My Five Bucks

This is the funniest post I will ever write ... Trust me !!

Ok, so the story goes like this: Gary in hardware (yes Carrie, Grumpy-Old-Gary ...), comes to me in the lunchroom one day, and asked me to sign a T&A for him. (A T&A is Home Depot speak for Time and Attendance .. if you forget to punch in or out, or have training you need to fill one in to get paid, and it needs to be signed by a manager.)

I told him I had no problem signing it .... for Five Bucks. He laughed and said put it on my tab, I'll pay you later. I'm not worried I know where he works. (He knew I was kidding ... or so I thought).

So yesterday he comes to work, with this Cat-ate-the-Canary look on his face, and he was carrying a box. He hands me a little card, and says read this before you look in the box. The card looked like this:




And inside reads:
Tracy,

A while ago I asked you to sign a T&A for me. You stuck out your hand and said "five bucks!". Well here they are! Of course they are the short Italian ones. Watch out for "Ruldolpho" (the one with the red nose). He tends to get into the "Christmas Cheer" (Chianti) a bit to much for his own good!

Gary S.

And this was what was in the box:







My Five "Bucks" !! He made my day -- I laughed so hard, and I showed them to everyone! Just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover. He made them all himself, and totally surprised me -- I can't wait to fill them up with Christmas Candy and leave them all over the house.

Update on Mom

Being busy at work is fun and not so fun.

It tends to take away from blog-updating time. It also makes it hard to visit Mom in the hospital.

My sister Erin and I took Mom in (finally!) for her cancer surgery on the 26th. We got her all checked in and settled, and then we helped to get her prepped for surgery. The Nurse was so great, we even had some laughs before they took Mom in. The nurse had to find the pulse in Mom's foot and mark it so they could monitor it throughout the surgery, and she wasn't having any luck finding it with her stethoscope, so she went and got one of those portable machines that you listen to baby's heartbeats with. I whispered to Erin it would be funny if a little voice came over the speaker saying something like "no habla espanol...", and I was laughing so hard after I said it I had to leave the room. Erin was so disgusted with me. She doesn't like hospitals much, she spent so much time in them when she was a kid.

They took Mom in about 9am, and said they would call us when she was out of Surgery. So we went for breakfast .... downtown. We left the car at the U of A and took the LRT to Edmonton Center. I can't remember the last time I was downtown! When we got back to the hospital, we checked in with Admitting to see if Mom had a room yet, and she did so we went up to the ward. She hadn't come up from Surgery yet, so we waited in the visiting area just outside. And waited. And waited.

She didn't come upstairs until almost 3:30, because she kept falling asleep in the recovery room and making the monitors go all funny. She had a spinal aenesthesia, so she was awake throughout the procedure. At least she wasn't sick afterwards, which usually happens if they put her right under. (If I was her, I would have said "ouch" sometime during the operation to see if they were listening.) Tee hee hee.

She had a basal cell carcinoma removed from her lower right leg, and a skin graft from higher on the same leg to cover the area where the cancer was. It looks really cool! (I know -- how could I say that?) I remember before the surgery her legs were always so swollen, afterwards her blood pressure has levelled out and her legs look back to normal! She even has ankles!

She came home on Tuesday after 10 days, and she has a walker to help her build up her strength, and home care comes everyday to changes her dressings. I'm so glad this is all over with !! The cancer was really starting to pollute her system, it hadn't spread, but Mom says she feels better now overall. And I know she'll be around a lot longer now ... :-) !

The busy at work part ?? Oh my god! It's been a zoo! Our free underpad carpet promo was over on Oct 22, and it helped us have our biggest week EVER! We had a day where Flooring did just over $40k, and it helped us finish the week at $140k ! (So I am now on the plus side for sales YTD, erasing the negative Numbers we were in. Yay!). Installs for the week finished just shy of $80k. YTD we are over $100k. I think we may make $2 million this year in labor sales. Can you believe it ?!

This was Halloween at our house ...

Anthony was "Mr. Incredible".




Lisa was the Monster from "Scream".




Artemis was his usual self.



And I was the pumpkin ... LOL!



The kids had a blast even though it was so cold. We ran into some of their friends and they stayed out for almost 3 hours. A stop at Tim Horton's on the way home for Hot Chocolate and that was it. Hopefully it won't be as cold next year ... !