Nurse Sean (dot) com

So, I’m on strike.

After spending all that time writing that last post, I realized that I meant to list several reasons as to why my life is chaotic, and I ignored all but one of them. I didn’t intend to write so much on the one subject.

Last Thursday, workers at the telephone company I work for (Telus) set up picket lines and declared themselves locked out. It’s a long and boring story, but Telus says we’re on strike, the union says we’re locked out.

Managment at Telus has slowly and increasingly treated us like pieces of garbage. Two years ago, Telus was an amazing company to work for, but now, it is a hell hole. An absolutely sickening company. I won’t go into examples because I don’t have a thousand hours, but just take my word for it.

The union is declaring that they want stronger protection for our jobs, no out sourcing, wage equity, yadda yadda yadda.

What it comes down to me is simply that Telus is mean to us, and I now have the chance to protest them. I am protesting against them in general, not just for detailed contracting issues. I am standing up against them because I don’t believe in the way they run their company.

What makes me sad are the people that are crossing picket lines. We are fighting for a better, more respectful work environment, and all they can think of is “Telus is offering me lots of money to cross the line–so I’m going to.”

I trust to easily.

During a union rally, Telus decided to parade about 200 managers and workers who crossed the line in front of us. They chanted about how much they love Telus, they shouted slurs at us, they laughed at us. The stand off became quite intense and felt close to errupting in violence.

And amongst these people standing against us were those I called friends, peers, and team members. They were people I trusted. They have aligned themselves against me for a few dollars. They couldn’t care less if what they think they are doing is right or wrong–they’re just excited about being financially rewarded for switching sides.

Ironically, many of the people I saw chanting about how much they love Telus, were those that complained the most about their jobs and managers.

It didn’t make me mad, it just saddened me…that the human spirit can be so easily influenced by money–by simple bribes. But that’s life.

I could go on forever. I don’t think I could even justly describe my feelings on the matter. I’m not a good enough poet or writer.

It has been a bit of an odd week.

Usually, order rules the summer months (at least from what I’ve noticed), but the last couple weeks have been 100% chaos for me. Not fully in negative ways, in fact, I rarely see chaos as negative–simply a fact of life.

First off is my personal curse. I’m not necessarily one to buy into curses, but let me tell you, there’s times when you just have to admit that something bizarre is going on. The curse, in a nutshell, is as follows…

I housesit for my parents and my sister very frequently. For my parents, it is usually two or three times a year ranging from one to two weeks. My sister is a slight bit more erratic. She is an adventure traveler. She has gone to Asia, Africa, South America…well…everywhere! I have spent up to a month taking care of her house and cats, once or twice a year. She had a baby last year, so I’ve only been to her place once in the last year.

Anyway, what happens is that my love life is entirely affected by my stays at these locations. My sister’s house is the positive influence, and my parent’s house is the negative influence. I find that when I stay at my sister’s place, I am bombarded with requests for dates—by email or in person. In fact more than one of my relationships has begun while staying at my sister’s house.

My parent’s house is a much different story. Whenever I go there, I feel a sort of “black cloud” hanging over the entire place. This may stun you, and you may think I’m joking, but four (yes FOUR) of my relationships have ended the day I stepped into my parent’s house to start taking care of their cats.

SO! I was absolutely paranoid about staying at my parent’s house for two weeks this summer (as I’m always paranoid about it when I’m dating someone). This time last year, I walked into my parent’s house, and V. broke it off with me…the year before it was G. And those memories were hanging on tight as I entered.

After all, I have been dating R. for sixth months now and I’m half way done moving into his place. But I thought—as I always do—that this “curse” is my own personal laughable joke. But, I felt that palpable black cloud still hanging around the house. It gave me the creeps. I’m talking literal here – I actually feel something strong and negative at my parent’s house when I’m there house sitting.

It’s rare to here me talk this strongly in a pagan style.

I arrived at 9pm, and had some food, fed the cats, checked my email, and settled into my room to sleep after setting my alarm for 7:30am.

I’m awoken by my cell phone, and thinking it was my alarm, I turned it off before realizing that it was my phone.

I listen to the message – It’s R.

He says “Hello, sorry to call so early, we need to talk”

“NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!” Is what I was thinking. I don’t remember, but I could have been saying it out loud. But I also had to laugh. I mean, this curse is slowly going from laughable coincidence to serious curse!

Did I mention that R. and I went on our first date six months ago—on the first night I arrived at my sister’s house to housesit for her?

Are you seeing the pattern I’m seeing?

Anyway, I spend the day resigned to the fact that R. and I were no longer going to be dating. I had plans made to move all my stuff to my parent’s and live there free for the last year of school. I was sad, but seriously, this is all just becoming part of my life.

I decided to bring out my secret weapon though—my sister’s house! Occasionally, when I feel I need a boost in my love life, or as in this case, a counter measure for a horrible love curse, I drive by my sister’s house.

Yes, you’re seeing the one thing in my life that is very odd, bizarre, and makes me look like a fool. Well, the one thing I’m willing to admit too.

So, I drove down her block a couple times. Then, it’s off to my place to pack a little bit, and take it over to R.’s. I am desperately trying to ignore the stress pain in my stomach and my urge to vomit. I wasn’t able to call R. back, so was still in the dark, making plans to move to my parent’s, trying to think of ANYTHING else he could have meant by “we need to talk.”

He gets home at 5pm to my warm hugs. I ask him how everything is.

“oh great” he says.

“How was work?” I ask, hoping he notices my casual tone, and false look of no worry. I’m dying on the inside.

“All right.” He casually flips through the mail.

“Are you ok?”

“Yah.” He pauses. I look at him desperate for clues. “I think I’m manic-depressive. I was SO depressed this morning, and then all of a sudden this afternoon, I felt just fine.”

“Not exactly a definition of bipolar disorder, but ok” I’m feeling a bit braver. “Is that why you called me? Because you were depressed and wanted to talk?”

“Sort of. And I’m SO glad I didn’t talk to you!.” He looks at me, hugs me, “You’re SO cute.”

I decide I’m not going to push the issue, and I leave it at that. But seriously, when I walk into my parent’s house for a few hours, does an angel descend to the man I’m dating and convince him to dump me? I mean SERIOUSLY! This is all getting a bit too weird.

I went to my parent’s after spending some time with R. after that conversation. The black cloud feeling is gone. I feel positive again. But, I’m still at my parent’s. I won’t be safe until I’m not there anymore. Seriously, I won’t be surprised if our relationship ends in the next couple weeks.

Resist the curse R. RESIST!!!!

*UGH*

Another work place post…

Actually, my posts have been excessively sparse lately. I have been spending most of my time at R’s house these days, and I don’t want to post from there. Reason being, I want to go through and set all posts about R. as private before there’s any chance that he can see them.

We will be sharing a computer in a few days, so it will be possible for him to see what I’m writing. So, obviously, I don’t want him seeing anything that he wasn’t meant to see.

I’ve been playing house wife the last couple days. Sending R off to work with a kiss, and welcoming him home with a hug. Ironing his clothes and setting them out for him. Grocery shopping–making him dinner. Watching Days of Our Lives.

Seriously, I think I was meant for this life! I love taking care of my man!

How 1950s is that! (If your a women).

******

Work is a very strange atmosphere lately. We will be going on strike on Friday, so there’s very much a “calm before the storm” happening.

I feel like a war is about to start, and I am one of the soldiers. Fortunately it’s a war of ideologies–non violent. At least, not yet. Strikes do have the tendency to get vicious, but let’s hope it never gets to that!

The tension is certainly thick. But, for now, business as usual.

*******

Moving begins in the next few days–I hate it!

Add to that, I’m house sitting at my parent’s for two week.

An organizational nightmare!

In case anybody hasn’t heard of the band “The Killers” or only know one
or two of their songs, I strongly recommend discovering their album
called “Hot Fuss.” They are absolutely amazing! If you know
them, and hate them, well, to each their own.

I’ve been delving into poetry lately. I remembered a phrase from
my music teacher. “If you want to be a good trumpet player, you need to
start listening to famous trumpet players.”

Sure, it sounds like good advice, and it is, but seriously, how many
people out their study poetry before becoming a self-proclaimed genius
of poetry? I think most people assume they’re good, start
writing, discover they have mild talents, get carried away because
people compliment them, and then they start diving into the
professional stuff seriously. At least, this is what I see from
my recent escapades into poetry places like pathetic.org.

My point, anyway, is that I’m discovering my voice a little bit.
For the longest time, I thought that in order to be a great poet you
needed to study a dictionary and thesaurus. You needed to be able
to impress people with all the wierd and crazy words you’re able to
work into your stuff. I always found I didn’t like this style so
much. It just seemed like random, far-fetched, impossible words
put toger in order to make the poet look smart. Granted, it’s
amazing to discover new words, and to read beautiful sentences made out
of them, and especially the ingenious new way of saying something in a
refreshing way. But, you need to be very skilled in order to do
this without crossing the line.

I hope my rant makes sense, and my point is that I have found some
beautiful poetry that matches more my own style. I have
discovered a style in which very plain speech is used–almost as you
would hear in daily conversation. It is used in such a way that
is deceptively simple, but hides an inner truth.

For example–what I see in pathetic.org and other sights are some poems like this:

Your calculus of corpuscle is
the verisimilitude of
dyspereunia and jingoism.

Whereas the professional published poems I see look more like this:

Your hardened bloody globule of body fluid
only appears to be true like
painful sex and excess nationalism.

Now, both of these poems mean the exact same thing pretty much.
But can you tell the difference between the poem in which I just used
the biggest words I could think of, and the one using accessable
language? I find the second one much more interesting–the images
are there, and sharp, and vibrant–and and they are less egotistically
boring. However, the poem still doesn’t seem to make sense.
And I’m finding that most of the poets I like use even simpler
language. They give you a feel like there are character’s and a
plot to your poem.

Take a look at this:

You have blood clotting on your leg.
It is mixed with body fluids.
This all seems to be too real.
Was the sex painful?
Were you thinking of the government while it happened?

Maybe I’m alone here, but I find the simplicity of the words in this
third example of pretty much the exact same poem much more
powerful. It’s more three dimensional too–It leads to more questions like: who’s talking?, who is
he talking too? what? where? why? when? There’s depth, not
just fancy words. Some would argue that the third
example is too much like a novel. And if they wanted to read a
novel–they would. And I think they are right, the third poem is
starting to tread close to the line between poetry and prose. So you have to be careful.

Ok, so this is probably basic for most of you amazing poets out
there. But seriously, it’s an amazing discovery for me. I
can write my thoughts out as I hear them in my mind–without
“decorating” them just to impress.

If you’re writing poems only to impress, you’re doing them for the wrong reason.

Anyway, with all the poetry reading I have been doing, this is what I’ve been thinking about.

End of Rant

**********************************************************

Have I ever sat here and raved about how much I am in love with iTunes
and my iPod? They are both so incredible. I loaded iTunes today,
and voila! It has a new podcast feature. So, now I’m
subscribed to several podcasts, and can’t wait to play around with them
some more. It’s like a make-it-yourself radio station. I
pick the shows I like, and they automatically update themselves when a
new show is ready. Add to the podcasts all my 3000 cds that I
uploaded (my entire
collection), many many audiobooks, and several hundred of my favorite
sentimental pictures. It really has become my media centre.
I hope the next step is the same thing, but with television.
Downloading whichever show I want, and when.

I think you’d need to be an iPod user to understand the power they have over their user.

In more interesting news, plans have been made for my official move to
R.’s appartment. After much debate and discussion, we have both
agreed that I would move to his basement suite. It’s dirt cheap,
which is what we both need. It may not be heaven, but it’s a
start. We’re both embarking on new, lucrative careers, and in
about two years–if all is well–we will be well positioned to buy a
wonderful house or condo.

Starting August first, I will start moving my stuff over. I
decided to overlap residences to ease the move. If you’ve ever
done this, you know the extra money is worth it! So, by September
first, I will be all moved in. That’s when the ackwardness of
learning to live together shall begin

This is all very scary! However, we spent the last five days
together and I must say, all was wonderful. Five days is a long
way from a lifetime though. I am, however, the type to just take
the plunge. No waffling for me.

So, let the moving begin. Ugh!