Blogger Dodger

I don't know about you but...

I'm just trying to do what I said I would...

Which is to write 500 words a day before I'm 'allowed' on social media...

Birthdays Are for Losers (Just kidding.)

So it's almost my birthday. My fantastically generous Steve has already bought me my desired gifts of a GoPro camera to use while bicycling and a modestly priced beginner's ukulele. I have not opened the camera yet, but am really excited about it, and the ukulele is on its way via Amazon. I feel awkward about getting such nice presents because two years ago he bought me a recurve bow so I could do archery, and I think I've used it about ten times altogether, so I feel like I'm not exactly worthy of gifts I don't use a lot. On the other hand, I also asked if we could get an ice cream maker we saw in Costco a couple months ago, and upon agreement that I would get rid of some other appliances to make room for it (both the slow cookers), we now have three different homemade frozen desserts in the freezer. I have used it A LOT so far. It's fun and challenging (I've already fucked up a few batches by making small errors...), and I am planning to make an actual ice cream cake for my birthday.

I digress (again?? yes, again...so sorry) into life's minutiae. The original purpose, if I recall correctly, and I hope I should because I'm the one who wrote it, of this 'project' was threefold. One, to improve my typing skills. Two, to practice writing. And three, to record my job search efforts. I also had planned on delving into stories and anecdotes about the fifty jobs I've had in my life. I may be exaggerating, but not by much. I had my first part time job when I was fourteen, cleaning up in a local hair salon. I think it could be very interesting (mostly for me I guess) to go back through each job I have had and talk about why I loved or hated it and any successes or fuck ups.

I have the feeling that if I were to do that, in between writing about my current position, that it would probably be a sort of therapy and might help me with the rest of my life. Nothing wrong with that... It's always a good idea to look at your life and be introspective with a little personal analysis of the 'why'.

Back to the Point of the Story

The first day of Summer school was without students, and I expected to meet all the other staff and teachers and find out what my specific role would be and how the class would be run differently from regular school year classes. In most special ed the students stay with one class, rather like grade school, and do individual work based on their abilities, often with a one on one instructional assistant (that's my job title). They are assigned to their classroom based on intellectual ability and age, but mostly behavioral history, like how severe their meltdowns can be and the level of violence toward themselves or others is. I could be wrong about that, but it seems true from my observations. 

I also expected to not know any of the kids in the class, but it turned out that two of them had been in one of my classes from before. So the first day I thought we would get some ground rules for the daily operation (we did) and then meet our individual class staff and probably do some kum-bay-ah stuff, like the name game to get to know each other, and perhaps some trust falls or a team scavenger hunt to build rapport (we did not). The first day was hearing gossip, moving desks around and papering over all the shelves and anything off limits, as we were borrowing another teacher's regular classroom. I think I may share some specifics later, but next time I plan on continuing to go back in time and explain what I have been doing for work for the last year...Cheers! Take care of yourselves.

500 Word "Ketchup"

Wow. It's been almost a year

since I entered this domain. I have been tweeting, writing some letters and texts, but despite thinking about blogging almost everyday, have not ventured back. I am ashamed to say how deleterious it has been for me, yet I have still avoided it. The catharsis and joy of accomplishment I got from writing posts was apparently not enough to encourage me to continue to do so, despite personal promises.

But now I'm back! I received some encouragement and motivation from a rather unlikely, and unexpected place: an erotica podcast. called "Kiss Me Quick's Erotica: Sexy Stories with Rose Caraway  (http://www.thekissmequicks.com/) where she preludes a story with a hint for returning to 'Daily Writing'. She said before you get on social media, write at least 500 words. In your journal, or blog, or notebook; wherever you write and however you write: fiction or personal, etc.

She then takes a screenshot of her word count and shares on Instagram as sort of an accountability insurance; for some reason this was what I needed to hear to finally inspire me to continue my saga here, and I'm grateful to her. I think I'll let her know. Here is the post that inspired her to begin writing again, and share her success with the concept: #500 Word Project

Instead of going back a year to play catch up, I think I will work backwards from now... so I don't get 'blogged down' with digressions and excess rambling. And before I start adding personal anecdotes and interesting asides, I'm going to try and stick to the subject matter, which is work. Though I have to say, I feel as if I've already written 500 words, and it's only 263, so, apparently this is not quite as easy as I maybe figured it would be...

I worked Summer School!

They call it ESY or Extended School Year for some reason; I never got a clear answer as to why. It was only 4 weeks, for 4 days a week for 4 hours a day, but I rode my bike (trying to get back into that after hurting my back last Fall) everyday (until the last week when it was over 100 degrees here) which was about 45 minutes each way, so the day felt longer to me. It was all ages of SPED (Special education) and quite fun and interesting to see and work around the littler kids after having been in the high school all year. Special needs students range vastly with a wide variety of behavioral and physical problems that mean they need extra attention and support in and out of the classroom. It includes kids with varying diagnosis of autism, neurological disorders including seizures, and mild to severe physical disabilities. Some of them are barely able to read and write, while others simply don't have the ability to sit down and concentrate long enough to do so. But they all have their own positive accomplishments and just need as much help as possible to learn what they can. The genuine smiles you receive from a special ed. student when things are going well is a great reward for an often difficult and challenging job.

I am honestly proud to say I am a little over my #500 so I am going to keep it basic and stop!

Sincerely, The apathetic job seeker

"Sincereously"

       Nothing is Wrong with Me!/What is Wrong with ME?

I have been slacking and procrastinating coming here to write, and it only took a bunch of Kevin Smith videos to encourage me to finally get back to it! Here's a good part of one of them: 

Kevin Smith encourages people to use their unique voice. He says: "Nobody hears it as often as they should...You Are Smart, and You Are Good!...". It would make a great children's book title actually. It could involve some anthropomorphized animals...with names like Carleton and Jewel. In the town of Shrewsbury...


Anyway! Because of trying to continue receiving 'food stamps' (long story), I ended up doing a really great Spring and Summer stint as a regular volunteer at an after school program called Shine. It didn't actually help me reinstate the food assistance, but that's okay. It was extremely valuable experience, starting out as an assistant, and then leading a class myself. The kids were, as they usually are, amazing. I 'sincereously' encourage everyone to start participating in volunteer work as soon as you are old enough to walk and talk. I encourage parents to volunteer with their children. It's great, do it!

I wish that I had volunteered long ago as a child, but I didn't. But I do it now! I can do better, and be better, now that I know better. And volunteering can lead to bigger and better things. It's really like an unpaid internship job that you get to choose yourself.

So while I was volunteering there I applied for about ten different jobs on the school district website. Different things, from library aide to nutrition services. A couple weeks later I got a call for an interview to be a substitute lunch lady. I was like, cool. I can do that again, I did it at the other sub job, but this will be more regular and closer to home. It's part time, so I can keep pretending to pursue my artwork and writing, and probably qualify for SNAP again. On the negatory side, it's food service, which I have sworn off many times (long story). The person who did the interview, a really nice lady, she shared practically her whole life story, which was really interesting, how she used to be a dressmaker and ended up in management at Nordstrom's, never having gone to college, she was very successful, before becoming a cafeteria worker herself, and then working her way up into management of the whole department! Anyway, I sent her a thank you email afterwards and she wrote back and said nice to meet you too, and yer hired! Pending an HR required physical.

Wow, Cool! I got a job! It doesn't pay more than my other sub jobs (11.00 an hour) but it will be cool. It's not in a classroom environment, but it's in schools, and I can observe and interact and take mental notes for my future ( say a little affirmation)books! I'll probably get a free meal! I was talking myself into it more and more. See the positive! Be optimistic! Then I didn't pass my physical. My still healing broken finger, and my heart murmur caused them to say Nope, pending a letter from the doctors stating these things would not interfere or compromise my ability to do the job. Oh, no! So I made appointments to take care of that. Then I get an email that I have an interview for one of the other positions I had applied for! A higher paying job! With people, not food! I was pretty excited. I wore, as I did for the first interview, my nice, gently used clothes I got from Dress For Success, applied a little makeup, and I felt pretty confident. It didn't require a physical, and wasn't a sub position, so it would be at the same location. It would be 35 hours, so would qualify for benefits. I told my boss at Shine about it and he said he would be glad to be a reference for me too. (Which turned out to be very helpful, as the reference I had put in my application didn't respond.)

I went to the interview in the Special Education offices and who should work there but Tammy Piscatelli, the former head school secretary from the school where I did SMART and book room volunteering! It was nice to see a familiar face. And then, when I went to the HR offices for the benefits meeting for the group of new hires, who should come up and say hello, but the former principal from there! It was pretty cool. So, fast forward, because I haven't written about each of these things and events as they were happening, and I'm just trying to catch up now, without writing every little detail...

It's September! I had a fantastic birthday last month with Awesome Steve, and now have a (hopefully) fantastic job to start next week! Some advice I heard recently from the speaker at a DFS meeting was that you should go home each day and write down a positive accomplishment from the day. I will try to remember that, next time I think about writing, then put it off.
Signing off,
Kaet

P.S. Here's an amusing excerpt from a Kevin Smith interview:

I feel like my entire generation grew up smoking weed and watching Clerks and Mallrats.

See, that’s something I never did until fairly recently. It was [Seth] Rogen who turned me on to it. I’d smoked weed in the past, but treated it as a recreational, once-in-a-blue-moon thing. But Rogen was just so impressive and productive as a stoner, and the only stoners I’d known filled the stereotype, but this is a guy who works against the stereotype, since he’s always working on, like, nine things at once. He introduced me to the notion that there’s a whole community of productive stoners—not just in this business, but everywhere.

It’s a really mental wall, but once you concentrate and bust through that wall, you can be very productive. 

Exactly. Some people are like, “I can’t imagine working stoned!” but for me, part of the fun is working through it, where it’s like, “OK, there’s something here but it’s clearing cobwebs and making me look at it from a new perspective.” It doesn’t give you any creative ideas, but it removes fear from any equation so you have no fear of what will happen.

Absotively Posilutely!

Absotively Posilutely!

Happy 4th of July! I have had some hiccups in the past couple months, but have been making some progress lately. I was told in order to retain my food stamp allowance I would need to take a class at the community college work source center called ABAWD, or able bodied adults without dependents. I did that, and then for a month recorded all of my job seeking/training activities, and any work (including volunteering) I was doing. The next month I found out in lieu of doing all this record keeping I could be working five hours a week at the Oregon Food Bank (where I took a free gardening class last year), so I did that for a month, while also volunteering at two different schools. While I was doing all of this I was not receiving any food stamp benefits. It turned out those two months didn't matter, the people at the Human Services department made some snafu and had my file closed so I would need to reapply from scratch. 

So I quit the Food Bank, since it wasn't counting, and it was rather hard work to not be getting paid anything for, also I had a couple bad experiences there at the end, when I got my finger smashed, and later wasn't allowed in to use the restroom even though it was past time to open the doors. I had just ridden my bike for over an hour and was pissed. The great news is, that because of the Abawd thing, I finally got to experience Dress for Success, for which you need a 'referral' from a social services agency, but man, could I have used their help for some interviews I had out of college. I do not know how to dress well, nor did I have the proper things to wear to appear professional. Dress for Success allows me to join HOPE (Help One Person Excel), and in just the first meeting I learned so much from their guest speaker, a professional organizer, and also found out about free eye exams they have in conjunction with a local optometrist! The other good thing was just donating time to the food bank, learning a lot more about how they operate, and where the things that are given out at the local church food pantry come from.

SMART and the bookroom are done for the Summer, as is the subbing, although I am signed up for a future course via them to learn how to subdue a child in a situation of physical violence, which is needed if you intend to work with special education in schools. I redid my entire school district application because they changed their online system, and though tedious, it was a good, fresh start. After doing that I applied for a dozen jobs all at once, from classroom instructional assistants to library aides to nutritional subs (cafeteria worker) and have an interview this week for the food services position. I was a bit disappointed it wasn't one of the educational ones, but really it's a great opportunity to be a sub in a less demanding job so I can organize and devote time to the children's books I (say I) want to write. Also, I can work directly with kids as a volunteer for shorter periods of time and not be in such a responsible position, which would honestly kind of stress me out!

My neighbor friend's cousin recently was visiting and asked me if I wanted to work at the Y with her. It's on hospital grounds and mostly kids of hospital staff, doing art projects and activities. It's a lot like what I am going to do with the Summer school program a couple days a week, except it's paid. And further away. But I told her I will come check it out to see what it's like! I vacillate between thinking it's an awesome opportunity, and questioning it because I didn't have to struggle to achieve it.

I also applied for the recreation center summer program to be an art instructor, which I would have been stellar at doing, but I haven't heard back and it's been weeks. So I rack it up on the "Not Meant to Be" side of the chalk board.

I think I will leave it here, I just wanted to add some more fun, esoteric thoughts, but I can do that when I have more time to ponder. Thank you and good night.

Christ on a Cracker!

By George, Something Went Right!

I'm kind of happy right now, and it may be a fluke, but 

I'd like to think I've been slowly working toward it with a combination of good (well, better...) decisions, personal effort, and some selfless giving too. Maybe that's over reaching, but even if it's half true then I will be content with that. Remember Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day book? Well, today was the opposite of that. I had practically given up on expecting to get more classroom sub jobs since the ones I've been seeing lately were all cafeteria work, but last night there were several different options. One of which was the same school where I had been for almost three months in the kitchen, but it was for a special ed. classroom assistant. I almost chose that one just to see some familiar faces, but decided on the unknown.

So I chose a school I hadn't been to before based solely on proximity to home, and worked from eight to three in two different classrooms, the nurse's office, and on recess duty. 

It was a smaller school, situated on a side street, next to an old community church, in a cute old fashioned schoolhouse building. Despite getting little sleep last night, I had my proverbial act pretty together this morning. Traffic was very light for the directions I was heading, there and back. It turned out that most of the classes were taught in Spanish, so I got to review some dormant language skills. There was free cinnamon cake in the break room. There was a back and neck massager set up on a chair in the staff room, which I took advantage of for the duration of my lunch hour. I met many lovely people, all of whom were younger than myself, but what can you do, I'm late to the game. I spoke with a very motivated sub who encouraged me to sign up for the supplemental training course offered by the sub office this summer to provide certified training for teacher's aids for students with disabilities. That would improve the opportunities for chances to work with special education classes.

Besides wishing I had taken eight years of Spanish instead of French, and running out of breath while jogging with the kids at recess, it was a really positive, nothing to complain about, pretty cool kind of experience. I really do enjoy working with children, but I don't know if I could be a full time teacher and deal with all the paperwork and disciplinary aspects of the job. Maybe that could come with training and experience. The teacher stepped in a few times when my kid I was working with behaved in a way she didn't deem appropriate, and I was glad of it, she seemed strict but fair, and had reasonably high expectations for her students, who were to my eyes, all on the above average level.

When I got home I cut some beautiful yellow roses from outside for our neighbor (just to be nice) and myself to brighten up the dark apartment space on this gloomy weather day. I wanted to share these feelings whilst still overflowing with gratitude for a super positive day, because even my optimism will wane and I may need something to look back on that was concrete and real in order to remember: Happy Can Happen. And it does, and being grateful really does help. "Attitude of Gratitude, Dude."

P.S. I should give a little shout out to Dress For Success non-profit organization for helping me put together a couple decent outfits and accessories to make me feel more confident and appropriately attired. I wish I had been able to go to them long ago, as the experience did wonders for my esteem.

Discerning Deleterious Decisions

What's Up, Doc?

 What's up with the snails in the garden, eh? We went to help a lady named Roxanne with her small garden weeding project since she put a call for help out on the neighborhood blog. Snails just came up onto the cranberry hibiscus iced tea that she made for me when I set it down on a rock! 

 Also, I accidentally dug up the bones of her deceased buried cat from long ago. Yikes. That was a little awkward. So reading volunteering is coming to an end, and I was invited to attend the end of year luncheon...I won a ping pong prize in the raffle! So I have begun orientation for an after school program that will be continuing into Summer time, to teach/lead an activity for elementary kids.

The dish washing cafeteria helper substitute gig ended when they cut the hours severely and the manager suggested it wasn't quite worth it to continue, and I agreed. I had really appreciated the consistency and regular expectations of the position, it reminded me of how it feels to have something you depend on that's reliable. I have an interview next week with a kid's Summer camp 

 day program, and have been searching job postings by the local school district and looking online for other opportunities. I had to attend an orientation/training class at the local work source center in the Community College in order to try and continue receiving food stamp benefits (SNAP, as they say), and the requirements are to work or be actively looking for work 20 hours a week. Including my current volunteering. 

So that put a little fire under my butt, and besides finding some good job possibilities, I signed up with two different volunteer organizations. Through them, I am going to start volunteering a shift at the Children's Museum (which is an educational play program), as well as the after school group I mentioned earlier. This is pretty awesome, as it can really benefit any future teaching opportunities I try to go for. Today I met with the school's work counselor, and she said all the regular housework and laundry I do here in exchange for rent can count as hours worked in barter (yay!) and I can also do one five hour shift at the Oregon Food Bank instead of tracking all my job hunting and submitting it, and that would be sufficient for fulfilling the requirements of DHS. Besides that, I am getting slowly motivated to create an online art portfolio, which I should have had long ago, as I applied to Laika for an internship, and also a separate illustrator job, with what I would consider a very substandard collection of drawings. If I ever expect to illustrate books, I must do this.

The daisy plant I saw today on my ride, growing through the crack in the pavement, is very inspiring!

Concentration is the Game

Blogs are dumb. Why do I say this? Because I am not a journalist, or an author, and blogging should be helpful information, and not just rambling diary entries, which is more what I seem to be doing. And I don't want to say that I am dumb, so I will just say that blogs are dumb. I still don't know how to type either, and that is frustrating too. But, Fuck it. I love having this, and doing it, so there.

Hey now, got that out of the way, so what's going on? Well, back in December the substitute place sent out an announcement that if you had a college degree you could apply to be a special restricted licensed substitute. That means, if you apply and qualify, that instead of just a classified sub, where you can do teaching assistant jobs, or work in clerical or janitorial, you can actually make some $. Without having a master's degree, or a specific early childhood education, or library sciences degree.

It's a nice proposition, so I am going to pursue it and see where it takes me. If anywhere. But for now, I am in the cafeteria everyday except for book reading volunteer day at the elementary school, washing dishes and handing out small trays of flavorless, yet nutritious food to hungry urchins.

The people are Great, I must say, they are kind and fair, and just very nice women. And I get to listen to podcasts on my phone, which makes the time fly by... I've had jobs where music or radio was strictly verboten, for no good reason. They said it annoyed customers, or interfered with worker concentration, or some other excuse to further crush and depress the lowly minimum wagers there.

But I got away from restaurant work for reasons, and do not relish the continuation of this type of work. It's just not...inspiring. Or motivating, or educational, know what I mean? Basically, anyone could do this job, and so I just don't feel it's fulfilling, or for lack of a better word, special. And fuck you to people who think that you shouldn't love your work, or feel special doing it, because it is possible, and it's a noble and decent thing to strive towards. So I've been doing this for so long because they are supposedly trying to hire somebody and until then they are fine with a substitute. It's honest work and that's always something to be proud of I think. There are no guarantees I would get other sub jobs, so it's nice to be doing something reliable and regular for right now. 

There's a literary history of famous dishwashing characters, men who saw the menial labor as a time to think and dream and philosophize. Job:A Comedy of Errors by Robert Heinlein, and Dishwasher by Pete Jordan are two wonderful books I would love for everyone to read. Love and Peace, AJS