This past week

Looking back over the past week there were many unusual things.

For one, the students are all gone now, even the Certs,so things are very quiet and there's no one to teach and no classes for me to attend either (voice, dance and choir this term.) So, on Monday Dave, Weston and I took off early for an eye doctor's appointment in Calgary to get a small mole removed from my lower eyelid, if possible. Instead of lacing up my snow boots to trot out to the van for an 1 and a half hour drive, I left them untied. After packing our lunch and gathering up Weston's little breakfast toast on a plate and getting my arms completely full, I commenced with the trick of holding the screen door open and slamming the big door and stepping out before getting nipped by the screen door ( a task almost as complicated as changing lanes in traffic, but natural once you've done it twenty times.) Anyway, I thought I had maneuvered the task, but as the door slammed and I went to step, my shoes stayed back with their laces closed in the door and I went flat: BOOM with a gutteral "UGHHH!" [I yelled so loud and ugly I had to note it later in my actor's vocal awareness journal]. Then I just lay there on the frozen snow waiting for Dave to come running. My chest ached and my knee and hands smarted. Thankfully my face cleared the second step, but I bruised my ribs pretty bad. ...Dave did not come. So after 12 seconds of frozenness I realized I should just get myself up. Then I heard a little "pad pad pad" through the snow. Weston was there. He'd seen me fall from the van and came near, but he was too shy to say anything. I gasped for him to go get Daddy as I still wanted Dave's sympathy. There's just something about him seeing me lying on the ground that evokes the appropriate response. But then, hey -- I was freezing! So I started to pull my limbs in and noticed (oh, this will be funny later, I thought--) I noticed the little toast and the little plate were flung FAR out into the snowy yard, and my other belongings I had been holding were strewn everywhere! Then I looked back at the dreaded shoes and laces dangling from the door. Wow. I was suddenly grateful that if my laces HAD to get stuck in the door, at least my shoes were loose enough that my feet came out of them without tearing any ligaments! (I did chafe one ankle, but no sprain -- merely a flesh wound.)

So, that was how my day started.

My time in Calgary was equally strange and even more abusive to my body. (Well, in a tiny way.)

I have never been to a doctor's office in an eight story building with concrete floors and lots of people in a very narrow space and receptionists half my age clicking around in four inch spiked heels. It struck me as kind of odd and ridiculous. Course, I was there in my huge (laced up) boots and comfy Rosebud gear (basically knits for rolling around on the floor) and wishing I had memorized my health care number, as I certainly didn't remember to bring it. [That's about the time we realized Dave had also forgot his wallet... this story is so funny now that I'm finally retelling it. --Ha. Ha.] [I refuse to use LOL...I still prefer "Ha. Ha." - so there.] ANYWAY, so this blond bombshell in the miniskirt on a freezing day calls to me, "Jean... you forgot to put your health number on here." "No," I respond, rising, "I didn't forget; I just -- don't know it." "Well, you'll have to get it on here or we can't see you--" At this point I walk my large boots over to her counter and penetrate deeply into her blond face with all the experience of my morning fall, the hour and half touch-and-go through rush hour freeway traffic and poor vision with the upspray on the windshield and a faulty back wiper and I say (politely), "Could you please call my doctor in Drum who referred me? I'm sure they have it." And go sit down. I could not tolerate the idea of not being seen in that cement office once I had endured arriving and finding the strange prison-like place. Thankfully, she did call and FOUND the number within hearing of everyone in the waiting cell.

I'm so glad David and Weston took the Starbucks coupon I had earned back in Vancouver during the U2 concert and ambled down to Andrew Cooper's swanky coffee house on SW 17th Ave to wait for me. That way they were spared the next hour of waiting in the second cell down around the hall. It's silly: they call your name, put your file in one of the doctor's little holders outside a closed door and you wait again in a new cement narrow corridor. "They want me to think it's a maze," I thought, "but no, it's just a loop!" Thank God for the art on the walls, because everything else was awful. And WHY were all the women wearing heels? The eighteen year old assistant took me into one room to check my vision: "How are you doing today?" "Well, actually it's been a tough morning--" "Ha. Ha." She laughs. Laughs! Not a cruel laugh, but a lame, "Oh that's nice, but I didn't hear what you're saying" kinda laugh. I felt like suffocating. Is no one real here?

After naming letters that do NOT make words I found myself waiting againin the second cell .

Then my name is called: "Jean?"

That must be my doctor; thank God he's not wearing heels.

He looks at me through the thingymajig where I have to jut my chin out. He stares, then pulls the equipment away: "You have a mole."

I nearly snicker. Silence.

"Um... yes." I say. [I know I have a mole; it's been there for about 17 years.]

"So... what's that mean?" I say, searching.

"Well, it's a mole. You have them all over -- one here [he points to the doosey on my cheek, one here--" --I can't believe he's doing that!!!]

"Yes, I know what a mole is; I want to know if it can be removed."

"If I remove a mole like that it'll leave a scar. What we do is burn it down, so it looks nice."

So, after realizing that he can do that and it shouldn't take long, and it actually won't cost me anything, I agree. So then he needles freezing into my eyelid and my eyes fill with tears instantly and my left eyeball feels like a rock.

Then I am told to walk through cell 2 to yet a third door where a 50 year old woman who's trying to be 25 tells me to lie down on the table. Why is cleavage necessary for optomitrists? Then with my one eye, I spot her shoes: stilleto gold. God, where am I? Have I lived in small towns so long I didn't get the memo about wearing sexy clothes to work?

"She's frozen and ready to burn," he says as though I'm a hamburger.

Five minutes later my doctor returns to room three and proceeds to BURN off my mole. There is something unpleasant about seeing little wafts of smoke rise up out of your own eye and smelling burnt flesh. "That smells bad" I say. He laughs. I realize he, too, is not used to the smell of truth being in the room.

Finally it's done. "Where you had a mole," he tells me as he's washing his hands of it, "there is now a little hole. Good bye."

A hole? A hole!!? Ahh.

So, I have included in my blog [not sure that I should have as it is very humbling] --I have included a picture of my swollen eye with my little burnt hole and my tired "this has been a challenging day, I don't belong in the city" face.

OK, that was a long a story.

And that wasn't even my whole week -- that was Monday morning!

Well, on Tuesday the boys wore hockey jerseys to school for spirit week (thanks, Xavier), and the power went on and off nine times as I tried to write. I lost some work, so I made a big batch of guacamole instead. Delish.

Wednesday I made oatmeal cookies and Karl and Lindsey came over for tacos. (My life centers on food.)

I wrote about yesterday yesterday, and today the color of the sky matches the ground: white. It's like being inside a steamy shower and not knowing where the edges are. Only the naked brown trees break the monotony. Today I Spy would only afford two color choices: brown and white. Sigh.

I miss Helen. I included a picture above that Donovan made off of Weston's idea. "I think you should draw a picture of Helen in the Big Life dancing at a disco." Ha.

Bill D. came over last night and told us the story of her last day. I learned she was actually 85, but you wouldn't have guessed it.

He said John McIvor saw her go and that she shook her head "no" twice before opening her eyes, and nodding "yes" at someone she saw before lying back and dying. Wow.

I felt privileged to hear Bill's story. David will sing at her funeral on Wednesday. Bill doesn't think many will show up as she has no family. I disagree. I think nearly all of Rosebud will show up because we loved her, her love and faith inspired us all, and she was part of our family.

Really, my week was not so bad. I'm alive, I have a funny scabby cavern on my eyelid, and I don't have to work today. And I just wrote more on my blog than all of January put together.

God is good.

Not tame, but good.