Score one for socks

The week began with having to work on the holiday Monday, after much debate as to whether or not I would have to. Last week I worked my ass off trying to get everything ready for Monday, so I didn't really want it to all go for naught. So Monday I did work, and it seemed to go well at first, but then took a turn for the worse. I ended up staying late, trying to make sure things would be ok for the next day.

Tuesday came, and the first half hour of the day was ok, but then I started to get the phone calls that something was wrong. I spent the morning working out those issues with our support vendor. I was supposed to have gone to Moncton for a meeting, but this problem trumped all, so I had to stay behind. I spent the rest of the week dealing with issues that cropped up due to a software version change that they snuck in without telling me. Wonderful. Things just didn't seem to go according to any plans I had set out for myself this week.

Today, in exchange for some help in putting together Regan's shower, I agreed to take my mother to Calais. I intended on leaving at 8am. I got up about 7:15, figuring I'd wash up, get dressed, eat, and be out the door a bit early. I ended up not quite sure how to dress for the inevitable warmer weather in Calais, so I spent too much time being indecisive about clothing and ended up being late. I pulled into Mum's place, and while she was getting in the car, I noticed my Blackberry flashing at me. A store was down. My co-worker just started his vacation, so I had to handle the issue myself. Since I was just about to head out of town, I called the store and asked if they were having any issues. I specifically asked if they needed their accounts unlocked, as I was just about to head out of town. They said no, we're fine. I left Mum's house and decided it would be a good idea if I took my laptop with me on the road, just in case anyone else called. We finally hit the road at about 8:30. I got as far as Musquash when my cell phone rang -- it was, of course, the store I proactively called to make sure they didn't need my help before getting on the road. I told him to try a spare account I had set up, but it didn't work for some reason. I ended up pulling over, booting up the laptop, connecting with my Blackberry, logging in to work, and unlocking the account. Issue solved.

I pulled back onto the road, got as far as Lepreau, just after where the highway turns back into 2 lanes. All of a sudden there is a deer running across the road in front of the car. I slammed on the breaks. If the deer had stopped in the road, I would have hit it. I was lucky.

We made it the rest of the way uneventfully. The border wasn't backed up too badly. While we were waiting in line, I left Mum in the car and took my laptop to the Canadian border office and got an ownership card for the laptop, just to avoid any potential issues with taking it over the border and back. As I was walking down the street, I went to go get something out of my shopping purse. I grabbed the zipper and it came right off. Took me a few minutes just to be able to get into my purse, great, now that's broken.

When we got up to the border agent for the US, she said, "You know you're trapped here today? The festival is going on." The usually boring "City" of Calais was abuzz with the International Festival, and a parade was going to start in about an hour. That meant lots of traffic issues to try and avoid.

We headed to Mardens first, then a quick stop at the Dollar Store. I took my US bottles & cans to the redemption centre. Then we headed for Wal-Mart. As we were walking in, I commented on how it was getting hotter. The woman ahead of me, who was walking with a limp due to a physical issue of some kind, turned around smiling and agreed with me. We headed on into the store and began shopping. I got to the aisle with kitchen stuff, and was pointing to a cutting board that I had seen last time I was down. It was a large wooden board with a groove in it, probably 1' x 2'. I grabbed one to pull out and show to my mother, and then another board fell out and dropped on my big right toe. It hurt so badly that I thought I was going to have blood gushing or a broken toe. I took my sneaker off to check things out, and then my sock; everything seemed intact and I could wiggle it, so it wasn't broken, but I was in a lot of pain. I got my sneaker back on and kept on going, though now I was limping quite a bit. A few minutes later in the store, we crossed paths with the woman whom we walked in behind... oh God, please don't let her think I'm making fun of or imitating her... I just dropped a cutting board on my foot, that's all!!

Aside: I am not much of one for being a slave to fashion. On a sunny, hot day, most women I know would be wearing bare feet in flip-flops or sandals. Knowing I was going shopping and would be walking, I wore sneakers and socks... well, that's pretty much my norm, to be honest. The point is, had I been wearing bare feet in other shoes, my toe would have gotten broken. Score one for socks.

I carried on shopping, being stubborn and wanting to finish out the day, despite probably needing to keep off my foot and have it elevated. We cleaned out all of the root beer at Wal-Mart, thinking we could get more at the grocery store. When we got to the grocery store, we discovered they didn't have any. The grocery dept clerk said they'd been trying to order it for a while now, but weren't having any luck. Great. To be sure they kept on trying to order it, I stopped at the customer service desk and put in a product request.

We finished the shopping and headed on to McDonalds for lunch. The parade was in the street, but I managed to get around enough back roads to get to McDonalds. We had a good lunch, and I decided I needed a Happy Meal toy because it was a small version of bears from Build-A-Bear Workshop. I had to get the purple bear. Couldn't resist.

Knowing that the parade was going on, and that they were crossing the main border, we headed back to Milltown to cross there. There were signs posted asking people not block driveways. Trying to be considerate, I followed their request. All of a sudden a gold Lincoln pulls up and cuts right in front of me, into the spot I was leaving for the driveway access. I proceeded to honk, shake my fist, give him the finger, and yell at him out my window, which elicited him giving me the finger back. It also likely resulted in my mother thinking I am just like my father, a fire for which she needs no more fuel, but I just handed it to her on a silver platter. She didn't say anything, but I knew that's what she was thinking. I felt pissed off at the guy in front of me and defeated at having lost my cool again so quickly after the Zellers incident last week.

I am apparently a lot more stressed out than I realized. So much so that my body is rebelling and a zillion cold sores decided to pop out overnight last night. Not only do I feel like a mess today, but I also look it. Mum gave me some ointment to attack them with, so hopefully I can get rid of them and try to destress a bit. My parents' wedding pics are marred only by the fact that my Dad had a big cold sore in every picture... I'd prefer not to repeat that visual.

I spent tonight at TotE and I was glad to have some laughs after my rotten day. All of the plays were good and I give kudos to those who wrote and performed. If I didn't socialize very much tonight, it wasn't anything personal -- it was just the end of my very bad day.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day. Please let it be better than today.