GOODBYE 2014!!! (Good Ridance!)

Priorities today:

1. Anti-inflammatory and simple analgesics to combat swollen aching fingers (?!)
2. Shower
3. Arrange curls so that a goofy little question mark does not stick straight up over your head until the next shower.
4. Dress for work
5. Eat Lunch!
6. Dishes and sanitizing!
7. Supper
8. Go to work
9. Come home
10. Turn on Rockin' New Year's Eve (without Dick Clark: *sigh!*)
11. Say, "Whoopie!" at the stroke of Midnight!
12. Go to bed.

Wake up in 2015 with a whole new outlook on life!!!

Mass Destruction!

The weapons!!!

Scary, aren't they?


Ewwww!!!  Body parts!

But wait...

Some of these I'll put in the "fridge"!  Like...

...strange threaded brass ball, or I guess it's a nut.  Sadly, only one of them.  The other was replaced by those two screws.  Decorative.



(CSA Approved!)



...tension pole...NOT!   You'd have to hack-saw some of the pieces to wedge it in to fit my 7-foot ceilings.  Don't ask me how I know this.  Well, okay, I'll tell you anyway!  'Cause I had to do surgery on my Mom & Dad H.'s pole lamp (circa 1954) with the three beautiful amber glass shades that started my amber glass fixation collection.

...one of the switches still has it's knob, and those marrettes (sp?).

Which brings me to...The Victims!!!

I killed one ugly-pole floor lamp and one ugly-pole tension-pole lamp and got 4, count 'em, four lovely light fixtures out of the deal...happy Kathen!  Now, where will I put them?  and how will I hang/mount them?  Not sure yet, but I am very happy not to be banging into them every time I turn around in my kitchen.  LOL!

What?  You don't like them?

...See the light?  Not really?  Yeah, me neither.  Let me try again...

...see?  I held one up in front of my bedroom lamp, and I think they show some promise!  I am going to rub some antiquing (Is that a word?  Antique-ing?)  on the gold.  It looks cool in this picture, but in real light, the antique brass looking stuff is a garish bright gold colour.

So, that is how Kathen cheers herself up when the anti-depression drugs are not cutting it.  Not to worry, I will be better in a day or two.  Mass Destruction really helps my mood!  Only thing better is Mass Construction!  Or actually, Mass.  But that's a post for another day.

Miasma

That's the word for the day, kiddies.  Miasma.  That's what I've had around here for the past few days.  Rain.  Rain.  Rain.  Repeat, ad nauseam.  The grass has prodigiously grown up to my knees, since my sunshine-filled hours have been filled with excitement or recovery from said excitement. 

Fire*.  Water**.  Work***.  Then lotsa rain to keep the grass wet and growing.  Bah.

The famous quote, from I-don't-remember, is that "the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, and expecting a different result".  So, today I am doing everything weird I can think of.  I will have tomorrow to do the mundane tasks of living that I am procrastinating over, anyway.

Hang mirrors.  Clean hallway.  Call the plumber.  (I am not a strong woman, by any stretch of the imagination.  How the heck did I strip the brand-new hot-water knob in my bathtub?!)  Dismantle the pole-lamps I got at The Nearly-New Sale three years ago. (I have plans for them.  Big plans.  Weird plans.  Not-BGH plans.  Ha.)

Will update y'all tonight on my progress.  'Cause the first step is to step away from this computer.

*I did not take pictures of my neighbour's porch trying to burn down a week ago.  I could not bear the thought.  I just stood there for 4 hours praying.  Thank God it was not windy.  I live in a trailer.  Thank God for our Fire Department.  They are heroes all.

**Allowing your car to dip it's nose into a water-filled ditch (F*****g Ducks!!!) is a recipe for disaster.  And a new-old car.  I'll never replace that sturdy little Toyota with the money MPIC will see fit to give me. 

***Gotta find more.  Part-time isn't cutting it, even the Best Part-time Job In The World.

Double Unicorn Success Club, Here I come!!!

OMG, OMG, OMG!!!  I am joining a book club ! ! ! 

This is funny, because I am a very slow reader.  AND I don't own the book yet, 'cause I have no money, and I live 70 miles from the nearest book store, and there is only one copy in the library system of my puny branch of the local library, although I guess I am the first on the list when it gets here, whichever month that will be...

I really am a slow reader.  I married into a family of readers that devour serious books, taking entire evenings to read them. (/sarc off)  I discovered my favourite author about 30 years ago, and I had almost caught up on the backlog of books she wrote before I had discovered her, but then I started bearing and raising children, and having no money or time to keep up, she got away from me.  She wrote books way faster than I could read them.  I am sad that she died last year, but I will be enjoying her books, probably I won't ever finish reading them all. 

But now, I have a favourite Living Authoress !




I will get the t-shirt!



Okay. Here goes nothin'.

Here I am again, and oh my, Blogger has really changed since 2006 when I was heavy into mastering HTML to say what I wanted to say, in the colourful way I wanted to say it!  Now they even have a button to let me reveal my inner child type strike-out at will. 

What has happened since I was a blogger last?  That was back before I knew the meaning of "LOL"!  Been a long time.

My former business, and that of my hubby's, is a distant memory. In fact, the 2 buildings are now under the parking lot of the Big Food Emporium.  Do I miss them?  Not on your tintype! 

I worked at The Hotel, 2006 version, for the summer, until the fall when the owners skipped the country with all the lottery, booze, and payroll money.  Stiffed me 2 paycheques, the bastards. 

Then I worked at the 2007 version of The Hotel.  It opened in July, and I worked there for the summer, until November, when the Manager decided me and the Cook no longer needed to be there.  At least I got friendship with the Cook out of the deal, which was WAY more valuable than anything else in that miserable place.  Such auspicious beginnings, and it closed in 2009?  2010?  'Nuff said there. 

I was trucking with my beloved hubby, and I was going to get my Class 1 with Air, so I could REALLY be a trucker.  We had plans.  Lotsa plans.  Sadly, he got sick in December of 2007, and passed away of lung cancer in August of 2008.  All I can say is the "grief process" is different for every person, and I have little advice for anyone else.  I know DFC Smash is busy, trying to be "Eyes In The Smoke" for other firefighters out there.  He will be waiting for me some day.  I can't say I am in a hurry (most days) because we have 2 beautiful (grown) children I want to watch for a while longer.  My Lord Jesus and Mother Mary help me every day with missing him terribly.  'Nuff said about that.

I had to give up our house, it was too big and lonely for little old me, and I couldn't make the payments, anyway.  Remember when I said I was friends with the Cook?  Well, she was dumped, jilted, shit upon crapped on, by her live-in, who gave her the mobile home he had bought for them and skipped town.  She moved away (she really had no good feelings about living in this town after that) and her trailer sat empty.  But then, like an ANGEL of mercy, when I needed to find new digs she said, "Use my trailer!"  At least, that's what I heard.  After I had moved in, she told me that I didn't understand, she was giving me the trailer.  Whoa!  Really?  Wow!

I had just about unpacked, when the land upon which the trailer had been sitting for 35 years was sold.  Yup, gotta pack up everything and batten down the hatches, and move it.  Went from not owing anyone a cent, to bills around town, and a loan to pay the moving company to relocate to the "Trailer Court" on the edge of town.  Blessing In Disguise:  Found out it is really in pretty good shape, it felt rickety before because the underpinnings were rotten.  I hired professionals to move it, and it is now levelled and solid.  Unexpected Crap:  The Porch, the 3-season storage room : the years have not been so kind to it.  A corner of it is rotten, and it looks like it will be scrapped, even though it was solidly built (survived the move!) and it's gonna be tough nail-pullin' to take it apart.  I'll get re-unpacked someday.

My application to work for Home Care was accepted, and I started working almost immediately after the hotel fiascos, so I was pretty pumped!  It is a great job to help people who need it.  I love it.  Had a few false starts at trying to take Health Care Aide by correspondence.  As the years went by, I finally had enough hours of doing the job to take a crash course from a career college and get my Health Care Aide certification.  Yay!  Now if I can just get more than part-time, I will be a very happy camper.

There it is, five years in a 7-paragraph nutshell.  A big thank-you to the following, for making this production possible:  DFC Smash (together forever, although we're apart!), Clare McLeod (sister extroardinaire), Amma and Grampa (my adoptive parents!), Tato (my Dad), Sweetie and Spud (the best kids in the world), and last but not least, The Lady With The Wooly Socks, and the Short Lady With the Humungous Heart (they kept me laughing!).  Oh, and the Firefighters and their FireBelles (who helped keep me sane).  And anyone I've missed mentioning.  LOL!

Five years?! Five years since I blogged?!! Yes. It has been five years. I will prepare a detailed explanation. I must compose a funny one, and figure out how to get rid of Snyder, my pet spider.

Great quote

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.
Excellence, I can reach for;
perfection is God's business."

--Michael J. Fox

A little culture, if you please!

Is this not the coolest video you have seen? (Don't answer that!)

The Dead Awaken...

I am still alive! I have had no time to post lately, since I have been trucking with the hubby, trying to clean up the house (not succeeding yet, but there's always hope!), and thinking about driving buses and finding menial employment.

I promise a post with pictures, or at least graphical content, tomorrow or the next day.

My Quote of the Day

Here is the quote of the day:

"...hopped up on so much coffee that I can feel my hair grow."
--Yarn Harlot, Aug. 23, 2006

Important Questions!

'Kay, so if the boss scribbles a line through your name on the work schedule (twice) for an entire week, should he then berate the employee he has forced to do your job, angrily asking where you are?!

Three sections to the tray in the package of Dad's Oatmeal Goodie Rings. Three of us in the house who are not allergic to oatmeal. Coincidence? (I think not!)

Is it possible to consume too much coffee? Should I snitch sweetener packets from work? (No, and no. I shall not stoop to their level. That would be wrong.)

Email so nice, I wrote it thrice

Excerpt from an e-mail I sent today. Names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty.

Hiya Tina!

I can't quite remember what my questions were now! I am very slow on checking my emails, since I started working at the Hotel.

Prob'ly, when I first emailed you (or was it comment on your blog? I forget) I was mystified by something the cook told me. It came from the inspector. Fly swatters are "dirty" and must not be found/used in the restaurant or kitchen. EH?! So the flies that come into the restaurant from the rooms or the doors the customers open...what?! We let 'em just fly around and die of old age?! Catch 'em with our hands? HERD them out the door again? We cannot use chemical bombs around the food. Apparently, fly-paper is a no-no, like the flyswatters. Don't tell anyone, but the head cook stuck some sort of sticky clear "fly-tape" onto the back door, 2 strips about 6 inches by 2 inches each. One fly flew onto one of them, by accident, I think. They are too busy swarming around the garbage can, 3 feet away from the strips.

Hubby found the actual legislation for the "Food Service Industry" on the net. It has about one small paragraph about "pests", which covers insects, rodents, everything. It basically says, "Keep 'em out!" Nothing about flyswatters being too dirty to hang beside the kitchen back door.

I just read what I have written, and I sound crazy. Well, it's a weird situation. I feel a weird, strange, bizarre gratitude (!) to this job, because when I started, I weighed around 200 lbs, and I huffed and puffed my way through my cleaning chores. But I was eating way less, and getting excercise. Hell, this job is like a gym membership they pay ME for! And when I had to work in the kitchen...I was nervous enough that the LAST thing I wanted to eat was ANYTHING on the menu in there! So now, two months later, I am about 166 lbs. and I feel just like a SPRING CHICKEN! One who can borrow (some of) her daughter's clothes! Woot! (It's only first thing in the morning I feel totally elderly. Totally. Ibuprofen and caffiene are my best friends in the morning.)

Anyway, that's the scoop on my questions. Except...do you know if there are any rules about room-cleaning you could pass along? Or tell me how to find them on the net? Or have someone who works in a Real Hotel In The City email me and tell me how to do it? I am thinking I should be using the "Official Manitoba Government Sanctioned Bleach-Solution For Disinfecting, May Be Put In A Spray-bottle, Don't Forget To Label And Make New Stuff Every Week" on the toilets, tubs, floors, sinks in the bathrooms... Right now, we are using a commercial cleaner/disinfectant spray, and wiping down with a clean rag...but I know the instructions say to kill germs, we are supposed to leave it on for 10 minutes...HA HA HA. We smear it around with a clean rag, sure, but I dunno how disinfecting it is. I know the Bleach Solution sprayed on after the surface is cleaned and clean-looking would prob'ly be better. (It is AMAZING how weak the Official Solution is: TWO TABLESPOONS per gallon of water. I would use scented bleach, of course...)

Anyway, if you know any computer literate, friendly English-speaking cleaning-people who might want to educate a poor, ignorant (real meaning of that word!) country gal, please forward this email to them! I know you are the "Cute Gal Who Works At The Front Desk" type of hotel worker. That's why I'm not expecting you to answer these weird questions.

Anyway, Thanks for listening to my rant. (Reading my rant).Have y'all picked out your vacation destination yet? I'll have to go read your blogs now! Hee hee! I love to live vicariously through you young'uns.

Luv, Nargus' Mom

It's all in the details...

reprinted from my other blog

So today, we have found out for sure that SMALL THINGS MATTER. Especially when they are accidently sucked down the drain of a hotel kitchen sink.

The other night, I was working in the kitchen as the chief food heater 3rd string cook chef, and one of my duties is to wash the pots and pans. The waiter or waitress gets to wash ALL the customer's dishes, plates, cups, cutlery. (Tip your waiters well, they may have to work very hard where you cannot see!) Anyway, I was washing dishes too ('cause I'm a nice kid) and I was using a dishcloth. The young man didn't know about the dishcloth, and I left it...in the water. Yup, he pulled the plug. Slurp! And he didn't realize it. So when I pulled the plug on my last dishwater a lot later...hmmm...that's draining kinda slow...

I got to work early this afternoon, and all the bar toilets were overflowing, all the restaurant toilets were threatening to, all the kitchen sinks...well, you get the idea. The plumber was just starting to try to figure out where the blockage might be, and I told him that my dishcloth went missing last night. So they started there.

Heh heh heh...sure enough, there it was. The plumber's snake dragged it out. Wasn't looking too good, after it's little adventure. I found a nice little spot in the garbage for it, it won't be doing that again.

So now things are back to SNAFU at work. After they fixed the drain, I got to do more laundry, so tomorrow I should just be able to rock cleaning those rooms.

Today was a waste of time in the room cleaning department, it was so hot. I tried to pre-cool the rooms I was about to do, but somebody set the conditioner units on "stun". Big noise, no cooling: the dials were set to 1 instead of 10.

Yup, details matter. The customers need to find the right amounts of cups, coffee, sugars, glasses, soap, shampoo...all those things that make your hotel stay bearable. They will have to figure out how to work the air conditioners on their own, though. I will leave them set to "MAX".

More Fun

reprinted from my other blog

Well, things are lookin' up here. The other Sous-Chef (sp?) is back at work after minor surgery, and I have time off from the kitchen. So just the rooms. There is nothing on the room-cleaning schedule, it is just blank. So I guess it is just me, although the boss is firmly convinced that the other lady, the one who quit, will be back next Monday to resume her job. This would mean: 1. The boss is crazy. 2. The only way to get vacation time around here is to quit and come back. Neither is a pretty picture.

Knitting stuff omitted.

I'll write more when there's more news. Over and Out.

What the heck have I been doing?

this post reprinted from my other blog.
Well, kiddies, I just got home from my job. I signed on at the local hotel as a housekeeper. Maid. Chambermaid. Cleaning lady. You get the picture. This little local hotel has a bar, restaurant, and 12 rooms to let. 2 rooms are used by the owners, and one room still has the stuff belonging to the late father of the former owner. 2 owners ago. (In a small town, things like that happen. Mike sold the hotel to George, and then George sold it to Etinder and Gagan's family. I think they are family, or maybe just Managers, I am not sure. Etinder signs my cheques, anyway.) There is a rumour going around the coffee shops that the hotel has been sold again. This always happens, and the scuttlebut is usually wrong. I know I haven't been told anything. Anyway...

So just when I'm getting the hang of doing the rooms in a prompt and efficient manner, the Chief Cook informs me that I will be doing cooking duties in the restaurant 2 days a week. YIKES! I told them I am not sure I am the one for the job, but everybody keeps telling me, "Not to worry, don't panic, you'll do fine." Right. Hubby and I are the Adult ADD Poster Children. It takes me a long time to get into a routine. Way longer if I have to make up the routine myself as I go along.

Doing the rooms is OK. I figure I have stayed in enough nice (and not-so-nice) hotel rooms in my lifetime, I know what hotel patrons want: cleanliness. And convenience. The first few times I did rooms, it took a long time, mostly because there were a couple of things I had to do, so I thought. Then I had to start arranging the "maids' room" a little.

Now the lady that was the maid when I started is quitting. Yikes. I am not sure yet what happens now, do I get all the maid work? Do I still cook 2 days a week? The maid I am talking about also worked in the kitchen a few days a week, but disliked that duty a lot. The lady that worked in the bar a lot was transferred out of town with her husband and his job, so they have a new girl in the bar. Plus the lady who did rooms, who is quitting, was also working in the bar. I think we may be getting short-staffed!

There was an array of waitresses working in the restaurant, but some of them are finished at the end of June, I guess they are high-school kids who want a fun summer life. One of them is going to hockey school, I think. So my darling daughter, who thought the waitress job was so part-time she needed another part-time job to make enough money for university, had to call off the second job already. I guess that's a good thing. She is so good at the waitress job, it shocks and pleases me no end. Greeting customers, serving the water and taking orders, taking the coffee, soups, salads, the entré (when the cook puts it up, on the "ready to go" shelf with the heat lamps), the desserts, ringing in the payment, cleaning the table for the next customers...whew! And the restaurant has, I dunno, 15 or 16 tables? And the customers fill and vacate these tables in no particular order? Aaaughh! I surely couldn't do this. But she does great, and the tips make the difference between a crummy minimum-wage job(i.e. chambermaid) and a good job.

Hey, I get tips too. So far: $3.06, 6 beer, a chocolate bar, a miniature chocolate bar, and a packet of Kool-Aid. Not just any Kool-Aid either: Mystery Flavour, Mystery Colour Kool-Aid. Woot! That was today, actually, I can hardly wait to make it tomorrow.

So that's what I been doing. Now I am going to log off, and go shower off the layers of sweat and deep-fryer flavour and aroma. Talk to you later.