Happy ending

Remember how I was talking about trying not to quit during my three-month review (which went fabulously, by the way)?

I lasted until the end of the day.

I gave my notice today for both my job and my apartment and have one more month left working for the paper before heading into a future full of wonderful uncertainty.

I'll be moving back in with my family and figure out a game plan later. For now I feel very happy and free.

(These squiggles are me being glad.)

Oh yes I did

Yesterday I did 15 pushups in a row! While they may have been nothing more than knee-pushups, that's quite an accomplishment for my wimpy arms.

Today I fixed a toilet! The chain fallen off the flusher thing, so I reached into the gross tank and did a little handymanning.

The dreaded review

I had my three-month evaluation this morning and it lasted for about an hour and a half.

I was getting a little ulcer-y waiting for it, but it went surprisingly well. Apparently the bosses like everything I'm doing, they just want more of it.

So we had a little brainstorming session about all kinds of profiles and stories we could do. It's about enough stuff to last an entire year. The only problem is that I'm not really interested in doing a lot of the stories.

I'm not so interested in my job anymore either and I really want to go home. I'm thinking about giving notice on my apartment and moving home at the end of October.

Poor scary baby

A dog that's the size of a pit bull just got sentenced to death.

I feel ridiculous for being upset about it but the poor dog was abused when it was younger and it's not its fault that he doesn't know how to behave.

His owner didn't even show up for the hearing.

Time for a book review

Down to This
by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

I love this brilliant book and have a little crush on the author. Shaugnessy went and lived as one of the homeless in Toronto for almost a year.

His book is basically a 474-page diary of what happened and how the experience changed him.

Here's a few parts I liked:

March 31

I do love this squalor—every day a little more. I love busting out of this shack in the cold sun, wearing just jeans and unmatching boots….

I love the rats. They live beneath my floor, still scurry back under when they see me coming—as if I don’t know they’re there, like we don’t lie awake at night (me and the rats) listening to each other breathe, scratching and scraping, and sharpening our teeth.

I love the ducks, pigeons, seagulls, geese and doves, all flying and fighting for bits of bread, singing and squawking—how it seems they’re copying our every move….

I love my little big brother, Calvin [no relation]. I love his smiling shiny eyes and that he asks me if I’m doing okay whenever he’s not. I love that he laughs if I hit him a bit too hard when we’re jousting with two-by-fours or fighting in the woodpile. I love that we can’t hurt each other, no matter how much we bruise and bleed….


April 3

The woman ahead of me in the soup line today was laughing in a Hollywood approximation of madness. She turned to me, still cackling, and we stared at each other for a long time, both a bit out of our heads—monsters meeting in a desert world.

She put a cigarette in each of our mouths, and I lit them. She stopped laughing and said, "You have nice eyes." She said it like you might say, "You’ve shot me."

"Thank you."

She took a drag of her cigarette, then punched me hard in the stomach.

Everything’s kind of like that these days.

Uber-fun Friday night

I went out to the bar for the first time since moving to my new town and it was even less exciting than I thought it would be.

For starters, there were maybe 12 people there, including the workers.

I went with my new friend who can't decide if she likes me or not and a few of her friends.

The one girl lost her licence for drinking and driving so she drove to the edge of town and hid her car behind an old building. Classy.

Then when we were at the bar, she and my new friend were talking about how they drink and drive and lie to the cops. Fun.

And the other girl told me that she hates people that drink and drive and that a guy she knew who was in the passenger seat when his friend was driving drunk deserved it when he was thrown into the windshield and almost died.

Other neat things I learned:

1. My friend who sometimes likes me lies to her boyfriend and he follows her to find out what she's doing.

2. I would rather spend an evening baking cookies.

3. I don't really like my sometimes friend.

A dilemma of epic proportions

Grey's Anatomy is on tonight after a summer-long hiatus. The finale made me cry and I can't wait to find out what happens next.

The only problem is that there's an aerobics class on tonight with real people in it that seem to like me.

I have no VCR and only two channels, so I couldn't catch up with my TV friends after the class. I think it would be smart to go to aerobics instead, but I don't really want to.

Tongue-biting ahead

My three-month evaluation is coming up in two days.

Here's what they'll say:

1. "We want you to use bigger words and string them together to make longer sentences."

2. "We want you to be on time for work."

3. "We want you to stop telling us about your ideologies."

4. "We want you to focus on writing stories in a way that will convince more clients to advertise with us. That is, we want you to write nice things about the people you interview."

5. "We want you to work unlimited overtime for no compensation."

6. "We want you to stop compaining about the 1980's computer that keeps crashing. We don't care how much it costs in lost productivity because, as we already mentioned, we want you to work unlimited hours."

7. "We want you to stop saying bad things about us on the internet."

I'm going to do my best not to say anything during the review to keep from spontaneously quitting.

Red like blood and shiny paint

I wrote a cheque for my last car payment yesterday — remember it's a cheap 1980's car so this isn't really a monumental occasion — and hit a raccoon shortly afterwards.

I swerved to aviod hitting the poor creature, but it was too late. The thud was so loud I didn't stop to see if he'd be okay. It was so gross and so sad.

After having paid my car off, I was thinking that maybe I could keep it, just for fun. But the accident reminded me that I don't want to keep wrecking the world with my car as the weapon.

I'll keep my car as long as I keep my job. After that, it'll be back to carpooling, taking the bus or begging my mom to drive me places.

The sort-of invitation

(Warning: this post containes pompous blustering, which I will try to keep to a minimum in the future.)

I made it onto the Dean's List last year and went to a little ceremony yesterday to collect a pin, a certificate and a nice heaping of praise.

The speaker sat beside me and we talked for a bit. He had spent 10 years as dean and is still teaching. After I told him I had already graduated and was working at a paper, he asked if I had considered graduate studies. (!!!)

I'm considering that my official invitation.

There's an idea in sociology called the looking-glass self. It's a theory that people decide who they are based on what they think others think about them.

I think the theory works, at least when it comes to decoding myself. Now that I know the dean thinks I'm smart enough to handle graduate work, maybe I'll have to give it a try.

Tid bits

The good thing about working ridiculous amounts is being able to take Fridays off. I'm back home and loving it. I heard it might snow this weekend and if it does, I hope there's such a huge storm that I'll have to take even more time off.

I interviewed the mayor of my little town earlier today and we got off topic and started discussing the future of rural Saskatchewan. He said, half-jokingly and half-seriously, that by the year 3,000 Saskatchewan will be no more than one farm and two cities. I agree, but I think it will be an awful lot sooner than that.

I'm in a rehab program for my neck and have to exercise muscles that are so tiny I have no idea when I'm flexing them.

I'm thinking of stealing Faunty's dog and taking him with me to my lonely town. I'm not sure if I want him or not though since he can be annoying.

The Photographer just came home and took a piece of lettuce out of the fridge, poured salad dressing on it, rolled it up and ate it. Apparently she loves ceaser salad.

My car will be officially paid off tomorrow! Even though she only cost $2,300, it'll be nice to know that she's actually mine and not the bank's.

High and low

A public relations woman from the university I graduated from called to ask if I wanted a part-time job that sounded amazing. I was too excited about it to sleep and kept thinking about all the classes I would take and the profs I would discuss political and social ideologies with. I also thought about how nice it would be to get back into my favorite yoga class.

Then in between going to court — which was depressing — and discovering that the woman who wanted to hire me thought I was a student and probably can't hire a graduate, I had a long, sad tired day.

Bees and flowers

I got two compliments on my writing today.

The first person sent an e-mail saying the quality of the paper has gone up since I've been here, that my column is his/her favorite, and that my writing is "refeshing."

I was feeling very smug until the second compliment.

A elderly man I was interviewing said he really likes my writing and keeps looking for my stories in the paper. Fabulous. But then he said, "It seems like you don't really know much about anything." When I said I keep my writing simple so everyone can understand it, he said he meant his comment in a nice way and that he enjoys reading my work.

So I'm feeling a little less smug.

Intruige and scandal in the workplace

Someone in my office is trying to kill me.

My would-be assassin keeps using the washroom, for presumably smelly purposes, and spraying lethal amounts of vile peach air freshner.

As if that weren't bad enough, this person closes the door, leaving the fan off, and making sure whoever uses the facilities next inhales masses of toxic fumes.

A simple but diabolical plan.

A not-nice dream

Last night I dreamt that I opened a dusty thing — maybe an art folder or a glass light cover — and all these tiny dead bugs and animals fell out.

There were moths and flies and a horse that would have been about two inches long and one inch high. They were all dead and dried out and covered in dust.

When I opened the container to clean it, they all fell on my bed and were too gross to even think about cleaning the mess. So I left.

I've thought about quitting about 100 times today.

Most jobs I've had have lasted three days to three months. I'm getting closer to the three-month mark and the suffocation is starting.

I had a disagreement with one of my old friends a while back. I said I've gone through probably 20 jobs so far in my relatively short years of being an employee. She didn't think the total could be anywhere near as high, so I'm going to make a list to see who'se right.

1. working at a park in new Brunswick, riding my bike up and down the trails all summer

2. working as a file clerk/secretary at an insurance company (fired)

3. working at tim hortons (fired)

4. working as a Santa photographer in the mall

5. packaging nuts and candies for a snack company (fired)

6. selling magazines door-to-door

7. working at a call centre doing surveys

8. picking berries at a little berry farm

9. working at a coffee shop

10. doing home care for a parapalegic (I lasted 3 days)

11. working in a department store

12. working in housekeeping

13. working in housekeeping at another hotel (fired)

14. working at a cell phone call centre

15. working in cosmetics at Shoppers' drug Mart

16. working as a painter

17. packing for people who were moving

18. big internship at a real paper

19. my current job

20. demonstrating products like Swiffer Mops in malls and handing out chocolate samples

****this list is only partly in order****

I wonder if it's a record to go through 20 jobs in 6 years, while also going to school. If not, maybe being fired three times in a row can be my claim to fame.

My parachute is not this colour.

Poor potential bird-to-be

My car got egged last night. There's dried yolk, egg white and a few pieces of the shell on top of the driver's door and the roof. Cute.

A bird once pooped on my face at Seaworld or Disneyland a few years ago, and nothing, not even an entire carton of eggs, could be worse than that warm sticky white mess.

Well I have no idea how to get the egg off my car, I'm rather pleased to have joined the elite company of one of my favorite court reporters (from a real paper, in a real city) who also fell victim to flying eggs.

Of fruit snacks and bus rides

Happy first day of school, Faunty.

This monumental occassion reminds of your grade-school picture with your huge glasses, she-mullet and your pink and white flowered shirt.

Good thing you now have a personal shopper and half of my clothes :)

Yipee

My new friend that doesn't like me likes me again :)

Good, because hanging out at the grocery store and library is starting to get old.

My Monday

In between doing an interview and waiting for an event to start at a camp, I had an hour to spend splashing in the water and laying on a gorgeous beach.

I was enjoying the sun and having a little nap on the sand when a huge dog ran up, jumped on my stomache and shook himself off, spraying smelly droplets all over me. What great fun.

"Murderer arrested"

Anyone see a problem with this headline?

I know of a paper (not mine of course) that ran this headline on the front page. I smell a lawsuit coming with huge, huge damages.