friend Kim is coming into town as well (to see Rob and Peter and hang with me on Sunday! Yippee!), so my perfectionist tendencies come alive at times like this too!

Pita checks out the stove, looking for spills.

Pepper checks the shelves for dust.

How exciting is your life, really, when the thing you look forward to the most each day is taking your shower??

This is my 290th post. What should I do to celebrate the Big 3-0-0?? Let’s start planning now.

Yesterday I went to the mall. Yes, I know, big deal, I always do that. But I left feeling pretty damn good, because I decided that after all the recent shopping I have done for myself, I better start thinking of others, considering the season and all. So I picked up a Cabbage Patch doll, a little Tonka firetruck and a football and placed them in the Lite 96 Toy Mountain tent… even before the official launch. I put the first toys in this one! And you know what? There are lots of affordable toys out there, I only spent $25 total on those ones, so I’m going to challenge all my readers to do the same. Buy some toys for kids that might not otherwise get any this Christmas!! Of course, I have no way of tracking whether or not you actually do it, (although I’m sure there is a way, as demonstrated by the fact that I am certainly going to get that cheque from Bill Gates and AOL since I forwarded that email on 8 years ago), but feel free to leave a message in my comments so I know my readers are good, kind, humanitarian-type people.

Anyway, after I gave away the contents of my shopping bags I finally picked up a poppy to wear for Remembrance Day. And to keep with that theme, I bought myself a lemon poppyseed muffin to go with my latte.

Today, I slept in like crazy!! I don’t know what happened. I remember waking up and the clock said 8:31 a.m., and I rolled back over to lie there a few more minutes because my body just wasn’t in “get up and go” mode. And luckily I didn’t have to be anywhere today and had that luxury of giving myself time. When I looked at the clock again, it said 11:57. What the…?!?!

Good thing I got my work for the Pub done yesterday because I don’t feel like working now! My cousin Sherry is supposed to be in town with her new husband (they got married a month ago, although they had been living together for about nine years before that!) Last time she was here was when she was recovering from her Crohn’s disease surgery and was about 90 pounds. She is now healthy and happy and looked so radiant in her wedding photos at about 130 pounds! I look forward to seeing her. They’re picking me up later and we’re heading out to my Mom’s in Strathmore for dinner. Just in case they come by earlier to visit with me first though, I need to tidy up around here.

Seeing Sherry makes me think about when I visited her at her home in Ontario a couple years ago, and we went for High Tea at this cute tea house in Streetsville. I loved that, and am wondering if there is anywhere in Calgary we can go for real High Tea? I was telling AH about it the other day, and he said he’d open a shop. HAHA right, a Lebanese man opening a tea room and serving scones. That’ll be the day… (”what’s a scone?” he asked. Stick with falafels and hummus, buddy!)

Who’s this? Momma doesn’t have legs like that!!

Oh, right, it’s Momma’s personal carpet cleaner brother!

Yesterday was the best mailbox day EVER!! And I don’t mean Email box, I mean real deliveries from Canada Post.

My mailbox was stuffed, plus the mail carrier buzzed my apartment to deliver one of the boxes. It was like Christmas!

The first package I opened was full of chocolates from Switzerland. My friend Terra sent them to thank me for helping her with her website and MySpace page. There was a giant bar that I haven’t opened yet, and a large bag filled with individually wrapped chocolates, of which I ate a couple and almost died. Sooooo good. Nothing is written in English, so I can’t read the ingredients or nutritional info, and I like that about it.

The second package I opened was the DVD, “What is Indie“, a documentary I have been wanting to see. Emma loves this film and now works with the director, Dave Cool, as an intern at his record label. Pretty cool, huh? I’m going to watch it tonight.

And the third parcel was a bunch of goodies I ordered from Lush. Ohhhh my God, I had forgotten how much I loved that place until I was reading about someone else’s addiction. Otherwise a lot of this stuff would have been in my Favourite Things post! I am now the softest, fluffiest, sweetest smelling person thanks to Buffy, Rock Star soap (I had to get that, duh!), Karma dusting powder and various other things. That Buffy bar is amazing and I highly recommend it. I’ve got a King of Skin waiting in the wings too, and they sent me some free stuff (including a Glamrock Hair Glitter which I promptly stroked my cats with) and samples, which is awesome.

So my Saturday is going to consist of a really long shower, coming out feeling fantastically soft and fresh, sitting back to watch a great DVD and eat Swiss chocolates. Jealous, much?? Hee!

I love Dollarama. The past two days I have walked out of there with a ceramic vase with a big sunflower painted on it, a bag of cat treats, a large bottle of cat litter deodorizer, 5 plastic clothes hangers, TWO plastic baskets with holes to stick on the shower wall to hold all my body washes and stuff, and TWO bottles of body wash. And how much do you think that loot set me back?? That’s right. Eight dollars. I fucking love that store. Screw Disneyland, THIS is the greatest place on earth!!

My poor kitties. I didn’t know getting spayed was such a big ordeal for female cats. When male cats are neutered, it’s just a simple snip and they don’t even know anything happened to them. They may be lazy for the rest of the day, but that’s about it. For females it’s a bigger surgery, removing their ovaries and uterus and they are left with shaved bellies and a little incision. I had to keep plastic cones around their necks so they didn’t lick or bite on their incision while it healed. This past week they have not been able to jump up as high as they could, and were sleeping and resting a lot. I hated those cones, I couldn’t cuddle them very well. But I also couldn’t take them off and on easily with my one good hand, so they needed to stay on 24 hours/day. All in all, they are doing much better than I ever have following a surgery. But I read Robyn’s journal, where she is getting all sorts of cats spayed and neutered these days, and it doesn’t seem to be much of an ordeal. Maybe it’s because mine are older? Or maybe she just doesn’t want to bore her readers with the details like I do.

Anyway, I finally had enough and removed the cones yesterday. Earlier than the Vet had advised, but whatever. They’re incisions look great and I was tired of the cones flipping their food dish over and tossing food all over the floor. And let’s not even talk about what those cones can pick up in the litter boxes. And I don’t like depressed kitties. So I took them off, and it was as if I had released them from prison and lifted the world off their shoulders . They immediately chased each other up the hall and started running around and playing and jumping like lunatics. They’re back!!

Oh, there is finally a confirmed show here for Rob Szabo and Peter Katz. Saturday, November 11, at Original Joe’s in Marda Loop. Check out their websites for details and other shows on this Western Canada tour. I do believe Rob is going to be heading to the Northeastern parts of the US in January with my good friend Lobelia, so if you’re around NY/PA/WV etc. they will be heading your way!!! I wish I could go with them. Those two are great fun to hang out with and we’d laugh and laugh…

I don’t even know what I’ve been up to lately. I used to keep a daily gratitude journal but I’ve given it a rest because I got tired of it. However, it did help me remember what I did every day by looking back at it, so maybe I should go back to it for that reason alone. But, how many times can you say “I’m grateful for the guy that held the door open for me” or “I’m grateful that AH called” before you bore yourself to death??

So this week has been a quiet one… worked at Troy’s on Monday, where there is a new girl in the office Mel is training to take over for her maternity leave. I’m sure she’ll be great. As long as she is aware that part of her job description is to pick me up a Tim Horton’s coffee and bagel on the days I’m coming in, we will get along fine. Hehe

The rest of the week I’ve mostly been at the computer and on the phone trying to promote Rob on this tour. It’s too short of notice and I’m not having much luck. Next time he tours out this way I need a couple months notice, then I know I can get him on the Breakfast Television shows and stuff and into the weekly entertainment rags. I need to create an actual media database pretty quick here. Contact names change so damn much in that field though, it hardly seems worth it. But it’s necessary because my list is growing and Excel doesn’t seem like the best place to keep it anymore. Creating the list in the first place takes way more time than contacting everyone! I haven’t done this since I worked in publicity at Paramount Pictures a hundred years ago, before Microsoft Access even existed. Hell, we didn’t even have a computer/word processor! Remember the days when we used typewriters and if we made a mistake… *shudder*

Speaking of my past, one day I need to write some entries about my crazy youth and my three years in Toronto that included living in a homeless shelter for street kids and sharing a place with a gay male prostitute and working for a rockin’ blues band and at a TV station and after I came back to Calgary when I worked at Paramount and then an “Entertainment” (read: stripper) agency and with a Carnival Freak Side Show. And you thought I was just a latte-drinking-kitty-lovin’-aging-groupie-shopoholic. With MS.

And now, I am a bookkeeper who has lots of work to do. So I better get to it. I’ll leave you with pictures of my little Coneheads:

First we must play with it, because everything is a toy.

Pepper says “GET THIS THING OFF OF ME!!!!!”

Pita says “DAMN, I’m cute no matter what you do!”

Depression sets in and Momma starts to feel real bad.

These are the little faces I had to look at all week…