New Cell Phone, Laptop, Garden, and 1rst Aid Certificate

BLARG! It's been over half a month since I've updated! I was averaging 4 posts a month, and I only met half my average last month. Alright! I'll tell you what's going on.

Last year, I lost my position as an Independant Facilitator and retook my Summer Program Leader position in late April. This left me with only my Direct Support contracts to stall my sinking savings until June when they would pick up again. I called it the "Miserable Month of May". It was all about financial loss and surviving until things picked up again in June. This year, with my more-than-full-time job as an overnight staff at the grouphome, my four Direct Support Contracts, which I recently got a raise in, and my Safe Management instructor position, which has taken more hours than was originally estimated, this May has been all about financial gain.

...Or at least it was supposed to. Both my cell phone and laptop recently broke at nearly the same time. I already explained that my cell phone had developed problems with its charge port, and I was using a pen and some rubber bands to create pressure on it while charging to prolong its life. Well, eventually, no number of rubber bands could apply enough pressure and the phone simply refused to charge.

And you know my laptop had its own unique charger issue. The first charger stopped working and because of its unique build I had to special order a new charger. This one worked for half a year, but then the charger randomly exploded. I was able to piece together opposite parts of the new and old charger to create something that worked. I estimated it would work for about another six months before needing to be replaced, but one day I powered off my computer and it just wouldn't turn back on.

It's funny, my new cell phone needed a micro SD card. I had all my contacts saved to my old non-micro SD card, so I figured I'd lost them all. For about a day, I had no contacts, and then randomly, most of them appeared on my new cell phone. Since my old cell phone had long since lost charge and its SD card was incompatible, I've no idea how this happened.

I hate going shopping for laptops because some salesperson inevitably talks me out of my intended purchase and gets me to buy some high-tech piece of equipment that turns out to have a short lifespan. This time however, I went to the store, stared at the selection for a good 15-20 minutes uninterrupted. Then I went up to one of the employees, told them what I wanted, and they got it
without question. Much prefer that sales style.

New laptop is an Acer. I know I've had issues with this brand before, but it fell right in my comfort zone of functionality and affordability. It wasn't the cheapest, and it had the most memory for a relatively frugal price. I feel like I'll regret this. Acer laptops and Deskjet printers are brands that have in the past offered consistently poor products, but because they fall into my comfort zone, they have brought me back repeatedly.

In the end I dropped like, $500 on the laptop and $200 on the phone, putting me back $700 when I was finally getting ahead financially. That's a gloomy way to think, though. Instead of thinking "My tech malfunctioned at just the right time to keep me from saving" I should think "Both those pieces of tech were going down and I knew that, but they held on until I could afford to replace them".

I started my garden. Last year, I had to take a plot in a community garden because my roommates owned a young, not-so-expertly trained dog that would inevitably dig it up if I grew it in the backyard. This year though, there's no dog and so my plot is on my property.

People have told me the land is no good for growing, but I really think that's because they didn't bother to prep the soil. If the community garden right next to the complex is fertile, our land should be fertile too, it just hasn't been worked over. I dug up two plots in the backyard, pulled out all the roots, mixed in planting soil, and built a couple of chicken wire fences around them. I'm keeping it pretty basic this year, only growing cherry tomatoes, zucchinis, snow peas, and sunflowers. All hardy plants that have yielded strong crops in the past. I'm growing everything from seed except the cherry tomatoes, which were transplants. Still too early to say how the seeds are doing, but the cherry tomatoes are showing positive, fanning their leaves toward the sun, showing a zest for life after overcoming the shock of being transplanted.

My roommate moved out. No bad blood. I could have obligated him to stay based on the sublet agreement, but forcing someone to live with you who doesn't want to sounds miserable, and since I'm working as much as I am, I really don't need the financial support of a roommate.

I recently did my First Aid recertification. Because of my association with Extend-a-Family, I got to attend this training for free. Eight hours total, two days, four hours a session. By coincidence, I happened to attend the same sessions as a girl that I did them with three years previous when I got my last certificate. During that session, I panicked and botched a roleplay where I was supposed to save her from bleeding out after she severed one of her fingers. This was in front of the class, and the
instructor basically had to talk me through it. Afterwards, I apologized to her.

Me: I-I'm sorry


Her: For what?

Me: I... killed you

Her: Oh my goodness Gryphon, if that actually happened, I would help you!

Me: No, you just lost a finger! You're in shock! You can't do anything! You rely on me! I can't gain composure, and you die, and it's my fault!

So about a year later, in another province, she chainsaws her leg. She's bleeding out, and apparently her last thought before losing consciousness is me attempting to bandage her hand and failing, "Gryphon would be no help right now!"

She tells me this after we become reacquainted. "You were right, I wasn't about to help myself"

So this time around, I'm keen to heal her proper and make up for my past failure. My compressions are on point, I do mouth-to-mouth like a boss, I handle the AED like a champ. When it come to scenarios, I get the severed finger again, but this time I have to do it on some random guy I don't know. Still determined,  but in the previous session I had been panicking enough that I didn't retain any information. This time around, I managed to step through it while retaining information, but I didn't get to be the flawless hero that I'd been hoping to be.