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!