Corner of Bourbon & Division

The quail hadn't laid any eggs yesterday when I checked on them, but clearly they got busy afterward because I got five eggs when I checked this evening before going to work! This is exciting news because it means the third lady quail is probably getting in on the action as well now. I think tomorrow night it will be omelette time. Om nom nom.

The night shifts are going by kind of slowly, and I have a headache tonight that the paranoid part of me is trying to convince me is the beginning of Covid. I forgot to call my parents yesterday evening and I feel kind of shitty about that. It was 10pm when I remembered, and I didn't want to risk waking them if they were asleep. They are notorious for going to bed much later than me normally, but this week it wouldn't surprise me if they were trying to get to sleep much earlier than usual. I hope they're doing okay. I'll probably call them when I get out of work tomorrow morning, maybe around 8:30 or so.

I won't be getting much sleep tomorrow anyway. KK has asked me to drive her to the hospital because she has an endoscopy at 9:00 that she has to be sedated for, so she is not allowed to drive herself back from the appointment. So that means I won't be getting to sleep until at 11:00 at the earliest and more likely noon. Normally that would be fine, and I'd just sleep until 8:00pm, but I also committed to a phone call at 4:00pm that I don't want to miss or reschedule.

I think I mentioned that I'd started looking for my birth parents last year, right? Anyway, my birth mother wasn't super keen on staying in touch after a few emails, which I understand, even if I'm a little disappointed that I won't get to know her any better. At least I got some answers to the questions I had, and that's good enough for me. I actually found a 2nd cousin through ancestry.ca, Cousin Karen, and she is VERY invested in helping me find all of my birth relatives. She and I are Facebook friends now and chat pretty regularly. She seems super nice. So, once I learned the identity of my birth father and, more importantly, his parents, she was finally able to pinpoint how we were related (we share a grandmother on my paternal side). The social worker on my file wasn't able to locate my birth father, but Cousin Karen is apparently far more resourceful. She recruited Cousin Suzie and they found him on Facebook under an alias (the way many people don't use their full name on Facebook, it's nothing nefarious). So I relayed this information to my social worker, she got in touch with him, and he is open to communicating with me.

I will confess to creeping on his Facebook beforehand, to get a sense of who he is these days. My birth mother had explained to me that he was very emotionally abusive with her, and basically abandoned her to be homeless during her pregnancy. He adamantly didn't want children, and she says he gave her an ultimatum: him or the baby. Since she didn't have a job or a place to live, I was a medically very fragile baby, and she wasn't ready to divorce him (they were married), so she gave me up for adoption. So, you know, he sounds like he was a world-class asshole.

His online presence has led me to believe he may have changed for the better over the years. Very shortly after he and my birth mother split up he met another woman (name unknown to me) and they remained together until her death last year, by the looks of it. He also became a registered social worker after, I assume, giving up on his dreams of going to acting school. He doesn't post much that's very personal, but then again, neither do I on social media, but his politics appear to be very left-leaning.

The social worker gave me his cell phone number, and he and I texted briefly today and agreed to talk tomorrow afternoon. Well, technically this afternoon now, since it's well past midnight. I'm very interested to hear his version of events, to see what kind of accountability he's willing to take, what work he's done on himself, and to learn if he's ever attempted to make amends, or what. He may have done a lot or nothing at all, but I'm interested to know.

Anyway, yeah, it has been a week, and we're not even done yet!

I'm going to go heat my "lunch" and wait for this shift to finally end in a few hours. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

November has arrived again, with its customary dip in my energy levels. I'm experimenting with being off Facebook and Twitter again, after a successful one-month hiatus in May. This time I'm not enjoying it as much. I took a break in May because those platforms were making me a little crazy, but right now I'm finding that I feel more isolated from my friends and community than anything else. Maybe November isn't a good time of year for introspection. At least in May it's sunny and the days are longer.

Apart from that, my news is mostly good. I got the promotion I applied for, despite the fact that I thought I was by far the least likely of the candidates to get it. Apparently I got a bit lucky. There were four of us applying for two positions. The girl I thought was most qualified got one of the positions. Two guys also applied from outside our section, but one of them withdrew without my knowing, and the other one, by all accounts, had a bad day when he interviewed. He'd applied before and been passed over in favour of a more qualified applicant, and it seems that he came to this new interview with something of a surly attitude as a result. My boss told me that it had showed that I'd come prepared, and that I had done really well, so no one on the interview panel doubted for a moment that I should get one of the two open positions.

So, in short, promotion! YAY! Also, in related good news, fully 75% of the supervisor positions in my section are now staffed by women. Go us! The three of us also get along like a house on fire, so it's going to be so much fun to work with them. I'm excited. :)

I'm also going to be spending the next four weeks training to perform a completely new set of functions at work, unrelated to my new supervisory role. Well, sort of related, but I would have had to learn them anyway, regardless of the outcome of the promotion process. That means four week of an almost bourgeois schedule of working 06:00 to 14:00, Monday to Friday. It will be very interesting to see if I can deal with working five days in a row with only the weekend in between for four weeks. I've been working shifts for eight years now, it feels weird to be going back to a "regular" work day, however briefly.

By the way, we are horrifically short-staffed at my office, and we will likely soon be opening up new jobs (again). If you or anyone you know is a Canadian citizen with a high school education or higher, good computer skills, and a more than basic grasp of French (you need to be functional but not fluent), and you want to come work for some great bosses (myself included, now!), drop me a line! I will send you the application information the moment the jobs open again. :)

I've also been nominated to become the Clerk for the First Day School of the local Quaker Meeting. It sounds more glamorous than it is. ;) Basically it just means I'd be responsible for herding the cats in order to keep FDS running smoothly. First Day School is the kids' program at Meeting, a bit like Sunday School, only a lot less formal. There's singing and crafts and occasionally lessons about what it means to be a Quaker/Friend. Honestly, I'm still learning myself how to be a Quaker, so I feel ill-equipped to be the Clerk, but most of the FDS Committee have been there for years, and they're all burnt out. So I've agreed to take the helm, and two of them will be mentoring me until I get the hang of it.

Technically I'm still an Attender at the Meeting, not an official member. I've started doing some reading to become more informed, and the more I learn the less I feel I know. I think that's sort of normal, at least at first. I don't want to ask to become a Member before I feel like I know what I'm doing. The Religious Society of Friends has had a long and rich written tradition, letters and essays and diaries, and there is a lot of history to go through. I basically know absolutely nothing of the complexity and nuance of thinking that evolved over the centuries to bring the Quakers to where they are today. So, that's one of my current projects right now.

The adoption project has slowed to a crawl while we sort out paperwork. I need to get a police check done to prove that I have no criminal record (yes, you may all laugh now) and no history of abuse toward children or anyone or anything else (go on, laugh harder). Also, even though I've been stable and not medicated for nine years, they want my former psychiatrist to sign off on my mental health. So I've been jumping through hoops trying to get him to answer his damned phone. He's moved to a private practice, and I've already left messages several times. His secretary assures me he'll call back "when he gets the chance," but it's been three weeks, so I'm a little irked. I realise I'm not a current or paying client, but sheesh. Once all those papers are in order, I'll find out whether or not I've been accepted as a potential candidate. If I'm accepted, things will proceed as they are right now. If not, I am toying with a Plan B, which I will explore more in depth if needs be. I'm not thinking about it too much right now, as it involves a pretty drastic life change, which won't happen at all if I end up on the waiting list for kids.

In the interim, I've been spending my free time returning to the gym, playing video games on the computer, and watching probably way too much TV for my own good, even though I've become even pickier about what shows I like to watch. The trouble is that, even if I'm picky, there's still a lot of enjoyable programs available, especially once you have both cable and Netflix. Yes, I caved and got cable, because my DSL internet provider, despite promising speeds of "up to" 30 Mbps, never delivered anything above 300 Kbps, and it was rather frustrating to pay for a service I wasn't getting. So I coughed up extra money for much better internet, and got a land line and cable TV out of the deal, too, which really isn't half bad.

The rest of tonight's plans involve sacking out on the sofa with the cats, the dog at my feet, and the latest episode of Sleepy Hollow (or maybe Elementary, I haven't decided yet). Then it will be bedtime. In fact, it will be past bedtime, as I am now old and boring and am usually in bed by 21:00 these days. Kids, lawn, etc.

How's everyone else in LJ land doing? Let me know!

I don't think I could possibly catch up on everything that's happened since I last posted here, so I won't even try. That being said, there's stuff coming up that I may want to blog about in more depth, so making a bit of an effort now is in order.

First off, hi LJ Land! I haven't been posting, but I do read everything you write. <3

Anyway, have a bullet-point version of the past few months:

• I adopted three new cats in February. It was meant to be two, but then fearsclave was forced to rehome his kitties due to health concerns, and so I got his Maggie as well. Alas, one of the other two cats I got is not integrating into the household, so he will be vacating the premises and going to live with good friends of mine. So far all the cats mostly get along, with some spats and negotiating of territory still happening. Things are settling down slowly but surely.


• I am still volunteering in the soup kitchen at Shepherd's (I won't use the full name, because I don't want their media relations people reading all my posts), and have also started volunteering one day a week at their community garden plot, helping to grow and harvest vegetables for the soup kitchen. I still love it, although the work is often physically very demanding.


• I went on a trip to Barcelona with my parents in March, which was far too short but truly wonderful. I posted lots of pictures on Facebook, so anyone following me there probably saw them.


• The work restructuring continues apace. It is, as I suspected, a PITA, and has resulted in a lot more work being given to much fewer people. Those people are also the ones who are paid the least, not surprisingly. It appears every workplace is the same when it comes to penny pinching: the higher up you are, the less you feel the pinch.


• I also managed to escape to PEI for a while this summer, also with my parents. I've joked with them that we've seen more of each other since I moved to Ottawa than in the past five years I lived in Montreal combined. That's not quite true, but they have been making extra efforts to come out and see me (and vice versa!) since I moved.


• The past two years of commuting to and from work in Ottawa, as well as trying to run two households on one income, paying for private daycare, and then renovating the house in order to sell it, all took a pretty serious financial toll on me. The short, ugly version is that I accumulated a fair bit of debt in order to do that. So I've been tightening my belt (the two trips notwithstanding, although in both cases my parents were generous enough to pay for almost everything) and looking for extra sources of income. I'm currently trying my hand at being a mystery shopper. It doesn't bring in a fortune, and it's not super great work for someone with anxiety, but I'm hoping it will at least offset some of my monthly bills. Every little bit helps, right? I also need to get my act together and try to sell some of the "extra" furniture that doesn't fit in my new, smaller house.


• In happier, not debt-filled news, I have been approved by the Ottawa Children's Aid Society to continue with PRIDE training (Parental Resources for Information, Development, and Education) as well as a home study. The training starts on September 9th, and if all goes well I should be done with everything by the end of October. If I'm approved as a prospective adoptive parents after that, then I get to start the waiting game of being matched up with a child (or maybe children!) in need of a permanent home.

So that's me in a nutshell. I may be using this space to talk about the PRIDE training in September and October, so apologies in advance to everyone who finds that sort of stuff super boring. I promise to put it behind a cut if it gets overly long. :)

I know lots of you have been having a really rough year. I hope you're all keeping as well as possible under the circumstances. *hugs all around*

The universe rewarded me for turning 36 with a wicked bout of vertigo in the middle of my night shift, which I was working alone. So I had to call my boss in disgrace for the second time in six months and crawl home and wait for death, but not before I ended up puking in the trash can at work because I couldn't make it to the bathroom. It was extra humiliating. /o\ I also had to cancel my first ever volunteer session at Shepherds of Good Hope, which also sucked.

So things are a little like my icon, but without the vodka, and it's not nearly as fun as it looks.

I spent today curled up with my laptop, posted some fanfiction and took a nap. I also did dishes, so that today wouldn't be a total write-off. I'm scheduled to have a Skype chat with my parents later on too, which will be nice. The world has (mostly) stopped spinning, and moving doesn't make me throw up anymore, so that's a win. :)

Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about my plans for the year. I've decided not to do "resolutions" in the traditional sense of the word. That being said, I do have a lot on my plate for the foreseeable future.

( 2015 behind the cut! )

Anyway, that concludes my lengthy rambling about what I have in mind for the year. I'd promise to post more, but that's probably a lie. I seem to go through phases when I post a lot, and others in which I post only sporadically or not at all, and I think I'll just stick to that. I'll post when I feel I have something of value to share, and that will have to suffice.

Happy New Year again, everyone!