Okay. Monday left at t (regular time) arrival at work: N +3 3 minutes late. (Goal is N-5)
Tuesday left at t-5; arrival at work: N
Wednesday left at t-10; arrival at work: N
Thursday (running late) left at t; arrival at work:N
Today after driving by the bloodstained spot on the street, I wondered what happened. I watched the news ever since it happened and didn't hear anything. I assumed the worst. Perhaps he did die, I don't know, but my relief was in the manner in which it happened and the reason. I finally got up the guts to call the police station and they explained that now with HIPA I couldn't know what happened to him - and I know that. What I wanted to know was the call to 911. Why did they call? Finally after stumbling through the computer he was able to tell me that it was for a seizure. I am so relieved after the picture that I had in my head of him laying there on the ground with his eyes wide open and the fresh red blood coming out of his mouth was not due to being run over or shot down. He must've hit his head and/or bit his tongue. The stain that is still there was pretty large for a tongue bite.
I decided to take off for work this morning to avoid the traffic I experienced yesterday. Just my luck, they all left early, too. Same traffic jam, different day.
I was told today by a coworker that she likes me because I am a sincere person. I almost cried. I thanked her. She made my day!
I came across something very strange on my way to work this morning. I had to drive around a man laying in the middle of the street with blood coming out of his mouth and his eyes wide open. There was a vehicle halfway in the driveway and I honestly don't know if they parked there to help him, or if they backed over him. I would say that I hope it was nothing serious, but it looked too serious or too late for that hope.
Throughout my life, I have had a problem with things like that. My vision gets so focused and I wonder how the world can keep working when things like that happen. I was shocked, stunned and yet, drove to work, hung my coat up and went about my day like nothing happened - not really, but sort of half-brained for the first part of the day.
I guess this is life. We should count our blessings.
I will gladly take Tom Cruise up on this battle.
In this world some rain must fall. For some it falls in the form of Diabetes, others MS, others have high blood pressure or heart disease, but for many it is Depression. Perhaps we all experience this once or twice in our lifetime, episodically. Some people are crippled with it. The media and our society as a whole have place the big blinking "FREAK" sign on the disease. Would we call a diabetic a freak? Would we call someone with high blood pressure a freak? heart disease? Maybe some would. There are definitely those that have been blessed with perfect health, but most people have something that could be improved - even if it is just their eyesight.
I don't know if this VT thing has been a blessing or a curse for those with depression. There definitely needs to be more knowledge and understanding with this disease. Depression presents in many ways: It is that listlessness that just won't go away. It is those negative thoughts that are in the back of the mind. It is the slow boiling anger. It is the fiery angry bursts that hurt the ones we love and intensifies itself. It is the tired that makes us sleep or want to sleep all day. It is that inability to accomplish those things we want to accomplish. It is us separating ourselves from others. It is not caring how we look, smell or act. It is a heavy lump of hopelessness and despair.
So often depression is a hindrance to its own cure. Exercise is a good remedy, but when getting out of bed in the morning takes all your energy, exercise is hardly on the agenda. Reaching out to someone, anyone is often a good cure, but who wants to do that. You just don't want to burden others with it, or be labelled a "FREAK".
The brain works in mysterious ways. We know now with Pmris and other diagnostics that the way the brain fires is different in those with depression as well as other disorders. This is physical proof that although it is in your head, it's not. The old way of thinking is: "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps", "Buck up!", "Knock it off!", "Just think happy thoughts". Okay, tell this to diabetics. Tell this to those with heart disease. There is a mind-body connection to physical ailments. Just because an illness is "mental" does not mean it is made up or controllable with thoughts. It is also physical. Many people have been able to overcome physical ailments using their minds. But do we want to take that risk? Virginia Tech. Do we really want to take that risk? Murder-suicides. Is it worth labeling these people as freaks? Columbine. Do you want to lose the people you love? suicide.
There are several treatments out there for depression. To deny people these treatments by stigmatizing and labeling and making them feel weak is inhumane. (Tom Cruise) Rather we should be embracing them and their uniqueness and supporting their treatment. It helps. For many it is the difference between doing something rash and being in control. Help them. Reach out with words. If you don't know them well enough, talk to them. Any contact is better than ignoring them - you don't just need to direct them to help. There are so many things that these people would be able to do if only they would get help. Don't stop them. Stop the ignorance and the labeling. Become part of the solution.
This weekend one of my sons told me that he is having suicidal thoughts. He is reaching out. I hugged him and cried with him. He was so brave telling me this and asking to seek counseling. I know how hard this can be. I will do whatever I have to to save his life. I am calling for counseling this morning. I am educating him as much as possible and being open about it here. He said he wants to quit his job. I completely support this. Just the day before he said this, I watched him walk into work, slouched shoulders, and knew he had to get out. I love you, man! I am there for you!! Thanks for being brave!
Odd night, it was...
We had a neighborhood N.I.C.E. meeting last night. City officials were there to answer questions. To be brief, I will quickly list the topics:
Good: M. Cooper is interested in finding a group of neighbors from areas around the focus area in the mayor's plan. He gave me his card and said, "Call me". (I picture Mike Meyers saying this in So I Married an Axe Murderer.) There were many present that were interested in my ideas: donating time and materials to improve properties of those less fortunate. Such as painting or repairing the house of a less fortunate person, or painting or repairing a house owned by a slum lord that will not do it himself. Beautification of parkways.
Once again K.R. came and talked to me about promises that a certain slum lord is on the brink of death. (I don't believe it. Only the good die young and this guy is going to live forever.) Apparently his wife said that when he dies, the houses will be sold before the funeral. This guy must be really awful to live with, too, if his wife is promising to settle the affairs before the funeral. Apparently she already has a place down in Florida that is sitting empty waiting for her.
T. Smythe, slumlord mentioned in previous posts, is facing a 405 page injunction. The scope of his slumlordiness is larger than previous thought, as he is in cahoots with another person who is now going down with him. He said at one point that he had 20 some units in Sioux Falls and neighboring areas. I know that I have seen more than that listed in the foreclosures already listed in the Argus. He is going through bankruptcy now and K.R. said if I call back in a month I should be able to obtain an update on this situation.
Bad: Vagueness on the neighborhood improvement. Called M. Cooper yesterday and call was not returned.
Questionable: A new ordinance that the city council approved Monday that will supposedly be more effective in cracking down on slums and according to K.R. will take care of the vacant house behind us. This won't go into effect for 20 days and I am unable to find any information on the content of the ordinance.
Ugly: Unbelievable!!! I brought up landscaping on the parkways to help make the neighborhood more attractive. The forestry person from the parks department told me that doing so would be in violation of city code that permits only trees and grass. I said that we may just have to change that ordinance. One of the people at the meeting brought up the fact that some people already do this, to which he replied: Where? We will address this!! Nobody gave an address. What an a$$hole!
Well, I had better get back to my homework.
My apologies to all. I have been busy! I am approaching the end of the semester, my son graduates and has been busy skipping class (putting his graduation in peril), I have papers and tests coming at me left and right, I had to find a car for my son (I would rather have all my teeth pulled one by one with no Novocaine than look for vehicles!) and I found out why I am so tired!!! I am anemic, my thyroid is even worse and I have a hiatel hernia! If anyone would like to assist me, I have a whole list of crap that needs to be done. I apologize for not blogging enough. It has been my outlet and now I have run out of time for that. As soon as I finish my last two papers, take my tests and do my presentation I will be back full boar!! Til then, perhaps a line or two here and there will have to do.
This is a post that I began after the bathroom blog. To update, each of us are taking turns cleaning the bathroom once a week. I think it is helping!
I am seriously thinking about hiring a maid to come in once a week. I will give the kids a chance to volunteer to clean the bathroom, after that, they will each pay for the maid to come in once a week to clean it.
(I will get over it, someday)
Anyway, that was my shower revelation today. That got me started thinking about the various jobs that I have had since I was 10 or so.
When I was 10, Renee and I got a job cleaning the condo of the bachelor next door. What was his name? He had a very clean house, but needed the glass tables and mirrors cleaned. Thank goodness we didn't have to clean his sheets. He was quite the busy bachelor and we could hear them in the summer when the windows were open.
After that I babysat for a little girl on weekend evenings. I don't remember too much about them except that they really liked me and trusted me and they had HBO. So, you have a preteen watching, "Here's Burlesque" and I still remember the "Jeepers, Creepers" bit. That was weird...
When we moved to Evansville, I got a babysitting job for two boys and two boxers. They were all challenging. I think I did a lot of journaling back then out of pure boredom. I was subject to torture of the worst kind - a television permanently tuned into "rasslin' ". I should explain that Evansville had a low form of southern dialect. Set across the Ohio river from Kentucky, they had all the backwoods dialect with none of the southern charm. Not only did the television stations have the national wrestling programs, but they also had local 'rasslin'. While I had Scott Baio and Rex Smith pin-ups taped to my bedroom walls, the locals fell in love with the local overweight foaming at the mouth 'rasslers. I didn't get it.
Two years later, when we moved to Yankton, an extremely cliquey town by all standards, I had difficulty finding babysitting or any kind of job. I resorted to Rent-a-Kid, the local job service program for youngins. My first and last job through Rent-A-Kid was a cleaning job for a middle aged lady in a housecoat. She lacked social skills and I suppose it was worth the meager wages I was paid for her to recline on the sofa while I toiled away at her pink bathroom and yellow kitchen. She led me to the bathroom that reeked of old and fresh piss. I looked and looked and couldn't find any cleaning solution. I invaded her time and asked meekly what she would like me to use for cleaning solution. Why, strawberry shampoo, of course! How stupid of me! Since experiencing this disgusting odor compound of strawberry shampoo and piss, I have been unable to tolerate the waxy smell of fake strawberry. Why, I wondered, after obviously all these years of filth had she picked this weekend to pay someone so scantily to clean her house? I had to scrape away at black circles of chewed gum stuck to the floor in the kitchen. All the lime and dirt layers in the bathroom were slowly penetrated by my sweat and the strawberry shampoo. So desperate was I for a job, that I didn't call my family to pick me up, but stuck with it. I think it was an eight hour job rewarded for some reason by meager wages and a disapproving look. That will do, I guess. Never did I contact rent-a-kid again.
My next job was babysitting for a nurse with 3 children. Their two girls were very well behaved and had a list of chores that were quite complex for for 7 and 9 year olds. The boy, on the other hand, treated with more of a "boys will be boys" attitude, was a monster not made to mind.
Somewhere in there I babysat for this toddler. Her parents were the type that gave her free reign. I should have realized at this point in my life, my tendency for OCD. They allowed her to play with a deck of cards. She bent them and threw them all over the place. I wanted to crawl out of my skin! What a mess!
Another babysitting job I had was for this couple that went out a lot. She was quite the lush! One night, she asked me to babysit. It was a school night and I preferred not to do that. She begged and begged and I eventually said yes. She promised she would be home by 10:00 at the latest. She wasn't home until after 2:00 am, then yelled at me because I said I needed to get right home. Back then we didn't really have concern for drunken adults. We knew the risks for ourselves, but I didn't think twice about this slurring, swearing woman driving me home. I don't think that she compensated for the late night with pay, either.
My next babysitting job was when I was 15. I was the kind of babysitter that cleaned the house and did the dishes and made it all nice for the parents. She was the manager of the movie theater in Yankton. She gave me a job there for $2.85 an hour. This was better than the $1.50 an hour I got for babysitting her kids!! I must have worked there only a couple of nights before I figured out that she wasn't scheduling me any hours at the theater because she needed me to babysit. Let me do the math... Nope!
So, I applied and got a job at Sunshine in Yankton on my 16th birthday! That was great! I was now making $3.35 an hour. I remember the boss there. Her name was Vi Larson. She was short, and like most short women I knew, was quite assertive. She had a beehive that attempted to make up for the short stature, and if that didn't do it, she ran a tight ship. Some famous Vi quotes - I remember them to this day - are:
"We all work when we're sick!"
"To whom it may concern..." on a note posted on the time clock, followed by something someone wasn't supposed to be doing and ending with: "You know who you are! And that means you!! And I mean it!!!"
This woman could strike fear in the hearts of monsters!
Jess's mother said she isn't going to do anything about it because of her negative experience when her mother tried to put her in rehab when she was in high school.
What a good friend!!
In my life, there have been a few cases of poetic justice. There should be more.
The manager that told me to go @#$% myself, later being fired.
The manager I was assistant to that called me at work, one hour after she was off drunk off her butt telling me she couldn't stand me that was fired for that and other drunken dialogs.
The bachelor supervisor that was so indifferent to moms and their need to be home with sick children who, not 2 years later found himself married, with a child that in her infancy began having seizures - requiring him to leave to go to the doctor or the hospital. (No, I don't wish that on anyone, but I realize that anything short of that, or something like it, would not have sunken in. Thankfully it was a temporary condition that she will outgrow.)
The manager that told me that what I do on my own time is NOT my business - because I was attending classes after my shift was over and pocketed the tips customers left for me up at the register, being later fired and charged with embezzlement.
I now have a wish for some poetic justice:
I wish for Jessica's mother to meet a man, have him move in with her, have his child(ren) come for visitation, love this man's children, help them with homework and other various situations - like their mother physically and verbally abusing them, pick them up from school so there is more time to help them with homework, have them treat her like crap, treat her daughter like crap, break things in her house that are precious to her, be left out of any important aspect of their lives, be told she has no rights, be told by their mother that she can't use her own phone because they are complaining about her to their mother, comfort these children when their parents are fighting, have birthday parties for them, be bad-mouthed by their mother to them and the man, be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in the mother and the children's lives, try to protect herself from the kicking, destructive, foul-mouthed, lying flunking-school children who call their mother and tell her that they have been stabbed, because when they were kicking her, their legs scraped her fingernails, only to hear later that their mother told the man that he should have stuck up for the children.
There's more, but I think that will suffice. I am glad the weekend is over. Time to finish my homework. Oh, and if you are a woman dating a man with children and his ex-wife or mother of his children is the psychob@#$% from hell, politely excuse yourself from the relationship and move on.
I think Brian is looking for a place of his own. I hope so. It sounds like he wants to live close by to see the dogs. Hmmm... I don't know if that would work.
But to end on a positive note, somewhat, does anyone else have any stories of poetic justice in their lives? Any wishes for poetic justice? Please help me not sound so evil here!!
