Friday 21 December 2007

Best Verse

I found an awesome verse in the Bible last Friday at House of Prayer: Ecclesiastes 12:13ish in the Message translation, "Fear God. Do what he tells you." I love this. I might have to make a fridge magnet with it.

Thursday 6 December 2007

Surgery

Well, I survived my surgery. Apparently, it was more difficult than anticipated. I don't have any horrifying stories except being "kicked" out of hospital before I was really able to stay awake and walk. For the first time ever, I got sick from the anesthetic. I don't recommend vomiting after abdominal surgery.
I seem to be healing well. I get my stitches out later this morning. I'll see what the doc has to say.

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Bits and pieces

I've really been enjoying the presence of God lately. I went to the One Thing conference at the beginning of this month (and bought a very cool hat). Nothing in particular impacted me but I have felt very filled since then. Sunday worship has been very good. Even on the Sunday morning that I was feeling angry having sworn at Bracken the day before and upset that she didn't come home and look after her dog.... I am very glad that God meets us where we are and if we choose to let him in then bless us profoundly.

On Monday (Dec 3) I'm having surgery. I'm a bit nervous. I'm trying not to think about it too much. I really don't need to freak out. Yesterday, I read an article in the paper about people who are awake during surgery despite the fact they were anesthetized. Really bad timing on reading that article. On the plus side, because of the surgery I have the whole month of December off of work. Well almost the whole month, I have to work the 31th.

Bracken insisted we get Christmas lights for the outside of the house. So for the first time ever, we have lights. Blue icicles and stars. Bracken's choice. She and a friend of hers put them up. I'm quite excited to have them. I think that lights should be on from November to February, just because of the darkness of our winter days.

That's it for now. I'll blog on how my surgery went next week.

Wednesday 19 September 2007

Life

I turned 35 on Monday. How did I get to be 35? I feel like I haven't done enough to be 35. I felt like that when I was 25 too though. Does that mean I am unhappy with my life? No, I am actually quite content but I often wonder if there should be something more, something more significant. Am I doing what God intended? I don't really know, which is a sad statement about my relationship with Him.

On Monday, I had a friend take me to get my ears pierced. Mostly just for fun, but partly because I've been to chicken to get it done. It's really neither here nor there whether they are pierced. It's not like I've always wanted them pierced, just every now and then I've thought about it.

I must commend my husband. He is such a good husband. He delights in me, which makes my life more abundant (I'm struggling to find the right word, I think abundant is it though). I am rather glad we are together. (how's that for an understatement).

I think that's it for today. (I should probably get back to work)

A Poem

My sister wrote this poem and I thought it was really good. It's formatted a little differently on paper...

Final Expression of Love

God give me strength.
The heart is weak,
The body is weary,
The mind is gone.

If no healing then
Peace
Freedom
The constraints of the body
this world
Freedom
Peace.

God give me strength.
To express my love this way.
I am so afraid, so afraid.

Collect for me
memories of love.
Bring them to the brim,
flooding out the pain and sadness.
Show my expression of love.
Pure.
True.
em

Monday 30 July 2007

Supposebly

A short rant:
Why is there a vast number of people here, where I work that say "supposebly"? Do they not realize that it is a d and not a b? I cringe every time I hear it; it irritates me to no end. I bite my tongue each time so I don't correct them. Perhaps I shouldn't.
So, in my rant I think maybe I'm wrong and supposebly is a word. So I looked it up on dictionary.com and supposably is a word. It is defined as an adverb meaning capable of being supposed. Supposedly (adverb) is defined as believed or reputed to be the case. So now, I'm humbled and confused.

Monday 23 July 2007

A Lament

I thought about writing a real lament but that is not my strong suit. The following lament sums it up without you having to read my bad poetry.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

God you are good!

Monday 25 June 2007

God made me too

Don't make fun of my physical appearance. God made me too. The bible says I am made in the image of God, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He knit me together in my mother's womb. Jesus loves me just the way I am. So what right has anyone to judge God's creation with scorn and ridicule.

3 foot lengths please

I went to Rona, with my sister, on Saturday. We were putting some stairs on my deck. We picked out the stringers and then went to get the lumber for the steps. I picked out a nice 12 foot 2x10. There are four steps and they needed to be about 3 feet wide. For those that can't multiply that is a total of 12 feet in length. Emily was pondering how this would fit in her truck and since we were standing by the wood cutting centre, I said lets get it cut. First four cuts are free. So we waited until the guy finished helping another gentleman. He came over and I said could you cut this in four pieces for me. He looked down at me like I was totally stupid. So I said "in three foot lengths please". He grabbed my 2x10 and off he went to his saw. He had not said a word to me. I was feeling pretty good though, that was one less step we'd have to do at home and there would be no problem fitting them in the truck. I was quite disappointed when he came back and put the pieces on the cart and they were all different lengths. Then he says, after seeing the stringers, "oh, you probably wanted those in exact lengths". Uh, duh. Emily and I were totally not impressed, being quite capable ourselves of cutting wood to the required length. Being quite annoyed, we said no, that's okay we'll fix it at home. The good part was that 3 feet was only an estimate on my part having forgotten to measure before we went to Rona. A damn good estimate too. The steps on the deck are the width of the shortest length he cut which was approximately 35". I guess I'll have to specify that I want an exact length next time....

Wednesday 2 May 2007

Addendum to the Walmart rant

At lunch, I went to the Walmart in Sherwood Park and ordered my lenses. It took all of 7 minutes (including some walking out of the store time) to put my order in. Yup, I'm more PO'd now. I'm going to complain to them, well I might get John to do it. He's such a good husband!

A Walmart rant

I got my prescription for glasses on Monday. I stopped in at Lenscrafters to order some new lenses for my old frames. I was floored by the price. I left not ordering the lenses and decided to check around a bit. John phoned Walmart and the lenses would be $200 cheaper. Fabulous! So we went last night and as we were walking to the store I realized that I had forgotten to bring my prescription. Doh! We went in to find out what time the vision place closed. 9 pm they told us. Great, we had enough time to run home and get the prescription and get back and place an order. We were back in Walmart at 8:45. And all the lights in the vision place were turned off and it had ropes closing it off. I was stunned. So we asked. The lady at the till, in an annoyed voice asked if we were picking something up. No, we said, we want to place an order. She said sorry, we need at least 20 minutes to place an order and they couldn't have done it anyway. How long does it take really to write down my name and prescription (all eight numbers)?
I was rendered speechless. I couldn't believe the stupidity of the reasoning. I should have tried that when I worked in Fanny's. I'm sorry, I know it's only 8:30 but by the time you pick your fabric and I cut it and you get to the till it will take more than half an hour so I'm closing the shop now. If they had said they closed earlier it would have been fine. And what would have happened if I had stayed in the store while John went home to get the prescription... Anyway, I'm just really annoyed about the whole thing.

Wednesday 21 March 2007

I got new eyes!

So I got some new eyes! I'm not sure whether I like it yet or not. It's a major change from the way things were for the last 20 some odd years. I had cataract surgery in both eyes which involves the removal of the lens in your eye and an intraocular lens implanted. The artificial lens is made such that it provides the vision correction previously provided by my glasses. The unfortunate part is I lost my close up vision because the artificial lenses cannot be controlled by eye for close up focus. So I need reading glasses. It makes me feel old. As it turns out this is a major adjustment for me. I've always had close up vision and now it's just not there. There are many positives with the new eyes like being able to see when I wake up.

The surgeries were fantastically horrible. My major fear for the operations was the needles for freezing which I always say are in my eye but actually go around the eye. During the first surgery I got a nice lot of sedative and don't even remember the freezing needles. However, when I was in the surgery room I felt the first thing they did, which is to put something on my eye that I presume is to hold my eyelids open. I asked then if that was supposed to hurt, apparently it wasn't. then I lost it and started crying right there on the operating table. The doctor was holding and patting my head and telling me 'it's okay'. I got more drugs and then I was happy but I could still see out of that eye a bit, which was most bizarre. Mostly what I saw was just grey with squiggly things but I could also see where the incision was and the light coming through the incision and the instruments that blocked the lights. I also could see distortions in the grey when the new lens was implanted. This was all bizarre and interesting and traumatic but not to bad due to my sedated state. Aaahhhh, sedation! After the operation, I had quite the shiner, but I was excited because I could see, at least out of one eye. I could no longer wear my glasses. So, I had one good eye and one not so good eye. I could definitely tell now that I had a cataract in my right eye. I hadn't really noticed before because it was just the way it was now I could compare the two eyes. It was quite amazing the difference it made. The paintings at church are so much more vibrant now, it's like I hadn't seen them before.

I wasn't exactly thrilled about going back to get the right eye done. But I told myself it wasn't that bad. Who knew that the anaesthetising proceedure is not the same between people or operations. This time the anaesthetist asked me if I wanted to be sedated. I said "yes, please" with a smile on my face. So he decides to give me a sedative that lasts for 2 to 3 minutes because he likes it better because it doesn't leave you groggy. Fine, I think, that should cover off the freezing needles in my eye. Well, it was good for the first one (or ones) but then it wore off and there were two more to go. So now the guy says I have to open my eye for him to put the needles in so I do and there is a huge syringe there so I close my eye again and start to lose it. The guy asked what's wrong with me, uh duh you're poking a needle in my eye. And then he tells me I imagining things and it won't hurt. How the hell does he know what I'm feeling? And does it matter if I'm imaging things, I'm still freaking out. I bravely tried to keep my eye open but the syringe was always there. It will be an image that remains with me for the rest of my life. He managed to get all the freezing in. I'm sure he thought I was the worst patient of all time and I was being a big baby. Maybe, but he was being a jerk.

So, I arrived in the operating room, crying still, to find that I was completely awake and lucid. I was not thrilled with this. Where was the nice sedative of last time? I could see the tools out of my left eye, feel them on my forehead, and hear them. And I thought the first surgery was traumatic. This one wins hands down. It was topped off with feeling, if only slightly, the cauterizing of the incision and then to my horror something said about an injection. If I could have run at that point I would have. However much to my relief, I didn't feel anything if they were in fact talking about a needle.

The result of is that I can see except for close up which magnifiers from any drugstore fixes. I will probably have corrective glasses in about six weeks and they will be bifocals.

A bit of a long post but that is the story of my new eyes.

Thursday 22 February 2007

I got a new tooth!

I'm so excited. I got a new tooth. On Sunday, the inside of one of my molars broke off while I was eating. This tooth also had a filling in it, so all you could see from the inside was a big lump of ugly silver filling. When I got back to work on Tuesday, I asked around about dentists as I didn't have one. I got a recommendation and had an appointment this morning. Apparently, it was not big deal. They took out the old filling and put a new filling in that replaced the broken bit. The best part is it is white. It looks like a normal tooth!

I wasn't much into having freezing, memories of childhood dentists, but it was bearable. There was however some very bad timing with this. I had a frozen mouth all afternoon while I was co-conducting interviews. It is not particularly easy to speak clearly when you can only feel half your mouth. Which brings me to another point, I got to do interviews today! It is much better being the interviewer rather than the interviewee.

ttfn

Friday 16 February 2007

Chair

When I arrived at the County, there was a chair in my office that looked like it belonged in a boardroom. So I quoted to myself a slightly changed famous fairy tale "This chair is too big". I went in search of another chair. I found one that fit me but was deemed unsafe as it only had 4 spokes (legs), 5 is apparently better. Nevertheless I snagged this chair although it had no adjustable parts. A bunch of chairs were brought in for us to try out and if you needed a new chair then you could order one, including choice of fabric and colour. I picked an Obusforme chair that has adjustable everything. I'm not kidding. It has: tilt tension, seat height, back angle, seat angle, multi-tilt, back height, forward tilt, synchro tilt with 5 position controls and seat depth, arm height and arm width adjustments. And the arms have ErgoGel armcaps! This chair cost a pretty penny. Many, many, many, many pretty pennies. You'd think then that the back height control would be sophisticated...but no. I'm pretty short so it has to be in the lowest position. Throughout the day it works itself into higher positions (it has eight preset positions) wtih the movements of my body soon the lumbar support is in the middle of my back. I wonder why an office chair would need the back height to be adjusted so easily. Do people drastically change height thoughout the day? Oh well, I chose the chair and got to pick the fabric and colour, you can't have everything......but it really pisses me off because it is poorly engineered. Doh!

Wednesday 31 January 2007

First Entry

I'm made a blog. I'm so proud of myself.