Category Archives: stress

Toilet paper and other unnecessary drama.

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Okay, I’ve been away for a while. It’s been STUPID busy. Fall is crazy time for people who work in health promotion. Two words: Cold & Flu. Yeah, baby, I’m working on getting people to wash their hands.

Last weekend, Adam was away in San Diego and I went to refill the toilet paper in both bathrooms. I thought we had a package in the closet, but alas! We did not. We had nary a square to spare (actually, that’s not true: It turned out that we had 3 rolls, but the panic was probably a good motivator to actually buy some TP before we hit an emergency situation).

I remembered to stop and pick up some toilet paper on my way home from my big sister’s birthday party on Sunday night and this is when I discovered something about myself: I’m embarrassed to buy toilet paper. It doesn’t matter what you call it, if you try to pretty up the name with “hygienic” or whether it’s called “bathroom tissue”. Or, as Adam so eloquently just put it, bum paper. No matter the name, I’m mortified when I have to carry it.

Why you ask? Well, my friends, because then people will know I—wait for it—go to the bathroom. HORROR OF HORRORS! I don’t really know what exactly it is that makes me want to grab the paper and run.

The Wall of Shame.

The Wall of Shame.

Also, why is toilet paper sold in impossibly large and awkward packages, WITH NARY A CONVENIENT HANDLE, MIGHT I ADD, which you will drop when the hole you poked through so as to carry the effing behemoth of humiliation tears, and then when you bend to pick it up, you drop everything else you’re carrying, thus drawing the attention of EVERYONE IN THE WORLD STORE? Why is the only effective way of carrying an unwieldy parcel of plastic-wrapped sheepishness, roughly the size of André the Giant, to hug it to yourself like it’s your saviour, or at least the way you wished you could’ve hung onto your first slow-dance with your crush in high school?

Honestly. This is stupid. It reminds me of when I was a teenager and the thought of buying feminine products was enough to make me seriously contemplate the benefits of running away and living in the woods like a savage. Because that would be less embarrassing than buying stuff that every female human needs, obviously.

This seems like a great place to live. No judgment from

This seems like a great place to live. No judgment from

 

Come on, Bay. Everybody poops. There is literally a book on the matter. People are not looking at me, thinking, she needs toilet paper because she’s disgusting. What an animal. I mean, seriously, the guy in front of me was buying stool softener, which is at least a 12 on the 10-point scale of embarrassing gastrointestinal purchases, right?

I need to get over myself.

For now, though, I can rest assured that I bought two massive packages, so I can at least postpone the next embarrassing purchase until I can pawn the chore off on Adam. Of course, carrying both packages made it really look like I had a problem…

Well. Some days.

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Hey y’all.

It’s been a busy week. Here’s what I’ve got for you:

parisGood thing to remember this week always. And it helps when it’s a gorgeous photo of the most beautiful place on earth.

Love to all you peeps.

What do you do to restore yourself after a trying day/week/month?

 

Where I’d like to be today.

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“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not that I’m wishing away where I’m at, but doesn’t this look lovely:

original

The answer is yes, yes it does. I’m very much loving lakes and cottages lately. When I wander off into my head and dream about places I’d like to be (as opposed to sitting for eight hours at a desk, inside/away from the summery, sunshiney beauty that is the world around us), I keep finding myself wandering here:

lake_dock Oh, lakes. I have a sneaking suspicion that Adam and I will not be the owners of lakeside real estate, because we have other priorities (for example, going to France ALL THE TIME AND THEN BACK TO FRANCE AGAIN). And I’m okay with that, UM BECAUSE FRANCE IS AWESOME.

But still. That dock. Those chairs (and hopefully not those weeds and leeches, because if I can’t see them, then they aren’t there, right?). Speaking of leeches, do we know what service they provide to the ecosystem? Surely it can’t be just grossing out children who squeal as they are pulled off <<barfs>>. OMIGOD I JUST LOOKED THEM UP ON WIKIPEDIA TO SEE IF THEY SERVE ANY PURPOSE AND THEY DO NOT BUT DEAR GOD DO NOT READ THE PART ABOUT REMOVAL AND TREATMENT (I know you will anyway, because you are a rebel and because I hyperlinked it so you can defy me with greater ease).

Ew. Gross. Why did I read that? I need to chill out. Here I go again:

adirondack

Spiders and car accidents.

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Hey, so I totally forgot to share with you a disclaimer with you yesterday:

In service of my not kowtowing (look, a word-of-the-day for you!) to my survival mechanisms, all of which are aimed at glossing things over with a glaze of perfection (who me? a perfectionist? Pshaw. <<this face>>), I’m setting out on a new practice of not revising posts for a while. This means that there will be some mistakes.

Believe me, this will hurt me more than it does you. Leaving mistakes in my writing makes me want to throw up. Or at least cringe. Anyway, there you have it. Feel free to let me know there are errors, so I really learn my lesson (about letting things be and being with things as they are, including myself).

Okay, moving on. Last night, I was at my sister’s place and it was really warm, so I left my windows open. This, by itself, is not so extraordinary, but I had earlier read a Facebook status by a friend who was commenting on this year’s crop of early-bird and abnormally large wolf spiders that are beginning their fall migration into the homes and imaginations of arachnophobes like myself.

I do not like spiders. I do not like them one little tiny bit. I don’t care what purpose they serve in the grander scheme of things: They are freaky and gross and disgusting and have way the hell too many legs and eyes and they creep and they crawl and they get into places and they’re gross (needs to be said twice) and I hate them. This image nicely sums up how I feel about spiders that have trespassed into any space that I may at any time inhabit:

non-violent-person

 

Why this matters is because while I was driving home, I thought to myself, just for fun, “Hey, what if a spider crawled in here while the windows were open?”

And then I promptly felt as though there were spiders all over me and thought about how I would likely cause a massive accident when it crawled up my leg and wouldn’t that look stupid on the police report. I wonder if insurance covers acts of God Satan (because spiders are clearly evil and therefore NOT God’s creatures)…

So, because I’m a rational and responsible adult, I put my indicator on and pulled over so that I could inspectigate my potentially spider-ridden scenario. This is when I discovered that the interior light in my car doesn’t really light up very well below the seat and the only possible remaining solution was to drive home quickly (though safely) and abandon the car and never drive it ever again.

What other solution could there be? I need a new car…

Just for the record, I did not burn down my car.

Just for the record, I did not burn down my car.

Also, in case you were worried, I did not have a car accident.

 

No news is good news.

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Hey, so I couldn’t think of a post on the weekend and was waiting for divine inspiration to descend upon my mind, or at least my keyboard. Clearly it didn’t happen. Oh well, there’s always next week.

Anyway, I have a dirty little secret. A sordid confession. I like to read the news. Actually, that’s not true: I don’t really like it. Not at all. It’s depressing and horrible and makes me feel sad, angry and helpless.

Today, I had to get up from my desk and walk away, after reading about two guys in Britain who used fanatical religious beliefs to fuel a terrible, horrible and shocking act of terrorism, in the name of God and revenge (I’m not providing a link to the story. I am not giving this backwards idea of a vengeful God who needs people to do shitty things to each other more airtime). I was shaking, from fear or from anger or disbelief, or all three, I don’t know.

How can this be our world? How can this be what people do to each other? Why? I mean, WHY? I’m so bloody tired of reading this garbage. It’s bullshit. It’s bad news. It’s bad for me. And it’s bad for you, too. Feeling anxious, stressed and angry is all kind of bad for your body.

people

So, you know what? I’m giving it up. No more reading the news. I have to scan medical news, for work, but no more clicking on the links up top. You know, those stories that get so much airtime, not just online, but on my heart and my mind, as they replay and wreak havoc on my perspective.

If it’s not about a miracle; if it doesn’t make my heart sing, then I’m not clicking on it. I’m done. I’m done with bad news.

Scaredy Pajama Pants

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I should not watch scary movies. I’d like to say I just shouldn’t watch them alone, but honestly, it’s not any better when I watch them with friends. I know this. I’ve known this fact roughly two weeks longer than forever.

The final nail in the coffin (you see what it does to me? I start getting all morbid and using death-y sayings) was watching The Strangers with Ben and Ashley, about 3 years ago. Adam was in Vancouver on a co-op term and he wouldn’t have watched it anyway because he doesn’t like to be scared (smartypants). Ashley watched most of it from the safety of the stairwell where she couldn’t actually see the screen, but pieced it all together based on the audio, combined with the look of abject terror on my face. Well, the abject terror that was visible above the pillow I was strangle-holding against me. I may or may not have been chewing on the pillow in distress.

That movie freaking TERRIFIED me. What do you mean, “because you were home.” Could that ending BE any creepier? I submit that it could not. But did I learn my lesson? Yes, of course. I never watched a scary movie again, because it is dumb to do something you don’t enjoy and I’m a grown up and no one can force me to watch a movie I don’t want to watch.

Sigh.

No, I didn’t learn. I then watched Paranormal Activity with Ben and Ashley, figuring it was clearly make-believe so I wouldn’t have to be scared of it happening to me. That’s pretty rational, isn’t it? I mean, obviously, my condo isn’t haunted by a demon and therefore I am A-okay. Except that it turns out that being rational isn’t possible when you become haunted by a bloody movie. Seriously, you guys. I didn’t sleep for days. I didn’t sleep well for weeks. I couldn’t get a particular image out of my mind—and no, I won’t tell you what it is, because then I’d be remembering it all over again and I don’t need that, thank you very much, but it gives me this reaction—and I was scared to fall asleep. I tucked myself into bed like a tightly wound burrito, lest any evil breezes ruffle my sheets. Because malevolent spirits are impassably thwarted by bedsheets, of course. I depended on the cats’ peaceful sleeping to reassure me that I was safe (Maui is DEFINITELY too paranoid to let a demon reside in the same room as her without a LOT of hissing).

So, what did I do last night? Let me tell you: I’m alone and decide to check out Supernatural on Netflix. I mean, it’s primetime TV. How scary can it be? I thought maybe it would be funny and perhaps campy. Well. Thirty seconds in and there’s a bloody (literally) woman on fire and pinned to the ceiling Exorcist-style. CLEARLY IT CAN BE VERY SCARY. So, because I’m a smart and responsible adult, I turned it off and read Winnie the Pooh and then went to sleep and dreamed of ponies and fairy dust.

No I didn’t. I watched the whole damn thing. And maybe another two episodes because I JUST DON’T LEARN, DO I?

And then I had to take the dog out, in the dark night. Alone and tweaky. Then I get in, lock the door (which I have to check three times after tucking myself in) and decide Grimby can sleep on the bed with me, because he’s lonely and needs comforting. And also because I figure he’d bark at any evil spirits creeping up to my bedside.

Yes, I’m pathetic and used my small, young dog to make me feel safe and protect me from my own imagination. What? WHAT? I ADMITTED IT AND THAT’S THE IMPORTANT THING. He might be allowed to sleep on the bed again tonight and maybe until Adam’s home from Vancouver. Look at me, problem-solving all over the place.

This is a reenactment of my scared face.

This is a reenactment of my scared face.

Getting more scared. I just noticed I'm wearing my headphones. I'm not scared of music.

Getting more scared. I just noticed I’m wearing my headphones. I’m not scared of music.

A placeholder

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Gosh, I’ve been gone too long. I promised I’d write every single week and here I’ve gone and missed two. I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to post and thought about you often. I’m not going to justify it with an excuse. I’ll just say I’ve been doing some growing and learning and it hasn’t been particularly graceful (again). But it’s good. It’s perfect. I’m right where I need to be and it’s making me a better Bay. But it’s hard. March is hard this year, all around me.

I need to go to bed—I have a well-being plan I’m following right now, so bedtime is pretty important these days. I’ll write more about that later.

So, I don’t have time to write anything momentous and earth-shakingly awesome tonight (or even ridiculous and trifling). But I do have a new band to add to my list of favourites and to share with you. Thank you Songza and 8Tracks for showing me that I am, in fact, a hipster who adores indie music. My amazing coworker Jill said she knew it all along. I think it’s my shoes…

Passenger. I love it. The melodies, the lead singer’s sweet and funny voice. The lyrics. I was walking to work today when I listened to “All the Little LIghts.” I mean, really listened, and heard, the lyrics. I invite you to listen to it now. Really listen, and hear it.

We’re born with millions of little lights shining in the dark
And they show us the way
One lights up
Every time we feel love in our hearts
One dies when it moves away

What makes your little lights go out? Do you notice? Don’t let them flicker and fail.

Light them up. Light up your world. We can use a little more light.

 

Oh what a feelin’!

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Okay, before you read more, click on this and set the mood. You’re welcome. Just bringing a little excitement to your lives.

Now, back to this post. I do not mean the above title in the way that the song does. This was not an “oh-happy-day” kind of Tuesday, if you get my meaning. I mean, seriously, people. SERIOUSLY. Get ready for some whining. Or not. You don’t have to read on. I’m not making you (but there’s a treat at the end if you do!).

Today started with my work laptop not working. For several hours, I tried to put out fires (not literal ones, though it did feel like a hot seat to me) on my work Blackberry, while talking with the help desk to figure out why on earth I had no access to the network. Just for the record, not having access to the network means I can’t access the internet, my email or any of my files. This may come as a surprise, but believe it or not, this particular scenario doesn’t make for a particularly productive morning. And, you guys. YOU GUYS. There was stuff going wrong all over the darn place. I was like a superhero without a spandex suit. I kept thinking of this video all day long, but I couldn’t watch it, because I had NO INTERNETS.

We’re not 100% sure it’s not my laptop (who says there’s no mystery left in life?), but it would seem the issue is that we have more laptop/mobile workers than IP addresses. For real, you guys. It’s like musical chairs. If you’re not quick, you get 2 sticks and a piece of twine with which to accomplish your wonders. I’m like McGyver! That would actually be pretty cool!

By the end of the day, I had a tension headache, a class to teach and was so busy following up on a million things today that I couldn’t get anything done, which leaves me behind. Or, I suppose more behind would be more accurate, because HOLY MOLY I’m already so far behind I’ve taken to laughing all high-pitched and nervously like the mom on That 70’s Show. That laugh is indicative of my need for a massage, a rage cage and a week off. Or possibly just a nap. Who knows.

Whatever. I’m done whining. Tomorrow is Wednesday, which is a good thing. What’s not to love about Wednesday?

Also, I’m going to Paris in 23 days. Baguette. Fromage. Du vin. Mmm… Just need to find accommodations, otherwise we’ll be sleeping on a park bench. I hear the parks in Paris are lovely this time of year. HAHAHAHA (that was high-pitched, but still happy).

Here’s my plan for tomorrow: Whenever things get stressful, I’m going to hum the Indiana Jones theme song and pretend it’s an adventure. Because really, whatever I’m dealing with isn’t going to be poisoned figs or monkey brains, so I’m doing pretty good, actually.

He may not look smart, but he's ours and we love him. He plays fetch. Does your cat play fetch? I didn't think so.