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Friday, September 5th, 2008
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4:09 pm - Maverick and Moose Girl, Part the First
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I just wanted to assure everyone that my silence didn't mean I wasn't paying attention or didn't have a LOT to say on the subject.
John recorded and watched the entirety of both conventions. I was weary enough of the wankfest that was the Democratic National Convention, but dear GOD, nothing prepared me for the wankfest that was the REPUBLICAN National Convention. I knew it would be bad, but oh man. I told John that the D-N-C was making me C-R-Y, but the R-N-C makes me want to D-I-E.
The really sad bit is that up until now, I didn't realize that these events were nothing more than large-scale, incredibly expensive, far-less-entertaining pep rallies. We didn't even get a break to hear a band or watch a drill team. The DNC would have been much better with Elizabeth Kucinich as a cheerleader. Yeah, that's pretty sexist. Watch out, cos thanks to Moose Girl, there's more where that came from.
I know we all joked back in '04 that if Bush were re-elected, we would move to Canada or some other place far away, but even those of us who said that were not prepared for what the next four years would bring. And I am telling you now, with no hyberbole, that I honestly do need to find out what countries will accept expatriates (love the pronunciation of that word, so fitting) and get prepared FOR REAL, because if McCain is elected, we're all doomed.
When I say all, by the way, unfortunately that means the rest of the WORLD too. Because McCain isn't going to get on the environmental ball, so we can pretty much say goodbye to the ice caps and start looking at life on a mountain top.
And you know, it would almost be better if they would just be HONEST. Maybe they're waiting like Hitler did. Hitler did at least claim superiority of the Aryan race. And you're thinking, uhh, is she comparing a stiff-armed, beady-eyed old pervert with no eloquence to one of the most terrifying dictators of all time? Yes indeed! Because misleading hundreds of thousands of stupid people and ensuring the demise of even more is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
What baffles me the most is all the comments about how "the Democrats want to make government bigger and take away all your [insert random whatnot here]". Because oh my god, taking your money to actually educate your children and provide care to the sick is soooo horrible when you think about how they could be taking our money to do worthwhile things like kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people!
Seriously, who believes this shit? People would rather keep their money and have all their personal freedoms taken away? What the hell?
(To be continued...)
current mood:  appalled and terrified
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4 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
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5:26 pm - Beliefs
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Someone on one of my Ravelry groups posted this, and it's not like a normal silly internet quiz like "What Mixed Drink Are You?" or whatever. I'm not knocking those, they amuse me, but here's one for those of us/you that aren't really sure what label to stick on our spiritual belief when people ask:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html
My results were very interesting, because I have no idea what the first thing on my list entails! EDIT: Oops! Apparently the results page includes links to each one that I hadn't noticed. So if you get one that baffles you, you can click and figure out why.
I have to admit that getting Jehovah's Witnesses as my least-alike one made me VERY happy. :)
1. Liberal Quakers (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (93%)
3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (90%)
4. Neo-Pagan (87%)
5. New Age (80%)
6. Reform Judaism (80%)
7. Orthodox Quaker (77%)
8. Secular Humanism (77%)
9. Mahayana Buddhism (75%)
10. Bahá'í Faith (74%)
11. Taoism (64%)
12. Sikhism (64%)
13. Theravada Buddhism (61%)
14. Jainism (55%)
15. Scientology (54%)
16. New Thought (50%)
17. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (46%)
18. Islam (45%)
19. Nontheist (45%)
20. Orthodox Judaism (45%)
21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (43%)
22. Seventh Day Adventist (41%)
23. Hinduism (40%)
24. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (37%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (34%)
26. Roman Catholic (34%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (13%)
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Be a darling?
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4:55 pm - Gimpy Green!
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Something's wrong with my foot. Has been for two days now. I woke up yesterday and was having issues putting weight on it, which lessened by the end of the day but never went away. Woke up today with it a little worse again.
John's mother thinks I have a heel spur, because she had them some years ago and it sounds alike to her. Me, I have no idea, but I had better not have anything that requires doctor attention because that's out of the question.
I've been trying to keep my weight off of it and flexing it while rested in case it IS a tendon issue. Hobbling around like a weirdo, I even gave up and voted for crawling up the stairs instead of limping. It worked a little better, to be honest.
Missed out on a knitting meeting at a Mexican restaurant last night because of it. I should have just hobbled. I'd kill for some enchiladas right about now.
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4 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Friday, August 29th, 2008
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12:12 am - When cats fly! Or wait, what?
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| Thursday, August 28th, 2008
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9:39 pm - I thought of writing, but straight from the horse is even better
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| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
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5:15 am - STILL haven't ordered my glasses!
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So I got a little distracted. It seems like I only remember I want my new glasses whenever I have somewhere to go and wish I didn't have to continue to look like a tool in my old ones.
Anyway, need your opinions!
EDIT: Remember these are from http://zennioptical.com so they're relatively inexpensive. And my biggest concern is looking OLD.
I'm thinking of these (#4620) in either the purple or maaaybe silver to be super neutral. They're not incredibly exciting, and they're not the super funky-chunky kind, but I've discovered that between my indistinguished eyelashes and my drab brown hair, the chunky glasses sort of eat my face completely. I would have to wear some serious ball-punchingly stark and dark eye makeup to combat the effect.
That said, I really like these (#3391) in obviously either black/red or the clear red. I can't be sure if they'd look right on me though, but I think they're cute.
This sort of catty shape (#3857)worked on me in the store, although I wasn't trying it in a thick plastic. I wouldn't know what colour of these to get. I know the black would eat my face.
I'd most likely pick the purple for these (#4176), although the burgundy doesn't seem bad either. If I got #3391 also though, I wouldn't want to double up on red.
Don't laugh, but I like these (#2244) in the clear/black and clear/purple. They're kind of wild, but I like it. Almost zebra-esque.
These (#2299) are pretty weird too, but I don't know. I'm looking at the black and purple of course.
Lots of colour choices with these (#4648), though I would probably go with purple. I kind of like the silver, red, and green too though. These are less cheap so multiple choice isn't really an option.
These (#3105) might be a little masculine in silver, but I like how the less rim there is hides less of your eye from a distance and makes it look less like you're wearing glasses at all. I'd be looking at the rimless models right now, but they're more expensive. I'm going to try these people's glasses first before I decide to buy something more expensive.
Some boring but serviceable half-rims (#3153). Wouldn't be bad in silver maybe. And another (#9178) with slightly better shape and colour options.
What do you think? I know it's hard to give opinions without them being on my face, but that's the dilemma I'm facing too. All I have to go on is a try-on thing with a photo uploader that I used on another site to find out what shapes worked best for me. That's what I made my selections based on.
current mood:  blind!
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18 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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4:13 am - For the real news the corporate media won't give you
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http://www.democracynow.org/
Including the stories about all the protesters the Denver police are harassing/arresting/pepper spraying, and how said Denver police all have new shiny uniforms without identification on them and new shiny GRENADE LAUNCHERS for tear gas grenades. $50 million buys a LOT. I'm sure $50 million would have bought a lot of education for underprivileged youth, or a lot of health care for veterans, or a lot of food for the indigent. Or was I mistaken in thinking that such things were Democratic concepts?
And how about the party that AT&T held for all the congress members who helped vote to grant them immunity and how no media were allowed near the partygoers as they arrived. God forbid we know who those people are so they can be held accountable for their actions.
That's nothing compared to the Captain Morgan campaign going on inside the convention, complete with a man running around dressed like and blathering like the Captain himself. But apparently the Republican convention has hired him as well!
I'm hoping that it hasn't been completely ignored by every other news station that Joseph Biden happens to have been one of the very people sanctioning the invasion of Iraq. But I guess that hope is probably naive. Along with the hope that Obama supporters would realize the incredibly un-Democratic things he's done and continues to do.
My dad is probably rolling around in his grave with his party members doing crazy bullshit in his city.
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1 darling paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
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11:55 pm - For what it's worth
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| Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
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5:15 pm - More reasons to hate McCain and his supporters, as though we needed them
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No, McCain himself didn't actually write this, but some tool working for his website did. You can read the whole thing here if you're interested. According to someone who commented to the original post I found this through, this tool has done this before and apologized when someone called him on it. And then did it AGAIN.
It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement
It just insinuates so many things that are utterly false. I know he thinks it's just a clever little joke about nerds and blog readers, but that implies the guy is insulting his own readers too, because guess where he's posting this, the INTERNET.
I swear, some people need to be hit with hammers until what little gray matter they possess oozes out through their nose.
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7 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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3:21 pm
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I feel so alienated from people. There's been a lot of things contributing to it lately, but the end result is rather downtrodding. It's like I'm alienated from people I already know by geography, but even situations in my area are awkward.
I've been doing these gaming meetups, but especially after being made an assistant organizer and the official welcoming committee to new members, just about everyone who joins just wants to play D&D. And most of them are male, which I expect so I can't complain, but even they are either young and in college or old and married, and it makes it hard to relate to them either way. There's like less than a handful of people I've met interested in the games I like, and even they like versions I don't like.
Then there's the event I just went to, which I've already said I had an absolute blast at, but I did feel awkward being a total noob at everything. I was fortunate in that there were other people there after all who weren't tiny, but I feel like I got the cold shoulder from even them. The one girl I managed to have an actual SERIES of conversations with (other than the volunteers-- I spoke to some of them but they didn't really warm up either) asked me if I was on this online community for bellydancers and when I told her not yet but I was going to join, she didn't give me any further information. I didn't even get her name until we were about to part ways.
So I feel like I must be walking around with an astral booger on my metaphorical nose or something. I try to be open and friendly and a good listener and a good responder and myself and all that other blather that helps you Win Friends and Influence People or whatever, and it just doesn't work. (Not that I've read that book, maybe I need to?)
And I don't get it. I've made friends quickly always before in my life, and I don't understand what's different now.
Of course that's when I can find people I wouldn't mind being friends with. It's getting really hard finding people with things in common with me. People my age are getting married and having children. People younger than me are wearing really weird t-shirts and listening to crappy music.
I haven't found any knitters I gelled with and the crocheters I met were mostly older women and/or bitches. Of course, I haven't exhausted my knitter-group resources yet, but two of them meet at awkward times for me and of course none of them are really close, which sort of puts a cramp on establishing a working friendship anyway. But of course a lot of the knitters I've met are mothers, grandmothers, or yarn-snobs (read: rich).
On the opposite end of the spectrum though, if I meet people that are actually subversive then they're TOO subversive for even me-- they do drugs or have Playboy bunny tattoos/merchandise or sex up tons of people (occasionally at the same time) or whatever. Of course I don't think "subversive" is the right word for that. I'm thinking more along the lines of "dumbass".
I can't be the only mostly-liberal, child-free, quasi-feminist, non-smoking, anti-commercial, monogamy-minded, crafty, creative, thrifty, religiously pluralistic, GLBT-friendly, anachronistic, bellydancing, roleplaying, book-loving, faerie-winged kid-at-heart with some extra meat on her bones, can I?
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12 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Monday, August 18th, 2008
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5:27 pm
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I watched a bunch of crime shows last night. Not the regular kind, but the ones where extremely manipulative sociopathic guys convinced women to actually HELP them in committing atrociously horrific crimes against other women, in some cases their own sisters/daughters. In some cases after all this, the guy then turned on the woman.
Then I watched the shows about people just killing their own spouses or parents or both.
After that I was so glum about human interaction and relationships that I had to watch Rock the Reception to make myself feel better.
The possibility that resides in the human psyche terrifies me. It makes me afraid to get close to people.
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4 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Sunday, August 17th, 2008
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2:01 pm - If I could type out a zaghareet, I would
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I had a PHENOMENAL time. No words can describe. Which is probably alright since I don't think anyone else would understand anyway.
*gibbers excitedly to herself*
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7 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Saturday, August 16th, 2008
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1:02 am
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taffy tummy
Leonine tendencies
saucy pants
laborious intent gone happily awry
reprisal on the morrow x eleventy billion (=rock)
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Be a darling?
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| Friday, August 15th, 2008
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2:33 am - I are dumbass!
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I really must work on my reading comprehension skills.
Taken from the volunteer information on the website:
In return, the volunteer will receive: all Friday classes in Cabaret and Tribal Rooms for free; the ability to perform in the Friday night show; and a T-shirt.
Moria, here I come!
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Be a darling?
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| Thursday, August 14th, 2008
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10:25 pm - Writer's Block: Six-Word Story
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10:00 pm
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I thought today was Wednesday for a long time. When I realized it was Thursday, I freaked out for two reasons. The important one is that I agreed to volunteer at Southern Fusion Fest tomorrow and I didn't realize it was happening so soon.
I agreed to help out in the tribal room for the afternoon shift and after I read that Moria Chappell and some other bigger name peeps were going to be the ones teaching classes, I got reeeeeally curious about whose classes I was assisting with. I was suddenly both very excited and very intimidated that I might be in the same room while one of Moria's classes was going on. (I particularly love the bit from about 4:08 on where she's like, "See, this is how I get stunningly gorgeous and I'll show you how to do it too!" -- Okay, so she doesn't say that, but she might as well, since it's true!)
I was both relieved and disappointed to read that I would be arriving just as Moria's class lets out and my shift covers the classes done by Paulette and Dulcinea of Gypsy Caravan. I haven't heard of them before, but they are supposed to be very established and good. The upside is of course that I won't be starstruck and terrified in their presence, and being that their class is for intermediate and advanced dancers, they can't blame me for not participating. And if I get there early, I might be able to see a bit of Moria's class, or at the very least, her.
I sort of wish I had read the schedule of events before I told the coordinator what I wanted to do, but I also thought that I would be busy on Saturday and that's why I signed up for all Friday stuff. It turns out the Saturday plans fell through, so now I'm wishing I was assisting with Saturday's show (costs $35 for non-volunteers and it has all the big name people performing!) instead of Friday's (costs $5 for non-volunteers and is basically a low-key hafla). It will still be really fun to see bellydancing done in person again though. I'm happy I was finally uninvolved enough in other things to get the chance to attend something like this at all.
Now I have to figure out something I can wear around a massive throng of thin girls who all know bellydancing moves. Talk about a kidney punch to a person's self-confidence. *gulp*
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rosesheart35, since the Friday show is only $5, do you want to come? Or should I just meet you after it's over? I think some pancakes (banana or cheesecake? how to decide?!) are calling our names!
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3 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
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9:31 pm - Shattering the closet door
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I guess I missed a boat somewhere, because John's sitting here going "Duh", but I didn't know Alan Cumming was... what's the word? androsexual? I'm reading a photo article about "Openly Gay Celebrities" on http://wcbstv.com, and as open as they're supposed to be, I was clueless about a lot of them.
Like Fannie Flagg, who wrote Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. She apparently dated Rita Mae Brown, who writes mystery novels, and I imagine if half of those old Southern Baptist grandmas who read her books when I worked at the library knew that, they would have been appalled. I wonder though if all the nuances that I saw in Fried Green Tomatoes weren't my own ridiculous dreaming then. I always wondered about the main character, who's so tomboyish she wears pants in the 30's and has an affection for her best female friend, a very feminine and pretty girl with demure charm. To me it always seemed more than anyone came out and said.
Ah, thank you Wikipedia. Apparently the novel is not so subtle about it. Who knew?
Others I didn't know about:
Stephen Fry (was Peter's Friends more biographical than one would think then?)
David Geffen
Leslie Gore
Neil Patrick Harris - I laugh at all the girls who thought "Doogie Howser" was cute
Darren Hayes - figures that you can't be a straight guy and sing those songs :(
Greg Louganis
David Hyde Pierce - I just read this and was amazed. I had a little crush on him back in the day.
Christopher Rice - I would bet money his mother did everything in her power to try to make him so, not that anything like that is possible. But if it were, she would be doing it!
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant - I wonder if that explains all the ill-fated love :/
Graham Chapman - he died in '89, which explains why I haven't seen him lately like Cleese and Idle :(
You might be wondering my point about even bringing it up. What does it matter? Well, I grew up in the 80's when no one really admitted such things or talked about it much at all, and I think it's a good thing that we've come far enough for a large number of celebrities to feel comfortable letting people know. There's another article I just read, called "When It Was Out to Be Out", and it's heartbreaking to read about so many people who hid themselves away for most or all of their lives, many of them dying miserably.
I can only hope in the next decade of my life we progress even further.
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3 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Sunday, August 10th, 2008
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9:11 pm
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I didn't used to be one of those people who was really superstitious about dice. At the same time, I never really agreed with David when he used to tell Carrie it was all about probability. Really, it isn't. The number of rolls means nothing. You can't say that rolling one die 100 times will get equal times of rolling each number, because each time you roll it, the probability resets. I'm not explaining this very well, but I sure lived it today at our 4E D&D game.
I don't usually worry much about whether I actually make my attacks or not, but when you aren't exactly playing games frequently and the combat scene's duration is already far too long for your taste, missing is aggravating because it means things take that much longer. And I didn't have as much fun today as I did last time because we had this guy in our group who was giving me a massive case of the heebee jeebees. He was just... icky. I have no other word for it.
Shadowrun yesterday, however, was awesome. One of our players was a couple hours late so we couldn't conduct our run until he arrived, so we spent all the time before that doing things around town, preparing, and getting a lot of roleplay and NPC interaction in. Our GM is pretty much the exact kind of GM I want to be. She knows her game rules, but the story and the characters are definitely the most prominent thing. When it came time to actually enact our plot and go after our objective, things went off without a hitch and the only combat involved was short and sweet. Of course part of that was because I disguised our guys to look like their security guards, but that's beside the point. I had an awesome time and was actually sad to go home.
In other-but-related news, I'm DYING to do something White Wolf again. To quote some dude whose webpage I was reading earlier-- "I've never been a Dungeons and Dragons kind of guy. I play it, I enjoy it but a fist full of ten-siders is much better than one of every die known to man and enough math to count as a college course."
Amen, brotha. Especially when all those dice and all that math doesn't give you any more of a chance to succeed than your comrade. I love a system where I get more dice to roll for being skilled at something. Unfortunately, I have to buy some ten-siders. Mine have gone the way of so much else of my RPG stuff. :(
So yeah, of course my first choice would be Midnight Circus. But I can't even find the book. I was pretty sure it was one I had taken with me. But I can't seem to locate it unless it's in some other box. I had hoped I had the notebook I made for it long ago too, where I put all the research I already did. That was one annoying thing White Wolf sometimes did, tell you to look in some other book you didn't own for more details on something in particular. In the V:tM books it wasn't as big of a deal because I/we had most of those, but when you get into crossover stuff like the Circus, it was a challenge. And things like Rage Across New York, Book of the Wyrm, and the Tribebooks would be hard to find now.
I'm not keen on Garou, but John said he wouldn't mind playing one in the Wild West setting. I think that the book for that is a post-ridiculum era product, so I'm not about to buy it, even secondhand, but I have the regular book (I think?) and a few Wikipedia entries can get me up to snuff about the 18-bbba-fbba time period. Plus I always wanted to play Deadlands and didn't get to because apparently people took my extreme wanting as a sign that I definitely shouldn't, and this would be not the same but similar in enough ways to be fun, I think. I can have trains, gunslingers, stagecoaches, and saloon girls. And there isn't any difference that a few saloon girls won't make up for. Saloon girls and a handful of Nunnehi, that is!
current mood:  nerdy
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Be a darling?
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| Friday, August 8th, 2008
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2:59 pm
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I really don't post half the things I would like to. It seems there's always something holding me back. Starting with all that bullshit last year and now all these strangers who've popped up friending me without saying anything. That creeps me out. I miss the old days of LJ when people asked if they could friend you before they did it.
I've threatened to do so before at least a half a dozen times, but this time I really have a couple names in mind, so I think it's only a matter of time before I pack my bags and head to a new journal. I don't really have any friends from the communities I'm on, so I could pretty much ditch those and start over.
I really just have to figure out if it's worth it. I used to use LJ for making friends, but I've made some awesome friends through it and don't do enough for/with/to them as it is. And I've yet to meet anyone in person, which is what I really want to do. I don't think I'm content with just online friends anymore. I need to giggle and paint toenails and catch movies and all the stuff that normal people do, and it's been YEARS since I've done any of it. It gives me the heebee jeebees just thinking about it. How arrested can a person be socially?
People from the past have been popping up in dreams lately, but the circumstances have been all weird. Like in a non-realistic way. Even the cats don't look right. I think even my subconscious is confused. I'm in too much inner flux, I think.
I'm doing some hardcore cleaning today. I thank Pandora, because without it I would be an unmotivated glob.
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6 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
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7:16 pm
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It's odd how some days were just meant to be good for nothing. On such days, absolutely nothing goes right and the things that go wrong are more annoying than usual. And since today is such a day (yeah, downhill since my last post, details unnecessary), I'm looking for something to point out that HAS been good today. I did think of something.
Edouard didn't go nuts like they thought he could today. Apart from a lot of rain and wind in Galveston, nothing went awry. It's August now and we got really lucky last year, so I'm a little nervous when it comes to tropical storms. Considering I drove through HAIL in Atlanta this weekend, I have no faith in the weather to not be absolutely bizarre.
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Be a darling?
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| Monday, August 4th, 2008
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5:20 am - Fun with End Users
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I should be in bed by now, but I'm still looking at glasses. Took a break to check email accounts, and my Gmail one has me giggling. Apparently my knitting (really crochet, but whatever) group leader posted some personal information for a member on our roster and the member doesn't want it on there. She apparently thought she was replying to just the leader, but sent a message to the whole list complaining about it and saying some things only the leader should have heard.
On top of that, John's uncle who lives next door, the zany one, has been emailing me for several days asking us to look at his computer. I've told him we'll come when we can, but now he's sending his messages in full-out caps. He's a complete internet nub and types pretty much like a 14 year old sans the abbreviated terminology, but I had to tease him about it. His last message said something like "IT IS SO BAD I HAVE TO KICK IT TO GET IT GOING". So I replied, "It's probably because of using caps lock so much."
Between his lack of computer skills and reading comprehension issues, I'm pretty sure he's going to take me literally. :D
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2 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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2:17 am - Want!
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I haven't ordered my glasses from Zenni Optical yet because I'm still trying to determine the type I should get. I'm planning to get two pair-- one that's sort of neutral in colour to match lots of things and one that is probably purple or burgundy or pink or something that I will really enjoy that's a bit more stylized and cute.
My biggest issue is that when I got my exam, I did try on some frames there and the ones that looked best on me (in my own opinion of course) were all of a specific style that I'm having trouble locating on the Zenni site. The ones I loved most were some Norma Kamali modified cat eyes, pictured here in a burgundy even though I tried them on in black. They were ADORABLE. You all might not agree, but I loved them. Everything black and chunky just ate my face right off. It was like, "Oh, you have eyes? I thought you just had big boxes floating above your cheeks!" Good eyeglasses should FRAME your eyes, not abolish their presence entirely.
Of course, were I a wealthy person, I would drive back to Pearle Vision and just get the Norma Kamali's, but that would entail dropping $200 on glasses and the whole point of this was NOT doing that.
Oh wow, hold the boat! I just discovered THIS! Think I'll poke around there for a while and see what I can come up with!
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Be a darling?
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| Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
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1:22 pm - <3
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If there are people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.
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Be a darling?
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| Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
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3:23 pm
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I must throw my own bewildering and beleaguered accounts into the collective pot of chaotic experience that is my friends list lately.
It's been a roller coaster in many ways since I last posted. I won't go into the details of the emotional garbage, but I did think for a moment I was going to have a job that required of me to do little but watch TV and sleep but would pay a bit over $100 a day (about $128 actually). That doesn't sound like much to some of you I'm sure (looking at you, Boston-dweller!), and it might be hard to decipher for others (looking at those dears across the pond) but it boils down to enough money per month to save and end up being able to move as soon as the job ended in a couple months. And that was working only 4 days.
And now it's been downgraded. Now there is a bit MORE responsibility but less HOURS, and I'll only end up with anywhere from $32 to $48 dollars a day. I'd have to do it 7 days a week to make it worth it, but they don't always need someone on weekends. The most annoying thing is in order to do this job, I might not be able to look for anything else, although it still will only last a couple months. I might be able to get something else part-time, assuming I could be off by 3:30, which doesn't usually happen in any job.
Anyway, now the details. When it was extremely lucrative, it entailed going down the street to this woman's house in our neighbourhood, and just staying there from 4pm to 8am the next day and making sure she didn't need help. She's 85 and just had hip surgery, so she can't get around by herself, but she also was eating dinner around 5 while her granddaughter was still there and then going to lie in her bed until she came back at 8am the next day. So it was pretty much just a situation of being there and making sure she didn't need anything. In the meantime, you had a guest room to sleep in and access to both the TV and internet (dialup, but still).
Well, John's mother went and did this the first night, and for whatever reason, the woman then decided she didn't want anyone there overnight. I don't know exactly why, though I'm assuming in my cynical heart of hearts that she didn't want to pay people for that many hours.
So now it's been changed to possibly having to give her dinner after arriving there, and helping her to her bed whenever she feels like going to bed, which might mean having to sit around in the living room with her for however many hours. There's no lifting involved, just holding her wheelchair for her, but still. It went from extremely NON-personal to both personally and socially involved. Yes, it's still a simple job that isn't that heinous and pays okay per hour, but the problem is it was offered to me as a glorious, stupidly simple job that would give me lots of money. And I can't say now that I don't want to do it.
Added to all that is the fact that I'm sharing the job with John's mom, so I can't back out because then John's mom would be doing it all and that would make HER mad at me and I have to live with her. :/ If the job had been offered to me the way it is now, I would have probably said no. I don't feel comfortable with strangers as it is, let alone being forced into social interaction with them. The woman's daughter and granddaughter had told us that she didn't need necessarily being talked to and stayed with the whole time, but that was when she was going to be in her bed already. If she's sitting in her living room, it's pretty freaking rude to just wander around her house and leave her alone. Plus John's mom told me that last night they sat together and TALKED THE ENTIRE TIME. I'm hoping that is just because John's mom is chatty, but honestly I'm terrified.
I have to get some food myself before I head over there, and I only have 45 minutes, so I should go now, but I just wanted to tell you all how scared I am before I go! Wish me luck. :/
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3 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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| Friday, July 25th, 2008
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12:20 pm - And finally, for monoculture
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Can you please remind me of the name of that movie where the people are getting rescued from the zombies by aliens? I might be remembering this wrong, but I just remember people trying to escape in a van and getting beamed up... some old guy who was previously abducted, and some really hilarious quotes. Maybe there weren't even zombies, but the aliens are [supposedly] trying to help them somehow.
I know we were talking about this a while back, so I'm hoping you remember the title!
current mood:  brain-addled
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2 darlings paying attention | Be a darling?
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amused