Overworked

Some jerk ate my sunflowers. I had 13 sunflower sprouts, and 12 of them got eaten all in one night. My zucchinis were coming up too, and I lost all but three. Whatever it is seems to only like sprouts, though, since the remaining one sunflower and three zucchinis have been doing fine since they got past the sprout stage.

Since my snow peas and tomatoes share one plot, and my sunflowers and zucchinis share another, there is a stark contrast between plot A and plot B. I wound up planting snow peas around the perimeter of the fence in plot B, since even though it's late in the season, whatever it is apparently doesn't like snow peas. I also went and got some transplants, since this pest seems to only eat sprouts. So now I've got red cabbage and summer squash growing alongside three zucchinis and one sunflower, and some latent-growing snow peas.

A little girl asked me if she could plant a sunflower in my garden, so now I'm really hoping that one will sprout and flourish despite it being late in the season, and with a sprout-loving pest in the area.

I learned how to grill. Remember how I said I had a grill-expert neighbour, and I was barbecuing in the dead of night so I could experiment with it uninterrupted? Well, he caught me, and it's a good thing he did. I'd gotten a fire started, and he came over to tell me I was overcooking my food. I was just happy that I'd managed to burn something, since the previous I hadn't been able to get a fire going at all. But he told me to stop feeding my flames, had me look at the glowing charcoal beneath and told me that was all I needed.

I totally would have thought the dim glow of the charcoal indicated only an insufficient and dying fire, incapable of cooking anything. But the next day, the two of us worked through it, and yeah, charcoal has a subtle and efficient glow, which cooked my dinner perfectly that night.

This past week I got to facilitate Safe Management courses for the Summer Program. It was our largest group yet, with two different summer camp teams and a few people taking the training for personal reasons. It was really gratifying to be able to take that leadership role with so many of my previous peers, but it also reminded me of how much I'll miss the Summer Program.

Everybody assumed I would be coming back for some reason. Come on people, it's seasonal work, I don't exactly wait nine months a year so that I can take back the only position that is relevant to your life.

Last week was draining though. For two days, I did a nine or ten-hour overnight shift, and then did six-hour training sessions during days. On both those days, I only got three hours of sleep. Plus I also had a direct support shift on Monday, and I rescheduled someone I had to cancel on because it fell into a Safe Management day to Friday, so I worked on my only day off. This Sunday, one of the people I support has a Summer Enhancement benefit, so after I do my regular four hour Sunday shift, I'll travel for an hour and a half, then support someone else for two and a half hours, than have three hours to waste which doesn't allow me to go home because of the Sunday bus schedule, and then I'll do a ten hour Sunday shift, since they ask me to do an extra hour on Sundays.

I knew a couple guys with two jobs, averaging three hours sleep a day, back when I worked factories. I always questioned what their motivation was for working that hard, since even if you make money, you've no time to spend it, and the average work day killed me bad enough already. But now I've turned into that kind of worker and I still can't tell you what the motivation is.