another christmas

another season seems to have passed us by. we hung our stockings  laid our stocking by the wall with care; the children were tucked in their sleeping bags; our yuletide joy will be boxed up in their rubbermade containers for another year. christmas it seems, has yet again come and gone.

i will admit, christmas will never be the same. but christmas this year, was the start of new traditions and marked a turning point in my family's lives.

last year, dads passing was still so fresh in our minds. it had only been 24 days since he died and christmas just wasn't what it should have been. i'm not saying that the reason for christmas was lost on us. no, i'm not saying that at all. it's just, nothing was how it should have been last year. my mom and i flew to gatineau last year to be with my very pregnant sister, and my other sister and her husband were spending christmas with his folks in ontario. christmas day rolled around, my sister was so sick (and so pregnant), my youngest nephew could only eat berries and gelato, and i slept on a camping cot in the fabric/sewing room. for christmas dinner we had surprise spread (a delicious dipping spread with cocktail sauce, shrimp, tomatoes and peppers), and our boxing day dinner was salmon. who has dip and salmon at christmas? and not to mention the fact that the whole family wasn't there. last year was just not christmas.

this year was full of our old traditions. there were 13 of us this year at our house (including the japanese and korean girls that live with us). we had our corn chowder on christmas eve (dad made the best, but mom did a satisfactory attempt this year). my older sister read the other wise man (which was made more entertaining this year by the giggles of my nephews at the mention of the word 'naked'). we all got our traditional christmas eve pajamas (courtesy of santa, the christmas spirit, and donalbain and andrew). we all got up at 9am to open stockings, have breakfast and then dive into the hours of present opening. christmas this year was happy and joyful. we were together as a family, which is how christmas should be.

i am very thankful for many things in my life, but my family is one of the things that i treasure more than anything else. my dad gave me a verse when i graduated. it was colossians 1:9-14. my favourite part of this verse is when it says that through gods great power, we will have the strength to bare anything joyfully. this christmas was joyful. eventhough he wasn't here, as a family, we were able to find the joy in each other and being in each others company.

i have a great family. i miss my dad, especially this time of year, but we managed to have a christmas full of laugher, christmas cheer and love. last christmas was a christmas to forget, but this christmas showed me that our family is strong and that we will be able to bare anything joyfully.

Nadia

oh my, where has the time gone? it has been, oh quite a while since i last blogged about my ventures in the funeral world. i have found that this has been a very helpful venue for me to vent about my very dreary classes and my wonderful (yes, wonderful) experiences in the funeral home thus far. i've shared with you my heart about my dad and his life. now i want to share with you, Nadia!

i didn't know Nadia very long or very well for that matter. but what i did know about her was that she was the kind of spirit that would light up the room whenever she entered it. she was the kind of girl that you wanted to get to know, simply so you could say that she was your friend.

Nadia was 21 years old and full of life. no one expected what happened and still when i think about it, it makes me shake my head to know that something could have been done to prevent it.

about a month ago, Nadia was having some pains in her back. no big deal, right? after a few days of the pain persisting and intensifying, she went to the walk-in clinic and was told to take some tylenol (a walk-in docs miracle tonic for all things that ail you). from what i know, Nadia was a little bit of a worry-wart, but still she just thought it was a bad case of lumbago. a few days later, with back pains so intense that she couldn't breathe, her sister finally took her to the hospital (keep in mind that she thought she had a sore back).

within a few days, Nadia was on a ventilator and her sister was told that she possibly wouldn't make it through the night! all this from a sore back! it turns out that Nadia had developed a staff infection in her knee and it had spread rapidly through her blood into her organs and her heart was now working on just one valve (our heart has 4 valves and 4 chambers... Nadia just had one valve working)!

Nadia was in the hospital for about 3 weeks in the ICU. she was on a ventilator and heavily sedated so that she wouldn't pull out the tube that was breathing for her. she was somewhat responsive but it just seemed that she was stable, not getting better. the doctors finally discovered that one of the reasons that the staff infection got to the point that it was at was because her blood never produced any white blood cells to fight off the infection which is why she never even really knew that she was sick. when we get sick with an infection, our bodies produce WBC to attack the infections. Nadia's never did. she never knew she was sick. for weeks, her body was being attacked by this infection with no way to fight it off.

during the last week, Nadia's kidneys failed, her heart was barely working and her brain started to bleed. it's hard to imagine that this all started with a pain in her back.

Nadia died december 14th, 2009.

i work with Nadia's sister. when we talked about Nadia in the week before she died, all she could do was hope. she said that she had to have hope that she would recover, but that if she was going to die, she didn't want to have hope at all. hope can be a curse and a blessing, she said. i guess to some degree i agree. but at the same time, if i loose hope then i'm doomed to a life dominated by doubt. even if things don't work the way i believe they will, i can't loose hope. i definitely can't loose my hope and faith in God, no matter how many times things don't turn out the way i plan or pray they do.

when i talked to Nadia's sister, it was all she could do not to cry.

"there is a sacredness in tears. they are not the mark of weakness, but of power. they speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. they are messengers of overwhelming grief... and unspeakable love" ~ washington irving

4:33am

it's 12:20am as i start this post. so many things have happened in the last year, some of which i forgot right after they happened, others i won't be able to forget for the rest of my life.

1 year, 4 hours and 13 minutes ago, my dad took his last breathe. standing there next to him as his life literally ended. i remember thinking that it couldn't have really happened. i remember feeling my heart physically breaking. i remember going out to find the nurse to tell her that he was gone. to tell her that my dad was dead.

it was just so unreal. at 8pm he was talking to us, telling us how much he loved us. telling us that he had never once felt abandoned by God. telling us that he had no regrets about his life. no regrets other than 2: the first regret was that he was never going to see his grandchildren grow up. the second was that he was never going to be there to walk me down the aisle. i was lying there on his bed beside him as he looked up at me, with this look like he had somehow let me down.

it was at 4:33am that my dad took his last breathe. it was at 4:33am that i had to say goodbye to my daddy. it was at 4:33am that my life changed. how do you adjust to life without the man who means more to you than anything else it the world? i've been asking myself that for the past year. i mean, how do you get used to something like that? how do you get used to the idea that your dad is dead? all i know is that i will never get used to it.

i love you daddy and i miss you more than the world!

until we meet again

unfortunately, i do indeed have a dead list. sad, but true. thank the Lord that i haven't lost any dear friends, but i envy God for having some of the most treasured people in my life so close to Him instead of here with me.

today, november 15th, marked my parents 34th LOVE-iversary!

i remember their anniversary last year. my dad was in the hospital and had just had his ileostomy surgery 2 weeks before. the doctors had given him a fairly shady prognosis, yet there he was. staring up at my mom wishing her a happy anniversary and kissing her the way he always did.

growing up i don't recall my parents having many moments of open PDA. i never caught my dad coming out of his room in his underwear; never caught my dad stealing a kiss in the kitchen out of sight of his daughters; never walked in on things that a child should never walk in on... but i always knew that my dad had eyes for no one but my mom.

to me, this is the greatest love story every told:

my parents met at prairie bible institute in the late 1950's. back then, being in the same room as the opposite sex lead to talking, which lead to holding hands, and we all know that that is how babies are made! of course, that is what was sternly ingrained into the heads of the God-fearing boys and girls that attended PBI. but as is the custom with hormones, they will inevitably win out over our fear of what comes after holding hands.

so my mom and dad started going together, (or so they called it back in 1860!) much to the dismay of the far to conservative educational staff. they did everything they could to deter anyone from courting, and it was no different for my parents.

both my parents helped serve in the lunch room, but of course they separated them the moment they learned of their blossoming romance. my mom was kept in the student lunch room, and my dad (the trouble maker) was sent upstairs to serve the staff. but dad had it bad for mom, and just as luck would have it, he had a friend who served alongside mom, and he would give him notes to pass on to mom. every sunday at PBI, the boys and girls were allowed to eat in the same lunch room!!! heaven forbid! before you go getting your knickers in a knot, the staff had a strict boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement policy. this, they hoped, would allow them the ability to monitor any hanky panky that was likely going on. sundays were mom and dads time to reconnect and discuss ways to meet outside of the prying eyes of the overbearing teachers. and that is exactly what happened.

every so often, mom and dad and another couple friend of theirs, would sneak off not to the local theater, but to the local cemetery (and people wonder where my desire to become a funeral director steams from). they would sneak off to the cemetery at night, and frankly, i don't want to know what went on there because even I wouldn't do any sort of hanky panky in a cemetery! but that's what they did. i guess they figured that the staff wouldn't dare think that anyone would go there, and so obviously their plan worked like a charm.

as their years at PBI were coming to an end, my mom suggested that they apply for CBC (Canadian Bible College). now my mom being the perfect farm girl that she was, got in no questions asked. my dad however, was a trouble maker. i can only imagine that his track record at PBI was anything BUT tarnished. and so mom and dad went their separate ways. vowing to at the very least stay in contact. so mom left alberta and headed out east to saskatchewan to start school at CBC. dad, went back south to montana to start his life up again back there. and for him, that meant getting married!

i don't think that dad ever really forgot about mom and that is why his marriage was a brief one, being another statistic of failed marriages. mom had headed out west to british columbia, but dad followed his heart and Gods calling, and was finally accepted at CBC. he had it pretty tough though. none of the professors really liked him because of his new status as a divorcee! but being the strong willed, bullheaded, persistent kind of man that my dad was, he definitely made them eat their words in the end.

one of my dads friends was from british columbia, and had just returned to CBC after a vacation back home. he also knew my mom. when he got back, he left a note in my dads mailbox that read what's red on top, and green all over? (my mom had red hair and her maiden name is green... get it?) my dad knew exactly who he was talking about! within a few weeks, my mom received a letter from my dad, and they pretty much picked up where they left off 6 years earlier.

my mom and dad were clearly meant to be together. they had that kind of love that just withstood anything. for 33 years they lived, loved and laughed together. when my dad looked at my mom on their last anniversary, i could still see how much my dad loved my mom! my parents were in love to the very last minute of my dads life.

they vowed on their wedding day to love each other till death do us part. and that time has come and gone. so now in this new chapter in my parents lives, it's until we meet again.

my mom the warrior

in the past 2 days, i have seen 4 dead bodies! now you would think that that is quite excessive, especially since i am no longer doing my job shadow. so not only have i seen 4 dead bodies, but my mother has been so instrumental and enthusiastic about it, that i hardly know where to begin.

alright, i should probably clarify that the 4 dead bodies that i've seen have actually been mice. yes, even thinking about it makes me throw up in my mouth a little. it is so gross and those little buggers are so bleeping fast and once they get under something, it is nearly impossible to get them out (especially when that something is a 100 year old piano).

i know that this may come as somewhat of a complete shock to everyone, especially considering my chosen career path, but i can not get out of the room fast enough when those little pests are in sight. i know that most people run and scream like little girls when faced with a 6 oz rodent, but not my mother! she has killing them down to a science. it's like a ballet really. she grabs a cornbroom, smashes it into the mouse whenever she sees it, then once it is trapped beneath the long, firm, flimsy bristles, she stomps on it with all her might and squishes them inbetween the broom and the floor! ok, so not exactly a ballet that anyone would actually pay money to go see, but i think she could get paid to be a verminator.

my mom is, like i said instrumental in the destruction and elimination of a problem that arises every spring and fall in our house. see our house is pushing 50, so those little buggers clearly have had plenty of time to find all the entrances. unfortunately, i think one of them is right by my room because i hear them at least once a week in the ceiling.

if anyone has any ideas, tips, or suggestions of ways to get rid of them that will cause as much damage to the mouse population of saskatchewan, PLEASE let me know! just thinking about them sends a chill down my spine.

and just for your viewing pleasure, a little sample of what a 1960's house looks like in the year 2009!

our fridgedair stovetop oven range with single oven and pull-out stove.

now you see it...

...now you don't!

the pink floor to ceiling tile in my bathroom, complete with push button lightswitches

the wood panels that are throughout the upstairs and the purple "bug eye" lamps

who doesn't like a little bit of orange shag?

daddy's birthday

so today is my dad's birthday. for those of you who don't know, my dad died almost a year ago. well it will be a year on december 1. i remember so clearly what happened a year ago on my dads last birthday. looking back, i can still see him smirking at me.

my dad had just had his surgery to remove his colon and the doctors were not very optimistic about his recovery. they really didn't give him much of a chance, but considering all he'd been through, all of us were bracing ourselves for the inevitable.

but it was on his birthday that he opened his eyes. for 5 days he was unconscious and making very little progress in recovering from his surgery. i remember walking into the ICU to see my dad looking at me! it wasn't for very long, but he saw me! it gave me so much hope that all his troubles would finally be over.

once he woke up, the doctors were more willing to give us a positive prognosis. and it was a few days after that that dad was moved out of the ICU.

but i still remember the feeling i had when i saw my dad looking at me after thinking that i may never look into his eyes again. i remember leaning over and wishing him a happy birthday. with all the breathing tubes and other things sticking out of him, i remember him looking up at me with the slightest twinkle in his eye. there was no celebration, no singing, no candles or gifts. just a simple birthday wish and little smile.

dad never wanted anything on his birthday. our love and affection was all he said he ever wanted. although there was nothing really that we did to honour his birthday, we definitely celebrated.

looking back today, i kind of wish we had done a little more seeing as it was his last birthday. but there was no way of knowing that then. there are still times when i feel like i should have spent more time with him, especially in that last month. but the time we spent together were priceless moments that i wouldn't trade for anything in the world... except maybe having him back with me.

tonight my mom, my older sister, her husband and their kids and i, went out for supper to make sure we did something together as a family (i wish my middle sister was closer so that we all could have been together today). i took my 4 year old nephew to wash his hands and told him that today was grandpas birthday and that that is why we were all out for supper. this was his response, well he won't get any presents because he's dead... heehee! such a childlike answer and interpretation of how life should be. there isn't anything wrong with being dead, it just sucks that you don't get any presents!

better a little late than never

so today is saturday. not much going on. just going to go to work and then prolly hang out with some of my girlfriends. b/c it's saturday and that means we generally get all dolled up and head out to a pub or something and just hang out and gossip like old hens.

so as the day progresses, i have nothing pressing to do so i enjoy a nice leisurely afternoon at work and watch the roughriders pull one over on the bc lions, the thought that i still might have an assignment due never once crosses my mind.

it wasn't until later this evening as my friend and i were contemplating where to go tonite that it hit me! i still have one assignment due for orientation to funeral services! crap! just what i was hoping to do tonite. sit down and write a 4 PAGE PAPER!!! that's right, this wasn't just a fill-in-the-blank assignment, or a stupid computer term crossword puzzle. this was a major paper worth 30%!

so i rush home and plunk myself down in our not-so-comfortable la-z-boy and miraculously whip up a paper on my experience with the arrangements of a funeral service. unfortunately, my dads or my two nephews funerals were too personal, so i couldn't use those as references for my paper. luckily, i had had a tour of one of the funeral homes here in the city several months ago and i just so happened to have helped as an attendant for the service.

ok, so i don't necessarily recommend writing a paper in 2 1/2 hours. it prolly won't be your best work. so mental note: next time you have a paper due, don't wait until the 11th hour to write it! note taken and lesson learned!

hooked on a feeling...

today, friday october 23rd, marks a new chapter in my journey! today marks the end of my first term and the end of my finals! since last fri, i've had 5 finals and this morning was the last one!

it is such a wonderful feeling that i no longer have to get up at 5:30 to get in some final studying and that my brain can finally rest and lose all the information that i've learned over the past 2 months.

as today marks the end of the first part of my journey to become a funeral director, monday will mark the beginning of the next chapter. this chapter i will call a week in the life of a funeral home. from the 26th to the 30th, i will be job shadowing at a funeral home here in the city and loving every minute of it! i think the best part about it will be getting out of the lob for a week! but seriously, this upcoming week has been the light at the end of my finals tunnel.

i've already bought my scrubs (and thanks to a friend with outrageously awesome discount powers, got 2 pairs for $20), and am off to get a suit today. i'll be helping at the funeral home in any way they want me too. prolly sitting in on a few arrangements, attending funeral/celebration services, washing cars, cleaning toilets, answering phones and the part i am most looking forward to, getting to sit in on an embalming or two! one of the reason i want to sit in on it so badly is to actually see if i have a strong enough constitution to actually do it.

for sure there is a level of curiosity involved in wanting to do this job, but ultimately, i want to be able to help people and be there for them when they need it. being able to celebrate the life of someone is awesome and i'm really looking forward to that next week.

so cross your fingers and wish me luck! i need to impress the funeral home so that they will want to hire me on the spot!

vindicated at last!

as i have mentioned before in this blog, i clearly DO NOT know anything about a computer! with a consistent 85 average on my computer assignments, one would think that i actually don't know how to hold a mouse!

well, i finished my last computer assignment today and handed it in. to my surprise, i got an astounding 97% on it! not to toot my own horn or anything but, TOOT TOOT!!! i finally feel qualified enough to have a blog and to send emails! this is the best day of my life!

and amy, it was newsgroup not newsforum... blast! thanks for you help!

someone didn't pass interpersonal communications

last friday morning, my mom and i went to talk to one of the ladies at the memorial gardens about arrangements concerning my dads remains. all in all, it turned out to be a relatively productive meeting and i think we accomplished what we wanted. there was, however, one little hiccough!

one thing that my mom is quite adamant about is that remains are simply that: remains! there is no physical, emotional connection to his remains. he isn't there anymore. and not only that, but realistically, it's not all him. so to my mom, his remains could be buried at the landfill, as long as there was something to mark his life lived on this earth. which is what is most important to most people.

having something to mark my dads life on this earth is really the most important thing to us. so what we decided to do was to have a memorial bench erected not 8 feet from where my two nephews are buried. it is amazing how it worked out. the area where they said we could put the bench is right next to lachlan and nathaniel's markers. it couldn't have worked out better in my opinion... wait, yes it could have!

so all the details were perfect: the bench itself, the location. everything was going great until the woman who was helping with the arrangements said this to me: "wow, you really like to talk over people, don't you?" WHAT?!!! did you honestly say that to me??? if there is one thing that i've learned from my studies so far, it's that you never insult a member of a grieving family... regardless of how long ago someone passed away. if it weren't for lachlan and nathaniel, we would NOT be dealing with them. even if you aren't in the funeral business, most people have at least 2 sense to rub together as to how not to talk to people. unfortunately for us, she is now the person we will have to deal with. YAY! i'm so excited!

laughing out loud

today was one of those rare days when i actually thought of my dad and laughed! and not just laughed, but laughed. out. loud! and not just out loud, but i literally had to stop my car for a second and collect myself. this was the first memory of my dad that made me bust a gut!

so today didn't start off too well. i woke up this morning at 11:20 (perfection is beauty, and beauty is sleep). now i can generally get ready, out the door and get to work, all in 15 minutes. but today was just not going well. it didn't help that it has been raining all night and didn't stop until 3 this afternoon.

just as i was heading out the door, i got a phone call from one of my managers saying that i actually started at 11:15, not 11:45! great way to start the day. so i run out the door and sped to work. now i always take the same route to work... i could almost do it blindfolded. sometimes i often wonder how i get to work because the drive has become so much a part of my life that sometimes when i am driving down that street, i end up going to work... when i am not even scheduled.

so as i am driving this morning through the rain, i am not exactly focused on what is around me. i don't use my wipers when it is raining (which, i know, defeats the purpose of having them), because i have this rain-x stuff that is on my windshield, and i love it! anyways, because i was more focused on getting to work, all i noticed was the leaves that were on the road... i didn't notice that they were floating on a giant puddle of water!

it was at the precise moment when i ploughed through the water that my dad came into my mind.

my dad was a great story teller. i know now how much i took for granted the countless stories he told over and over again. like one such story he would always tell me on rainy days.

my dad grew up in montana. one of my most favouritest places in the world! there was one particular rainy evening when he was cruising down the main drag, he noticed, not 2 blocks away, were 2 girls huddled together under their umbrella trying to keep dry. my dad, being the gentleman that he was at 18, could think of only one thing to do to these poor, soaking wet, cold girls... drive through the puddle that was in front of them as fast as he could! all he could see through his rearview mirror was the tidal wave landing on them and them shaking their fists and more than likely shouting profanities at him.

that is what i thought of as the deafening sound of water splashed in every direction. as the cars sped past me, i envisioned those 2 girls shouting profanities at me (because i am sure that every other car on the road with me was indeed saying more than one curse word as they got the majority of my tsunami).

i was late for work, of course. but i had a good, well needed, laugh! my day at work wasn't the greatest, but having my dad make me laugh this morning, was in actuality, the best way i could have started out.

what was i thinking?

my dad passed away nearly 10 months ago. just typing that 10 seems so unreal. it was, in part, my dad passing away that prompted me to even start thinking about doing this as a career. i still remember the day the idea was presented to me. and it happened in the most peculiar way.

in the days that followed my dads death, there were many arrangements that obviously needed to be attended to. when we were in the show room looking at urns, my older sister pointed out the keepsakes. i was all over it! i think that out of my sisters, i am most definitely the most sentimental. my middle sister i think would (as it always has with the middle child) come in in a close second on the sentimentality scale. my older sister, well, she couldn't care less (sorry sis). but i digress.

when i saw the keepsakes, i knew right away that i needed one. i have no problem saying that when it comes to spending money, i need a lot of things but this, i NEEDED (i am not above using caps, and it is right here for the blogging world to see). i was a daddy's girl and this was the one thing that i needed to make that first step into living a life without him. 

this is literally the most important thing i own! 

 i will always have my dad close to my heart

but it was in the office at the funeral home when the director forgot to get my mom to sign for the remains, that i said that i could do this! and that was pretty much it. that was the moment that changed my life. it wasn't just the purchase of the keepsake that would shape the rest of my life, but it was also how we were treated. it wasn't like we were just another family. it was like we were the only family.

and that was pretty much it.

in the months that have passed since dad died, there have been more than one occasion when i've broken down and cried myself to sleep, physically feeling my heart breaking b/c i missed him so much. as much as i can literally feel my heart break some days, i know that that is what will make me do the best i can for others who will inevitably feel the same heartbreak.

negative reinforcement can be nice on the eyes!

while studying for another psych exam (this will be the second in as many weeks) today, learning about the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and responses, i realized that there was one major negative reinforcement that was impairing the amount of information i was able to input (which i also learned i would forget as soon as i learned it, so really i don't know what the point was).


imagine if you will, picture in your minds, chris pine! if you are unfamiliar with who chris pine is, here is a little visual stimulus that will wet the palate of your cornea:

famous for his portrayal of captain james t. kirk in the new star trek movie

now that you have a visual reference, try and imagine studying with that piece of delicious goodness sitting not 20 feet from where you are! let me tell you, it is next to impossible! especially when he is dressed in a perfectly tailored black 3 piece suit.

what little i did learn today was very quickly forgotten b/c there isn't much else your sensory receptors can handle when they are being overloaded with a pair of very fine eyes... and a few other fine parts too. 

i realized while sitting in the coffee shop this afternoon what exactly a negative reinforcement is and how it applies to our everyday lives. i clearly didn't get any studying done this afternoon b/c of the chris pine look-a-like, and therefore, i should have gotten rid of him. in retrospect, all i can see myself doing is staring, mouth agape, drool running down my chin. i don't think i would have had two sense about me to go and tell him to leave b/c he was distracting me. this afternoon, i welcomed the distraction... tonight, i welcome caffeine! 

on a different note: i got back the marks for my first psych exam. 75%! i will confess, i know i could have done better. however, i have a saying and it goes something like this: sometimes it's better to be lucky than good! for the time being, i will take that 75% and relish in the fact that i am still in it! i just hope, for my sake, there are no more chris pines that will be popping up around town, b/c then i'd be making my way through the doors of a funeral parlour sooner than i would like!

how to hold a mouse

while reading through my COMP 170 course manual, i discovered that through the majority of my life, the beliefs and values that i have, have indeed been false and misguided: i never knew that the rounded top of the mouse should rest in the palm of your hand and the cord extends away from you!

being a Mac user all my life, i have always believed that you delete typing mistakes. who ever heard of backspacing typing mistakes? its like learning german! this might just be too much for my sensory receptors to handle! seriously, what kind of malarkey is this? i mean, if i have to use a computer, i will just stick with what i have... it works just fine!

e-mail? what is e-mail? why would i send electronic mail when i could send regular, old fashioned, time consuming, out dated, by-the-time-it-gets-to-you-its-irrelevant mail! i can't believe that they are going to try and make me use the internet to research things that i could look up in a sexist, pre women's lib, politically incorrect book! e-mail, that just won't catch on! and GOOGLE! don't even get me started on that rubbish. and what the heck is wikipedia anyways? why can't i just use an encyclopedia? i like the smell of old, musty, leather bound, lead printed books. i just don't think that this will ever be useful.

you know what, i guess progress can be good. had the railroad not made its way to the west, who knows where we'd be! maybe i can adapt to the changes and advances that technology is making. who knows, i might actually like it. maybe the internet won't be that scary. they do call it the world wide web though. that is a little intimidating. i think i will tread this water very carefully. it still might be scary out there!

i'm not even joking about this! this is the basis of my basic computer skills course... i am PAYING money for this! paying money to learn to send emails and how to hold a mouse. awesome!

beauty school dropout

many people will tell you don't judge a book by it's cover and that you should make your own decisions based on your own unbiased observations. i would have to say that i agree! i would say that a good trial period for a new venture would be say, 2 months. 2 months to me sounds like the perfect time frame to base a decision that could, in reality, form the foundation for your career.

when i started school to become a funeral director, there were only 15 of us in the program. not a very big number, especially when you consider the age demographic of the directors who currently occupy the majority of the vocations in this particular field. a more startling statistic is that there are only 3 men in this program (one of which is currently a grave digger... not even joking). as much as there will always be a demand for funeral directors, there aren't too many jumping at the chance to deal with the dead.

school started on september 1st and by september 17th, we were writing our first midterms. when a couple of us got together to study for our first exams (psychology and orientation to funeral services), one of the other girls was already psyching herself out of the course. it had literally been 2 weeks and she already wanted out!

it was as if she had dug her own grave by enrolling in this program and was now trying to punch her way out of her casket which was buried 6 feet below ground (which i know to be an impossibility because i watch mythbusters).

granted she is 22 and is still very, how should i say this, indecisive. but 2 weeks is not enough time to make any sort of rational decision. you need at least 21 days! everyone knows that! when i was 22, i know that i was a tad bit unsure of what i wanted to do with my life (i think i wanted to be either an astronomer or chemist, 2 things that involve math {which i am more than deficient in}), but i knew better then to pay $11,000 for something that i wasn't going to stick with for more than 17 days.

the other girl in my program jokes that now there are more jobs for us. which is a bit disturbing when you think about what we are studying. i won't lie, now that she is out of the program, we actually get some studying done because we don't have debbie downer over there moaning about how she doesn't want to take out her lip ring.

i think frankie avalon said it best when he said you've got the dream, but not the drive. put down your teasin' comb and go back to highschool! 

blepharoptosis

7:30am came and went and i had yet to get out of bed to head to my medical terminology midterm. thank goodness for that grande caramel macchiato or else i prolly wouldn't have made it through that hour and a half.

as it happens, my exam supervisor is a gem and is easily bribed with grande hazelnut steamed milk, so she didn't even blink an eye when i rolled in 5 mins late and asked for an extra 10 mins to go over my terms (not that it helped much though). it didn't help my situation much that i am a tad bit lactose intolerant and my caramel macchiato generally goes down tasting like heavenly goodness, but comes out well, lets just say it comes out!

so the exam starts and i am escorted to the science departments 'broom closet' and plunk myself down in my chair and stare at the scantron sheet. 70 questions in the medterm world means 90 mins!

all in all, i am self-professing that i get a 70%. clearly a bit more studying would have increased that self-proclamation, but it could be worse right? so i won't bag too much on my shady performance this morning.

as it stands though, 3 out of the 4 exams i have written so far have been a cakewalk so i won't fret to much over a possible 70%. at least THIS instructor was able to send the right exam to me without me having to call her 11 hours b4 the exam to inquire as to why my supervisor doesn't have it yet! nothing like leaving things to the last minute right? but that is another story for another day... or maybe for after lunch!

ps - for those wondering, blepharoptosis means droopy eyelids. now you know!

me, a thanatologist? well, sorta!

having recently entered the world of thanatology, i have decided that my life is now interesting enough to share with the rest of the blogging world. i have therefore created this lovely little log to document the events of this entirely fascinating new chapter in my life.

for those of you too lazy to look up what thanatology is, it is the study of death. now i should point out that i am not, in actuality studying death, but more appropriately, i am studying to be a funeral director/embalmer. "WHAA!?" is the general consensus when i tell people what i plan to be. and i am sure that the thought has now crossed your mind to never return to this page.

the truth is, i can honestly think of no better way to show love, compassion and respect to people than to care for those that have just passed on. having recently lost my dad, i know how important it is to honour and value the memories of those we loose.

as this is my first entry, i should actually go back to aug. 28th, 2009 at 1:30pm:

i got home from work and got a message saying that a spot had just opened up and i was next on the list for the funeral services program. classes started sept. 1st, so that meant that i had 2 business days to scrounge up $11,000! what fun! miraculously i managed to get a loan and the next order of business was getting the day off so that i could spend 8 hours in orientation!

the first 4 hours i pretty much could have slept through. lunch came and went and then it was time to move some bodies! i'll clarify... we moved LIVE bodies! then the best part: setting up the grave! now that doesn't sound that interesting, but trust me, the looks on peoples faces as they came out into the parking lot to see a full coach, church truck, casket and lowering device on the lawn was PRICELESS! needless to say, you have to have a bit of a sense of humour to do this job, and i think i can definitely check that off of the list.

well, that has been the most hands-on experience i've had so far. the past 25 days has been a mix of psychology, orientation to funeral services, interpersonal communication, medical terminology and basic computer skills (personally i think that the creation of this blog should automatically give me an 'A' in that last course, but i actually have to know how to send emails, so this doesn't qualify). i've written 4 out of 5 midterms so far and can, with a certain degree of confidence, self-profess my average to be roughly 80%. this is, of course, just a guesstimation, but, i am pretty confident. i will however give or take a few percent... prolly mostly take!

although many people don't quite get why i am doing this, and although many question my sanity, all i can do is shrug my shoulders and wave their negativity to the wayside. i hope you enjoy my ventures, breakdowns, and rewards. and trust me, you will be in for more than a few breakdowns... that is a given!