Despising the “Mucous Monster”

One of my belated Christmas gift this year, was a lovely chest cold.  You know them.  They’re the really lovely cold that make it feel like a small hippopotamus is sitting on your upper chest and squeezing your lungs.  It’s also the cold that bring on the invasion of the “Mucous Monster”.  This nasty little creature add to the tightness and causes you to feel like you’re donating a lung everyday because you can stop the hacking cough!  You start to lose your voice, and you can feel the monster sitting on your vocal chords. If you’re really lucky, when you cough, you’ll get the taste of hard, icky sputum on your back taste buds.  But it’s just a tease, no matter how much it feels like you’re going to throw up with the force of the coughing, you can’t bring the special nugget of mucous forward to join the spittoon contest just yet.  Then, when you’ve gladly moved on to nicer times (ie. cough free times), you all of a sudden feel the urge to clear your throat, and LO! AND BEHOLD! the mucous loosens and you have to drop everything, run to the sink, toilet, or whatever and expel the offending “mini monster” post haste.

If this lovely dance isn’t enough, you must also build up a arsenal of cough mixtures to fight the “Mucous Monster”.  My personal artillery consisted of Buckley’s and Benylin Mucous and Phlegm.  No amount of training could have prepared me for the taste!  Both are equally piquant, in unique ways.  The Buckley’s make me feel like I have finally given in to irrational thought and have decided to drink a mixture of bleaching hair dye, Vick’s VapoRub, and tree sap.  The Benylin is more like swilling down a variation of Varasol and cherry Koolaid, that just seems to tweak your stomach just a little.  Worst of all, I cannot attack the monster with both at the same time.  It is either my sword or my shield that can be wheeled at any given time.  The Buckley’s shield suppressed the cough, and the Benylin sword attacks the mucous.  And I am stuck using one or the other, or neither, and somehow never thwarting the Monster!

Thus has been my struggle for the last seven days.  It has caused me many a rough, sleep-deprived night and many a cranky day, exacerbated by a non-stop scheduling and the persistent feeling that I’ve swallowed sandpaper.  But hear this “Mucous Monster”.  One day my body will be victorious!  You will be expectorated in a radical fashion!  You shall no longer live victoriously in the annals of my respiratory tract, and you will be gone until we take up the fight in the next cold season.  BE GONE FORTHWITH VILE ABOMINATION, I BID THEE GONE!

Happy Canada Day!

It’s Canada Day in the T-dot. There is an 80% chance of rain, limited sunshine and a stench of garbage.  Good times.  There are few parks that have been excluded from being temporary garbage dumping sites and the fireworks have been cancelled.  And we don’t even have a long weekend this year!  Somehow this just doesn’t seem as fun a day as it has been in the past.  And it kind of annoys me.

The strike sucks.  It’s no fun for anyone.  I’m sure the people who are picketing don’t think not being paid, or the stress of negotiations.  I’m POSITIVE the residents of the city aren’t happy.  And the major is looking more and more like he wants to rip his hair out.  It will be interesting to see how long this tension plays out.  I’ve got to admit that based on the details being published about the requests of the city workers, it seems a little unreasonable to me that they are striking at all.  Here we are in a time of economic uncertainty and unemployment, and we’ve got a group of people who have jobs choosing to strike over 18 vacation days they want to bank so they can get paid out a ton of cash that the city can’t afford.  Come on!  There are people who don’t have a job at all!  Really?

But last night, I got to hear some of the other side.  I had the opportunity to talk to a Toronto EMS paramedic who is also on strike.  Apparently the city returned to the table with the following deal: no more sick days period.  For anyone.  What?  That’s not cool either!  You’re expecting people who work in an environment where they are at high risk of getting sick (coughed on by an person with H1N1 or something?) and not allow them to have a paid sick day.  Come on! Really?  There were a few more details to the deal to that didn’t sound great, so I could see his frustration.  Makes sense.

I just hope that both sides stop being so damn stubborn and start talking about this issue in a more open way.  It’s a bigger issue now that just the workers.  They are affecting the entire population of a huge city.  I don’t think anyone wants their summer ruined by even more garbage!  UGH!

Pipe down in back!

I know it seems like I’ve been ranting a lot lately on my blog. I haven’t started a complain-o-blog, I promise, I’ve just had a few things annoy me lately.

Today I had an awesome day at my paeds rotation – I’m learning quite a lot in just a couple of days at SickKids. The boy I was working with it totally adorable, and the nurse I was working with was awesome. I was feeling happy, I was feeling good. Key word: was.

I took my regular TTC commute home – eventually getting on the King streetcar heading east. It was all well and good until my ears were bombarded by the healthy voices of about ten kids that were about 9 or 10 years old talking loudly (and even more loudly) with each other in the middle of the car. There was no where to go, and I traveled about 10 minutes with this noise while it came up to an ear shattering level. By the time I got off my ears actually hurt from the noise. I was ready to scream “PIPE DOWN!” – and I can’t believe the people who seemed to be their supervisor did not. Seriously. That’s just not cool at all!

It’s been about 10 minutes now, and well, my ears are still ringing a little and I’m totally cranky. Thanks for nothing chumps. Next time – SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!

The elusive Tim win!

So, it’s a new season here in Canada: Roll up the Rim!  This year, I’ve decided to track just a little bit how my stats are for buying Timmie’s drinks and how often I win.  So far I’m 1 in 5.  Not bad odds at all.  However, it seems the gods of the world do not want me to enjoy my spoils!  Since winning a free cup of coffee last Thursday, I’ve already lost the torn off piece of cup I need to redeem this cup of Joe!

Seriously.

I’ve been looking everywhere for it!  I guess it serves me right for bragging a little bit over winning more than M.

Dammit.

I love dogs, but not all dog owners

Spring is in the air – you can feel the warmer wind in your hair and the…DOG SHIT…under your feet???

Ok. Right. So, we’ve had some really nice weather lately, which is great. But I have since discovered something about the people living on the east end of the city – those who own dogs do not clean up dog poo in the winter. Ever since we had our first “thaw” last week, I’ve had to navigate the sidewalks like I’m heading in to mine field. Narrow misses all the time! Quite frankly, I’m tired of it.

Just because there is snow on the ground, it doesn’t exempt dog owners from taking responsibility for the excrement that their doggies leave behind. You can’t scoop yellow snow, sure. I get that. But leaving “presents” in the snow that later melt and make it look like the sidewalks have a case of the runs come spring time just isn’t cool.

Pick it up, so I can stop looking like I’m drunk when trying to walk to the streetcar.

Seriously.

My present to the dastardly owners. Just add water for the right effect.

bad day/good day

Yesterday, I totally had a rotten afternoon. I go to leave for class, and I discover that my Metropass which is basically always in my jacket pocket was not there! I couldn’t get on the streetcar. Luckily the diver was super nice and let me get on the care without it so I could look – when I didn’t find it, she let me stay on and I go to school ok. But, I was of course super pissed about losing the pass 4 days before the end of the month! I don’t want to have to pay for tokens when I’ve already paid for the pass.

Crap.

Then I go to pay for my December Metropass, only to discover that my debit card had been canceled by the bank without anyone advising me. Seriously! I had to call them, get crusty and go in to get it replaced. It was canceled due to suspicious activity somewhere I used the card. Good to know – but thanks for not telling me that my card has been out for a week! GAH!

I can seriously say I was pissed when I got home!

Today, was better. I got to clinical, and was taking a moment to get out my frustration over the pass when my friend, B, said she found an extra one the night before and that I could have it! YESS! That made my day. Then after a decent clinical day, I headed to the gym, I rocked out the work out. That made it a so much better day too.

Word.

Sweet validation

M and I moved in to our new house last December – if you want to hear that adventure of a story, ask me – but ever since then, we noticed that we’ve been living with some additional creatures. Luckily, they aren’t quite as invasive as LTK’s, but all the same they are really annoying. We’ve got squirrels in our ceiling!

Ok – so some of you might be thinking “so what”? Well, let me put this in perspective. Squirrels are active ALL DAY. They wake up really early in the morning and are still awake during the night. They scrabble (not play the game, see definition here), scratch, jump, bump and generally make a raquet. We’ve told our landlord several times about this and about our concerns because they also tend to gnaw on the wood and things behind the wall, and the sound is coming ever closer! This has been going on for almost a year now – I’m particularly annoyed by it because with all my long days of studying I’ve been forced to listen to this misfits clambering around. And I’m tired of it!

Good new, though! Finally today our landlord brought around a vermin expert who confirmed it was squirrels, not mice at all. And it seems like something will be done about it – namely repairing the squirrel hole in the roof with a one way door and finally having it sealed up!

FINALLY!

A bad start to the week!

Sheesh – if life hasn’t been crazy enough with midterms and assignments, etc – I had to have an encounter of the totally nuts this morning!

There I was, on the subway, reading for class when I landed at St. Patrick’s station. As the doors open I heard a loud yell, so I looked up, thinking someone might be hurt or in trouble. I didn’t see anything, but made brief eye contact with the man just on the other side of the door! Bad idea! He flipped out at me yelling “What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you staring at?” I responded “Sorry, I thought someone might have been hurt!” and went back to reading. Then I noticed that he spit in my direction. I just left it.

When I went to get off, I made the mistake of trying to sneak passed him to get off at Queen’s Park. He saw me coming, started yelling at me again, spit on my leg, and when I didn’t react, he pushed my book out of my hands. When the door opened, I exited quickly but turn a yelled at the top of my lungs “You asshole! Don’t you ever thing you can touch me again!” before I turned heel and walked away very quickly. As I was trying to regain my breath, I noticed he had shrunk away out of the car and was walking in the opposite direction. Luckily, I had lots of people notice, and I got the attention of the constable – luckily is true because I wasn’t stopping to slow down!

I tried to talk to the booth guy when a woman caught my eye, asked if I was ok and told me the constables had headed after him! I was so relieved I just left, happily running in to a classmate which helped me calm down!

Gotta love Toronto sometimes. Seriously!

Unseen enemies

I’m feeling like crap this morning and have been for the last couple of days.  It’s of course ragweed season, so anyone else who suffers like me is feeling like their head is exploding and that you nose it so itchy you’re ready of cut it off.  It’s especially unpleasant at times when you’ve got a nose ring because, well, it gets messy.  Ugh.  The worse part, however, is not being able to take anything for it because it might affect my cleanse/special diet.  Blarg.

Otherwise, I’m generally not feeling that wonderful this morning.  I had a rough night, and I couldn’t sleep in this morning.  It just seemed that bad thoughts wanted to plague me last night and I was feeling really awful.  Good news, I journaled for the first time in ages – hopefully that will banish some of the crappiness. Blarg to that too.

Finally, I’m totally ready to be off the diet and back to some sort of normalcy.  I’m tired of having to plan everything and having to eat a very limited amount of food.  Seriously.  But alas, I’ve got another week and 2 days before I can start adding foods back.  Blarg thrice.

Virtual Insanity

After a long, awesome relaxing weekend at Rachel’s cottage, I came back to work this morning sunburnt a little tired, but generally good. Then it seems I was punished for being a heathen an not going to church yesterday – I’ve had back to back meetings all afternoon, one of which I totally forgot about so I didn’t get to my lunch until almost 2:00! BLARG!

I’m just going to coast through the day from now onwards because I’m not going to lie, I’m a little cranky and tired now.

Just one more month…