Just Me and IT.

 Art's funeral is over and I am with my Mom back in Canada for however long it takes. I'm not holding out any hope for long term residence here based on past attempts... but you never know.

This is Calgary where my brother Mark and sister-in-law Sherrilyn's HUGE family enjoys tobogganing from time to time. It's just a small hill at the school at the end of the road where they live. Because of that I was pretty certain I could participate injury free.

I didn't go over the jump. I didn't hit any of those trees. I didn't crank my back in any uncomfortable direction although I felt every bump as I went over it. I actually came off the hill unscathed...

... until we took a shortcut through a neighbor's back yard. There was a tree in front of the fence door and because I had my hoodie hood up a branch from that tree seemed to jump right out at me and scratched my face! My glasses came off and you know those oooohs and aaaahs people make when old, feeble folks slip on ice or fall down for some other reason in lieu of laughter? Those sounds were made.

But who cares? Look at us! We were having fun! That's my niece Elanor wearing the hat I got her for Christmas last year. Isn't she cute? Their whole family is cute. I had a lot of fun staying with them. Sherrilyn's dad George was over and we played Euchre every night. It's an Ontario thing. 

During the day we played games too. One day Gwennie decided to hide at bed time. Everybody was searching the house for her until I checked the washing machine. There she was, squeaky clean and dizzy. Hah, no, just kidding. It was latched somehow, but it wasn't washing.

I decided to get some steps one day and I walked down the street to the 7-11. I planned to get some chicken wings and some munchies for Euchre later that night. I had just started out when I heard pitter pat pitter pat pitter pat getting louder and louder behind me. It was G-dawg (Gwennie) coming on the walk with me dressed in her red and black plaid onesie PJ's, gloves and boots. Luckily the jammies had a hood so she didn't get too cold. About half way there I asked if she'd told anyone she was coming with. "No," she replied. So I called Mark and told him she was with me and nobody needed to check the washing machine.

I didn't say that but I wish I had. 

Despite the sad circumstances, Art's funeral turned out to be a largely positive experience... although you might not know it from the pics. What are you supposed to do? Smile? Cry? Frown? I wasn't sure but I hadn't planned on looking ANGRY! It just worked out that way I guess. 

I know, I know, the spellings are different. I am happy to remember the names. I'll work on the spellings later. 

Andy is from Victoria. His twin boys (30 years old now) Tyler and Dylan, and his better half Linda did not make the trip with him. Jeff, who lives in Calgary, had to stay home too but it's the most people from my family we've had in a photo in... maybe ever. 

I'm not even gonna take a stab at ages. You can guess.

We had a nice little weekend. We all did some catching up; we at lots of junky food; played with the kids; Andy and I went fishing, and we did a bit of preparation for Mom's future life without her husband of 25 years. Art was a wonderful man and we'll all miss him but he took very good care of my Mom and I am sure she will miss him most. I'm going to stay with her for a while and, as much as I can, ease her grief and transition to Calgary where most of her family now live. If you have ever read this blog you might be wondering why she might put herself in such a precarious position and, suck a bag of dicks but you'd be right. 

Andy had just left and for the first time Mom and I were alone in her and Art's house to start our adventure together. And start auspiciously it did NOT. Well what did you expect from this blog? I went downstairs to go to the bathroom and the toilet was clogged. I got a plunger and plunged until I was getting fountains of water in the shower beside the toilet every time I plunged. Mom flushed all the toilets upstairs and ran the sinks but everything was going straight into the shower. We had to bail poopy water out of the shower and throw it on the front lawn. It was about 1 AM by the time we had determined that we were not going to fix this problem so we waited till morning to make some calls. Long story short, we set up a bucket and a lid in the back shed until the next morning when Shirley the next-door neighbor allowed us to use her basement facilities until ours were fixed. Luckily the plumber came next morning at 7:30 and drilled out the clog. When I say "drilled" I mean there were tree roots coming out. Things are back to normal now but it was a shitty start to operation "Move Mom to Calgary." 

Just about everything we've done so far has been a big ordeal but that was expected. I couldn't find a decent deal for internet or hijack the neighbors' so I added data to my phone plan and am typing this on a hotspot. Hopefully the 100 gigs will meet all of our needs, particularly when I start doing my final M.Ed. course. You would not BELIEVE the hellish internet/phone gymnastics I had to go through to achieve THAT goal. It is an entire blog post itself. I had seen an ad for a position in Trail/Montrose here as an educational assistant and was unable to apply cuz you need to complete your entire Indeed or whatever middleman site it was to apply and even though all the blanks were full they kept telling me my profile was only 80% complete and I could not apply for that reason. So I called the board of education directly and was transferred to Monica with whom I left a message and it wasn't answered. So I sent another email to 4 people in the education system here and got referred to a website call "Make a Future." It didn't work. I called the help line. They filled in everything exactly as I had and it worked for them. My site still had the cancel button clickable but the "finish" button was all greyed out. So anyway, I was then in and I searched for that job and found it. BUT I couldn't apply for it cuz I had signed up as a teacher but the job was inexplicably listed under "support." Well it turns out that you need to go through all the application steps all over again to apply for a "support" job. SOoooo I did it all over again and got a greyed out "finish" button again, called support again, they filled in all the blanks identically and it worked for THEM again. So after only 6 hours of THAT, I had applied for one job.

That's just me and IT. 

Anyhoo, I gotta watch Wheel of Fortune with Mom and maybe yell out some answers on Jeopardy. We have already started packing but the first thing we tried to do was take a couple beds apart to make more room to pile and pack but the garage door was locked so we couldn't get a wrench we needed to even do THAT. But that has since been remedied and we started packing today.

So we're off to a flying start. More to come...