don't speak.

no doubt is one of my guilty pleasures. and lucky for me... they're playing right now on the radio.

as of january my work situation is set to change. and not for the better. the schedule for the new year went up last week... and... i will have ONE life shift a week. ONE. my paycheque won't even cover half our rent. awesome. so i suppose i will be searching for a new job if something doesn't work it self out.

my christmas shopping is done. i feel pretty good about that. and wrapped!! the only bummer is that i ordered tyler something online a couple of weeks ago... and it still hasn't arrived. i worry it won't. yikes!!

i still haven't gotten my etsy store up and running... i am waiting on photos of all my lovely earring creations. i am to drop them off at jordi's tomorrow before i come in to work for our weekly staff meeting (where i will complain about the cuts that have been made to our schedule after i was assured that everything would be fine - how is one shift a week fine??). hopefully i can make a little bit of extra revenue... maybe??

i don't really feel like i have a whole lot to report. a lot of my friends are home for christmas and i am thankful for that. i love getting to see people who live on the other side of the country.

snow snow snow.

if i was into skiing or snowboarding i would be REALLY excited... they got 30 cm of fresh snow last night at silverstar. so much snow!!! we got a pretty good dump in vernon too. driving to work was fun this morning... at 5:20 am... i drove really really slow.

i have officially started my christmas shopping. this is what makes me hate christmas every year. i would love to get a million things for everyone, but i never have a budget to cover it. its frustrating. there are so many nice things that i would like to do for people for christmas. rhiannon, my mom, and i had a conversation last night in starbucks after we had shopped for a bit about helping other people this time of year. i always always remember the christmas we came home to find everything we needed for christmas dinner, a tree, and all our presents just left on our porch in winnipeg. it was probably one of the most amazing things anyone has ever done for me. just something to keep in mind.

i am tired this morning. i stayed up too late last night (you aren't the only one who does that, laura). i would really really really like to go back to bed right now. but nope, i'm at work. and i probably won't get to go back to bed after. it will just have to be an early night tonight.

tyler has his finals this week. and then his big exam on the 23rd. and then he is DONE his apprenticeship. i will be much relieved when he is working again. not to mention... he'll be a journeyman, which is cool.

i've been feeling really uninspired in the kitchen lately. and lazy. i'm sick of always having to make dinner. and do all the dishes. there is nothing that kills your want to cook like having to clean up the whole mess yourself after. it isn't a great deal. tyler and i decided that he's going to take monday, tuesday and wednesday dinners (which are the nights i work at the station), and i'll do thursday, friday and saturday. sunday we can cook together. and i said if he comes grocery shopping with me and doesn't just leave it all up to me then i would make his lunches for him during the week too. pretty good deal, right?

i'll get some pictures of my feather earrings happening!!!

producer back in the studios.

that's me! it is vipers hockey season yet again, and i offered to operate the game tonight as there are games tomorrow night, and sunday afternoon as well. so... i gave jen a bit of a break for the weekend. no big deal.

i have read up to date on everyone's blogs. i feel like i have been neglecting my blog horribly. oops.

my hand is ALMOST healed. still a little sore. the scar makes it hard to completely straighten my finger. it sucks. a little bit of the scab did indeed turn black and fall off, but it wasn't enough to necessitate a skin graph, so that was good. it also got infected, and i apparently left the stitches in too long. the infection is basically gone (and without the use of antibiotics, thankyouverymuch) and just a little scab left where the gross black part fell off. it has been an adventure... haha.

i got this idea for homemade christmas gifts - feather earrings!! i made a bunch, and thought - these look good enough to sell on etsy! so i want to create my own etsy shop and put my earring creations on there. but first... some will indeed be gifted. i hope people like them. i used beads and feathers - they're really pretty. i got some really cool glass beads for them too - and used some of rhiannon's. anyone have any ideas for a cool etsy shop name?

aside from that... i haven't done ANY christmas shopping, and unless tyler gets his ei next week... i don't even know that i will be able to do christmas shopping at all. its a little bit stressful.

i found black forest cake in the fridge at the station. score.

the lovely killbots!

this is a friend of mine from toronto... her band is awesome. check out their first video!!!

wounded.

i haven't kept things up to date. oops. i've been really really busy. BUT... now i am not really washing windows, and just working at the station and sewing. and... back to cooking dinners and stuff. i have to get back on track with the cooking. i have been so lazy/busy.

the biggest news from me is an accident i had thursday evening. i came home from work at 8. the office was on at 9. so i got started cooking some pasta because i hadn't had dinner yet and was SO HUNGRY. and while i was cooking, i decided to wash some of our dishes that were starting to pile up. by 8:30 we were on our way to the emergency. an awful thing took place. something that i had HEARD about happening, but had never happened to me. it had all happened before i even had time to compute what had taken place. my hand was gushing blood, all over the dirty dishes in the sink. a glass broke with my hand inside it, and i sliced open my knuckle on my first finger of my right hand. brutal. i yelled or screamed or something, and tyler came running into the kitchen... in an unfunctioning panic as is typical when i get hurt. i told him to get me something to cover it with, and he ran upstairs looking for some kind of cloth, and came down to the kitchen, soaked it... meantime i grabbed a clean dish cloth out of the drawer across from the sink. is it normal to put a WET cloth on a cut gushing blood? i thought that was weird...

we rushed to the hospital. luckily once we filled out all the stuff, they took us right in. i was light headed, and crying. when tyler broke my nose... i didn't cry the whole time... my eyes watered because it was my nose... but... i didn't cry. this time i cried a lot. it hurt so bad. and i was terrified. the nurse at the desk when we were getting checked in or whatever was not very nice. she asked me when my last tetanus shot was. i told her i had never had one, and she looked at me like i was retarded. she said "you would have had one in high school in grade 9." and i said "no, i didn't." and she said, "you didn't go to school?" and i said "no, my mom just didn't want me to get shots." she said, "well how do you feel about shots now?" in a mean voice, implying i was an idiot. once we were taken back to a bed, a male nurse came over and cleaned my hand, which stung like NO ONE'S BUSINESS. it felt awful. and i knew that would happen and that it would kill. i cried more. he was really nice though. he gave me shots to freeze my hand. those hurt really bad too. i was crying the entire time. it was like the shots they gave me at the dentist when i had to get a tooth pulled once, but way worse. i guess it makes sense considering how senstive hands are. they are so boney and so many nerve endings.

after that we waited... it was all set up for me to get my stitches... but i guess a girl had come into trauma and all of a sudden, the doctor was nowhere to be seen, and the nurses who were actually doing things for patients were all gone. just the paperwork nurses. we waited for 2 and a half hours. from what i overheard, i know a girl died, and i think it was from a drug overdose. tyler talked to a nurse and told her how long we had been there, and asked when someone would come give me my stitches (even though i told him to just chill out and wait) and she had kind of a snarky response saying well, someone is dying, and considering what is going on you haven't really been waiting very long. he learned his lesson. but tyler gets very protective when i am hurt and mad when no one does anything. i was patient. that is, until i had to pee so bad i couldn't possibly hold it any longer. my hand was sitting on a piece of that absorbent stuff with some gauze and whatever... but basically sitting in a puddle of my own blood. tyler managed to flag down a nurse who was very nice and cleaned me off a bit so i could go pee without leaving bloody handprints on things. it was one of those pees that feels SO GOOD because your bladder was soooo full.

i went back, and continued to wait. at about 11:30 finally the commotion in trauma was over, and the doctor came back. i told him i was scared that the freezing would have worn off some and i would feel it. it was supposed to be frozen for 8 hours. sure enough, when he started doing whatever he was doing (i couldn't look at my hand without getting woozy feeling) i felt sharp pains, which he told me i shouldn't feel. so i had to get shots to freeze it again. he told me just by quickly looking at it he was pretty sure i had knicked my tendon. he said he would have to put me in a splint and i would have to come back the next morning to follow up with plastic surgery. PLASTIC SURGERY?! was what ran through my mind. all from a fated dish washing experience. haha. when he returned about 20 minutes later and more thoroughly checked out my mobility of my finger, he said he would stitch my tendon, one or 2 stitches, but i had really good mobility and wouldn't need the splint or a follow up. i was so relieved. he told me there are two tendons in the finger, one that is the main one that you see when you flex your finger, and another one that goes diagonally. i knicked the smaller diagonal one - so... i was really lucky, basically. he stitched it all up, the whole time without me looking. i wouldn't even let tyler take a picture at any point because i didn't want to see it. he told me i had to get a tetanus shot, and he was going to prescribe antibiotics.

then two nurses came over and discussed how they were going to wrap it up for what felt like forever (was probably actually about 15 minutes - still far too long to discuss dressing a wound). they did a really awful job of cleaning it, and wrapped it up and gave me the shot (which bruise my arm and made it sore to move... agh) and gave me the first dose of the antibiotics and we were sent on our way.

i still hadn't eaten dinner and my stomach had been grumbling and eat itself for almost the entire time we were at the hospital. it was now midnight. we went to denny's and i had pancakes and hashbrowns and eggs. and tyler had some other kind of gross denny's food. by 12:30 we were at home in bed (poor tyler had to get up at 6:30 and go to work later that morning).

by 7:30 ish the next morning i was awake and unable to fall back asleep. the freezing had worn off, and my poor hand was SO SORE. i couldn't shower for 2 days, it is REALLY hard to style ones hair without the full use of your second hand (and all the pain too...). it was just a not very good day.

as of this morning... it doesn't hurt so bad, but i still think it looks so gross. the doctor had said there was a chance that the skin flap over the cut would turn black and fall off... in which case i'll have to get a skin graph (GROSS!). that idea really freaks me out. as of right now... the skin flap is dark coloured... but tyler says it is the blood clotting underneath. i hope that he's right, but am scared he isn't.

in better news, i made friends with the girl who moved in next door. we have a ton of mutual friends, and had been introduced before but never talked other than that (which was several years ago). her name is jordi. i really like her. and it's so nice to have someone right next door to hang out with. it's almost like having a roommate, but you don't have to share living space or mess or dishes! she has a baby, oliver, who is really cute. and super chill. he just hangs out and is quiet most of the time. her boyfriend, who also lives with her but i haven't met, works up north and isn't there a lot of the time... so... i keep her company and she keeps me company. she is going to help me cut out all my patterns and work on the invitations.

... more on the status of other things later... i'm at work, and time to get back to work!

PICTURES!!!

now i know what you're all thinking - birthday post. but this isn't really one of those. sorry. haha. i'm sure you're all so disappointed that you don't even want to read this one - but i do have something that might be interesting - PICTURES!! who doesn't like pictures? some of these are old... not that old though. i haven't really posted many pictures in the last year, so i thought perhaps now was the time... plus, i will share my fantastic birthday present with you!!

now this one was at grandma b's memorial. tyler and i make appropriate faces at all times, believe me.


this one was later that night in vancouver, when we went to karaoke with megan and tyler's friend colby. it was a good time. again - i make awesome faces.


this is when madelaine, caleb, and gabriel came to stay at my mom's and they did dress up at o'keefe ranch. i know you have already seen my mom's pictures... but... this is my favourite of the ones that i took.


and this was thanksgiving weekend when we were house sitting the pets. rhiannon's kitten is so cute. we took a lot of pictures of her.



this was while camping this summer with brady and suzanne. tyler really likes to take pictures of himself that he hates afterwards and gets mad that i put up anywhere... but... i'm doing it anyway. haha.


this is my latest beautiful addition to my artwork permanently inked on me. its sort of starting to scab right now... but... it still looks beautiful. it is thanks to my wonderful friend jessy.

and this, ladies and gents, is the best birthday gift i think i have ever received (well... i can't remember everything i have ever gotten for my birthday, but it's pretty amazing). i'm so happy that i own this. and i still can't believe it. i came home from vancouver to be surprised with THIS from tyler. my mom and dean and kaetlyn and andrew and tyler's parents all pitched in. it's a fender. it has a built in tuner. it has a pick up. and it is light blue and so classic rockabilly looking. i'm in love with it. i learned how to play 4 chords (i'm trying to play jenny lewis - acid tongue... i got all the chords down, i just have to practice so i can transition fast enough!).

i'll write about my whole birthday weekend and fabric shopping next time...

tyler is watching the canucks game.

i am sooooo busy. i hardly even have time to write this right now!! just kidding... i do have time.

i have so many things happening coming up that i FEEL like i should be busy right this second - but i'm really not. it's like.. i am anticipating the busy-ness and just want to get it over with. like, 'LETS JUST DO THIS RIGHT NOW!' but i can't... because the busy things haven't started yet.

i have to work at 5:45 tomorrow morning (operating the morning show). and then i get ALL DAY off.. which will be lovely. although i would like to go to the gym tomorrow. and i have to take the truck to get an oil change at 2:30. which means i will have to drive to wherever tyler is working tomorrow and trade him vehicles. i will also need to pack for friday morning. i work tomorrow evening.

FIRST THING friday morning i will be leaving for vancouver for fabric speed shopping. attention vancouver relatives (coughlauracough) - any interest in going fabric shopping with me friday or saturday? my friend kelsey supplied me with a list of fabric stores in vancouver with addresses, and her favourite ones highlighted. jasmine AND tamara will be joining me friday, and tamara says she will be joining saturday as well. but i don't really know my way around vancouver very well, and i will need to do this as efficiently as possible.

let me know.

annnnd... i skipped dinner and just baked an apple pie that was in my freezer. it was tasty. and NO, i didn't eat the whole thing. there is lots of pie left. i need to grocery shop. and starting on the 17th of this month... we have to pay the insurance on tyler's truck. and that sucks. it's a lot.

MY BIRTHDAY IS ON MONDAY - just in case anyone forgot.