The Frazzled Female

Man am I jealous of my sister who is on a beach in Phuket, Thailand for three weeks!

This week has been brutal for me. Although this week was a short week due to last weekend being a long holiday weekend, trust me it felt looooooong. Not sure if it is due to some wacky alignment of the planets or if the moon is full but people are NUTS this week. To add to the zaniness my Director is off on vacation and she asked me to be Acting Director.

Anything that could go wrong this week did. From the wee bit of family drama on the weekend with helping JB's sister move herself and the niece and nephew out of the house she shared with her husband and the children's father. To the monosyllabic, low IQ roofers hired to put a new roof on our house this week. Not to mention the insane outages and bizarre incidents at work this week.

The move on the weekend went fairly smoothly. JB's two friends Jayman and RB came up to help with the move and Sis and kiddies seem reasonably adjusted to their new space. Unfortunately our roof is not progressing as smoothly. The roof work was started last week and is not finished yet. They can't finish til next week because one of the so called "tradesmen" shot himself in the foot with the air gun used to shoot nails into the new roof tiles and secure them to said roof. I wondered about their competency as roofers when they showed up to start their roofing job at 3 pm in the afternoon the first day and then were outside working in the dark of night sweeping and cleaning up the mess they made during the afternoon because they did not hire a bin to throw all the debris in. When I questioned why there was no bin, i was told "oh don't worry, we have a dump truck coming to pick up the debris" The last straw was when they showed up at 6:45pm on Sunday. That's when I lost it and snapped "are you actually planning to start work and disturb us on the Sunday evening of a long weekend? and just how does it take FIVE days to put a roof on a house??" Suffice to say, I did not hire these roofers and did not pay for them. If I had they would have been sent packing and a more reputable roofing company would be called to finish the job.

On to the next crisis: this morning I awakened to my Brother swearing like there is no tomorrow. Intrigued as to what would have him swear more than normal,as he can swear with the best of them, I ventured down stairs to the basement kitchen to find him straddling the drain in the floor with a plunger trying to plunge the backed up sewer water back down the drain in the floor. I simply sighed, look up towards heaven and found myself quoting my Fathers favorite coping mantra "these little things are all sent to try us" With my brother using every swear word known to man with each plunge and each plunge getting a different swear word all it's own, I finally said to him "look, stop, some of the water has subsided" I washed the floor with anti bacterial floor cleaner and told him I would call a plumber and ask to have the drain snaked. I then realized that I had to be at work for a meeting. Had a shower, got ready, called a cab and was sent quite possibly the worst cab driver in Toronto. It was particularly nice when he started clearing his throat only to hork up a loogie and spit it out the driver side window towards oncoming traffic. I thought to myself "Yep, today is going to be a great day!!" It was not to be, work was insane. I e mailed JB and said "day from hell" to which he responded "that means what time for pick up?" I sent back "ASAP"

JB picked me up, got home,stepped over all the roofing debris neatly piled waiting for the mysterious dump truck to come and retrieve it. I called Brother's Plumbing asked how much to unclog a basement drain was quoted a reasonable rate and said "can you send someone now" A nice chap arrived snaked the drain and all is back to normal. I washed the floor, again, with PineSol to kill any germs that may have been sitting in the overflow water and all is back to normal in the basement. Man that bottle of Pinot Grigio we had with dinner was finished fast!!!

Let's just say that I am looking forward to this weekend. I am not on call and I have all my fingers and toes crossed in the hopes I will not be called for an escalation requiring the Operations Director. Coglero was supposed to be our houseguest this weekend as he was going to drive in from Ottawa and he and JB were heading to the Toronto Beer Festival which is why, as my previous blog states, we couldn't head to Fergus this weekend. Alas, poor Coglero is feeling under the weather and has placed himself on some bizarre cleansing diet. Coglero or no Coglero JB is not missing out on the Beer Festival. I decided to take a pass on the Beer Fest this year as I find I seem to just stand at the Guinness booth and down Guinness samples then move to the Stella booth and then back to the Guinness booth. I never seem to walk around and try the other beers. Rather than attend beer fest with the boys, my girlfriends Espinoza and EL have booked an 8am tee time for Saturday. There is nothing like a nice early morning golf game to make you forget about the week that passed. How can you feel stressed when surrounded by nature and such lovely vistas.
The photo is of the 13th hole at Four Seasons Golf Club located just north of Toronto. We are very excited because we found out that Four Seasons actually means just that open all four seasons! They keep the course open ALL YEAR. You can play nine holes on the course in the winter. I expect they have a blizzard rule in effect but we are game to try and play golf in our polartec turtlenecks! Anything is better than hitting balls inside as we are normally stuck doing during the long Canadian winter.


Quote of the day:

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. Seneca