My 'angel of mercy', not thinking and some happier times

I would love to say that everything in my life is all peaches now. Instead last night I got my own ‘accidental angel of mercy’, which turned out to be a woman who could tell neither time nor speak English that well. So “Only give the night pills every four hours” and “Give me these pills at 5:30 a.m.” Got turned into “Give me these at 4:00 a.m.!” in her head even though she SAW me take the opiates at 1:30. Plus Linda and I had both talked about how she absolutely could not give them early because after the pain specialist I might be on morphine. So when she started feeding me pills lose on the table at 5:30 a.m. I asked, “When did you give me my night pills?”

“4:00?”

I had her wake Linda and we talked about whether the dosage was high enough to go to hospital. Luckily I hadn’t taken the extra I normally take. So while there was no charcoal and dialysis for me that night, there was not a lot of sleep for us either. The next day and over two hours in getting her dropped, they seemed not at all interested in her giving pills early, ignoring instruction and only checking on me once in 2.5 hours (we instructed every 20 minutes). I was told quite sternly, “Our workers are not supposed to be required to think (at work)!” Which made me wonder, if that is true, why not bring in 8 or 10 year olds, break that child labor law (like so many others Beacon is breaking) and truly have a workforce who won’t challenge them by thinking on the job. Linda has been also told that, “Workers are not to use common sense!” Well, mission accomplished I guess.

This leaves us tired and with no night workers as we found of our three back up night workers, one is back in school and two have been put on day shifts and if they are willing to work an overnight for us, will still be required to show up at their day shift the next morning. Also workers are currently able to refuse to take me at all due to my “complexity” (which sounds an awful lot like AIDS discrimination, doesn’t it?). Except I also verified from two sources that workers can refuse to go to a client due to objection of their sexual orientation ("Me no like gay people!"). So guess being young, lesbian and dying makes me the very person no one wants to go to. Haha, I wish they had that written down in a hand-book so I could get a copy to give to the papers. But I’ll bet it is a verbal policy.

Ironically, I cannot refuse chain smokers, despite having lung problems on my health form. Workers can refuse smokers! Now do you see why I applied to be a worker at Beacon? I don’t have to lift anything, I can choose who I want to go to, there is NO WAY I will be fired for anything, including double dosing opiates or not thinking at all (I might get a bonus for that). Sweet!

Okay, let’s start thinking of nice things. Which means I have to dig around a bit. We had a bit of fresh tomatoes this week. Linda bought them at the Farmer’s market. She smelled them to see if they had that dirt and fresh from the vine smell. Linda loves her fresh tomatoes.

As for me, my joy was this card. I am not (in case anyone wants to start sending my tones of them) a butterfly person. Well I like those walk through butterfly places but generally I think of butterflies and think of young kids and older women. But this card, this card said something different. I don’t know what it was but the butterflies were amazing covering the back. On the front as well there was a host of ‘not your average’ butterfly and not your average colouring.

Inside, I found a gorgeous dark gothic dream. A girl with wings (check!) and ribbons (double check) and things of corsets and bows, and hair and the colors. It was something between the dark fairie and the gothic otherworld and I just sighed. Beauty. It was a visual dream. Someone totally got me, the got me the perfect card. Which of course upped the anty and now I had to find a perfect one for them back.

Here are a couple of the backs we stamped from last week, hopefully most of the people have received their cards by now so I won’t spoil anything. These are just starting into stage 2 (wood and rubber stamps, not yet dried). I have this new pre-raphealite stamp I love, particularly under the old oak tree, it just seems so very William Morris don’t you think. The scroll of stars and sky is freshly pressed and the black ink is drying on the slicker Japanese paper – we dry the cards for 4-8 hours.

This one has some similar elements but again nothing beats a bloody fingerprint and a microscope. Perhaps this means I am longing for Bones Season 3, which won’t be out for what Cheryl and Linda tell me is a LONG, LONG time. ARG!

Anyway, I am off to try and start something going with postcards, get something happening, start a list, make one and get something concrete going in my hands, if my hands will cooperate this time of night. Too much anxiety and phone tag for today, I want to make a card and send it off. Envisioning a task, preparing for it and completing it. That’s what I need. Speaking of which, I hope we can all think of Collette, who comments here, as she will be doing the 60K walk for Cancer in Toronto starting tomorrow I believe. She’s the one who got me inspired to do the Terry Fox Run/Walk/Roll on Sept 17. Thank you Collette and I wish I could be there cheering you on in person.

Summer is closing off (hooray, I can leave the apartment!), so I guess if we want to finish off our projects, we better get to it! I think that many a male, or female will be in the garage or shed or with some tools somewhere this weekend, getting that stuff done. Fall comes, and we want to be tucked indoors drinking mulled wine – well except me, I will be out finally getting outdoors getting frostbite as we find out tragically that my body is now COLD intolerant too (oh please, I hope that is a joke!).

Cheers!