Outside of my chest mound and it's southbound migration, I want to announce that Jenifer gave birth this morning to Maya Peyton Brownstein at 1:40 am and the beautiful little girl weighed in at 6lb 15 oz and was 20" long. I stopped by the hospital after work today and she is absolutely gorgeous and Jen, outside of being tired, doesn't look like she just had a baby - she looks fabulous.

Arthur is still at the vets and will be there for days - the amount is increasing steadily, probably close to $1,000 now for the final bill. His surgery is scheduled for either Thursday or Friday. I can't believe they have to operate in order to close a wound - I say pin him down, save me the hundreds of dollars and slap a bandage on him. Come on! Get the staple gun out, they've done it to me...no biggy.

I'm exhausted, possibly encouraged by the 2 pints I had at Paupers. Well deserved after taking the kids to my hair stylist for cuts. Jakey was very funny - he seriously enjoyed the hair wash/massage experience. I wish I had had my camera with me so that I could have shown the world Satchel and Jakob side by side at the hair washing station, both experiencing something tantamount to ecstasy.

But since I didn't have my camera, instead I'll scare you with a couple of pictures of me and one of Jakey in the bath.





I know what you're thinking - GO TO BED MEG, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD - GET SOME SLEEP!

I'm going already.

I think my new breast is leaking down towards my new navel.
What - do they miss each other?

But more importantly:

I life my glass of wine and toast my sister Susan who would have been 53 today if she had not been taken from us so tragically 15 years ago.

I hate the money gods, hate them hate them hate them. Why can they just not leave me alone?

And all because I paid off 2 credit cards with our income tax return.

First my car dies (last week) and now Arthur gets attacked by a cat and has a gigantic abscess above his eye and is at the vets where he will be for days and probably require surgery to close the quarter size wound. The good news is that so far it looks like no nerve damage has been done after she squeezed nearly a quarter cup of puss out of the wound, the bad news is that it's going to cost nearly $800.

I feel spent - emotionally and financially. All I wanted to do was buy a dress for Dave and Jody's wedding and curtains and a rug for my bedroom. Though I still may get the rug, it's only $150 at Canadian Tire (a shag by Debbie Travis). And I can probably find curtains at Ikea that will block the light from pouring in to my room at too early of an hour.

What am I thinking! I must drink my wine and consider this carefully. Put a cheque together for Dave & Jody's wedding present, wear old Comrag skirt and older shoes with even older black shell. Roll pennies and cash in wine/beer bottles.

And yell "Fuck off money gods, find someone else's strings to pull for a while!"

The Gods are playing with my emotions again...and my bank account.

Ellie Escort had to go back to the shop, this time for electrical problems. The mechanic called with reservation saying that the cost to fix the old girl will be more than she's worth but fortunately the bill was under $400, unfortunate to think the car isn't worth that much.

With any luck we can squeeze one more year out of her and then find a replacement.

But really, this couldn't happen at a worse time and I'm sure it's because I just dumped Paul's and my combined income tax refund on to our credit cards that it is happening.

I spent the morning at the hospital for my post op appointment where the surgeon painstakingly removed the stitches with tweezers and scissors. It's surreal watching this happen to my body when I have no sensation. I can kind of feel pulling but no pain - and from the look of it, it should have hurt a bit. Especially when small little wounds reopened. I felt a bit queazy afterwards like I had just participated in a sleazy reality show.

Pat's coming over to dye my hair and bringing her entire family to watch. See, once again, I'm part of a sleazy reality show.

I'm home again, recovering from my second surgery. I knew it was going to hurt but it knocked me out more than I expected. I thought I'd be back at work today and instead slept until 11am.

Going back to Easter weekend, pre-surgery, I had my neighbours William & Brenda and their adorable little boy Aidan (not quite 2) for dinner and an Easter egg hunt.

A picture of Satchel egg hunting, Jakob with his loot from the Easter Bunny, and finally Jakey playing with Aidan.





While we ate dinner (my first attempt at a pot roast EVER and in a never-before-used slow cooker - I'm hooked), the kids, while playing together, shut the barn door and then it was stuck with Jakob trapped in the kitchen. We take a look to find the barn door broken and off it's tracks. So either Aidan is the most powerful 2 year old in the world or the door was installed incorrectly, lasting only a couple of months and during that time was rarely.

The powder room door no longer opens all the way unless forced and is now gouging the floor and the door leading to the basement barely catches and during the winter doesn't catch at all. The three doors that were "custom" and cost us an absolute fortune all need to be fixed.




Paul left a message for J*** early last week and we were told that Tim would come the following morning to assess what needed to be done - he didn't show. Paul calls J*** to find out where Tim is and he says "yeah, Tim called in sick, I was just about to call you. We'll arrange for tomorrow." So now it's been a week with no Tim and no follow-up from J***. Paul's calling him again today. It will be interesting to see how J*** reacts to follow-up work once he's been paid. Considering what an ass he was at the end of the job, I'm not optimistic.

Next chapter: the surgery.

Last Wednesday I had my 2nd surgery for the reconstruction and as I mentioned before, it hurt a lot. The surgery started an hour late and lasted just over an hour. The nurse that installed my IV did a terrible job and on her second attempt I mouthed "help me" to Paul. Dr. Lipa came in with her team of 3 and marked me up so once again I felt like a nip/tuck episode and you can still see the faint direction and arrow pointing to my navel. Sadly Christian was no where to be found.

The Princess Margaret hospital was fabulous. When I checked in I was directed to a private room to wait until it was time for me to go to pre-op. This was also the room I returned to and spent the night. It was amazing - except for the horrible decor and terrible food, I felt like I was in a hotel room. It was quiet, had a nice western view. Because the surgery wasn't as serious as the last one I wasn't bothered at night with nurses checking my vitals every hour and there was no intercom system where I would hear the paging of nurses or frantic announcements of code blue. I had so many flannel blankets that I stayed cocooned in one position the entire night, alternating between admiring the city view and sleep.

But now I'm home and I'm still sore. My hand is throbbing. My throat is sore - I initially attributed this to the breathing tube during surgery but now I wonder if I'm instead succumbing to something. I wonder if I'm depressed and if that's contributing to my excessive sleeping coupled with the sleep helping with recovery and pain management. Only pajamas and track pants are comfortable so I haven't left the house and can't figure out what I will wear to work.

I finally braved a shower on Saturday and removed all my bandages and saw myself for the first time. I should do it again today and have another shower but even though I've now seen myself, I don't feel brave enough to do it again. I think instead I'll go watch Volver with Penelope Cruz.

Flowers from Paul (with a shot of my 2 sputniks):

Part 2 of my reconstruction surgery has been scheduled for next Wednesday. It should be reasonably harmless - I liken it to a 2-hour nap. I should be home by nightfall - or the next morning. Hopefully not a night visit - the food doesn't exactly draw you back in. But the prescription drugs do!

When the surgeon's office first called yesterday to inform me of the date, I have to admit I was thrown. I liken the surgery to child birth but I haven't had the luxury of having a couple of years pass by to dull the memory of the pain. 4 months means everything, in all it's glory, is still very fresh in my mind.

I look forward to having it over, then it's only a tattooing left. I'll have to suggest to Dr. Lipa that she sign me, after all she did rebuild me - just like Steve Austin or Jamie Summers but without the sound effects.

New York was fantastic! But sadly my terrible luck in hotel rooms prevailed. Even though I thought I had a free upgrade to a suite in the bag by throwing on to the table my breast cancer card (I said I was still recovering and tired and would prefer a room with a great view because I might spend more time in the room than usual), I still wound up with this:



And this was my view:





I immediately called the front desk and asked to be switched - I mean, was this REALLY the only non-smoking room in the entire hotel? Come on! COME ON! Even with the free unlimited lattes the Shoreham has to offer, the glass of champagne handed to me upon check-in, that we were only blocks from Central Park, I wanted more of a view than a bunch of ducts and a man's face staring back at me from the other side. The face was a bit unnerving.

They did move us the very next day to a room that faced the street, where you could actually see the sky and discern what the weather was - or if it was day versus night.

Unfortunately our trip didn't start well with problems at LaGuardia keeping up stranded in Toronto - either high winds preventing us from leaving or someone in the LaGuardia control tower wasn't having a very good day. By the time we arrived in NY, we had just enough time to get to the hotel, change, clean up and have a surprise run in with William at the hotel bar. The handsome guy in the back is Paul.




Willy's show was fabulous! I channeled the 80s with a hint of Edie Sedgwick and had a fabulous time.




Here we are in front of the Forum Gallery about to go to the dealer's house for dinner.



Check out William's work at: http://www.forumgallery.com/current_on1.php?id=174

I'm off but will write more NY stories tomorrow.

Finally a few pictures to attach with my new camera!

Here are a few shots of my installed light fixtures: the powder room, front hallway and at the top of the stairs.

I'm off to New York City tomorrow morning and have no idea what to bring. Thursday night is the opening for William's show with a dinner after. That's my predicament - what does one where to a NY art opening?

I am so excited - we're off to the MOMA on Friday and then shopping, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, perhaps a cruise around the Hudson, checking out the Statue of Liberty and then some more shopping. Kim & Scott, Eve & David are also going and we are staying at the same hotel, the Shoreham. Will be a fantastic and slightly wicked time!

It's been recommended that I censor my blogs - removing the name of a certain SOB in past postings for example as well as excerpts from an "alleged" email exchange. So I've done it - heaven forbid I enter into a lawsuit with him, as is the concern of my husband, and have to give him MORE money.

I avoided the final meeting with ___, instead bringing dinner over to Scott & Kim's place to heat up and eat while Paul dealt with ____. Suffice it to say, ____ won. When Paul brought up that he should perhaps get better in communicating and managing expectations with clients he began to get aggressive and combative again. Paul decided whatever and gave up, figuring we're done and he'll never concede. So a cheque was left in the mailbox Friday morning with his inflated amount and gone with out any note or message.

But later that evening I found out something huge is happening in ___'s life. Something that is going to completely turn his life upside down and how can I stay angry at someone who's life could potentially turn in to an absolutely nightmare?

We have our final meeting with our contractor tonight to go over the last bill and give him his payment. I am so angry with him right now that I can't bring myself to be at the meeting and will hand over the reigns to Paul. I'm taking the kids and going next door to Kim's so that I don't have to look at his face.

He is such an unethical bully. Paul wrote him asking him to clarify the cost of doors and credits that we should be entitled to after revisiting the original contract and the discrepancy with his final statement to us - and Paul wrote the email because if I had written it, I'm sure it would have led to a cat fight. It still led to one. Here are a couple of excerpts from his reply letter:

REMOVED

and then he hit with:


REMOVED


I'll write about how the meeting going tomorrow. I need to get back to my school newsletter.

Our project this weekend, outside of hanging pantings and curtains, is that we're supposed to go over the initial contract from ___ to determine if there is anything else we can hopefully deduct from his last invoice. So far we have a credit for the front door knob that R__ threw out, hopefully a credit for a $40 dimmer switch that Ron threw out and replaced with a $1 light switch, and we want ___ to justify why we were charged $500 the final clean when it consisted of R__ running through the house with a swiffer and a paper towel, and a half ass job at steam cleaning the attic carpet. I'd like to deduct $450 for that joke of a job.

My poor camera is dust, may it R.I.P. I am now waiting for Henry's to send me a replacement by Sony valued at with lens, $1,200. Yippee!

I am still poor having lost at the Millionaire lottery - not one number the same. Sigh.

Paul had his birthday on the 28th and I threw a birthday party which ended with American Idol on the PS2 and all of us signing and being rejected horribly by SImon. Well not all of us, William ended up being brilliant, David getting a perfect score and Paul doing quite well too. I think they're all wannabe lounge singers, needing only a polyester suit. While at the party I gave Scott a belated birthday present: Jesus Christ bandages which I told him I'd had blessed by a priest which tripled their healing powers and a little punching bag that when knocked, swears like a Newfie fishwife (or me). Scott took to shaking it at William everytime he'd make a comment about his "competitive nature."

Now we're desperate to get the game so we can have kareokee parties regularly. We're kareokee junkies!

Wow, Jakob has a friend coming over tomorrow - that's never happened before. I didn't think he had friends. Crazy.

I started back to work last week - Wednesday the 21st was my first day. God it was exhausting. I'm not meant to get up before 7:00 am - I'm meant to have slow, leisurely mornings - sleeping in until nearly 10:00 and then watching Cityline with Marilyn Dennis while yelling at the television set.

Thursday, my second day at work, at 9:20 a.m. the school calls me to tell me that Satchel had an accident during gym and needs to be treated. The vice principal calls me 10 minutes after the first call to tell me that he thinks it's serious, that Satchel may have broken his ankle and should go to the hospital. In fact he'll take him there if I can meet up with him.

The ambulance finally arrives and Satchel gets wheeled to admissions. 3 hours, 2 x-rays, 2 examinations, 1 small room shared with a woman who's 20-month-old daughter hasn't pooped in a few days, but makes up for it in our room, Satchel's diagnosed with a sprain and we're discharged with a brand new pair of crutches ($28 but I can donate them to a third world country when we're finished with them - probably by Monday).

Friday, Paul stays home with Satchel and I actually make it through my third day at work without incident, receiving the most beautiful arrangement of flowers from a woman I work with.

Sadly I wanted Satchel to walk to a store to buy a lottery ticket with me. I was going to press the money into his hand and have him ask for it because it's the only way I figured I'd have a shot at winning. I'm not a very lucky person and he usually is, but I guess not any more now that he's my little Mr. Hop Along.

Today I went to Royal Lighting to pick up my second sputnik light fixture for over the island. As is my way I choose the worst possible route to get there but finally make it to the shop. I pick up my light fixture and also a dimmer switch because when the sputnik light is turned on, with 24 bulbs lit, you can probably make out my kitchen from space. Because the combined wattage for both lights is insane, I had to buy a 1000 watt dimmer switch which ended up costing $125 - instead of $40 like the little 600 watt capacity dimmers. I brought our new sputnik home to find out the manufacturer changed the mounting plate so it doesn't look anything like our original one and it's kind of decorative which is kind way of saying "ugly." After 2 hours of repeated calls to the store they're now trying to track down an original plate and I have taken a liking to beer.

John is leaving daily messages on our machine asking for payment, no longer in a nice tone, more of a "I WANT TO GET PAID. NOW!!!!!!" tone. I keep ignoring the messages telling Paul to deal with him. I'd only end up in another fight.

I'll write more tomorrow - time for bed.

We are finished with ___. I can't believe I'm finally writing these words after 9 months. T__ came last week to install the hardware on the barn door and L____ came Friday to do the final paint touch ups. And yesterday, well yesterday we received his final bill.

I didn't sleep last night thinking about the bill and how he completely screwed us financially...yet again. How I border on hating him because I feel I'm a pretty nice person, was incredibly easy to work with even though I did get diagnosed with breast cancer 4 months into the process, made decisions quickly, paid him promptly...even offered him a drink when he came over to collect his funds.

And he sends us this final bill, over charging us on the last bits of the job and yet crazily low balling the amounts we were to be credited to the point of me wanting to shake him and ask does he truly think we're that stupid or naive to accept these numbers? I kind of want to contact Mike Holmes, not to complain about the quality of work but to complain about unethical and fraudulent billing practices.

But how do I go about it when ____ refuses to surrender any receipts to me? He can make up any cost he wants and ship them my way - as he bragged to Kim about a year ago at a separate party on how he handles his life as a contractor. A conversation I wish I'd been privy too.

He's going to wait a while before he sees the last cheque from us - I have many phone calls to make and prices to verify.

I think what also makes me angry is that this was supposed to be finished before Christmas, not the week before I return to work. Did I really have any time to recover from my 15-hour mastectomy and reconstruction? No. I was to busy having to deal with his guys in the house before 8:00 am or him forcing me out, hunting down lights while holding my insides together - only to find he didn't really need them as urgently as he led me to believe.

But the saga of ___ will continue in this blog until I do hand him that last amount. There will be a lot more pins in that voodoo doll and no recommendation.

Unfortunately my camera is still in the shop so no reveal pictures...yet.

Now that I have finished picking all the stickers off Sputnik (and screaming at Cityline because it was a fantastic show with incredible giveaways and reaffirms how much I love Marily and Jann), can anyone recommend a product to get all the sticky stuff off the 20+ bars?

Good god - will this reno never end?

Tim was here before 8:00 am to work on the barn door forcing me to get out of bed. How do I make them understand that I want NO ONE IN THE HOUSE BEFORE 10:00 (my getting up time of choice). The barn door is now finished, hardware installed and track cut down, but the painters now need to come back to touch up dings, cracks and spots they missed before.

This reno will never be over.

Tim is now gone and I'm currently sitting cross legged on my island peeling stickers off Sputnik 1 while watching a fabulous episode of Cityline with great give away prizes and Jann Arden who I adore and is so freaking funny.

The show is back on so back to my perch, back to picking labels.

Home day on Cityline must have been the most boring show ever aired in their entire on-air history. It really was all about how to make a bed, how to make those perfect hospital corners, how to iron the sheets while on the bed, how to measure the height of your boxspring, how to fold a fitted sheet...absolutely painful.

Fortunately I had Brenda to give me a good jab in the ribs when ever I looked like I was about to nod off - and she was very enthusiastic about it. And because of the absurdity of the content, I laughed so hard - to the point where I had tears welling up in my eyes and I had to hold my nose to try to prevent them from spilling over and down my cheeks.

Brenda was the best person to go with. We started laughing hysterically, again with tears threatening to roll, when we found out that our take home gift was tea. Bad tea. A painful show only to be rewarded by bad tea - it just couldn't get better. Actually it did get better; it happened when I looked in to my gift bag and discovered stationary with teddy bears and a coupon for a day's shopping at Sam's Club but at a cost which equaled 10% of their regular annual membership fee.

And also when I went to shake Marilyn Dennis's hand, hoping to win her over as my new best friend with some witty comment, only to spit out a few words that made me seem like I had serious mental issues.

When she gave me a crazy look and said "oh yeah, I hear you" and started backing away, I knew our friendship was doomed.

This is my luck of late: for fun I booked tickets to Cityline with Marilyn Dennis for myself and a friend (I love Marilyn Dennis and would quite happily stalk her...and Margaret Atwood, love Margaret Atwood) - the tickets are for tomorrow. What are they doing tomorrow? Showing us how to make a bed. Great, I never make my bed and I definitely don't need to know how to do hospital corners. Reading over the day's profile it has to be the most boring show ever. And then Tuesday, well Tuesday is pajama/girlfriend day with Jann Arden. Jann Arden makes me laugh harder than anyone and coupled with Marilyn Dennis, well let's just say I would have had to borrow a pair of Mom's depends.

But instead I will making beds with Lynn Spence.

Anyway, if you're home tomorrow from 10-11, tune in and see me passed out unconscious in the audience...hopefully I won't be drooling.

I've just returned from taking Jakob to swim class.

Really, is it so wrong to have a drink at 12:23 on a chilly Saturday afternoon because he was really, REALLY horrible in the class. This time he didn't even pretend to have a passing interest in the swim instructor - and she's adorable.

Jakey spent his time acting like someone with an IQ below 40: gargling pool water, sucking on floating devices, splashing and making guttural noises. Lot of fun. I'm sure I was as much entertainment to the other parents as I yelled at Jakob, making hand gestures, continually hopping off the wall to remind him to listen - and he payed as much attention to me as his instructor. Of course when I told him no treat afterwards there was remorse - but it was fleeting.

My frustration was exasperated because our car broke down this morning leaving us stranded. I called CAA and they came an hour later. We were hoping that worst case scenario was that it needed a new battery, now it's at the shop while they perform a diagnostic. Seems the car is draining the battery even when completely shut down. Thankfully it worked fine at 11pm last night when we drove home from Norm's birthday party - all I can say is please don't let it be expensive. So to get Jakob to swim class, I dug out our dusty old sled and pulled him all the way to the pool while Paul dealt with the CAA guy and took the car to the garage.

Sleds are not meant to be pulled on concrete.

Sadly it will be a while before I post more pictures. I took my camera to Henry's and it turns out the there was a recall on my camera and also that Minolta is no longer in the digital camera business and has been bought out by Sony. Off my camera went to Sony with a promise to have it returned either fixed or replaced in 6 weeks. Hopefully before we head off to New York, and seeing as Minolta is no longer in business, and a new camera rather than a repaired model that's probably obsolete.

But there is news on the house front - and I really wish I had photos to post - our light fixtures are all up, we're missing only one Sputnik which will hopefully come in soon and the barn door has been installed, and everything looks fabulous! The painter was in doing his final touch ups so we're nearly at the end of this whole crazy process.

All we're missing now is the hardware for the barn door, which was to be installed last Thursday. But after a no-show by Tim (the carpenter) and still no word from John - I'm not holding my breath that it will come in any time soon. It's a bit disconcerting that John can't even be bothered to phone me to let me know the reasoning behind the no show when a date had been committed to. And it also makes me wonder how accountable he will be when it's time to do the touch ups next spring after the house has settled. If he can't be bothered to show up or call when we still owe him money, how am I going to get him here to do final repairs when we no longer owe him money and I no longer have a carrot to dangle?

Good news regarding my skimmed funds, the money is back in my account! - well was, it's now in the hand of the daycare. I am still sending out evil thoughts to the people who did this but thankfully I have a fantastic bank manager who put all the paperwork in place and had the money returned to me on Thursday. While I was out with a couple of girlfriends the other night, Beth told me the same thing had happened to her and it was the No Frills on St. Clair where her card had been compromised - and that was also one of the places I had used the week before with my debit card. My bank is not passing on the information on where my situation happened which is unfortunate. Going forward in life, I will be much more cautious when and where I use my debit and credit card - other than that I really don't know what more I can do.