Kidding. I didn't get you anything. I know, I know, it's been years since I bothered with your birthday. But in fairness, I don't bother with anybody's birthday, not even my own kids'.
And don't get me started on Facebook. Geez Louise. Grow up, Facebook friends.
But back to real life. I tapped out with shopping about two decades ago. I had planned on making a cowl by this Christmas for one of my three kids with the $126 worth of wool I accidentally bought a couple of years ago, but I got a job between the time I bought it and learning how to knit.
How the hell do people work and live? I go to work in the dark (because it's Ottawa and winter) and come home in the dark, shelve my to-do list pretty much as soon as I cross the threshold, and go to bed to work on my book of New York Times crosswords for five or ten minutes.
I do my reading on the bus commute to work. Middlemarch is my current read and I highly recommend it if you're a "reader". It's really quite funny and you'll learn a lot of political history you forgot from your degree in history.
Luckily for me of sixty years but little pension I actually enjoy this job. It's super hard (for me, not my twenty-something mentors) but I figure instead of learning physics or algebra I'll learn how to do it. Also, the people are fun and pleasant to be around and so good for the soul.
Build brain cells AND pension AND relationships.
One of the great ironies of life here in Canada where we continue to lack equity is that the more opportunities we have to make money, the more money we will continue to make. So I promise to whine less going forward (as they say in government meetings, not about whining less but about going forward) because I've led a relatively charmed life and it's unseemly and embarrassing to me now, how much I've whined over the years.
And on the internet, too, which is forever!
Bear that cross in silent suffering I have not.
Okay, one more whine. Well not really a whine, more a public service announcement for you men out there reading this. On Sunday, I passed a kidney stone. So hear it from me - I pushed out three good sized babies, and when our healthcare professionals tell you men that passing a kidney stone is comparable to having a baby, know that they're lying.
Passing a kidney stone is exactly a grabillion times more painful than having a baby. I even had a doctor who looked and acted like he'd just stepped off the set of Grey's Anatomy, and nurses who also looked and acted like they'd just stepped off the set of Grey's Anatomy, all of whom assured me that passing a kidney stone wasn't dangerous, just painful, and I still thought I was in danger of going into cardiac arrest from the pain.
Oh, I just remembered, I thought I was going to die giving birth to my first child, and, in fact, asked the doctor if maybe she was overlooking my possible death from cardiac arrest due to the pain.
Okay, never mind, men. Know this instead - that suddenly, the pain will go because the stone has passed or dissolved or whatever the living hell your kidney has got up to with it. But unlike with having a baby, where we forget the pain so that we go on to have more babies, the memory of the pain in passing a kidney stone will linger, and, if you're smart, you will fill that prescription for suppository pain relief. It will barely put a dent in the pain but you'll be more comfortable inserting it at home than in a hospital washroom.
Anyway, here's what I learned about life at sixty this past Sunday - it's all about access to pain relief - and that, at the very least, should be equal for everybody.
Merry Christmas.
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