The past 7 days: brought to you by Satan Days 5 and 6.

Here is the next installation of the increasingly inaccurately titled 7 Days of Hell. It would seem that only Wednesdays are actually hell for me. I'm writing this on a Wednesday, and thinking about what happened last Wednesday, and forget that the days in the middle were only so-so and involved nothing worse than hopeless church initiatives and tourquoise hair dye. But here it is!

Sunday. Sunday, people found out my dog died and were mad I hadn't told them earlier and then I was mad at them for being mad at me and I may have slapped someone. It was only on the thigh, though, so it barely counts. I am now part of the Visioning Board at church, which means that all the organizational problems that the church has that I usually laugh quietly to myself about are now suddenly my problem. For instance, the problem that the two areas that the church identified as most important are Christian Education and outreach programs. Guess which areas are the ones no one has time to volunteer for? That's right. CE had the Dickens of the time getting teachers for its classes, and now our great Thanksgiving Banquet outreach is probably getting canned because no one wants to coordinate it.

I first became aware of all these problems on Wednesday, 7 hours after Kaitie died, and had been hard-put not to explain to our pastor that there really is no hope and we should give up trying to coordinate anything because, while everyone likes to experience our programs and celebrate the fact that we have them, no one wants to run them, and the people who can be guilted into running them do 80% of the church work already. On Sunday I met up with the pastor and told him we should do Thanksgiving in January. He accepted it as a fall-back plan. I decided that my work here was done. It wasn't. But that's enough church business for one post.

Sunday I got several urgent phone calls from my boss asking me to go to the store and unlock it so that someone could come pick up their wedding order. I was going past a shopper's drug mart on the way to the store when I realized the only thing worth accomplishing today was to change the colour of my hair. I did my bakery duty and spent the rest of the day making random patches of my hair turquoise. Immediately afterwards, I remembered that I actually rather like having my hair be a normal colour. Though turquoise does make me happy. I am divided

Which is worse: having to try to comfort someone, or having to accept comfort from someone else? When someone's pet dies, you apologize for it, because that's the right thing to do, even though it was clearly not your fault. What does the aggrieved individual say to that? Have some free kibble? I phone around to see who wants Kaitie's old dog food, and end up getting to spend some time with the two most precocious little girls I have ever met (as well as their mother). They have a pomeranian who eats Kaitie's brand of food. We talked about racism and Shakespeare and dry British humour, and the misconceptions that people hold about pomeranians. I got a free meal and some chocolate cake out of the bargain, too.

Monday, I used my hair to turn several white towels green, then signed up for Judo classes, paid for them, and realized I am always busy in the evenings, and will never go to them. I went home and played with melted chocolate instead, and tried to write something coherent for Creative Writing. I had to read something aloud in class last week. It was meaningless gobbledegook that was supposed to emulate Cormick McCarthy's writing style. I was told I sound wittily ironic, which I appreciated. Unfortunately, being witty and ironic does not help me think up any actual story line. I can be witty and ironic for several pages without saying anything at all. And our first assignment is due next week. Yikes.