Monday, December 30
Dec. 30th, 2024 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
After a rough start (once again, very little sleep, and I am NOT functioning at full levels now), I managed to make a go of the day.
We did normal chores and animal feeding, cleaned up and got dressed, and went to the city, mainly to be with our friends.
I also wanted to take back a DVD we bought that it turns out we already have a copy, and return a shirt I bought at a vintage shop that said it was silk on the store tag, but not on the label once you looked closely (tag was faded and folded in a way that you couldn't easily see it).
The movie store was happy to take back our DVD, and I found something else to watch.
The mall where the movie store is located is right across the street from Senior's apartments, and though there were some younger folks, the mall very much felt like a "senior's shopping center". In one way it was a bit depressing to see so many elderly folks shuffling around, BUT at the very same time you had to admit that it was great to see them all getting out and doing something. The mall catered to them, having essential services like an optometrist, groceries, a place that made take home meals, a pharmacy. Not a bad place to live beside, really.
The vintage shop also took back the shirt no problem. I debated about keeping it, but I don't know that I was happy about it not being silk, after thinking it WAS silk. I felt that the shop was being a bit...sneaky about the original tag, because the way they put their store tag through it, you couldn't see that it was polyester without some real effort, and their store tag said "silk". Returning it was about the principle of not rewarding the store for being sneaky.
I did use the store credit to buy some books.
Then we went to our friends' place. I have been there before, but never spent much time sitting in the house itself. It's a great old place that they have done a lot of work on it, much like we have.
It really felt like a home. Comfortable and unfussy.
The hosts are a couple that the husband has helped us a lot on our home, and we have worked with them back and forth.
Another couple that came were also "house work" people, who live fairly close to us.
All of us have worked back and forth helping each other with projects. It's a wonderful way to do things.
There was a new couple there, and they are a bit younger. They are recently arrived in Canada from the Ukraine. We didn't talk too much about their flight, but that cannot be easy. They both left family behind and worry a lot about the war. They are trying to become permanent residents, but that is not easy, and may take years. They have learned English fairly well, and are working, so that's helpful. They have a teenage son that they very much want for him to become Canadian.
They do not want to go back, even if there is an end to the war, as their community would likely not treat them well for leaving the country. They might have trouble finding work.
They also spoke about how, as children, they were only 145 km from Chernobyl, and the woman was evacuated with her mother to a town quite far from their home for about six months while her father stayed behind to help people leaving areas closer to the facility who were evacuated but needed to go through a cleaning process and have their clothes taken away and so on to get rid of as much radiation as possible.
The husband's father had been a doctor trying to treat people for radiation sickness.
It's very strange to be sitting at a table with pretty average looking people, and have them speak of things that always seemed distant and "historical", and for them it had been their childhood.
The woman said she didn't even know what had happened until she was in university because at the time, there was so much covering up of the events that no one really knew what had happened. The information she got when she was older was because of the internet, and information from other countries.
We had a very good visit, and I'm glad I was able to pull myself along to go, even though I am so sleep deprived. The one couple who live closer to us have now been friends with us for over 15 years, and that kind of blows my mind because it just doesn't seem like it's been that long, but we've known them for as long as we've lived here.
They are the ones who invited the Ukrainian people, because the Ukrainian people have no family in Canada, and our friends (who met them through work) want to make sure they have people to be with for the holidays and so on, and are "adopting" them, helping them make their way here.
If things go well, they might well become members of our "work friends" group.
After visiting, we got a few groceries on the way out of the city.
I spoke with Trainwreck in the car on the way home. She is out of the hospital and in her own place again, and it sort of sounds like she had been drinking again, and she's kind of not giving that the weight that it deserves. In October she really did almost die from drinking, and here she is, just coming out of the hospital for the second time in just over two months. She made it sound like her sons were giving her shit for it, and of course they would. There is no way she should be so casual about her lapse.
She isn't saying that her being sick was FROM drinking, she said it was about her electrolytes and blood sugar, and almost in passing mentioned that she "had to stay away from booze" when she was SUPPOSEDLY not drinking any more.
So while she still won't attend AA, she said she does now have a number for a crisis line of some kind, that she will call if she needs to talk to someone. I don't think that does what AA does, which is forces you to be accountable for your actions, to work on the reasons why you drank, and to have to keep showing up and being honest about whether or not you are staying sober. Calling a crisis line is just someone to chat with when you're feeling anxious. AA partners you with a sponsor who is also in recovery, who can offer support from a place of common experience.
We got home, and my Sweetie pretty much went to bed, and I have to stay up a while to feed animals (they have to be fed at certain times).
After a rough start (once again, very little sleep, and I am NOT functioning at full levels now), I managed to make a go of the day.
We did normal chores and animal feeding, cleaned up and got dressed, and went to the city, mainly to be with our friends.
I also wanted to take back a DVD we bought that it turns out we already have a copy, and return a shirt I bought at a vintage shop that said it was silk on the store tag, but not on the label once you looked closely (tag was faded and folded in a way that you couldn't easily see it).
The movie store was happy to take back our DVD, and I found something else to watch.
The mall where the movie store is located is right across the street from Senior's apartments, and though there were some younger folks, the mall very much felt like a "senior's shopping center". In one way it was a bit depressing to see so many elderly folks shuffling around, BUT at the very same time you had to admit that it was great to see them all getting out and doing something. The mall catered to them, having essential services like an optometrist, groceries, a place that made take home meals, a pharmacy. Not a bad place to live beside, really.
The vintage shop also took back the shirt no problem. I debated about keeping it, but I don't know that I was happy about it not being silk, after thinking it WAS silk. I felt that the shop was being a bit...sneaky about the original tag, because the way they put their store tag through it, you couldn't see that it was polyester without some real effort, and their store tag said "silk". Returning it was about the principle of not rewarding the store for being sneaky.
I did use the store credit to buy some books.
Then we went to our friends' place. I have been there before, but never spent much time sitting in the house itself. It's a great old place that they have done a lot of work on it, much like we have.
It really felt like a home. Comfortable and unfussy.
The hosts are a couple that the husband has helped us a lot on our home, and we have worked with them back and forth.
Another couple that came were also "house work" people, who live fairly close to us.
All of us have worked back and forth helping each other with projects. It's a wonderful way to do things.
There was a new couple there, and they are a bit younger. They are recently arrived in Canada from the Ukraine. We didn't talk too much about their flight, but that cannot be easy. They both left family behind and worry a lot about the war. They are trying to become permanent residents, but that is not easy, and may take years. They have learned English fairly well, and are working, so that's helpful. They have a teenage son that they very much want for him to become Canadian.
They do not want to go back, even if there is an end to the war, as their community would likely not treat them well for leaving the country. They might have trouble finding work.
They also spoke about how, as children, they were only 145 km from Chernobyl, and the woman was evacuated with her mother to a town quite far from their home for about six months while her father stayed behind to help people leaving areas closer to the facility who were evacuated but needed to go through a cleaning process and have their clothes taken away and so on to get rid of as much radiation as possible.
The husband's father had been a doctor trying to treat people for radiation sickness.
It's very strange to be sitting at a table with pretty average looking people, and have them speak of things that always seemed distant and "historical", and for them it had been their childhood.
The woman said she didn't even know what had happened until she was in university because at the time, there was so much covering up of the events that no one really knew what had happened. The information she got when she was older was because of the internet, and information from other countries.
We had a very good visit, and I'm glad I was able to pull myself along to go, even though I am so sleep deprived. The one couple who live closer to us have now been friends with us for over 15 years, and that kind of blows my mind because it just doesn't seem like it's been that long, but we've known them for as long as we've lived here.
They are the ones who invited the Ukrainian people, because the Ukrainian people have no family in Canada, and our friends (who met them through work) want to make sure they have people to be with for the holidays and so on, and are "adopting" them, helping them make their way here.
If things go well, they might well become members of our "work friends" group.
After visiting, we got a few groceries on the way out of the city.
I spoke with Trainwreck in the car on the way home. She is out of the hospital and in her own place again, and it sort of sounds like she had been drinking again, and she's kind of not giving that the weight that it deserves. In October she really did almost die from drinking, and here she is, just coming out of the hospital for the second time in just over two months. She made it sound like her sons were giving her shit for it, and of course they would. There is no way she should be so casual about her lapse.
She isn't saying that her being sick was FROM drinking, she said it was about her electrolytes and blood sugar, and almost in passing mentioned that she "had to stay away from booze" when she was SUPPOSEDLY not drinking any more.
So while she still won't attend AA, she said she does now have a number for a crisis line of some kind, that she will call if she needs to talk to someone. I don't think that does what AA does, which is forces you to be accountable for your actions, to work on the reasons why you drank, and to have to keep showing up and being honest about whether or not you are staying sober. Calling a crisis line is just someone to chat with when you're feeling anxious. AA partners you with a sponsor who is also in recovery, who can offer support from a place of common experience.
We got home, and my Sweetie pretty much went to bed, and I have to stay up a while to feed animals (they have to be fed at certain times).
