Yes, there are. Many of them.
So this blog has gone dormant lately. I can tell you that I've gone back to Grand River Unitarian, this time with Eva. The sermon this time round was on radical compassion, kindness and love--right up our alley--and it heavily featured the lyrics of Renegades, by X Ambassadors, which I have fallen in love with. I went despite having worked both the night before and the night of, and I made it through thanks to Red Rain. Yes, I will shill for this for a moment: it tastes like rancid cough syrup, but ounce for ounce it's the best bang for your buck in terms of energy drinks on the market. A dollar a shot, for something that's about the effect of four cups of coffee? Can't beat that.
No, I don't drink them often. I know they -- and Monster and all their ilk -- are not good for you. But damn it, sometimes you need a kick in the ass. All things in moderation...including moderation.
Anyway. Since I made it through without too much issue -- this will, in fact, become a steady habit for me. Not sure I can stay for the social if I worked Saturday night and will work Sunday night, but if one of those nights is free I'm going to do it. Starting, in fact, this week. There are people there it's definitely worth getting closer to. And the environment felt just as welcoming to me as it did the first time. My only beef is that the pieces the pianist plays aren't named in the order of service.
(Eva said I play just as well as Matthew Gartshore does. Ahem...not even close. Not even close. I'd go just to hear a concert from him.)
I am getting through life on substantially less sleep than I used to absolutely require. Most days it's five or six hours; some days it's two or three. I would like to get more sleep again, but it doesn't seem to be essential.
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I never thought much about the future, growing up. We moved too often; the future was unknowable, not worth wasting mental effort on. Instead, I tended to escape into the past, a habit I only broke once my present improved. Eva, in other words.
My mom ran a variety store in Ingersoll for a little while. It was open 24 hours; yours truly worked there for a summer, mostly on graveyards. Mom made sure no favouritism was shown by giving me all the shit jobs, but behind the scenes she was paying me well--well enough that it should have funded two or three years of university. It only funded one, because freedom to spend spawned a hellish addiction, but we won't get into that now.
I was getting some of the money that should have been going to my mother. Green Gables had a rather unique payroll system in place: Mom got paid a truly staggering amount of money each month. Out of that she had to buy all her inventory and pay her staff, and there were probably miscellaneous expenses in there as well, and whatever was left over was hers. This to me would seem to punish success: sell inventory and you'll have to replace it. But I didn't know all the ins and outs of the system. I do know that my mom figured out once that for all the hours she put in, she was making something like three bucks an hour.
Her real pay came in social capital. She knew much of the town, and got along with most of the people she knew.
I find myself musing, more and more, about emulating her.
I picture a general store...perhaps with more attached, depending on who's in our life at the time and what they're passionate about. Something like this place, just down the road apiece from my dad's. It'd definitely be a village, not a city, though, because of that social capital. I find myself increasingly enamoured of the idea of getting to know the people who come through my door.
A store...a little restaurant...maybe a marina. It's a thought. It's something I would really enjoy.
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