Seismic Twitch

What can I say? I rock.

I’m driving a manual transmission car. That’s not the firsts though. I knew how to drive one before this but I’ve gotten much, much, much more practice shifting than I ever figured I would. Bran can’t drive for another 3 weeks so I’m primary chauffeur. I’ve driven to and from the hospital, to and from work, to and from stores, to and from Boy’s work and to and from the highway where Costco is. That’s more driving than I think I’ve done in the past 10 years.

Today was the Costco run. Bran and I went to get some fruit and other essentials that we were running out of or didn’t have to begin with. One was white poultry meat. Another was some kind of spice that doesn’t have salt. Mrs. Dash was the only one of many. The rest had salt as either the primary ingredient, or listed in the top 5. Really, even lemon pepper had salt first.

We got fruit, lots of apples, oranges and grapefruit. The oranges are the delicious little zipper skins (Satsuma or Japanese oranges depending on where they’re grown). The grapefruit are the lovely sweet red ones. Red grapefruit are the sweetest of the varieties. Ruby Red is the best. We eat them like oranges but I don’t eat the hard section skin and avoid the white as it’s mega bitter. The apples, well they’re Gala and Bran likes them. Since he’s the apple eater, he gets to pick.

We also got salad fixings, cucumber, and vine ripened tomatoes. Toast and tomato for breakfast!

We looked at the salad dressings, but they didn’t have anything suitable (or frankly, appetizing in appearance) for us. I’ll be making a light oil and balsamic vinegar dressing for the salad…something good and simple.

I’m never going to make a judgment on a person who doesn’t help their spouse carry heavy things. Bran isn’t supposed to lift anything over 5 pounds and not with his right hand (that’s the hand they did the second angioplasty and stent insertion). Since it was to Costco you know that there was nothing in the cart that weighed under 5 pounds. I had to carry everything in and put it away.

So now I’m sautéing up three breasts (one for each of us – Boy will have leftovers when he gets home), the salad is ready (love the premixes, in this case bibb lettuces and spring mix) and leftover baby potatoes that can be nuked. The chicken is spiced with Mrs. Dash and paprika and sautéed in about 1 tsp of oil and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. It smells lovely.

Later tonight I’ll package up the rest of the meat so that it doesn’t go to waste.

I don’t like driving. I don’t know if I ever told anyone here, but I don’t. That’s why this is such a difficult month for me. I mean, it’s hard on Bran the most, but it’s hard on all of us in our very own ways. Think about being phobic and not wanting to leave the house, add onto that an activity that is undesirable in a car that doesn’t have an automatic transmission and it’s an arduous time. Happily I’ve not braved parallel parking in it.

Work was ok. I spent a lot of time going through the wire working magazines I got. Two are paper, the other 4 are on disc. There are lots of wonderful ideas for making jewelry that I can hardly wait to try out. However, because Rings & Things shipped me the wrong wire I have to go to Michael’s to get some at retail cost. Ouch. I repacked it up in the original box and sent it back to them at their cost. It’s only fair. I’ll be jiggered (whatever that is) if I’m going to pay for shipping more than once, especially for their error.

I was hoping to have a few weeks of practice before I started milling out the stuff for the Spirit Moves Us: Pagan Crafters Showcase and Sale in late November and CFCR Craftacular on October 29th and 30th. I’m not sure I can do both especially now that I don’t have wire. What a pain! Yeah, cal me a waaaa-mulance, right?

Anyway, supper is ready and it’s time for me to eat. I’m somewhat peckish.

Let’s see. The highlight of my week was getting my fingers caught in the car door. Again. This time it was my forefinger and middle fingers to get the brunt of the damage. Bran rolled his eyes and Boy was underwhelmed (it was he who closed the door on them, again). My forefinger isn’t very happy with bruising across the nail and a nasty scraping of skin off just below it. The middle finger just has a bit of bruising under my fingernail. Nothing was broken and everything is healing nicely. My boss is threatening to get me a helmet to wear because he’s convinced that someday I’m going to decapitate myself. Bran and I figure that something like lacrosse gloves or hockey gloves would be of more use. The residents just wince and then laugh at me.

My piercings are healing up nicely and look marvellous. I love them! I’m already thinking about getting more. The next one I want to get is tragus done next. I just can’t decide if I want to get both ears done or just one, and if one, which one. I might not though, I just read about how it might interfere with the use of ear buds. Hmmm…I’ll have to think some more. It’s a good thing I don’t get holes punched in my ears more often than once a year or longer.

I got some of my beading orders. I have the display racks for bracelets and earrings and the earring cards. They’re set aside and will go into a plastic box when I get one. I have more beads and tools. Alas, I ordered the wrong wire. I ordered 1/2 round. I should’ve ordered round. 1/2 round is shaped like it says. It works well for wire wrapping but not for other things. I’ve been playing with it regardless and done a few nice things. I ordered the round wire last night. I should arrive sometime next week. I got a new, metal jig. It’ll come in handy when I made chandelier earrings. I can also make my own hooks an closers with it.

I have a tool that I call the clapper. It’s two pieces of thick plastic, similar to what cutting boards are made of but somewhat harder. You put the metal work in between them and either use a hammer or hand, pound on the top piece. It helps to make the metal harder without damaging it.

I also have a neat tool that will allow me to make my own jump rings of various sizes as well as other round shapes with wire. I also have a pair of nylon tip pliers that will help me make scrolls without damaging the wire at all. Before I got this tool the pliers I used marred the wire. That makes oxidizing more likely. Of course, the wire I’ll be working with won’t oxidize as it will be surgical grade stainless steel.

I got some leopard skin jasper and aquamarine beads. They’re all quite lovely.

I’ve been looking at real estate in town for the past couple of weeks as well. It’s good to see that there are houses available that we’ll be able to afford once the will is settled and dispersed. We probably won’t end up in the area that Bran most desires. That tends to be an expensive area anyway, but prices are still coming down. It’s possible that by the time everything is ready (including us) we’ll be able to afford to buy in that area. There is one loft condo in an old warehouse that would be nice. 1800 square feet of living area. It’s out of our affordable range, but who knows? Maybe we’ll win the lottery, right?

I’m surprised at the number of new houses being built that don’t have things like closets at the front and back door. I mean, if you’re coming inside after gardening or even taking the trash out on a rainy day, don’t you want to have a place to put your shoes that isn’t in front of the fridge? If you have company come over, don’t you want a place to hang their coats? I just don’t understand that. So it’s a requirement for me, to have that.

Another annoyance to me is a fireplace. I mean, sure, they look good, but they interfere with furniture arrangement. I wouldn’t use a fireplace. When we had one at the last place we rented we only used it a couple of times. It was never used for heating. We finally put the couch in front of it because that’s where I wanted seating. That goes for those wood stoves too.

I like the idea of a galley kitchen. There are lots of houses that have that and then the eating area to the side. It’s similar to what many apartments have in terms of cooking/eating arrangement. It’s compact. The weird ones have the fridge or stove sitting all by themselves off to the side like little orphans. I want a surface next to the stove to put stuff if needs must.

You’ll get to see photos of the place we move into and of the yard. Chances are the yard will change because I’m not keen on grass. It’s a large monoculture space that lacks colour variety. Though I won’t take up the entire lawn immediately, I’ll work on making flower, vegetable and herb gardens larger and larger until there is little or no grass left. Perennials take less care than grass and are definitely prettier. Flowers encourage the population of pollinators like bees and butterflies. We need more of them in the world.

A friend is in town visiting. Right now she’s staying at other friends’ places but on Sunday she comes here. So I’ll be helping finish up the cleaning (the bathroom is long overdue) and getting laundry done. Laundry needs to be done anyway. We’re all kind of short on clothes.

That’s about it. I think I’m going to take apart some bracelets.

Let’s see. The Fringe Festival was a bust so far as selling my jewelry goes. I sold only about 10 pairs of earrings and no bracelets. There were other people there selling earrings made of feathers, glass and plastic who had better sales. Of course their prices were like, $2 a pair and such. I can’t go that low. I can spend upwards of 1/2 hour putting together a single pair of earrings (some of the more complex chandelier earrings take even longer) and use supplies that cost more than a plastic bead would cost. The shoppers wanted cheap stuff. I’m sure they got that. I hope the people who bought my stuff are happy and remain happy for a long while.

Bran was steady in his dedication to selling my stuff. He was out there every day, chatting to people, being all friendly and shit. Definitely stuff I have little tolerance for. Boy would go out and help him set up at times when our friend had to be at work. I’m extremely grateful to both of them for that.

Now I have to rethink my jewelry. People keep telling me my stuff is good and that they like it but it just doesn’t sell. That’s really discouraging. Even when the prices were cut to $10 a pair, $15 for 2 pair and $19 for 3 pair and the bracelets prices were cut from $20 to $10, nothing sold. Even people who wore dangly earrings didn’t even glance at my stuff. I just don’t get it.

One thing I thought of, judging from some of the stuff I heard, is for show sales in person, I’m going to concentrate on making simple birthstone earrings. maybe a few fancy chandeliers but nothing epic. People seemed to like the idea of having their birthstones. I heard this from people looking at the wrapped stone necklaces made by the woman we were sharing a table with. She made out fairly well and people were always more interested in her stuff than mine.

After that, I just don’t know what to do. I know I overpriced my stuff for what people were willing to pay on Etsy. That makes me sad because then my work is undervalued, if that makes sense. Plus I have to pay a shit pile to ship stuff and people don’t want to pay that either. I don’t want to lose money making jewelry. I mean, I love doing it, but I don’t want to be giving it away.

I’m feeling rather discouraged about it right now.

On a brighter, if more painful note, I got two more piercings in my left ear. I now have holes from my lobe nearly to the top of my helix. There are seven holes in total. I might get two more in the helix, I’m not sure. These last two hurt like the dickens!

Today, doing as I’m supposed to do, I went to the drug store to pick up some saline to clean the piercings. Unfortunately I picked up lens solution, not saline solution. I have to return it and get the saline. I feel somewhat stupid about picking that.

The landlords are coming into town on Tuesday so we’ve started trying to get the house less messy. We’re still going through stuff and getting rid of things we don’t want. That always creates mess. I swept up my area and the small foyer of the bedrooms and bathroom. Now to sweep the rest of the house. My back doesn’t like doing that but it has to be done. I’ll continue on and sweep up the kitchen and get the floor washed (at least where there’s obvious stuff on the floor so it looks clean).

I’ve been looking at houses around town. When Dad’s will is completed with probate and the taxes are all filed, his estate will be distributed. Probate shouldn’t take too long as he only had the house for property. When that comes through then Bran and I are going to be looking for a house, probably come next summer. I know it’s pointless to look right now if we won’t actually be looking to buy until next year, but I can’t help it. I want to stop being a tenant so very much. I’m tired of the limited space we have. I’m tired of our stupid kitchen (who puts a 4′ X 5′ island in a kitchen that’s hardly 10′ square?) and not being able to get around in it conveniently. I’m tired of having not storage space and having shit in the bedrooms that should be in a pantry or basement. I’m tired of not being able to do what I want in my own space.

Yeah. I’m a sad and pathetic case.

Well, I’m off to sweep up the kitchen.

Apparently the supply of jewelry at the Fringe Festival (a 10 day event with independent plays, music performances, street performances, psychics and craft sales galore) on Broadway Avenue this year is creating a buyers market. I haven’t heard from Bran yet, but as of this morning only one pair of earrings had been sold. I have a feeling that mine is the only nickel free stuff though.

I spent yesterday rather productively. I went into work at 1130 or so to get the month end report done. It needs to be handed in on Tuesday. My boss could’ve done it, but he prefers that the person who knows what they’re doing take care of it. I was ok with that. I ate lunch and then phoned Bran to come get me.

We went off to Michael’s to find some earring nuts (those backs put on studs and hooks to prevent them from falling out of the holes). The place was rather crowded. I didn’t like that much. I liked it even less when I couldn’t get up to see the rack of findings. That got even more less desirable when I encountered a woman wearing enough perfume to kill flies at 50 paces. What is that all about? Do people have no sense of smell? If they don’t they should be outlawed from wearing scents. Anyway, it was a fruitless trip.

I worked to make jewelry on Thursday to increase the supplies for the Fringe but didn’t do anything on Friday. Today I made two bracelets. They’re rather pretty. When the Fringe is over, I’ll start taking photos again to get some up on my Etsy store. I’ll also be working on advertising on other sites to get buyers.

Today I set up the etagiere I took from Dad’s. It didn’t fit where I hoped it would on my bedside table. It does, however, fit on my end table on the living room. I now have multiple shelves holding my beading, tissues, pills and other junk that crowded my table.

I went to Panda Hall and Rings and Things and made orders. I got earring nuts, various tools I need, wire, and beads. I think I spent around $450 or so on supplies. Oh, I also bought a wire working book about the basics. The wire I ordered is surgical grade stainless steel.

On a more disappointing note, last night I ordered yummy Chinese food. I got deep fried shrimp (colour me having had a craving) and tofu and vegetables in sate sauce. That’s not the disappointing part. The disappointing part is the whole thing falling off my work table and leaking sauce all over the floor. The food stayed in the container as the lid had still been on it, but damn!

Boy approves of my movie choices today. First was The Cheap Detective which he missed because he was entertaining a friend. the second was The Incredibles, third was Interview with a Vampire, fourth was Catwoman (yes, the bad Halle Barry version) and now Casablanca is playing as I type this entry.

We had a discovery when we got home on Wednesday. Because of all the rain we’ve been having the ground has been saturated. The last good storm we had about 12 days ago caused water to leech through the concrete and infiltrate our basement. The tenant in the suite down there didn’t say anything until his floor was getting wet. By that time it was too late, damage had been done. Had he notified the landlord when he noticed water the first time a sump pump could have been put into a hole and the water pumped out through the sewer system. Now we have a small issue with black mould.

The downstairs tenant has to move out. His suite is contaminated. Since black mould is highly toxic (or produces toxins, I’m not exactly sure) he has to leave. The stuff we have downstairs is also contaminated and will have to be cleaned. We may have to move as well depending on the results of the tests conducted that evening in our suite. Upstairs has also been affected, but it’s not known how much. One advantage we have is that we rarely use the rear door and did laundry over a week ago, before the bloom of black mould (hopefully). We don’t have forced air heating so that prevents fast spread of the mould. The symptoms of poisoning from black mould are heart burn (or increasing heart burn), sleeping a lot, and a few other things that we suffer from all the time anyway – and did before we moved in here – so which came first, right?

Anyway, the tests done will determine whether or not we can stay here. Cross your toes would you please? I don’t want to move before we move into a house we buy after the will is completed in probate.

Speaking of buying houses, I’ve been looking through the real estate listings for Saskatoon. I’ve found several areas that are affordable to us, up to $300,000. Some are a little bit more than that but we’d not want to spend much more. I want a house that we don’t have to do a lot of altering to. This means I’m looking for hardwood floors (or laminate) throughout the house, a good, high wooden privacy fence, a well functioning kitchen, and a basement that has adequate windows for egress. This means it’s most likely to be a split level house. Central air, though not a requirement, would be a definite bonus. At any rate, it was entertaining and kept me amused for several hours. I even looked at the areas we’d not likely buy in unless desperate.

That’s about it. I’m looking forward to the new supplies coming in.

I’ve sunk down a lot with my feelings about Dad dying. I’ve preferred quiet to talking. Boy and Bran went out to Shell Lake to be with friends today. I opted to stay at home. I didn’t feel up to being with people and welcomed the time in solitude.

I got most of my order from Panda Hall. They left out one of the spacer bead orders though. I contacted them that day, and of course, made a typo in the email. It should be straightened out soon, I hope. I didn’t pay much for them, but I’m missing out 2000 pieces of stuff I paid for.

Since the order arrival, and after I checked it, I started to experiment with what I could create. I’ve made several bracelets and some earrings. I’d make more earrings but I don’t have many earring backs (I use rubber backs) left. Getting more will have to wait for a bit. For the time being I’ve deleted my Esty inventory. I’ll let you know when I put anything up for sale there again.

One of the bracelets I made uses up some of the sandalwood beads from a necklace that Boy finally gave me. I love the scent of sandalwood and having a bracelet made of it pleases me no end. I’ll have to get a picture of it for you to see. I’ve not made another like it thus far.

The best part of the items I ordered is that they’re nickel free. Nickel is usually what people react to in metals. There’s no (or little) nickel in surgical steel and that’s what the earring hooks are made of. The eyepins, chain, bead caps and spacer beads I bought are all nickel free. That can be a selling point of my product. I haven’t found any nickel free wire though. I want some half-hard silver wire that is nickel free, but can’t find any.

Because I’m doing something with my hands, my mind needs to be occupied with other things. I’ve always found it difficult to do only one thing at a time, except for reading. I still prefer to have no noise or distraction when I’m reading. But I bead, do crosswords, crochet, knit, etc. to the television. This means that I’ve been watching movies again. Not new ones, that would be far to radical of me. I’d been watching Scooby Doo DVDs (8 of them), Scooby Doo the movie (the first one), The Avengers, Emperor’s New Groove, Kill Bill (Part 1 and Part 2), and now the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tomorrow I’ll be watching more movies, I don’t know which ones, but I’ll be watching more.

One thing about LOTR I’ve been wondering about. The narrator says at the beginning that the elves are immortal folk. If this is the case, why is it that Arwen’s father is middle aged? Shouldn’t he appear to be in his 20s? I mean, sure, he doesn’t look like suffering from old age, but still, he has wrinkles and looks to be of about the right age to have a daughter the age Arwen is.

Dutchess hunted tonight. There was a rather large moth flying about the living room and she was in very close attendance to it. Alas, being an inside cat has caused her hunting skills to rust and she lost track of the prey as it flew toward my light. More to the point, it was my getting up to get out of the moth’s way (vicious things they are!) that caused her to lose the trail. Hopefully the moth won’t creep up and pounce on me when I’m least expecting it.

I got an email from my thesis supervisor yesterday. She wants to see what I’ve done. Of course, I’ve not done a damned thing since I saw her last. I asked her if I could take a year off the program. By the time a year is up I should be able to get back into doing stuff as I should. By that time Dad will probably have died and things will have settled out emotionally speaking. Either that or I’ll need to step away and not get my Masters degree. Regardless, I can’t do anything right now. It stretches my abilities to deal just going from one day to the next. Working is going to further stress that. It’s hard fighting the inertia I’m feeling. Adding stress to that isn’t going to help me any.

That’s about it for now.

We were down to see Dad on Monday and Tuesday. Things haven’t changed any since I wrote last. Dad is not eating though he did take a few spoons of porridge on Monday morning and ice cream on Monday and Tuesday evening. They are still using Seroquel to sedate him when they are able to get him to swallow anything. If they don’t sedate him then they’d have to restrain him. For most of the visit Dad was non-responsive. He was responsive for very short time periods (two to three minutes) in a day. When he became agitated he’d strip himself of bedding, bed clothes, endanger the IV by pulling it (the entire pole and mechanics) down and out of his arm.

He would point at things that weren’t there and try to talk. However, because he has been breathing through his mouth it was impossible to understand much of what he was saying. He did tell me he loved me after I said I loved him, asked me “where is she” and when I asked who the she was, he looked confused and said he didn’t know. Then after a couple of spoons of ice cream he said “that’s enough”. I know he was trying to say things, he would repeat sound patterns when I said I couldn’t understand. This was quite frustrating.

This was only for a short time last night. Monday evening he was non-responsive and unconscious. Now we just wait while his body slowly poisons itself because of his kidneys not working properly. They work some as he has some urine passing through his body (the catheter bag had urine in it), but not enough to properly detox his body. He’s also slowly starving to death since he refuses to eat except for a few spoons of food in a day.

I emailed work while I was out of town and updated them as to what was going on. This way when Dad does die, they’ll be semi-prepared. I’ll need to be gone somewhat longer because, as with the power of attorney, both my sister and I are named as executors of Dad’s estate. There will be business I’ll have to be out of town for.

The stay at home was painful and awkward. I don’t want to be around my older brother and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Dad dying. Bran was having difficulty with this as well since what affects me, tends to affect him as well, especially with family stuff. The entire house reeked of cigarette smoke. It probably wouldn’t have repulsed me so much but for my distaste for being around that particular person.

Bran went through the house and looked at things that needed to be done in order to get it fixed up for sale. Most of the work is cosmetic (paint, new flooring, cleaning carpets) with the exception of needing to gut the main bathroom and update the master 1/2 bath.

I went through some of the stuff in the basement. You can tell that Mom and Dad were children of the 1930s and lived on a very limited budget for many years of their marriage. I found an amazing number of things that most everyone now-a-days would have thrown out. Mom saved things like aluminum take out containers and styrofoam plates from under meat (she washed them up and saved them for who knows what). There were also various plastic containers for condiments, peanut butter and other things saved. I don’t know how we’re going to work out things around the work needing to be done around the house. I know my brother can’t be there for much of it since a) it needs to have the house cleared and b) he smokes. Any renovations need to make the house smell fresh to make the house more saleable.

I’m glad to be home. II missed Boy a lot while we were gone. We left Dad’s at about 9:30 this morning and arrived home around noon. While we were gone Boy did a lot of work to have the kitchen mostly clean. When we got home he made us Lipton’s chicken noodle soup for lunch (he forgot to take bread out so couldn’t make us sandwiches) and then he washed up all the dishes he used to create and serve lunch. He’s a darling boy. I’m glad I’m home and he’s around me again.

I got home to the happy news of receiving my mail package from China. After lunch we all piled into the car (I let Boy sit in the front since Bran had also greatly missed Boy) and off we went to the Shoppers Drug Mart where the package depot is. I now have a couple of different styles and sizes of nickel free silver spacer beads (Tibetan style), a couple different styles and sizes of nickel free bead caps (Tibetan style), two different lengths (2 cm and 3 cm) eye pins, and 200 metres of nickel free jewelry chain. Yes, it was a heavy package. They didn’t send me one item that I ordered 2000 pieces of. So I sent them an email telling them.

Everything I got has been repackaged into labelled plastic containers from the zippered plastic bags except for the chain. I want to spool that onto dowels to keep it from getting all tangled. Right now that’s also in a plastic bag. I didn’t expect that. I expected it to come spooled.

Anyway, I’ll be looking at my beading stuff and seeing what needs to be redone. I want to make sure it’s all quite durable. I used super glue on some of the pieces and those ones need to be redone because of it. The super glue makes two weak spots in the wire at each side of the glue site. The closer is also a weak spot because the crimp bead might slip (for things like bracelets and necklaces). This is especially important for the bracelets since more people tend to wear bracelets more long term (days at a time) than they do necklaces.

So, guess what I’ll be doing for the next few days. Yeah, knitting. HAH!

Thursday. It was an entire week all packed into one day. And that was after Wednesday. OY!

Wednesday I had to call NDO on another person. It was one of those foggy ones where the boundaries between what the PO wanted and what the parole board set out were somewhat contradictory. I let the NDO decide what to do. The next day I heard that warrants were issued for him.

That’s a record for me – having to call three people in to the DO in one week. I haven’t had to do that for months. I think the last person I called in was (I had to really stop and think) over a year ago. Then I get three in a week.

Then Thursday. An experimental contract with opening two mental health beds failed in one fell swoop. We were going to house people for short term when they were being forced to move from one mental health group home to another because of conflict or the home became unsafe.

We’re experienced with working with people with mental health issues. In fact, that’s one of our selling points for people coming out of prison. We offer closer supervision and support as well as working closely with the mental health social worker. However we were lied to with this one. The degree of mental illness, the neediness of the person involved, and I believe the very reasons this person was moving out of the group home were glossed over or lied about.

I spent most of Thursday night’s shift running interference between this new person and the residents. Most of the residents were patient and tolerant. A couple, however, were severely tried by her. In one case a baseless accusation was made that could have had extremely dire consequences for one of the residents. I know it was baseless because I had the two in my sight the entire time before the accusation was made.

It’s unfortunate that the person who was trying to place her lied. You can’t do that when it comes to mixing different populations such as that. It jeopardized the safety of the house. That’s not an exaggeration either. Because of the actions of that person I had to have my attention nearly fully on one person. There are 23 other people that I have to make sure are safe and not up to something. The degree of mental illness, this person’s fantasy/delusions, inability to not insult people (called one visitor a slut, called other staff names, and general all round rudeness), and at times inability to distinguish between reality and what goes on inside her head placed her at risk, and also placed residents at risk for a false accusation.

I ended the shift with a nasty headache that didn’t go away fully until I was nearly done Friday’s shift.

I was supposed to change the bedding in the cages last night but didn’t have any bedding. So I emailed their owner and told him to get more bedding. I’m thinking of handing responsibility of the animals back to the owner. He ‘s working in Saskatoon now and there’s no reason he can’t come and make sure they have food and that their bedding is changed. To be honest I’m feeling like I’m being used.

He was supposed to be selling the animals and I was taking care of them until they were sold. Then I was taking care of them because he was out of town. Now I’m taking care of them without the benefits of owning them and he’s getting my work for his animals.

I have to figure out a way of telling him this without ending our friendship. I mean, I still like him. It’s my fault that I allowed this to go on for so long. I doubt he’ll feel like he was taking advantage of me. I just don’t want to take care of animals that aren’t mine, especially since he’s not at school out of town and making no effort to sell them, as he said he was doing when he left to go to school last fall.

Sometimes it’s easier to not make friends.

I didn’t sleep last night. My brain was too active with the events of this week. It wouldn’t let me settle in and relax. I was awake until just past 9 am. Because of that now my day is upside down and I have to fix that before Monday as I’m on days. To quote Roxie in Dead Like Me “Why do you do that to yourself?”

I get to go to Edmonton later this month to the AGM of the organization our half-way house belongs to. I’m quite looking forward to it. I learned a lot at the one that was held here last year. This means I get paid for going out of town. My accommodations and food are all paid for. All I have to pay for are incidentals and entertainment.

Then it’s a concentrated wild time of getting month end completed, a week of work and then I’m going to be on holiday for 2 whole weeks. We’re not likely going anywhere, or far if we do go anywhere, but the whole idea of not having to get up for work, being able to do what I want without a schedule, pleases me enormously. It’s been nearly 10 years. I think I’m due.

My beading supplies were shipped on May 21st. It will take 6-8 weeks for it to get to me (surface shipping is cheap, but slow) and it should be here sometime in my holidays. I’m quite looking forward to getting them. Everything I ordered is nickel free. That’s a great selling point as so many people who react to jewelry are reacting to the nickel in the alloy.

I think that’s about it for now. It’s been a hard week. I was glad to see the end of it last night.

It’s been uneventful and yet busy all the same time, this past while.

Tonight was a fundraising dinner for my co-worker whose husband is in an Edmonton hospital trying to survive a surgery (three surgeries now). Since his heart surgery he’s had his stomach removed because of heavy bleeding as well as another to close up more bleeds in his chest. He’s been there nearly a month, in critical care in ICU. He’s still on life support though they’re weaning him slowly off of it. He now has a trach because the tubes down his throat were making him bleed more. He’s greatly distressed at the amount of time he’s been in hospital.

So tonight a fundraiser was held in his name to raise funds to help pay bills, pay for his wife’s (my co-worker) transportation to and from Edmonton (at $1.07 a litre for gas that’s not cheap) and her accommodations and meals there. At the last count, before I left to come home, we raised over $500 from the 50/50 draw and the dessert auction.

The dessert auction was funny and awesome all at the same time. The most popular desserts were a turtle cluster cheese cake and a deluxe chocolate layer cake. The former sold for $65 (or there abouts) and the latter for $75. It was lively and hilarious bidding.

The earrings and necklace/bracelet and earring set I donated to the sale raised around $80 or so. Anyway, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what the final tally will be as the silent auction hadn’t been added into my total, nor had the share from the dinner (about $7.50 per person going to the kitty).

I have blisters between my big and next toes. Why, you ask? Well, today I was wearing a pair of fuchsia thongs. No, they’re not “flip-flops” they’re thongs, damn it! I bought them at Michaels for around $3 or so. I got that colour because it’s to start out my Halloween costume as a ninja school drop-out. I’ll have my ninja outfit all in pink with my pink thongs (the foot wear! Get your minds out of the gutter!). I want to get a pink hilted plastic katana sword too. That way I’ll be able to have epic, pitched battles against my boss, whose planning on coming as a pirate.

Anyway, back to the blisters. They hurt. They’re between my toes just at the sole of my foot. This means that the thongs won’t be worn for the next few days as the blisters get resorbed and some callusing is created. I won’t be wearing them much at work though. I discovered that they’re too soft and squishy for any amount of walking and that’s hard on my back and legs.

I’ll be going to Edmonton in June. I don’t know for how long, probably just for an overnight trip. That’s when the Half-Way House Association AGM is being held. It should be interesting if last year’s AGM is any indication. I got some excellent information at that one.

I ordered some beading supplies from Panda Hall. They are wholesale beading supply sellers and I got around $60 worth of materials with around $33 in shipping. I ordered 200 metres (yes, metres – a metre is about 39 inches) of nickel free iron chain, two different sizes of eyepins (500 grams each – a pound weighs about 554 grams), some spacer beads (around 2000 each) and bead caps (around 2000 each). It’s all nickel free so I should be able to sell to those people who are sensitive to most metals other than gold. I’ll be getting them in a couple of months as I requested surface mail delivery. I can’t afford anything else and at those weights it would’ve cost me more than the total price of the items I bought to ship it here. I love that the Canadian dollar is so competitive with the American dollar. It’s saving me a bundle.

Did I say I was thinking of taking a year off of school? I’m not sure that the Master’s degree is something I want anymore. I just don’t know.

I need to go to bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night as is usual for the Sunday before I work days. I’m desperately tired.

Ta-Ra

There are changes happening at work and I’m not sure I like them. We’re losing two staff members. The first is my counterpart – working shifts opposite mine (mornings when I work evenings, evenings when I work mornings). She’s excellent and the residents love her. She’s one of those people who can chat and quickly get that trust necessary to working with the people we do. She’s moving on to better things at the prison here in town. She’s got two kids she needs to think of and the new job will have benefits, pension, union protection, sick pay…the list goes on. I’ll miss her laughter.

The other co-worker leaving works the graveyard shifts during the week. I like her too. She’s moving to the west coast soon to enjoy more clement winter weather, summer weather too, for that matter. I’ll miss her laughter and sense of the absurd.

This means that we’re very quickly training people to replace them. One began today and training with my counterpart. I work with her on Friday. She’ll be doing most of the building and room checks while I do month end reports and teaching her about the program that I coordinate.

It’s going to be a sad day Friday for me. Then the week after my other co-worker leaves. I know that things change and people move on, but it doesn’t make it suck less.

Keep the prayers/good thoughts/energy etc. going to my other co-worker/friend and her husband. I’ve not heard anything since my last posting about him. That was about him having his stomach removed because of it hemorrhaging. This is adding further stress to his already stressed body.

We (the counterpart co-worker did all the organizing for this) are having a steak dinner fundraiser for them. The surgery was done in Edmonton, in another province. Though our health care covers all his costs it doesn’t cover hotel costs, travel expenses, mortgage payments and such. Since neither of them are working they’re not bringing in any money. So far I’ve gotten 4 sold (us and a friend). I’m hoping a couple more friends will say ok and join us at a table.

If you’re from Saskatoon and reading this, want to join Bran, Boy and our friend for a delicious dinner? You can have steak, chicken or vegetarian entrée for only $15. The kid’s (under 10) get chicken fingers and fries for $10. There is going to be a silent auction for things like desserts and I’m making a jewelry set (necklace, bracelet and earrings) for it as well. I’m sure there’ll be other things offered as well.

I missed today’s workout because of difficulties in the morning. I slept in and didn’t arrive to work until about 20 minutes into my shift. So tomorrow I’ll be going in early to make up for the time I missed and allow my co-worker to go home earlier. I can’t believe I slept through my alarm. Bran is setting a back up alarm so it doesn’t happen again. I’m also planning on going to bed soon. That’s where Bran and Dutchess are going. I just know I’ll have to shift her off my blankets.

Tonight after we dumped Boy at work we went to a store to find a couple of things. I wanted cheap disposable chop sticks. I want to make them into hair bun holders. I have a pair made from bamboo that Bran cut down. I just make a pony tail, curl it around and stick them in to hold the hair in.

The ones I got tonight are made of birch. However, for 100 of them they only cost a couple of dollars and will give me plenty of cheap practice pieces. I plan on drilling holes in the top and adding a small string of beads and maybe some other thing like little bells or something. Anyway, I’ll show them when I’ve managed to get a pair done.

That’s about it from here. I can’t say I like changes that involve people I like moving on. However, there’s diddly squat I can do about it.

What have I been up to? Oddly enough, a fair bit. This is a long entry so get yourself a cup of tea. I’ll wait.

I got some seed beads to work on Bran’s handfast outfit thing I’m making for him. It’s like a priest’s stole but made of beads instead of embroidered cloth. I’m sure it’ll be quite a bit heavier too. Anyway, I picked up lovely red beads and some blue that are drop dead beautiful. It’ll all look really nice when I’m done.

Yesterday was a day of dishes and laundry. I got ALL the dishes done, the stove and counter tops all wiped off and thought about sweeping the floor. Yes, I thought about sweeping the floor. Alas, my back, after standing at the sink to do load after load of dishes, was in no fit shape to wield a broom. Some witch I am, right?

While I was doing that Bran and Boy were hip deep in laundry. Really, we hadn’t done all the laundry in a few weeks, just a couple 0h-I-Have-No-Shirts/Pants/Underwear loads that just did the necessities. It’s still not done yet, there are 3 more loads to go, but they made excellent progress in that. Not only did they do that, but I got the folding nearly done as well.

Boy also dried dishes and pumped up the bike tires. He was an enormous help to us. I just thought I’d put that out there as sometimes he feels under-/unappreciated. Without him the work would’ve taken much longer if it got completed at all.

Then today was an excellent workout. I did a full 20 minutes on the elliptical machine. I didn’t stop to drink water and when I drank I didn’t spill all over myself. I really have to get a bottle with a built in straw. It saves me the embarrassment of looking like a totally uncoordinated slob. I’m only a partially uncoordinated slob.

We also did work on our arms on the weights. I was in the Captain’s Chair and managed to get to 5 leg lifts before my shoulders gave out and I started drooping. We also did weight assisted chin ups (two different kinds) and dips. Then we worked on pecs on two machines and the other of my favourite machines but I don’t remember what it works.

Then it was home to shower (eventually I did) and get ready to go out for sushi with friends. It was wonderful connecting with them again. They’re both good people with good hearts and fabulous senses of humour.

My shower was satisfying. This past week I’ve been dealing with a bit of an emotional dip. Ok, so more than a dip. I tanked earlier in the week and I haven’t recovered from it yet. So my mood is low. So showering is something that fell somewhat by the wayside. It’s hard to be motivated to do anything and getting out of bed to get to work was a major accomplishment. Let’s just say that personal hygiene has been taking a hit.

Anyway, I did shower today. My legs are freshly shorn and moisturized. My hair is fly-away clean (as only curly hair can be) and I smell fresh. I’m hoping to hit the shower at least every second day as a part of trying to lift the mood. We’ll see how that works.

This week has been somewhat distressing as well because of a co-worker/friend’s circumstances. Anyone who has friended me on Facebook will have seen my status thingie about that. She and her hubby went to Edmonton where he could have heart surgery. He has a congenital heart defect and it needed some work. They spent twice as long in surgery as they planned (11 hours) then, because of bleeding and other complications, he had to go back into surgery the next day. He’s currently in critical condition on life support. Though he’s making small improvements there’s the spectre of him not making it. They’re a young couple with two young children. I’ve been sending Reiki left, right, and centre and hoping for the best. I hate it that there’s virtually nothing else I can do in terms of helping.

This added to the general lowness of my mood and had me in tears on Friday night. I don’t usually cry unless there’s some impetus, like a movie or someone hurting my feelings. Just sitting and being weepy isn’t something I normally do. It’s also not a good thing considering that I’m on anti-depressants. This leads me to think that perhaps my dosage needs to be elevated. However, I can’t do that without seeing a physician and my doctor scarpered (see previous post about that) so I don’t have a doctor right now.

Earlier tonight I was called in to work because the person who was to work the 8-12 shift didn’t show up. I got out of the house and was on the way when I got the call that she’d finally turned up. So instead Bran and I headed off the the drug store (pharmacy/apothecary/chemist’s) for cinnamon, antihistamine and junk for Boy and I. We also got a squirt container of liquid soap for the kitchen. The old soap squirt container we had was a long-ago Christmas present from Boy when he was in elementary school. It never did squirt right and recently wouldn’t squirt at all. Thanks to the antihistamines I’ll have less vertigo related nausea when I’m doing things like ab crunches and such. Gotta love being allergic to your pet.

Speaking of pets…Bran managed to do some grooming of her today (or was it yesterday?) and got a kitten. She’s also lost a little bit of body fat thanks to the food she’s been on the past while (older cat/indoor cat). This means that she can take care of her own “intimate” grooming. Of course she has to stop and do it while I’m walking behind her…on my way to the bathroom…first thing in the morning when my bladder is screaming to be emptied. Yeah, she’s such a cat.

When we were leaving to take me to do the work that I didn’t end up doing tonight, I was confused. Somewhere, thanks to the housework we did yesterday, I lost the entire day. I thought today was Saturday and I wasn’t going to work a 4 hour shift, but an entire 12 hour shift.

Oh, one thing about yesterday. I got a pair of ear buds to replace the ones that I lost the rubber thing to. These are Sony buds for sports. They have soft over-the-ear holders and are sound eliminators. They came with a hard case that makes it more difficult to lose bits. They should last a nice long time. They’re quite comfortable to wear and muffle outside noise nicely. Since I won’t be wearing them for outside exercise they’re be quite useful.

I also figured out a way to go on the jogging outings with my gym partner. You see, because of sciatica I can’t jog. It’s what makes standing still for long periods of time painful (remember how dishes made my back blow out? That’s why). The compression of the disc onto the sciatic nerve is the reason jogging (which would cause further compression) isn’t a good idea. However, I have roller blades. So long as I manage to move forward and not land on my butt, I can go along while he runs. He also has a pair of blades so we could zoom along together. Cool, right?

That’s about it. Now I have to label this entry. It’s going to be a long list. Try and pick out the one thing in the labels that I didn’t mention in the entry.