Seismic Twitch

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.

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.

I had a close one today. First off, I lost my blog bookmarks. I have them all unorganizedly organized. At least I did. Then I got to work and realized I didn’t have them at all!!!!!! Even worse, my browser synchronized my x-marks (Foxmarks for those who use Firefox now renamed) to not having my blogs either. I checked Explorer and it lost them too!!!!

Luckily for me, I downloaded and installed Opera (another free web browser) and got it up and running and it picked up most of my bookmarks from wherever bookmarks are stored. I lost a few…Rhonda, if you’re willing, could you let me know where your blog is again please? Thanks.

I just spent an hour and a half getting my blogs back.

So now I’ve stopped all automatic synchronizations of x-marks. I’ll remember to make sure that all my folders are where they should be and then allow it to do that.

That’s the first time I’ve totally lost a whole file of files of bookmarks. Yes, I read a lot of blogs. But there are a whole lot of interesting people out there to read. I hate missing out on the news.

I had to work last night, so I was somewhat tired this morning. I so much, did not want to go to school. However, being the second week of classes I didn’t want to leave a poor impression. I’d forgotten that we had a guest speaker. Our professor couldn’t stay. His wife was/is pregnant and her due date was today. She’d been having “pains” and was in hospital being checked. I ended up being the one to facilitate the presentation by the guest speakers.

Our speaker was Serge LeClerc, an MLA with a colourful background. He spent many years in various federal penitentiaries in Eastern Canada before he decided at 38 that he’d had enough. He got an education while inside, continued his education outside and has done various and sundry work afterward. He’s also a Conservative…in Saskatchewan he’s a member of the Saskatchewan Party. Same pile, different name.

He began his presentation/lecture by insulting everyone in the class. Yeah, a really good way to start. I can’t say I disagreed with all he said. He advocates early intervention with children who commit crimes, keeping them out of the “justice system” and thus avoiding having labels become self-fulfilling prophesies. He spent much of his time bashing the previous government (forgetting that before this past one, his own was in power and did nothing but rack up a huge debt). I wish I’d counted the number of times he used the phrase “hand up, not hand out”. Jingoisms leave me cold. I have no doubt to his passion and his dedication. However, because he’s dealing with the products of the Criminal Code and that’s federal jurisdiction, his success will be limited.

He’s also a fan of indeterminate sentences. In his dream prison system, the only way people would be able to get out of prison is to take programming to address their problems. He thinks that if you commit a crime you don’t just do the time, you lose all rights as a citizen. Of course, that can’t happen. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says he can’t and the Supreme Court will ensure that.

I do think that working with community organizations to help offenders access necessary programs and services is a good idea. Communities know what needs are unfulfilled and are more effective in many ways than government imposed systems. I do have some concerns with the funding of “faith based” organizations since the majority of them have an agenda of proselytizing and connecting services with being required to follow their faith systems. If someone is sentenced to work with them it could be a problem. However, if the government is willing to work with any faith based group, not just Christians, then ok. However, knowing the Conservatives as I do, I doubt they’d work with a pagan faith based group no matter how affective the programs are. Colour me sceptical.

He and I butted heads a few times. He pulled the “I’m more an expert than you” card more than a few times. While I will be the first to admit that I don’t have his experiences, he also doesn’t have mine. When I talked about how CSC lacks adequate accountability (as several government appointed commissions have pointed out time and again) he claimed they did.

I could go on, but let’s just say that the whole experience left me offended and concerned about what’s going to be happening. The phrases “bleeding heart liberal”, “common sense” (whose?), the ubiquitous “hand up, not hand out” and others that were bandied about with reckless abandon. He did leave us a present of his book. I don’t know when I’ll get around to read it though.

I have reading I need to get done for tomorrow, but it’s all about qualitative research and that’s not too exciting. In fact, it’s kind of dull and being tired like I am it’s going to be hard reading.

I discovered that I have to make sure I check my blocked comments to ensure that none of your’s get caught in there. It never occurred to me that regular comments would get caught in that filter. They did. I approved the latest ones, scanned back to a while ago for any more recent ones and then deleted the rest. Hopefully no one lost any. But they’re all there now. I don’t know what it was about them that triggered the filter, but I’ll be checking it more often than when I have over 1500 blocked.

That’s about it for now. At least that’s all I can think of at the moment. I think I’m going to lay down for a nap.

Ta-Ra

I’m tired of working. Well, not so much working, but the situation that management has created for me to work in, that’s what I’m tired of. Yesterday I had to go in, on a day off, to do up month end reports. I’m expected to do reports for them that aren’t mine, and yet neither they aren’t willing to fill in for me. It’s not like my job is any mystery either. Because they have me working support work rather than my own job, I know nearly as much of what’s going on with the program as they do. That’s another sticking point.

It isn’t even so much those things but that there’s nothing I can do to change things because of the attitude of those higher up than myself. I’ve already encountered the brick wall of I-have-more-power-than-you-so-fuck-you. The only other option is quitting, which I will be doing as soon as Bran gets a job. I’m shifting into a space I was in back in 1991 when I was trapped in a job because Bran wasn’t employed and we needed me to be working.

I’m in a funk.

On the up-side, Bran and Boy went and played badminton today. They enjoyed themselves. While they were gone I got dishes done and the kitchen tidied up some.

However, I feel like the rest of my day was in bitch mode.

Pity party? I don’t know. Maybe I need to go back on meds.

Not a single comment about my “say it with testicles entry”! Geesh!

I’ve done work for the week. At 8 am this morning I was cut loose and now I don’t work again until the 3rd of January. Right now I feel like I deserve my time off.

Last night a pipe burst in the north wall of the building. It was a big pipe that burst judging from the spewing of water from the wall. Luckily for me I’ve got at least one person who has their spit together when it comes to dealing with stuff like this. One of the residents turned the water off at the main while many others shooed the water to the women’s washroom where the pipe burst, but also where the drain was.

It was finally cleaned up, the high and mighty mucky-mucks left. The main floor was without cold water. That’s ok. The important part is that the residence area has both hot and cold. We didn’t have to close the facility which could have left some people without any place to go other than the Salvation Army shelter. That’s not good.

Otherwise the Christmas shifts were quiet. I like quiet. I got some school reading done for the new year. I also watched some lovely murder and mayhem while doing my reading and note taking.

Bran left me to sleep until about 5. Since that time I’ve gotten the vegetables prepped for tomorrow’s curry squash and cauliflower soup. It’s going to taste good…at least that’s the plan.

That’s about it from here. Remember…say it with testicles (I think that’s going to become my new tagline).

Ta-Ra

I woke up with a sore throat, vertigo (thanks congestion, I really needed that), a slight sinus headache extending into my ear and the grumps. Despite that I’ve gotten a few things done.

I started dishes, though Boy is going to be finishing them off. I folded the clean towels that have been sitting beside the bed collecting books and magazines as Bran read them, I’m folding the white load (picky with socks – my least favourite load) and it’ll be put away when I’m done. I started to tidy the living room table, but got overwhelmed when I looked at Bran’s side that has tools and shit in front of it. When I’m ready again I’ll dump trash and get other things put away, but leave the tools for him.

I’ve also grumped at Boy a fair bit. It irks me that he’s happy to do a half-assed job on chores unless we ride him. I hate that. In fact, I’ve stated that to him very clearly. The last think I need is a child who holds Bill Gates as a hero – the worst of the half-ass job people around (need I remind the world of Windows ME or Vista?).

I can answer inside comments now. So if you ask a question in the comments section, go back to your comment. That’s where the answer will be if I’ve gotten around to it. It’ll be bolded and italicized for easier viewing. I might even start using brackets or something. I’m so proud of me for installing it. Being able to do that meant adding a plugin. Yay, me!

Back to folding.

That’s what I did today.

Bran was feeling quite tired and didn’t want to drive me to work. I was ok with that. I mean, I don’t care much for driving, but it’s only a few blocks to work. So that’s what I did. I parked the truck and then went in. At about 7 pm I went out to move the truck to the front of the building (people’s cars have been broken into in the back parking lot – not a happy thing). I started the truck and began backing out, being very careful to miss the pole and the dumpster near it…and backed into another pole that was happily hidden in my blind spot. I mean, it was the real blind spot. The one that you can’t see, the mirrors can’t see because the body of the truck was the same width of the pole. Yeah, that blind spot.

So, you might have remembered me talking about how Boy, in his first attempt backing out of our driveway scratched the back door and window on the bolt of the garbage bin. Then Bran backed into the self-same bin but put a dent and broke the cover of driver’s side rear light. Tonight I took out the side bumper (Jeeps have rear bumpers divided into three with a centre bumper and two side bumpers and the entire rear light except one bulb. At least I wasn’t totally unlit on that side on my way home, but the signal doesn’t work. Yeah.

Next time I drove to work I’m going to do what Bran recommended today. I’m going to bite the bullet and pay the cost of the meters in front of work for a couple of hours before 6 and avoid those danged poles in the back.

Of course, this was cause for much amusement at work, especially since I brought the bumper in from outside and had it sitting on the desk. The guys were curious about the bumper on the desk and got the entire story. They’d laugh. I’d ruefully laugh. My co-worker would laugh uproariously. Good times were had by all…well, except me.

Bran took the news with more equanimity than I figured on. At least he hadn’t already had the repair work done before I did this. I just made the whole thing worth while. Damn.

Other than that, I don’t have a term paper due on Monday, it was always due the Monday after. That’s ok. I thought it was due this coming Monday and would have had it done for then, but then the prof gave an extension because she’s been ill and not been able to see people so she gave the undergrads an extension. So, indirectly I got an extension even though I didn’t. If that makes any sense at all.

It’s snowing out. The police have been really busy down in the area of town where I work. They were seen whizzing off in one direction or another with their lights flashing and sometimes the sirens blaring. In one instance they (and the fire department and paramedics) attended to a truck-cyclist collision on the corner across the street from work. Being as this is a fairly heavy snow and it’s actually hanging out on the roads making them somewhat slick, it’s going to be a busy night for emergency workers in general. It all leaves me feeling very happy I’m home sitting on my comfortable couch with my ubiquitous fan blowing on me.

The December work schedule was out today. Despite saying that I wasn’t wanting and wouldn’t work the weekend of the 20th and 21st I was scheduled. Not only was I scheduled, I was scheduled for graveyards. Duh! Anyway, I also found out that the counsellor was the one who worked out he schedule so I left him a note asking him to change the schedule. I work graveyards over the 24th, 25th and 26th. That works out nicely for me. It gives those people for whom those holidays are important their family time and gives me at least one day of stat pay. I’m not sure if Boxing Day is a stat or not.

That’s about it. I’m greatly relieved that the damage wasn’t more considerable than it was. I’m pissed that it happened at all. I mean, you really have to watch out for those poles. They leap out from the strangest places.

Ta-Ra

Today was a pretty much lost day. I woke up at 8 full of good intentions of getting to school by 9:30 or so and getting the work I had to get done finished. Yeah, it didn’t happen. At about 8:30 I was overcome with severe fatigue (I was awake late because I worked last night to midnight). I reset my phone alarm to 11 but instead of am, it was pm. I didn’t get up until just after 2 am when the phone rang. I did get to school by 3 though. Bran took me to Tim Horton’s and I got a chicken salad sandwich (which is different here than they make at Stonebridge) and a coffee. I got to school, chatted while I ate and then went off to the computer lab.

The computer lab for Arts and Science’s grad students is in the basement level. I got to see Cameron because he was having a meeting with his adviser and wanted to get some work done so that he would at least seem like he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t there long though. I sat next to a woman who is a Native Studies grad student. She shared some TMI. I never quite know why people do that.

Why do people share way too much information about themselves to people they barely know? I mean, it’s not like I’ve taken more than 3 classes throughout my undergrad with this women. However, I know that she used to work with corrections, that one of the persons there made her life hell there. I know that she’s in a relationship with a man in a Healing Lodge (basically a minimum security facility for Aboriginal men or men who are willing to accept the teachings of Elders and such). I also know that the person she used to work with has broken several of Corrections’ basic tenets including talking to her about a current inmate (bad breach of confidentiality even if she is “dating” him). There’s one thing that she considers a threat to her life, but what is, in essence, telling her to go play in traffic”. I told her that it’s more like an immature thing and not a threat to her. I mean, it’s not like he said that he was going to throw her into traffic. Anyway, it all boils down to the fact that I just don’t care, didn’t care then, and care even less now. I didn’t want to know that and I was too damned wussy to say I didn’t care and didn’t want to know. So now she thinks we have this intimate bond that doesn’t exist and any time I see her she’s going to puke her woes all over me and I’ll be like, ewwww! Curse me and my good manners!

Eventually she left (yay!) and I managed to actually get some work done. I think I’ve done an ok job on this one. However, I’m not sure it matters. I don’t think they give out part marks. I guess I’ll find out. It’s all done and in my backpack.

I should go to bed. I have to be up to shower and get ready for school. I have more things to take to my spot. Tonight, before I settled in to do my homework Bran and I went to Staples, London Drugs and Zellers. I got a small digital clock, a power bar, a stapler, staples to go in the stapler, a small step stool (two steps that will be used as a footstool under my desk as well as a way of climbing a bit higher to reach things). I’m also taking a large and rather powerful magnet to stick on my locker door to keep my pen/paper holder from falling down too far. They don’t put strong enough magnets on those things and it keeps slipping down. Alas, this magnet is strong and I can’t put it in my purse (phone and music player go in there) or in my backpack (computer – if I demagnetize that I’d be very unhappy). I’m going to stick it into my right hand coat pocket. That should keep it away from any delicate electronics.

We also got three huge bath sheets. Bran’s is the dark blood red, mine is the sky blue one and Boy’s is a moss green colour. They really are huge. I’ll be able to wrap it around me and not have spaces where bits of my cellulite will be displayed where the towel doesn’t meet. I like that in a towel.

I now have a theory paper to do for Monday. It’s like doing the little bit of literature review of my thesis. I have to read and review various peer reviewed articles and write up my own theoretical approach. At least that’s what I think I need. I know I don’t have to have an abstract for it. It should be only about 3 or 4 pages in length so it shouldn’t be too difficult. The nice thing about it is that I’ve already got a nice number of articles read and I can use the bibliography from my other class (Aboriginal Women and Canadian Law). I like grad school because of that. Everything is interrelated and overlapped with one’s thesis. Or as well as it can be done all things considered.

Ta-Ra

I was going to get up early and get to the university to do some homework. I set my alarm and everything. I forgot, however, to enable the alarm. I woke up at 3 pm when Bran came in to wake me. I also woke up with a very nasty sinus headache. It’s still hanging out in the periphery of my sinuses, though it’s not as severe as it had been. I’d lost the study time I’d wanted to use to prepare my presentation in Theory (which takes more formal notes that I’d used on the Aboriginal Women and Canadian Law class.

I did spend a lot of very productive time last night at work reading peer reviewed articles for my annotated bibliography. Of that I’m glad. That’s what I’ll be working on this evening as well. Bran and Boy are off picking up prescriptions and giving Boy some more driving practise. Then they’re going to KFC to pick up soem popcorn chicken for me to eat. I’ve got a craving.

My sister will be in town tomorrow afternoon. This means that I can get to the university, read the remaining chapter for my Theory class presentation and prepare the basics of my notes. I have to prepare something resembling base notes for the class to have as well. I should also read the third chapter that is being prepared for presentation by a classmate. I might be able to find some other things to note and present on peripherally.

That’s it. I’m going to start reading the articles again to find ones that I shall be creating the annotated bibliography. I wish my Word program would work normally. I’m having issues with the buttons. Oh, speaking of having issues. The problem with my arrow buttons only occurs in Firefox. This means that the latest update they did is what is screwing around with that, not the computer functioning itself. That’s a relief.

Ta-Ra