FINALLY!

I have high-speed internet!!

BIG YAY!!

*sigh* feels better.

KS?

I've been thinking a lot about kindred spirits lately.

What might a KS be like for you?

Do you think they exist?

Do you have one?

Just thinkin'...

[East] Side - of the country - Story!

Jenni came to visit!

Had a great time, though I wish we could have done a few things that didn't just work out.

Wednesday we drove to New Hamburg to go to a knitting shop. Delicious yarn. I bought some and I shouldn't have. Eek. but Jenni bought some for herself and some yarn for a friend of hers who is ill and needs something new to learn. Jenni learns to purl and do a cable stitch. She begins her cable knit scarf. She gets hooked on knitting.

We went to Stratford. Did the usual tour of the chocolate shops and Ken's Fry Bus. Delish. Saw West Side Story. I won't go on about how great it was because I'd bore you, plus I don't think I could put it into words. So great. We stayed after the performance to attend the post show Q&A with four of the actors. I managed to screw up the courage to ask a question. "Given the history that the Sharks and the Jets have, do you think their issues stay respolved, or do you think that their history gets the better of them and they return to being the rivals they once were?" I got both a yes and a no. On the way out, we bumped into one of the actors - Eric. Jennu and I chatted him up. Super nice. Jenni's first brush with fame, haha.

Saturday wasn't too exciting. I don't actually remember what we did. Jenni is nearly done her scarf, though. She's turned into a mad knitter. I'd wanted to go to Hillside festival (hippied music festival) in Guelph but it's sold out. I don't get how an outdoor mysic festival can be sold out. It's outdoors.

Sunday was rainy. We drove to Elora. Saw the gorge. Got rained on as we paroused the shops. In one shop, there was lots of artisan blown glass. As we leave, Jenni says "I don't think I could own anythin like that because I'd be afraid of breaking it"...and then just as we open the door to leave we hear this huge crash from around the corner of the shop. And then silence. And then "omigod." One of the employees had knocked an entire shelf off while dusting. Jenni and I left, worried that we'd jinxed her. I also bought a "Joan the Wad" pendant from a curio shop. Joan is the Queen of the Cornish pixies. There is only one female, anyway, but if you carry her with you, she'll bring you good luck. And she's chums with Jack-o-the-lantern. Jenni finished her scarf. She's addicted to knitting.

Monday I drove Jenni back to the Waterloo in so she could catch the bus back to the airport. Sad to see her go. It was nice to have a friend around! Drove to the town of St. Jacobs to check things out. Ran into a woman at a shop who was from New Zealand, and we kibbitzed about how much we love the Pacific Islands and Samoa. *sigh*

Today's cloudy. Maybe a beach day will come up soon. All rainy days, it seems. I'm sad there wasn't a beach day while Jenni was here...but she's going to the "Great Heat" of Kamloops, anyway!

You''l Have to Wait!

Sorry guys!

I forgot to bring my camera cord with me to Ontario, so the completed sweater will have to remain an enigma...for now...

Just dream about it.

Did I actually do that?

Oh Shiz!

Give me a "hands up in the ayr"!

After a really really long time (I'm talking years, here) I finally, FINALLY finished knitting Mike's sweater.

(insert sigh of relief here)

Now it's time to move on to (or continue with) my smaller knitting projects - like the socks I'm knitting out of 100% soya. The pattern is really neat and comes out like tree bark. They will be my tree socks since they're also being knit in a brown. They'll be soooo nice.

More Pictures...

The internet was being really stupid. I waited forever to upload pictures from my computer onto my blog, and then the internet kicked out before it saved...

So here's some more photos...

Here's a shot of me at the Grand Canyon. Just chillin', you know.

To the left is Kaan. This was at grad. Guess what he was wearing to convocation....

I had fun in nursing school. Yes I did. This photo was from a fundraiser.

Here's Mike's grad photos. Can you guess which one ended up in the class composite to be framed and hung on the walls of the Engineering Sciences buildings for all eternity..



Picture from my grad. I like this photo even more because I got the results back from my RN exam, and I PASSED! I'm a REAL REGISTERED NURSE! YAY!

More pictures soon...

Hampster

I just wanted to post some pictures I had laying around. Enjoy!This is Dwight. He's My first "neo-hampster"...I had many when I was younger, but he's the first of the new generation. Now I have Jude....

Moving On

So I've been in Ontario now for nearly 5 weeks.

5 weeks.

It hasn't seemed that long. Mike said that last night, and I think that it's good because maybe the next 8 weeks will fly by quickly and I'll get to see him sooner. That would be nice.

Last week was a bummer. My dad called to tell me that I got a letter from the Ontario Nursing people saying that I was missing a piece of information in my application and that my application was stalled. I called the BC nurses (that was the piece missing) and they said they couldn't send that piece needed because I hadn't got the results back from my exam. So there was nothing I could do, and my application for RN status in Ontario was stalled. I was hoping to have it all DONE this week. Now it could be three or four more weeks. I was so angry and so upset because I'd put in so much time and it was all going so wrong. I was mad that I had asked direct questions about things and didn't get all the right answer from people the first time. I was angry that I had to still be working as a care aide when I should be working as a nurse...for twice the way. I was angry that I felt so incredibly helpless in this process. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do based on the information people gave me. When I called the woman in BC and told her my plight, she seemed empathetic. I mean, I asked her what I needed, then explained my situation and was told "yes, we send this and it's always fine"...and then it wasn't. But she called me bacl 10 minutes later and told me to call her the minute I got my exam results back and she'd have the correct form send immediately, and free (the first form, which was wrong, cost me...and I wasn't happy already that I'd put in so much money for a job I'd hardly work at). Literally, I started to cry on the phone. She said she'd help me out, and then "I hope I've made your day a little"...and she had. This whole process has sucked. I don't ever want to go through this again. And for one person to say that they'd actually do something for me, I just felt like someone had listened. Someone wanted to help. I've done this completely alone, and, honestly, have made a lot of mistakes. There wasn't any one person who could give me all the information as to what I was supposed to do, or how, or where. I got tidbits of information from Ontario and BC....and it didn't always match.

I'm glad I've had the opportunity to work as a care aide for a while, and get to know the facility before I'm supposed to be in charge of it for a shift, but I don't want it to be all that I do. I already feel left behind when it comes to m classmates. I missed out on Undergraduate nursing last year, when I could have been working in interesting nursing placements (the ER, ICU, neonatal...whatever..) because I attempted to work in Ontario (they waited 3 weeks to tell me they didn't hire for the summer, and in the meantime I missed the UGN application date), and now I get all the facebook updates of my classmates finishing their specialty courses and working in cool places, or of them getting their first real nursing paycheck...just getting out there and doing the things we worked so hard at to learn in school...and I'm stuck wiping bums all summer.

I'm being pretty harsh, and I know that in 10 years, this slow start isn't going to have made a lick of difference, but when you already feel like you've missed out when you haven't even begun, feeling like everyone else is "making it" when you're stuck in a web of bureaucracy really F%&@ing stinks.

And the worst part is, is that the more I feel like things are going wrong, the more I feel like "of course, it shouldn't be a surprise if it turns out I failed the RN exam" ...Like, things are already on this sucky path, it would only be natural for me to be the person who fails. Something else I have to do - another hurdle for me to jump over while everyone else drives past me.

And so last week, after the woman who told me she would help me hung up, I took the keys to the Buick LeSabre and drove to Stratford. I just needed to drive. To get out and be able to yell and scream and cry. I thought "I should go see a play - that would certainly take me out of my life" but I needed to have the car back for supper...and I ended up doing some "shopping therapy"...expect it was at Giant Tiger. GT is like a discount Zellers. My shopping "spree" was $33....because I'm broke (working as an on-call care aide doesn't exactly rake in the dough) and I have $1800 in debt on my credit card. I can't even mourn for the perceieved loss of my life properly.

I am feeling better now, almost a week later. It's still hard to talk about it, especially when I meet new people at work and they find out that I'm a new RN grad, and "when do you start as an RN?"...and I can't tell them, or even explain it because it's so damn complicated...

That's what's happening in nursing land this week...blah.

But the good news is that I think I'm on the mend

One Week Later

I'm trying to keep up with the blog. Still a bit tough considering the slow dial-up connection, but I'm on it.

So I'm now finished all of my orientation shifts at Knollcrest. For a while (nearly a week) I was worried that I wouldn't get any work, and that I'd be in the lurch at the end of the summer despite all of my efforts. So far, though, I've been called to see if I could work at least once per day. This morning, for instance, I had already made an agreement with another staff member to take her evening shift, but I was roused at 730 am by the charge nurse to see if I could come in for a day shift because someone didn't show up. I'll put in at least 40 hours this week. I'm hoping I'll get one more shift so I work 5 days, but of course I'll take what I can get. I truly hope that this holds up all summer. Most of the work I'm getting is because it's summer and people are trying to get vacation time in. I'm loving when people go on vacation here.

My plan will stand that I'm going to go and see a show at the Stratford Festival Theatre for each paycheck I get. Last week I saw Cyrano de Bergerac, and I drooled the entire time. I snagged a front row seat (though off to the side) and was totally sucked in. There was an epic battle scene near the end, and I could feel the heat as the explosions and gun shots went off. Steve (friend of mine who'd come to visit) could see me from his seat (he and Tori had the best seats I've ever seen and I'll be eternally jealous because I'll never in my life have seats like that) and said that he laughed when he could see me with my mouth hanging open. I'm OK with that. It was brilliant. They couldn't get me to shut up afterwards because I was so giddy. *sigh*

So anyway, I'm looking at seeing another show this weekend. I'd like to alternate between the three theatres, so I'm looking at seeing one of the shows at the Avon Theatre. The Avon was where I saw Sara Polley for the first time when she starred in Alice through the looking glass. I was 7 and had been watching her for years on tv. I remember that my mom and grandma had bought two tickets, and they split up. Grandma and I saw the first part, and mom and I saw the second half. Then, grandma bought me a ring from the shop across the street that showed all of the characters from the show holding hands. I really liked the ring, but I was young and I didn't take care of it, and it got lost to the ether. But I've always wondered if I could find abother one like it.

There isn't a lot else going on around Millbank. I'm still fumbling my way through work, and often feeling like I'm slowing everything up and making things harder for the other women I'm working with, but I keep reminding myself that I'm just new, and that I've agreed to take lots of shifts, so I'll get better. But it's still rough in those rushed moments when I whished I had the same instincts and experience. blah.

Happy Canada Day!

Drink something ice cold and see some great fireworks!

My Canada Day has been less than thrilling, but I'm definitely having a proud Canada Day. In this area, it's difficult not to. The local newsletter came with a 81/2 x 11 sized window flag, and the neighbour had a fluorescent maple leaf sign. I find that celebration of Canada Day is slightly different here in Ontario than in BC...not that people in BC aren't proud Canadians, but there's a definite sense of Canadian establishment here that isn't quite in BC. People have been living in Ontario several hundred years longer than they've been settled in BC, so I feel like there's a deeper sense of "our land"...It's difficult to put a finger on, but either way, it's all good.

I haven't written in a while because I'm working with a 56K dial up internet modem. It takes forever to do anything, including posting on a blog. It took be nearly 4 hours to download 4 minutes of a 9 minute video. blah. But I'll try to post once a week, maybe.

The weather here's been pretty rainy and wet. I don't mind that, but it does mean that when the rain all finishes, it'll be extra humid.

So I said that my day hasn't been all that exciting, but I like it that way. Usually I'm stressed to the max, even when I'm on vacation. But I barely have internet, I have no social obligations whatsoever, and I work casual-on call. So I've spent a lot of time knitting, playing the guitar I rented for the summer, and writing hand-written letters to my friends. It's been really nice that way. I've also got a summer membership to the gym in the next town over, and I go there probably 4 times a week. That's been really good for me. I'm just getting myself sorted out, and taking care of myself.

I'm planning on going Strawberry picking on Friday. I haven't done that in years. I used to go with mom when I was little, and I'm pretty sure I ate more strawberries than I put in my basket (which I'm sure mom should have paid for, haha). I want to get a bunch so I can eat 'em, and bake with them. I just want a giant bushel of strawberries. They smell so good. mmm. Also, I want to have a pie baked for my really good friend who's going to visit me here on Saturday. It's pretty much the most excitement I'm going to get in a while, so I want to do it with a flourish!