Can't touch these

Technically, they're not made of enough fabric to be Hammer Pants, but for my purposes, they are close enough. Three pairs of them, in fact. One is snake pattern rayon. And cost $10. And are now the only pairs of pants I can wear as I wait to find out more about my journey towards the spine surgeon. I'm hoping that he and I will only chat, exchange some information and statistics about sequestered discs (I've graduated from herniation, it seems), and then I will leave his office with a few trips and plans to cancel and no surgeries in my near future. We'll see.

Although I went into town by tram in search of my non-jeans today, I returned by taxi. I've been taking taxis about 3-4 times a week these days, to make sure I don't overdo it with the standing and sitting, but can still go to the odd birthday party (in reality, it was totally normal, with amazing party favors from a Dollar Store in Montreal), shopping trip or pool outing. I make sure to just decide not to buy the last item and bam!, there's my cab fare home.

I've gotten to know a few taxi drivers, with all this being ferried around which brings me to my other topic - learning German. I think that should we every move back to the US while I am still of employable age, I should really look for work as a relocation expert, or a university study abroad counselor. Because this whole thing about "oh, you should just learn German, you'll feel more at home" is hitting some serious roadblocks in the form of misunderstandings. Sure, my conversational partners will forgive my bad grammar and small vocabulary when they are friends, but when the taxi dispatcher sends the taxi to pick me up at the children's hospital instead of dropping me there, or the guy I just called to come in 30 minutes shows up 10 minutes early at 30 minutes past the hour, I'm not sure how much of it is my German versus their mistake. And they get pissed off, and I just feel like calling off watching an hour of bad soap operas a day and reverting to English where I can be magnanimous....and right.

I also have a new found respect for all those people learning English as a second language. I apologize for in, to, after, before, under, on, around and all those other words that can really mess with your intended communication. I finally get how much it sucks to be misunderstood on those points.