Corner of Bourbon & Division

One thing you don't grasp as a child is that becoming an adult essentially means giving up a huge chunk of your free time. Until I moved out on my own, I essentially had two adults who did a lot of stuff for me without my really noticing. Don't get me wrong, I was expected to help around the house and contribute to the overall functioning of our household, but that's very much not the same as having to do it all myself on top of holding down a full-time job.

This is my roundabout way of complaining that basically every single day next week is taken up by commitments, even though I have the whole week "off" work. I am deeply annoyed by the fact that I won't have any downtime at all until I have to go back to work the following Monday. It's very rude, is what it is, and honestly I am tired just thinking about it.

The good news is that, much to my surprise, KK agreed to move her in-office shift from Monday to Tuesday, so tomorrow I shall zip to Montreal with the Hubris Shawl and a couple of other things I got for my mother, specifically some new KN95 masks for her to try out and a pulse oximeter. I have been worried for quite some time that my mother will resist seeking medical attention when she needs it because she tends to dismiss any symptoms as minor or unimportant, and I'm hoping having an objective measure will help her make that determination. The one I got has good reviews and wasn't super expensive, and I can show her at what number she should definitely seek medical care. Her compromised lung function already puts her at considerable risk, so also knowing when *not* to go to the hospital is also a useful skill to acquire.

The plan is to leave around 8am, which will put me in Montreal by about 11am, especially given the current meteorological conditions, and then leave maybe around 7pm to avoid rush hour traffic and the aforementioned meteorological conditions, which are pretty terrible right now. It didn't snow much overnight, much to my relief, but it has been snowing steadily all day while I've been at the office, so I fully expect the roads to be an absolute nightmare for the next couple of days until the city can get them cleared properly. Driving in was pretty gnarly despite the relative paucity of snow, because the ploughs weren't out yet. Logistically it makes sense. The plough drivers will likely be doing 16 hour stints and desperately need sleep, so it makes more sense to send them out once a lot more snow has fallen so as to maximize the effect of the ploughing, rather than having them scrape two centimeters at a time off the roads and then have to go off shift just as the storm hits its peak. 

Speaking of ploughs, I'm not at all convinced my property management folks will have gotten around to my driveway by the time I get home tonight, so I am bracing for having to pull out my shovel and clear myself a space in there. My immediate neighbours, who share the driveway with me, drove away on Thursday and I haven't seen their car nor any sign it has come back to the driveway since that day. I'm not sure if they just decided to park it elsewhere until the snow was completely removed, or if they just went on a little trip together that happened to coincide with the winter storm.

In the meantime, I have reached out to a local professional organizer. I am 100% fed up with the state of the house, and I can't do it on my own. KK is not going to be of any help for a variety of reasons, so I'm hoping the lady I emailed with today will not be faint of heart and will help me manage within the parameters of the current state of the house. I'm willing to purge more of my stuff to make room, but KK is not going to want to part with any of hers, so I have to figure out storage solutions for all of that in a way that will allow me to keep functioning

My main hope is to start with the garage and turn that into a more functional storage space than it currently is, then turn my attention to the main floor and the basement. I am reasonably confident I can tackle my bedroom on my own, but if that turns out to also require a helping hand, I can always avail myself of the services again. Of course, we might not start with the garage simply because it's been so damned cold lately, and my garage is unheated, so that might have to wait for more clement weather. I'd much rather do the garage first so that it can serve as a staging/storage area, but needs must, I guess. We could always start in the basement or the kitchen. The kitchen is the most in need of some kind of organizing, but we have «l'embarras du choix» as they say. 

I'm just over halfway through my last weekend shift at work. Another five hours and I can GTFO. Pray for good road conditions, friends!

Would you look at that? I am back after less than six months! Who knows if I can keep up this incredible momentum?

The best time seems to be to do this from work, even if the mighty and mysterious firewall doesn't like Dreamwidth. I need to try to remember to import my entries to DW later.

Anyway, enough of that. It's been a whole week since I posted, and it kind of feels like I have nothing to say. That's not entirely true, but I don't want this to become a space in which I only complain. I know, that's what I've used it for 90% of the time, why change? But in the immortal words of Jefferson Airplane: "Life is change; how it differs from the rocks," which apparently is inspired by a quote by John Wyndham in The Chrysalids. Trivia, ahoy!

My mother is going to her first radiology appointment on Monday, which she tells me is just a measurement/fitting appointment rather than actual radiation therapy, which she will start a week later. We have agreed to Skype on Tuesday if she's feeling up to it, so I will know more then about how things are.

Speaking of change, that's what I've been trying to do. Whether I've been successful is a matter for debate, for sure. I'm a little depressed at the thought that my life took a downturn after I turned 35, after nearly seven years of progressive improvement. My only serious and stable relationship tanked, I had to sell my house at a loss (and ended up in some pretty serious debt because of the relationship, from which I'm still recovering), and had to abandon my hopes of having children of my own (which I thought I'd have somewhere between 36 and 38). Then I got forced out of my home by the aptly nicknamed Cruella de Froot Loops (thank you to blackmare for that, which still makes me giggle), and that set me back financially quite a bit, plus vet bills for my beloved but extremely expensive Sergent. Combine this with some regression in my mental and physical health, and you also end up with a house that is, in terms of housekeeping, a goddamned embarrassment.

In short, my life right now looks nothing like what I wanted it to look like, and it's honestly pretty hard to take. I try to console myself with the idea that I am trying my best, but to quote Supernatural: "Well, do the best of somebody better!" So that's what I'm trying now. I am revising a few of the goals I had set for myself, and trying to come up with a plan that's realistic but without setting the bar too low. It's a tricky balance for me, because my brain really enjoys dreaming up things that are basically impossible for me to do, and then convincing me that no, I can totally do them! Brains lie, y'all. It's a problem.

Anyway, since I like to put my ridiculous plans on LJ, I feel that there is no reason not to do it again. Maybe this time I will break the pattern of "post plans on LJ, proceed to then completely fail at plans." (:::ETA::: This turned into something that was less plans and more "thinking out loud and processing stuff.")

( Plans! Plans? Plans. )
Holy Hannah that got long! YIKES. Don't bother reading that, I rambled a lot and it's mostly for my own benefit. Here is the tl;dr:

• I want to de-clutter, downsize my stuff, and fix up the house I'm renting.


• I want to buy a house by the end of summer, and might be doing so with my friend & coworker, KK.


• I'm considering fostering teenagers in the future.


• I want to eliminate all my debt.


• My job is stressing me the fuck out.


• I am looking to change careers, both to get away from my management, and to work in an area that interests me more and has a more reasonable schedule.


• I want to improve my mental and physical health, and lose weight. I don't believe that health is directly correlated to thinness, but for me better health will be achieved in the same way that I will achieve weight loss, which is diet changes and exercise.

Ta-da! Done. :)

I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend. Catch you on the flip side!

What the title says. Today was a good day, overall. I will write up the full promised report tomorrow, after I've had some sleep, and presumably after Meeting.

*falls over*

G'night, LiveJournal. 

My doctor has given me two weeks off work, with an appointment to reassess at that time, to see where we're at. She and I agreed that my work has put too many demands on me at once, and that I definitely need time off to recharge and reboot, as she put it, but that I also need to make sure that they accommodate me more upon my return. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Accommodation is all well and good, but part of our problem is that there is literally no one to do the job except the few of us who are there. Still, that doesn't mean it's a good idea for me to burn myself out trying to keep the place afloat. They can manage without me for a while.

She also will be setting me up with an ear/nose/throat specialist for testing, so we can determine the extent of my hearing loss in my right ear. Because yay Menière's Disease! Ugh.

I've spent the last two days in waiting rooms. After a nice week off last week, this week has been kind of stressful. Sergent came back from the kennel (I was in Montreal for the weekend) with no appetite, and after he'd refused any kind of food for three days, threw up what little I got him to eat, and developed diarrhea, I got worried. By the time we were ready to go to the emergency vet he was so wobbly that I had to lift him into the car. $800 later, and we're not sure what's wrong with him. It's nothing visibly serious: no obstructions in his digestive tract, no tumours, and his blood work came back squeaky clean except for one liver value that always tends to read high on him (ALP, if memory serves). In fact, he has the x-rays and the blood work of a really young dog, except for how he can't walk well and has no energy. So he got an antiemetic, an antibiotic, a new painkiller in case the old painkiller for his arthritis was irritating his stomach, an injection of something to reduce his stomach acidity, and an unofficial prescription for me to feed him ground beef and rice for a few days to keep his stomach settled. I'm still worried about him, because he's still super wobbly today, and seems to be having trouble walking well (one hind leg keeps slipping around, as if he can't quite move it the way it's supposed to go). I've been watching him like a paranoid mother hen, trying to figure out if his breathing seems more laboured than usual or if I'm imagining it.

So much has happened in the past few weeks, I feel hard-pressed to try to address it all. There was the Orlando shooting (which I did  talk about in a previous entry), and then there was the Brexit vote, not to mention several other mass shootings, and ISIL suicide bombers targeting people in Istanbul during Ramadan, of all times (not that there's a good time to be a suicide bomber, but Ramadan seems particularly egregious in  terms of timing). It feels like the whole world is swinging to extremes again, and with the threat of the European Union slowly coming apart at the seams, I can't help but see shadows of the first half of the 20th century, which almost all of humanity spent at war with one another. There is so much fear, so much hatred, being spewed about, that it's really hard to push through it to see the good in humanity as well. The bad news rises to the top, and is always accessible. Finding the good is always a lot more work, and there are days when it's hard to remember to even look for it.

According to a topic trending on Twitter, today is Heterosexual Pride Day, which... wow. Just wow. I don't know who came up with that, but that is pretty terrible. The LGBT community has a pride day/month that was "not born out of a need to celebrate being gay, but instead our right to live without prosecution. [...] So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one." (Quote by L.Z. Granderson)

I'll try to come up with some nice things to post about after this very depressing entry. I had a good time last week, overall: I saw my parents, I went to a friend's birthday party, I ran a D&D game, and it was all really nice. The world around me seems to have gone to shit, though, and it's hard to reconcile good things on a small scale with terrible things on a large scale.

First off, what the hell just happened to LiveJournal? I DISLIKE CHANGE, OKAY? Well, I dislike change that makes my LJ look ugly, anyway. I am not overly fond of this new look. Still, if the past is anything to go by, LiveJournal is going to ignore all feedback and carry on the way it wants to, and since I'm not yet ready to give up on it just yet, I suppose I'd better just swallow this and keep going. *sigh*

( In which I rival anime heroines in levels of klutziness )

( Scheduling Woes, i.e.: There are not enough hours in the day. )

I am a little surprised at how many dreams I'm managing to remember of late.

In this one I had arrived at work and was just starting my shift. In my dream, starting my shift meant going outside the RCMP building and making sure the weeds didn't take over the place. I was still a dispatcher, but apparently weeding was part of the deal. I'm guessing that yesterday's yard work was lodged somewhere in my subsconsious. Anyway, the weeds were plentiful, and I was very worried that I hadn't already done a better job of keeping them at bay. I thought it might have something to do with the arrival of spring, since they were springing up all over the place, but I kept thinking that I should have done a better job during my last shift, even though there hadn't really been enough time to get all the weeds in the short time I was allotted before I began my shift (about half an hour in the dream, if memory serves), since the grounds at work are quite vast.

I wasn't able to get it all done then, either, but it was time to head back in, so I hurried into the building and, for some reason I now don't recall, went into a small conference room. Perhaps I was fetching something, or had to do something in the room prior to my shift, I don't remember. Anyway, the next thing I knew people were pouring into the room. I recognised them all as being from the drug enforcement section, and realised that I was inadvertently crashing an important meeting. There was a beautiful young woman there with very long brown hair and big blue eyes, and I recognised her immediately as the girlfriend (or maybe daughter?) of an important mafia boss, and that's when I knew that she must be there to give testimony. It explained why there were so many officers and why everything was being kept hush-hush. She was being kept in witsec in return for her to turn state's evidence, as they say in the U.S.

For some reason I couldn't figure out, she took a shine to me and insisted I sit next to her. I knew her life was in grave danger just by being there, and sure enough when I turned around I caught sight of a sniper on the roof of a building farther down the street. Amusingly enough, it was Eliot from the TV show Leverage. In the dream I apparently knew him well enough that we were friends of a sort, or at least had been. I remember being very upset at the thought that he'd apparently gone back to being a thug-for-hire. I didn't want the girl I was with to die, so I waved and smiled at him and sat directly beside her, so that he wouldn't have a shot unless he went through me first, and I was convinced that our relationship was strong enough that he wouldn't take that shot. (I'm not 100% sure, but I think briefly in the dream I either thought I was Parker, also from Leverage, and I might have transformed into her for a little while, to capitalise on their bond in the show).

In the end, we got through the interview with no bloodshed, and the officers were able to take the girl back into witsec without incident. There was a strange little interlude in my dream, then, in which I shifted into spectator mode. This actually happens a lot to me in dreams, when I seem to step outside what's happening and just watch what's going on. Sometimes I'm watching myself, but more often than not it's like watching a very surreal movie. It felt like an extra scene from Leverage, but it was taking place right after what had just happened in my dream. Parker was there (perhaps I had been her after all, and was now myself again?), and she'd gone to find Eliot, and gave him a very impassioned speech about coming back to the side of the good. She reminded him of everything they'd done, all the progress they'd made, all the lives they'd improved, and I am pretty sure that by the end of the scene they had reconciled and Eliot had given up his thug-for-hire ways for good. So it was a happy ending for them.

By then, though, I was nearly five hours late for my own work shift. I sprinted down the hall and arrived at my office, where I couldn't see anyone. There were beautiful green plants hanging everywhere, though, as well as lined up on trolleys in the hallway just outside. My office was apparently in the midst of a big campaign to improve employees' lives through plants and flowers. The whole office smelled fragrant and green, and I couldn't help but feel my spirits lift when I walked in. I knew that not only would I be allowed to have plants at my desk, but that I'd be encouraged to take more plants home, which was great. I kept thinking that this would never have happened at my old posting, and was such a vast improvement over my previous job, and that I was very lucky to have such a great job now.

Still, I had to account for my tardiness. I ran directly to my supervisor's office to explain what had happened. He seemed pleased to see me, and had wondered why I was late. I explained that I'd actually arrived at work early for my shift, but that I'd been delayed by circumstances outside of my control. He seemed pretty sympathetic overall, since he apparently knew about the witness meant to give testimony, but I lost him when I told him that Eliot had been the sniper on the roof. I recall saying: "But wait—it gets better!" because I was legitimately excited about Eliot being there, but I could tell my boss couldn't quite bring himself to believe me. Nonetheless, he decided that I didn't deserve to be sanctioned, and sent me back to my desk to get to work.

And that's all I remember of that.

Today there is rain in the forecast, which means yard work will not be happening, alas. I should have gotten up at 6:00, but I was lazy and slept until 7:30, so that means I couldn't get an early start on the yard work at all. Since there's mostly rain forecast all week it's not the end of the world, as my main goal was to get the yard in good enough shape for Bean to play in it. If it's raining he won't be able to play outside anyway.

Instead I shall try to organise some of my stuff today. The back and forth from Ottawa means I rarely stop and go through my things, and so my "packing" has become increasingly haphazard over the months. So today I'm going to cull my things and try to get everything back down to manageable levels of bags.

I have been a terrible person to be around lately, both online and in person.

I'm going to try much, much harder to be better than I am. I kind of lost track of my goals in the last few weeks, especially once I started looking for another place to live, but even before then.

My resolution not to complain has been a total bust so far. I just can't seem to help myself. Resolution #1 is to try harder not to complain. I have it pretty good, especially when compared to most. No more complaining, self. This is the last post in which you get to do that.

I also have not been good at doing basic things to ensure good health. My eating habits are... well, they're okay but not great. I already decided to try the mason jar salad things, and in the interest of promoting better health, I'm going to try a few things in the coming weeks.

• Walk 30 minutes a day. Preferably shortly after "breakfast," but otherwise whenever I can squeeze it in. Take the dog with me when I'm home so he gets some exercise too.


• Stop drinking caffeinated beverages (coffee especially)


• Cut back drastically on my sugar intake


• Plan healthy meals for myself when I'm on my own


• Take my vitamins/supplements every day

I am going to make a more concerted effort to clean and tidy both my living spaces. I've been doing maintenance rather than in-depth cleaning (like dishes, or surface cleaning in the kitchen and bathroom), and I need to do a lot more than that. I will have to find a way to keep myself accountable for this, but I haven't thought of a good way to do that yet. Related to this, I need to finish organising the books in the bedroom and do another sorting of my clothes to get rid of some of the things I don't wear or that's too old or that doesn't fit anymore. I have overall too much stuff that's taking up too much space in the house, so I'm going to try to cull unnecessary things in the coming months. I guess it could be considered spring cleaning/reorganisation. :)

I've been letting myself sleep in on the days I'm home, sometimes not getting up until 07:30 or nearly 08:00 when the rest of the family is up at 06:00 or 06:30. This needs to change. I'm going to set a (very quiet) alarm for 07:00, to make sure I'm not oversleeping, because these days there is no way I can drag myself out of bed before then without an alarm.

I am also going to work a lot harder to find additional sources of revenue.

No idea if any of this is going to work, but I'm damned well going to try. Self-improvement for the win.

So it turns out my fine motor skills are for shit. I got some discounted gimp the other day (yes, I know, bad Phnee for spending money on stuff that isn't necessities or a birthday present for Bean, I know, I know), and I can't actually get the first loops to stay long enough for me to keep lacing it all together. *sigh* I will keep trying, but so far I've just managed to get cramps in my hands. At least there are video tutorials on YouTube, but gimp is slippery shit at best, and I worry that what I used to be able to do when I was eight years old is now entirely beyond me.

No wonder everyone thinks I'm incompetent. I can't even manage plastic laces. Thinking about it, it's amazing I manage to feed and dress myself every day. :P

I don't suppose any of my local friends who know how to do this would be willing to have a craft date with me and teach me to be less useless? I've always learned better with someone to show me and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Learning from books and videos has never been my strong suit.

I never write anything cheerful anymore. Sorry about that. I can't guarantee upbeat posts, just FYI, so if you're here for that, well, you're going to be disappointed.

( I'll put it behind a cut so you don't have to read the rest )