Use Your Words - Lottery

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once, and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

beautiful ~ warmer ~ lottery ~ choice ~ rejoice

They were submitted by Baking In A Tornado - thanks, Karen!

I am writing this at Starbucks at Metalli, a lovely Shopping Plaza in Zug, the city Colin is playing hockey at. Yes, we commute up to an hour's drive (each way), three times a week, at different times, to different gyms all over town.

This is in addition to Monday night swimming class, btw.

So far the weather has been diverse, too. I was hoping to use the warmer spring days to put my (car's) top down.

So far it only happened once, but then it was truly beautiful! A very rare visibility.

I have been tense these days:

Colin is in the process of getting braces. Therefore I need to take him to the dentist's for a series of short appointments. Our local orthodontist who specialises in children is fully booked for at least 12 months, so we are lucky that her former med school classmate is squeezing us in. He's only a 15 minutes' drive away, but usually we need another 15 minutes to park our car. With C's schedule it was hard to make those appointments, so the dentist (who actually treats a team of grown-up hockey players which makes him the hockey dentist!) suggested to leave school early, maybe skip some less relevant class like the gym? "Are you crazy, PE is my favourite one!" Colin cried. They agreed it was preferable to get out of arts and crafts, hahaha!
My Mom is visiting my brother and his family in Israel, which is wonderful for them, but to me, selfishly, it means I have no babysitter for our usual times.
Hubby left for a three day vendor partner convention in Lisbon, Portugal, which is wonderful for him, but to me, selfishly, it means I have to take care of everything at home. Who am I kidding, though, I do that when he's here, too. Somebody actually pointed out I should rejoice over the fact that there is one person less who is making a mess!
My coworker is on vacation for longer than three weeks, which is wonderful for her, but to me, selfishly, it means I have to work as full time as possible. Later that month we are undertaking a customer event to present a new product. I am the project leader taking care of flyers, invitations, conference rooms, name tags, giveaways, snacks, etc. With my new schedule, see above, I feel like I either do food prep, laundry, packing, working or driving:

Had to rush home during lunch hour to complete the remaining tasks.

I miss the things I can't do those days, like going to the gym (who would have thought?), going shopping in peace vs chasing after our groceries during lunch hour, meeting friends for coffee and blogging.

After this year's A-Z Challenge I have some renewed motivation to do free posts beyond the many challenges I'm involved in, but frankly, my plate is full right now. At least I try and take notes so my ideas may be used at a later time.

Until my current situation will totally improve as of the week of May 22nd when my colleague returns from her trekking trip to the Peruvian Andes Mountains, I wish I won the lottery!

All of my issues would just go away!

I'd quit my day job, buy an appartment right next to the hockey arena, hire a maid, a driver, a chef and a trouble shooter. Somebody who takes over crisis management on a morning like today:

I had been up since 5:45am, working on my to-do list, see above.

When I got out of the shower, I wanted to insert my left contact lens, and it was gone. I fumbled and felt for it, but the left side of the container was empty. I called Colin to help me look for it. Sometimes it sticks underneath the faucet or around the sink, and without wearing my contacts I can't look for my contacts, you can see my dilemma.

With all the dental products cluttering our sink
I felt I deserved some girly stuff!

He couldn't find it either. Darn.

Luckily I had one pack left. I wear monthly contact lenses, so I went ahead and put in the new one. Oh my goodness!!! Everything was super fuzzy! Maybe it didn't quite sit at the right place? I inserted my right one and had a look. Nope, seemed to be OK, just - it was all blurry.

I covered my left eye: I could see OK with my right one, so I decided to leave the house. It had become late.

Driving went fine, but as soon as I switched on my computer at the office and wanted to start working, I couldn't read those small letters! So I sat there, covering my left eye with my left hand, trying to get stuff done. Of course with my colleague gone, and my driving back and forth between office, home and practice, I had a lot of pending issues I needed to take care of. Plus I needed to be able to read and drive.

The longer I tried, the sicker I felt, though. Dizzy, headache, you get the picture. I called my contact lens lady who promised she'd order a new pack for me, but my custom prescription would take up to ten days. "Please send me the funny lens, I'd like to take a look", she said.

I told my coworkers I was going home to remove my contacts and come back to work wearing my glasses.

When I removed the bad left lens and the good right lens I could still see pretty decently.

Whaaaaat?

Covered my left eye: blurry

Covered my right eye: perfect

Whaaaaat?

Oh my goodness!!!

A major blonde moment.

I had been wearing my left contact all along!!! When I opened the new pack and inserted the new one, I actually covered the first lens with the second one, hence the major blurriness!

I had to laugh too hard to feel stupid.

Went back to the office - not wearing my glasses so I had to tell them what happened - and looked up the words I needed to use for this post:

beautiful ~ warmer ~ lottery ~ choice ~ rejoice

How was I going to integrate the contact lens story? I didn't know yet, but I knew I was going to manage somehow. Sh** like this deserves a platform!

Oh, wait, one word is still on my list.

Later that day, after dropping C off at his gym, going to SBUX to write (part of) this post, picking him up and driving home I kept getting notifications on my watch.

Hockey World Cup started a few days ago. It takes place in Paris, France (and Cologne, Germany), and that night the French team was playing against the Swiss. Of course, as soon as we were home Colin begged me to watch, and I thought what the heck. With hubby away, anything goes.

After 10pm I was getting so tired. The game was tied, and with very little time remaining they would go into overtime, and who knows how long they were going to be at it.

I told C I was going to sleep.

"And what am I supposed to do?"

"It's actually your choice. You can switch off the game and come over and sleep in our bed (which he loves) or - if you promise to get up without whining tomorrow morning - you can finish watching, and you sleep in your own bed."

That sweet boy preferred a sleepover with Mommy!!!

He didn't miss much. France won during overtime. He was pretty mad the next morning. Our next game is vs Canada on Saturday, let's see how we'll do, my expectations are not high.