Bleh.
I stayed home sick from work on Monday & Tuesday last week, and went back to discover that there were no casuals called in to take over for me in my absence. Maybe there are no casuals? That means there was four days of work piled up for me to spend the rest of the week catching up on. I was busy. It was fun. I really enjoy my new job. :-)
In other news, I spoke to my father recently. It's unlikely he will ever read this so I'll give you a nutshell version of what's happening. Some time in January he was admitted to the hospital after coughing up blood (this is what he told my sister's husband) and spent four days on IV. No further detail. Some of you may recall me telling you about the spot on his lung that the MRI found a year ago, and a few other lung associated problems which he was calling 'asthma' first (um, asthma wouldn't show up as a spot - it's either cancer or TB) and then an infection. He contracted pneumonia in the fall and took a long time to get over it. When I said something to him about 'at your age it takes a long time...' he really didn't want to talk about the whole aging thing. That was interesting, I didn't know he had end-of-life issues but there you have it. Meanwhile, all this time he's been waiting for his mail-order bride to come from the Ukraine. He spent a month in Europe (well, Ukraine and Russia) last summer searching for the Right Woman and ended up with Tamara, 31, with a 7-year-old daughter. (Note that I am almost 37 and my sister is 34, so our new 'stepmother' would be younger than us. Ew.) Well first he had to wait until she finished her schooling. She is an accountant, a nurse and a dental assistant. (Yeah right). Her schooling finished and she was supposed to be here in October. Then there was a problem with her ex, he didn't want her to take their daughter out of the country. This is starting to sound fishy. Then, most recently, she was about to board the plane when the government official decided she was a 'risk of flight'.
See, here's how I have it figured. They (the organized crime that deals in human trafficking and scams like this) hook a naive guy like my dad into believing that he will soon no longer be lonely, that he will soon have his new wife. Then they string him along according to a formula to get him to keep sending money. He hasn't told me he is sending money but I have no doubt he is. He lives on a disability pension by the way, so who knows where this money is coming from. At any rate, he still believes this woman is coming to be his wife.
I'll believe it when I see it. If she does show up she will have to learn English in a hurry, and soon understand that my dad really just wants someone to clean his house and look after him as his health fails. Ain't that love?
Okay I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing. It's just a bit surreal to know that your father is trying to get a mail-order bride from a poor country. It's hard to have respect for someone who does that.
Dan's youngest sister is at present in Europe studying German in Germany for a year. She has two months off just now, so her parents are there with her and they are touring around western Europe. All I can think about is all the gorgeous European yarn shops they aren't going into. Well, and the cafes. OMG can you imagine the coffee? And the shopping. I would love to go clothes shopping in Europe.
I'm almost at the 20 pounds of weight loss mark. Twenty pounds! How can that even be? I can't even imagine myself with 19 more pounds on me. Well, I've been able to dig out some of the clothes I haven't worn in a while to discover that they fit again. I am retiring some jeans and pants, will wear them only if I have work at the fish job. Today I put on a top that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday last year, one I haven't been able to wear because it didn't fit. I wore it all day for the first time! It's very powerful and motivating, being able to get into smaller clothes like this. I wonder why I have never attempted weight loss before. It seems to be easy, but I owe it really to a number of things:
1) the LoseIt! app for my iPhone, which keeps track of everything for me
2) the free Nordic Track elliptical trainer I found on Freecycle (which Dan repaired and I use almost daily)
3) Dan, for being mindful of my need to weigh/measure everything I eat so I can log it
4) my compulsion to lose the weight I've been carrying since all my big surgeries a few years ago before my skin loses its elasticity so that I'm not left with 'wings'.
Last week I think I mentioned we zipped out to Courtenay to pick a new laptop for me, since I killed my other one. (me=sad) I'm still getting used to this one, it's smaller but lighter, is quicker in some ways but not as powerful. I haven't been spending much time on it because I've been knitting like a madwoman. I always knit like a madwoman, don't I? Well, I'm working on Cookie A sock #3 and I've put about 10 hours into it since Friday morning. Here it is:
I stayed home sick from work on Monday & Tuesday last week, and went back to discover that there were no casuals called in to take over for me in my absence. Maybe there are no casuals? That means there was four days of work piled up for me to spend the rest of the week catching up on. I was busy. It was fun. I really enjoy my new job. :-)
In other news, I spoke to my father recently. It's unlikely he will ever read this so I'll give you a nutshell version of what's happening. Some time in January he was admitted to the hospital after coughing up blood (this is what he told my sister's husband) and spent four days on IV. No further detail. Some of you may recall me telling you about the spot on his lung that the MRI found a year ago, and a few other lung associated problems which he was calling 'asthma' first (um, asthma wouldn't show up as a spot - it's either cancer or TB) and then an infection. He contracted pneumonia in the fall and took a long time to get over it. When I said something to him about 'at your age it takes a long time...' he really didn't want to talk about the whole aging thing. That was interesting, I didn't know he had end-of-life issues but there you have it. Meanwhile, all this time he's been waiting for his mail-order bride to come from the Ukraine. He spent a month in Europe (well, Ukraine and Russia) last summer searching for the Right Woman and ended up with Tamara, 31, with a 7-year-old daughter. (Note that I am almost 37 and my sister is 34, so our new 'stepmother' would be younger than us. Ew.) Well first he had to wait until she finished her schooling. She is an accountant, a nurse and a dental assistant. (Yeah right). Her schooling finished and she was supposed to be here in October. Then there was a problem with her ex, he didn't want her to take their daughter out of the country. This is starting to sound fishy. Then, most recently, she was about to board the plane when the government official decided she was a 'risk of flight'.
See, here's how I have it figured. They (the organized crime that deals in human trafficking and scams like this) hook a naive guy like my dad into believing that he will soon no longer be lonely, that he will soon have his new wife. Then they string him along according to a formula to get him to keep sending money. He hasn't told me he is sending money but I have no doubt he is. He lives on a disability pension by the way, so who knows where this money is coming from. At any rate, he still believes this woman is coming to be his wife.
I'll believe it when I see it. If she does show up she will have to learn English in a hurry, and soon understand that my dad really just wants someone to clean his house and look after him as his health fails. Ain't that love?
Okay I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing. It's just a bit surreal to know that your father is trying to get a mail-order bride from a poor country. It's hard to have respect for someone who does that.
Dan's youngest sister is at present in Europe studying German in Germany for a year. She has two months off just now, so her parents are there with her and they are touring around western Europe. All I can think about is all the gorgeous European yarn shops they aren't going into. Well, and the cafes. OMG can you imagine the coffee? And the shopping. I would love to go clothes shopping in Europe.
I'm almost at the 20 pounds of weight loss mark. Twenty pounds! How can that even be? I can't even imagine myself with 19 more pounds on me. Well, I've been able to dig out some of the clothes I haven't worn in a while to discover that they fit again. I am retiring some jeans and pants, will wear them only if I have work at the fish job. Today I put on a top that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday last year, one I haven't been able to wear because it didn't fit. I wore it all day for the first time! It's very powerful and motivating, being able to get into smaller clothes like this. I wonder why I have never attempted weight loss before. It seems to be easy, but I owe it really to a number of things:
1) the LoseIt! app for my iPhone, which keeps track of everything for me
2) the free Nordic Track elliptical trainer I found on Freecycle (which Dan repaired and I use almost daily)
3) Dan, for being mindful of my need to weigh/measure everything I eat so I can log it
4) my compulsion to lose the weight I've been carrying since all my big surgeries a few years ago before my skin loses its elasticity so that I'm not left with 'wings'.
Last week I think I mentioned we zipped out to Courtenay to pick a new laptop for me, since I killed my other one. (me=sad) I'm still getting used to this one, it's smaller but lighter, is quicker in some ways but not as powerful. I haven't been spending much time on it because I've been knitting like a madwoman. I always knit like a madwoman, don't I? Well, I'm working on Cookie A sock #3 and I've put about 10 hours into it since Friday morning. Here it is:
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