Because I am her sister...

Joanne is getting married! Last night we were just chatting and laughing together on the phone and one second we are making plans to spend some time together tomorrow and the next second she is asking me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. I can't tell you how surprised I was, but it made me so happy and I felt so honoured that I accepted in a split second. As if she hadn't put me in a great mood already she elevated it even futher by saying, "cuz you're my sis-tah, and we run togeth-ah." and then we laughed so hard I almost peed.

Sarah vs The Whip Arounders

One of my pet peeves is how people drive on Taylor. For the most part Taylor had one lane for each direction, and each lane is neighbour to a parking lane. For some reason on this street and this street alone people feel it is ok to drive in that parking lane. I mean sure, if you are making a right, then you pull in there as the start of your turn, but I am talking about people who do the 'Whip Around'. The Whip Around is when the car in the lead is not moving fast enough for the car behind, so the follower swerves into the parking lane and accelerates, passing the lead car on the right and then pulls back into the driving lane. For the most part this is merely a show of incredible impatience, but sometimes it is a very bad idea. I was actually explaining the whip around to Eric one day and he said he didn't really see what was so wrong. At the time we were stopped behind a vehicle on Taylor and the car behind us whipped around to pass both us and the lead vehicle. The car had to quickly slam on it's brakes though because the reason the lead vehicle had stopped in the first place was because it was a crosswalk, and a pedestrian was crossing. The Whip Around was very close to really hurting someone that day.

Well today I was waiting to make a left turn. Remember, there is only one lane on this road for each direction - so when the car opposite me was also making a left turn it should mean it is all clear for me to go, however the nextmost approaching car didn't wait. They did the whip around. Of course this means I have to slam on the brakes because not only has this car suddenly swerved into a collision course with me, but they haven't braked at all and are still moving at 50 kph. I said to my mom "God I hate when people whip around. " The next vehicle was a van and while I waited for it to whip around as well I added, "They should all get the finger." and then I gave the driver of the van a good view of mine as I kept on the lookout for more whip arounders.

A minute after I made my turn my phone rang. I answered it and I heard a voice say "Sarah"? It was Patrick. I said "Yes?" and I waited to see what he wanted and it was darn lucky I was pulled over at the time because the next thing I heard made me laugh so hard I probably would have swerved into oncoming traffic. He said: "Did you just give me the finger?!?!"

Happy Heather and Sarah Day!

You've always got time for ...

A lot of people wonder about what it takes to be happy, and I am proud to say I think I have figured out at least part of it. I know what you're thinking, "Sure sure Sarah, you are going to go on and on again about how perfect everything is turning out for you". Well I don't blame you - I am always blabbing about how happy I am, but this time is different. When I think about the last year or so I am all smiles, but lately in the here and now I am feeling quite 'blah'.

I don't really know how to deal with this depression of spirit. In the before-time I used to always feel this way, but I than again I also knew exactly what was wrong (and strangely it seems to help a lot if you know what is wrong even if nothing changes). Now that I have fixed that whole situation why do I still get the 'blah's??? About the only thing I could pin down was that I find myself feeling quite lonely, missing my friends - even the ones I talk to frequently. For example: last night I got home and wondered what Megan was up to and considered messaging her on the computer... but I just got back from going to a movie and coffee with her! It made no sense to me! Well, today I think I may have figured out what is wrong with me. It is not my human friends I miss, I miss my best friend of all - SUGAR!

A couple weeks ago I went to that diabetes education class and ever since I have been trying to be careful of my carbohydrate and sugar intake. I didn't realize until this morning that only I started feeling 'blah' after I changed what I was eating. The discovery happened because I could not stop thinking of Tim Horton's coffee and I ended up cutting out in the middle of work to go get some. I didn't just get any coffee either. I said 'to hell' with watching carbs and sugar and I got an extra large, double cream, double sugar with a cheese croissant. My friend Jesse used to say he thought Tim's added drugs to their coffee to make it so addicting, and today I am totally subscribing to his theory because I feel GREAT!


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P.S. (written a few hours after the above)
If sugar is my best friend, then imagine the reunion I am having with all my old friends that came in this box of Smarties Patrick just bought me.

To My Sister Laurie:

You may have died 8 years ago, but it seems as though no matter what the situation, a memory of you is often no more than a split second away.

Sarah
~//~

Eight Years Ago...

I saw you laying on my lap with hands barely able to fit around my finger. Soon after I watched you learn to walk and run. Shortly after that I remember you crashing into walls at full speed until you got a pair of glasses. I remember you, too young to spell your name, cleaning your glasses with a kleenex.

I saw you with your friends. You belonged to a group of friends, and to each of them you were their best friend. You had a way of connecting with them, letting them know that you cared about them. You even cared about them enough to hand out a few harsh words here and there to straighten them out. There are many people who are extremely glad they were lucky enough to know you.

I saw you learn the piano. At first the going was slow, I remember hearing the first three bars of a song being repeated over and over again. Eventually though I would hear entire songs played through. After that I got to hear songs that no one else had heard before, as you had just made them up yourself.

I saw you developing your interests. As a young kid you were fascinated by the stars and what may exist out there. As you became older you turned to music as a full time hobby. The house would ring with your singing. Soon you had your first guitar, and then your second. You taught yourself to play, and soon you began to write and sing your own songs.

I saw you buy a car. Your first car, bought with your own money. You danced up the driveway holding the license plates proudly above your head.

I saw you start a life of your own. You found yourself a job, and soon afterwards you were promoted. Not long after that you could afford to live on your own. Despite this freedom you had plans of going to university to become a teacher.

Then I saw you in the hospital. You couldn't talk, but you could still squeeze my finger. Then you couldn't even do that anymore. Then you were gone.

I saw you grow older, but not old enough.

I really miss you Laurie.

Order of Rootbeer

Today I went to Diabetes class at the university hospital. It was a welcome distraction from work... but being over 3 hours long itself I soon found I needed a distraction from the distraction, and that distraction came in the form of former Saskatoon mayor Cliff Wright.

I walked in at 12:59 - Perfect timing. I scanned the crowd. I was the youngest. In most cases I was the youngest by far. I sighed over the sad state of my older-than-it's-days pancreas and I walked into the room. As I searched for a place to sit I made a mental correlation between the age of an individual and the 'settled-in' look of their immediate surroundings. I got the impression that perfect timing for most of these old folks was 45 minutes ago. I decided to sit next to Cliff Wright and his wife. To be honest it just seemed like the best place for me. I could tell the other people in the room were jealous, but let's face it - I have a blog named after me, and he has a library. Obviously we share a certain social standing. The meeting was already running behind and it hadn't even started yet. In the down time Mrs. Wright and I chatted it up while Cliff, (I call him Cliff), gathered his courage up to talk to me. It wasn't until the break that he opened his mouth. He waited until I looked at him, then he leaned over to me, took off his glasses, and opened and closed his mouth a few times. It was as if he was preparing to make a great point. After all, he is a recipient of the Order of Canada, so I have no doubt whatever he says to me would require at least a little limbering of the face. I unconsciously stretched my own face a bit as I gathered my wits about me (in case whatever he said required I say something smart back). Then he spoke, and I was not disappointed:
"As it turns out... we have always *eaten* well. Where I go wrong is in my indulgences. I have a weakness, " he paused for a moment and looked around, the looked back at me and said proudly, "... for rootbeer."

Why Vaporizors Make Colds Worse

I haven't been going to get my face lasered much at all. Since August I have only gone once, and even then it was just to get my upper and lower lip area done. I have noticed quite a few hairs making a comeback, but most of them are very pale and don't show up anyway. The only real trouble is that lip area. Only about 50 hairs are visible, but they were very dark and therefore did not look good - even when shaved completely smooth you could still see them. So I decided I needed to take some action, and I pulled out the tweezers.

The good thing about getting lasered is even though it hurts a whole lot more, each zap does an area the size of a nickle, so it only takes a few minutes to finish the entire area. With tweezers it took me over an hour and each pluck not only hurt, but it made me sniffle, tear up and sneeze. By the time I was done I had gone through a box of kleenexes and I was all stuffed up and puffy-eyed. I went to sleep though feeling good about what I had done.

When I woke up after a terrible sleep I wasn't feeling so hot. I figure that earlier in the night, somewhere in my head, was a couple of tiny little germs eeking out a measly existence in the desert that was my sinus cavities - until my tweezing activities flooded the area with mucus. It sounds gross, but I am sure the germs had a great time eating and multiplying. Multiplying so much that when I woke up I was stuffed up so solid I couldn't even swallow and every word I spoke sounded like I said it without vowels.

I spent the entire next day breathing through my mouth and you know how it gets when your mouth dries out like that. Every breath is annoying and it is hard to sleep. So, because I wanted to sleep I pulled out my vaporizer and set it up in my bedroom. I noticed I wasn't getting a lot of steam, so I also grabbed the humidifier from the living room. The humidifier has a digital readout and when I brought it in it said 20% even despite the vaporizor. The humidifier would help of course, but what I really wanted was steam. Since the stream of vaporizor steam was pitiful, I (remembering the owners manual) added salt to the water.

I have never been one to be stingy with a salt shaker, so I think I may have added too much. By the time I went to sleep it was a perfect stream of steam, but when I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sound I saw that vaporizor was pumping out more steam than a cappucino machine (and it was sounding a little like it too). You know they say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity"? My room felt like a tropical rain forest in summer and I couldn't tell if the dampness of my bedding was from the humidity or from sweat. I looked at my humidifier and the readout said 98%. It was easy to believe that 2% more and my room would be underwater! I knew I'd never get to sleep like that so I shut off the humidifier and vaporizer, but my room would take hours to get to normal so I opened the door and the window and with a cool breeze across my face I went back to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning I felt no different than I did the previous morning. I was again stuffed solid, I again couldn't swallow and my mouth and lips were again all dried out, but all that vaporizor action did change something afterall - now my room was freezing and my window was frozen open.