Jeez Louise

So this morning I thanked my student for his snow moving services of yesterday, and he was like “Oh man, I didn’t want you to know it was me!”

I’m kind of like… hmm, should I give him some money? But there are two factors preventing me:

1) we are Broke as a Joke
2) we didn’t ask him to do this, so if we pay him, is he just gonna start showing up and randomly doing things (I imagine waking up to find him washing our windows) and expecting to get paid?

We shall see how this all pans out.

So… we had a storm on Wednesday night. The one Wednesday gave us plenty of snow, but our driveway was mostly spared, except for the end where the snowplow filled it in. Rob dug it out, whatever.
Then we had another storm on Saturday. This one filled in the whole driveway, and lasted until dark last night. I went out to babysit my nephews (cute story about that later), and Rob managed to dig a little path from the house to the road, so that was alright. But I told him to wait til it was light before shoveling the rest because who wants to shovel in the dark?
Anyway. This morning we slept in a little. Then we didn’t want to shovel. So we kind of lazed around a little. Finally we’d gotten up the nerve and started to head outside, when we looked out the window…
and there was one of my students, just finishing shoveling our driveway!
Now, before you go thinking that I have the best students in the world, (I do, but that’s neither here nor there) it so happens that our next-door neighbour is this particular kid’s grandfather, and we share a driveway.

Now for the cute story: While I was babysitting the kids and I played Pop-O-Matic Trouble. Then we put together a Buzz Lightyear puzzle. Then I read them a couple of stories. And then - it was time for bed, so I said “Boys! It’s time to go upstairs and brush our teeth!”. The youngest one said “I have a Spiderman toothbrush! And brother has a Batman toothbrush!” “Wow, guys, that’s great! Let’s go upstairs and use those toothbrushes!”
Which caused the oldest to give me a quizzical look and finally say, “… I guess you can use Mommy’s toothbrush…”

This is probably more information than you ever needed to know about me… believe me it’s more than I’d care to know about myself, except I’m living it so I’m kind of forced to know.

So.
I don’t want this to become one of THOSE blogs… you know- the ones that people hate because all the person does is talk about their health or whine all the time (what’s that you say? too late? Well!), not that I know any blogs like that because everyone on my blogroll is super awesome and I love reading them. But.
I *KNEW* my period was coming today. I KNEW IT. The little chart tells me that today is the day it’s supposed to start, my temperature this morning told me it was supposed to start, I had a cramp a couple of days ago, and I’ve been unreasonably cranky the past couple of days. Like “I told my student that he could get a drink and then this other person I work with stopped him and told him he couldn’t get a drink even though it was NONE OF HIS BUSINESS and the kid was COUGHING AND COUGHING” phoning Rob at home and bitching to him about it for 20 minutes kind of cranky. Seriously, what the hell’s up with that? Before I started taking the Clomid, I was NOT that kind of cranky even in the throes of PMS. Guess that’s why they have a term for it: the Clomid Crazies.
ANYWAY. So I logically knew my period was coming. But it wasn’t here this morning when I woke up (it usually flits in on dove’s wings while I’m sleeping). It wasn’t here when I left for work. It wasn’t here when I started teaching. So I started explaining away everything that I could.
“The chart says that it should start today, but it also says that I should test today! Maybe it won’t come today, and today I will test!”
“My temperature went down, but that might be because Rob turned the heat down to sub-zero last night before coming to bed, and I somehow ended up kicking off the blankets during the night so no wonder!”
“Cramps? Cranky? Maybe the cramping was because of indigestion! Maybe the crankiness is just due to the fact that we’re in an incredibly shitty, stressful situation at the moment that I refuse to blog about!”

I need to start trusting my initial instinct.

Period Time of Arrival today: 10:25 am.

Operating

We had quite the interesting little storm last night… so much so that school today is on a one-hour delay. Of course I went in at the normal time, but whatever. Just means I have extra time to do work without the kiddies swinging from anything. Not that they ever do. I promise.

Weird

I have no idea what’s going on, but all comments (not that I got thousands, but I liked the ones I got!) disappeared from my site! If anyone has any idea why that would happen, wanna send a girl a clue? jeezDOTlouiseDOTblogATgmailDOTcom.

A funny thing happened on the way to the pharmacy…

Do you want to know what was super funny the other day? Well, maybe not THAT funny, but it was funny to me.
One of the prescriptions I have is for a steroid cream in case I have any eczema flare-ups. Of course I forgot to bring in the box when I went to the doctor, but I figured she’d know what it was called. So when I asked for a refill on the prescription for my eczema cream, she flipped through my chart, found what she was looking for, wrote something on the prescription pad, and off I toddled home. The next day on my lunch hour I dropped off the prescriptions, told them I didn’t need this, this, or this right away, but I did need the cream (my left arm has been hiving up like crazy lately), and that I’d be back at around 4 pm.
So, 4:00 rolled around. I arrived at the drugstore, asked for my prescription, and what would usually take about 10 seconds took a good five minutes. First the lady looked on the counter. Then she looked in the drawer. Then on the other counter. Then in another drawer. Asked me my name (again). Looked again. Asked my phone number. Looked again. Then she called over another lady, who repeated the process. And a third lady. Still nothing. I was beginning to wonder if these people actually worked there, or if they had just snatched up blue lab coats and ninja’d their way behind the counter.
Finally, one of them called over the actual pharmacist, who asked my name, tapped a couple of buttons on the computer, and said “Oh! Yes, Dr. (same last name as mine but we’re not related) prescribed a medication that no longer exists. We have a call in to her, but she hasn’t called back yet.” She offered to call as soon as my doctor had gotten back to them with a replacement prescription.
Now, before you go thinking that my doctor is a crazed buffoon - she isn’t. It’s just that she’s been my doctor since I was 5 years old. I’ve had a lot of health problems - ranging from asthma to eczema to alopecia to collapsing lungs to perforated eardrums- and a lot of surgeries, and my file is rather thick. So she flipped through and got to the first letter from a dermatologist that she could find, and re-prescribed what he’d prescribed to me, way back sometime in the 90s… It just turns out that they stopped making that particular steroid cream in 2001.

In other news: I bought the wrong apples today at the grocery store! They’re still good, honeycrisp are good apples, but they are not my beloved gala apples that I love. Oh well though. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP.

Hurry up! Wait!

So I’m seeing a lot of doctors lately. The RE wanted me to see my family doctor to talk about some weird test results I got back. So. Here’s how that went today:
First, as I said in my last post, they called to change my appointment from 11 am to 1:15 pm.
Rob and I got to the dr’s office at 1:10.
I stood in line at the receptionist’s desk for 15 minutes (there were two people ahead of me) waiting for the receptionist to get off the phone. And she wasn’t talking about important medical emergencies, either - she was talking about someone’s wedding shower that she was going to, or had been to, or something. Fine, fine. She got off the phone, it took 5 seconds for us all to tell her we were there and have her check us off on her list.
Then I sat and waited… and waited… for an hour and a half. How long would most people wait around for a doctor’s appointment? I guess I’m just used to waiting, because you can’t just leave and have them see you another time - getting an appointment takes at least three weeks if not more, so you’re not going to waste one when you have one! Finally I was called into the little examination room which is adjacent to my doctor’s office. Where the doctor’s daughter was breastfeeding her baby. So I got to listen as, between each patient she saw, my doctor went in to say hi to her daughter and grandbaby, and spent 10 or so minutes with them.

Suffice it to say, my 1:15 appointment was finally uhm… “consummated”? yeah, that’s REALLY not the right word. But anyway. At 3 pm.
And the doctor just basically told me that it would probably help my liver if I lost weight, and that she’d try to get me an appointment with an internist about that, but it might be a year and a half before I saw her. Then I at least made something out of the appointment and had her refill a bunch of my prescriptions.

Have any of you seen this? It’s funny, and I haven’t been lately:

I love Buck.

Positivity! Positivity!

I had a doctor’s appointment today - and because the appointment was for 11:00am, I had to take the full day.

How does that make sense?
Well, the way my classes go, I teach my first four in the morning, between 8:53 am and 12:30 pm. Then my last two of the day between 1:20 and 3:10. So logically, since my appointment was at 11:00, I could just take the morning off, right? And be back for the afternoon? Yeah. Except. My doctor is never on time. Not ever. She has a lot of patients who show up for a five-minute appointment and spend half an hour. So even though my appointment was for 11, and I have to be there for 11, I probably wouldn’t get in to see her until 1:30 or so. Of course once I was in her office she’d have me there for as long as I wanted to be there… but yeah.

Anyway. So there I was getting ready for my 11:00 appointment when I got a phone call from the medical centre. My doctor is running late, and they’ve changed my appointment to 1:15.

Which means I’ll get in there around 3:00.

Uch.

Anyway. It annoys me that I have to “waste” one of my limited sick days on this… but I have to go, so I should stop complaining.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

So I just realized (well, actually a few hours ago) that I have some doctor stuff tomorrow and that means I need to book a sub and get lesson plans ready. It’s 8 pm. I have yet to go into the school. I’m so on the ball.

Edited to add: Oh… done now. I was actually prepared for this whole week so it only took me about 5 minutes to get ready.

Mission Accomplished

Yesterday was Parent/Teacher interview day. For some reason this year instead of splitting it up into two days (afternoon Monday, evening Thursday) we decided to just do it all in one shot. This, of course, made for a super-long day - 8 am to 9 pm - but luckily they went quickly (10-minute time limit) and finished on time (there have been times in the past that I’ve been there til nearly 10 pm). Some of the other teachers went out to play pool afterward - I came home to my bed. Well, I came home to Rob and the sofa but eventually my bed was involved.
Anyway! Today is Remembrance Day. And it’s 7 am, so I’m going to have a little lie-in.