Perhaps I shouldn't say "I did something dumb". It wasn't like it was planned.
I stayed up the night before making Christmas treats to bring into the office the next day. I was used to trudging into work sleep deprived, so my mind was still back in bed when I shuffled across the parking lot to my waiting cab. I hit ice.
I felt like I was in a cheezy slow motion movie scene. My right foot went right out on the ice, my left foot solidly planted on pavement. I dropped my purse. The Christmas treats went flying. I landed with my left foot bent under me, and the entirety of my not insignificant weight came crashing down on my ankle.
I swore. A lot. Loudly.
When I didn't get up the cab driver, to his credit, moved very quickly. After an aborted attempt to stand (followed by a copious amount of swearing), it was fairly obvious my foot would not bear any weight. I called Hubby, who was downstairs in his PJs in record time, looking white as a sheet. He got me settled on the couch, where I tried to figure out why I was crying, before realizing it was due to shock. Rest. Ice. Compress. Elevate.
Fuck me. 5 days before Christmas and I go and bugger up my ankle. What are the chances.
After a few hours it was obvious that a trip to the emergency was in order. X-Rays, hobbling along like gimpy walrus. Not broken, thank god. I heard the words "tore", "muscles, "ligaments" and "physio".
48 hours later and I have a new found appreciation for my body and good health. I can manage a hobbling kind of shuffle by putting a minimal amount of weight on the ball of my big toe, but after a dozen hops my body reminds me that "put no weight on it" means stop shuffling around like an idiot and sit on the couch. I'm not ashamed (alright, I'm slightly ashamed) to admit to collapsing on the kitchen floor and having a minor tantrum. I was just so tired and hurting and frustrated.
Oh Christmas. Some of my shopping was done, but I had so much more to do. And cookies. How was I suppose to bake cookies while balancing on one increasingly sore leg? I knew no one was going to hold my stupid injury and inability to provide presents against me, but I was still my harshest critic. And Hubby. As I was sending him off to work this morning it dawned on me that one of the last presents I was going to buy was his. He had been gloating about his marvelous gift for me for weeks now, crowing with delight and ingenuity. I was suppose to take him shopping to feel out his present. As it stands, I had nothing to give him. Absolutely nothing.
I sat at my computer and just cried. I'm not telling you this to illicit sympathy. It was just the only thing I could do. A final release of frustration and pain and disappointment. I blubbered and snotted and felt a million times better for allowing myself to feel rotten and pained and sorry for myself. There was no Christmas baking. We had no tree. There were no decorations up. Nothing was wrapped. The house was filthy.
Self, I said, this is silly. You are not useless. Christmas is not ruined. So, I can't get out to shop, or put up decorations, or walk more than 4 steps without swearing in pain. I can still give.
On behalf of myself and Hubby, we just donated $1000 split between CHEO, The Ottawa Mission, and the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (formerly Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada). I sat and stared at their little Comments box for a while, before writing simply "Merry Christmas" and sending off my money to do some good out there.
My mum surprised me by showing up and now my fake ficus tree has some pretty (if lopsided) lights on it, and there's some incredibly tacky red garland hanging off one of my paintings. It looks wonderful. It feels like Christmas.
So Merry Happy Christmas to all those out there wrapping presents, or fighting through shopping malls, or feeling a bit sad because things didn't turn out quite as you planned them. I love you.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Christmas (Part 1)
I love Christmas.
I'm one of those annoying people who get ridiculously happy at the sight of Christmas lights. If I had my way, my house would look like Santa vomited all over it. I love the lights, I love the decorations, I love the tree (real, sticky, messy, half frozen, pain-in-the-ass tree) ... I'm that person.
However, my other half is not. He's the person who, when malls begin playing Christmas Carols on loop, wants to strangle people like me. Or stick me in a box, wrap it up, and ship it off to Antarctica where he no longer has to deal with the lights, decorations, tree and annoyingly perky attitudes. In part, this is because he works in retail, and so Christmas is his own personal Vietnam. But it goes deeper than that, to before he worked in a mall being hounded by Christmas cheer. He just does not like Christmas.
So we compromise. I get over enthusiastic and run up our electricity bill with lights, and he shuts up and allows it. He wants nothing to do with gift buying or wrapping, so I happily put on some music and build a fort in the living room out of wrapping paper, tape and ribbon. Honestly, with his retail hours I consider myself a widow until mid-January, so it works out fairly well. I can explode in Christmas cheer, he can Scrooge it up, and we can reconvene in the new year and bond over other shared interests.
This year, however, it looked as if his Scrooge-ness was going to win. We're in a smaller house, so our gorgeous 7 foot tall Christmas tree can't be resurrected from the basement because it won't fit. Then the cats went and peed on it, so we had to toss the whole thing out - tree, wreath, garlands. The whole lot. (I love real Christmas trees, he thinks it's cruel to kill a tree for a holiday - so I get a big tree, but it has to be fake. Love is all about compromise.)
That's alright, I said. We barely spend any time at home during the holidays anyway. We're over at his family's, then his sister's, then my brother's... our place is much too small to host a Christmas anything, and with no kids the onus of travel falls to us. We don't need no stinkin' tree to enjoy Christmas! I still have the lights!
Then he had a dental emergency. A panicked appointment, followed by two months of visits and fixes and work wracked us up over $5000 of dental crap. It had to be done, no help for it. And I'm an obsessive compulsive squirrel when it comes to hoarding money, so we could afford it. But it was tight. So, no tree, no plans to buy a new tree or anywhere to put it, far less money than we had planned, and an increasingly cranky hubby facing a month of close-combat style Christmas retail insanity with ongoing tooth ache on the side (our dentist is amazing and was a miracle worker in his mouth, but with his teeth shifting around and the amount of work done, the recovery is long and painful.)
So I was feeling distinctly un-Christmasy. My mother was visiting soon, which meant my house was a chaos of cleaning. My school work was piling up and I was going to have to juggle final exams with two jobs, the dojo training, my mother, and my newly returned-to-the-country brother and his son. And a tooth-cranky hubby. And his family. And what on earth was I going to buy everyone and when on earth was I going to do it!?
The stress levels were high. The Christmas spirit was low.
It was in this frame of mine that I trudged home from an excruciatingly long day. It was cold, it was wet, I was wallowing in some self pity. Maybe because of all this, I was looking for a reason to love Christmas again.
I moped. Hubby and I had a long talk about our finances, and decided that we could do it. He wanted to buy presents and we would stretch our budget to accommodate, since the one area we agree on completely when it comes to Christmas is that the giving is a million times more important than the getting. I could bake cookies, which would supplement our low-income gift giving. We could put Christmas lights on the fake ficus and make it our gimpy Christmas tree. We could do this.
Then I did something dumb.
To be continued...
I'm one of those annoying people who get ridiculously happy at the sight of Christmas lights. If I had my way, my house would look like Santa vomited all over it. I love the lights, I love the decorations, I love the tree (real, sticky, messy, half frozen, pain-in-the-ass tree) ... I'm that person.
However, my other half is not. He's the person who, when malls begin playing Christmas Carols on loop, wants to strangle people like me. Or stick me in a box, wrap it up, and ship it off to Antarctica where he no longer has to deal with the lights, decorations, tree and annoyingly perky attitudes. In part, this is because he works in retail, and so Christmas is his own personal Vietnam. But it goes deeper than that, to before he worked in a mall being hounded by Christmas cheer. He just does not like Christmas.
So we compromise. I get over enthusiastic and run up our electricity bill with lights, and he shuts up and allows it. He wants nothing to do with gift buying or wrapping, so I happily put on some music and build a fort in the living room out of wrapping paper, tape and ribbon. Honestly, with his retail hours I consider myself a widow until mid-January, so it works out fairly well. I can explode in Christmas cheer, he can Scrooge it up, and we can reconvene in the new year and bond over other shared interests.
This year, however, it looked as if his Scrooge-ness was going to win. We're in a smaller house, so our gorgeous 7 foot tall Christmas tree can't be resurrected from the basement because it won't fit. Then the cats went and peed on it, so we had to toss the whole thing out - tree, wreath, garlands. The whole lot. (I love real Christmas trees, he thinks it's cruel to kill a tree for a holiday - so I get a big tree, but it has to be fake. Love is all about compromise.)
That's alright, I said. We barely spend any time at home during the holidays anyway. We're over at his family's, then his sister's, then my brother's... our place is much too small to host a Christmas anything, and with no kids the onus of travel falls to us. We don't need no stinkin' tree to enjoy Christmas! I still have the lights!
Then he had a dental emergency. A panicked appointment, followed by two months of visits and fixes and work wracked us up over $5000 of dental crap. It had to be done, no help for it. And I'm an obsessive compulsive squirrel when it comes to hoarding money, so we could afford it. But it was tight. So, no tree, no plans to buy a new tree or anywhere to put it, far less money than we had planned, and an increasingly cranky hubby facing a month of close-combat style Christmas retail insanity with ongoing tooth ache on the side (our dentist is amazing and was a miracle worker in his mouth, but with his teeth shifting around and the amount of work done, the recovery is long and painful.)
So I was feeling distinctly un-Christmasy. My mother was visiting soon, which meant my house was a chaos of cleaning. My school work was piling up and I was going to have to juggle final exams with two jobs, the dojo training, my mother, and my newly returned-to-the-country brother and his son. And a tooth-cranky hubby. And his family. And what on earth was I going to buy everyone and when on earth was I going to do it!?
The stress levels were high. The Christmas spirit was low.
It was in this frame of mine that I trudged home from an excruciatingly long day. It was cold, it was wet, I was wallowing in some self pity. Maybe because of all this, I was looking for a reason to love Christmas again.
I moped. Hubby and I had a long talk about our finances, and decided that we could do it. He wanted to buy presents and we would stretch our budget to accommodate, since the one area we agree on completely when it comes to Christmas is that the giving is a million times more important than the getting. I could bake cookies, which would supplement our low-income gift giving. We could put Christmas lights on the fake ficus and make it our gimpy Christmas tree. We could do this.
Then I did something dumb.
To be continued...
Friday, December 2, 2011
Why I Use Facebook
I realize I'm stepping dangerously close to freaky meta territory by writing a post about a social medium on a social medium. Like somehow by blogging about facebook, they will be thrown together in some disgusting social media orgy resulting in freakish internet babies who are over-opinionated and have zero grasp of grammar and the English language.
I'm going to risk it though.
Full disclosure time: I facebook. Often. (Also, when did facebook become a verb??)
Most of my family (read: everyone) lives far away. Inaccessibly far away. So the glory that is facebook allows me to keep in touch, or at the very least keep tabs, on both close and extended family. Except for the once-every-two-months phonecall with Mum, who could fill me in on major life events (babies, weddings, major surgeries), if not for the glory that is facebook newsfeed I would have zero idea what was going on with any of my family. Like most other internationally scattered families with a high rate of divorce, second marriage, and rabbit-like breeding, even with the glory of the facebook newsfeed it's difficult to keep track of them.
More full disclosure time: even if all my family lived within driving distance (may such a fate never befall me), I would still stalk facebook whenever possible.
It's like a train wreck you can't look away from. Or those videos of disgustingly fascinating staph infections I wasted most of an afternoon watching (don't judge me). Or the fact that I wasted three hours last night watching Glee (please don't judge me). I feel like there is nothing healthy to be gained from compulsively checking facebook on my phone while I wait for the bus. I gain nada from hearing about how the guy I vaguely sort of knew in highschool is having a fantastic day and enjoys waffles. I know this, but I still find myself waiting for the bus, trying to look like I'm reading some email from work when I'm actually checking out the lolcat picture the girl from second grade posted on her wall.
Final disclosure thenI'll stopIswear: I worry I'm one of those annoying people the internet tells you to defriend.
Or maybe just that I'm doing this whole facebook thing wrong (I know, I know, there is no wrong... let this one go, it's my anxiety talking not me).
I was reading a blog-ish post on facebook, and she had posted her own list of criteria for defriending. I shamefully fit some of it. I'm that person with more photos of her animals than anything else. I've posted pictures of the meal I just created. I share things. Lots of things. I've been that annoying farmville person (although I've since kicked the farmville addiction, so there is hope!). I've friended people I haven't seen in years and have no plans on seeing for years more. My mum's on my facebook and I don't block her from seeing anything I post.
And yet... I'm kinda okay with all of this.
See, I like facebook for the same reasons I enjoyed World of Warcraft for years, for the same reason I'm a million times more likely to text than call. I'm only human, I crave social contact. I like people. But I'm terrified of people. Facebook gives you a venue to connect with other human beings, without actually having to deal with the social morass of actual interaction. Not that I'm against the occasional cup of coffee with a physically present person. But sparingly. And only with people I well and truly like.
And it's not just the stalkerish aspect of peeking into someone's window. I enjoy sharing on facebook too. I spend a crazy amount of time alone, both by preference and circumstance. Poor hubby gets pounced on as soon as he walks in the door and has to deal with my verbal explosion after having no one but the dog to talk to for the past 6 hours. He takes it well. Facebook allows some of that verbal explosion, that need to impart a little of yourself, to bleed out and satisfy the social craving. Like that just-one-more cigarette to tide you over in the process of trying to quit.
My social group is small. Beautiful, but small. I don't have close family. If I cook something crazy good, like my chicken stuffed boccocini and baby spinach wrapped in prosciutto, I can't call my mum or my sister or my aunt and say, "Check this shit out. I MADE that!". I'm lacking that critical social component, the someone to give my uncooked pasta art to so they can put it on their fridge.
Facebook is my fridge.
So, sorry about all the pictures of my dogs being dumb. But I'm not going to stop.
I'm going to risk it though.
Full disclosure time: I facebook. Often. (Also, when did facebook become a verb??)
Most of my family (read: everyone) lives far away. Inaccessibly far away. So the glory that is facebook allows me to keep in touch, or at the very least keep tabs, on both close and extended family. Except for the once-every-two-months phonecall with Mum, who could fill me in on major life events (babies, weddings, major surgeries), if not for the glory that is facebook newsfeed I would have zero idea what was going on with any of my family. Like most other internationally scattered families with a high rate of divorce, second marriage, and rabbit-like breeding, even with the glory of the facebook newsfeed it's difficult to keep track of them.
More full disclosure time: even if all my family lived within driving distance (may such a fate never befall me), I would still stalk facebook whenever possible.
It's like a train wreck you can't look away from. Or those videos of disgustingly fascinating staph infections I wasted most of an afternoon watching (don't judge me). Or the fact that I wasted three hours last night watching Glee (please don't judge me). I feel like there is nothing healthy to be gained from compulsively checking facebook on my phone while I wait for the bus. I gain nada from hearing about how the guy I vaguely sort of knew in highschool is having a fantastic day and enjoys waffles. I know this, but I still find myself waiting for the bus, trying to look like I'm reading some email from work when I'm actually checking out the lolcat picture the girl from second grade posted on her wall.
Final disclosure thenI'll stopIswear: I worry I'm one of those annoying people the internet tells you to defriend.
Or maybe just that I'm doing this whole facebook thing wrong (I know, I know, there is no wrong... let this one go, it's my anxiety talking not me).
I was reading a blog-ish post on facebook, and she had posted her own list of criteria for defriending. I shamefully fit some of it. I'm that person with more photos of her animals than anything else. I've posted pictures of the meal I just created. I share things. Lots of things. I've been that annoying farmville person (although I've since kicked the farmville addiction, so there is hope!). I've friended people I haven't seen in years and have no plans on seeing for years more. My mum's on my facebook and I don't block her from seeing anything I post.
And yet... I'm kinda okay with all of this.
See, I like facebook for the same reasons I enjoyed World of Warcraft for years, for the same reason I'm a million times more likely to text than call. I'm only human, I crave social contact. I like people. But I'm terrified of people. Facebook gives you a venue to connect with other human beings, without actually having to deal with the social morass of actual interaction. Not that I'm against the occasional cup of coffee with a physically present person. But sparingly. And only with people I well and truly like.
And it's not just the stalkerish aspect of peeking into someone's window. I enjoy sharing on facebook too. I spend a crazy amount of time alone, both by preference and circumstance. Poor hubby gets pounced on as soon as he walks in the door and has to deal with my verbal explosion after having no one but the dog to talk to for the past 6 hours. He takes it well. Facebook allows some of that verbal explosion, that need to impart a little of yourself, to bleed out and satisfy the social craving. Like that just-one-more cigarette to tide you over in the process of trying to quit.
My social group is small. Beautiful, but small. I don't have close family. If I cook something crazy good, like my chicken stuffed boccocini and baby spinach wrapped in prosciutto, I can't call my mum or my sister or my aunt and say, "Check this shit out. I MADE that!". I'm lacking that critical social component, the someone to give my uncooked pasta art to so they can put it on their fridge.
Facebook is my fridge.
So, sorry about all the pictures of my dogs being dumb. But I'm not going to stop.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)