Career and Garden

Last week I had my annual review as well as my assessment for the full-time facilitator position. Good news is, I got my contract renewed... indefinitely. I am now a permanent employee with Extend-a-Family. I even get some benefits. Bad news is that, since the person I was covering a mat leave for is returning, I will be going back to the In-House Facilitator role, which gets fewer hours. That was expected though.

Since I'm going back to part time, it is very timely that I have been asked to lead a Community Men's Group in September. I'll do that with one or two Direct Support Contracts to simulate a full-time work schedule. I'll be sure to book the weekends off this time around, though.

Not too long ago, I was training this year's Summer Program team among others in Safe Management. First day was fairly standard, but my co-facilitator called in sick on the second. That's never happened, and since it was such short notice and since training dates are spaced so far apart, this would be the only real opportunity to have the Summer Program staff trained at all in crisis intervention. So I was asked to do it alone. I was pretty freaked out, because I am the most junior member on the SMG team, with the lowest status in the organization. In the past, I've kind of leaned on my co-facilitators for support. Was I really ready? Well, I accepted the challenge, and yes, I was ready.

We had strong results on the written portion of the training, I was able to answer all questions during the physical intervention segment, and reception seemed positive. I was lucky to have my former boss from the Summer Program there, who has done the training a number of times, and so could act as a prop when doing demonstrations during the physical component.

Garden's coming along alright. Pumpkins have taken the place by storm. They're huge, crawling plants that I think have choked out the watermelons, cantelopes, honey dews, and cucumbers, and right now they're bothering the cauliflowers. So I'd better get some pumpkins.

Shame about the cucumbers. They are a traditionally successful crop. I don't know if these results make me want to grow pumpkins again next year because they're successful, or if I want to avoid them because they bully the other crops.

Broccoli are doing well. They have a really fun growth pattern. Cabbages coming along. Snow peas doing a lot better than they did last year.

Sunflowers are really strong, which means a lot to me. I've been trying to grow sunflowers for the past few years with no results. You might remember that it was a sunflower that started my interest in gardening. Somebody handed me a Jiffy Pot at Conestoga College and had me plant a sunflower seed. I brought it home from the residence and planted it in the backyard of my mother's place and it started this big community garden thing. After many trials and tribulations, the sunflower blossomed.

For reasons I won't go into, I have associated sunflowers with my romantic life. Back in my first year of Summer Program, I told one of my colleagues that I liked sunflowers because they were romantic. She laughed at me because they are a "happy" flower, not a "romantic" one. I then proceded to give her five concrete examples of how they tied into my romantic life.

Well, and I'm just saying, but in the previous years that I've lived here, my sunflowers wouldn't grow. This year, my garden is bursting with healthy sunflowers! And wouldn't you know, I have a dating life this year. I'm currently seeing someone, and we have seen each other eight times so far. She was my date to the staff bbq last Friday. So things aren't exactly a secret, but I'll hold off on further information until things become more official.

Cat

I got a cat

This has been something I've been thinking about doing since graduating college, but I've always told myself that I can't take on the responsibility of caring for someone else when I don't know what my own future might look like. I almost put things off until August, when my contract is up for renewal, because of this reasoning. But, realistically, I would have just kept finding reasons to put it off. I'm in a more stable position than I have ever been before. It's just time to take a jump.

I got him from a cat rescue organization focused on Kitchener called Pet Patrol. A couple of friends of mine have gone through this organization. They're based in Wallenstein, which is a small town outside of my city. When I called them, the person in charge asked me what I do for a living. I told her that I'm a facilitator at WALES. Turns out, she used to work in the school that WALES used to be based in, and she knows my current boss.

I had a lot of difficulty organizing transportation. Eventually, I just posted "Who wants to help me adopt a cat?" on Facebook. I got three offers inside a half hour.

I went with an old College friend named Rob (he's in the second photo). My roommate, (in the background of the third photo) came along as well, because it's important that, if we're both going to live with a cat, that they get along with both of us.

I eventually went with a one-year-old grey tabby named Kieren. When I met him, he climbed onto me and held me around the neck and wouldn't let go. I figured he's made a decision. They say the cat chooses you.

I don't know how I feel about cats with human names, but I'd feel bad renaming him. Besides, I'm terrible at naming things anyway. He's got a bump on his head that Pet Patrol was initially worried about, but apparently it's just bone. They think he may have injured himself as a stray, and it filled in thicker. Regardless, he's got a thick skull and goes around headbutting things, and this reminds me of a pachycephalosaurus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachycephalosaurus

So if I was going to name him, it might be based on that. But it's too long, so it would have to be a short form... and then I realized how unfortunate a short form of that name would be, when my roommate is from Pakistan.

Anyway, Kiren's been nothing but pure love. All he wants to do is cuddle, and he follows me all over the house. Every day, I wake up with him curled up next to my head, but when my alarm goes off he bats at me until I get up. He gets along great with my roommate's son and the neighbour's kids.

His origin story is that he was found on the side of the road in a rural area, still very much a kitten. Other than a notch in one of his ears and a bump on his forehead, he doesn't show much of his rough past. So far he's never attempted to leave my townhouse, even though he bugs at me to open every door inside of it.

He won't eat wet food, for some reason. My mother's cats know exactly when they're getting their daily wet food and they live for it. Kieren just ignores it. He has also shown no appreciation for cat treats or even catnip. I wonder how that's even possible.

I've bought him a cat tree, one of those tracks with a ball that can be batted around, and a stick with a string that has some sparkling balls tied to it. So far, the favourite is the cat fishing rod, followed by the cat tree, followed by the track with the ball, which I paid $46 for and he broke it in a day