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I am out of that place. I am not in my new place yet. I am happy and sad at the same time. Although I thought about leaving a great deal, when it came actually time to do it, it was sad. I miss the kids, the people, the mountains, the quiet, the solitude, the rain, the unexpected, etc. It sure is noisy in the summer in the city with the windows open.

Power!

We got our power back last night sometime when I was sleeping. You would think that this would help me sleep (so I wouldn't have to keep waking up to check on my watch if I've overslept) but no. I guess I wasn't certain it wouldn't go out again. We didn't have power for over 26 hours (not certain, was sleeping). Everything in my freezer melted and refroze. I don't care, there wasn't much in there and I'm leaving on Friday so I can leave. Yay!
I leave on Friday. I start a new life. I am very excited.

Still lost

I still think about the suicide of my friend a great deal. Carlo Spinazzola was a great man, a great artist, and a great friend. I miss him a great deal.

Part of what I think about is where suicide fits into things. I know I am a proponent of euthanasia of people when they have a physical disease, such as cancer, if they choose it. I think in certain cases suicide is euthanasia. It is just a different kind of pain. I know Carlo had been suffering for a long time, for most of his life in fact. I don't think this was a spur of the moment choice for him. I think it took him a long time to come to this again and I believe this was his choice to end his pain.

When I told my class I had to leave to go home because my friend had died, had killed himself, one student promptly told me that he was in hell. While I don't believe in a heaven or hell, this still disturbed me. I don't want people who choose to end their lives, because of physical or mental pain, to end up in some kind of bad energy place. And who makes these calls anyway? If a guy is driving drunk and crashes into a tree and dies it was an accident, but it was kind of suicide in a way. I can't think of Carlo in a place of torment, or fluxing in some kind of bad energy, or not being able to be re-born, or whatever my belief about life after death is at the moment. He was a good person. He did everything he could to make people's lives better. He was suffering and he choose to end that suffering.

I respect him and the choice he made.

My father had to drive 2 hours to come and get me when I flew out of here to get out when I heard about Carlo. In our family, my father and me are the only two that have experienced the death of a person we knew by suicide.

My dad's roommate killed himself when my dad was away at work. My dad walked into the hotel room they were sharing (they were there on a job) and slipped in his brains. My dad said he thought suicide was catching and he struggled with his feelings about this suicide, even though he didn't know this man that well, for 1 1/2 years. He had my mom and I was under two years old and until that point he had never really thought of suicide.

We talked about that on the ride back to Prince George. He shocked me and hurt me deeply when at one point he strongly said, "Suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do. They are only thinking of themselves." except he said it in a more toxic way, but this is the general idea. I knew Carlo was not selfish at all. I knew that this statement had nothing to do with Carlo at all and it hurt me that he thought this. He had met Carlo briefly when they had visited me in the fall but did not get to know him and see that he was not selfish. He also said I could talk to him anytime about this, but when he said that I knew that I couldn't. I knew we didn't have the same beliefs about it but I was unable to formulate my thoughts at that point.

Sometimes, I come into work and sit and listen to songs that I downloaded around the time of Carlo's death. Some are his, ones that friend's posted after his death. Some are off of a blog I sometimes visit. In my mind I call them my suicide tracks. If I listen to them, they always bring up emotions. On the weekends I often listen to them and cry. My ex gave me all Carlo's CDs, but I cannot listen to them, not up here while all alone anyway, but I want to hear his voice and his thoughts and his views, and that is the only way I can right now.

Horse Fly

Yesterday was the last day of school. I took my class plus a few others to the lake. I got bit by a horse fly in my armpit. OUCH! I haven't got bitten by one since I was a kid. I forgot how much it hurts. I screamed. People laughed.

New Blanket

I am the proud owner of a new blanket. Not just any blanket, but a knitted lovely cream and dark green blanket. It is beautiful. It is soft. It is warm. Oh my. It is like butter. Mmmmmmmmmmm. My boss's wife gave it to me for my birthday, but it just made it to me today. Well, she DID knit it and she DOES HAVE a new baby. Blankets like this come along once in a lifetime.

Marvelous muffins

I think I may have created the perfect muffin. I don't even like muffins that much. MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Woo who

I enabled the comments. I truly am a superstar. Now you can talk to me.
Oh and it is still raining. It varies from pelting hard core hard to normail rain.

Rain rain

How excited I was about 3 minutes ago to be done enough work for the weekend to be able to go home and walk my dogs. I was just moving the moust to click to start shutting down when a loud noise drowned out the music. I looked over my shoulder and out the window and discovered it was a torrential downpour. Lucky I missed it but sad because I didn't bring a coat and now have to sit here and wait for it to be over before I go home. Also, it bodes ill for the walk with the poor dogs who haven't gotten a long walk all week because of work.

Ow!

So, last night I went to bed. All in good health like and such. Feeling fine. Tired but fine. So I read a Roald Dahl book and then I went to sleep. Sometime in the night, it all went horribly horribly wrong.
"AAAAAAAAaaaaaa!" I screamed, at some point last night, while attempting to roll from my right side to my left side. My dogs immediately jumped up on me to make sure nothing was killing me. I think something has snapped or broken in my right shoulder area, preventing me from moving my arm from shoulder to wrist. Or at least, it is sprained. I woke up screaming several more times during the night, but the dogs were more used to it and stayed on the floor, but still woke up and came over to show their concern.
When I mean I can't move that part, I mean, I can't move it certain ways, like to pull up my pants. Can't do it. Usually I forget though and scream in the bathroom. I am not much of a pain screamer, I am much more of a pain whiner, but this focused pain is shocking in its intensity. Right now, the last bathroom trip pain is wearing off, and it is not that sore. Soon it won't be sore at all and I will maybe not remember and try to pull up my pants again. Then I will scream again.
Oh yeah, and since my last update, I have still not written one report card. At least I have opened word.

In the Home Stretch

Only 1 real week left to get all this stuff done. So, what am I doing this afternoon? Sipping gingerale and playing on the computer. Do I have a million things to do? Yep. Oh well. Often I have heard, report cards write themselves.

Just as I had suspected

It turns out that the whole community up here is as disgusted with my roommmate as I am. They are pissed off that they hired someone who is supposed to be a role model who acted in such ... un-role modelish behaviour. They are also just disgusted with her attitude in general, which I would have to agree with.
The thing is, when you are in a position when you are a role model, you have to behave as such. I will say that my private life is my private life, and because of the position I am in, I do not let that private life seep to public, if it is not something that the public finds highly acceptable. In larger places, this is easier. Here, your private life is public in the biggest possible way. When you conduct yourself in a crappy way, everyone knows. And she did not set a good example what with sleeping around, not using birth control when doing it, getting pregnant. In your own time, that is fine, but it was all highly involved with her work and very much in the public eye. It was disgusting and unprofessional from the get go, and the only person who supports her in anyway seems to be my boss (who said, way to go). In a community where they are trying to control STD's (AIDS included), teenage pregnancy and keep people in school and responsible for their actions, she did the worst possible thing.
Gah. Whatever. She is yucky anyway.
She is coming up to stay here next week and probably to stay with me. I really don't want that.

Oh and

I forgot to mention anything that was going on in my life lately. See, I have been really busy living my life WITHOUT my roommate around. She developed high blood pressure (which they thought could be the start of toxemia or pre-eclampsia) so she went off a couple of weeks ago. I had forgotten just how much I like having my own space and doing my own thing. I have actually started loving it up here. Hours of walking, yoga, keeping the house cleaner, eating well ... without her I am a whole different person.
It may seem strange that I just couldn't do these things with her around, but it seems that I am a CONSIDERATE PERSON, and wouldn't do things that interfered with her constant TV watching. I had started to take walks and stuff to get away from her, but now that I am taking the walks for pure enjoyment, it is much better.
All this joy and T'ai chi too! I have started doing T'ai Chi up here with the psycologist, who is a T'ai Chi guy. I am starting karate as well.
I can't believe how much better I feel about this place, which is good I guess, because I am leaving in about 3 weeks and will be parting with happy memories and will even miss it more than I thought.
I have no new job yet, and I am not really worried about it. I am sure that whatever will happen will happen and I should just let it. When I do that, I am usually much more happy in whatever I do find.

Bananas and Dogs

Or maybe I should say bananas and pets.

I never ever thought in a million years that dogs liked bananas. I have owned several dogs in my life and known quite a few more. I thought that all dogs hated bananas. I have seen responses from ignoring bananas to running away from bananas. I have seen this in cats too. I could never understand why the antibiotics for pets were banana flavoured, given the adverse reaction I had always seen.

Not too too long ago my mother emailed me a bunch of pet food recipes, which included a lot of snacks and treats for them. One was a birthday cake with banana 'icing'. I couldn't believe that any dog would eat that cake.

Even more recently I saw a dog on TV whose favorite snack was bananas. What the hell? My current pet runs the opposite way whenever shown a banana, and she has never even had to take the god-awful banana flavoured antibiotics.

Dogs are changing.