Take The Heat Off

For all my predictions, becoming a trainer for firefighters was not on my 2023 bingo book.

As one of my side gigs, I facilitate something called Safe Management. I've talked about it before on here. It's a crisis intervention training. Most front-line social work jobs in the helping professions require employees to do something like this. Examples of similar trainings are Understanding and Managing Aggressive Behaviour, and Non-Violent Crisis Intervention.

Somehow, a firefighter caught wind of us doing Safe Management, liked what he saw and asked if we could do a "different" version, targeted for firefighters and condensed to a two hour workshop.

We didn't really know what we were doing. We figured that they may have encountered people belonging to the demographics we support, gotten non-typical responses from them and had less-than ideal outcomes. So we decided to develop our training around this assumption.

We didn't have a lot of guidance. Turns out that firefighters enjoy learning by doing, so they didn't give us much criteria or context. They just asked us to develop something that we could run through a team of seasoned workers that could help us fine-tune our material.

It's very important at this point that I emphasize that the product we presented to the firefighters was 100% original content from me and my co-facilitator. We were approached because of our background in Safe Management training but none of the material translated to the workshop we presented.

We called our workshop "Take The Heat Off", as an attempt to connect what firefighters do with the emotional state that a person might be in when they're trying to deescalate them.

During our run-through, we received a lot of good feedback specifying what they were looking for. I was positively surprised at how open they were to talking about introspective topics, and how they deferred to us as experts on emotion. I had gone in thinking that these perspectives would be a hard pitch.

One thing that surprised me was that they were interested in our expertise surrounding vulnerable people generally, not just people with developmental disabilities specifically.

Overall, they seemed encouraged by our presentation and asked us to be a part of their basic training going forward. We're currently figuring out logistics, but from the request put out before us, it looks like I'll be doing about as much Take The Heat Off as I do Safe Management, at least in the immediate future.

The person in charge of training at our organization said that it went better than he ever expected.

Dreams in 2022

One of my goals for 2022 was to record my dreams more consistently. I was disappointed with my follow through on that, but looking over last year, I'm surprised at how many I managed to write down. I'm going to put a few of them on here.

Lots of my dreams included people I know in real life and information about my relationship to them. For confidentiality reasons, I won't include personal information. Some of my dreams were pretty dark, and some were pretty mundane, so I won't share those either because they aren't fun.

I'm a fan of dream interpretation, but because these spanned over the last year I'm not confident that I'll remember what was happening in my life at the time. I don't think I can offer much insight on the deeper meanings

Dream 1: I'm on a platform, gliding along a track. I get stopped by a fare inspector and instructed to tap my card on their reader. I tap it and they say that it doesn't show that I paid at the previous stop.

A person on the glider ahead of me tells me that there was a stop a little while ago where I was supposed to pay, and this one is for confirmation. I don't remember a previous stop and have to get off my glider.

I ask the security guards if I can walk back to the previous stop. They say they don't want me walking back on my own, but I can walk back with a musician they know. They say he's going to have to go back anyway because he's going to "bomb"

Dream 2: The forest spirits lost something and they tell me and some other people to harvest wild celery to help them find it.

Dream 3: Found three animals. They are woolly like sheep, have trunks like elephants, are the size of dogs, and meow like cats. I bring them home. Their original owners track them back to our place. We pretend not to be home, but they confront us and we give them back.

Dream 4: My brother talks me into pretending to be a masked supervillain and to try and steal something from a group of women. They attack me. I don't want to hit them so I wind up getting unmasked. I'm a lawyer, so I'm mad at my brother for talking me into committing a crime.

Dream 5: I'm conducting interviews and there's a woman who won't tell us her name. We ask her, but she gets awkward and changes the subject. We tell her that she doesn't have to tell us her real name, just something that we can call her, but she gets awkward again. We ask some people that know her and they also become awkward. Later we find out she filed a complaint about us because we tried to figure out her name.

(I don't remember why I kept saying "we", or who else was conducting the interviews) 

Dream 6: I move into a new apartment with my old roommate. He's taking care of the neighbour's dog. I open the balcony door and she runs out and jumps off. My roommate goes to find her.

After he leaves my cat Kieran runs out and jumps off the balcony too. I go out and find him crouched with big eyes. I remember that this behaviour is called the "church mouse".

I bring him into the building but he keeps squirming in my arms. He escapes and gets into some dirty water the custodians were using.

I grab him but he gets me covered in the dirty water and after this, everything I touch gets dirty. I see a sign saying there are surveillance cameras and I worry that I'll be caught getting dirty water everywhere.

Dream 7: I'm climbing a mountain and find a room built into the rock. I go in an find a freezer full of chicken breasts. I take one and leave a soft pretzel to replace it. I also leave a note saying what I did.

The guy who lives there suddenly shows up and is yelling at me, so I push him down the mountain. He's knocked out.

I'm irritated now so I take another chicken breast and take back my soft pretzel.

Comfort Inn Waffle and Trip to Doon Campus

Last weekend me and Lee-Anne were in Guelph for my brother's birthday and we stayed at the Comfort Inn. This is exciting for a specific reason. Six months ago we were in Guelph for my birthday and we stayed at the same hotel. At that time I was still fairly new to diabetes and I was being pretty strict with my diet. However, I got surprised by the person serving breakfast because I thought it was self-serve. So when she offered me a waffle I panicked and accepted.

I used strawberry jam instead of maple syrup because I thought the berries might offset some of the unhealthiness. Obviously it didn't. My sugars bounced out of target range, I think for the first time since diagnosis.

So this time I decided to intentionally eat the same thing that put my sugars out six months ago to see if my body reacted any differently. Same location, same meal, and even the same server. I asked for a waffle and I slathered it in strawberry jam. My sugars spiked but they stayed in range!

It's pretty cool to see that my body is capable of doing something it wasn't able to do six months ago.

Yesterday me and Lee-Anne went to the Conestoga College Doon Campus to meet a friend of mine who works for the college, but used to run a youth employment program in Guelph that I attended. If you don't remember, I graduated from Conestoga Doon. I'd spoken to this guy over video chat a few times over the past couple of years, but I hadn't seen him in person since he used to work in Guelph (which was a while ago), and I hadn't been to Doon Campus since I moved out of student housing in 2015.

While I was there I ran into an old instructor of mine. I've seen him in person before, as I'd run into him on the Iron Horse Trail and we'd caught up once over video chat. It was cool to see two of my primary contacts from the college while I was there. I think there's only two other people that still work at the college that I'm as familiar with.

The campus hasn't changed drastically. I got to see the remnants of their COVID measures. They had plexiglass barriers in front of the Information Desk, where I used to work. They had racks of medical masks available to the public with signs that read "Masks STRONGLY Recommended", but I think I only saw one person wearing one.

 I get it. The safety measures have been getting less prioritized but the messages aren't factually incorrect, so the language used for them seems kind of strong at this point but it's hard to know when to modify them. At this time we have a lot of signage that's a little out of sync with the current societal attitudes.

They added a Starbucks. Before, we only had a Tim Horton's and you could get Starbucks brand coffee at the cafeteria. So now you have one more option.

Vending machines still accept cash. At the University of Waterloo they have gone completely cashless, but Conestoga's not quite as close to the cutting edge.

Sandwich Central in the Cafeteria is now a sushi place. I wanted to see if they still had a stirfry station but it wasn't open. The daily soups were still in the same place.

The section of the cafeteria known as the Blue Room isn't blue anymore. They revamped it with more subdued and varied colours, but it's still called the Blue Room for some reason.

The Sanctuary, which was a a secondary cafeteria, smaller and slightly more intentional in design, is now called The Venue and it's a sit-down restaurant. When we went in I was surprised to be approached by a server.

The Coz-E-Corner, which is like a micro-cafeteria that has a Subway and a Pizza Pizza is still in the same place and branded the same.

The Aboriginal Services Office got moved to a new section of the school. It's not in as public a space, but they have more room and it's next to the Indigenous Garden. The person that used to run it left to work at the University of Waterloo, which I already knew, but when I saw that the office wasn't where I remembered it I was a little worried that they'd scrapped the concept once that guy left.

They've also fully rebranded to Be-Da-Bin Gammick, which means "Place of new beginnings". When I was a student, the guy in charge was trying to get away from the term "Aboriginal" because being "abnormal" means "not normal", so "Aboriginal" sounds like "not original" when they are actually the original people to live on the continent. But for recognition they had "Aboriginal Services Office, Be-Da-Bin Gammick, Place of New Beginnings" printed on the front of the office in entirety. Now it just says "Be-Da-Bin Gammick" without even the translation, which I think is cool.

They still had an "Expect Respect" slogan displayed. I used to work for the Respect Campaign, but at the time they were phasing out the term "Respect" for "Student Life Leaders"", so I was surprised to see that there's at least some remnants of the original Respect message this long after I graduated. Happy to see it.

The Atrium, which is like a really wide set of giant carpeted stairs where I used to hang out, looked smaller then I remembered. We went and looked at the house I used to live in, and that looked smaller as well. It's a pretty common phenomenon to think things don't look as large as they did in your memory, but that's usually only for childhood memories, and the reason is that the things didn't get bigger, you got bigger and so they look smaller in comparison. But I was fully grown in college, so it's weird that everything looks smaller.

Weather, Plastic, and Teams

We recently had a huge snowstorm. We've had a few really warm spells and there was a time that it felt like we weren't going to have a proper winter at all, but it seems it was just postponed because we've had a series of storms and wickedly cold weather as we near Spring. This wasn't the coldest or windiest we've had this year, but it beat the others in shear output of snow. Since we live in a basement apartment, I was wondering if it would be dangerous if the snow collected above our fire escape windows when I saw a bright flash. I thought I recognized the phenomenon, but it felt out of place and I didn't have time to consider why that was before a loud rumble confirmed what it was.

We were having a snowthunderstorm! I'd never seen such a thing before and frankly didn't know it was possible. I went outside to experience it personally. There was a lot of thunder and lightning accompanying the extremely heavy snowfall.

It felt so surreal. There was a time when I think I could have appreciated it simply as the awesome power of nature, but with all the talk of climate change any unusual phenomenon  sparks concern that its a symptom of the Earth's ill health.

Apparently thundersnow is an established thing, although considered rare. I didn't understand most of what I read, but I don't think it implied anywhere that it was a byproduct of climate change, so that's nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundersnow

Recently Canada banned a number of single-use plastics, including grocery bags and plastic cutlery. I approve of this but it seems kind of minimal. I'd guess that packaging and transportation are much more significant drivers of climate change. I wonder if the more common use of medical masks alone offset the positive effects of banning plastic grocery bags. Oh well, maybe it's best to implement these changes incrementally. We saw the impact of large social change during the COVID measures.

It must be the production of these things that are banned, not the use or distribution of them because plenty of places still offer them. At this point, I've seen Wal Mart and Food Basics operating without plastic bags, although they still have those little clear ones for produce. The closest grocery store from us is using compostable bags, like what you use for food waste. I'm not sure if this is actually a viable workaround or if they're just using up their supply. If it is a viable alternative, I wonder why the larger companies haven't adopted it.

Rexall and the LCBO are using paper, but they always have. I remember a time when most places gave you the option of plastic or paper bags. I think there was even a time when people thought plastic was the more environmentally-friendly option because paper was "killing trees". Of course, now we know plastic is overall worse because it doesn't break down. If paper used to be a lucrative option for companies, I wonder why most places don't use it now.

But I'm not actually trying to champion compostable plastic or paper. Most places are encouraging use of reusable cloth bags, which is probably the best choice.

The other day I ordered a salad at a community centre cafe and they gave me a plastic fork. I wonder when we'll stop seeing that, and what fast food places will use to fill that void.

My work life has been turbulent. Our boss retired at the end of January and the person on our team that had the most experience got promoted to his position. Then we hired a new person to fill the place of the person that got promoted. Then someone else on the team had to quit their job a couple weeks ago because of life circumstances and we're down a person again. So we're waiting on another new hire.

I don't think I've talked about any of this on the blog. We were given a little notice, but the information came to us before a lot of other people so I didn't want to make it public, even though this blog doesn't get enough traffic for that to be a huge concern. I could have talked about it a few weeks ago, but I let the events occur before mentioning it here.

Tarot Reading for 2023

It's the end of February and I haven't updated with my annual tarot reading. Truth is, I did it at the usual time, but the results were really weird and I didn't know if I wanted to share.

I used to do a "Year Ahead Spread" which would have one central card to symbolize the whole year, then 12 cards surrounding it in the positions of the numbers on an analogue clock. It seems that spread fell out of fashion since it was too much like "fortune telling". Tarot is supposed to give a full picture, including the past and present, and offer options and advice with one or more potential futures based on behaviours that you can choose to adopt or reject. It doesn't usually cement your fate.

So I stopped doing that spread and for the past few years I've just been doing the Celtic Cross, which is the most standard.

For Christmas Lee-Anne got me a tarot journal and it offered a "New Year's Tarot Spread". I tried it, and I'll share the results here and the meanings of the cards, but I won't get too into the analysis since, as I mentioned above, it's a weird reading.

1. The Previous Year In Summary: The Magician

The Magician is card #1 of the Major Arcana. It comes after The Fool, which is card #0. It features a man at a table with a wand, pentacle, sword, and cup laid out in front of him, each item representing a suit in the Minor Arcana. This card is the spark of life that sets everything into motion, and the presence of each of the suits represents limitless potential.

2. Lessons Learned From the Past Year: 9 of Cups Reversed

Cups represent emotions and the element of water. This card features a man sitting in a chair, backed by nine cups. Upright it means emotional contentment and stability. In reverse it represents some kind of emotional stagnancy.

3. Aspirations for the Next 12 Months: King of Swords

Swords are the element of air, the mind, burdens, and strength. The King of Swords is someone that has reached a level of stability and projects a sense of authority. He is able to carry life's burdens without distress.

4. What Empowers You in Reaching Your Aspirations: 6 of Cups

The Six of Cups features a young man passing a cup filled with flowers to a young woman. There are four cups in front of the couple and one behind the young man. This represents generosity and some kind of emotional exchange. Wearing your heart on your sleeve. Usually it's emphasized that there is a playfulness and childishness to this. An inner child surfacing.

5. What May Stand in the Way of Reaching Your Aspirations: The Devil

We have an image of classical devil sitting on a throne. A couple stand before him with chains around their necks. It should be pointed out that the chains are loose. They could be free if they only had the strength to lift the chains off of them. This card represents addictions.

6. Your Relationships and Emotions in the Coming Year: 3 of Swords

This card shows a heart with three swords piercing it. It represents heartbreak and emotional pain.

7. Your Career, Work, and Finances: 9 of Swords

We see a man sitting up in bed, his face buried in his hands. There are nine swords in the background. This card means restlessness, difficulty sleeping, a feeling of heaviness. It shows burdens weighing down on someone, to the point that they feel like they cannot find reprieve even when they try to relax.

8. Your Health and Well Being: 6 of Wands Reversed

This is the first time getting a suit other than cups or swords. Wands represent the element of fire, energy, spirituality, and everyday tasks. This card shows a man on a horse riding forward, lifting a wand high in front of a crowd of people. The people in the audience raise wands in support.

Despite being the spirituality suit, in the latter half wands get weirdly combative. Upright, this card shows a leader bringing forward a group of people to challenge some opponent. In reverse it's the same, but the person is being foolhardy, their bravado is empty or unwarranted.

9. Your Spiritual Energy and Inner Fulfilment: Ace of Cups Reversed

Aces are beginnings, so this card means the beginning of an emotional journey.  In reverse, it means the person feels apprehensive about the path forward.

10. What You Most Need to Focus On in the Year Ahead: 7 of Wands Reversed

This is the natural continuation of my health and well-being card. In that one the person was marching off to battle. In this one they've arrived and are actively in combat. We see a man at the top of a hill, using a wand to fend off the blows from wands striking out at him from below. In reverse it just means that he isn't doing so great. He's taken a few licks.

11. Your Most Important Lesson For the Coming Year: The Star

The Sun is one of the happiest cards in the deck. It means that everything you want is right before you. The star is similarly positive, it's just that what you want is much further away. This card represents reward after long, sustained effort.

12. Overall, Where You Are Headed in the Next 12 Months: 4 of Wands

This card depicts a couple lifting bouquets of flowers in front of a castle, there are four wands before them that are decorated with a wreath. This card represents celebration.

Analysis

Obviously the card I'm most worried about is the Three of Swords under relationships and emotions. Getting the heartbreak card there in the year you're supposed to be married is not nice. It bothered me enough that I pulled a clarification card (which I never do). I got three of cups in reverse, which shows three women dancing and clashing their cups together in celebration. In reverse it represents overindulgence or undeserved celebration. Confusing and unhelpful.

I grew doubtful enough about this spread that I tried a Celtic Cross. I was keeping my eye on the "people in your life" card which is where relationships would surface and got the six of swords reversed. Represents a difficult journey full of burdens, and going in the wrong direction. My advice was Lovers in Reverse. If I take that advice I get King of Pentacles Reversed, and if I don't I get Queen of Swords Reverse. This is all not very reassuring.

There's been a theme lately of anticipated heartbreak and a desired future where I am a bad leader.

As far as this spread goes, my past and future cards look decent enough. Last year was full of potential. I should have learned not to be static in how I feel, and to open myself up to changes of heart. My biggest hope is to get things under control, establish myself and rise above my challenges. I can accomplish this by being generous, vulnerable, and reaching out to others. I might fall short of my goals if I indulge in addictive behaviour. What I need to keep in mind is that it's a tough battle forward, and I'm sure to take some blows in the coming year. What I'm sure to learn is that my goals won't necessarily be achieved this year, but I'm still on the right track. Overall, the next year will be a celebration.

Pretty straightforward. But there also appears to be four "human aspect" cards, and those have me looking pretty miserable. I'm going to be emotionally heartbroken, I'm going to be restless from financial burden, I'm going to be undeservedly confident about my health, and I'm going to be spiritually apprehensive.

As far as personal connections I can see... There isn't much. I've got a lot of swords, cups, and wands, but no pentacles so I guess finances and material goods won't be much of an influence in the coming year. I can see the bit about being overly confident in my health and later getting hit for it being connected to my recent successes in lowering my blood sugar and losing weight. The devil could be explained as me lapsing into old habits after celebrating too early and getting punished for it.

Finances might not be too important, but since the spread pushed the topic and it said I'd feel restless, I anticipate that that's about spending a large sum of money on a wedding while the economy isn't the best. But it doesn't present as especially concerning.

That's all that comes to me at the moment though. Maybe it will become clearer with time.

Health Update

This past Friday I had my regular quarterly doctor's appointment that is recommended for people with diabetes. This was my second session since my diagnosis. Last time, I dropped from a blood sugar level of 10.5 to 6.9.

Over 7 is considered diabetic, meaning I had dropped into pre-diabetic levels, which are between 6 and 6.9. So I was barely in that category and only managed to maintain it with the use of medication. Still, my doctor and dietician were very enthusiastic about my progress.

I was told that the first target was to get my blood sugar beneath 7, and the second target was to get it to 6.5. This time my blood sugar was 5.9.

This means that not only did I meet the new target, I'm beneath pre-diabetic levels. Again, only making it to the new category by a hair and only with the sustained use of medication, but happy that things are moving in this direction.

I got to see a copy of my results before going into the doctor's office, and the form said I was at risk for pre-diabetes. Kind of like saying I'm at risk to be at risk.

I'd brought in my home blood pressure monitor so that we could compare the results between it and there's. It worked the first time we tried, but then kept giving error messages which it sometimes does. At home, I just keep readjusting until it follows through with a reading. The nurse inspected it more closely and found a small break in the cord connecting the cuff to the machine. I think one of my cats chewed it and slightly punctured it. She recommended I get a new cuff so I'll have to get one and bring it in to the next session. Aggravation with medical tech remains a constant, but to be fair it's not the monitor's fault that my cat chewed it.

We did take my blood pressure with their monitor six times to get an average. It came out as 120 over 78. That's normal blood pressure. This was surprising for me, as I never thought I'd get to that level in the office, even if I got my resting BP there. This is because I usually get a case of White Coat Syndrome, confirmed by comparing my office results with my home results and the numbers from the 24 hour cuff. I guess I just got used to getting tested in the office. Taking my pressure six times probably helped.

My pulse was weirdly high and I couldn't get it down though. I don't know why it was like that but it was only during the check up.

I've also lost 15 pounds. If I can do that between each session I could lose another 45 pounds before my wedding. I think the initial weight loss is the most dramatic though, it should go a bit slower from here on out.

There's a bunch of other numbers they look at as well, but I can't remember all of them. They were all mostly good but one was a little high and another was a little low. They were both improved since my last session, though.

My doctor said she was really happy, she said that my improvement is "dramatic" and that what I've accomplished isn't easy.

The goal of all diabetics is to go "into remission", which would basically mean not having the condition anymore. I was told by my dietician to think of it more as "remission" and not "recovery" because my status would be based on whatever intervention was still being practiced, even if it's lifestyle. Basically, if I go back to how I was living before, I'd develop diabetes again. I think to be properly in remission, I'd have to be able to maintain non-diabetic levels without the help of medication.

Since it's usually considered a progressive condition, most people don't get to that remission status, but with the results of my previous two sessions, I'm beginning to feel cautiously optimistic.

Changes

 A couple of weeks ago a friend of Lee-Anne's family passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. She was only sixty and passed from a heart attack with no prior health concerns. Last weekend we went to her funeral.

I wasn't particularly close to her but I did get to meet her. It was at Lee-Anne's parents 40th anniversary. We were sitting at the same table and chatted a lot. I remember being warned about her wicked sense of humour and being worried about getting roasted. But when I met her I found that she was more the type to get information on you and do "bits" like a stand-up comedian. She teased but it made you feel included and "in" on the joke, not bullied like I felt people had prepared me for.

Lee-Anne's parents were close enough to her that they read a passage from the Bible at the funeral ceremony. She was going to be invited to our wedding this September.

We're going to dedicate a spot with her picture so that she'll be with us on the day posthumously. There's a couple of other people that we'll include with that.

In other news, my boss just retired. He'd been working for our agency for thirty years. His first twenty-three were in the position I presently have, and the last seven were as a manager. As a branch of Extend-a-Family, we're a pretty small team of just seven people, so whenever there's a staff change it feels like a big shift. 

Obviously when the person leaving is the manager, that feels even more significant. We know who's taking his role though. It's the person on our team with the most seniority and we all trust her, so hopefully the transition will be smooth.

We'll still need a new employee to take the position that the new boss is leaving. Lee-Anne's joked about applying, since she recently finished a paid internship and is looking for work. I think that would be awkward.

Two weeks ago I taught a Safe Management session. Over the pandemic it was sometimes impossible to teach the course due to lockdowns so it was removed as a requirement. There were times when we were allowed to do the training, but we weren't able to generate enough interest as long as it wasn't required.

During this time, I provided some really awkward virtual trainings for the WALES team (my team) and the Summer Program, and I did one in-person session for WALES.

This was the first time back teaching the general public though. There are usually three instructors at the agency, but the two that aren't me quit during the pandemic. We hired two more people, but only one of them has had an opportunity to teach. It was for the in-person WALES session, and since she used to be on that team, the pressure was off.

Now it is required again, and the pressure was on. The other facilitator had been hired and trained nearly a year ago, and this was her first time teaching. It's almost time for her to recertify as a trainer and she just taught her first course.

It went fine. Usually we host the training once every three months, but because we have such a backlog, we need to host trainings monthly for a bit.

In other news, my Christmas gift for Lee-Anne arrived: