Sharks

There's so much talk about dreams on other peoples' blogs that I felt I should share my mind's nocturnal musing from last night. I dreamt that Scott and I were at the aquarium here and while I thought I was going to watch the dolphins, they turned out to be sharks. The viewing area for the show was open to the water and the water lapped up at our feet and I could see that the pool was at an incline like at a children's wading pool. Still thinking that I was about to see dolphins, I was going to sit down right at the water's edge, but one of the trainers told me to sit on the steps a little to my left. Just as I sat down I saw the sharks speeding towards us and one of them came right up beside me, brushing me as he came by and then wriggled back into the water. It scared the crap out of me, but I found out that they had been trained to do that and that there was no danger. It didn't make me feel any better. Curious, I looked it up in the online dream dictionary and this is what it said:

"To see a shark in your dream, represents a person whom you see as greedy and unscrupulous. This person goes after what what he or she wants with no regards to the well-being and sensitivity of others. The shark may also be an aspect of your own personality which exhibit these qualities. Alternatively, you may be going through a difficult, painful, or unpleasant emotional period. The shark symbolizes feelings of anger, hostility, and fierceness. You may be an emotional threat to yourself or to others."

I found it kind of intense. I think I might have just seen a shark on tv or something and not noticed. Or maybe I'm subconciously scared of dolphins.

By the way, I couldn't resist the picture. I googled sharks for a picture and inevitably came across pictures like the one above so I thought it was funny. It's for Al.

My shifts have increased at the store lately and it's left me with two precious days off. I didn't do as much as I should have yesterday as far as housework goes, and now I have to do it all today. I like to have at least one day a week when I don't have to do anything at all, but if my apartment is messy I can't really relax. I've been putting off the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and cleaning out the fridge. I hate those chores.

I got some new books from the library last night (I think I need to give up on Crime and Punishment). I got Good Bones by Margaret Atwood and The Promise by Pearl S. Buck. I thought The Promise was going to be the same story as the Mandarin movie that I wanted to see in the theatre, but now I'm not so sure. Either way, I started reading it and I wasn't crazy about the author's style of writing and I had a hard time focusing. I had to keep going back and re-reading parts because I didn't know what was going on.

I have to go do housework now!

3 years

It was a beautifully perfect rainy day three years ago today that I married the most perfect man for me on the porch of my in-laws house with our 34 guests. I can't believe it's already been three years. It was such a perfect day and it's been a perfect three years. Happy anniversary, Sweetie!

Busy

Work has really picked up now! It's wedding season again so we have some blushing brides and some bridezillas around as well as their lovely guests. I'm working a lot more lately which is good for the pocket book, but not so good for my other job of being a housewife. I had the weekend off with Scott (much to the chagrin of my dept. head) because tomorrow is our 3rd anniversary and we wanted a nice relaxing weekend together. We didn't go out of town like we usually do, but we had a great time in the city. On Saturday, we went to dinner at Sammy J. Peppers after spending the afternoon walking around Coal Harbour and going to see The Da Vinci Code (neither of us were impressed by it). On Sunday, we did more walking, but this time we started out on Scott's favourite trail in Stanley Park, stopped at the aquarium to check out the belugas, sea lion, sea otters, and seals, and then went for lunch at Red Robin. We had to get home in time to watch the hockey game, of course, and it was obviously great.

It's good that I had the weekend off with Scott because tomorrow is one of those rare days when I won't see Scott since he's working at 4am. When I'm leaving for work, he'll be coming home and he'll likely be asleep when I get back. It used to happen a lot more often.

Time for change

I managed to get rid of my shift for tonight, but not without jumping through a lot of hoops first. I couldn't switch with someone as I had liked, instead I had to just give it away to someone and lose a few hours. I didn't have a choice.

I didn't have a good day at work yesterday and it left me feeling upset. Things happened, and have been happening there, with my superiors that don't jive well with me. I've always admired people with integrity and principles, but I'm feeling like there are a few people that aren't showing those qualities and it makes it hard to enjoy myself. I think it's time to find a different job. That's a hard decision for me to make because I don't mind the work that I have to do and I get along well with my co-workers. I don't know how quickly I'll find somthing, though, because I need to find something that suits my lifestyle. I still want to be able to be a good housewife. It makes me wish we just had a house so I could do my home daycare like we've been planning. I've done some praying and I feel like it's going to be ok. I don't know if I'm going to find something ideal or if things will just improve where I am, but I'm not as worried as I could be.

I can't believe how warm it is here. It's definitely time to start wearing sunscreen when I walk to work. I managed to get out yesterday after I did all my housework in the morning. I got started on it kind of late because, as my dad used to say, I "had a lazy on". I wanted to get out to buy a couple gift cards for my brother and his wife for their birthdays coming up, but I couldn't go where I wanted to to since it turns out that St. John has fewer stores than Vancouver does. I settled on the big stores of Sears and Canadian Tire. I hopped on the bus to get to Canadian Tire after walking downtown thinking that it would be a very quick bus ride over the bridge, but with the construction for the Canada Line Skytrain everything is out of whack and it wasn't very direct. I had a moment of panic thinking that I got on the wrong bus, but it all turned out. It was a very short ride back downtown, though and I got off the bus right by Scott's place of work hoping he'd be done, but he wasn't. I went home instead and got supper ready for us. I'm so glad he's working from downtown now instead of an hour away. It's nice when he calls to say he's on his way home and shows up 15 minutes later!

I'm very anxious today because I found out the hockey game tomorrow night will be on when I'm at work. I'm desperately trying to switch shifts, but there aren't a lot of people available to take it. Two people, actually. One person has already said she can't so I'm praying that I can work something out today. I guess it won't be the end of the world if I have to miss it, but I'll be somewhat bitter if I have to be at work during game six when I think the Oilers will be eliminating the Sharks. I keep telling myself that it's ok because if the Oilers win I can watch them in the next round and if they lose then I probably don't want to see it. The crappy part is that if they lose and there's a game 7 then I'm also working that night. It's hard not to say bad words.

I'm almost 100%, I'm a day to day decision. I think I can play today though, my nose was feeling pretty good at the morning skate....oh wait, I'm not a hockey player.

I'm pretty excited about tonight's game 5 of the Edmonton/San Jose series. I just finished reading some articles and I got somewhat pumped. Luckily, I'll be home from work in time to watch the game. I'm really hoping it doesn't go to 7 games, ideally the Oilers can do it in 6 because then I'd have to switch my Friday shift with someone and I'd rather not do that since she said she'd prefer to not work that night, but would if I needed her to. I dreamt this morning that I was a on a bus with Kevin Lowe (the Oilers' GM) and I told him that I was sure they would win the series. He said that sounded reasonable.

This morning I sneezed about 15 times in a row. It reminds me of one time when I was little and had started a sneezing fit. I was sort of laughing with my mom in between them until I hit about 5 and kept going. I started to cry then because I thought I would sneeze forever. My mom probably started laughing even more.

Getting Better

My cold is starting to go away now and that makes me happy. I didn't go to work yesterday because I was feeling too crappy. If I had a job where I didn't have to interact with people I would have considered going anyway, but I was pretty gross. I still sort of am. I'm going to cook a nice healthy dinner anyway tonight because sometimes when I'm not feeling great I don't feel like cooking and therefore and up eating poorly and not helping myself. I'm going to make "Creamy Corn and Garlic Risotto". It sounds pretty good and it looks pretty easy to make. I got the recipe from my Betty Crocker Quick and Easy Cookbook. I've got some pretty good ideas from it...Scott may not be happy with everything though.

Scott and went to Chapters today so that he could look for a specific magazine and I wanted to look at the Max Lucado books since Aphra reccommended his work. I requested Come Thirsty from the library, but When God Whispers Your Name wasn't available so I wanted to see what it was about at the bookstore. They didn't have it either. On the topic of books; I finished the Mother Theresa book and I really liked it. Now I have to keep working on Crime and Punishment. Along with the Max Lucado book, I also requested The Chrysalids. It was one that I was supposed to read in high school, but only read about half of it. I think I might appreciate it more now that I'm older. Listening to the discussions about it in class and hearing what happens in the end makes it more interesting to me. Sci-Fi isn't usually my style, but I'll try to get through it again.

My life hasn't been very exciting lately so there hasn't been much to put in my blog.

Scott's on holidays this week which is really nice for him; too bad he's sick, though. He's been coughing and blowing his nose a lot since the weekend and is just miserable. I have a sore throat too, but I think it's going to stay as just that. If I suddenly get worse tomorrow and I start making the horrible noises that Scott is then I'll have to tell work I can't make it tomorrow night since most brides don't want me touching their nice wedding china with my germs.

Today we put a pink collar with a bell on Mishka because she keeps peeing on the floor in the bathroom and we hope the bell will help us catch her in the act. We know it's her because it happened when it was just me and her living alone together before I was married and I've been litter trained. She has too, but she's spiteful or something. She doesn't really like the bell and she thinks if she turns her head really fast she can catch it.

Tomorrow morning we're hoping to go to Lynn Valley and hang out by the stream. It's a nice area in the mountains where we can go for hikes and check out waterfalls.

Reading

I love exploring bookstores and the library. There are always so many books that I want to read and broaden my views. I have a huge collection of children's books that I've purchased over the years so that I can read to my kids and hopefully make readers out of them.

The problem is, I like the idea of reading. Even when I absolutely love a book, it takes me ages to read it because I'm not always motivated to sit down with a book. There can't be anything else around to distract me. Right now I'm reading Crime and Punishment and I really like it. For those of you who haven't read it, I recommend it. I also picked up No Greater Love by Mother Theresa. I went to the library the other day in search of a Max Lucado book like Aphra suggested, but I'll need to request a copy since my little library didn't have it. I'm already half done Mother Theresa's book; it's an easy read and also really good.

When I was in high school I took as many English courses as I could because I always did well in them (compared to any math and sciences, but I rarely finished the books. Most of the time I would read part of them and then either watch the movie or ask people about the important parts. If the book was in French, though, I didn't even bother reading it. I don't know how I ever passed those classes. I think I did well in English because I was good at taking the important parts of the books that I knew about and writing an essay about them. All you have to do with essays is prove a point, right? I think I'd get an A in BS-ing. The two books I did finsh and really enjoyed were Far From the Madding Crowd and The Mill on the Floss. The latter I chose for an independent study and my teacher was really impressed since it was so long. The story was sort of slow, but turned out to be pretty good.

My goal is to read more. I always feel better after I finish a book and I love how I learn interesting things. I learned some really cool historical stuff from my Scottish romance books! The ironic thing is that Scott really likes to read, but when we play Jeopardy on the computer I always kick his butt in the literature categories. But that's it. He always beats me by an embarassing amount.

My mom passed this website on to me to raise awareness about how bottled water companies are taking the water from poor communities, causing harm to the environment, and being socially irresponsible in general. I haven't done very much research on it yet, but what my mom told me about it makes me think. I drink bottled water exclusively because I don't like how my tap water tastes (and it turns my bath tub flourescent blue).

http://www.insidethebottle.org/