Author: Cindy

I was sick last week. So sick that I didn’t do anything writing-related from Tuesday night until this Monday. I think I had the flu. Not the barfing/sitting on the “commode” type of flu, but the my-head’s-gonna-blow-up, I-ain’t-got-no-energy (and I don’t care if that’s a double negative), sleep-for-15-hours-and-still-feel-crappy sort of flu that then resides in your ear and sinuses, keeping you dizzy enough that you smartly cancel a very busy week of appointments, wear pajamas whenever possible, and forget to wash your hair.

The second day into this illness, I decided that if I strapped on snow pants and a parka, and extra layers of clothing, boots, hat, scarf, dog poop bags—the whole bit—I would have what it takes to walk the dog to the park and back, the same route we used to run before it started snowing. And, if I accomplished this task, I wouldn’t have to walk up and down the basement stairs for 20 minutes to make up for no longer running.

I actually felt quite good walking in the fresh air. Man, it was cold, though, and the snow was coming down. The snow was coming down not “hard,” precisely, considering this is Canada. But coming down hard enough that tracks were getting obscured within minutes.

So Allie and I rounded a corner onto a busy road, and I had to shorten her lead to make sure cars didn’t slide off the road and hit us (logically, I knew shortening her lead didn’t mean the cars wouldn’t slide off the road, but at least I would be saved the embarrassment of the driver shouting, “Her damn dog raced into traffic!”) While trudging along with the short lead, what did I suddenly see sticking out of the snow? A $50 bill. Right away, I knew it was a fifty, because we have colored money in Canada. For those not in the know, this is what a $50 looks like:

Which sorta confused me, because it used to look like this:

Same guy (I think), but when, like me, you never see fifties, you don’t remember who’s on front (turns out it’s William Lyon McKenzie King, only one of our most important Prime Ministers ever).

But it was pink, and so I snatched it up. Then looked around. Cars were driving past, and several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me I could see a couple walking. Had one of them dropped the fifty? I decided the couple might be a pair of women from my neighborhood whom I often encounter while walking or running Allie. So I began trudging after them in hopes I might catch them. Because it was a fifty! A $5 bill I would keep. A ten, yes, probably. A twenty? You snooze, you lose! But a fifty? At this time of year, when we’re supposed to act charitably toward one another and wait until April to be a jerk? Maybe it was my illness influencing me, but I felt so bad. I could not in all conscience keep that fifty. Maybe someone was filming me to verify my honesty. Maybe someone felt compelled to hang their hand out a speeding car window in the frozen, snowy day, and they accidentally dropped the $50. Maybe it didn’t belong to the people walking several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me. Maybe it belonged to the person in the house of the driveway two feet away from where I grabbed the bill.

So I backtracked to that driveway. Allie couldn’t figure out what was going on. The dog park was in another several feet, and she was getting antsy. When I reached the driveway, I got more and more confused. No tire tracks, no footprints leading out of the driveway. In fact, no one had even shoveled the driveway. I glanced around at the surrounding driveways, and it was much the same story.  By this point I was totally convinced the $50 belonged to the walking couple, and so I trudged off after them again. But by the time I reached the dog park, they were long gone.

Maybe it’s because I was sick, but my conscience was working overtime. I’d found the $50 close enough to the high school that it made sense to me that if the strolling couple weren’t my neighbors, they must be kids from the high school. Even though it was somewhere around 9:20 a.m. and they should have been IN school… All the way home, I wondered what to do. Because of the dizziness and ringing in my ears, I wasn’t thinking too clearly, so it took the rest of the 45 minute walk to figure it out.

First, I called the neighbor, but she hadn’t gone out that day. Then I called the high school and asked the secretary to announce over the loudspeaker that someone had found an unspecified amount of money in the area, and if a student could describe the denomination and approximately where it was found, they could have it. If not, the finder would treat her family to Chinese take-out. I figured I’d give until the weekend for a student to come forward. Then, realizing the walk had totally exhausted me, I forgot about it and fell into bed.

The next day, I was finally starting to feel better. I still couldn’t work (as in write), but I could make my rescheduled massage therapy appointment. I was puttering about when the phone rang. It was a student from the high school. She’d lost a $50 bill, she told me, walking along Road I’d Walked Along with another student, going toward the corner store, because they both had spares (why they weren’t in school at 9:20 a.m.). She’d been out of town on a shopping trip to the West Edmonton Mall (which, for Canadians, is almost like going to Disneyland, but it’s Edmonton so the theme park and waterpark are all indoors), and the $50 was left over from that trip. It was all the money she’d had in her pocket, and she’d lost it “near the dog park.” Then I asked her to describe her ski jacket, because I remembered one of the couple was a lot smaller than the other and the smaller was wearing a coat with a white background and this memorable pattern I can no longer remember. But I remembered it well enough when she phoned, and it was the jacket of one of the pair walking in front of me.

I had been right to listen to my conscience, not keep the money, and instead try to find the owner. The girl popped over on her lunch hour, and I gave her the $50.

Integrity. It got me because I was sick. Don’t expect it to happen again.

Happy December!

My husband grew a moustache for Movember, Prostrate Cancer Awareness Month. He shaves it off in two days, and I can’t wait. The only time he’s had a moustache is for a couple of years around the time I was pregnant with our second child. I got…used to it. But I far prefer him without one. It’s just too prickly, and this ain’t the Seventies, folks. Moustaches remind me of the Seventies, weasley used car salesmen (as opposed to non-weasley used car salesmen, who have nice goatees), porn stars (of the Seventies), and guys who sell fake Rolexes out of their coats. I’m just not a moustache-loving girl. That said, I know men who are quite handsome with their moustaches. I just prefer my guy clean-shaven, the better to see his charming smile. Awwwwww.

But we have friends who’ve struggled with prostrate cancer, and so the moustache will return next November, I’m told. Bring it on!

Speaking of moustaches and Movember, they both start with M. And mammogram also starts with M. I’m bringing this up because I recently learned an old friend just underwent a pretty intensive surgery for breast cancer detected during an annual mammogram. She’s on her way to recovery, and I wish her well.

You did read what happened, right? She had her annual mammogram, and that’s how the cancer was detected. Smart woman, to have gone in for the mammogram. I’ve been getting mammograms for several years. Much earlier this year, I was called back for diagnostics for the very first time. That freaked me out. I can’t imagine going through the fear and uncertainty my friend must have experienced these last several weeks. The time between my mammogram and the diagnostics were enough to stress me out to no end. On one hand I rationalized I couldn’t possibly have breast cancer because I plan to live to at least 90 and will haunt everyone I know and all the friends of everyone I know, including the friends of friends of friends of people on Facebook I know, if I don’t make my goal. It’s not my goal, really, more of an expectation based on family history. I take very good care of myself. I eat chocolate whenever possible and exercise only enough to ensure I can eat chocolate whenever possible. Cancer has no place in my body.  

Neither did it have any reason to reside in the body of my friend.

But it did.

Cancer is a bitch. It doesn’t care if you plan to live to at least age 90 or if you haven’t gotten around to taking that trip around the world yet. It doesn’t care if you have proper medical coverage, and it doesn’t care if you do have the coverage but the wait times for surgery in your area are long. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor—as long as you give it what it wants. And that’s your life. However it can take it. If that means leaving four children without a mother while one of those children is recovering from his own life-threatening illness, cancer will be happy to oblige. So we owe it to ourselves to fight back as fiercely. To grow that ugly moustache in support of a friend. To get annual mammograms—no excuses. No, your boobs AREN’T too small. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, the first time is embarrassing. Well, the first time you opened your legs for a doctor while you were in labor might have been embarrassing, too. The 3rd or 4th time? Not so much. So it is with mammograms.

Oh, my diagnostics turned out okay. Then I returned in August for my follow-up and the mammograms were okay. I’m still getting tested in another year. And every year thereafter.

While I’m at it, I had to cancel my Pap Smear last week because I was sick for several days. But I’m getting it this week. If you haven’t had a Pap Smear in two years, what are you waiting for? Get ‘er done!

Winter basically fell from the sky with a wallop last Friday morning, the day we drove my parents to the airport for their Mexican sojourn. My Liege took a “day off,” so I got dragged along to fetch the last of the firewood for the winter. He and Eldest Son and Old Logger (a.k.a. my dad) fetched the first load last weekend. My primary task was to make sure Allie McBeagle didn’t venture out of the pasture while M.L. sawed already felled and dried logs into chuckable chunks. As in he intended to chuck them into the pickup bed and then E.S. would chop them up at home.

That was the intention. I wound up getting roped into carrying the smaller wood pieces to the truck. I felt like a wimp carrying only one at a time, so I did two. I knew this wasn’t good for my bicep injury, but I did it, anyway. Then we returned home and realized it was not just snowing, but it was cold enough to do the vehicle shift.

Eldest Son’s 1986 Honda Prelude doesn’t have a block heater. Normally, he and Youngest Son park on these brick tracks M.L. created several years ago, at the other end of the yard. I get the carport and M.L. parks near the kitchen door. The last two years, E.S. has been away at university, so we didn’t have to worry about his block-heater-less car in the winters. The rest of us have block heaters, so could all plug in where we sat. Now, Y.S.’s little pickup is wheel-less at the bottom of the yard because he’s away at university, M.L.’s big pickup is parked in the snow where the kids’ vehicles both sat this summer. If needed, he’ll just put it in 4-wheel-drive to get out of his “driveway.” My poor little Sophie, my fantastic, amazing 1999 Nissan Altima that doesn’t even have 90,000 kilometers on it yet (but I’m getting close), now sits by the kitchen door, and E.S.’s ’86 Prelude has the carport. The reasoning is his car, which can’t plug in, will catch the heat of the house this way.

Before I moved my car, I stupidly decided to shovel what is now “my side” of the driveway. The snow wasn’t deep, but the exercise did a number on my bicep injury, regardless. From now on, so I’m told, if E.S. isn’t around I’m to clear two tracks so I can back out of the driveway and then allow E.S. to clean both driveways upon his return. (Yes, he’s our slave). (On the other hand, he gets free room and board while taking his teaching certification).

Then Allie got into the act. Lo and behold, overnight her water dish on the sundeck where her insulated doghouse sits, suddenly froze solid. This is a big water dish. It’s an empty ice cream bucket. She’s not allowed to sleep inside if a skiff of ice forms on the surface. But we didn’t get to skiff-forming this year. We proceeded directly from liquid to ice. Which means the beagle is now sleeping on the bed at our feet. It’s only been 3 nights, so she’s still operating under the misconception that we’ve lost our brain cells and that’s why we aren’t locking her on the sundeck to sleep outside. As soon as she figures out that she’s indoors for the next three or four months, she’ll slowly and craftily begin creeping off her blanket in the middle of the night…and wind up cuddling my spine. Oh, it sounds cozy. It’s aggravating, for someone who tosses and turns as she sleeps. But…it’s temporary. Praise God.

This morning was the first day since the first snow that Allie and I were to go on our run. I nixed that right away. I slammed ice-grippers onto the bottom of my snow boots and basically tried to ensure she didn’t drag us into traffic as we made our way to the dog park. The entire walk took about 40 minutes, but doesn’t escalate my heart rate enough to count as cardio. So then I trotted up and down the basement steps for 20 minutes. My left knee complained. The trotting shall have to continue, however, until I get off my duff and buy a cheap elliptical. Then at least I can watch TV as I work out. The problem is getting off my duff and buying the thing.

Yes, winter has descended, and we’re comfy cozy. When the fire is blazing in the evenings, and I’m lazing on the couch with a contented beagle snoring on my lap, it’s very obvious that Christmas is coming. Am I prepared? Of course not. Honestly, people, you should know me better than that by now! But I’m looking forward to the holiday nevertheless.

How’s your November shaping up?