If I start wearing jeggings, you'll know what happened.

I got a stupid flu shot. Now I feel drunk or something (I hope it lasts), so of course I'm going to write a poorly constructed blog entry about it.

Before getting it, the health nurse at the clinic asked me if I am allergic to formaldehyde or thimerosal while I signed a waiver: um, isn't everyone allergic to formaldehyde and thimerosal? Thimerosal contains mercury, in case you're wondering. Mercury causes MadNeSs.

So how do you even know if you're allergic to neurotoxins? I seem to be okay, right? The last time I had formaldehyde cookies, I might have gotten a weensy bit itchy- but overall I think I'm okay. I also think the school "peanut & formaldehyde/mercury free lunch" policy is a little drastic. Do we have to deprive them of EVERYTHING they love just because a couple of kids caught madness? Psh. Just look at old Vladimir Lenin. He loves his formaldehyde and he's a pretty important guy. Besides, I had plenty of formadlehyde and thimerosal when I was a kid and I don't have any more brain damage than anyone else from my generation graduating class. It's not just a neurotoxin after all, it's also an important preservative and fungicide. MmmM... stick it in my muscles, please.

Here's a story: We used to play liquid mercury blob hockey with our pencils in the the science lab in ninth grade while our teacher was ignoring us. It was pretty cool. Am I digressing? What? Mercury? Hmm? Also, we usually left the gas on at our bunson burner stations. Small town schools have small budgets for things like 'safety' or 'common sense' or 'teaching' (no offense, DBS). I've always wanted to make fancy hats for the Queen.

This guy sticks his bare hands in mercury all the time and he doesn't look very crazy at all.

So anyway, I did not go to the clinic this morning thinking that I was going to be injected with anything and to tell you the truth, I have been doing a fair bit of yapping about how I'll never get a flu shot and how the flu shot is to blame for everything from jeggings to hipsters, is a big government/drug company conspiracy to control our minds with formaldehyde, fear and mercury and it's not even organic etc etc. So why did I break down and do it? There are 3 things that happened to make me get injected, and I'll tell you them:

1. I pretty much work entirely on impulse. To say I'm impulsive is like saying that there is a crumb or two under my couch cushions, when really I've planted a lovely garden of rare mushrooms on top of the layer of dust and new topsoil which rests upon my kids' toys, remote controls, cordless phones, dvd cases and granola bar wrappers. It's called making the most of a bad situation, you guys.

So... impulse. They had a poster saying that I could get a flu shot TODAY, it was FREE and there was already a stranger standing there with her needles ready, I had a 10 minute wait... so... yep. I would have gotten my blood sugar tested at the next poking booth if I'd have had more time. Is that a heroin booster clinic? Why even think about it? Sign me up.


2. The impulse was driven by the fact that my 2 year old had to get her booster shot, which is why I was at the clinic to begin with and I thought she'd feel better if I got a needle too. This decision took 4 seconds to make.

PS. She didn't care that I got a needle, she was just pissed in general over hers. She snarled & threw her Cinderella sticker at the nurse as hard as she could and basically turned into this creature for the rest of the day:


3. I watched 4 episodes of AMC's Walking Dead with Neil last night and decided that I never want to actually catch anything or end up living in a tent town outside of Atlantic City with a ragtag group of offensively stereotypical people. I also want to avoid crowded areas while riding on my stolen horse in case I am attacked by zombies (or geeks). They'll eat your horse too, you know. They don't even CARE about horses. So, injecting myself with things will prevent that, right? Of course. So basically, now I think that the drug companies are in cahoots with zombie movie makers to get you to get a flu shot. I'm already a victim. Yeah, I don't know why you're still reading this, either. But here I go, just type type typing away and you're reading it.


4. They still have a giant, colorful bowl of free condoms at the front desk of the clinic. That doesn't have anything to do with this post (or does it? they did have 2 other poking stations, after all), but I blushed when I looked at it. Because condoms=sex and that=feelings. Especially if you look at the bowl of condoms and then accidentally make eye contact with another person in the waiting room. What if they think you looked at the condoms and then looked at them because you want to use the condoms on them? That could be pretty awkward. Especially if you look at the old woman offering to test your blood sugar after looking at the condom bowl? What if she tested it and found prude cells in your blood sugar? That would be pretty embarrassing. I'd probably shift around in my seat and check my blackberry, pretending to text people if they found that out. I'd even say, "ZOMG that made me L.O.L" to make it seem more authentic. I wouldn't really text people though, because that gets expensive.



The End.

Happy Birthday Honey, I pulled the garbage can lid out of the wheel well.

I lay in the middle of the road, one leg kicking at the undercarriage and one arm grasping in behind the front left tire of my vehicle at the hunk of grey plastic. A car passes without a glance at me as I am sprawled halfway underneath my vehicle, kicking and grappling with it. The garbage truck passes too, giving a rude little honk. I could be dead, you evil fools. These things would never happen in a small town.

"What's the black dangly thing there?" Asks an old woman who was stumbling down the road with her yellowish, teacup pomeranian, little cur of a mongrel. Now the dog is climbing onto my chest, while trying to lick me as I lay beside my vehicle, kicking at the garbage can lid that is jammed into my wheel well. I'm not a dog person. "Maybe try some kind of gardening tool," suggests woman with mongrel. "I'll look in your garage for you." and she begins fumbling around with my possessions. "I don't think a rake will work.... hmmm" Super. At least there are some helpful souls out there still, I guess.

"It's the animal deterrent lid locker thing" says I about the dangly black thing hanging from the lid in my wheel well, brushing some filthy snow from my hands. Uvula I think to myself. I get up and go get an axe from the garage because I want the old woman to stop going through my things while I'm laying on the street, kicking a the stupid lid that is wedged in impossibly tight. I'm a little embarrassed at the state of my garage: everything is jumbled in there. "I don't know about an axe. Maybe you should wait for your husband to get home from work. He can jack up the vehicle for you." she says. Blink.

This makes me cringe internally at the idea of Neil having to jack up the van instead of me, to remove the offending garbage can lid.... and also pours gas onto the fire that is my stubborn, proud streak. No no. There will be no crumpled, frozen garbage can lid wrenched into the wheel well when Neil gets home today. There will be no saving Chelle from her own disregard for backing over grey plastic garbage bins. I have a lot on my mind, you know. I will do it myself.

I call over to my neighbor, Peggy, who is on her way to pick up daycare kids from the same school I was headed to for my own little clump of children. "Peggy. Would you do me a huge favour and pick up my kids for me? Yeah. I ran over my garbage cans. Yeah. It's stuck"

Peggy comes over to have a look at the lid. She lays on the drive way to give it a shot. Her white scarf is dragging in the muddy snow, much to the chagrin of Madame Puppymill. Mr Yippee is freaking out because one of Peggy's daycare kids that she has with her tried to look at him. "He's nervous around strangers." says old woman with dog.

"WELL. I have to go get those kids." says Peg and off she strides toward the school, little ones bouncing behind her. "We might stay and play for 15 minutes on the playground." Perfect. That will give me more time to yard on the garbage can lid. How lucky can I even get?

So I try another axe, this one with a prying end. Woman with Pomeranian has gone off to check on Cindy's baby. She was supposed to be watching a baby and was instead rummaging through my garage for an axe or hoe? Thanks for the help, please go check on the baby. I get back to peevishly tugging and hammering at the lid with the blunt end of the axe and my foot. I get lost in it, thinking to myself that if I can change the oil in a gravel screener and run an excavator, then dammit- I can get this lid out. I'm picturing the glorious moment where I track down woman with Pomeranian to show her that HA! I didn't need anyone to jack up the van for ME! I'm a capable and perf.....

"I can't get your kids" Peggy is back already. "Yeah the school is apparently on lockdown. You have to go get them." Lockdown for like... gunmen????!! screams my brain. "Yeah apparently someone saw a coyote down the street." The alarm bells konk out.

A coyote.

A $#%& COYOTE? But I haven't saved the day from the whole lid thing yet. I can't drive to the school with a garbage can lid crammed into my wheel well. Can I??? Nooo. Nononono. Surely I don't have to drag my stroller out across the ice and wait outside the school because someone possibly saw some flea-bitten, foot long hotdog of a so called predator stumbling into the neighborhood from a field 3 hours earlier. It's garbage day. This is CANADA. Of course there is coyote. For every one coyote you see, you don't see 20.

Well the last bell is going to go soon, so I fling the stroller out of the back of my vehicle.. I don't even remember setting up because I was busy seeing red and sending annoy vibes to the kids' bumbling, dramatic principle over this newest shenanigan. Eleanore materializes into her stroller and off we trudge. Down the street and through the barren schoolyard, stumbling through the frozen, thawed, and refrozen footprint gouges; my clothes all covered in mud and grease and snow. Eleanore burbles through the particularly bumpy patches. They really did close down the school over this stupid coyote that is probably happily gnawing on someone's chicken carcass, back home in the field and laughing to his coyote buddies about the panic he personally spread that day. The furry little terrorist.

I arrive there and the children have been rounded up into the gymnasium, and the fear of God has been put into them over this little twit of a dog-rodent. Some are crying. I am LIVID at the kneejerk reaction to such a trifling issue. People have been called from work. The kids are not allowed to walk themselves to their buses without an escort. As though this coyote is outside the school, waiting in the darkness- choosing which child it will pick off for it's dinner. This freak of nature beast that has crossed the lines of wilderness to suburbia. Do they know how small and skittish coyotes are? Have they confused it for a werewolf? Has someone read too may werewolf stories? Bugs Bunny perhaps?

(The rebel in me wants to print this out and paste it around the elementary school.)

The poor little thing, if it had even been in the school yard, would have turned inside out from fear if it had seen the hoards of screeching kids pouring from the school. Coyotes are not well known for their fearless constitutions. I am beginning to see a resemblance to this authority figure in the nature of the coyote. I make sure to tell my children that what happened today was so very ridiculous. I worry that they will look up to this weak kneed person and in doing so, weaken themselves and allow themselves to be governed by unnecessary fear.

They locked the school down over a coyote sighting that was blocks away. Should I start constructing survivo-bubbles for my kids? Have we come to a point where we trade freedom for the weakest possibility of purported danger? Do we teach our children to cower over imagined threats? Do we teach them that these faint threats are worth huddling in masses of contagious panic? Oh I do hope not. I need to allow the steam to stop rocketing from my ears. Tea will help.

..And so my afternoon went on fairly uneventfully. I got home and popped the lid out of my wheel well ten minutes later, took the bent lid across to my neighbor's to show my trophy to Peggy, who was appropriately impressed. I got the accolades I deserve indeed. Neil got home from work, sloppy joes and jokes were made. Kids were sent to bed several times over. The house is quiet and I am now in the process of unwinding my brain.

*breathe*

Now off to bed, it's Neily's birthday tomorrow and I will take him out for lunch.