Category Archives: Words Words Words

MemeMemeMeme!

I am amused by the silliness, and also by the curious appropriateness (propriety?) of the things a-whatevering.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, owldaughter sent to me…

Twelve plays studying
Eleven soundtracks writing
Ten candles a-curling
Nine books acting
Eight vikings a-reading
Seven brontes a-singing
Six myths a-learning
Five bla-a-a-ank notebooks
Four used bookstores
Three fairy tales
Two robertson davies
…and a literature in an alternative spirituality.
Get your own Twelve Days:

Four used bookstores! Singing Brontes! Writing soundtracks! Why am I giving these things away?

Except that last, of course. I do that with pleasure.

Strike One

So, that doctor’s appointment today?

It didn’t exactly happen.

Yes, we made a sixty-kilometre round trip for Liam to cheerfully play in the waiting room, voluntarily pull a chair over to the doctor’s desk in her office, and play happily with a set of Russian stacking dolls while she asked me about his food intake and sleep patterns. She uses a big exercise ball as an office chair, and when she went out of the room to take a call Liam rolled it around and bounced it and chortled. When she returned and asked him to come over to the other side of the room so she could start the examination, however, Liam suddenly backed into the corner of the office, slid down to crouch on the floor, and cried. Big, berry-like tears squeezed out of the eyes, and pitiful “no, no, no, no”s came between the sobs. He kept asking to go back to the car. He was miserable.

I am informed that this is very normal for children his age, as they are developing a sense of personal space. The doctor even told me that it’s a good thing, as it’s a form of self-defence. As he’s always been fine with our GP I can only surmise that the sudden refusal to go along with the appointment was probably a combination of that developing sense of personal space and the new, unfamiliar office location. He was happy all morning, repeating “going to the doctor’s house, going to the doctor’s house, see doctor!” over and over. But he asked to be carried down the stairs to the office, which is indicative of needing a bit of reassurance, and came back to me often while he explored.

We have another appointment scheduled for three weeks from now. In the meantime, we have been instructed to buy him a toy doctor’s kit and for us all to play with it a lot to accustom him to the instruments and how they’re used. (I foresee Bun-Bun being a patient in the coming weeks.) The doctor also said that it might take a couple of ‘play dates’ with her before he lets her actually do the examination. She was so unfazed by it that it must happen more often than I think.

Halfway home in the car, he asked to hold my hand. I reached back to give it to him, and he held it all the way home as long as I didn’t need it to shift gears. Five minutes away from the house he said, “I have a hug?” I promised him a big cuddle when we got home, as we were both strapped into our seats. He had a quiet lunch while watching some Beatrix Potter, but then it took over an hour to get him to nap.

On the bright side, in his exploration of the new office he found the scale and weighed himself. And it looks like yes, he’s 33 pounds, unless he’s 34; the needle was vibrating a bit, because no two and a half year old can ever, ever stand still. He is officially one-third my weight.

We’ll try again the first week of January.

Status Report

Five chapters of edits handled so far, or one-third of the MS. I’d like this done today but it won’t be finished by the time I have to go collect the boy. And it looks like I’m not going to get to the hearthcraft book at all, but the edits on the YA book are more time-sensitive at this point, as I want to get it out by my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year.

No cheque in the mail today, but I didn’t really expect it. If they cut it last Friday afternoon it wouldn’t hit the system properly till Monday anyhow, which means the earliest it could realistically arrive is Thursday.

ETA at 14:57: Seven chapters down. Maybe it will be finished today after all.

On The Lack Of Common Courtesy

There are times when I really, really wish I could turn the ringer on my phone off completely. And I think people who don’t identify themselves when they say hello should be given a good hard smack. I just had someone who called the wrong number get mad at me for saying ‘obviously’ when he asked if he had the wrong number. The conversation went like this:

A: Hello?

STRANGER: Hello.

[PAUSE; SILENCE]

A: Hello?

STRANGER: Hello. [WAITS EXPECTANTLY]

[PAUSE; SILENCE]

STRANGER: Do I have the wrong number?

A: Obviously.

STRANGER: [AGGRESSIVELY] Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sor-ry —

A: [HANGS UP]

Now, I’ve had many pleasant wrong number calls, calls where the person is very polite or warm and genuinely distressed because they’ve bothered me, and those callers I reassure and even wish them a good day. I am as polite to them as they are to me, or more so.

Nine times out of ten I know exactly who’s calling when they start talking if we’re acquainted, before they’ve identified themselves. That doesn’t mean the person on the other end of the phone should deny me the common courtesy of identifying themselves. I don’t care if you think the person you’re calling has call display or if they were expecting the call, you still say “It’s So-and-So” after your initial hello. All my friends do it; I do it. That’s also how I knew you had the wrong number. No one I know who calls me would ever be so discourteous.

So don’t get mad at me when your discourtesy earns you a short response, stranger. Especially when the wrong number was your error to begin with. You get what you give.

New Day

Today: bright sun, then snow, sun, snow. Just above the freezing mark, too. Beautiful.

Yesterday was A Very Bad Day, all of it happening after 3 PM. The burn on my left hand from a splash of hot oil caused by a can opener being thrown into a pan of frying ground beef seems to have been relatively neutralized by the lavender oil I put on it, but the right foot damaged by an overturned kitchen chair is causing me problems today. It was a two-year-old day. Enough said.

Today I had intended to print out a two hundred page document, but I have just realized that I have to go through it and accept all the damned edits I did in Track Changes first. So it has to be put off yet again, and it’s already been rescheduled over and over for the last two weeks for a variety of reasons. Grr. At least today I’ll get to switch back and forth between the hearthcraft book and this other document as I get stuck on one and need a break. And it will be nice to take a final look at the other document as well, as I’ve been second-guessing my edits on it. Rereading it will help refresh my memory and help me get in the right headspace for the associated cover letter, too.