physio appt - finally

Well, it's not next week - or the week after. Joan's first meeting with her physiotherapist is May 22 - the day before her neurology appointment. She'll probably be meeting the occupational therapist the next month. She's in the study, though, which means sessions starting next week, running through the rest of May. Can't say I'm thrilled - the OT is the one that orders the hand brace, so that's yet another delay on that. But it's better than nothing. I've been told the labour shortage has hit the children's hospital particularly hard, because most people moving here are young people who either come with young families, or start them soon after they get here, and I believe it. It's so....incredibly...slow. Though, they've just promised some rediculous sum of money for healthcare in the last budget - they updated their numbers based on $78 a barrel. It allowed them to invest billions, and still eliminate the healthcare premium as of January, 2009. If you want a job in healthcare, now's the time to come to Alberta! That and construction. They're investng a ton, both municipally and provincially into roads and infrastructure. Want a great-paying unskilled labour type job, pouring asphalt? We're the place to be! Oh, and mechanics - we just paid $69 for an OIL CHANGE because there's such a shortage! Even the Chicken Shack is still loooking for someone. They've been hiring since last September at least - $15/hour. The 7-11 starts at $12, including benefits and retention bonuses. It's crazy! And they've done so much frantic home building, that housing prices are expected to fall this year, including rental prices, which aren't even all that bad. Our place is awesome, and only $900/month. (Though, the little war-time type bungalows in our neighbourhood sell for $700,000. Or at least, that's what they've been listing at. They sit for months on end at those prices, so they must be coming down.) The only downfall of Calgary is it's a two-industry town - oil and construction. And it's all based on oil sands - the oil they've been pumping is almost all gone, which means our entire economy is based on oil being at least $60/barrel. If it ever falls below that, or even gets too close, this place would be a ghost town. Nice thought. But it's good while it lasts!

Anyway, I'm off to get a GST number. I tried and failed yesterday. We don't have a printer anymore, so the guy on the Revenue Canada number said to pick up a form at the Calgary tax office, and we can fax it back to them when we were finished. Well, sounds great in theory - it should absolutely be that simple, shouldn't it? So, I pack up the kids, and make the dreaded trek downtown. Anyone who's been in downtown Calgary feels for me right now. It's the most ludicrous downtown in the world. The main street - Centre Street - is cut in the middle of town, by the freaking Calgary Tower! And it's not like the road that runs into Queen's Park, where they've built a ring road around it. No. it's just smack in the middle of the street, and you have to navigate through a maze of narrow, one-way streets to get around it. It's ludicrous. Who planned that!? Anyway, we finally got there, then had to hunt for the parkade, then find a spot inside it, get the kids out, find the elavator, get into the lobby, find Revenue Canada inside a ginormous Government of Canada building. We finally got there, only to be stopped by a security guard. I'm a Canadian, in a Canadian government building, trying to conduct legitimate Canadian business, in a Canadian agency, and I'm stopped by a guard, who asks me what I want. "I just need a form," I squeak. Five women behind desks are staring at me. "Over there," the guard says. "WHAT do you need?" asks one woman, visibly annoyed by this intrusion. "I need an RC1." (That stands for Revenue Canada 1. As in, Form #1).
"What's THAT!?" she barks. "It's the new business form," her neighbour whispers to her. "Oh. We don't do forms here," the first one says, handing me a photocopied sheet outlining all the ways I can get the form - none include stopping by a Revenue Canada office. I can get one mailed to me, but she warned me that it's very, very slow. How nice. In fact, I can't even bring the form back to them once I finally DO get it - I have to send it directly to Regina. I really wanted to ask what exactly they DO do there, but didn't. I was the only non-employee in the room. There were five clerks and a security guard. Seriously, what DO they do? The whole fiasco could have been prevented if they'd just publish their phone number. Online, the office description said "service by appointment only", but it gave no phone number to make an appointment!! Ah, gotta love government waste in action.

So the business is off to a rough start. But the kids are doing great. John is still missing family. He's started calling me "grandfather," and pretending that I'm his grandpa. It's not so bad at home, but he did it all through the grocery store yesterday. We got a few strange looks, to say the least. He's such a goofball. he's really grown lately. he's become really tall and skinny all of a sudden, so a lot of his pants are loose. He had on a particularly baggy pair to get groceries in, and somewhere in the pasta isle, I hear. "Mom! Look at me!" I turned around to see him with his pants down around his ankles, and he giggling like a loon. Thankfully, no-one else saw! He's potty trained, by the way! he's in underwear 100per cent of the time. He hasn't wet his bed in almost two weeks, and has even been pooping in his potty! Everytime he does it, he comes up to me and says "mom, I have a surprise for you!" When I ask what it is, he whispers "it's something brown." Then we head to the bathroom for the great unveiling.

Anyway, he's up now, so I'd better go.