Specific Mall

Naturally, the saga of my Mom's leg lump isn't over yet.  After the He-Said/She-Said ultrasound results ("It's a tumour!"  "Is not!"  "Is too!"), the doctor who originally raised the alarm advised my Mom to go ahead with an urgent MRI.  His concern is that the second-opinion doctor at the hospital ER didn't check high up enough above my Mom's knee.  Yes, there is a cyst.  However, there is also something else in there that could be a tumour.

"Investigate sarcoma" is what the doctor wrote on her test requisition.  So, of course, she's alarmed,  and I'm trying not to worry, with moderate success.  It's a case of Schrödinger's cancer, which both exists and does not exist simultaneously until we have more information.  I submit that this should be the official disease name that everyone can lay claim to while waiting for their actual diagnosis.  I mean, the waiting stage isn't neutral, not by a long shot.

The MRI is scheduled for Monday, the results will take around 1 week, so we just have to sit tight for a while.

What to do when distraction is required?  Go to the mall!  Not just any mall.  A specific mall, i.e. Pacific Mall.  (See what I did there?)  Ken and I hadn't gone in a year or so.  Because it's a marketplace mainly composed of tiny, kiosk-sized businesses, there's always a lot of turnover, which means that there's always something new to see, and this time was no exception.

My favourite new business name is: It's Skin!

There are so many ways in which this name could go wrong.  Are they selling skin?  Things made of skin?  I mean, sure, it could be a leather store, but that would be a pretty weird name for it.  Are they answering a question that their salespeople get asked all the time?  "What the heck is that in the display case?"  "It's skin."  Ew.

The most unexpected new addition to the mall: several vape shops.  If you don't know what that's about, read this: "vape" is the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year for 2014.  

The current most popular type of shop in the mall: cell phones and accessories.  I swear we saw at least 20 different retailers of this type.  If you want anything to do with cell phones, Pacific Mall is your go-to destination.  Especially if you feel that you need the maximum possible choice of phone cases.  There were literally thousands of options.  A couple of my favourites are, blue guy playing a saxophone:

And butter lion.

Butter lion?  Apparently yes.  I did a little looking into the origin of "butter lion", and found that he's actually a bear who was hit in the back of the head by a couple of butter pies.  There is no end to the weird imagination of Asian character creators.

It's not a toomah!

My Mom's leg lump has been resolved.

Thank God.

It turns out that the first doctor who looked at her was using an old, low-resolution ultrasound machine.  When she had her leg re-scanned by a better machine, the second-opinion doctor said that it's not a tumour, at all.  Definitely just a cyst.  It doesn't even require minor surgery at this point, or drainage.  It will resolve on its own over time.

So.  That was an emotional roller coaster I won't soon forget.  (Assuming that's the end of it, which I sincerely hope it is.)  As if Christmas weren't enough of a psychological minefield all by itself.

I'm glad that I have a bunch of time off work without many plans.  I shall spend it regaining my equilibrium.

I hope that you had a Merry Christmas!  Ken and I celebrated on Christmas Eve with my family, because it was my younger Bubbe's 94th birthday; and on Christmas Day we spent time with his family.  My new sister-in-law is a professional pastry chef and could easily be a... you know, a CHEF-chef too.  For savoury food.  Like roast beef with veggies and dressing and gravy and homemade Yorkshire puddings.  I never understood what Yorkshire pudding was all about until last night.  It's all clear to me now!  (It's about buttery fluffiness with a soft, hot middle.)  I almost didn't have room for my personal-sized, fully-homemade-including-the-perfect-crust apple pie.  My goodness, did we eat last night.

Today we visited my elder Bubbe, who will now tell you that she's 98 and a half, because you go back to counting the halves at her age.  As usual, she made tea, excavated some fossilized pastries from the back of her freezer and commanded us to eat.  We ate.  Elder Bubbe may be old and tiny, but you'd better do what she says.  She's fierce, and a marvel.

I guess that's it for the season.  Family members have been embraced, gifts exchanged, and bellies filled.  I think now I'll spend the weekend reading my incredibly absorbing book.  And sleeping.  That sounds about right.

Leg Lump

If you've never seen the movie A Christmas Story, shame on you.  GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  Just watch it, because it is the best Christmas movie ever, and don't anyone try to tell me otherwise.

This is Peter Billingsley, who stared as Ralphie:

I got curious about him.  I wondered :What does he look like today?"

Here he is, having aged quite gracefully, I must say.  Looks like he didn't shoot his eye out after all.

If you know the movie, you know the leg lamp.

It's a testament to the staying power of the movie that more than 20 years after it was released, leg lamps are still selling well.  Good old leg lamp.

However, that is not what I have gotten for Christmas.  Unfortunately, my Mom has just discovered a pretty scary-looking leg lump.  She had it checked out by ultrasound yesterday.  It's not a cyst, and it's growing fast.  Dang.  

Is it just me, or does crap like this always happen around Christmastime?  November and December seem to be reliably dark months in all senses of the word.

Next step will be an MRI to see what we can see.  Until then... we wait.

Although I had to sit down when I first heard about what was going on, I'm feeling steady now.  I've been psyching myself up for something like this for the past couple of years.  I've been reminding myself that my parents are getting older, and that I need to stay strong if/when they start to go downhill.  If I fall apart for a while, I must put myself back together again before long.  Socks up, chin up, take one day at a time.  I'm glad I was at least slightly braced.

This may turn out to be nothing serious.  My Mom will probably need surgery to remove the Whatever It Is, and that might be the end of it.  She can recuperate at her Mom's house, where there are care workers on duty 24/7 already.  

Thanks in advance for your well wishes and prayers.  I know all y'all have my back! :-)

Par-TAY!

The office Christmas party was almost a disaster, and it would have been on my head.  I am the party organizer, for the same reason that I do a lot of stuff at work: no one else wants to do it.  I don't want to do it either, per se, but it's not unbearably painful, so I don't object very loudly.

We share our Christmas party with another company, and have done so for several years.  This is because one professional who works part-time with us has his own company, but he's too busy to plan his own party.  His employees have always been a small and unobtrusive group; it was easy to absorb them into our party.  It saved him the trouble of organizing an event, and it helped fill the room when our own turnout wasn't great.

This year, this fellow expanded his business.  By a lot.  And didn't mention it to me.  I mean, I knew that he had added some locations, but I figured there were only a handful of staff in each new office.  I had booked the party room in June.  I was expecting 20-30 people from the other company.  They e-mailed me last week to say that they were sending 90.  Ninety!  My company only confirmed 65, including the plus-ones!  We were totally outnumbered.  I wasn't sure that we could all fit.

It was a squeeze to seat everyone in the venue I had booked, and still have room for a  buffet and a dance floor, but fortunately we managed it.  And hey, the party was super-fun!  No one got sloppy drunk.  My boss kept his often awkward and rambling annual speech to a minimum.  And I only sustained a slight injury to my right foot from dancing like no one was watching.  (As the hostess, I feel it is my moral responsibility to break the ice on the dance floor, and I don't care if I look a fool in the process.)

So there you have it.  A work event that did not involve any drama or calamity.  It's a true Christmas miracle!  Now, if only I could get my hands on some of those mini-quiche hors-d'oeuvres  at home, life would be perfect right now.

Everybody's Working On the Weekend

On Friday I tried on this sweater:

Alpacas!  (Or llamas, I suppose, it's difficult to tell, but "alpacas!" is more fun to say.)  Imagine my chagrin when I found that it didn't fit well.  Unless skin-tight arms with a baggy, flying-squirrel look to the torso is the next trend. 

I was out with Ken doing some minimal Christmas shopping.  This is the time of year when I'm most grateful for being Jewish.  The only people I have to buy for are those who inconsiderately have their birthdays in December, and the underprivileged kids who will be the recipients of the toy drive at work.

Although it's technically called a "toy drive", we've been told to provide appropriate gifts for teens and tweens, who may be a little too old for toys per se.  Last year I got a palette of nail polishes and another of lip glosses for the girls.  This year I wanted to get something for the guys.  It's difficult, because what can I successfully pick out for a 12-16 year-old boy?*

My first thought was a cool watch, but then I remembered that kids don't wear watches anymore.  Don't be such a square, grandma.  Alright then, how about a cap, in the style of LL Cool Joe?  But when I was confronted with a wall of caps to choose from, I realized I didn't have a clue which one to pick.  And trust me, I remember enough about middle school to know that the wrong cap would be worse than no gift at all.

I finally settled on a couple of wall calendars.  Sponge Bob, for the slightly younger fellow, and Dream Cars for the cool high-schooler.  Ken tried to talk me into getting the car calendar that included hot girls in bikinis.  As if!

Anyway, I brought the calendars in to work today, yes, Sunday, because I'm here babysitting the place while Miguel and Estaban clamber around on ladders wielding a huge, duct-sucking hose.  Everything is going pretty smoothly so far today, but I figured I'd better come in to supervise, because with this place, you never know.  For example, yesterday, in addition to the duct-cleaning team, a couple of guys from building management were in here playing around with the fire alarm system.  They were supposed to know what they were doing, but next thing I knew all the bells were ringing, and three minutes later I could hear sirens whooping as a big fire truck pulled up outside our front doors.   I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen.  Except that it's my workplace, so of course there's a certain amount of guaranteed drama and angst.  Oh well.

How's your holiday prep coming along?

*Note for Joey, and anyone else offended by gender stereotypes, yes, I know, I know.  If the toy drive organizers want to give the nail polishes to a boy and the car calendar to a girl, that's fine, they can go ahead.  Maybe it's better to say that I'm trying to cover all the bases, for kids of all identities and styles.  Better?  ;-)

The Artsy Craftsy Show

It never occurred to me that it was my responsibility at work to make sure that our air ducts got cleaned.  I mean, it's not something that I ever thought about.  Would you?  At our last two facilities, building management took care of all that jazz, and no one mentioned it to me when we moved in here.  But when the question came up as part of a health and safety meeting, I realized that it hasn't been done in the past four years.  And as the de facto Facilities Manager (basically it's up to me because no one else can be bothered) it became my problem.

To make a long story short, I finally managed to get a couple of quotes and booked the job for next weekend.  Which means that I have to work next weekend in order to supervise.  :-(  In order to compensate myself, I declared a couple of lieu days off, including this past Friday, which I used to go with my Mom to the One of a Kind Show, known to me as the Artsy Craftsy show.  Known to Ken as the Stuff White People Like show.

He's totally right.  Both the vendors and the shoppers are mostly white.  (Note to Americans: this is very unusual in Toronto.)  In fact, there were so many slightly overweight, sixty-ish women with the same dyed blond, cut short, parted on the side hairstyle that I had a moment when I wondered if I was in the Matrix and these women were like the hundreds of Agent Smith clones.

The booths fall into a few basic categories.  There's jewellery, stationary, clothing, fine art, knick knacks, and food.  Styles range from super-trendy (mugs with moustaches painted on, for example) to twee (delicate ceramic fairies posed in bonsai-sized gardens covered in glitter) to fashions for the aging baby boomer set.  My Mom, by her own admission, favours the twee.

I'm not sure what category I fall into, if any, but I didn't have to use much willpower to resist buying stuff.  Mostly I was thinking "Yeah, that's cute, but I can definitely live without it."  Super-trendy stuff actively irritates me.  Like: yes, yes, we know, moustaches on everything, whales, silhouettes of birds, WHATEVER.  Can we get a little originality over here?

I also felt a little sorry for the fine artists.  90% of them had done extremely similar oil paintings of trees.  Some of them were a bit more impressionistic, and others leaned more towards impasto, but essentially they were variations on a theme.  By the time I passed the tenth painting of a trail through a vibrant, sun-lit autumnal wood, dwindling to a single vanishing point, I wondered what the artists must be thinking.  It's like high school girls showing up at prom all wearing the same dress.  They should have called each other.

My mom splurged on a pretty, hand-smocked flannel nightgown.  That was her only purchase, except for a fresh, catnip-filled mouse toy for the cats.  For myself, I picked this electric-blue handbag.  There's something about the proportions that I find profoundly satisfying.

I had to fiddle a bit with the photo settings to capture the vibrancy of the blue.  The colour might be just titch off, still, but this is more or less it, believe it or not.  I like how it almost knocks your eyeballs out, but does so with elegance.

I drawed a pikchur

Things at my work continue to be kuh-razy.  Our facility has recently been targeted by a couple of different regulatory bodies.  Inspectors have been in here with their proverbial white gloves on, checking every tiny detail and criticizing freely, as inspectors do.

For example: we have a large waiting room/lobby.  There are two doors leading from that lobby out into the wide world, and both are clearly visible and marked with illuminated EXIT signs.  From any point in the room you can easily see at least one door if you're willing to turn your head.  If an evacuation of the building were required, I don't imagine that anyone would have any trouble finding the exits, unless perhaps they were 100% blind, in which case one of the staff assigned to the evacuation team would assist them.

This is not good enough for at least one of the regulatory bodies.  The inspector insisted that we must post a map of the lobby on the lobby wall with the paths to each door clearly marked.  Really?  Is that honestly necessary?  You think that if the fire bell rings someone will, instead of proceeding to the clearly marked exit, pull out their reading glasses and inspect a map?  Well, whatever.  You don't get anywhere by arguing with these people, so we posted a map.

However.  That was not good enough.  The inspector came back and insisted that the path to the doors on the map be printed in RED.  For the love of...  Fine.  We reprinted it in red and reposted.  This was deemed to be satisfactory.

Do you think I'm making this up?  I wish I were making it up.  Truth is stranger than fiction, and I guess the inspector needs to prove to his boss that he's doing his job.

So what's the good news?  I drew this guy.  I'm pretty proud of him, even though one of his eyeballs is twice as big as the other.  Every once in a blue moon I get inspired to do a sketch.  This is from a photo of James Baldwin.

 

 

I think his hand turned out well.  That's my favourite part of the sketch.  It looks a bit stippled because I scanned it as a PDF and then converted it to a JPG and that's how it turned out.

 

Ken thinks it's scary.  I left it on his desk so that he could see it, and when I came in the room he had turned it face down.  Sure, it's a little intense, but that's why I liked the photo!  That and all the interesting lines around his eyes.  What do you think - does it scare you?