UMAB Recert

Recently got recertified with UMAB (Understanding and Managing Aggressive Behaviour), which is the training we got at my old group home job. I mentioned before that several long standing employees as well as my old supervisor were fired. Now an old friend of mine is running the house, and she has reached out to me to be more active as a relief staff.

The training was at the Cambridge location, which was much more convenient than the one in London Ontario, which required me to stay in Guelph, and then spend five hours on a Go bus and then five hours back. Regular city transit still had me riding for about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the Cambridge location, although I got a ride back.

I was surprised that I knew four people at the training. They kept talking about stuff that had happened during the time I worked there, even though I'd worked there for six months and had been gone for eight. I felt like I hadn't missed a beat.

Because my last shift was over six months ago, that means I have to redo my file. That means, in addition to the training, I have to get a medical examination done, I have to get a criminal record check, and I have to get some youth-specific criminal record check. I might even have to get someone to read the manual to me with all the regulations. It's a big drag. Last time I went, the medical examination was $100, the criminal record check was $30, and the youth-specific one was maybe $15. So if I'm going back, I'd better make more than $145.

I also reapplied for my old Summer Program job with Extend-a-Family. I skipped last year because I was occupied with the group home job, but the two years before that I managed to find a position despite not being a student when it is normally a student job. If I get a position this year, it will be the first time I've been a student while working for this student job since I began four years ago.

Taxes

The past few days have been crazy. Mid-April and we're getting blizzards that are leaving huge snow drifts. It's a winter wonderland over here. Everybody's got their snow blowers out, snow plows are patrolling the city. It's the second time this has happened in April, although the first round only lasted about a day, whereas this has been a few days. One day to the next, you don't know what season it's going to be.

Last time, I was supporting someone and it felt like we were literally fighting a blizzard. This time, I've had two people cancel on me because it's potentially dangerous to be outside.

When I did my Safe Management Recertification, my co-facilitator let me know that I'm the agency's "biggest paperwork headache. Apparently, of the hundreds of direct support people, I'm the only one who works both directly with them, and independently but using their system. Had no idea. I just chose to work with people using the agency if the agency found them, and I worked independently if I was the one who found them. Don't know why it's not more common.

I lost my Wal Mart Rewards Mastercard somewhat recently. It had $1000 worth of credit on it. Canceled the card that got lost and had it replaced. Now it's worth $2500. Don't know why they decided to give me another $1500.

Did my taxes recently. Last year, I came the closest I ever have to the poverty line. Just have to make $10,000 more and I'm officially lower-middle class! Only had to work three jobs, one of them being full time, to make that accomplishment. I'm a student again though, so yeah right.

I learned in Social Psychology that wealth only impacts happiness until you reach a certain income level. However, I'd still need to make three times as much as I did last year to reach that income level, so I think it's fair for me to keep seeking wealth.

Although to be fair I didn't work at the grouphome for a full year.

I made enough money last year that my tax return went from increasing to decreasing. I was using a $15 service from Turbotax. After putting in my first two T4 statements, I had a $3000 return, which is higher than I've ever received. Thought it would really burst up when I put my grouphome T4 through, which was my largest statement by far. Instead, it shrunk to $500.

For some reason, your return is much smaller if you're a student than otherwise. In years past, my return has gone from like, $1500 to $500 after stating I was a student. So this year, having only a $500 return, I was worried I'd be $1000 in the pit. But instead, after I stated I was a student, it raised to $800, Can't understand it.

Tax day is an emotional day, watching a number bounce up and down drastically with you having only a shaky understanding as to why. Feels like gambling.

Creeper in the Window

Finished my final essay for Russian Studies. Now I just gotta wait for grades to come back.

My brother was in some dance recital. He joined a Dance Theatre group and they did a performance based on a three song mashup from the movie Hairspray.

Sounds like it went pretty well. There were a bunch of other groups as well, including Irish dancing, Latin, Tap, Seductive, Contemporary, Jazz, Hiphop, and Sword Dancing. There may have been others as well, but that's what I remember him mentioning.

Last time I was in Guelph, my mother told me the neighbour was staring at me through the window.

They live in a basement apartment, so the window is closer to the ceiling, and to look into the apartment a person would have to get low.

I turn to look at the window, and indeed there is a man squatting and staring directly at me, eyes bugging out of his head, but it isn't our neighbour.

As soon as he sees me see him he runs away. I'm grateful for his absence, but that reaction shows that he's not just socially oblivious or something, and he realizes what a faux pas it is to stare at someone through their window.

I'm ranting to my mom about how creepy that was when he comes back. He motions at me to meet him by the front door. He's got a dead serious expression on his face and his gesture is sharp and weirdly authoritative. I'm a large man, and I'm unused to strangers being so demanding and authoritative on a first encounter. He walks out of view before waiting for my response.

I say, "He wants me to meet him?" Mom's like, "Well, you're the big guy."

Oh screw that. Letting people you don't know, who stare in your window tell you what to do gets you killed. I crack the window open and shout "HEY BUDDY!"

Guy comes back and asks about one of the upstairs neighbours. I tell him, "He lives upstairs and our apartment doesn't connect. Can't help ya." and close the window.

I shouldn't have even engaged him that much, to be honest. Should've just closed the blinds.

Mom tells me "Before you noticed him, he walked by the window with a shovel."

Now I don't fully trust my mother's eye witness testimony because she initially mistook the guy for our neighbour, but the image of him with a shovel certainly does ramp up the creep factor. Makes me imagine him waiting outside the front door where he gestured me to meet him, ready to conk me with a shovel.

Maximum level creep right there. I won't soon forget the image of him, with his deadpan expression and hyper-focused, wide eyes, staring at me, squatting outside our window, with a shovel just out of view.

In all probability he didn't have any ill intentions. Or if he did, they were perhaps intended for the neighbour. But man. Don't stare into strangers' windows please.

Ice Cream and Chocolate

I finished my Social Psychology test, now I just have to wait on my final grade. If I pass the test, I pass the course, and if I don't... there's not a huge margin for error.

Got 93% on my Russian Studies presentation. Just have to write an essay now, and I'm done the school year.

Way back in Canada World Youth, during my rotation in Quebec, one time me and my counterpart, as well as another pair of counterparts and our Project Leader, went out to Quebec City. We went to some icecream place. I wasn't fluent, and when the server asked me a question I didn't understand about a topping I said "non" to eliminate further conversation and minimize the language barrier.

On the other side, everyone in my team is eating chocolate-coated icecream. I note this, and my Project Leader says, "Of course, we're at the House of Chocolate, Chocolate Favoris"

I'm like, "So I came to the House of Chocolate, the server asked me what what kind of chocolate I wanted, and I said NON?!"

During our initial cultural sensitivity training, we had a practice where we were asked to step back from a difficult situation and ask, "Will I be angry in five hours? Five weeks? Five months? Five years? So is it really worth being angry about?"

Telling people about that practice, I offer the example of Chocolate Favoris, and I say "It has been five hours, weeks, months, and years, and I am still mad I didn't get that chocolate covered ice cream!"

When I was carpooling with my coworker to my Train the Trainer recertification, at one point, my coworker screams. I ask what that's about and she's like, "This ice cream parlor is opening up! It's like Dairy Queen on steroids! They have like a million options for chocolate dips!"

I say "That's a bit of an extreme reaction for ice cream. It reminds me of this story where I..."

She says "I finally won't have to go to Quebec City for it!"

"WHAT?! What is the name of this place?!"

"Chocolate Favoris"

I screamed.

They are opening a location in Guelph of all places, and now me and my coworker are going to go there on opening day.

This will be so cathartic.