The story of my eye, a wedding, a funeral and, hopefully, a holiday
Cesar Millan makes me want a dog. I’m not a dog person, but he makes me think I could do it. Damn you Cesar Millan! I do love watching his show, though. He’s much better than the other guy, the one who seems really angry and aggressive all the time.
It’s been busy around here lately. My poor livejournal is really suffering for it. So, what’s been happening? Hm. Well, last week - no, wait, the week before, the week of August 23rd. We had a wedding to go to on Friday 27th, Adam’s cousin Keri, out in London (London is a small city in Ontario - there are lots of places here named after bigger and more famous cities, like Delhi and Paris and so on!). I thought, hell, I never have anything nice to wear, and I’m sick of looking frumpy all the time! So I splurged a little. I got myself a slinky grey knee-length fake-silk-satin-looking dress, a bit of jewellery, and then a pair of high heels.
Anyone who knows me AT ALL knows I never wear high heels. I don’t even wear fancy shoes of any kind. I hate shoe shopping. My feet are big, wide, and high. I’m considering doing my outdoor garden wedding in bare feet. Now I’m not so sure. See, I went to a shop called Aldo’s and saw a lovely pair of high heels, only they didn’t come big enough for me, so then I tried my second choice, also lovely, very high, and they looked so great I thought, what the hell! You’re living aren’t you? Go for it!
The toes were pretty tight, even after they stretched the leather in the shop, so I spent the week at work wearing them around the office. It was quite the talking point! I was suddenly tall enough to see over partitions! One of my colleagues got out a ruler and measured the heel. I was rather shocked at the result: four inches! I think if I’d known that I might have balked at buying them - well I guess I did know at some level, but I blithely ignored it.
I was having a pretty fun week actually, until the Tuesday. I somehow hurt my eye on Monday night, probably when removing my lenses, and on Tuesday people kept commenting on my eye - the right one this was. I finally went and looked in the bathroom mirror and found that one whole side of it was filled with blood. It did not look pretty, and it was also hurting - not in the usual way of eyes, but tender and sore like the whole area was bruised. A co-worker suggested a walk-in clinic and I thought, yes, that’s a good idea, I’ll just pop in to the Women’s College Hospital walk-in clinic, won’t take a moment, it’s just down the road.
Ha! Yeah you can tell I’ve never been to a walk-in clinic before. I thought it meant it was quick. Cause otherwise, y’know, you’d just go to your GP. I was there for over three hours, from 3 to 6:30 p.m. The longer I waited, the more stressed and anxious I got. I had left work in a rush, hadn’t brought a book to read, my water bottle, hadn’t finished up what I was working on (cause I thought I’d be back in an hour). I used the free phone in the lobby to leave messages on Adam’s phone, then remembered he had a doctor’s appointment and probably wouldn’t get them. I was just about to leave one on the home phone when I got called, just as Adam walks in!
I had to wait longer for an actual doctor (I’d been triaged already, after waiting about an hour), and he wasn’t very impressed with me. I should remember that I can LIE about not having a pair of glasses for back-up. It’s better to LIE and say “oh yes, they’re at home” than have someone look at me like that. Because it’s a long story, and it’s my fault that I couldn’t wear my glasses, but it doesn’t help any to look at me like I’m a complete idiot.
After escaping from the Urgent Care Centre, with a full-blown headache, I still had to go back to the office and finish the time-sensitive work I was doing for the next day, because even though there was no real damage to my eye, the doctor didn’t want me wearing my lenses and with no glasses in back-up I couldn’t see! So in the end we didn’t get home till close to 8 p.m.
I stayed home on Wednesday and called my optometrist - who was on holiday - and then several other optometrists until finally finding one who wasn’t on holiday and could see me - and I’m definitely switching ‘cause he was really great, had a wonderful sarcastic sense of humour and really knew his shit. Thankfully, it was just a tiny popped blood vessel in my eye, the blood was filling the membrane and had nowhere else to go, the bruised feeling was normal, and I COULD WEAR MY LENSES! It was very good news to hear, especially because they wouldn’t have new lenses for my glasses ready until the following Monday. But it took a couple of days for the headaches to go away.
So that was my drama of that week. The wedding went smoothly, my shoes looked great even though I couldn’t get them back on my feet by the time we left - oh and the food was bad. The main dish, anyway: cold, overcooked pasta with a tiny bit of gunky tomato sauce. That was it. Pretty much everyone left theirs only half-eaten. But they did serve a heavenly raspberry sorbet so I can almost forgive them.
Sorry, no photos.
______________________________________________________________________________
TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) starts this weekend. We’ve got a funeral to go to in London on Friday - Adam’s uncle Bill, who died of cancer last week - and we’ll either go up to the cottage afterwards or on Saturday morning. We’ve got all of next week off, which we’re spending most of at the cottage, and the following Saturday (18th) we’re going to see a film at the festival - I picked Never Let Me Go, a new film based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro. I absolutely loved the book, so when I saw the film was on I talked Adam into agreeing to see it. We wanted to see a Canadian film too but in the end decided to go with just one movie. There are so many good films on, but for the two of us to just see one film it cost $50. So it’s a treat.
I’m leaving work early this afternoon to go to an interview with CNIB - Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I’m hoping to do volunteer work there in their recording studio. Get this: they record their own audio books! I’m auditioning to read books for recording, which also involves helping in the recording studio. I hope they take me. It would be so cool! But who knows, maybe they won’t like my accent or the way I pronounce words… We’ll see.
I have a list of August books but it's not quite ready. Haven't finished writing reviews for them all!
It’s been busy around here lately. My poor livejournal is really suffering for it. So, what’s been happening? Hm. Well, last week - no, wait, the week before, the week of August 23rd. We had a wedding to go to on Friday 27th, Adam’s cousin Keri, out in London (London is a small city in Ontario - there are lots of places here named after bigger and more famous cities, like Delhi and Paris and so on!). I thought, hell, I never have anything nice to wear, and I’m sick of looking frumpy all the time! So I splurged a little. I got myself a slinky grey knee-length fake-silk-satin-looking dress, a bit of jewellery, and then a pair of high heels.
Anyone who knows me AT ALL knows I never wear high heels. I don’t even wear fancy shoes of any kind. I hate shoe shopping. My feet are big, wide, and high. I’m considering doing my outdoor garden wedding in bare feet. Now I’m not so sure. See, I went to a shop called Aldo’s and saw a lovely pair of high heels, only they didn’t come big enough for me, so then I tried my second choice, also lovely, very high, and they looked so great I thought, what the hell! You’re living aren’t you? Go for it!
The toes were pretty tight, even after they stretched the leather in the shop, so I spent the week at work wearing them around the office. It was quite the talking point! I was suddenly tall enough to see over partitions! One of my colleagues got out a ruler and measured the heel. I was rather shocked at the result: four inches! I think if I’d known that I might have balked at buying them - well I guess I did know at some level, but I blithely ignored it.
I was having a pretty fun week actually, until the Tuesday. I somehow hurt my eye on Monday night, probably when removing my lenses, and on Tuesday people kept commenting on my eye - the right one this was. I finally went and looked in the bathroom mirror and found that one whole side of it was filled with blood. It did not look pretty, and it was also hurting - not in the usual way of eyes, but tender and sore like the whole area was bruised. A co-worker suggested a walk-in clinic and I thought, yes, that’s a good idea, I’ll just pop in to the Women’s College Hospital walk-in clinic, won’t take a moment, it’s just down the road.
Ha! Yeah you can tell I’ve never been to a walk-in clinic before. I thought it meant it was quick. Cause otherwise, y’know, you’d just go to your GP. I was there for over three hours, from 3 to 6:30 p.m. The longer I waited, the more stressed and anxious I got. I had left work in a rush, hadn’t brought a book to read, my water bottle, hadn’t finished up what I was working on (cause I thought I’d be back in an hour). I used the free phone in the lobby to leave messages on Adam’s phone, then remembered he had a doctor’s appointment and probably wouldn’t get them. I was just about to leave one on the home phone when I got called, just as Adam walks in!
I had to wait longer for an actual doctor (I’d been triaged already, after waiting about an hour), and he wasn’t very impressed with me. I should remember that I can LIE about not having a pair of glasses for back-up. It’s better to LIE and say “oh yes, they’re at home” than have someone look at me like that. Because it’s a long story, and it’s my fault that I couldn’t wear my glasses, but it doesn’t help any to look at me like I’m a complete idiot.
After escaping from the Urgent Care Centre, with a full-blown headache, I still had to go back to the office and finish the time-sensitive work I was doing for the next day, because even though there was no real damage to my eye, the doctor didn’t want me wearing my lenses and with no glasses in back-up I couldn’t see! So in the end we didn’t get home till close to 8 p.m.
I stayed home on Wednesday and called my optometrist - who was on holiday - and then several other optometrists until finally finding one who wasn’t on holiday and could see me - and I’m definitely switching ‘cause he was really great, had a wonderful sarcastic sense of humour and really knew his shit. Thankfully, it was just a tiny popped blood vessel in my eye, the blood was filling the membrane and had nowhere else to go, the bruised feeling was normal, and I COULD WEAR MY LENSES! It was very good news to hear, especially because they wouldn’t have new lenses for my glasses ready until the following Monday. But it took a couple of days for the headaches to go away.
So that was my drama of that week. The wedding went smoothly, my shoes looked great even though I couldn’t get them back on my feet by the time we left - oh and the food was bad. The main dish, anyway: cold, overcooked pasta with a tiny bit of gunky tomato sauce. That was it. Pretty much everyone left theirs only half-eaten. But they did serve a heavenly raspberry sorbet so I can almost forgive them.
Sorry, no photos.
______________________________________________________________________________
TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) starts this weekend. We’ve got a funeral to go to in London on Friday - Adam’s uncle Bill, who died of cancer last week - and we’ll either go up to the cottage afterwards or on Saturday morning. We’ve got all of next week off, which we’re spending most of at the cottage, and the following Saturday (18th) we’re going to see a film at the festival - I picked Never Let Me Go, a new film based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro. I absolutely loved the book, so when I saw the film was on I talked Adam into agreeing to see it. We wanted to see a Canadian film too but in the end decided to go with just one movie. There are so many good films on, but for the two of us to just see one film it cost $50. So it’s a treat.
I’m leaving work early this afternoon to go to an interview with CNIB - Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I’m hoping to do volunteer work there in their recording studio. Get this: they record their own audio books! I’m auditioning to read books for recording, which also involves helping in the recording studio. I hope they take me. It would be so cool! But who knows, maybe they won’t like my accent or the way I pronounce words… We’ll see.
I have a list of August books but it's not quite ready. Haven't finished writing reviews for them all!