Sophie's Story

   Yesterday I had lunch with a friend. I pulled out my cell phone to text C and let him know I'd be a bit late getting home. My phone made a squealing noise and then locked up. (It's an old flip phone.) For a few minutes I panicked, what was I going to do? C was going to worry. He's get upset. He'd think something bad had happened to me. I quickly calmed myself down mostly so my friend wouldn't think something was seriously wrong and ate my lunch.   On the drive home I thought about all the things we have now that we didn't have when I was younger. I also thought about how dependent we are on some of these things. I'll give you a few examples.   There was a time when we didn't have cell phones. I know that may be hard for some younger people to believe, but it is true. If you needed to call someone you either did it from home or you had to find a pay phone. If you used a pay phone you had to make sure you had some change. Debit cards didn't exis

   Yesterday after supper I put a load of laundry in the washing machine. Our biggest load of laundry tends to be whites. I put in the load, started the machine up added detergent and some non chlorine bleach and left it.    When the load was done I went downstairs to put it in the dryer. Then I saw it. It was staring at me.     It was a gel ink pen.     What the heck was a gel ink pen doing in the washing machine? Then I realized where it came from. I had put a lab coat in with the load. The gel ink pen must have been in the pocket. I was furious with myself.     This has happened before. Less than a year ago I left pens in my lab coat and washed them. Many items in the load had ink stains. I managed to save the underwear and other whites, but I ruined my favourite lab coat. As it was also my last good lab coat, I wound up having to buy several more. Since then I have been pretty careful about making sure then pens were out of my pockets. I'm guessing that was I so concern

      I will admit, last week was not a good one. Most of the week I was definitely down and feeling depressed. Going from full time plus to not working can do that to you. I'm feeling much more positive this week. A few good interviews and some potential opportunities help.   Now that I'm feeling better, I'm looking around the house. There are some things that need to be done. When I was working, I told myself that I'd do it on my day off. I'd take care of it on a weekend or maybe take a little vacation time to get things done. The trouble is, none of this happened. I didn't want to spend my few days off doing housework. I wanted to have some fun. I wasn't bothered by it.   Now that I'm home on what I considered to be a leave of absence from the pharmacy profession, it is starting to bother me. I'm tired of my cleaning closet being cluttered. I'm tired of having to hunt for things. I feel the need to get rid of stuff we don't need

   I know the title is a little strange, especially after I've written a column on how I like being an adult. It is true. I do like being an adult. Like all things though there are times when it isn't much fun.    Near our house is a church that has a Mid-East festival every year. They have music, dancing, things to buy, ethnic food for sale and tours of the church. We've attended most of the years we have lived here.    We went yesterday. We bought ourselves a sample platter of food to eat and sat down in the big tent where the tables were set up. They had music playing through a sound system. I'm not sure if it was Lebanese or Syrian music. I know that is had an interesting beat much different from music in Europe and in the United States. I don't know really how to describe it.    While we were eating I was tapping my foot. I couldn't help it. The music was contagious. The dance floor was empty except for a few small children running around. There was an

   My last day of work at my store was Saturday. I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Leaving a place that you've worked at for ten years is not easy.    I decided that some prep work was in order. During the week I cleaned out the drawer where I kept my things. There was a lot of stuff in that drawer. There were things I forgot I had. I had several small empty bottles of hand lotion and hand sanitizer spray. I think my plan was to take them home to put in the recycling bucket as we don't recycle plastic at work. There were a few cards I received from customers, interns and my staff. I put them in a box to take home with me.    I found a ton of old journals that I saved for the interns. I put those in the recycling bucket. I had several folders of lessons of various types for when I had interns. I wasn't sure what to do with those. There's a chance I may not get to precept interns again. Should I recycle it or take it home? I decided to take it home. Maybe some

        One of the things I'm doing is thinking about how I'm going to handle what I hope will be a short time of unemployment. This is actually harder than it seems. For nearly 25 years I've had a job to go to. In about a week Monday morning will roll around and I won't have anyplace I need to be.         It would be very easy for me to fall into the pit of despair and fear. It would be very easy for me to give into fears about a future that wasn't what I planned or imagined. It would be very easy for me to feel sad about what I'm going to miss.         I decided that the best thing to do is make a conscious decision to move away from that pit. I have heard that attitude makes a huge difference in how a person handles a challenge (I typed 'setback' and then deleted the word and used another.) I am a woman of faith, but that faith means nothing if it can't help me in a time of trouble.       I'm pleased with the fact that not once when this