Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I think I’m fighting the flu or something …

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Do you ever have one of those days when you just feel … bleh? That’s the way I’m feeling today. Actually it started last night.

As many of you know I have Crohn’s so I’m not sure if my Crohn’s is just acting up more than usual or if I’m fighting a flu bug or something. Last night I started feeling weak and shaky and feverish (but the feverish part is nothing new, it goes with my version of Crohns). Today I’ve got bad stomach cramps and I just don’t feel up to doing much of anything.

It’s not like I don’t have tons of things to do … but I just can’t work up the energy to do much of anything at all.

So I’m just spending the evening watching TV for now. Speaking of TV did you catch this evenings NCIS? It was a creepy Halloween type episode. I also watched yesterdays episode of Heroes that we’d taped. I guess it will be a TV night. I’ll rest up and hopefully feel a little more like myself tomorrow.





Doctors creating movies and cellphones dialing on their own

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Chris was home from work again today. His back is a lot better today, thankfully, so he’ll be returning to work tomorrow. Finally I’ll have some peace around here, even if it’s only for one day.

The hospital has a policy that if you are off work for three days in a row you can’t return unless you have a doctors note, so earlier today Chris made a call to our family doctors office and he managed to get an early morning appointment. As it happens I was supposed to have an appointment next week, just to get a shot of a medication that I have to have every two or three months, so I tagged along and horned in on his appointment so I could get my needle.

If I hadn’t gone to the doctors today with Chris I would have had to take the subway to the office next week and I hate taking the subway these days. It takes me over an hour to get there and well … if you’ve ever been on a subway you know they are crowded, smell and you often encounter some pretty strange people! I should tell you some of my subway stories sometime.

I think that we finally figured out what’s been distracting our doctor the last two times we’ve seen her. I was starting to dread my appointments with her because she’d forget things we talked about the last time I’d seen her and just wasn’t her cheery self. I actually started to think that I might need to get a new family doctor! Well it seems that she’s been busy with a huge project and I’m assuming that was the cause of her distracted behavior! She made a movie!

She wrote and produced a movie that’s going to be called “A Touch of Grey”. I guess they are in post production now, but she talked about how they might submit the film to Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival.

I had no idea that she was interested in film making. Usually when Chris or I visit with her we talk about her family, her sons band, music and things like that, but it sounds like she’s been interested in acting and writing for some time. It will be interesting to see what happens with her movie when it comes out.

Ha … one funny thing happened while I was in the doctors office. I was sitting there with my purse in my lap and I leaned on it. Do you know what happens when you have an unlocked phone in your purse? It starts dialing people! LOL

I didn’t realize that the phone was on, let alone unlocked until I started hearing “Hello … hello” from coming from my purse! That was weird. It just so happens that I was in the crowded waiting room at the time too. Boy did my face turn red.

Have you ever had your cell phone start dialing people on it’s own and possibly create an embarrassing position for you?

What a week

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I’ve been having an interesting week …

My husband came home from work last Friday complaining that his back was really sore. This was on the heal of having a bad cold for two or three days. We thought that maybe the cold virus had affected his back, so he took it easy that night and his back felt a bit better, but it was still sore on Saturday.

By Sunday his back was really bad and the way he was describing the pain (BTW he’s the worst at describing symptoms and being a nurse I’ve heard some very poor symptom descriptions) it was starting to sound like he might have a kidney stone, so we spent a while that day trying to figure out exactly what the problem was, but in the end it really was just his back.

He’s an OR attendant at the hospital and he helps move people onto beds and pushes stretchers loaded with patients to hospital rooms which of course can be hard on a good back and much worse on a bad back. He has Monday’s off, so he was able to get three full days to pamper his back, but when his back still wasn’t any better on Monday he decided to call in sick on Tuesday. It still wasn’t much better today either so he didn’t go to work today and he’s called in sick for tomorrow as well. He really needs to be sure that his back is better before he goes back to a job that is so hard on the back.

So … I’ve been stuck at home with a sick husband!

I’m sure the men reading this will admit that they aren’t at their best when they are sick and the ladies … well, I’ll bet most of you would say your husbands or boyfriends become little boys when they are sick. My husband is no different.

My back goes out every now and then so I know how painful it can be, but I still somehow manage to get a few things done around the house, like cooking dinner (or at least heating up an easy meal) and other basics, but whenever my husband gets sick all he does is lie around and act like it’s the worst thing in the world! LOL

So I’m not having the best week … plus with him around and me waiting on him hand and foot I can’t get much of my own work done!

I did manage to get out today to see my pain doctor though. She’s pretty cool. A little ditsy in some of her advice, but overall she’s a good doctor and she’s good to talk to as well. Only part of my visit was spent discussing my Crohn’s disease and how we are managing the pain I’m in … the rest was spent talking about her cold, family, my dog, my sick husband and her latest purchase – a very comfortable looking pair of Dansko shoes.

The very best part of the visit is the fact that I don’t have to see her again until the middle of December. Pretty much since January 2006 I’ve been seeing her once a month, only when she’s gone on vacation have I had longer periods between my appointments. This was the first time she actually asked to see me in two months without saying it was because she was going on vacation. Maybe from now on I won’t have to see her so much. Like I said she’s a nice doctor, but yeah … I don’t think I need to see her every single month.

So I’m taken care of for a while – at least pain medication wise (not health wise – I need a magic wand for that!). Now all I need is for my husbands back to get better and for him to get back to work so life can get back to what passes for normal around here.

Ladies – don’t you dread it when your husband is home sick? How do you cope?

Do you ever have strange dreams?

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I had the strangest dream the other night. I had fallen asleep on the couch and at about 5 a.m. I woke up feeling very groggy and wondering how I came up with the phrase “The Newfies are watching them.” in my dream. (Newfies are people from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and they are often the butt of Canadian jokes.)

So what was I dreaming about? Well … that’s kind of hard to explain. I guess I was at a zoo or some kind of reptile exhibit with two very young nephews that do not exist in real life. One of the boys took off and ran up this man made rocky area behind a huge exhibit for iguanas and the next thing I knew he was in the exhibit with these giant iguanas (yes, in my dream they were larger than in real life). I seem to remember monitor lizards also being in the caged area too.

In my dream, I couldn’t get into the enclosure the way he had so I ran around to the front yelling for help and that’s when someone told me not to worry because “The Newfies are watching them”. LOL So I ran up to a man, I guess he was one of the Newfies, and he let me get into the enclosure to rescue my nephew, but just then a large iguana ran at me. The odd thing about the iguana was that it had a small lions head.

Yes, my dream was very very weird!

I backed off when I saw the lion headed iguana and as I looked towards the back area of the enclosure I saw my small nephew being held horizontally in the air by a few men and he had about 15 iguanas hanging off of him. I guess they’d bit into his clothing and were hanging on like Bulldogs. When I think about it now that image was pretty funny, but if it had really happened I guess it would be pretty scary for the kid and maybe me if I really was his aunt.

My dream ended with me outside the cage again, trying to get back in, but being blocked off by monitor lizards.

I still have no idea why I had such a strange and vivid dream. It occurred a few days ago and it’s still with me. I thought that maybe writing about it might purge it from my mind.

Chris and I used to keep an iguana and several other lizards (I think we had 14 in house at one point) as well as box turtles, but the only reptilian pets still present in our home are the turtles.

I don’t have the slightest fear of iguanas or monitor lizards so I don’t know why I dreamed of them in a frightening scenario. My only guess as to why the lion headed iguana appeared in my dream goes back to the one year that my big male iguana, Napoleon, went into a very bad breeding season and he literally chased us around our apartment for two months! However, other than that one brief period he was a complete sweet heart for the whole 10 years that we had him.

As odd as my whole dream was it’s the line “The newfies are watching them” that gets me the most. I have several friends from Newfoundland and Labrador and I rarely ever call them Newfies. It’s just not a term that I use.

That was certainly the strangest dream I’ve had in years! At least that I can remember!

Do you ever have strange dreams that stay with you for the whole day or even for days afterward? Dreams that you can’t really connect to anything in your life or at least not to anything in your recent past?

Paying for a night out on the town

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Wow, I’m starting to slow down in my posting quite a bit aren’t I? It hasn’t been the best week for me. My Crohn’s has been acting up – the worst of the symptoms … bleh …

I think I might be feeling so bad this week because Chris and I went out on Wednesday night. His sister was in Toronto for a quick Government related course and then she was going back home on Thursday after a test for the course and then well .. as I said in my last post she and her husband were moving to a new house on Friday (with Chris’ help).

Anyway … when Chris came home on Wednesday we drove off to meet his sister at her hotel in the lovely section of Toronto called North York. Uh huh … she was staying in a Novotel and she was waiting for us in the bar.

That wasn’t the best idea! She’d already had 5 Cosmopolitans while she waited for us! Once we got there she talked me into having a Cosmo and Chris tried out a new beer. Chris and I were both hungry and while we tried to talk his sister into going down the street to the Baton Rouge restaurant for a meal we were snacking on some kind of pretzel/ beer nut/ cracker mix.

In the end I had three Cosmos and my sister in laws tally came to 8 cosmos all while sitting on these weird modern furniture style bar stools at the bar.

By the time we got to the restaurant my sister in law was of course too drunk to eat. She ordered appetizers but only had a nibble. I wonder how she felt the next day? LOL I guess I’ll have to give her a call and find out.

I wasn’t feeling so good even by the time we got home. I don’t drink much anymore, so three pretty much pure alcohol drinks were enough to make me pretty tipsy, but unlike my sister in law I did at least eat half my dinner before getting the rest packed up into a doggy bag.

The drinks, the snacks that I ate and probably the dinner that I had all combined to make my Crohn’s act up worse than it has been for a while. Yes I should have known better, but you can’t be good all the time. Even people on a diet cheat every once in a while right?

Hopefully I’ll be feeling a little better in a few days. Maybe not though. My Crohn’s just seems to be getting worse and worse as each week goes by … maybe Wednesday night isn’t even what caused this latest flare … who knows.

BTW it’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada so Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians!

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