Stressed out? Me? Of course not!

I’m a high strung person most of the time but if you asked me if I was stressed out, I would prolly tell you no, I’m always this tense. Case in point, whenever I go to Amanda to get my nails done she always tries to wiggle my fingers, telling me to loosen them up, to relax. I tell her that I am relaxed. In fact, getting my nails done is one of the most relaxing things to me.

At the chiropractor’s office, my chiro says the same thing. Relax. I tell him, ‘This is me relaxed!’ Once he ran his finger down the tendon that was sticking out sharply on my neck and said, ‘Then what is this?’ But it’s always like that, I explained.

So, am I stressed out right now? Mental inventory: hmm. Well, I have had a death in the immediate family, but the arrangements are all over. And work is busy but it’s better to be busy than not. And I’m not sleeping very well, but my caffeine intake has gone up recently (see aforementioned death in family and work is busy). So am I stressed? ‘Course not!

But my body appears to be trying to tell me a different story. My hair is falling out faster than normal (a classic squirrelly girly sign of stress), and I just saw my chiro last week and already I can hardly move my head today and I’ve gone over and above the daily recommended dosage of Tums (but really, what can happen if you take too many Tums??) and the Advil bottle is getting more of a workout. Plus there’s this tight feeling in my chest that makes it hard to breathe.

Dammit, I think I am stressed! But what’s a busy girl to do? Yoga? Who has time? Facial? Again, who has time? Massage? Already got one booked but it’s not till next week. Sleep in? Who will pay the bills? Exercise? Hi, have we met? I don’t think so.

So, like the rest of the peeps in the world who are stressed out, I’ve got to keep going. We’re in this together!!

Paging Rock Hudson . . .

Man’s man, ladies man, man about the town, yes, it’s Rock Hudson. He was the studliest dudley Hollywood had seen in quite a while. I still watch Pillow Talk and Magnificent Obsession on a regular basis. Sigh, Rock Hudson, you dream boat.

But, unbeknownst to us at the time, he was gay. Sadly back in those days, you had to hide your sexual preference if it was not for the opposite sex. But they say, times have changed. . .. .

Or HAVE they?

My mum told me when she read a biography on Rock, that he said he and his ‘guy pals’ always made a point of hanging out in odd numbers, groups of 3, 5, etc. Hang out in even numbers and people might consider you ‘paired off.’ But hange out in odd numbers and it was ‘apparently’ clear, you were just hanging out with the buds, swilling a couple of brewskies.

Now I hear that Lance Armstrong, Jake Gyllenhall and Matt McConaughey are quite the threesome lately, hanging out all the time. Sure, they could be just good ol’ boys, meaning no harm. But hey, this is Hollywood.

Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares – If you can find a phone that works.

Okay, so my office moved and the move was pretty sudden. Shaw Cable (my new best friend) was able to hook us up the very next day. They were helpful, polite and apologized for not being able to hook up our internet sooner. Shaw Cable – You are my hero!!

But, let’s not forget the phones. Can’t have an office without phones. So I phone my office’s telephone company, Melus*. After waiting on hold, speaking to the disembodied voice of the phone system (Please speak your answer now. Okay, it sounds like you are moving. Is this business or commercial? Please speak your answer now. Okay, it sounds like you are a business account) I get a REAL LIVE person who asks why I am calling. What was the whole rigamorole I just went through? Am I on candid camera??!! Anyway, the earliest she can get me in is August 18th.

August 18th. It was July 28th when I called. But what can I do? Digital phone is not available in the new area. I’m over a barrell and she knows it. Alright, August 18th. But I ask her if she can set up call forwarding on our line so it will go to my boss’ cell phone. She says she’s doing it as we speak.

Flash forward to the following Monday and I go back to the old office to set up call forwarding and am told by the disembodied voice, “You do not currently have this feature installed.” MELUS!! You are my nemisis!

And on Friday, the 11th, Melus dude shows up to do our phones, at 4.45, just as Chantal and I were leaving. We weren’t expecting him and we have no key to the telephone room (where all the important blinking lights and pretty cable is kept). I explain the sitch to him and he says he will call to see if he can get call forwarding set up. He spends 40 minutes on the phone, gets transferred 6 times and at the end of it all, IT STILL CAN’T BE DONE!!! AND HE WORKS FOR THEM!!

I told him, you know what, don’t sweat it, we went a week without it, we can go a few days more. He says, ‘Oh, but I get off at 5.30 and I got a few more minutes to kill so I don’t have to go somewhere else.’

That sound you heard was my brain imploding.

He SWORE he would be back noon on Monday. What do you think my chances are? Or should I buy a lotto ticket instead?


* Names have been changed to protect the no-so-innocent.

Imagination Station

Well, kiddies, in an effort to get back to normalcy after my dad’s untimely passing, I’m back to the blog.

And here’s my question for you: Why is it that imagination in young children is encouraged but imagination in grown-ups must be stamped out like a spider found in your bed?

Consider this: When you are a child, you have imaginary friends. You host imaginary friend tea parties. You build stuff out of lego and while it looks like stuff built from lego, you pretend it’s a mansion, a shopping mall, a McDonald’s. Your parents ooh and ahh over it and brag to all their friends how imaginative you are. You’re so creative and bright. Why, just the other day, you put a tennis ball in a sock, tied a string around it and walked it around the house, pretending it was a dog. How cute!! How inventive!!

Flash foward twenty years later and anyone with a hair of creativity left on their head is considered a whack job. If my sister came home tonight and found me having a tea party with chairs set up for my teddy and my cabbage patch kid, Addie, she’d call the men in the white coats. If I decided I wanted to play dress up (in my own clothes, no less!) it would be considered odd, crazy and maybe even a little scary. If I put on my makeup like Baby Jane, Jenge would call the cops.

So what happened? What’s the difference? Why are children allowed to ‘play pretend’ but grown-ups can’t? Don’t you think we need it more? Who has more stress? A four year old who doesn’t know how to spell ‘mortgage’ or me with a full time job, bills to pay and an hour long commute? Can you imagine how much fun it would be to have a pretend tea party as an adult? Not only could you serve REAL TEA and SCONES but you have WAY BETTER imaginary guests. No longer would I have to invite Teddy and Addie, I could pretend it was Jake Gyllenhall and Dr. Daniel Jackson from Stargate (Shut it! It’s MY TEA PARTY!!) and they could be arguing over which one of them I should choose. Who could buy me prettier things? Who would run out at midnight to get Coke Zero when I ran out? Who would mow the lawn and see if they could get the grass in front of my house to come back to life? Who could pay off my mortgage first?

It would be THE BEST TEA PARTY EVER!!

Circle of Life

Well, mes amis, it’s a sad time at Squirrelly Girly’s. My dad, John, passed away on Tuesday, August 1st. Jenge and I were with him when it happened and he went peacefully. I’d been away from the blog for a while while he was in the hospital, and I’ll prolly be away from it for a while again while my family tries to process all this. They say the first stage is shock, and boy are ‘they’ right. My family is wandering around right now like walking wounded and every once in a while we stop to ask ourselves what the hell just happened? Is this really going on? Did this all just happen? No, can’t be. But it is. So there you have it.

For everyone out there that has sent their condolences, my family really appreciates it, thanks. Everyone has been so kind.

Love,
Squirrelly Girly.

Doctor on Duty: Urban legend or reality?

So Dad is in the hospital again. No matter how many times I go visit him, I never see a doctor. Mum, Ann and Jenge assure me that they have seen doctors. They have spoken to doctors. They have asked questions of doctors and gotten answers. But I’m beginning to think that the ‘Doctor on Duty’ is a myth, an urban legend and they have not really seen anyone, only convinced themselves that they have. In all my trips to Foothills hospital over the years, I have only seen a doctor one. He was very nice. Very tall. That’s about all I can remember.

In a country like Canada, I should not have to wonder if doctors are figments of my family’s imagination. I should be able to see them milling about, working. I see lots of nuses, nurses aides, orderlies. No doctors.

And don’t get me wrong. Everyone I have seen is bending over backward to be nice, and efficient. They are doing their jobs. It’s not them I have a problem with.

The health care in this country sucks. We have, like, 2.6 doctors per capita and are the only first world country without a plan to improve that. I think that as per capita stats go, we rank FOURTH LAST in the world.

Yet Stephen Harper lowers the GST from 7% (7 being a holy number) to 6% (6 being the number of you-know-who). And Ralph Klein buys us off like four year olds at Christmas handing out a $400.00 rebate cheque since our province is doing so well. How about keeping the GST at 7% and tossing that extra cash toward better health care? Stop placating me like a child with the promise of a pony and toss that $400 toward some medical equipment.

AND YOU!! STOP BEING PLACATED!! Instead of squealing with excitement over the possibility of another rebate cheque you should be OUTRAGED!! OUTRAGED that your allegiance has been bought and sold so easily. Sure, some people really needed that money, but most of us could have gotten by without it.

OUTRAGED, I say!

Sick as a Dog!

Oh! Mes enfants! I am sick! (insert violin music here) Yes, I have a cold or the flu. Does it matter which? The point is, I am sufferring! Like most of you when you are sick, I have no time to be so. I spend my days convincing myself that I am not sick enough to go home (LIE), that I will feel better after another glass of water (LIE), and that my sudden loss of appetite really isn’t that unusual in myself (THE BIGGEST LIE OF ALL – If I didn’t worry about my weight, I would eat like an NFL linebacker 24/7. Don’t believe me? Ask Donna, she lived with me for 8 months and reportedly had never seen anyone eat as much as me). My throat hurts, my head hurts, my body is all achy-shmachy. At night, I don’t so much dream as have paranoid delusions (you’ve had ’em when you’re sick. You sleep like the dead for 2 hours and then suddenly find yourself waking up every fifteen minutes CONVINCED the communists are about to bust down the door and steal your knitting yarn! BASTARDS! WHY would they do that to me? Unless it’s not the communists, it’s the fascists! Yeah, that’s right. The fascists! They want to take my yarn and sell it for double the price! Miserable hunchbacks. I oughta. . . wait, where was I? Is it time to take my Neo Citran again? Has it been four hours yet? It must have been (check clock) Wait a minute!! Those communists have screwed with my clock!! Setting it ahead four hours so I won’t get any rest and will work more! Damn Communism!! Dammit!!)

Then you wake up in the morning, drenched in feverish sweat and wonder why you don’t feel rested.

It sucks being sick!!

If I was a celebrity I could check myself into my nearest high class exclusive hospital and have cute doctors fretting over me, soap opera like, wondering if I’ll make it. (But doctor, will I live??? Will I ever be a world class cellist just like I’ve dreamed off since I was a poor vagrant on the streets before I became so fabulously wealthy for doing nothing except have my picture taken every time I leave the house? SOB! THE DRAMA!!) But being the real world, I can’t face the eight hours I would have to wait in line at the local clinic – nor can I afford to take that kind of time off work, so I schlepp to and fro, telling myself that tomorrow, I will feel better!! Neo citran, Ny-Quil, Advil, Cold FX, Vitamin C Halls – my high end drugs of choice!! My body and my brain are in a war!! Who will give out first?? The body? With its low-grade fever, foggy brain and achy muscles, it appears to be ahead of the game. But this is still early in the match. The brain has a memory! It remembers that you do get well eventually, you just have to keep going! The brain also has a calculator and is keeping a running tally of Mastercard and Visa. They won’t take “But I’m sick!” as an payment installment.

Damn this mortal body!!

You Can’t SING!!

Okay, kiddies. What’s with all the singer/songwriters these days? Time was, you were either a singer or a songwriter. It was a rare breed that was both. But nowadays, anyone who can pen a tune thinks that gives them the right to be a singer. The problem is alot of them can’t sing. Can’t carry a tune in a bucket. You may disagree with me (although you’d be WRONG!!) but here is my starting list of people who should go back to just being songwriters, if that.

1. Sheryl Crow – Is she popular? Sure. Good Looking? You bet. Can she sing? Nope. If you want to argue this one, listen to “Strong Enough” for thirty seconds. I win.
2. Cheyenne – This one is a new one. I heard something screeching at me from the radio the other day and, my God, it was awful. It was Cheyenne. She should be banned on account of the Geneva Conventions.
3. Ashlee Simpson – Gurl, you got moxy, I’ll give you that. And I admit, I like the song ‘Boyfriend.’ But just because your sister can sing doesn’t mean you can.
4. Paris Hilton – Can someone please assasinate her already?
5. The Tragically Hip – Yes, legions of Canadians are now going to be hunting for my hide, but the lead guy CAN’T CARRY A TUNE TO SAVE HIS LIFE!!
6. Raine formerly of OLP – Dude sounds like he could sing, if only he would stop trying to be so artsily anguished. Damn this pop-star life! It’s SO HARD!! Sniff.

I’m sure there’s more that annoy me, but it’s early and I’m doped up on cold medication. Feel free to add your own!!

PS – I’ve a new link on the side, Doctor Boogaloos Lunch Counter. So funny. Check it out.