I finally got the Basement of Horrible Cat Pee professionally clean. It's now looking horrific but smelling a million times better. It also cost a bloody fortune, and I am... well, not exactly broke, but definitely back to paycheck to paycheck, juggling bill payments, and constantly worried something, somewhere, is going to bounce and send me into a spiral of late fees. Part of this is justified, and part of this is just my usual hang-ups about money. I should have some overtime payments coming in in about a month or six weeks, so if I just hang on until then, things should get a little less tight, budget-wise.

To be fair, I have been doing some unwise spending, especially when it comes to groceries, of all things. I've been feeling more than a little overwhelmed with everything, and that tends to make me go for convenience, rather than the stuff that would take me time and energy to cook, and unfortunately convenience around here costs about twice as much as I would normally pay to feed myself.

I'm really enjoying my Master's level courses so far. I have good professors, and both the readings and the course material are super interesting. I really hope I'm able to keep up and do reasonably well. I need to have a good GPA in order to be allowed to write a Master's thesis, otherwise I'll have to produce a smaller, directed study, and take a lot more courses, which I'd rather not do (although the unstructured aspect of writing a thesis is pretty terrifying to me, the queen of procrastination).

Anyway, I am sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul these days in the sleep department. I'm trying to get all my mediation courses done before Christmas so I can start to get actual experience under my belt, but I only have so much time I can take off work, so I'm having to go to class directly after my night shifts, which is... suboptimal to say the least. I don't seem to have much choice in the matter, though: we're so short-staffed that my work is threatening to cancel the leave I've already requested (they refuse to authorize overtime to cover university courses, which is actually bullshit because they're not really entitled to know why I'm taking leave), which would mean I can't go to class and would automatically fail my semester, thus flushing $3,500 I can't afford down the drain.

So to say this is all causing a great deal of anxiety would be putting it mildly. I've requested an appointment to see my doctor, but the earliest I could get was October 2nd, and even then I'm pretty sure she can't medicate my management out of existence.

In the meantime, Canada has declared elections, things are in full swing, and I want to crawl under a rock and die. We're ten days in, and we've got another month of this bullshit. I am pretty sure we're in for a Conservative minority in the government, and while the previous Conservative government was not my favourite, the current Conservative party have leaned considerably more to the right, and are actively anti-LGBTQ+ and are likely to re-open what they call the "abortion debate." So, you know, if they get elected, and God forbid, with a majority, we can all kiss our freedoms goodbye. People are saying it can't happen, but several provinces, including my own, have voted in some pretty horrifying right wing governments in the past couple of years.

I really hope Canada doesn't turn into a mini trash fire version of the USA's dumpster fire, but I guess we'll find out on October 21st. *siiiiiiiiiigh*

There's more, but I am looking at the time, and I really need to nap before my night shift. See above: getting enough sleep. If work is reasonably calm tonight, I may post again later, while I still have the motivation.
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I have become a Busy Person, and I don't like it. I also don't really see a way around it for the moment. I am trying to keep a lot of plates spinning, and the net result is a lot of broken crockery and the occasional moment of juggling brilliance. Feel free to skip most of this, I'm just trying to get things down for my own records.

Here's what I've got going on, commitment-wise. (This is just for my own benefit, so that I can see it all written down.)

• Work, which is ~60 hours a week these days.
• University, starting up again after September 4th, 2 classes 1 day per week (plus readings and coursework(
• Dog training (once a week, but the new trainer I am looking at is quite far away, so we shall see about the frequency, I may try to arrange for every two weeks)
• Being the Clerk of Children's Meeting for Quaker Monthly Meeting
• Being the (temporary) clerk of Peace and Social Concerns for Quaker Monthly Meeting
• Streaming (this is on hiatus until I figure my shit out, but I really want to get back to it)

Other than my outside commitments, I still have to get my personal shit together. I am something of a human dumpster fire on the personal front these days. In no particular order, these are the personal projects I wanted to work on this year (and in general).

• De-clutter the house. The Great Marie Kondo Experiment of 2019 came to a grinding halt after I got the puppy (especially at the beginning she was NOT conducive to getting anything done beyond Pay Attention To The Puppy and basic chores), and then once that calmed down there always seemed to be a reason/excuse to not keep going. Still, my house is full of crap I don't need or even particularly want anymore.
• Related to above, get the house back into good enough condition to have people over again. I think I've already posted about the Basement of Neverending Cat Pee, and all summer I've been trying to get hold of a specialized cleaning company to come give me an estimate to rip out the basement carpet, get rid of the smell, etc. That finally happened this morning, and they are scheduled to come in on September 11th. With that in mind, I want to get rid of as many things that are taking up space in the basement as humanly possible. I have a stack of things packed into the boiler room (several stacks, if we're being accurate), and I am confident I can get rid of at least 1/3 of it all, possibly 2/3 if I am stern with myself. The cleaning people need unfettered access to the whole floor, and I don't want to just haul things upstairs and have them clutter up the house.
• Organize my clothes/laundry. I Marie Kondo'd my clothes, but still haven't got them all organized into a nice, usable system, mostly because I got distracted. So, that's on the list.
• Improve my mindfulness practice. By which I mean, remember to practice mindfulness more than once every two weeks. *rolls eyes* Ideally I'd like to do one mindfulness meditation every day, even if it's only for a few minutes.
• Walk every day. This one has been a little hit and miss, more hit than miss, but taking the dog for walks has been less effective for me than I'd like. Peggy doesn't really walk politely on leash yet, although we are working on it, which means we don't actually go very fast. Every time she pulls, we stop, so she learns that pulling won't get her places. Combine that with the natural stops she makes (to pee, sniff, and generally do dog things), and it essentially means we're going at a snail's pace. Normally I can easily walk about 5 km in roughly an hour, but now I'm lucky if I get 1 or 1.5 km in an hour with her. Is it better than no walking? Absolutely. But it's not quite where I want to be. Hopefully I will start to see more concrete results soon with the training. Ideally I'd like Peggy to become my running buddy.
• Be more present at Quaker Meeting (both physically and spiritually), especially when it comes to the Children's Meeting.
• Start living more in line with my values, which means a few things:
  • Being thriftier with my money. I have been terrible about budgeting, pretty much as a direct result of a) not managing my time properly, and b) not correctly anticipating several large expenses since May. I am trying to put money aside to buy my own place, and have the financial wriggle room to be able to afford the move, the closing costs, and not be house poor once I'm in the new house.
  • Drastically reducing the amount of waste I produce. I've been trying to limit plastics, and eliminate single-use plastics wherever I can, but I haven't been consistent about it at all.
  • Actually have people over. I enjoy entertaining, and I haven't done that much at all because of the Basement of Neverending Cat Pee. I really hope that after the work gets done, I will be able to invite people for tea or a meal without cringing in embarrassment at inflicting one of the grossest smells in the world on them.
  • Cook everything from scratch, and start making preserves/canning food again. That practice fell very much by the wayside, and I need to figure out how to carve time out of my schedule to get that done.
  • Practice self-care. I suuuuuck at that. What I'm focusing on as much as possible is sleep. There isn't enough in the world, and so I've been trying to incrementally increase the amount of sleep I've been getting. I will never, as long as I am at my current job, get an average of 8 hours a night. It's just not going to happen. 12 hour shifts guarantees I can't get all my stuff done AND get to bed in time for 8 hours, so either stuff doesn't get done or I don't sleep, and it's not like you can tell a puppy that she'll just have to wait another 8 hours to go pee and have food. That is just cruel. However, I've been aiming for 6.5-7 hours a "night" ("night" meaning "the time when I sleep," regardless of the actual time of day), and I've almost sort of got it, on average. I have lots of nights of 4-5 hours when I'm working, but when I'm not working it's more like 8-9, so it's been averaging out to about 6-6.5. Not great, as I always do much better on 9 hours of sleep, but that's a pipe dream.
  • Finding some kind of volunteer work to give back to the community. I am living a deeply selfish life, tbh, and it bothers me. I used to love working at the soup kitchen a few years ago, but had to stop because that and work was exhausting me. So I have to find a different way to give back that doesn't involve a fair bit of physical labour for 8-9 hours, especially after my night shifts. I don't have any ideas on that front yet, and am open to ideas, if people have them.

That's about it, for me. Peggy continues to be a delight, and is growing so fast she's unrecognizable from when I first brought her home.

In other news, the outside world is a shitshow. The Amazon rainforest has been ablaze for three or more weeks, and fuck-all is being done about it. Refugees and migrants are being detained in literal concentration camps in the USA. Citizens are being illegally detained without recourse primarily on the basis of their race "just in case" they're undocumented. Canadian politics are taking a hard turn to the right, and a lot of the rhetoric is scarily similar to what we're hearing from south of our borders. Racism, xenophobia, unfettered capitalism, deregulation, and catering to the one percent.

You kind of have to go out of your way to find news that isn't horrifyingly depressing. Speaking of which, there is now a cure for Ebola! Isn't that cool? That is some really nice news in the sea of shit in which we've been swimming for the past three years. I'm trying to channel Mr. Rogers and not only look for the helpers, but also to BE a helper, and it's that latter bit that so far has been my main challenge.

So, onward!

This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1450408.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

Dreamwidth didn't crosspost this, for reasons which escape me, so I'm doing it manually. Apologies if this somehow ends up posting twice.

( Trigger warning for cancer and death.Collapse )
Moving on to stuff that's not about cancer and death...

I've been watching a lot of TV recently. Probably more than is reasonably good for me, but that's actually par for the course. The difference is that, rather than watching it during the down times on my night shifts, I've been doing it more at home. At work I've actually been working a bit more. But in the meantime, at home, rather than do anything productive, I've been watching Veronica Mars (among others) and playing an unhealthy amount of Stardew Valley.

Shockingly, I've been having a lot of trouble managing my time. It feels like I'm juggling too many balls at once (funny story, I can't physically juggle even two balls, I've tried), and so, true to form, I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed and just kind of, well, avoided everything except the bare minimum of what I needed to do to get by.

The good thing is that I have a puppy, and she needs me to get out of the house every day. I haven't always taken her for long walks, but I have taken her out each day, and I try to work with her on her training each day, so that's probably been the best thing for my mental health. That, and the fact that she is the cutest, sweetest, most loving dog in the universe. It's all very helpful. :)

Otherwise, though, things aren't awesome. I think the trigger for this latest massive avoidance is the extra $1,500 I'm getting charged for university. There's nothing like financial stress to knock me for a loop and make me metaphorically crawl under my own bed and refuse to deal with the world. Is it productive? Nope. Is it my default behaviour? Yep. So, something to work on, I guess.

I'm heading to fearsclave 's this weekend for some romping around in the wilderness with Peggy, and introducing her to the joys of fishing. Or, more specifically, to the joys of fish. fearsclave has a long-standing tradition of letting his dogs lick the fish before they get taken back and cleaned (thoroughly!) for later consumption. Hopefully we will have an excellent day of fishing, which means actually catching fish. Not catching fish is still a good day of fishing, but I would really like to see Peggy's reaction to a fish. My guess is that she will go bonkers.

I've got a short list of things I want to get done before I leave on Friday. I'm working on keeping things realistic, because I have a tendency to over-plan and have a poor sense of how much I can actually accomplish in a given amount of time. Apparently that's a common thing with ADHD, the inability to properly gauge the length of time unfamiliar tasks will take. That, and forgetting that you need to plan time *around* the task. Also, I get overambitious about plans when I'm on nights at work. I have hours stretching in front of me, and it always seems like future!me is going to have tons of energy and motivation to do all these things, and in practice future!me is way more interested in catching up on sleep. So I hope I've worked it out correctly this time.

Okay, time to get back to work. These night shift duties aren't going to do themselves.

My kingdom for better organizational skills.

Peggy is growing like a weed with teeth. She is still ridiculously adorable. We experimented with puppy daycare, and unsurprisingly she LOVED it, but alas came home with a case of Bordetella (kennel cough). Luckily she's vaccinated for it, which has made it a very mild case, even though it didn't protect her entirely. She's had it for just over a week, but she seems 90% better today, so I am hopeful she will be all better in another day or so. She's been bored out of her skull staying home and resting, and a bored puppy is a puppy that gets into mischief, moreso than she usually does.

( Peggy picspam below the cutCollapse )
The rest of my life has been a lot less adorable (although Peggy more than makes up for it). Work is a shitshow. We are incredibly short-staffed, and we are hemorrhaging people, because our management is terrible. I and at least four other people are looking for work elsewhere (some more actively than others). I can't really actively look for work in mediation until I take four courses in Third Party Neutral mediation. I wanted to take them this summer and ran out of money, and NOW the damned Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution is stubbornly offering every course EXCEPT the first one, so I can't even start. Argh. I will also need to have a certain number of mediations under my belt, but I plan on volunteering at the Ottawa community mediation centre and hope that will count.

( Complaining about work under the cutCollapse )




Anyway, enough complaining about work. Apart from that, things are going just fine. It's just that work is a huge part of my life, and therefore occupies a lot of my thoughts. I try to leave work at work, but that hasn't been happening in the past few weeks, which is in and of itself a red flag.

The next thing I have to do is figure out how the hell to pay my tuition, because it's $1,500 more than what I budgeted for due to the fact that SURPRISE! full-time students get charged for a bunch of things I don't need, like a transit pass and insurance. I have a car, and I have insurance through work. I am going to see if I can get those knocked off my bill, because holy Hannah that is a lot of money.

I will be back with more Peggy updates soon, I hope! In the meantime, she is back in her crate with her lunch, because she was getting very barky with the cat and, bless her, she is incredibly shrill. So she gets to have a time out with some toys and her kibble and some treats, not that she views it that way. This way, though, we all get a break: her, the cats, and most importantly, me. This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1449808.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

 Peggy is learning how to break out of Puppy Jail, aka her crate. She has done it twice now, including today when I was trying to nap. Then she peed on the bedroom carpet out of excitement. >_< It's a process. The house training is still a lot more miss than hit these days.

Otherwise, she continues to both be adorable AND dance on my last nerve, bless her. I've been trying to write this entry for a whole hour, if that gives you any indication of how much trouble she gets into on a regular basis. :P I have introduced her to ice cubes, and I may have created a monster. She looooooves ice cubes, but she keeps losing them under the fridge. At this rate I may end up with an ice cube-induced flood. I'm almost done with my summer class (just over a week to go!), and then all I will have to do until September is regular work. After that, I start my Masters degree. Here's hoping it goes as well as my first year back at university, or at least that it's not so hard I fail right out.

I have an OSAP update waiting for me (that's student financial aid in Ontario) and I should really just go in and check it, but I've been putting it off all day because I'm worried I'll get refused again. I could really use the grant, and maybe even some of the loan in there. Right now affording university is dicey at best. Okay, never mind, I decided to go check, and I've been approved, so YAY! I won't get the money before after tuition is due, alas, but I can scrape by, I'm pretty sure of it.

I am dithering about the loan. Currently I actually have a fair bit of debt (by my standards, anyway), and I could use this loan to clear a huge chunk of the debt off my line of credit. The student loan is at a lower interest than the line of credit (2.5% vs 5%), and I have a grace period to repay it until after my degree is completed. So I'd have debt, but a different kind of debt, and if I am more careful with my money (I've been sort of careful, but not careful enough), then I could be entirely debt-free in not too long, which is not shabby at all, really. But it's a Big Decision, and I have never been good with those, so I guess more pondering is in order.

I should get going. I have a D&D game tonight, which I get to play live on Twitch! It's been a pretty fun game so far. I've been playing a Kenku (a bird person, basically) who, instead of going with the usual crow stereotype, looks like a budgie. Her name is Coco, and she's so much fun to play, because Kenku don't have their own language, they can only mimic what they hear, so I've been having a great time trying to communicate with a combination of gestures and repeating phrases others have said (I am keeping a running list in a Notepad document). Coco is a rogue, and since she does quite a lot of damage with her sneak attacks, we've all nicknamed her Murder!Birb. XD

See you on the flip side, everyone!






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Four night shifts in a row has messed up my sleep schedule. I got a more than decent amount of sleep today, nearly ten hours, and so now I am awake, even though I need to be awake in just a few hours so I can get stuff done. My property managers are coming tomorrow (well, today) in order to do a "safety check," which means checking smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

I'm going to try to go to sleep in just a moment, so I am going to keep this entry brief, at least. I will come back and make a more substantial post later. I want to try to use this journal to keep myself accountable and also maybe as a gratitude journal for a while. I've read that writing things you are grateful for a couple of times a week can be really helpful. So, that's the goal for this week.

And now for another attempt at sleep. Good night, folks!

This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1449401.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

 Happy Canada Day, everyone!

I am working overtime tonight. It's the National Capital, there will be fireworks, and so we're on alert in case someone decides to do something Symbolic and Memorable. It's unlikely in the extreme, but apparently we are exercising an overabundance of caution on this most festive day.

I'm working with a fun shift tonight: my old supervisor and two others. We ordered hamburgers from Five Guys, and one girl brought in 0% beer, which was a cute idea, if not especially tasty. Mind you, I'm just not a fan of Heineken, so maybe people who like that beer would have enjoyed it more. We've decided to do some admin training (both the other employees are aspiring supervisors), and otherwise probably not much is going to happen. I'm pretty grateful for that because, to be honest, I am quite tired today. it's my sixth shift in a row, and my fourth night shift, and I am getting too old for this shit. Still, I could use the money, so here I am.

Currently we're fomenting revolution against our current management. SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION! Or, in our case, we are going to our union and weaponizing policy in our favour. Management have, uh, not exactly endeared themselves to us over the past eight or nine months, and people are getting really sick of their bullshit. I for one need to explore what unionization really entails for me, because I only have a general notion of it. If I'm going to be in a union, then I damned well better know what they can do for me, as long as I'm working here, anyway.

I talked to my therapist about the fact that I can't seem to pry myself out of bed with a crowbar on my days off in order to get stuff done. Even these days when I have to get up early so the puppy can pee, I often putter aimlessly about the house for several hours before I can really get myself to pull my act together and be productive. I was kind of hoping she'd have a magical formula or a cool life hack to make me spring out of bed like a young lamb, full of vim and vigour and ready to face the day! Unfortunately, it turns out that the cold reality is that you can't life hack your way out of chronic sleep deprivation. *sigh* I haven't been getting nearly enough sleep for... well, overall for years now, but moreso these past few weeks. Part of this is having a small puppy who needs to be taken out once per night and then early(ish) in the morning, but mostly it's my ridiculous job schedule, which means I go to bed at drastically different times during the week, and seriously messes up my sleep schedule. My Fitbit tells me I'm averaging about five hours a night, and I am a person who tends to do better on nine hours of sleep (rather than eight), so, yeah, I am living life as if I'm constantly jet-lagged.

With that in mind, one of the goals I have for the short term (and also the long term) is to try and protect my sleep better. It's extremely hard with 12 hour shifts, because on those days it's next to impossible to get even eight hours of sleep. If I choose to wake up at 4 am on a day shift to be able to get to work on time, that means I have to be in bed by 8 pm at the very latest. It's not often I manage this, and I usually count it a "good" night when I get to bed between 9 and 9:30 pm. I finish work at 6 pm (again, on day shifts), so I'm not home before 6:30, and that leaves me an hour and a half to have dinner, take care of the dog, and get anything else I need done before going to bed. So, you know, it's tricky at best. Still, that doesn't mean I shouldn't at least *try* to get enough sleep when I can. I find it more difficult in the summer, frankly. It's hot and very bright during the day, which means sleeping enough before my night shifts is next to impossible (I've had 2.5 hours of sleep each "night" for the past two days, for instance). I am going to have to find some workarounds besides my cute little sleep mask that comes off the moment I turn over in bed.

Starting next week I am going to come back from the hiatus I took from streaming for a few months. Between work, school, computer problems and puppy, something had to give, and I figured it should be streaming. It's the most expendable of my activities. I have been working with an artist and have a fun visual revamp of my channel planned, as well as several improvements to the overall production values of the stream. I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with that.

On that note, it is time for me to get back to work. I shall (I hope) check in again soon!

This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1449040.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

I'm not actually having an existential crisis. Nor a mid-life crisis, for that matter. If anything, I am surer now than I ever have been that I still want the same thing I've always wanted, and just never managed to make an executable plan for it.

I haven't posted about those things here in years, probably. People who've been my LJ friends from close to the beginning will know this, but all of the lovely but more recent friends probably aren't aware that, for a very long time--practically since I was a child--I've wanted to have my own small farm in the country. That dream has taken on a few different forms over the years as I grew more informed about what such a thing would entail. I never wanted a large farm, or one that would sustain me economically, but even then there are challenges involved, and these are only the ones I am learning about via my reading, rather than through direct experience.

Essentially what I want to do is remove myself somewhat from the rat race. I'm not in the same rat race as most people. I don't work in a corporate environment, and I haven't been seduced by workaholism (yes, I know my schedule kind of puts the lie to that statement, shut up ;) ), but it nonetheless remains that I am working at a job that has not been making me happy for quite some time now. Well, "unhappy" is not quite the right word--it's more like "unfulfilled."

Even though I was born and bred a city girl, I've always loved the country. I love being out in nature, or just being near it. I love being able to look out my window and see nothing but trees or fields or water, and to be able to look up at the night sky and see the stars scattered there. My dream has always been to live somewhere that this would be possible every day.

I have had the idea for about 12 or 13 years to try to live a more self-sustaining lifestyle. I want to live on a small hobby farm, raise some animals, and live more sustainably and independently than I do now. I have had a bit of success growing vegetables in the past, so the goal is to grow and raise as much as my own food as possible. So, vegetables, maybe grains if there's enough land for it, and some livestock (chickens, then rabbits, and eventually goats). I have very long-term plans for going partially off the grid, i.e. mostly producing my own electricity (solar panels and/or a small wind turbine), and producing most of my own household necessities. Not all of this right off the bat, of course. I view it more as a series of ongoing projects that will likely keep me busy until the day I die. Right now I'm slowly working on the habit of cooking from scratch, which I'd let fall by the wayside over the past couple of years.

Obviously, I haven't accomplished that yet. I was on my way there when I got sidetracked by a relationship that turned out very poorly, and I've spent the past five years recovering from that (we just passed the "anniversary" of the end of that time, which is overall better not spoken of). I'm still not 100%, financially speaking, but I am closer to my goal than I've ever been. In fact, I am so close that it is extremely tempting to jump the gun and put in an offer on a likely looking property. It's taking a lot of willpower on my part not to just dive into an endeavour I can't *quite* afford yet, just because I am really excited at the prospect of finally doing what I've always wanted to do. I have friends who have just bought a beautiful farm, and I am low-key pretty envious, because it's gorgeous and well beyond anything I'd be able to afford on just my income, but I'm also excited to see what I will be able to do with a smaller allotment, too. A little can go a very long way, if you plan carefully, and if I'm perfectly honest with myself, I probably wouldn't be able to manage a really large property all on my own anyway.

I'd been feeling a little guilty in the past few years, because it felt like I'd really let myself lose sight of what was really important to me in life. I forgot that I wanted to slow down, to embrace a quieter pace of life. I don't want to disconnect from the digital world entirely, but I need to take a few steps back and find a balance between all the things I love about online life (my online friends, video games, streaming, etc.) and my need to also be outside and in nature. My life has been very out of balance on that score for years and years.

I won't be in a position to buy a place to live for at least another six months. Ideally I should wait eight or nine months, to be sure I have enough financial wriggle room for unexpected things. I still have to pay all my normal expenses (rent, utilities, pet food, what have you), try to get my personal debt down (*sigh*), and also pay for my university tuition, which is increasing now that I'll be pursuing a Master's (*further sigh*). I have no real reason to complain, I am much better off than most people, but life is expensive, yo. That's actually something I'm trying to fix: I want to spend less money. People who've known me for a long time will know that I am not super good at money in the long term. I can do short term and often manage medium term, but long term? No sirree Bob, not I. So the goal is to learn to simplify, and reduce what I consume (thus reducing what I spend). It's all really in the name of living more intentionally, rather than coasting along with the current, bobbing around wherever the river decides to take me. 

Depending on where I move, too, I might try to get some Quaker activity going over there, too. Driving to Ottawa for Meeting every Sunday might be a bit challenging, but I would love to create an intentional little community right where I want to put down roots.I still haven't quite given up on the idea of children, and if/when I get away from shift work (please, God), I want to look into fostering kids, especially teenagers. A few years ago, if you'd asked me, I would have said I'd never be able to handle troubled teenagers, but now I feel more confident, and I think it could end up being a really good thing in the long run. All kids deserve a safe space to land when their lives are falling apart.

What does all this mean? I suppose, for now, it means that I am going to make an effort to chronicle and document my efforts here, starting small. First I'm going to focus on cooking for myself, and significantly de-cluttering and downsizing the house, in anticipation of moving next year. I don't plan on becoming a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination, but even I know I have way too much stuff, and I want to move into a house with a smaller footprint, which will hopefully help me manage my waste production and allow me to focus more on the outdoors than the indoors. After that, we shall see.

I'm working one more night shift tonight (after this one, which will be over in about three hours), as my manager asked me to come in on overtime for Canada Day. I'm not really needed, but they're clearly trying to impress someone and I could use the money. Once I've had a chance to recover from working six days and 72 hours in a row, I'm going to continue going through my impressively huge collection of paperwork and try to get rid of, optimistically, about 90% of it. I estimate that will take me several more days--conservatively around five or six, I should say. Once that's done, I will move onto books, which, interestingly, should be easier, because I already have a good idea of which books I will part with. The konmari category after that is komono, or "everything else," and that is going to be a huge undertaking. I assume it will take me the rest of the summer, if not longer, to get through it all. Still, I think it will make a huge difference in my life, getting rid of so much of the stuff that I've been carting around this whole time.

I don't really have a pithy conclusion for this post. These are just my thoughts at 3am on a Monday, and perhaps I will have more coherent thoughts later on, after I've slept.

Happy Canada Day, everyone! This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1448916.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

I am trying to be better at recording what's going on in my life, but so far I've been kind of failing at that.

 Things are chugging along here.

I got a good evaluation at work, which I am choosing not to question but am nonetheless perplexed about. It's not that getting a good evaluation is surprising in and of itself, because I am quite competent at my job. However, my new manager has been making my life super unpleasant for the better part of seven months, implying that I am incompetent and also allowing rumours to that effect to keep circulating, to the point where it has thoroughly undermined my job as a supervisor here. I've been having to work twice as hard to get half the results of the other supervisors, because some employees refuse to take me seriously as a direct result of management's attitude toward me, which is super frustrating. So to say I am surprised at getting a good evaluation from her is a hell of an understatement. I mean, she'd be hard-pressed to put her insinuations on paper, since I actually perform my job satisfactorily, but still, you'd think she'd be able to invent something that sounded negative, at the very least. *shrug* Whatever, I will take it.

I am still in the midst of de-cluttering my home. I kind of slowed down after the overhaul of my kitchen, although I *did* clean up the whole living room so that it would look more like a living room than just a place where I stack boxes. :P I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I got many compliments from my mother when she visited, so I am taking that as a win. I got a small shelving unit for the kitchen, too, which has freed up some cupboard space and actually looks quite nice. My next step in the kitchen will be getting rid of a bunch of glassware and maybe one set of plates/bowls so I can free up even more cupboard space. Eventually I will have that space completely functional, I am sure of it.

The last time I updated this journal, I hadn't heard back from university admissions. I have now heard back, and have been accepted to the Master's program without reservations, which is very happy news indeed! Less happy news is that my university profile hasn't been changed to reflect my new status, which has made it impossible for me to register for graduate classes starting in the fall. Urgh. I emailed several times this week, but so far have not received a response. I will have to telephone on Tuesday (Monday being Canada Day, and therefore everything will be closed) and see if I can get that fixed. It might be temporarily unfi-able, as I am finishing up an undergraduate class. My working theory is that I will have to wait until this class' grades are posted before my profile changes. Maybe. I'm still doing well in the class: mostly A+'s and one A-, so I should be able to pass without too much trouble. The class finishes in two weeks, if memory serves, and all that's left is one quiz, one group discussion, and one short paper (3 pages or so). Nothing too terrible.

I am mildly concerned about my finances these days. It's been an expensive few months (vet bills, car repairs, random things), and I've ended up accruing a bit more debt than I had, after well over a year of paying it down, which is a little disheartening. I'm hoping to turn it around soonish, but it feels like every time I have a plan in place, something messes it up, and right now I am kind of worried about not being able to afford the more expensive graduate school tuition come the fall. That's probably not the case, but still, I am antsy about the whole thing.

Peggy continues to be a delight and an utter pain in my ass. XD She is the puppiest puppy to ever puppy, and she has SO. MUCH. ENERGY. This is fine on my days off and even during my day shifts, when I can take her out in the evening for a decently long walk, but so far it has proved killer on my night shifts. She sleeps through the night, and then is full of vim and vigour just as I need to sleep for at least five hours, and understandably she starts losing her mind long before I'm in any shape to take her out. She's now old enough to go to doggie daycare once she gets her Bordetella vaccine (I need to check her certificates), and I think I will be taking her there when I need to sleep for most of the day. She loves other dogs (and people, and kids, and babies, and bicycles, and cars, and basically *everything*), so if I can get her to blow off a bunch of steam that way, we'll be all set. Another reason to try to switch away from shift work: I want to be home with my puppy more, and actually spend time with her, and not be cranky when she does normal puppy things like try to eat my table cloth. :)

Otherwise, she graduated from Puppy Kindergarten I yesterday (I was a tiny bit afraid she'd be the first puppy to ever flunk out of that class), and we start Puppy Kindergarten II in two weeks' time. I need to carve out more time in the day to work on her training. I've been a little lax of late, and it's been showing in her behaviour. She's still a sweetheart, she's just extremely excitable and prone to trying to jump on the cats. Her house training has also not improved in the slightest, in spite of my best efforts. I feel like my best efforts are maybe not as good as they should be, too, so I'm going to try new things. This is one of the few times in life that I regret being single or at least not having a roommate who can tag-team me with the puppy. I don't want to keep her in her crate all the time, but I also need to get things done, and when I get things done *and* let her run around, she a) has accidents and b) gets into all sorts of mischief. Having a second body in the house to wrangle the puppy while I do my chores would be super useful, but, alas, it is not to be.


That's actually it for now. I have other things at the back of my mind, all of them relating to changes I want to make in how I'm living my life, but most of it is percolating in the back of my mind, still, so I shall hold off on posting about it for a few days more, at least, until thoughts have properly coalesced.

And now, I must away back to my actual job.

This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1448518.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!

I'd forgotten I posted in January. I thought the last time was sometime last summer, and oddly it makes me feel a little better that I didn't abandon this space as long as I thought I had.

As always, a lot has happened since I last posted. Well, a lot, and also surprisingly little, when you think about it. It feels like a lot to me, but to the outside viewer I assume it looks like not much at all. It's all a matter of perception.

The big news is that I did, indeed, get the puppy I'd been planning on. Her name is Peggy, and she is the best Brittany Spaniel ever. She is exactly 12 weeks old as of today (born March 1st). Here is a picture of her under the cut:
( Peggy!Collapse )
University is still chugging along. I am averaging As overall (two A+s, one A, one A-, though that last one I am blaming squarely on the group work), and at the suggestion of one of the university staff I've applied to be allowed to switch over directly to the Masters' program earlier than I had originally intended to do. No word on that application yet, but I'm not worrying about it. Either they accept or they don't, the only thing that will really change is what degree I end up with when the dust settles. Either way I will receive the education I want and be able to go about my business. I am really, really enjoying taking this degree. That and the new puppy are the main things keeping my morale up these days, because work is a fucking shit show that shows no signs of improving. That's a rant for a different day, I think.

I kind of dropped the ball on several of my goals for this year, but I'm still trying. It's been a hell of a thing, trying to keep all my plates spinning, and right now it feels like I am surrounded by broken crockery. I had some unexpected expenses (the car required a trip to the car vet for a new exhaust system, and the actual animal vet bills cost more than anticipated), and my bank account is in the red for the first time in over four years. I'm not broke, or anything, but my available funds are, uh, negligible. With that in mind I've signed up for YNAB (You Need A Budget), which I'm still trying to wrap my head around. It's not super intuitive, but it takes a different approach to budgeting than the traditional one that I've been following, and since tradition has not served me, I figure this is worth a shot. I've been socking money away to pay for the house I want to (hopefully) purchase next year, but if I have no actual available funds to, you know, live on, then the point is moot. I am being melodramatic, of course. Things will balance out a bit over the next two months, but between the vet, the car, school bills (God, tuition is expensive!) and just existing in general, my bank account is deeply unhappy these days. *sigh*

In slightly better news, I've been slowly chipping away at making my current house more livable. I realized after I'd moved in a hurry away from Cruella de Frootloops (many thanks to blackmare for the nickname!) that I actually really don't like my current place. It's both too big and too small, in that the spaces I use the most often (the kitchen and dining room) are tiny, and everywhere else in the house is way too big. Everything in my kitchen is cramped, I have no pantry, and the cabinets are shallow and poorly designed so that things don't fit well and there is a ton of wasted space. The rest of the space is huge, which makes it a pain in the proverbial ass to clean, and a lot of it is wall to wall beige carpet. BEIGE. Who does that? Who thinks beige is a good idea for carpet? Anyway, between me, the four cats, and two dogs in succession, let's just say the carpets are, uh, not looking great. I will have to have a professional come in and shampoo them to within an inch of their lives before I leave.

So last... Monday? No, Tuesday, I spent a good chunk of the day reorganizing my entire kitchen so I could have better access to the stuff I want to use. It's still tiny and cluttered and difficult to work in, but it's so much better than it was. I actually took quite a bit of time beforehand to visualize what I wanted, and having a clearer vision in mind really helped it come together quickly and efficiently. I am quite proud of myself for that. I also sorted through a bunch of paperwork several weeks ago, but I only got about, I'd say maybe halfway through if I'm being generous, and then I stopped (it was 2 am and I forced myself to go to bed because 2 am is a poor life choice for me) and never got back to it. Partly my not getting back to it is due to having a rambunctious puppy who is not at all house trained yet (alas).

I'm hoping to be able to get back to it in the coming days. I want the room in which all those papers are piled (boxes and boxes worth!) to be emptied and made into a nice, functional space, and I need to put my bedroom and bathroom in some semblance of order. I am going back to Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I am still not a fan of the last few chapters of her book, but the overall method does seem to work, so I will overlook her chirpy claims that decluttering will help me get a "slimmer tummy" and get clearer skin so that I can look good for my boyfriend! (Blech.)

[...]

I got interrupted by work, and now I don't at all remember where I was going with this. Oops? The perils of getting older, I guess. ;)


If I manage to remember this time, I will post the rest later, perhaps tonight during my last night shift. Supposing I don't forget again.





This entry was originally posted at https://mousme.dreamwidth.org/1448226.html, where there are currently comments. Feel free to comment wherever you'd like!