00:08 - 04.12.06
saturnian
To continue dear diary, I woke on Thursday around the supper hour. My youngest was due home and I wanted to have supper ready for him. Filled in the extra time carrying laundry up and downstairs as it went through the cycles. Since the packing had already come out from the one nostril, I thought I would call my sister who had had the same experience a few years back, to find out if there were any follow up instructions I should know about. I don't know if the emergency room staff had forgotten to tell me what to do or if I was too hazy to absorb their words, but I had no recollection of them. My sister stated she had been told to lie horizontal for three days with a further three weeks of cautious movement so as not to re-tear the offeding blood vessel. Also she said that leaning forward, going from one level to another too quickly or moving and lifting anything was discouraged. Well so much for that, eh? I'd already broken all those rules by preparing dinner and doing laundry. I had already told my son I would be at his home on Friday to care for my grand-daughter as well. I think maybe the hospital staff assumed I had the freedom to ignore my prior responsibilites and obligations and would just be sitting at home waiting to go to my doctor's office on Friday where he could instruct me further. Cranky, I know. My sister and I swapped details of our respective experiences with that issue. She felt I had received much better treatment based on my wait time and the fact that I had been given demerol. Apparently they hadn't given her anything for pain. I think each emergency facility has their own variations on standard protocols and she must have gone to another hospital. Didn't ask though.
Despite the warning not to lean forward, I needed to check my email for work related communication. Found one from the local rep asking me to send in some spreadsheets from the September assignment. She said they hadn't been received and were deemed missing, therefore no payment of the fees I had submitted over a month ago. So why hadn't she called me earlier since it is her responsibility to gather and forward said material. I checked my "sent email" and sure enough I had sent them to her on September 17 and received acknowledgement of same on October 3 from head office. I forwarded all that to her - again - with a comment that I wanted confirmation of payment of my invoice by next week since it was - once again - not my error that the material was "lost". Funny thing, last week I had received several email messages from the web group demanding that I empty my "in" and "sent" boxes since they were "over capacity". Good thing I ignored that and created folders elsewhere for those communications. Otherwise I would have had no evidence of sending the material as I knew I had. I also sent reworked spreadsheets of the material that had been due later, although I had already discussed and agreed with the owner of the task in Ottawa on the variations she was objecting to and wanted amended. Pick your battles. She hasn't responded to any of those emails. This is another time she seems implicated in holding back my work so I don't get paid. Not exactly what I need to try and deal with when I already am fighting to recuperate from that blood loss - more stress and still more stress about not knowing when I will have money to spend. Merry Christmas again. Maybe I should email the federal auditor with my tales of woe around departmental financial malfeasance.
Early Friday morning I was still feeling really wobbly, so I called and prebooked a cab for later pickup. Right now a news story in our media is stating that the odds of getting through to their dispatchers is less than that for winning a lottery. Lucky I'm up in the middle of the night - I got through. Cabby was on time and we swung by the pharmacy for my prescription, before heading off to my son's home. No use tempting fate any further right now by ignoring the medical regime, right? The driver had greeted me with "Hello Honey" while he worked his way through his coffee and breakfast. Once we were on the freeways the pitch began. First was the idea of giving me his direct contact information so I could call him for pick up directly. Given the news story that was not a bad suggestion. Then the conversation started to slide around to personal information. Sometimes that's ok - "where were you from originally", family and community involvement and so on. This time it wasn't that way - he started talking about being single and lonely. I told him I wasn't interested in any relationships and that usually my rather, um, eccentric personality scared men off. Mentioned my six adult sons. Talked about my independent and opinionated nature - anything that I thought would scare him off didn't work.
Then he slid into the sympathy pitch. All alone in this country as an immigrant of 15 years. No ties back in his home country and no friends or family here. Constant moves from city to city in this country. It sounded like no more than two years in any one place. As he talked, it was as though he already knew a certain amount of information about me. The community he comes from is very social and close knit. Gossip about each other and those who interact with them - like me - is normal and usually harmless. Small town type of relationships, don't you know. His assertion about no friendships bothered me a lot as did his unwillingness to chat about his home country. It was as though he had cut all ties there and was avoiding any re-connection with that past here. Probably would make a good movie script, but I'm long past wanting to rescue anyone with the psychological steamers trunks of old wounds and baggage he obviously is carrying. Still didn't put him off though.
Next he tried the racist card. "Women won't go out with me because of my race/ethnicity". I pointed out that for the past decade and a half I have been an equal opportunity rejector of passes or approaches. He had the same attitude of a lot of immigrants from various patriarchal communities. He had watched the Hollywood movies, don't you know. As a result, he knew North American women all jumped in and out of bed with anyone who asked. Sigh. I found this Bollywood site with synopses of some of their movies in English. I realized as I read some of the information that my assumptions about the East Indian culture were skewed, because of what I still don't know about some cultural practices and beliefs. I would never have guessed that the song/movie - Dil Se - I've linked to where the singers are travelling on a train through the countryside in India was a sympathetic portrayal of terrorists. Why they become what they are. However, that said, I don't believe for a minute that even 1 per cent of that country's population would choose that life. It is a movie because it is an experience that people want to know about vicariously rather than experientially. Ditto for most Hollywood fare, I think (and hope). One really bad relationship is enough for any lifetime is what my concluding sentence was to him.
Then he started in on sex. He felt that all "older women" - meaning me - should have younger men as partners - meaning himself, although I am guessing that he lied about his age too. If we hadn't been on one of the major freeways in very heavy rush hour traffic I would have got out of the cab then. Fortunately we were very close to my son's home by then, so I just put him off. We had to circumvent an accident that had occurred near where I usually have to cross at the traffic lights. The ones where I've nearly been hit a couple of times. There were two ambulances, several police cars and a fire truck. Sigh. All this before 7:30 in the am and I was still feeling really wobbly from the blood loss. To top it all off the cab fare was $45. Ouch.
I was hoping I could just rest during my grand-daughter's naps to recuperate, but that didn't work out either. My son had received a notice the day before from one of the really big courier companies telling him this was a final delivery notice for that day. It was, according to them, non-negotiable. My son hadn't received any previous notices and had been home the day before when that notice of final delivery was left. He was expecting a box of second hand playstation games to be delivered. Hmmm. He asked if I would take special care to catch the door when the delivery person arrived.
That would be enough of a challenge on a healthy day if I was changing my grand-daughter,for example. Her change table is such that she could fall off if I left her for even a few seconds. Friday I wasn't even supposed to be standing up let alone lifting, leaning forward, or running up and down stairs to answer the door. I already had jelly legs from dealing with the morning's stressor - that cabbie. Grumble. It was hard not to be paranoid and feel as though this was punishment somehow for missing a day of "work". I finally argued myself out of that attitude but still was faced with the prospect of no rest until 2 pm or whenever that driver decided to turn up. It was obvious that my son really wanted his games and that he didn't want them returned to the supplier somewhere in the US, which is what the final notice stated would occur if they didn't deliver that box today. Customs and shipping fees had already been an issue between them. Homeland security is damaging cross border trade in multiple ways isn't it?
I was able to look after my grandaughter's needs and we played a bit, but she was still not feeling well because of her teeth and the rash on her bottom, that appeared to be spreading to other parts of her body. It had almost been cleared up when I left on Wednesday, so that was a bit upsetting. At 2 pm the delivery person had still not arrived despite the notice. I had been sitting on the stairs waiting for him in the last half hour of the deadline set by the courier company and had been outside to check the mailbox and neighbours' doors to see if a notice had been left despite my vigilence. Nothing anywhere. My son called right after 2 pm and then said he would call the courier company to track his package after getting my negative on the delivery. He said he would call back when he got an answer from them. Meantime my granddaughter was fussing because I had to leave her in her secure play area. I couldn't have lifted and carted her up and down the stairs as many times as was required because of this unexpected delivery task I had been asked to deal with. It bothered me to leave her, but my son really seemed to need to have his delivery too. About 15 minutes later he called back to say that the company had told him the driver had been to the house around 1 pm. Since I had been near the front door and had not heard a doorbell, knock or seen any notices, I found that very hard to believe as did my son. The company had told him that they would ask the driver to make "another" call to the house during the afternoon, but with no guarantee of when. Arrrgh. Great. My only option at that point was to stand by the door to wait for the jerk driving the truck. Interestingly enough, he arrived within 10 minutes of my son's last call stating that he had been in the back alley the previous delivery attempt and couldn't find his way into the yard. He was so smarmy that it was disgusting. My own suspicion was that the listing of the games on the box might have tempted him to think about somehow having that box go missing somewhere in the return to sender/reshipping process that the company had threatened to undertake. I know I'm not being all that fair, but once someone lies to me I don't ever trust them about anything again. The driver didn't even apologize for all the trouble he had caused, including not leaving the first two notices when he had told the company he had attempted delivery. Called my son to let him know everything was settled.
It was after 3 pm by then and my granddaughter and I were both upset by all the disruptions and changes to our daily schedule. I was also beginning to feel really sick again and my head was spinning. I cuddled and comforted her until she fell asleep. Then I sat down to rest too. My son arrived just after she awoke from her nap. I had changed her and put some ointment on the places where the rash was apparent, trying to make her more comfortable. I was just about to start her evening feeding routine when he walked in. He seemed fine with that and went to check that the contents of the box received was complete. It was fortunately. My daughter-in-law walked in at that moment and asked him what he was doing at home. He said he had just arrived and seemed a bit crestfallen by her response to his presence. It was already 5:30 in the pm so it wasn't as though he had done anything inappropriate such as skipping work. He went back upstairs calling down, asking if I wanted to go shopping with them before heading home. I was holding my grandaughter and was explaining what had unfolded for her during the day and mentioned the rash to my daughter-in-law. My daughter-in-law got really annoyed at that point and said she didn't want any ointment anywhere other than on the baby's bottom.
At that point I could feel blood starting to trickle down from the broken blood vessel. I wasn't about to indulge my daughter-in-law's crankiness or become the target of it since it seemed as though she was building up for a set-to. I just asked my son if he would take me home immediately, because I had had enough for the day. He said she was always like that with everyone when she was having her period. Whatever. I have had periods for decades - it isn't an acceptable excuse. Anyway you can tell that I'm rather cranky over something that shouldn't matter at all - it was just a bad ending to a long and frustrating day on a day when I had no inner resources to deal with conflict. I decided that removing myself from the situation was the only reasonable choice I had, before a molehill became a mountain. Added in to the distress about the Elections Canada rep and the financial penalty that was being inflicted on me as a result of her/their actions and the fact that my first of the month mortgage payment was due without the funds in my account to cover it, I had reached my limit I guess. The bleeding continued after I got into my home so I crawled into bed. When my youngest arrived home and had gone through his nightly routine the bleeding had stopped. I asked him if he would mind walking me to the bank, so I could make certain I transferred some money into the checking account so there were no penalty payments to deal with too. He was fine with that, so I bought him dinner at the Pho restaurant as a thank you. I'll finish the story of the weekend tomorrow. Good night dear diary.
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