Category Archives: Words

it suddenly occurred to me today that, over the last year, i’ve made quite a number of changes in my life to avoid things which bring toxins and other dubious substances into my life.
i used to take Brita-filtered water to work in one-litre pop bottles. i’d re-use the bottles until they were, quite literally, cracked and ready to give up the ghost. i can’t even begin to bring myself to imagine the amount of icky plastic particles which i voluntarily drank as a result. some time last year, i recycled the last plastic bottle and bought a Laken aluminum bottle to take to work instead. it’s blue with a whole buncha cute sheep acting out around the outside.
shortly before ditching the plastic bottles, i found this website which documented a woman’s experiments with rats and Aspartame which really scared me. basically, she dosed her rats with relatively moderate levels of NutraSweet to see if she could get some clear results as to the safety of the artificial sweetener. if i recall correctly, all the rats died. most developed tumours or lost eyes or their offspring had birth defects. it was a frightening thing to read and look at (there are lots of photos documenting it all). after that, i swore off my non-sugar sweetener of choice: Splenda. while i know that white sugar isn’t the best for me, it’s got to be better than some franken-sweetener made in a lab. recently, i even purchased some Agave nectar to try to get away from sugar, too.
for Christmas, i received a gift card to London Drugs. with it, since it was free money, i bought myself something i’d been wanting but wouldn’t have ever brought myself to purchase: tempered glass lunch containers. so, instead of nuking my lunch every day in plastic containers, i now heat it up in tempered glass. no more icky plastic bits are being exited and finding their way into my leftover chicken fried rice. i pretty much refuse to microwave anything in plastic now. sometimes, i’m too lazy and do it, but i always feel guilty afterwards.
next in my quest for less bad things in my life, i’ve been trying to buy fewer processed food items. no HFCS, no excessive corn or soy by-products, less sugars and salts. generally, i’ve been moving towards eating closer to the source. maybe it was reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food” (i heart Michael Pollan), but it just makes so much sense to try to eat real food instead of all the packaged crap which marketers call food. gah! it makes me a little queasy to look at all those boxes of shelf-stable food-like substances on the grocery store shelves. oh, i’m FAR from perfect in this regard, but to think back a few years… i shudder to remember what i was putting in my body.
i didn’t really MEAN to have made so many changes in my life in 2008. maybe that’s the key to continuing them? one small thing, followed by another small thing, until, suddenly, you realize you’ve actually made a whole bunch of pretty big improvements in how you treat your body!
p.s. do you want to join Kimli, Nelson and I this Saturday when we go to give blood and save lives? aw, c’mon… you can have all the cookies you want!

no wonder i’m broke (sorry, jen).

i had a big, long, thoughtful post written about how i’m feeling confident about money and my financial goals for 2009. then, i suddenly had an overhelming sense i was tempting fate by broadcasting my optimism and freaked out a little about posting it.
so, you get this sucky post instead. sorry.

let’s see… what sticks out about 2008 (in no particular order)?

• i worked out a lot more than the year before.
• i learned i really like to run and want to do more of it.
• then i borked my knee.
• i went to physiotherapy and massage therapy. a lot.
• my new-to-me car developed mystery problems i spent a few thousand dollars trying to repair.
• my boss quit and i cried.
• my boss came back and didn’t give us his present back.
• i splurged and got really good sneakers (Nike Vomero+ 3’s FTW).
• i made pies! yum.
• i turned 36.
• i finally, finally! got a firm handle on my finances so, even though i’m still fairly deep in consumer debt, i feel more optimistic about money than i have in many years.
• i drove in the snow. and didn’t die.
• i spent a lot more time with my friend colene (whom i miss).
• i discovered the best sushi in Vancouver — but, i’m not telling you where so it gets too popular for me to get my fix.
• there was a lot of purging of physical things i owned but didn’t need/appreciate/want. it was liberating!
• i got orthotics for my shoes because my physiotherapist told me i have ridiculously flat feet.
• my friend, whom i’ve known for over 12 years but not yet met, came to visit and…
• we went to see REM!
• i sold a bunch of stuff i knitted/crocheted/crafted!
• i attended a mini highschool reunion and learned it’s true you can’t go home again.
• i broke my fake tooth on a piece of Dove chocolate.
• i cut off all my hair. well, a lot of it, anyway.
• i had a photo displayed in an actual art gallery.
• i turned into a clean freak (aka my grandmother).
• i lost some friends.
• i realized, thanks to facebook, that i don’t really care to rekindle a lot of relationships from my distant past.
• i had an MRI!
• i went to see a couple plays.
• i let myself try a whole bunch of new foods and liked most of them! but, i still refuse to eat mayonnaise.
• i went to two fantastic weddings!
• two hard drives crashed. one was recovered, the other died and took 14 years of net.memories with it.
• became dejected regarding my photographic abilities and hardly shot anything at all.
• i hope i learned to accept gifts graciously.
• there was a lot of being spoiled by christopher evans, my amazingly generous and sweet boyfriend.
• i went to Victoria and hung out with my lovely friend mrs. boo.

i’m sure i forgot some wonderful things, but these are what stick out with a few moments reflection.
2008 sure went by fast, though. even with all the trauma and stress (car, teeth, money, knee), i seem to have ended the year on a pretty positive note. i feel fairly optimistic about my self and my life. sure, there are things to be worked on (and be sure they will be), but nothing seems unsurmountable right now.
it’s taken me a long time to reach this place in my life. i sometimes feel i was a very slow learner that way, that people my age reached this level of maturity sooner than i did or, maybe i just think *i* should have reached it sooner. i suppose it doesn’t matter when you get there, just so long as you eventually do. it’s a much calmer place to be within yourself and the world at large and i highly recommend it!

him: i love you!
her: why?
him: you’re the only person who ever brings me coffee!

hi. my name is heather and it’s been over ten days since i’ve driven my car.
i parked it in its spot behind my apartment building after coming home from having dinner to celebrate my dad’s 75th birthday two saturdays ago. then it started snowing. then i went away for christmas, during which time it seems never to have stopped snowing.
by the time i got home (after a normally 20-minute trip from the ferry terminal taking almost 2 hours due to yet more snow), my car was utterly surrounded by the white stuff. snow was piled over a foot high on the roof. the snow on the ground reached above the bumpers and almost entirely obscured the wheels.
then my neighbour dug her car out, but piled all the snow behind my car. there’s this teasingly snow-free area just a foot to the west of liselotte. unfortunately, i lack a crane or superhuman strength to lift and move my car into the snowless section. there also doesn’t seem to be any hope that my building manager will even consider digging out the parking lot. hell, he wouldn’t even leave a shovel for me to do it myself.
so, i’ve been taking public transit to work. oh, and i’m filling in for my officemate while he’s on vacation. this combination means that my alarm clock turns itself on at 4:45. that’s a.m., in the morning. and, i have to be at the bus stop by 5:45 a.m. again, in the morning. if i’m lucky, and i don’t slip and fall on something (like i did this morning) or the train doesn’t get delayed at a station because some dumbass wouldn’t let the doors close (like yesterday morning), that gets me in to the office at either just before or just after 7 a.m. yes, that’s still the morning.
i don’t know, have i mentioned that i recently had an MRI which revealed some fairly substantial damage to my left knee? ever wonder what happens to an injured knee when it suddenly has to spend a lot more time than normal walking in slippery, unstable, snowy conditions? well, i’ll tell you… it hurts! and, shockingly, when the work day also suddenly requires a lot more walking and heavy lifting than usual, it hurts even more! not to mention the requirement of wearing quite possibly the worst pair of shoes for someone with osteo issues, complete with steel toes to add extra weight and less comfort, it’s a recipe for lots of yucky gimpage.
this is only day two and already i’m near breaking. it doesn’t help that i landed square on my one remaining good knee when i slipped on the icy sidewalk this morning. it was a fairly graceful landing — reminiscent of a curler throwing a rock — but wholly unnecessary and unwanted.
the small glimmer of hope is that tomorrow could be a short day at work, what with it being new year’s eve day and all. then, i’ll have a day off to recover, during which i hope to beg, borrow or steal a shovel to dig out my car and, hopefully that will mean an end to this ridiculous getting up early and hour-long commuting.
after my week on the island with the luxurious ten hours of sleep a night and lazing about on the couch, knitting and watching television, this working shit is really getting me down. too bad i like a roof over my head and food in my fridge so much, or i’d call it quits right now.
update: not five minutes after clicking “publish”, my boyfriend showed up at my door holding my very own blue snow shovel — which he’s currently using to dig out the hessmobile mark II. how awesome is he? excuse me while i go order pizza to feed him when he’s done.

since i blew my wad on yet another car repair last week (this time it was the defrost fan motor which decided to call it quits at pretty much the exact moment winter weather started in earnest – awesome!), i’ve started day-dreaming about what i’m going to do with my income tax refund come March.
yeah, i know; but sometimes you just gotta have something to look forward to, you know?
so, i’m thinking about selling my Nikon D70 and buying a new D60 or D80 to replace it. i figure i could maybe get $250-300 for the D70, body only. that would mean i’d only have to shell out $250-400 more for the upgrade. bonus: i’d get to keep my lenses! i’m mostly thinking about the upgrade because i finally got up to 10,000 actuations and i think i remember reading something somewhere which said it was all downhill from there. plus, 4 more megapixels would come in handy, not to mention 100 and 3200 ISO!
of course, this is probably just day-dreaming on my part. two weeks ago i was salivating over a desk chair at Staples, but when it came to shelling out the cash i totally backed down. it’s far too nice a feeling to see my bank account balances get bigger instead of smaller (or, worse yet, my credit card balances get bigger!) to succumb to the siren song of big ticket non-essential purchases.

official confirmation of my borked knee is quite soothing, in fact. it’s a feeling of justification. “see? it’s not just in my head!” yes, i’m petty enough to feel good about waving my MRI report in my boss’ face and saying “i told you so!” because i felt the disbelief as i hobbled around the office, up and down stairs, trying hard to continue my work-required heavy lifting and hauling all with a ruptured ligament and torn cartilage. i have RUPTURES and TEARS, people!
despite the caps, i’m not even a little bitter.
how could i be? i’m going to see a surgeon; and, if i’m lucky, he’ll decide i’m worthy of fixing. then, many months from now, i just might be able to get up, walk from here to there and not worry that my next step might gimp me up. again.
now that i’m waiting again and have told anyone who’ll listen about my horrible injuries (snarf), i hope to not mention it again until i: a) have seen the surgeon; or, b) borked it again. if i don’t shut up about it, i might just annoy people. therefore…
i’ve decided not to decorate for christmas this year. neither am i baking anything. i have so many other making things on the go i just can’t add any more to the pile without wanting to scream. the next two weekends are booked up with birthdays and weddings. work socializing is reaching a fever pitch with potlucks, pancake breakfasts and meeting dinners. that being said, all the presents are bought and wrapped. i have a couple of cards to send out, but that’s all i have left to do to prep for the celebration and i’m SO HAPPY about that.

you’d think i’d know better by now. time and time again, i’m given examples that my life follows this simple formula:
1. think something good.
2. something bad happens.
case in point:
1. think “hey, my car is running really well!”
2. that very same night, find huge puddle of water in backseat.
shiny newest example:
1. think “hey, i can hyper-extend my knee again! maybe i’ll try going back to the gym.”
2. that very same night, re-bork knee by crawling into bed and spend the next week hobbling.
at least my knee will be nice and unhappy for my MRI on tuesday. if that’s an upside.

beyond all the xmas presents, i’ve got a few significant birthdays in december/early january. then there’s all the socializing. to date, i’ve got two potlucks i need to prepare dishes for, one work lunch and the vandigicam photo swap. in addition, there will be at least three more work lunches, a possible third potluck and my dad’s 75th birthday dinner.
i just roughed out a quick list of approximate costs and we’re looking at well over $200! not including the presents i’ve already purchased and craft supplies i have yet to buy or expenses traveling to/from the island. when your budget runs as tight as mine, $200 is a lot of money.
no wonder i had an anxiety attack yesterday.
i’m not really complaining, either. i don’t begrudge the additional costs related to the season; but, i think having all these expenses lumped together during one month of the year is annoying. i’m just lucky and grateful that i can afford to do an all-cash christmas and not have to borrow money to pay for any of it. there’s a lot of people out there who don’t have the luxury of saying the same, especially with the way things are in the world today.
i can only hope that once i get stuff photographed and up on my etsy store, i’ll be selling like crazy and not worrying about where i can cut costs to pay for all the winter wonder.
see? i’m still an optimist at heart!

today, on my 11th work birthday, i discovered twitter is now blocked by the firewall from hell.
what does that mean for you? more posts here, probably.
what does that mean for me? an even bigger sense of disconnect from my online life and friendships. and sadness.
i’m now officially cut off from anything online which even remotely resembles conversation. for someone who has some major relationships with friends who don’t live in the same time zone, this is a mighty blow. hell, it’s not even good when you’re just nosy about local acquaintances’ social media expressions. it’ll even be more difficult to learn about such things as method products or where to get breakfast!
in other news, i got an order for a dozen teddy bear thank you cards from a co-worker who is about to have her first child. she’s planning on using them when the baby comes as “very unique thank you cards” (her words, not mine). i was pretty thrilled. luckily for me, michael’s has a week’s worth of 50% off coupons so i can stock up on supplies. i burned through my stash making cards for the craft fair (three sold and i took two to give to christopher’s sister & brother-in-law), so i was unprepared for a bulk order.
making crafty things is addictive and expensive. i need to sell one more magnet set and i’ll break even, but still… huh. i just got an order for a pair of booties from another co-worker. maybe i’ll break even after all!

if i were to start posting daily digests of my witty, amusing, thoughtful and creative twitter tweets here on ye olde blog, would those of you who read both my website and my twitter be annoyed with the duplication? please leave me a comment with your answer. if it is a truly unwanted idea, i will scrap it. thanks a bunch!

christopher has been eying the Wii Zapper (with Link’s Crossbow Training game) ever since he first saw it at EB Games. but, probably because of my disapproving tsks he never purchased it for himself.
well, friday when i picked him up he has the Toys’R’Us flyer out to show me, in which the Wii Zapper is on sale for $9.97 – a little over $10 off their regular price. the sale didn’t start until Saturday, so we took the flyer with us on the premise we’d go buy it at someplace in my neighbourhood and just get them to price match it.
just before we took off yesterday afternoon for shopping & voting in the rain, i thought to check Futureshop.ca to a) ensure they still price matched; and, b) ensure they had the item in stock. the answer to both was yes, so we headed out.
we found the Zapper on the shelf, got inappropriately chatted to by a pink- & purple-haired sales associate, then, after extricating ourselves from the uncomfortable conversation, i took it up to the counter. i said to the clerk “i have a competitor’s ad!” as i put the item on the counter. he asked where it was from, i replied. he found their price and goggled at it, then did a little fast verbal math:
“okay $25 minus $10 is $15. 10 percent of that is $1.50. how about i give it to you for $7.97?”
yes, please!
every once in a while i get a retail deal which pleases me to no end. this is one of them (also, that time everything i bought at Save-On was on sale – score!). a $25 video game and accessory for $8.93 after taxes? that’s a STEAL! i’m still giddy about it, which is amusing because, as the title states, it wasn’t even my money!

okay, so i watch Eureka. it’s filmed locally and, despite it’s awesome cheesiness, it’s just plain fun. it’s kinda nice to think about a town full of geniuses fully funded by the government to create anything they want. and, well, the actor who plays Sheriff Carter is freaking HOT (for a blond).
in this season’s episodes, a potentially evil female boss has come to town and is trying to make the experiments money-making in order to bring more cash back to the governmental coffers. in her quest for stream-lining and cost-efficiency, she’s been handing out “redactions” all over town, effectively firing half the staff at Global Dynamics – the company under whose umbrella most research in Eureka is done.
at first, i wondered about the word. i’d never heard it before. i didn’t think too long on it, though, just chalking it up to new corporate-speak i would try my best to ignore for as long as possible. then, today, in a blog post by my friend Andrea, she used the word and it got me curious because her usage was not what i’d have expected after the Eureka context had introduced me to it. what Merriam-Webster has to say about the word “redact” is:

do you see anything in that definition to even remotely mean terminate employment? sometimes it bugs me how words get mucked up. then again, thanks to Gillian and a couple of talking dinosaurs, i learned that “fubsy” will be removed from the Collins dictionary. that will be a sad, sad day for the english language, that will.

these days, i spend a lot of time with my nose pressed up against my Excel spreadsheets, online account pages and personal finance websites. with the looming WORLDWIDE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN (Fox News-inspired hysteria implied), i’ve found myself increasingly glad i spent the earlier part of the summer straightening out and getting prepared for a new start with my own finances. while things are nowhere near flush, with a little careful planning and some cuts here and there, i’ve settled into a budget/plan which manages to cover almost any financial hiccough which is likely to strike me. other than a major upset (job loss, disability, car finally quits), i feel like it’s all going to be okay — which is a far sight better than i was feeling just six months ago.
i thought things were good last year, too; but then i crashed my car and things went downhill fast. i had to use up my “emergency fund” to buy a new car, then dip into the credit cards to pay for repairs to the new car (both planned and un). on top of that, i was still trying to maintain a social life consisting of many meals out (usually with drinks) and having people over (more Wii games and controllers!). then came christmas and birthdays and just trying to live “normally”… suddenly, i was stretching things to the limit trying to pay back the bank and the credit cards, while still buying food and gas for the car.
luckily for me, a long relationship with the bank (yes, RBC, the one i railed against because they wouldn’t give me a free computer) proved worthwhile and i got myself into a consolidation loan with a payment and terms reasonable enough to not only manage my debt payments but also sock away over $400 every month for both yearly bills (insurance, memberships, etc) and padding for my new “emergency fund”. i’m not at all happy my debt “end date” is now somewhere in 2013, but at least there is an end date. the more i read about people’s personal finance problems (and i read a LOT), the more i feel i actually might have my shit together when it comes to money. i hope.
it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the recent rash of decluttering/cleaning/decorating i’ve been going though has been a direct result of this reorganization in my financial life. once one part of your life starts to get put in order, those which aren’t so neat seem to demand the same attention. in order to free myself from the physical things which have been weighing down my psyche, i’ve had to also let go of a lot of emotional things attached to them. it’s been very challenging, especially to someone such as myself who is prone to some serious emotional packrating. every little nick-knack or card or book or chair has some huge emotional attachment which needs to be separated from the item while i remind myself that i don’t need the THING to hold onto the MEMORY. heck, even some of the memories have had to be let go of.
as i remove things from my life, i’ve discovered: stuff i didn’t know i had, stuff which isn’t even mine, too much stuff makes me anxious, giving things away makes me feel good and, i hate to say it, stuff i wish i had. as i go through my possessions, i’m discovering things i don’t have, or which need replacing. so far, they’re mostly kitchen items — my tech desires are mostly fulfilled (except for that Canon 5D Mark II, of course) and, with the addition of the awesome chair, so are my desires for furniture. surprisingly, it kind of makes sense. as i’ve tried to cut back and be more frugal, specifically in the food/entertainment arena, new/better kitchen items could really come in handy. i keep finding myself wishing for a food processor so i could make my own hummus instead of paying $4.99 for it at Save-On, or a proper roasting pan big enough for a chicken/cow/turkey or a cast-iron frying pan to make anything from cornbread to a perfect steak.
kitchen anecdote: i had to throw out a spatula the other day. not only was the rubber bit separating from the wooden handle, the tip of it had mostly disintegrated from many years of use (i do love a good spatula!). not a bad lifespan for a 99¢ utensil; but, have you looked at the price of heat resistant spatulas lately? seriously, they range anywhere from $5 – $20 dollars depending on the store and brand. i was agog at the ridiculousness of such prices and loathe to even consider such an extravagance. i feel exactly the same way about replacing the square baking pan which has lost all it’s anti-stick coating or the awesome pot with all the chips in its teflon.
it makes me wonder if i’m going a little too far in trying to get all the good use out of my tools. am i so cheap i can’t even buy myself a new spatula?
i have many more thoughts on finance, frugality, marketing and our North American culture of stuff. maybe i’ll even get around to sharing them with you. i hope i do, as i’d really love to start a conversation about it.

it was a very close call, but for about an hour today there was a chance i wouldn’t be able to go to victoria for my annual visit.
turns out that my boss made a typo in an email back in MARCH which meant that there had never been anyone booked to cover for my days off work next week. the thing is, i was prepping my desk for the days away and thought “i should check who’s filling in next week” and asked HR. it’s a good thing i did, otherwise, mr. supervisor would have been stuck with an empty desk for three days – and i would have had mountains of work and a frantic boss to return to. we’re all lucky i’m so diligent, i guess.
in other news, i spent my morning at the dentist having my broken crown replaced with a temporary one, a cavity filled and my troublesome crown ground down in hopes of making it less painful. my dentist had to give me three needlesful of freezing, but i still felt half the procedure. you see, i’m sensitive to epinephrine, so i can’t have the “normal” anesthetic, but the slower-acting, shorter-lasting kind. every time i would wince in pain because the freezing was coming out my poor dentist would get upset and reach for that big, scary needle. eep!
then, i was reminded of why i never make dentist appointments for the morning. the entire left side of my face was still frozen when i got into the office. then the freezing started to come out. ow. i thought it was bad when i was in the chair. nope. i spent most of the day suddenly grabbing my face as blinding pain shot through my teeth. fun!
at least now i have a new a tooth on order!
and, i’m on my way to my little mini-vacation first thing tomorrow. i can’t wait! i get to hang out with my mom, two cats and i have a lunch date with the fabulous mrs. nixon! on top of all that awesome, colene rearranged her entire tuesday evening to drive all the way out to the ferry terminal to pick me up. how lucky am i to have such an generous friend? SO lucky!
y’all have yourselves a great weekend, y’hear! ;)

i’ve been thinking that i’m SO GLAD that i have a dentist appointment next week because maybe i’ll be able to get the dentist to fix the crown he placed last year. i haven’t been able to chew anything harder than Wonderbread on that new tooth without pain since its installation. that’s on top of the random aches and sharp pains which trouble it.
i guess the universe was just waiting for something to kick my ass with for all the whining in the previous post because tonight, mere moments ago, my older, pain-free porcelain crown on the other side of my mouth came apart in my mouth after i bit into a piece of Dove dark chocolate (hell yes that will affect my review).
not that i needed anymore kicking with the upcoming hellacious car bill and the 2-hour bus ride from the ferry next week, but they say things come in threes, right?
gee, i wonder how the hell i’m going to chew things now. hm.

i’m smack dab in the middle of a major “woe is me” funk.
i feel the need to bitch and whine about all the things making me sad, crazy, angry and frustrated, but i know that if i even began to start to tell anyone i’d get blank stares or rolling eyes in return. so, what do i do? i put them on the internet where i don’t have to see any “you’ve got to be kidding me” expressions.
– my car is acting like a little bitch and i am so very tired of being stressed out every time i get into it. no one knows what’s wrong and, even if they did, i don’t have any spare money to try to fix it. in the year i’ve had it i’ve spent as much on repairs, if not more, than i paid for it. yet, i have no other options. i can’t afford another car and i have no desire to spend the winter commuting via public transit.
– my co-workers are pissing me off to an amazing degree. just because YOU can’t remember a simple little thing *I* have to change the way i work? i don’t think so. obviously they have no fucking idea how many “little things” i need to remember on a daily basis in order to do my job correctly; how many dozens of exceptions to every single thing i do i need to keep in mind as i go about my day. seriously?
– i want that fucking comfy chair out of my fucking apartment RIGHT NOW, goddammit!
– while money isn’t nearly as much a stressor as it was just a couple months ago, things are still pretty tight and i’m tired of that. every possible expense, other than living expenses, is weighed cautiously to calculate it’s merit before i spend. it’s utterly exhausting.
– i really miss the jogging. i know it was only 60-90 seconds at at time, but after a while i was able to see marked improvement in how i performed and how i felt. i don’t get as good a workout on the stationary bike, but it’s the only thing i can do with my stupid wonky knee acting up again and again. it frustrates me because i just want to run!
– waiting for the MRI to start the trip down the knee surgery road is also bugging me. i can’t really afford to go through the process until next year, but i would at least like to feel there’s some progress. plus, even though it means there was someone messing about inside my body, i’m really looking forward to the 6-8 weeks off work for recovery.
– i want a shiny new cell phone like the one christopher just got. *pout*
– my new jeans keep slipping down my ass and i’m sick of yanking them up, but it’s cheaper than having them altered and i hate wearing belts.
– i hate silverfish. and fruit flies.
– it’d be really nice if i could have a good night’s sleep, too.
– trying to re-arrange my travel plans to victoria this weekend, eliminating the car (so i can leave it at the mechanic’s to do the fixing i can’t afford), is proving annoying. i have the going 95% sorted, but the returning is either going to cost a lot of money or take a lot of time — neither of which i really want to have to deal with. grr.

a list of the cleaning/de-cluttering tasks i’ve undertaken in the last few weeks:
– consolidated four boxes of personal filing into one, highly organized plastic file storage box. there is a bag-full of shredding to do, but it’s nice to know everything is in one place.
– went though my clothes closet, organizing by colour and clothing type. took a HUGE bag of clothes and plastic hangers to the Salvation Army. also, found at least ten items of clothing i’d totally forgot i owned. it was traumatic, but i definitely like the results. discovered most of my clothes are black.
– went through my collection of shoes. just as traumatic as purging clothing, but i managed to find seven pairs to take for donation. i could probably purge another three if i really wanted to, but you can’t make me!
– sorted/organized my desk drawers. i have too many pens and pads of cute paper. it’s a sickness.
– emptied, cleaned and organized the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. why i had so many sparkly hair accessories, i’ll never know. discovered perfume is not like wine and does not get better with age.
– took keyboard apart and scrubbed each key clean of many years of crud. boyfriend was shocked at the state of it, which says a lot about how gross it was.
– sorted the piles of books stashed around the house. set about returning all borrowed tomes because if i haven’t read them yet, i probably won’t any time soon; and, i can always ask to borrow them when i’m ready to. have two books i don’t know the owners of and four more belonging to people i don’t talk to any more. oops.
– got ruthless with the various candle-holders and nick-nacks cluttering my shelves. piled them into a whole foods shopping bag and put them in the free stuff section of our building. they were gone within a few days. that’s nice and satisfying.
– took all the knobs and dials off the stove top and scrubbed off the grime. seriously, i don’t cook that much. how is it my stove can get that disgusting? ew.
– decided that owning six polaroid cameras is excessive, so found a new home for one, put another on ebay, am testing a third for keepability to replace the fourth. my two sx-70’s are non-negotiable and will stay with me forever. by this time next week, i’ll be at 50% polaroid capacity. sweet, less to dust!
– consolidated all my various stashes of (good) knitting supplies into the awesome red tote bag i got from Dove (post about that sometime soonish, i hope). the hope is that having it all in one handy place will encourage me to actually make progress on my yarn projects.
– after a shower from hades, a bathroom with water quite literally dripping off the ceiling prompted me to finally wash the walls as i’ve been threatening to for at least a year. you wouldn’t think walls could get that dirty, but when the exhaust fan makes more noise than moves air, things can get a little swampy in the loo.
next up:
– attack the storage closet. no one needs that many gift bags or extra keyboards.
– get ruthless with the linens. i only have so much space and hardly ever have houseguests. i don’t think i require so many blankets and throw pillows.
– socks? don’t talk to me about the crap-load of socks i never wear any more. then there are the ones with all the holes i keep putting off replacing.
– find some way to deal with DVDs. there are quite a few and they’re not very pretty, especially now that the living room is getting slicker with the recent chair exchange. there’s got to be a good compromise between access and organization.
– the inside of the oven and fridge are gross and need serious attention. after having to clean six years worth of oven yuck when i moved from my last apartment, i promised myself i’d never let an oven go so long without cleaning. well, i’ve been in this place four years so far… oops.
gee, think i might have a problem? ;)

so, last night, i managed to aggravate my meniscus injury by kneeling on my bed for more than 0.3 seconds. no joke. i woke up completely hobbled and annoyed. seriously, i had DARED to just THINK that i was so happy to be able to be walking around work pain-free yesterday — i even thought “gee, i better not say this out loud or i might jinx it”.
between a combination of work priorities and having used up all my sick claims for the rest of the year, i went into the office this morning. i happened to pick up the HR director at the gate and gave her a ride down the hill, too (yes, i know how to suck up). i kind-of-asked her if it was all right for me to park in the close-to-the-building visitors parking since i was gimpy, but i probably would have parked there even if she had said no.
so, four hours of training a new temp to cover me while i’m on vacation next week, lots of hobbling and even more “oh! what’s wrong?!” commentary from co-workers, i finally gave up and left to come home to rest up and ice my knee before going to see my physiotherapist tonight.
fast forward 45 minutes.
i’ve driven back to North Van, gotten rockstar parking on Lonsdale so i can hobble into the postal outlet to pick up whatever it is my mom sent me via XpressPost (btw, i HATE signature-required mail). i’ve hobbled back to my car, levered myself in and i try to start the car so i can go home.
catch that? TRY to start the car. not start the car. TRY.
i’ve had a crash course in early-model Volkswagens these last 10 months i’ve had Liselotte. from the long list of things i’ve had fixed to the even longer list of little quirks to the franchise. one of the most annoying things has been the ignition. if you don’t have the steering wheel in JUST the right position and your key doesn’t slide in JUST the right way, you can spent quite a few minutes just trying to turn the car on.
at first, i thought it was a faulty ignition (hey, my Geo never did that). then i thought maybe it was temperature related (it seemed to happen more during winter). then, one day at work when my boss came out to listen to my fuel pump (to diagnose that intermittent power problem), it happened and he said “oh, yeah. that’s annoying”. since, i’ve just shrugged and said “oh, you those silly Germans”.
back to today, i’m parked on a major street. the steering wheel has locked, so there’s just a very small range of motion for me to move it in hopes of finding that sweet spot where the key will actually work. it’s hot. i’m starting to get sweaty. and frustrated. and overwhelmed. although, i managed not to cry, which is a total victory.
instead, i called the Beetle Spa. i had a very positive (even if very brief) experience with them about a month or so ago. i figured there was no point in calling BCAA — they wouldn’t know VWs. upon calling the Beetle Spa, i gave the guy who answered the phone my name and described what the problem was. first point scored: he knew what i meant. second point scored: after he put me on hold for a very short time, he came back on the line and called me by name. third to 1,000,000th points scored: he asked me where i was and came to rescue me. no charge.
seriously. he got in his Jetta, drove to where i was, got in, worked his mojo and got my car to start. without asking me for a dime.
well, he did ask one thing: “remember the Beetle Spa“. hell, how could i not with that kind of service?
thank you, Ted! you and your little moustache saved my day.