Just another Manic Monday

Oh oh woah, wish it were Sunday, Cos thats my fun day, my " i dont have to run day " ....


Blah di blah di blah, you know the rest. The point is it WAS Monday, and it WAS kind of manic, at least towards the end of the day. I think the combination of a lack of eyewear patients and a tad too much chocolate had my colleague and I a little hyper. Never mind that i'm 24 and she's almost 36, the last two hours of work went by in a haze of gossip, giggles and " Big Brother " updates. Yes, we're sad " Big Brother " addicts ( hey, there were two housemates from our town this year, both of whom i know as acquaintances, so i HAD to watch ) but we're also really compatible as workmates and friends. I think i've actually been kind of lucky like that - we're a little apart in age, and technically i'm the boss, but we're fine to call each other names or make jokes. Its a good work environment and, despite what it may sound like, we do get all our work done at the same time. We're women - we multi-task.

I also spent a good proprotion of the afternoon pulling stuff together for my upcoming conference. Tomrrow afternoon we fly down to Sydney for a one day conference, all the eyewear contingent from my company together. But seriously, how good is our management ? They chose to organise our conference for July 2nd, in Sydney which means - they're taking this all to State of Origin! Yay! Now if you're Australian, particularly from either NSW or Qld, you will know that this is a big thing. An important game. Pride rides on this ( especially as half the staff at the conference will be from Qld ). If you're not Australian its like the Super Bowl for Americans; or FA Cup final for and Brits; or the Springboks playing just about anyone in the Rugby World Cup final ( hello South Africans! ). I'm not ashamed to admit i'm excited - its no secret that i love rugby league, i've been raised on it, so attending this game is something i'm looking forward to.

So i'll be missing in action for next two-ish days. Nevermind the conference itself, the presentations, the discussions. I'm really only in it for the sport, and the company ( as in the people, not the business ). That being said though, if NSW lose, i will be crying into my breakfast come Thursday morning.....

World Changers

Well like I said I'm back from World Changers. We got back Saturday around five in the afternoon from our 10 hour drive home. So needless to say I am still very tired. So I thought I'd share a little(more than likely al ot) about what happened this past week.
Saturday- Woke up 3:00 in the morning to be at the church by four to leave. Was the first kid there and had to wait about 10 minutes before anyone else got there. Loaded up in the van drove for 11 hours. When we got to the school we unloaded and went to our room. Funny thing about the room we were one of two groups where both guys and girls got there own rooms it was pretty cool. Our room was small and crammed full of desks that we had to move into the hall to have any room so we did and then got in trouble but we didn't have to move them back until we left. Went to dinner and believe me it was not all that great, so Morgan and I ran to the showers. This is were it gets funny. I was the first in the shower and was still getting ready and decided to turn the shower on to let it warm up and stuff. So I turn it on and (you guessed it) got half way soaked because the shower was like a pressure washer and it wasn't hot. Everything else went well and was uneventful for the rest of the day.
Sunday- got ready for church and met my crew. Funny, funny time. I met my crew and we had our first crew chat. I was the medic. but the thing was our crew chief Nelson said right off that we could call him anything we want to. So we did. Here's a short list of some of the names that we called him: Nellie, Nellie Bell, Nell, Cecil, Earl, Tony, Anthony, Papa Smurf, Squirrel, Squirrely. The list could go on and on. So we met and went to church. We got there before anyone from the church did and had to wait. That's when we came up with most of the names. Went to the elderly ladies class at the church, which was okay except we kinda stuck out just alittle. Went to the service, only about, maybe, thirty people there it was good but was different that what I'm used to. Left after lunch to go to meet the person whose house we were gonna be working on, Mrs. Teets(yes that is her name) and had a good chat with her and her daughter. It was cool cause after we left to go to the van Squirrel stayed and talked to Mrs. Teets and her daughter for a few more minutes making sure that they had received Christ as their Savior and the daughter said the she had received Christ as a child but had not been to church in a few years but after seeing us youth giving up part of our summers to come and help her mother that she was going to go back. That really excited me. To know that I made a difference to some one. Rest of the day pretty uneventful.


Monday - We got up at 5:30 eastern time(4:30 for me!) to get ready for breakfast and head to work. On Monday we got a 5 by 5 deck and dug the post and poured some concrete(which we didn't get until about one o'clock so we got to go back to the school about an hour and a half earlier than we were supposed too. Had a good shower though. Nice and warm too.
Tuesday- about the same as Monday except we stayed longer this time. Nothing too eventful really happen until that night when we had a Concert of prayer. Which was AWESOME!!!! I will dedicate a post to it later.
Wednesday- Again about the same except we finished our project and had a half a day(not just our crew, everyone had a half day). So our Church group went to the mall for the rest of the day. It was all good until Audrey found out that all her money had been stolen so that didn't settle too well.
Thursday and Friday- Started another project at Mrs. Dorris' house. Painted scrapped lead paint stuff like that. It was fun though and we got it almost all done which was fine cause we didn't have to really finish it. But on Friday night we had to say good bye. Which was hard. Our whole crew got really close in the week we spent together. So it was pretty hard. But I made it.
All in all I had a very good time and can't wait till I can go back next year. I'll do a post about my crew and the Tuesday night service later so for now this is it.

Last Word

“Shit.”

From all accounts it was my father’s last word, and he uttered it as paramedics struggled to lift his large body from his bed onto a stretcher thirty-one years ago last month. He died on the way to the hospital of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-five, and he’d been expecting it. I’m left with the dilemma of how to interpret his last remark.

Was he summing it all up? His had been a difficult life. Was he afraid of death now that it was finally visiting him? He said too often that it was imminent. When I objected, he’d say, “Every Irishman is born with one foot in the grave,” and I think of that whenever I hear someone singing “Danny Boy.” Or, it could have been just a casual remark, as you might say when the alarm goes off for work after going to bed too late the night before and you sit up on the edge of the bed. You’re not really ready, but you’re resigned to go anyway. Guess I’ll never know for sure why he said it.

He visits me in my dreams some nights. The last time, I was going into a cafeteria and I saw him sitting at a table in back by a window. He was looking at me. His face was peaceful and he smiled a bit as if he were glad to see me. That wasn’t typical in life. I don’t remember him smiling much and he seldom seemed peaceful, but it looks like he is now and I’m glad for him.

My mother told me they’d gone out to dinner that last night at the Harvard Club in Boston. On the way home, they drove around Charlestown where he grew up. He pointed out the many places around the Bunker Hill Monument where he had lived. He was the oldest son of an alcoholic father who often drank away his paycheck instead of paying the rent. Often they had to move to a different apartment late at night to avoid the landlord. With five younger brothers and sisters, he shouldered the responsibility that should have been his father’s - and he resented it. For the rest of his life, that accumulated anger was always just below the surface and it permeated the atmosphere of the household in which I grew up.

The last time I’d seen him, he passed me the research project he typed up for me. It was the final piece of my master’s degree program and he was proud that I’d finished it. He was sad too because he knew I was moving to Maine soon. As I was leaving I told him my wife, Roseann, was pregnant with our third child. “Hmm,” he said - not “Congratulations,” or “That’s great.” I’m not sure what he meant by that “Hmm” either. Was he afraid I was following his pattern of siring children in rapid succession? I’m the fourth of eight. I’ll never know because my not-quite-three-year-old daughter, Jessica, was pulling on my finger and telling me “Come on!” She wanted to go home and play with her one-year-old sister, Sarah. My father would have loved his granddaughter Annie though, who was born that December after we had moved to Lovell.

It was a busy winter - new job, new house, new child, new state - but I thought a lot about my father and what made him the way he was. When school was out the following June, we went back to Massachusetts for a visit and I looked up my father’s Uncle Bill - my alcoholic grandfather’s younger brother. We’d never met, but I wanted to pick his brain about my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin Sr., who immigrated here from County Donegal around 1900 and who had been a notorious alcoholic as well. At his request, I met Bill in the parking lot of a windowless American Legion Hall in Medford, Massachusetts. We shook hands and he invited me in for a drink. It being 10:00 am, I suggested a cup of coffee somewhere else instead. He agreed, but then he opened his trunk of his Cadillac and took two snorts from a half-gallon bottle of whiskey first. Later, he took me to visit his brother, James McLaughlin, Jr. and his wife because they’d been in contact with the McLaughlins who stayed in Ireland, and knew where they lived. I wanted to go there - to Isle of Doagh in Donegal - but it would take thirty years before I’d be ready.

When I go in August, perhaps I’ll learn something about the source of the addiction that has plagued the American McLaughlins for more than a century. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted about what comes with it - summed up succinctly by my father’s last utterance.

Progress, episode #1

So, guess what i did today ? I ran on the treadmill at the gym. RAN. Yes, me - i ran. The last time i've ran anywhere for anything was so i didnt miss the last train back to New Jersey after a John Butler Trio concert in New York City. In heels mind you, but i digress.

I have steadily been improving my fitness over the past 8 weeks or so to the point where i was getting kind of bored with a fast walk on the treadmill. Admittedly, i like the bike and the rower more ( i'm even getting callouses on my hands from the handles on the rowing machine... yay! ) but i thought maybe i could liven up the treadmill section of the workout. Why not jog a bit?

Bare in mind that i had the " why not jog a bit ? " thought about two weeks ago, but couldnt bring myself to do it until today. After having had the initial thought the rest of my self-conversation went like this :
Me#1: " You cant jog - you arent fit enough for that. What if you keel over and die, wearing tracksuits pants and a Cookie Monster t-shirt ? "
Me #2: " I dont think i'll keel over, but maybe i'm not fit enough yet".
Me #1: " Of course you arent fit enough yet. Plus, you'll look ridiculous running. Everyone else at the gym is giong to look at you and all you're wobbly bits jiggling around as you jog. "
Me#2 : " I dont have wobbly bits! Do I ? "
Me#1 : " I hate to tell you sister but... mm hmm. For the love of God, dont do it! "

So that was two weeks ago. I listened to Me #1 then but today, well, Me #2 said " Screw it! There arent many other people here anyway so just push yourself a bit and see what you can do! ". So i sucked it up, and thats what i did. I only did it in intervals - one minute jogging with two minutes walking in between - and only for 10 minutes, but the point is i did it. And, even better, i'll do it again.

Congratulations me! As one of my teenaged friends would say - i took a cup of cement and hardened the fuck up!

AIDS And Our Tax Money

Originally, it was called GRID - Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Homosexual men, who were the first to acquire the disease in the United States, didn’t like that name. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control changed it to AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and so began the sustained effort by homosexual activists to separate male homosexual practices from the disease in the public mind. This they largely accomplished by orchestrating a fear campaign about a world-wide heterosexual AIDS epidemic. That epidemic, however, never materialized. Last week, the UK’s Independent reported that: “Threat of world AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits.” AIDS continues to spread among men having sex with men.

The fellow making that announcement has the unfortunate name of Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of the WHO’s Department of HIV/AIDS. He said, that except for some peculiar circumstances in sub-Saharan Africa, “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries.”

The article went on to say that “AIDS organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria . . .” This seems to be a general pattern when it comes to AIDS. According to a Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) report: “Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States.”

What do you suppose are the chances that those “highly mobilized lobbying forces” were homosexual activists who early-on got themselves appointed to key decision-making positions governing taxpayer expenditures for AIDS? I’m willing to cover any bets here.

The CAGW report went on to say: “Research expenditures at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) demonstrate the uneven use of federal resources. In 1996, NIH spent an average of $1,160 for every heart disease death, $4,700 for every cancer death, and a whopping $43,000 for every AIDS death.”

AIDS is unique in that it became a political disease. Public health measures such as contact tracing - used effectively for decades to fight syphilis and gonorrhea - were abandoned with AIDS. With contact tracing, nurses would contact the sexual partners of people reporting to clinics for treatment of STDs to inform them of their exposure, encourage them to seek treatment, and avoid spreading the disease to others. Homosexual activists fought contact tracing because it would lead to the closure of San Francisco and New York City “bathhouses” in which promiscuous anal sex proliferated. That, of course, remains the most dangerous vector for spread of AIDS.

Ever hear about that development? Probably not. To take the focus off their own behavior, homosexual AIDS activists staged demonstrations around the country in which they blamed President Reagan for spreading the disease. That’s what the media reported on. And those bathhouses? They didn’t close. Instead, they got federal government subsidies. According to the CAGW: “In 1998, CDC approved a $338,000 grant to Hollywood Spa in Los Angeles, a gay bathhouse. The upscale spa is complete with strobe lights and club music. Patrons check each other out while wrapped in tiny gym towels. Is AIDS likely to spread in such an environment? As a 1997 Los Angeles Times article noted, ‘Local AIDS prevention workers do not pretend that all the sex is safe in bathhouses.’”

That’s the tamest of many nauseating examples of taxpayer money squandered on outrageous “AIDS prevention” activities in the CAGW study. If I wrote about the others, the family newspapers in which this column runs could not publish them. They’re that bad.

Under the original pretext of AIDS prevention, homosexual activists have gotten access to public schools as well, where for years now homosexuality is presented as a positive alternative lifestyle. Not mentioned in their seminars is data from the Family Research Institute indicating that, since the outbreak of AIDS, the average life expectancy for a homosexual man is only thirty-eight, and only about 2% live past age sixty-five. Yet, taxpayer-funded seminars continue for middle school and high school boys such as : “Queer, Questioning, Quiet: Developing Gender Identity & Male Sexual Orientation.” It was promoted by a Portland organization called “Boys to Men” for its 2008 conference at the University of Southern Maine. The conference cancelled that particular seminar when a representative from Maine’s Christian Civic League signed up to attend. Were they afraid taxpayers would discover what our middle school boys are being taught with their money?

Nah. You’d have to be homophobic to think that.

Tessa and Me

I have no reason for this other than I have not a thing to do. So here is a pic of Tessa(left) and I.

Uncle Steve the Big Red Alligator and introducing the Doormat Branch

So heres the thing - i dont sleep too well. Most nights, i wake up four or five times, i toss, i turn, and by the time the alarm goes off i am back to being tired again. Its that whole " I'm so tired of waking up tired " thing for me. The other thing is, the more tired i am and the more restless my sleep, the weirder my dreams. And i'm talking weird. Crazy. Like, wake up in the morning and go " What the forking beejesus was that supposed to mean ?!? " crazy. Let me elaborate:

For those of you who are either new here, didnt already know or who may have forgotten, i was once an au pair in the United States. Instead of having to explain what au pair actually means - i was a nanny ( to three very wonderful boys... but i digress ). Anyhoo, so last night i dreamt that i was a nanny again, but it wasnt for the same family. Some members of this family were white, but the parents and one child were dark skinned ( i'd be politically correct and say African-American or Aboriginal, but truth be told i dont know where this dream was taking place ). Weirder still was that the youngest child in said family was my neice, Hannah. And there i was, nanny to this family, brand new into the job and off we go to visit their Uncle Steve. But Uncle Steve was no ordinary man-uncle - no, Uncle Steve was a big, red, alligator. And by big, i mean HUGE. You remember Clifford the Big Red Dog ? Well Uncle Steve was the alligator equivalent of Clifford. He was a monstrous, red, reptile and he lived in a huge pond. With a lid. Like a coffin lid. On a pond. Uncle Steve could also speak - in English suprisingly ( in a dream like this you would have thought it would have been some obscure Russian dialect or something ) - and he was really sweet. The kids and the family got in the pond and swam with him. I sat on the edge and gave Hannah a marshmallow from my handbag. There were other kids playing nearby the pond and when one of them fell in and started crying, i pulled him out and gave him a marshmallow too. Just as Hannah starting yelling out " Amma! Amma ! " - the name of a Finnish exchange i knew in high school - i woke up.
Seriously - can anybody else say what the ?!? Perhaps the combination of bad sleep and brain altering medication is pysching me out....

But enough with dreams, and on to reality. Yes, we all have to wake up sometimes, and that kind of sort of, happened today. My colleagues and I all came to the conclusion that we are the Doormat Branch. That is, we are the branch of our company that everyone else takes advantage of and, frankly, we're sick of being walked all over. But what are we to do? Find new jobs? Conduct a walk off and picket outside the store? Fire off an aggressive email to management ? Or just take a cup of cement and harden the fuck up ? Our branch has been understaffed by at least two people for almost a month straight now. We have been coping the best we can, some of us even taking on roles and duties that do not come under our job description. One of my workmates came in to work sick as a dog, dying of the lurgy, ill to the point where she had lost her voice and couldnt talk, because she was the only person to fill that role that day. And we soldiered on. Sure, some of the paperwork got backed up, but when you're short staffed and ( some of you ) are on deaths door step, that cant exactly be helped. Management, however, thinks it can. No " Thanks guys, you're really doing well down there ", no " Job well done in a hard situation ", no " Can we send someone down to help you guys? ". No, only an email from our area supervisor querying why some paperwork had not been put on and questioning our priorities and understanding of our job. Even though she was aware of the no staff and the dying of the lurgy bit. Are you freaking kidding me ? We spent a good half hour following the arrival of managements email bitching about how unappreciated we are. Whenever someone else at another branch is sick or needs holiday coverage who do they get to go ? Someone from our branch. One of us goes away, say for a week long tutorial, and we dont ask for a ring-in, we just buck up and get on with it. Management even sent one us away to another branch for six months ( which is why WE are now short staffed ) to begin a job looking after some agencies and when a new agency opened, one that my workmate had been working on for months, did he get to go to the opening? Nope. Some other douche from some other branch who had little to nothing to do with it went. What a crock of crap.

Perhaps i should get my good buddy Uncle Steve the Big Red Alligator to rock up to management and tell them how we really feel.....