Jeez Louise

Update on the wig situation

Well, no comments on the last post - although really I should be more patient and give it at least 24 hours, eh? Maybe it’s the luggage under my eyes in the photo I posted of myself that is offputting to people. And yes, I do and always have “blogged for myself”, not for anyone else, but at this very moment I am really missing the way blogging was when I started years ago - where people would actually comment on each others’ posts (I admit I’m guilty of not commenting as much as I should) and not have to lure readers into commenting by having giveaways or promising page hits to them. But things change and that’s life. And that’s all I have to say about that. Anyway I posted pretty much the same blog post to Facebook and have gotten two responses - both of them saying to go for the 2nd one (the one with the cheesily-smiling mannequin head and all the blond streaks that says “wigs-us” on it). I’m still not sure. And that is my update on the wig situation!

My version of window-shopping.

You all know that I’m bald and that most of the time, in public, I wear a wig. Unless I’m at the gym. Or if it’s too hot out. Then I just wear a bandanna because I don’t want to scare people who are driving around or blind them with the light reflecting off my head - that would be one way to drive their auto insurance quotes way up - “Do you suffer from head-glare blindness?”. Oh, or if I’m walking over to my brother’s house (exactly 750 steps from my house!) because he and his wife are gone to his company Christmas party and need someone to let their dogs out. Then I just wear a tuque. Because it’s cold out but I don’t wanna bother putting my wig on.

ANYWAY. So yeah, I have no hair. I do have one really kickass wig that I love, but it’s getting up there in age (yes I realize I just got it back in June, but they don’t last all that long, especially with daily wear) and it’s probably going to need replacing soon. I’d like to just get the exact same one over again because I like it, but at the same time I kind of want to get something less expensive in addition to that one, that I can wear whenever - just throw it on and go. The one I have requires taping down in the front, which I love because it gives it a nice hairline, but is also time-consuming and the lace is really delicate and I’m always worrying about tearing it (it’s started to tear) and I can’t wear it without taping it down so even if I’m just going out for 20 minutes I have to waste some tape and you can’t buy wig tape around here: I have to order it online and I ordered new tape 2 weeks ago and it’s not here yet and I only have about 5 days’ worth of tape left so I’m sort of panicking at the moment. Ahem.

Anyway! Here are my wig choices. I don’t really quite know what they’d look like on me. That’s kind of the peril with buying wigs online, but that’s the only choice I have at the moment.

Oh! To start, here’s a photo of me wearing the one I already have. I like it.  It’s this one:

So eventually I would just buy that same one over again.  Now. As for the cheapie wear-and-go ones, here are ones I’ve been looking at:

That one’s pretty neat, because even though it’s synthetic, you can use a blow-dryer, curling iron, etc etc. on it.  So that’s interesting. Here’s a video of a lady wearing one, just to give you another look at it on someone other than a model (although this lady is gorgeous and COULD be a model – but she’s not wearing ugly orange clothing):

I like this one alot, even if it is a bit longer than I usually go for. It runs about $100 (less than 1/2 the price of the Revlon one above).

This one is about $30. I like it, although it doesn’t have the type of top/part that I usually go for:

… It’s sort of similar to the one I have now, so I know the style would be alright on me. The only problem being that it doesn’t seem to come in any colour that would look remotely good on me (I don’t do well with blond highlights. I’m more a dark brown or auburn girl – and everything they have has tons of blond in it).

I also like this one:

which is another $30 one, but this time, while they have the colour I like, I have no idea what it would look like on me.

I’m thinking “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is going to be the expression of choice when I do decide to pick something up.

It’s a bonanza!

You may remember how inordinately pleased I was in September when I found out that this year I actually had enough books for every kid in my grade 7 class (unlike last year when I had to continually photocopy). And then again back in October when I got not only a new globe for my classroom, but also whiteboards instead of chalkboards. Like, so pleased that I thought I was going to fall over. Well, folks, that ain’t nothin’. I now have new maps (and they are the coolest maps — well, I suppose as far as maps can go) and A NEW PENCIL SHARPENER. Mine wasn’t working at all and I was having to send kids to other classrooms which is not only annoying but also disruptive.

Of course there was a great big drill (like bigger than my head - and that’s pretty big) sitting on my desk when I got in this morning but I will overlook that and just be so excited about my new stuff.

(I realize most people out there are thinking “Um… alright…” but this is kind of a big deal to me)

In which I mutter “Stop forgetting to put on a title, dumbass!” while I type.

I am drinking a cup of “chocolatey chai” tea.
I love chai.
I love chocolate.
I don’t love chocolatey chai.

I just watched Part 1 of Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth edition) and Rob (in the next room) kept mishearing it. Subsequently it turns out that he thinks that Mr. Darcy swears constantly. It would probably make the story appeal to a wider audience, if he did.

I did not pay my student. I said thank you, and he said “you’re welcome” and that’s about the size of it.

My week is long-seeming. I guess leaving for work in the dark, and getting home when it’s dark, sort of… drains a person. This is only a four-day teaching week though - PD day on Friday, which means meetings all day (blah) but the upside is (probably) not having to tell people not to give piggybacks in the hallway.

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.