He's of the colour of the nutmeg. And of the heat of the ginger.... he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts. ~William Shakespeare, Henry V

Thursday, June 25, 2009

STUFF

Training for Verety has been going good. I was worried the first day I went in, but it's a pretty simple job to do once you know where every button is located on the computer. Once that's down, it's a cake walk. I go in for certification testing today at Noon. We take live calls until we get 10 perfect calls in a row in a 3 hour period. When we complete our 10 perfect calls, we are done, and they will send me home with my Dell computer and all the equipment to start working out of my parents house immediately. I am just hoping that I don't have to work this weekend. I do not have a sitter for the girls and my mom took a trip to Minneapolis to visit my sister for a few days.

The kitten is doing great. She finally has figured out that we are her family now and has turned into a rambunctious freak of nature. She jumps all over my furnature, shreads up any piece of paper on the floor, she has been chewing through the girls socks if they are not put away, and tries to climb everything in the house. I love her, and she is cute, but I am wondering why I made the decision to go through they kitten phase again.

The day before yesterday I got our pool setup. It was a little bit grimey when I unrolled it, but nothing too serious. When it was all up, I let it dry out for a day, and then yesterday I swept out the pool with a broom and got all the crap out of it and started to fill it up. It's still filling right now and I am hoping that it will be close to full when I leave for certification.

Rainy and I are pretty sure we are going to have a lawn party/bonfire out here at my place on Saturday. It will be fun. Rainy hasn't been able to make a lawn party since September of last year. It would be nice if Jason could make it too, but he has something going on and won't be able to make it. I want to introduce Jason to my neighbors. I think everyone would get a kick out of him. If any of you are around, feel free to drop on by if you want to. The bonfire normally burns until 4:30 - 5 am....but you don't have to stay that long if you don't want to.

Peace, readers!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

GOING WELL

So far, my training for Verety in Rugby is going well. I am really enjoying it. In class today, the instructor encouraged us to chat with other Verety employees while we are working. She showed us how to run the Verety chat site and how to check if certain Verety employees are online. I have never in my life worked for a company that promoted chat while during work, and I think that is pretty cool. I understood a lot of the training class and am excited to start taking live calls...but that won't happen for a few more days. It's a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I must admit that I was pretty nervous about my first training class, but there are no more worries.

My babysitter and her husband are taking vacation on Thursday and Friday, so I have Brandie's niece at my house tonight through Friday. I picked her up tonight when I got off of work because training starts super early on Thursday and Friday....and this way the girls can sleep in. Darren's fiance is coming to pick up the girls Friday evening when I get off of work. I feel a little sad about it. Now that I am "working", I don't get to spend as much time with my girls as I have been.

Well, I better hit the hay. It's getting very late, 7 am is going to come WAY too quickly. At least I am going to fall asleep easy tonight. There is a thunderstorm moving in and I am watching the lightening, listening to the low thunder with my bedroom window open, there is a slight breeze coming in, and I can smell the lilac bushes outside my house. It feels like a little piece of heaven!

Friday, June 12, 2009

I FINALLY FOUND A JOB

I have been job hunting for some time. My main problem that I kept running into was that most of the jobs I found were part-time and consisted of evenings and weekends. I cannot do evenings and weekends because I do not have a babysitter for those periods and a part-time job doesn't pay enough to put two girls in daycare and put fuel in my car. A while ago, a friend told me about Verety in Rugby, ND. Verety takes McDonald's drive-thru orders via call center and you can even work from home if you wish. I jumped at it. I received and email from Verety saying that I wouldn't be able to perform the job for them "due to the poor Internet services provided to those living within the York area". My poor Internet service has kept me from many jobs that I could have had. I replied to the email and told them I would be working out of my mother's home since she has DSL. Yesterday I got a phone call from a woman with Verety asking if I was still interested in the job and if I could answer some questions for her over the phone. I told her absolutely and answered all her questions. I start training in Rugby on Tuesday next week. The training schedule is a little quirky. Some days I only go in for a few hours in the evening, sometimes a few hours in the morning, and a few days it's all day long. Training goes for two weeks in Rugby and, when I am finished, they will send someone out to my mother's house and install everything I need...they even provide a computer. Working for a fast food place has never been an appealing job for me, but right now it's a job that I really need, and I am not actually really working inside McDonald's, it's from the comfort of home and that alone is really going to help with gas expense.

APPOINTMENTS

The girls and I had appointments last week to see the dentist and eye doctor. All visits went okay for me. I wish I could say better for the girls.

At 9 o'clock in the morning we saw the eye doctor in Devils Lake. My vision hadn't really changed too much. The girls really didn't like the optometrist all that much, even after I went first. It took a little while to get them to actually take their vision tests, but once they started they did well. Jessie past her vision test, but her test was pretty basic since she is only 3-years-old. Cassidy has to go back to the eye clinic next Thursday to have another test done. The optometrist said that she has signs of near sightedness and that's unusual for a child her age. She is borderline for glasses, but this other test needs to be done before he makes the final decision on glasses. I am assuming that her near sightedness is coming from all the computer games she plays. I talked to her a little bit about using glasses if she needs them and she named me, nana, and our best friend Bob all having glasses so she is cool with it. After we finished at the eye clinic we rushed out of Devils Lake to get up to Edmore to see the dentist. Cassidy had one tiny cavity starting so the dentist filled that right away while we were there. However, Jessie was referred to a specialist in Minot because all four back molars are bad and need to have steel caps put on them. We are still waiting to hear from Minot on when Jessie's appointment is going to be. Both girls did very well at the dentist. They behaved, were polite, and didn't have any problems with the dentist working on their teeth.

A NEW KITTEN

A couple of weeks ago, the girls and I went with a friend who was getting a kitten from a lady in Cando, ND. The girls feel in love with a cute calico female kitten and wanted to bring it home. I explained the basics to the girls. If they wanted the kitten, they had to take care of it and still give our big cat, Scrappy, attention too. Also, if they brought the kitten home, there would be no more pets. No puppies or nothing.

We got home and I let the girls play with the kitten in the living room. I thought Scrappy was outside so I didn't have much to worry about. They girls and kitten were not playing long when I saw Scrappy come out from my bedroom. Scrappy sniffed the kitten and then sat down next to Cassidy on the floor. I thought things were going to be alright, until the worst thing in the world that you never want your children to witness happened.

Without making a peep...no growling, hissing, or spitting...Scrappy jumped across Cassidy's lap right on top of the kitten, bit it through the neck, and killed it right in front of the girls. The poor kitten wasn't in the house for 3 minutes until her little life ended. Of course, the girls freaked out. I took the dead kitten outside and then came back in to clean the pool of blood from my living room carpet and wipe the blood off Cassidy's knees. I explained animal nature to them as best as I could and told them not to hate Scrappy for it. Cassidy helped me wrap the kitten up and she picked out a box to bury it in. I let Cassidy pick a spot out in the pasture to bury the kitten. The situation made me feel shitty. I honestly felt like I deserved the Worst Mother Of The Year award. Here I let them bring a kitten home and then it's dead in 3 minutes. It was an awful feeling.

The next day we were getting ready to leave the house. On our way out to the car Cassidy looks at me and says, "Mom, I want to see my baby kitten before we leave". I told her she could because I was getting Jessie into the car. I watch Cassidy as she goes into the pasture, kneels down, and starts talking to the patch of black dirt. Then, as if the kitten itself was standing in front of her, she starts gently patting the dirt as if she was petting the kitten. I had to look away because I was starting to cry. Cassidy came back and got into the car. She was sniffling pretty good and about half a mile out of town I asked her if she was going to be okay and the conversation went like this:

Me: Cassidy, are you going to be okay?

Cassidy: No mommy. My heart stopped beeping.

Me: Your heart stopped beeping?

Cassidy: Yes. I loved my little kitten so much when Scrappy killed her it made my heart stop beeping.

At this point I did start crying. I felt so bad for her. So, I checked the local Tradio ads and there was a gal in Devils Lake who had kittens for give-away. I called her and she said that she had two female calico kittens and would meet me at the TSC parking lot in Devils Lake. Both of the kittens were very cute and I let Cassidy pick out the one she liked the best and we brought it home. I made sure I knew exactly where Scrappy was so she wouldn't get this one, then I brought one of the old huge dog crates inside and set it all up for the kitten. At first, I let the girls play with the kitten when Scrappy was outside. When Scrappy was inside, the kitten was in the kennel where I knew it could not be hurt.

It's been almost two weeks now and the kitten has been a wonderful (sometimes stressful) addition to our family and has healed Cassidy's heart. We can have the kitten out around Scrappy now. Scrappy is still fairly annoyed with the kitten, but she is putting up with her and hasn't tried to eat her yet. We still keep the kitten in the kennel at night for safety...and because I don't want her tearing up everything I own in the middle of the night.

 


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