Cremes

Inspired by my friend Mark, I decided to write a recap of every year that I was in school. Despite the fact that I am slightly younger than he is, I don’t think it will be any easier to remember much of anything before grade 8 but we’ll give it a shot.

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The name of my preschool or kindergarten (that must be a German word) or whatever-you-want-to-call-it-before-I-turned-5 was called Papillion et Pissenlit. Yes, it was French and situated in the next “village” or “hamlet” over, Pubnico. The name means Butterflies and Dandelions, but “pissenlit” itself was always hilarious to us kids because if you made that one word into three - piss en lit - it roughly translates to “pee in bed”. It was on the top floor of the community building, which ironically is the same building I recently took my wedding pictures in. There were two older ladies that ran it, I remember them being old then and I have no idea if they are still alive but I highly doubt it. A fair amount of the kids in it were also in my primary class the following year. A few instances of that particular year stand out to me.

First, I hated oranges (the fruit and at that time the juice too) at that early age. One day the teachers cut them up for us in slivers and I decided I liked them that way and would beg my neighbor to recreate them but never could the magic of those particular oranges be created. I still do not like the taste or texture of the fruit.

I also remember not being very sociable with the other kids. I have a distinct memory of being alone surrounded by shelves of books and reading, perfectly happy not to be playing with the others. I also remember making a little boy with no hair (or at least whitish-blondish wispy hair) cry because I hit him with a blunt object since I didn’t want to share. The boy probably had it coming - I don’t think I was a child that would take toys from others but often I would protect the toy I was playing with already. I don’t recall making any friends or being invited to playdates unless it was instigated by the mothers. I was probably a lot like I am now - not all that concerned with making friends as long as I had things I could do by myself.

I don’t think that I hated preschool or anything, but it wasn’t exactly something I loved either. I was just as content to play with my toys at home as I was anywhere else.

Next: Grade Primary (which is not grade 1 for those of you that don’t have our screwed up school system!)

I can’t believe that I’m still stuck down here, with no apparently release in sight. It’s already been two months since I’ve been married (or it will be in a week’s time) and I’m still living at home with mom. It hasn’t been easy, I’ll tell you that. I still haven’t heard anything from the consulate and it’s driving me a little crazy. There’s not even anything more to write about, really. Mom and I had a fairly huge arguement where essentially it was solved once she realized that she was irrationally attacking me for no reason and that she had to stop treating me like a child. I’ve had two shifts at work cancelled in the past two weeks so that’s not boding so well for hours either. I found out that my course marks need to be in by September 8th for me to be able to graduate in October so I’ve been doing a lot of reading on my last two days off. I ordered a bunch of books from the Athabasca library (where I’m taking my distance course from) so those should come in next week and I can get started on my first essay. I’ve played a fair amount of World of Warcraft and got my gnome mage up to level 17 last night. I’m mostly bored of all of this stuff and want to be with my husband already. I’m pretty much just waiting for my letter to find out when my interview is and then things can swing into action. I might even still be here when its time for the graduation ceremony, but whether or not I’ll be in it is another matter entirely. We’ll see how quickly those books come in anyways. One month to finish an entire 3rd year history course isn’t much, but we’ll see what kind of magic I can churn out.

It’s true, I absolutely love my job. I’m happy to get up and get ready for work, or go work an evening shift. I don’t even care that much if I’m missing a nice sunshiney day like today to stay inside for 6 hours and work. I’m always having a great time when I’m there working. I’m not even sure how to pinpoint it exactly, but there could be a few reasons.

First of all, it gets me out of the house. Now I love my mom, but she drives me a little bit insane. I dislike living with her. If I had my choice, I would be renting a place in town. I lived at home for the first 20 years or so of my life and I’m tired of it. After having my own place, this is something that really gets to me. It’s not even that we get into minor tiffs almost everyday - it’s the littlie things that aggravate. Example: I like having my towels in the bathroom. It’s just better. Mom keeps them in the closet outside the bathroom, so if I hop into the shower without grabbing a towel first - I’m pretty much screwed and have to walk out into the hallway… with no clothes.. and dripping wet. This wouldn’t be so bad if the FRONT DOOR wasn’t right across the little hallway. Mom always gripes at me because I may have let a few water droplets fall to the floor without wiping them. If she kept the towels where they should be then this wouldn’t be such a big deal! She also still gets after me for having a messy room. No one can see my messy room to begin with, and I don’t see why it matters. I’m 22, I should be old enough to determine the cleanliness of my own bedroom. I don’t even make a mess in the rest of the house - I keep my shoes and even most of my bathroom stuff in my own room. Even my cat’s food and litter is in my own closet. ARG.

Anyways. Another reason why I like my job is because of the cool people that I work with. Everyone is usually upbeat and friendly and we don’t sit and gripe about bad customers (although we share stories) and we aren’t usually running out of there when it’s time to go home. People stay and hang out and it’s cool. We are all big clothing fans (who wouldn’t when working at a clothing store!?) so we always comment on certain shirts or whatever and collectively drool on the new stuff when it comes in. We like to joke around with each other and we just have a plain good time.

The work is pretty easy too. I mean, sure my feet were really hurting after my shift today (and my back too, a little bit) but folding shirts or hanging them, or helping customers with purchases is really easy and fun. Best of all, we get to dress up at work and wear stuff that we like. And there is quite of a bit of selection! Of course, we do have a dress code but it’s mostly common sense for working in a place where you sell nice clothes and may have to climb ladders. So no short skirts, low necklines without something under it, and no sneakers, but so far it hasn’t been much of a problem for me. I have lots of cute clothes that I adore, and there’s something new coming in every day. (Literally.)

I also like how it’s indoor, and most people are pretty nice. Most people actually don’t even want to be bothered. It would be cool if more people would let me help them with stuff, but most are just “Nope, just browsing!” I got to help a woman pick out some jewelry today and I think we might have a drunk customer today, but I still tried to help her anyways. But yeah, nice clean airconditioned environment. Ah. It’s just so wonderful! I hope to be able to get more hours or maybe even get another clothing store job in Texas, but I worry that I won’t like a different store as much as I like Suzy Shier. Ah well, we shall see!

So I finally broke down and made myself a World of Warcraft account. I’ll be hanging out with my husband and our friends that we met online in the vast wilds of a 3D generated environment. So far I think it’s pretty neat, but I need more time to get used to it, I think. I can’t let it interfere with my studying and you know, life in general, but I don’t think there really is any fear of that. I’m just amazed that this computer seems to be able to handle it moderately well. It’s a little bit choppy but nothing that I can’t handle. My only character right now is a little Gnome mage named Denaye with pink hair. Wee! She’s like 2 inches tall compared to everyone else, but still very cute. I managed to get to Level 4 on my first night, no idea if that’s good or bad. I wasn’t trying very hard to level up quickly. Some quest missions I don’t dare do myself because I don’t have a lot of defense or protection or whatever you want to call it. I’m sure I’ll pick up on some of the terms eventually.

I went to town to return a defunct belt to work, one that I had bought the other day and ended up leaving with 2 shirts, 2 belts, and a necklace. Sigh. I also picked up Mandy’s birthday gift so yay! I’m going to make up her card soon so she’ll be all ready to go. First time I’ve been in the country for her birthday in quite some time! Altogether I spent more money than I intended to, but I think I’m going to keep a handle on my finances for the next while. I need to stop buying stuff that I don’t really need. Of course, this weekend I’m going to probably pick up the World of Warcraft game so there’s another 40$ gone! Sigh. But I got my new credit card in today so I’ll be earning wonderful Starbucks dollars now! Hurrah!

Anyways, Mike is bothering me to get on the game so I should skedaddle for now. I don’t really have much else to say anyways. I have tomorrow off, then working on Friday and after work mom and I are driving into Halifax for the weekend. So, yay!! I probably won’t be updating again until next week, detailing the events of my trip, so stay cool everyone! BYE!

So I just got done two days of work, and today and Monday are my days off, then I work Tuesday and Friday of next week. It was a good time. I learned to do the cash register so that was fun. Now I’m doing sales! I also picked up some new shirts, so there is something wrong if I run out of work clothes. It’s great that I get to wear clothes that I like to work, and look really nice. I even had some people try on something thatwas similar to what I was wearing! But it’s good, I’m starting to know what we have on the floor so that I can help people pick out things. Of course, once I get to know the collections, I bet that they’ll be all gone and replaced by the new fall stuff. We’ve already got quite a bit of fall stuff out already. The new halters are out and I love them! I only wish I had noticed them yesterday when I did my shopping. Oh well, I may pick them up later if I have any extra cash - right now I’m kinda strapped. I get paid this week so hurrah! Money, finally coming in. I don’t think I’ll be able to start any saving until next month. Which doesn’t mean much saving if I leave by September. At this point we have no idea when I’m going, so it’s all open ended. I’m sending in my checklist (finally) tomorrow, so I’m hoping that in a couple weeks I’ll be receiving a letter that has my interview date on it.

Next weekend, mom and I are planning to go into the city for the weekend. Mom wants to look at some small furniture for the house, and I want to get a makeover and some Starbucks. Mom mentioned staying over night somewheres, but I’m not sure yet what we’re up to. I seriously doubt that I’ll be getting called in this week, hours are down for just about everybody. However, the couple weeks after that, Angela’s on vacation, so those hours need to be filled up so I might get something. Wee! So the next couple of weeks I’ll hopefully be working more so that it will go by pretty fast and then I’ll find out when my interview is. Gosh I can’t wait.

Another day off for me. I didn’t really do much besides have an encounter with a rude Pubnicoer at the gas station today. I pulled into T-Paul’s Petro Can and there were no available pumps that I could get at so I just waited in the parking lot for one dude who was parked in between two pumps, filling up containers for his four wheeler. So technically, he didn’t even need to be parked there but whatever, it was raining. So I’m waiting for him to fill them up and then he goes inside to pay and whatever. I pull up behind him so that no one else steals my pump since I’ve been waiting awhile. He comes back and just as he’s about to open his door, he goes to chat with someone else filling up. So I honked the horn at him. He and the dude he was chatting to gave me a look but it was an effective honk because he drove off. So I pulled up to the second pump so that someone could still reach the one behind me without blocking me in because I’m nice! And the dude filling up was like, “In a hurry today?” and I was like, I was waiting for him forever!! You can talk to him anytime, for crying out loud. It’s not like you don’t both live within 10 minutes of each other. Or he could have just pulled up enough for me to reach the first pump, that would have been fine. People are so inconsiderate.

Anyways, today I intend to go into town with mom and do some groceries plus get a present for a girl getting married sometimes. She didn’t have a registry, I was like big mistake! I made mom call and ask to make sure, apparently they’d never even heard of it. She recommended we buy towels or something. I’m thinking, that girl is going to have every color towel in the rainbow. And probably every type from Walmart cheapies to actual nice ones. People really should embrace the idea of a registry. It’s so awesome, and so much easier to return if you get duplicates. It’s almost a law that you’ll get at least two toasters, and you need to return one of them - if they are identical then the solution is easy! Not to mention, it’s just easy to return things that were purchased from a registry. Except Target likes to make it difficult if things were purchased online. Not to mention for people like me who detest knick knacks and unuseful gifts - a registry practically eliminates it. In our case it was really great because it just got sent to the right part of the world. Registries are just a wonderful idea.

I had another shift at work yesterday and it was fun. I only wish that I had more hours! Tomorrow I have another 5 hours shift and then again Saturday night I have a 4 hour. I wish I could have a nice long 8 hour shift or something. People are getting called in on their days off when I’m sitting here bored out of my skull. I have no idea why this is happening; just train me and then get on with it! If you have employees sitting around bored, then you shouldn’t be making people work on their day off. I can’t make it any clearer that I want hours. The hours are obviously there - I’m just not getting called in! I told the assistant manager that if things didn’t get better soon, then I was going to have to find a second job. And if they want to give me 40 hours, I might just quit Suzy’s. At this point, I just want the hours. I would even foray into food service if they would give me something that I could live off of. I prefer working at Suzy’s but I can’t go in for only two 5 hour shifts a week. Why bother having me on payroll? Anyways, I’m just hoping that things pick up soon and I’m kind of sad that I didn’t take that museum job when I had the chance.

I guess we’ll see when I get my schedule for next week.

So I terminated my Zip.ca account today. I got an email with them being like, please tell us what we could do to get you to return as a member! So I listed all the reasons why I left:

• rarely got the movies at the top of my queue
• ASAP slots rarely were sent (you can set priority to 2 movies on list each shipment)
• free shipping only applied to 11 movies a month (this changed midway through my membership)
• turnaround for DVDs was 8 business days
• all the “good” features of the service had an extra fee
• several DVDs I received were damaged on arrival (haha, or DOA)

I ended the email saying that I could rent DVDs for less and get them faster at my local rental store. Which is now true, since old releases at the Pubnico rental place are now only $2.50! I rented Spanglish tonight and mom and I watched it, it turned out to be not half bad. And I got to see it a heck of a lot faster. When I signed up for this, I was under the impression it would be a lot like Netflix, but let me tell you - it wasn’t! And I only wish that I had been able to read as many reviews on the service then as there are now. When I joined, 8 months ago, there were only 2 and they said the service was alright. I guess it’s been since the “threshold limit” that more people have been actively complaining about the service. Anyways, in a few short months I will be enjoying Netflix and REAL online rental service.

Not to mention it’s nice to walk into a video store and be recognized by the owner. :)