Corner of Bourbon & Division

It's not that I've forgotten LiveJournal exists. I come on here and read my friends' list almost every day. Few of you post that often, but enough of you post intermittently that I feel as if I'm keeping track of many of you. I suspect that may be a bit of an illusion, but that's okay. Social media is always a bit of an illusory beast.

I just saw slipjig link to a friending meme, and I think that it would behoove me to at least try to post more regularly. Sometimes I feel like my life is far too mundane to be of interest to anyone, but then, I love hearing about the little things that all my friends are doing. Going to work? I want to know how your day went! Planning a garden? Show me pictures of your squash! Taking your kids to school in the morning? Yes, please! Are your pets adorable? PICS, OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! Etc. So if I'm interested in all these small, daily victories and disappointments, it stands to reason that at least some of my LJ friends feel the same way.

So, what have I been up to since the last time I posted? That was in February, I am a little horrified to see, when my computer keyboard bit the dust. I got it repaired, it's working fine now, except every now and then it... decides not to. It's always a bit nervewracking when that happens, but it's never for more than about 10-15 seconds, and it's happened maybe twice or three times. I'm trying not to worry about it too much.

( Quaker Stuff )

( Pet updates, with cute pictures! )

( The Parental Units )

( Work and gardening )

Well, Canada, you didn't exactly vote for change, but at least you didn't vote for the status quo. Many of my non-Canadian friends have congratulated me on having a Disney prince as a Prime Minister, which I think is hilarious. I have my hopes set to "cautious optimism," since the Liberals are basically a centre-right party who are slightly to the left of the Conservatives, so I don't expect any kind of radical change.

I just spent the last four days at a fan-centric convention (no stars, no special guests, just fangirls fangirling about what we love), and it was wonderful but totally exhausting. I spent 12 hours driving yesterday (8 with friends, 4 by myself), and I am paying for it today in very sore muscles and stiff tendons. I'm not looking forward to going to the gym in a little while. It was fantastic to get away and hang out with like-minded people for a few days, though. I have been very spoiled this year in terms of travel, I must say.

I have become a Busy Person, and I don't like it. I'm not sure how to fix that, because I genuinely enjoy my extracurricular activities, and all my errands need to be run, but I still need to fix it because I have spent nearly two months without any alone time. As an introvert, this is making me a little crazy. It's not like I have all that many extracurriculars, either: I have the soup kitchen on Mondays, and Meeting for Worship on Sundays, and that's pretty much the only regularly scheduled stuff I have. It's not like I can suddenly stop grocery shopping or going to doctor's appointments. What has really started eating into my time is my return to my local gym, which, while good for me, doesn't (to me) count as down time. I am working with one of the trainers, and she only ever seems available in the middle of the day, which tends to put a crimp in any other plans I'd want to make otherwise. Anyway, I'll have to give it some thought, and see what I can do. I don't enjoy worshipping at the altar of busyness. It's a social sickness that needs to be eradicated.

The adoption process is going along at a moderate clip so far. I finished my PRIDE training a couple of weeks ago, and had my first home visit around the same time. It was actually a lot less invasive than I had anticipated. I thought for sure that my assessor would poke into every nook and cranny in my home, and so I dutifully tidied the whole house so that it would be as "child-safe" as possible, but she barely glanced into each every room, and pointed out a couple of things I'd need to do to conform to safety standards. So far, so good. My next "home" visit is actually an interview at the Ottawa CAS, and takes place on Thursday. During this bit we're apparently going to detail my own personal history from Day 0 all the way to today. Holy hell, Batman. It will be interesting, to say the very least. I understand why we have to do it, but I think I should invest in some lozenges. I foresee a lot of talking. I still have two classes to take: one on Openness in Adoption, and the other on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. After that, if I'm approved, it's all a waiting game. CAS has a child-centric approach, so what they do is look at the current children in care and determine which families would be a good match for them. So even if there are lots of children in care, that doesn't mean that I would be the right parent for them. Adopting could take a few weeks, or it could take a few years.

Tomorrow I'll be interviewing for a potential promotion at work. The other candidates are all very strong, and all of them have interviewed before (I have not), so I'm not holding out much hope that I'll get the position. That being said, I do interview very well, so I refuse to despair, either. I will prepare as best I can, and that will have to suffice. The promotion would be nice, though, as it comes with a pay increase, too. I'm not hurting for money, but I'm trying to get rid of some consumer debt, and a bit of extra income would go a long way to fixing that.

I've also got a doctor's appointment on Thursday. Partly it's to get a form filled out for Ottawa CAS, so that they can make sure I'm not about to keel over and leave any prospective children orphaned, and partly I want to get my shoulder checked, as I seem to have mysteriously injured it, and it's not getting any better after several weeks.

So there you have it. My life isn't very exciting, but I thought I would update anyway. How is everyone else? How's kicks?

I promised I would update on all the things, and then never did so. So, uh, I'm going to try to do this succinctly. I will very likely fail at that too. Succinctness (succinctitude?) has never been my forte, as you all know. ;)

( Update behind the cut! )
I think that's it for now. Thank you for bearing with me if you made it past that wall of text. ;)

Working a 78-hour week. 7 days, although one of those was a half-day (yesterday). Back home Sunday night, then I get a full day at home on Monday, then it's back to Ottawa for another 60-hour week next week.

So, yeah. Busy busy busy.

I have ten million things to do on Monday, all of them time consuming. No idea how I'm going to get it all done, but whatever, I'll improvise. I might be able to do some of them on Tuesday morning, too, before I get going.

There you have it, the main reason I haven't been posting: I am insanely busy. Also very stressed, but that's not new.

I hope the universe is treating all of you better than it's treating me these days. :)

The power adapter for my laptop just died a tragic death. Yay, another unexpected expense. I've ordered a new one but it'll take several days to get to me, and if it hasn't arrived by Thursday I'll have to go to Ottawa without my laptop.

So if you don't hear from me, that's why. I will be checking in on Twitter by phone, but that's probably it.

I have decided that in the New Year I'm going to make a point of writing here every day, even if it's just a couple of sentences or something. Until then, I'm going to try to at least post more often, maybe a couple of times a week.

Every time I think of posting here, I worry that I'll never be able to catch up on everything that's been happening that I haven't had time to post about. Then I feel overwhelmed and decide there's no point in even trying, and I creep away from LJ filled with guilt and regret. Wah. :P

So I'm not going to try to catch up. I'm just going to jump in where I am and hope people aren't too confused.

Quick bullet-point summary of significant events of the last year:

April: pdaughter moved in with Bean. We are all very happy, if adjusting. (:::ETA::: It occurs to me I shouldn't speak for them. I am very happy. I have no idea if they are, but if they aren't they haven't told me.)
June: I applied for a transfer to Ottawa
August: My transfer was accepted, and I was offered a permanent position with the RCMP. Whee!
September: I started work in Ottawa

Because pdaughter is still in the midst of her studies, and because we didn't want to pull Bean out of his wonderful new preschool, I kept the house in L'Ile Perrot and am renting a tiny (no, really, it's 8' x 11') room in Ottawa at an exorbitant price. I commute back and forth roughly every five to six days. In two years' time we will be selling the house and moving to Ontario permanently.

This year has also been the year of hospital visits (one each for Bean and pdaughter, though luckily in both cases it was for stuff that was easily treated with antibiotics), car accidents (one each for me and pdaughter, though in her case the accident wasn't her fault and in my case it was technically I who hit the other car—no injuries in either case and insurance covered all repairs) computer deaths (only one, but that was enough), and cat-assisted cell phone death.

In short, life right now is insane for me. Whenever I get a chance to be at home I cling there like a limpet because there are so many chores to do that I can never seem to get to the bottom of them all, and because I'm a homebody at heart and I hate having to spend so much time away from my family. I'm reasonably sure they don't enjoy my absences either (though in my more paranoid moments I wonder if they don't heave a sigh of relief when I'm not there screwing up the new routine).

I haven't been writing at all (creative or otherwise), because I'm a) really really busy with mundane things, b) really really exhausted from the new job and the new commute and general stress, c) perennially stressed out about money. All these things basically fuck up the headspace I need to be in in order to settle down and let the muse out to play. I'm hoping to change this in the New Year. I have vague plans that I hope will become more concrete to not only write but also finish my writing projects (something I'm notoriously bad at).

So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell. I'm open to questions if you have any about just what the heck's been going on with me these days. ;)

Happy trails!

LiveJournal tells me I haven't posted since February. Oops?

I'm mostly on Twitter these days, because I have no time for anything that takes up more time than that. Even then, I spend cumulatively about an hour a day on there, usually in one to five minute bursts.

The short version is that I'm busy. Working mostly night shifts, attempting to find additional sources of revenue (btw, if you know anyone looking for a proofreader/editor/translator for contract work, feel free to point them my way ^_^), and dealing with household stuff. The usual.

I don't think it's even worth trying to apologise for how not-present I've been. An apology usually implies that the apologiser is intending to modify the offending behaviour and, well, I don't think that's going to be possible in my case.

Today I have absconded to a cafe with free wifi for the afternoon, but this is likely to be an exception rather than the norm. So, anyway, hi internet! Long time no post. :)

Adelandayo.

So instead of having a depressing entry about how I am a terrible friend and a pathetic excuse for a person who can't even manage the basics of life without fucking everything up, have more photographic proof that my dog is the cutest dog ever. \o/



See? Isn't that way better than a real post?

In my quest to be more positive about things, I have stopped posting because I seemingly have nothing nice to say.

The short version is: everything about the Quebec government is complicated. :P

There is nothing to report on my end. Work, a bit of cooking, a bit of cleaning. The dog is well, the cats are thriving, and on the whole I am more than okay. Life is good, though I could do with there being less work. Alas, less work means less money, so there will be lots of work for the foreseeable future.

I hope you are all taking care of yourselves. *group hugs*

:::Edited because apparently I have forgotten how to spell.:::

Sporadic Life Update #75

So life proceeds apace. Just got back from a mini-roadtrip to New Brunswick with my colleague J, which was equal parts fun and frustration, mostly because she turned out to be a slightly passive-aggressive kind of travelling companion. Overall, though, it was a really good time, and the GSCVO handled the road beautifully AND had fantastic gas mileage.

Work is work. The schedule is still wreaking havoc with what little social life I have, but is otherwise pretty good. I'm not being totally overworked, which is a nice change of pace.

We've had some unpleasantness over the past few months due to the possibility of permanent positions opening up. We are 14 temporary operators vying for six job openings, and while some of us (like myself) are being reasonably zen about the whole process, others have taken it upon themselves to make things as unpleasant as humanly possible. Even though the process of filling the permanent positions is pretty much an objective one (everyone has to pass through two evaluations, one written and one oral, which are graded by one senior staff member and one HR person who's entirely impartial), these people have decided that they will be best served by trying to undermine their colleagues in any way they can think of. It's really very unfortunate, and has made the atmosphere around here pretty tense. I'm lucky enough that my 12-hour schedule keeps me mostly out of the way of said unpleasant people, which is good all-around.

It does, however, motivate me even more to keep working toward my goal of becoming a regular member. I'm not deluding myself that there won't be other problems in other jobs, but at least I'd be paid more. ;)

Lots of other minor work-related things, which I may go into in depth at some future date.


I came home from my trip to a very sick cat. Gretzky's been feeling poorly for a while now, but she took a sharp turn for the worse when I was gone. So we hied ourselves to the vet today, where I found out that my beloved vet is on maternity leave, leaving me to deal with the evil vet who accused me of wanting my cat to suffer back in the day. Evil vet redeemed himself by A) being polite and respectful, B) telling me how beautiful my cat was, and C) not trying to sell me any ridiculously expensive procedures on my cat.

Gretzky got poked and prodded, injected with antibiotics, injected with a whole lot of saline solution to rehydrate her, and even got her claws clipped since she won't let me near her paws anymore and her claws were threatening to grow right into the pads of her feet. The possibly-not-evil vet cleaned her up, talked nicely to her, and let me hold her while he did undignified things to her so she wouldn't be too traumatized.

We got home after two hours, and she's already looking much better, and seems perkier. So all is well in the feline world.

I then got called in for an emergency night shift at work, which is where I am now, sneaking onto the internet. Bad Phnee! ;) I am tired and mostly braindead, so I'm hoping they don't hold it against me too much.

In other news, the date for Capricornucopia has been set: January 15th. Mark your calendars. :)