Pre-Christmas annoying things (and a few small pleasures)

 Annoying things: 

• I was trying to comment on a WordPress blog recently -- and when I hit "publish," up popped a note from WordPress:  they had blocked my password and I had to create a new one?!  This took some doing, but I finally managed to change my password (grrr...). 
• Related annoying thing:  My comment disappeared into the ether, and had to be recreated.  

• I went to the nail salon last week to have the gel/shellac polish on my toes removed. I've been going there for occasional manicures & pedicures since we moved here, almost 10 years ago now. My SIL goes there too and suggested it to me when I asked her for a referral. It's near where she & BIL live, and the prices are pretty reasonable.  (She & I ended up in pedicure chairs side by side the day before Older Nephew's wedding rehearsal, totally unplanned!) 
• Back story:  I'd had a pedicure in late September, just before we headed to dh's cousin's cottage for the weekend. I had asked for just a regular pedicure with regular enamel polish  -- but the nail tech pushed (hard) for me to have a shellac/gel pedicure. "It lasts much longer! You don't have to sit under the dryer for as long!"  she pointed out brightly. 
• (What she didn't point out:  it was more money, and thus = potentially a larger tip for her.) 
• I didn't really CARE if the polish lasted longer;  I just wanted it to look decent for the weekend. I don't get pedicures very often, and I like being able to remove the polish myself once it starts to chip and look ragged. Plus I am not entirely comfortable with the unnecessary UV light exposure. 
• Anyway, she talked me into it (eyeroll), and brought out a polish that she said was very close to the regular polish I had already picked out. Annoying thing/Spoiler alert:  it was not. I had picked out a teal blue;  the polish I wound up with was more of a teal green. It was nicely done, but not quite what I had wanted -- and obviously more expensive -- and I left feeling a little annoyed that I hadn't stuck to my guns and gotten what I really wanted. 
• While at the cottage, I stubbed the toes on my right foot on the leg of our bed -- TWICE.  
• I didn't think much about it until about a month later, in late October, when I was in the shower. My nails had started to grow out from the nail bed, and while I was lathering up my feet, I noticed a black spot on/under the nail of my right second toe.  I have no idea how long it had been there -- I mean, how often do you look closely at your feet?  Plus I obviously didn't have my glasses on in the shower. Most of the spot was (of course) UNDER the polish -- which I could not remove myself (grrr....). 
• The logical explanation, obviously, is that it's a bruise from when I banged my toe on the bed leg at the cottage a month earlier. (I had a previous black toenail after hitting my toe on the corner of a wall, some years ago. It turned totally black, lasted for months before eventually fading away -- and my nail eventually fell off. Thankfully, it did eventually grow back.) 
• EXCEPT.  I couldn't help but think of the younger brother of my best friend from high school. He died of melanoma at the far-too-young age of 40, leaving a wife and two young boys, as well as his parents & four sisters. It started -- you guessed it -- under the nail of one of his toes. He thought he just had some weird sort of nail fungus. By the time he checked it out with his doctor and they figured out what it actually was, it had spread, and it was too late. :(  
• We had checkups scheduled with our family doctor in late October, and I showed the spot to him. He was pretty sure it was a bruise too, but since he was referring me to a dermatologist (for other reasons), he suggested I have that doctor check it out. (And that I should get the polish fully removed before I went.)  
• So last week, I headed back to the nail salon. I explained, both over the phone and at the counter, that I wanted my gel/shellac polish removed. They could trim my nails, remove the dead skin, etc., but I did not want more polish, even clear. 
• Wouldn't you know it? I got the very same nail tech. And this time, she started in on the hard sell for a paraffin wax treatment. "The skin on your feet is very dry... the paraffin helps seal in the moisture. I really recommend it,"  she said. 
• I've had paraffin treatments before, and I knew she was going to keep pushing, so once again I caved and said yes. 
• She brought out a plastic bag filled with liquid wax. It was HOT, As she squished it over my foot and slipped a terrycloth bag over the plastic, I felt like the bottom of my foot was burning. "It's HOT... please, take it off!" I said.
• She did NOT take it off. "It won't burn you, the temperature isn't hot enough," she assured me brighly, as she put the other bag of liquid wax over my foot -- which was also hot. 
• I was honestly afraid my feet were going to be burned. They weren't -- my feet are fine -- and she did do a nice job on cleaning up my feet and smoothing down the rough spots -- but I wasn't particularly happy. I didn't have enough change to leave even a 10% tip  (I had enough for a larger tip on the regular pedicure I thought I would be getting...!), and frankly, I didn't feel like she deserved one.
• The girls there don't wear nametags, so I'm not sure who else I could ask for. I'm debating whether to ask my SIL, or just try to find a different salon, maybe one closer to where we live. I've been happy with the service and the results in the past;  I just don't appreciate the hard upsell.  :p   
• The kicker?  When I got to the dermatologist's office this week, I COMPLETELY forgot to ask him about it!  (eyeroll) 
• In my defense, he was a busy guy & spent no more than five minutes with me before sailing out of the room and on to his next patient. Sigh. 
  
  
• I found a typo in this year's edition of the annual Christmas letter that I send out with some of my cards. (I mean, I used to be my department's go-to editor & proofreader...!) 
• Related annoying thing:  Of course I found it AFTER I had put the cards into the mail...!  
• Not only that -- what I THOUGHT I had written ("The trip we’d hoped to take didn’t materialize, but maybe next year…!") turned out to be "The trip we'd hoped to take didn't maternalize...").  Freudian slip??  :p 

• You may or may not recall that we had some plumbing repairs done in late August that turned out to be far more complex (near-disastrous, in fact) -- and WAY more expensive -- than we had anticipated. 
• I wrote about this in brief, general terms at the time. To summarize briefly: We wanted a few things done, but my main concern was the water spout in the shower cubicle in our master bathroom. (Like the water spout in a bathtub, but in a standalone shower cubicle. Apparently it's a Canadian thing:  a lot of people refer to it as a "toe tester," lol.)  It had been dripping for months. The dripping sound was driving me crazy, and it was a constant battle to keep the mildew at bay. I figured all that was needed was likely to replace a rubber ring behind the tap handle. 
• I'd mentioned the issue at least twice to the plumber recommended by our property manager, who does the general plumbing repairs & maintenance for the building, both in person and in an email, but annoyingly, he never got back to me. I asked dh if I should try one more time or try someone else, and he said to try someone else. I did a bit of Googling, read some reviews, picked a name and called them up. 
• As I said above, what we wanted done turned out to be a LOT more complicated (and the bill was MUCH higher) than we'd anticipated. We weren't very happy with how it all unfolded (let alone the bill!!) -- but the good thing was that they did fix the dripping. (Eventually!) . 
• Since then, however, we've noticed the water runs nowhere near as warm/hot as it used to. Even when I crank the tap handle all the way over on the "hot" side, the best it gets is just nicely warm. Some mornings, it's just lukewarm. Also, the water pressure seems a lot weaker.  
• Note:  We have no issues with the warm/hot water anywhere else in the unit. 
• One recent morning (less than a week before we leave on holidays), dh emerged from the shower to tell me the water was cold.  Not freezing cold (yay?), but not even lukewarm -- like, barely tepid. 
• I got in the shower, turned on the water and stuck my foot under the spout (without turning on the actual shower). "Oh hell no," I said.  
• Luckily, we have a second bathroom, with a regular tub/shower unit. Dh had taken a few baths in there, and I'd used the tub to fill buckets and wash large items (like window screens), but in the almost 10 years we've lived here, we'd never tried out the shower...!  
• Well, no time like the present...!  
• The water was wonderfully warm and the spray was strong.  
• His cold shower was the last straw for dh:  he's resolved to call the plumber -- the building-approved plumber -- when we get back from Christmas holidays, and ask them to come have a look. They may be hard to get hold of sometimes, but they have done a good job for us before, and their prices have been very reasonable.
• We are definitely NOT calling the other guys back -- even though it's really their issue to fix...!  
  
  
• A to-do list that never seems to get any shorter...!  (especially as we head towards Christmas...!) 

Small pleasures: 

• The decorated Christmas tree, especially the lights.  
• Little Great-Nephew #2's first birthday party on Saturday!!  :)  
• I'm still lacking some stocking stuffers, but the great-niblings and Little Princesses are well taken care of.  :)  
• Heading west for Christmas in a few days' time too!  :)