Monthly Archives: December 2007

Cranky

Not one — not one — of the clerks I dealt with today while shopping wished me some form of holiday joy. A couple of them didn’t even say hello or thank you or goodbye, or tell me the total I owed aloud.

Now, I’ve done my trenchwork in retail; I know how bone-wearying this time of year is. But this was a Friday morning, and it’s only mid-December. And I don’t care how tired you are, you talk to your customers. Pretend to smile, damn it. My trenchwork allows me to sympathize, but it also allows me to disapprove of how you aren’t holding up your end of the clerk/client relationship.

I wished every single one of them a good holiday season, as sincerely as I could. One of them looked up at me in astonishment, a tremulous smile appearing on her face. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you so much. And you, too.” And she’s the one that I have the most sympathy for, because the client ahead of me was giving her a hard time and she was having trouble recovering. I was polite to everyone, I made eye contact, I smiled, I was as warm as possible, because this is a thankless time of year. But I really, really hate not being met halfway by sales staff, particularly when I’m not the one being paid to make the experience a pleasant one.

Then I came home and wanted to get my ergonomic chair up from the basement, which I couldn’t do because there’s an immoveable trunk in front of it downstairs and it’s wedged in behind it, hooked under something. And none of the lights work down there for some reason.

And, of course, no cheque in the mailbox.

Also, despite the snow last night, I did not see a single snow removal vehicle anywhere on the slippery roads today.

So yay! I am cranky again!

I did remember to buy antihistamines, and multivitamins, and intensive skin lotion, and Q-tips. I also got my ink cartridge refilled. And I bought vitamin C as well, because HRH brings all sorts of fun little colds home from school.

Now, to finish vetting the Track Changes in the last third of the YA manuscript, and print the bloody thing out.

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.