Tuesday, June 24, 2008

working for pennies

I don't know why i'm putting this in blog format. i have 3 weeks to go before i can go on maternity leave, and today is Aloka's big end of school year picnic for all the families. I got a phone call at work from Josh saying he forgot Aloka needs fairy wings because the children are all doing a play for the parents.
i raced up to her school with a pair of fairy wings i bought from the store where i unfortunately have to be working today.
there were happy parents and children everywhere, i saw Aloka getting ready with all her friends for the play, tons of parents basking in the sun out in the yard where the play is, everyone bringing lots of food. and i have to go back to work so i can earn my $12 that i get per hour instead of being with Aloka. Then Josh shows up with his new girlfriend, yay. So they get to be there for Aloka, but not me. I feel great today.

Monday, June 02, 2008

wow, i'm back!

I can't believe Blogger worked this time! I've been trying to post (via my slooow dialup connection) but i kept getting a weird blank page, every time i tried. so i gave up for a while. but now it's working again! i'm going to see how it is uploading photos. if it's painful, well, i'm not sure how often i'll post, but we'll see.
so where do i start? maybe i'll just do a couple little posts at a time, because i do have a lot of photos! we've finally moved about a month ago, which was, well, to summarize, a total nightmare. But finally being moved it's great. I packed up my entire house singlehandedly, and Richard and Josh both helped move everything. Josh came over one day and helped move the big furniture, and then Richard did all the other runs of zillions of boxes and other furniture.

My landlady ended up being a complete psychopath, (really...not joking here) as in, calling me 3 times at 6:30am and once at 12:30am just to see if i had an extension cord she was looking for. She was calling me telling me how great i was, and then in the same sentence saying what a mess i left everything. This is delusional, the place was spotless. I even have videos. Then she would start crying. Honestly, crazy... but after twice of threatening to call the police, i think she's leaving me alone finally. What a weird experience.

It's been a very stressful pregnancy i must say. Even being here now, I'm more broke than i've ever been in my life. I'm perpetually overdrawn, and my paychecks just keep bringing me back to a zero balance. It's nuts! But i have confidence this too shall pass and things will improve.

Aloka loves it out here. We've been going on lots of walks, often right after dinner, and she just loves it. She collects rocks, jumps in puddles, examines all sorts of rodent holes and burrows... we found a little stream yesterday, it was beautiful, and she had so much fun just pulling up grass and throwing it in the stream and watching it float away. There's also a huge rock yard across the road from us. They have beautiful flagstone and granite that they sell by the pallete to folks on the coast. At the rock yard there's an enormous sand pile that Aloka loves playing in, it's so fun! It makes me want to order a dump truck load of sand for our house. Who needs a sandbox??

Another fun discovery is the thousands (and i mean thousands!) of wild strawberries growing everywhere here, on our land and everywhere you look pretty much. They are covered in flowers, so we'll being seeing fruit soon! We also have a ton of wild blueberries on our land. Such a different life than living in the town.
The downside is that it's 10km or 15km from town and soooo expensive on gas. I don't know how to afford that part of things. i'm probably putting $100 to $150 in gas in my car every month. And you Americans who are complaining about gas prices right now? We pay $137 per litre!! Thats around $5.50 per gallon!! And it's supposed to go up to $1.40-$1.45 this summer, crazy!

Anyway, that's all i have time to type right now, but i'll try to post some photos. I'll start with some cute photos of a goat farm that Aloka went to on a school field trip. Josh went too. Next post i'll try out the photos from May Day which was wonderful!