crazywonderful

I am experiencing some kind of sinus thing that is making my head really hurt. Either that or I’m getting a migraine, but I’ve decided to risk erring on the side of hopeful and taken some allergy medication. May it soon not be so painful to move my head.
The week has been mostly concerned with the pursuit of employment, and though I got an offer yesterday from a very nice company, I’ve decided to decline. It’s not really a money thing, it’s more what they do and the job itself (vaguely defined) and not getting a solid bead on the person I’d be reporting to and it all sums to a fairly amorphous “No” feeling. Now I just have to think of a slightly gilded rephrasing of that for the agency that procured me the interview. The one that makes their money when I get hired. Here’s hoping the next choice will be from their agency as well. If this were my only possible hope I might be less picky but besides the fact that I’ve already hired myself out on a temporary basis I have a second interview on Thursday for a job I would very much like to get. I am looking forward to walking to that appointment without having to resort to the gauze and tape and hobbling and cursing that was my trip to the first last Tuesday. I suggest clicking on this picture (taken in RAW) only if you want to see the weeping, skinned heel wound underneath.

Thank god for my Personal Adventure Medical Kit, because unfortunately, I left my ruby slippers at my ex-work and didn’t discover this until it was too late for me to go pick them up pre-interview (for the job I’m not taking) on Monday, so I had to resort to another pair, a dressy version I haven’t worn in at least eight years, and whilst hailing a cab from my knees ten minutes into my two inch higher walk home I realized something had changed in the intervening period. Apparently I’ve gone soft in the heel – lulled into a weak and callusless state by the world of comfortable shoes. It’s not that surprising, I’ve become adamant about foot comfort, what’s really disturbing me is, where did the skin go? Where did all that skin…go? It was on my heel when I left for the appointment Monday and it was not on my heel or inside the shoe (I checked, feeling slightly queasy) when I got home, so did the shoe gnaw it off and spit it onto the sidewalk? Is it my foot acid again?* I really need to know. It feels like some fundamental laws (“Paging conservation of matter – conservation of matter to the red angry scar phone, please”) are being blatantly disregarded, and if I have shoes that are breaking laws, they need to go. You cannot walk around on that shit even if it does make your ass look better. The wound formerly known as grievous is starting to re-heel, though I still hobble and – when uncovered – cause people to gasp. But soon all will be well again. In the meantime, I’ll bandage up and stump off to contracting on my merry way to becoming a Dilbert cartoon.
In other news, you have probably noticed by now that I survived the trip back from Manitoba. And so did the U-Haul. And all curbs remain unmolested save one, and that was the stupid Drumheller tourist attraction parking lot planner’s fault, not mine.
Five days before I left, after painting all day during a heat wave with Laura (who flew there on her way home from a conference in Ottawa), Poke phoned me to ask how large of an uncertainly maintained rental truck I was comfortable driving halfway across the country: 17 feet (likely too small to fit her house contents) or 24. I said if the 17 foot was too small, that pretty much answered the question, but let me get used to the idea and then hung up and called my mother to see if she thought I could drive a 24 foot vehicle safely. Because if she thought I couldn’t, she would tell me. She said she didn’t have a fucking clue. “But what’s the difference?” she asked. After a pause for verification on my fingers, I said, “I was thinking about seven feet.” “But if you can drive 17′, you can drive 24′,” she said in her “duh” voice, which did effectively curb the panic. I’m not sure if it is because of or in spite of her I’m good with big vehicles**, but I believe most valuable in this instance was that I inspire trust and am good at faking it. You’d think the two would counteract but in reality it’s a great combination. And so I was flown to Winnipeg by Poke’s dad, the ringer for driving what would end up being a 26′ U-Haul (newer ones are two feet bigger – surprise!) from Carberry to Delta, BC.
It’s roughly a 24 hour trip, and we planned on doing it in four days but got home a day early, on BC Day, driven mostly by wanting to just have it over with, I think. We three women lived together once upon a time and I’m sure whatever made that work rose up and prevented either of them from killing me or me killing the children during the week of prep and subsequent adventure. I’m a little worried I’m now the mean auntie, on account of the fact that while both Laur and Poke seem to have limitless patience in the area of jollying whiny children along, I’ve taken a page from my parents’ book and expect kids (and pretty much everyone else, now that I think about it) to respond well to my death glare. Ben (3) got sick before we left and passed it on to Thomas (4), who still needed to be within reaching distance of a bucket the day we left, and after 9 or 10 hours it is hard for anyone to keep their shit together, no matter how many Disney movies they’ve driven through. Or perhaps because of. Still, we all survived, and admirably, I think. The only person I really lost it on was not part of our trip and I was extremely civil to while doing so, which did not stop him from threatening to call a lawyer afterwards (perhaps using the little-known Dressed Down By Ex-Wife’s Angry Friend Hotline – Tagline: It’s All That Bitch’s Fault), but did allow me to sleep Sunday night. It’s nice that I chose someone outside our little caravan, but would have perhaps been nicer if I’d just held a pillow to my mouth and ran along the streets of Golden screaming into it for the same net effect.
The driving itself was never a problem, nor was the truck poorly maintained as far as I could tell from flipping through the log book. It was louder than the hounds of hell, but other than that its performance never bothered me, and I cannot possibly convey what a brilliant co-pilot Laur was. She was experiencing the prairie provinces for the first time and rode with me for the first day and a half, until the mountains were looming, plotting distances on the map to the next town with her pinkie finger, keeping me awake, making me laugh and singing about our country being too big.
Then Thursday after a day or two of rest and laundry in my own house I came down with whatever the kids had, revisited in varying states of digestedness the lovely meal Ken had prepared for me Wed eve and slept enough to arise Friday and start making appointments for the Great Heel Massacre of Ought Seven.
And that is how I spent my summer vacation.
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* Bought a pair of shoes from Aldo once and after about a week and a half, the sole cracked open – from the bottom – and eventually ended up breaking all the way across the ball of my foot. When I took my bill and went back to enquire after their production standards, the salesperson informed me that the cracking was likely due to the acid in my feet wearing down the soles. I thought she was joking at first (I am wrong about this kind of thing way too often) but then realized she was dead serious. So serious that not even me repeating it back to her rather more slowly dented her conviction. So I marvelled that it had never happened to any other pair of shoes I’d ever owned and she helped me pick out a replacement pair which turned out to be moderately less vulnerable to foot acid. Ken and I still – whenever something goes inexplicably wrong with apparel – blame body acid for it.
** I am also in favour of small vehicles. In fact I nearly convinced my brother to go in with me and buy one of these last Friday, but once the hard, cold light of Saturday hit, it turns out the fact that he doesn’t have his motorcycle licence severely hampers his ability to share. With his only sister. Who dint raise no fool.