Why I Need a New Career

The reasons for my wanting a change in careers are too numerous to name. As part of my administration job, I am the primary person responsible for answering phones. Today I had a conversation with an unidentified caller (from this point on known as UC) that went something like this:

Me: Good morning, Jennifer speaking.
UC: Can I have the person in charge of advertising (more of a demand than a question).
Me: Can you give me some more details, so I know who to give you to?
UC: There are no more details. The Advertising Manager (spoken very rudely) .
Me: (Still trying to remain calm and polite in spite of wanting to choke the jerk) I need more details on the type of advertising you are talking about so that I can determine who is the best person to give you to.
UC: Who's the president?
Me: (Getting a bit ticked and short with him myself) Grant Roberts, but he's on vacation until July 17th.
Silence.
Me: (Continuing-for some retarded reason-to be nice to the jerk) I'm not trying to be difficult and I'm not trying to avoid putting you through to anybody, but we have a few different departments, and I just want to make sure I'm giving you to the right person. BLAH BLAH BLAH, ETC. ETC. ETC.
Dead Air.
It is around this time that I realize that I am talking to nobody, and the jerk hung up on me (I'm guessing somewhere around the time I told him that Grant was not back until July 17th). What a total *@!*$*!
Me: (Hanging up) Asshole.

So, let’s call this reason #1 for why I need a new career.

Test Results In...

Well, I can officially say with 100% certainty, that if you eat Pepto Bismol tablets, you will be left with a thick pink coating on your tongue. If you go to bed without removing that coating, you will wake up with a thick black coating on your tongue. And even if you take the time to brush the coating off your tongue before going to bed, you will still be spitting up nasty-looking black stuff in the morning.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be buying Pepto Bismol tablets again any time soon.

Oh Canada

Canada Day? What does it mean to you? Does it represent nothing more than a day off work, a chance to sleep in? Is it simply Canada Day celebrations and fireworks?

I have to admit that I was one of those people who viewed the Canada Day holiday as little more than a long weekend. On occasion, my family and I would participate in some of the local activities, but rarely did I give much thought to what Canada Day, and Canada itself, meant to me.

A new friendship has opened my eyes to the great things about this country that many of us are guilty of taking for granted. Over the past year, I have become friends with the parents of one of my son’s friends. About five years ago, the husband came to Canada from Romania with the dream of bringing his family over to join him after getting established. A year later, his wife and two young sons joined him.

Both were highly-educated university graduates with engineering degrees. They were successful, had good jobs, and a nice home. And yet, they gave up what would be considered a decent lifestyle in Romania to start over in Canada, with the hopes of giving their children the chance for a better future. They have made many sacrifices including not being able to see most members of their families, taking jobs that are beneath their education levels, and retraining for different careers, all because they know that this country can offer their children opportunities they could never have had if they’d remained in Romania.

Recently, my husband and I spent an evening with our Romanian friends where they told us stories that most Canadians could not even begin to imagine. They told us of how, when they were in University, they had to study by candlelight because they were limited to two hours of hydro each day. Television was also limited to an hour or two a day.

In Canada, most families have a minimum of two vehicles, which are considered necessities; a vehicle in Romania is a luxury—a luxury that most cannot afford. While we complain of the price of gas, the car owners in Romania have had to deal with monthly gas rations, regardless of their ability to afford more. They would receive coupons that would allow a family less gas for the entire month than most of us use in an average week. They could not save these coupons, and they could not use them in a town other than their own. A family trip to the Black Sea could require storing gas purchases for an entire year, and taking the supply with them for the journey, ensuring they had enough gas to make the round trip. Stopping for gas along the way was not an option.

These were only a few of the incredible stories our friends shared with us. I believe that much of what they told us occurred back in the 1980s and that the situation today is not quite so severe, but it remains clear that there is no comparison between the two countries.

I couldn’t imagine telling my children they had to limit their combined TV, computer, and game time to two hours a day, much less have a limit of two hours of hydro for an entire day. And as much as I hate the price of gas, I know I can fill up when and where I want. I don’t have to give up driving for an extended length of time to save my gas so that my family can enjoy a vacation together.

I have a whole new appreciation for the freedoms and opportunities of this country, and I hope that I never take any of it for granted again. On this Canada Day, I will be thinking of more than sleeping in and having a day off work. I will be thinking about how privileged I am to live in this great country and how proud I am to be Canadian.

Shopping Frustrations!

I am sooooo tired of trying to find pants and shorts that fit me. Yesterday, I was on a shopping trip to find myself some new shorts. I went from Fairweather, to Reitmans, to Ricki’s, to Cleo, to YZZA, and found absolutely ZERO pairs of shorts that fit me.

My problem?

If they fit over my hips and butt, they are HUGE on my waist, and if they fit my waist, there is positively no way they are going over my hips. Who designs these things anyway? Do designers honestly believe that women are build like boards? I know I can’t be the only woman who has to deal with this problem.

One of the pairs of shorts I tried on (unknown to me at the time I grabbed them) were those low-cut things that look good on teenagers with perfectly flat tummies but not quite as wonderful on a 37-year-old woman with a bit of a stomach. (Shoot me if I ever become delusional enough to believe I can wear something like that and look good in it without dropping at least another 15 pounds first). I zipped them up and nearly cracked up, they looked so ridiculous. Even those shorts left a big 2-inch gap in the back. You could pretty much see all of my underwear (and they were bikini bottoms). How lovely.

I have been dealing with this problem most of my life. Even when I am overweight, I am proportionality overweight. My waist is still smaller than my hips and I still struggle to find pants and shorts that fit me. I have recently lost about 15 pounds and am finding that the problem is even worse now. It's driving me crazy. I’m glad to have lost some weight, but this is plain stupid. I just want to go to a store and buy a lousy pair of shorts that don’t require alterations. Is that too much to ask?

Do You Miss Me?

Recently, my nearly-15-year-old son informed me that he was dead – that is the old ‘he’ was dead anyway. Apparently, he seems to think that whoever it is he used to be no longer exists and he is now a totally new person with no traces left of who he used to be. Then he went on to ask me, "Do you miss me?" Now I didn’t know what it was he was really trying to say or what reaction he was looking to get from me, but it certainly got me to thinking.

How often do things happen in our lives that change who we are, perhaps even result in the death of a part of us?

When we are laughed at or made fun of, does it kill our self-confidence?
When we are injured after doing something risky, does the risk-taker in us become overly cautious?
When we are cheated on by a partner, does the trusting part of us become hard and untrusting?
When we are taken advantage of, do we lose our naivety?
When we enter into a physical relationship with another, is our innocence gone?

I think it's fair to say that events in our lives constantly change who we are. We are affected by the choices we make and the things that happen to us. We are not the same person today that we were ten years ago. And in ten years from now, we will be different still. But does that mean the who we once were is dead and gone?

I know that I have changed from the person I used to be. Sometimes it makes me a little sad to think that because of things that have happened in my life, I have become less trusting and that I am no longer surprised when someone lets me down. I admit to having become somewhat hardened, and that I am less likely to give all of myself for fear of setting myself up to be hurt. There are some parts of me that could probably be considered gone and replaced by something different.

But is it all bad? Perhaps parts of me needed to die in order for me to grow and become a better person. Maybe I needed to be a stronger person, and the events in my life have forced me to adapt and develop the tougher shell I needed. Perhaps being a little hardened and requiring someone to earn my trust isn’t all bad. Being cautious after experiencing an injury may have prevented me from being even more seriously injured. And maybe having been hurt by others has made me more compassionate and less likely to do the same.

Yeah, I’ve changed-in some ways for the better, and in some ways, not. There are some qualities about the old me that I miss, but there are other qualities that I am happy to see gone. And, there are things about the new me that I would not want to change, even if it meant I could go back and undo the negative experience in my life that resulted in that new part of my personality. I’m different, but is the old me truly gone? I don’t think so. At the core, I am who I am. I may grow and change as I experience life, but I believe that, even if it is buried deep within my memory, the old me still exists in some form. And I think that if my son were to look a little deeper, he would also find that the old ‘he’ is still there too.

Black Tongue – Mystery Solved?

In March of this year, my husband (Dave), my youngest son (Brad), and I took a trip to Cuba. One morning, near the end of the week, Dave woke up with a black tongue. It was very bizarre and kind of freaked us out a bit. Upon giving it some thought, we concluded that it must have been from the black beans he’d eaten for supper the night before. Since Brad and I did not partake of the black beans, it made sense that Dave was the only one with a black tongue.

Oddly, several days later, after we were home, I woke up one morning with a similar black tongue. Now I was really freaked out. I certainly hadn’t eaten anything black and this had never happened to either of us before. Had we contracted some weird Cuban disease or something? We had our shots before the trip.

With some serious brushing with a toothbrush, I was able to remove the black from my tongue. It didn’t seem too serious, but it was very strange nonetheless. Several weeks later, it happened to me again. Now it was really starting to bother me. It was no longer an isolated incident.

I searched for Black Tongue on the internet and actually found several sites devoted to the topic. Seems Black Tongue is the result of some kind of vitamin deficiency or something. As well as the tongue being black, it referred to the tongue as looking ‘hairy’. Well, neither of us had hairy looking tongues, and I highly doubt that within the same week we both suddenly became deficient in vitamins resulting in a weird black tongue.

So what could be causing it? What had changed in our lives that could have this bizarre effect on our tongues? I thought about it and wondered if it could have anything to do with the Pepto Bismol tablets we had picked up for our Cuba trip. It seemed like a long shot, and we couldn’t remember for sure whether we had taken the tablets on the nights before we were plagued with black tongues or not (besides Pepto Bismol tablets are pink, not black).

So, this morning I woke up with a black tongue, yet again. AND what do you think I took right before going to sleep last night? You got it – 2 Pepto Bismol tablets!

Mystery solved?

Maybe. I might have to conduct a test and see what happens.

Old - Who Me?

Not too long ago, a band that my husband enjoys (INXS) performed in the city we live in. INXS has been around for a lot of years and goes back to our high school days. When the opportunity came to see the band with its new Canadian singer (JD Fortune), we decided to go.

I was a little surprised by the range of ages in people attending the concert. There were young kids, no older than about eight years old, right up to people in their forties and possibly even fifties. One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was that there was an awful lot of OLD people at the concert.

Then a really horrific realization occured to me. That realization was that I (at almost 38 years of age) and my husband (at age 40) WERE TWO OF THE OLD PEOPLE! Now when the heck did that happen?

Sometimes I forget I'm not sixteen anymore.