Student Placement

My roommate is back from the hospital. His progress has been slower than expected, but consistent. He's going to need to have a surgery done once his kidneys are back to normal levels, which will probably happen mid-March. In the meanwhile, he can stay at home, although he still has a bit of equipment attached to him. Obviously he can't work at the moment.

Somehow, I failed to mention in recent posts a fairly significant development in my life. Lee-Anne is currently living in Brampton and attending the University of Toronto, with classes on Monday and Tuesday, and student placement on Wednesday through Friday. She had a placement in Toronto that fell through, and when looking for a potential replacement, the person in charge of scouting out opportunities found one for her at Family and Children Services, run through the Family Centre... in Kitchener.

It's a twenty minute walk from where I live. When I was an Independent Facilitator, the agency I worked for operated through that building.  Turns out, it was noticed by the person scouting opportunities that Lee-Anne had experience in Waterloo Region.

So she's been staying at my place Wednesday through Friday. We're five weeks into this arrangement. It's the first time that I've shared living space with someone that I'm in a relationship with, although we're still only kind of half-living together.

Most of her stuff is still in Brampton, but we've put down a few pieces of light furniture to accommodate her regular presence here. We put up a set of hooks and got a set of drawers, just one of those three-drawer plastic things that you can attach wheels to and find in the tupperware aisle at Wal Mart for $35, but still.

I'm lucky I didn't know about these giant tupperware drawers back when I was decorating for myself, or I might never have found the motivation to pay for, transport and assemble actual furniture. It was such a pain, and this plastic thing was cheap, light, and ready to use at purchase. I might've just stacked a few of them and called it a day.

Lee-Anne's also been able to meet a few members of the family. We had dinner with my cousin Sarah a couple weeks ago, and had lunch with my Aunt Nancy last weekend. Being in Brampton so often has made the Toronto branch of the family more accessible.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I, at one point, frustrated by my laundry situation, impulsively bought a stacked washer dryer without realising that I don't have a hookup for it. Well, ever since then, it's just been sitting in my living room, as a stupid-looking storage unit, as a daily reminder to be more mindful with my money.

Until recently. Me and Lee-Anne managed to sell it on Facebook Marketplace. Well, Lee-Anne did. I posted it first and got a lot of responses. Turns out, people generally ask a lot more questions than I did when I made my purchase. I learned a lot about it, such as, it's an Electrolux, 6'2" tall, 27" wide, 28" deep, 45" deep with dryer door open, with a 240 v plug. Think it was built in 2004. Didn't know any of this until people started asking and I had to look it up. Lee-Anne reposted the ad and we had better data on how to sell it. Well, that, and I'm just not much of a salesman.

I get another holiday. Turns out, I had another 33 hours to spend before the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of March. So I am taking the last week of march off. I'll have to be conscientious of how much vacation time I get in the coming fiscal year. After March, the fiscal year begins again, and I get about three weeks off total. This was my first full year at WALES (I came in partway through the last one), so I guess I was just not prepared

Sick Roommate

About a week ago, my roommate was hospitalised for kidney failure.

Inside the past three months, my Uncle Steve passed from liver and kidney failure and my family's cat Luna also passed due to liver and kidney failure, so when I received the news about my roommate, I was feeling very pessimistic. He called me from the hospital while I was still working a direct support shift, and I made the inadvisable decision to answer my phone. Finishing that shift without letting on to how I was feeling was challenging.

I visited him the next day in the hospital, and I gained a better understanding of his condition. His prostate had become inflamed and had been blocking his kidneys, which is something that can happen to people over 40. He didn't get checked, got unlucky, toughed out a bunch of symptoms, had some kind of attack at work, and made it to the hospital right before it would have been too late for him.

The good news is that, it's not his kidneys that are the problem, it's his prostate. His enlarged prostate stopped his kidneys from doing their job, and kidneys that can't do their job will eventually fail. As soon as he got a catheter in, his kidneys were able to do their job again, and the recovery process began.

So now he's waiting for his kidneys to be 100% again so he can have a surgery on his prostate. Things seem optimistic though.

I feel bad, because he had a ton of symptoms for like, three quarters of a year, and I kept telling him to go to the doctor, but I never got on his case about it. Somehow, despite chronic, excruciating back pain, excessive need to use the restroom, the loss of his sense of taste, and his tongue turning white, never caused me to think that anything serious was wrong.

I'm still signed up with my family doctor in Guelph, who I haven't seen for about eight years. I'm finally seeing the need to get someone more local.

In other news, I have updated my gallery blog, and I have added commentary to the two posts I made before today:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6039356006030778391#allposts

Gryphon's Gallery 2020

It's been a  bit, and this is one that I've been thinking about for a while. Aside from this blog, technically, we have Migrarting Gryphon for travel content, Gryphon's Reviews for things I evaluate, and Gryphon's Gallery for pictures I've taken. Initially, my gallery blog was just for photos, but I have since taken up painting as a hobby, so you can admire my lack of talent there:

https://gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com/

0202 2020

I gotta update, because it's another fun date. Today is the second day of the second month of 2020, or 0202 2020. It looks the same, written normally or in reverse. One of my coworkers texted me, since she knows I'm into fun number stuff, as I'd brought up the 20th day of 2020 this past January 20th at our team meeting.

I've been on vacation this past week. Turns out, since I went from my initial part-time hours at WALES, to full-time hours, and then to an increased part-time, I developed a bunch of vacation time. I even need to take off another week and a day and a half before the end of March. Oh well, it's a good problem to have.

The bus strike ended last Saturday. At WALES, we held bets on what day the strike would end (no prizes, just for pride). A lot of people bet last Tuesday, because that would mark a week since the strike started. I bet this past Friday, because I thought that people would be reminded of the tension after a week in, and then talks would be scheduled, and an agreement would be implemented a day after the discussion. I turned out to be a day off. My folly was thinking that change couldn't be initiated on a weekend.

Even though I was on vacation, I still managed to work on the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On Monday I ran a Community Men's Group, on Tuesday and Thursday I did Direct Support Work, and on Wednesday I co-facilitated a Safe Management course.

I considered spending the first Saturday and Sunday of my vacation in Guelph, but ultimately decided to slot away a few days for myself. Didn't accomplish much, but I did replace the doorknob on the walk-in closet which had fallen off, and I replaced the shower curtain/rod (which Lee-Anne had subtly donated to me).

I spent the next weekend at home, and we did the Pokemon Go Community Day Voting, and the Mincinno Event. PoGo tracks your steps and distance and rewards you for it, and I didn't think I would meet the conditions to be rewarded this week since I spent so much time inside, but between Voting Day and Mincinno, I easily made the requirements.

I reconnected with someone that I used to support (encouraged by EaF, I'm not breaching boundaries), and we watched the most recent Star Wars movie. This was really good for me, since I don't have other friends who were interested in the movie, and the same culd be said for my friend who wanted to watch the film.

I saw some deer during my time off. They were just off the LRT, in a patch of woods that is surrounded on all sides by urban archetecture. Somehow I thought to grab some photos. Here they are: