My first Christmas with my boyfriend was pretty good. i missed my family an awful lot and there was the sadness over my cat,but otherwise it was quiet. We cooked a ham dinner on Christmas Eve and invited a family over. I opened the presents from my dad and rom my boyfriend
This is totally late, but I have been busy and am now in Anchorage!
My first Christmas with my boyfriend was pretty good. i missed my family an awful lot and there was the sadness over my cat,but otherwise it was quiet. We cooked a ham dinner on Christmas Eve and invited a family over. I opened the presents from my dad and rom my boyfriend
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The only bad part about Christmas was finding out that my cat Necromancer has not been doing well since his last seizure. To the point where my mom was unsure if he would make it to the new year. He is having daily seizures where he spends an hour having trouble breathing, plus has started having other issues. She is unsure if he has always had daily issues and no one was around to see it until recently, or if he is getting worse. Other than that hour a day, he is happy and social and loves everyone, and still gets on the counter and is mischief (totally using the Yup'ik phrase because that is what you say when someone is causing trouble, despite the bad grammar).
In April or May I think I wrote about how badly I felt about abandoning my Necromancer and that I was worried about him forgetting me. Despite his health issues, it never crossed my mind that he might not make it until May, when I planned to see him again (family of course as well, but this entry is about my cat). It sucks because I cannot give an accurate decision on what to do because I am not there to see him. This means my family has to make a hard decision for me if it comes to that. I was the one who decided when to put my elderly cat I had since childhood, to sleep. My mom has never made that kind of decision. I just know that he suffers when he has severe trouble breathing, and I cannot stand the thought of him suffering for an hour a day. And if he has more days like Christmas Eve, there will be no other choice. But how can you decide to put a cat to sleep when he is so happy and purring and cuddling everyone the rest of the time? It just really sucks. I do not know what will happen or if maybe he will snap out of it and get better like he has done in the past. I cried a lot over it yesterday when I found out. I have had Necromancer since my 20th birthday. He is my child. I would have taken him with me if I thought his enlarged heart could survive flying, and if we had a vet in the village. It will break my heart if I cannot say goodbye to him. My boyfriend and I went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. He drove us on the 4wheeler across the frozen lakes in total darkness. I brought my cute Christmas blouse here, but it did not look as cute as usual, considering I needed to wear long johns under my clothes and wear jeans. Actually, the amount of layers needed to ride on a 4wheeler at night is ridiculous. Long johns, jeans and blouse, sweatshirt, coat, face mask, scarf, gloves, mittens. But it has been -18 windchill. Last night it was warmer though, maybe 6 degrees.
The little church was crowded, which was good. I thought most families went to the big church, though. We were the only white people there. I would say the congregation was almost 3/4 children with over half being under the age of seven. A lot of crying babies. I did not know a single Christmas song they sang, which is odd considering I was in my church choir for years. They did have a guitar, which is progress from the lack of instruments at normal Mass. Plus the priest was there! He only comes every 5-7 weeks, so we were lucky. The biggest thing I noticed were how disrespectful most people were. It was not just the kids running wild and tugging at the priest while he spoke while the parents ignored it, it was the adults as well, talking the entire time. I heard the homily but my boyfriend could not hear it above the chatter and the kids shaking the pews. I mean, not once was there a moment of silence. Kind of sad. But the priest seems use to it. It was a nice Mass though, and the ride there and back was nice and pretty. We saw a few lights, but most houses only have one strand of lights in a window, and the more well-off people might have the gutters on one side of the house covered in rope lights. Since the week of Thanksgiving, I have only been working half the time. Partially because more aides were actually coming to work because of the smaller paychecks coming up. January is rough because we only get paid for a week the entire month. Also, the woman filling in for one of the office ladies kept putting me at the bottom of the call list, and only offered me jobs at the last minute if everyone she called said no. But not much to do about that.
Since I had some free time, I helped out another teacher and took over creating the Christmas program for the performance. I enjoy document creation. I also picked student art to be featured on the back. The day of the performance I was still doing last minute corrections because teacher kept chasing after me to have something added. Insanity! But I got it done and folded hundreds of the programs in record time. Even though i was doing it as volunteer work, the principal said for me to get paid for doing it. Score! The Christmas performance was cute. Mostly the elementary school kids performed. They did mostly dancing, but some kindergarten kids sang Silent Night in Yup'ik. I had an interview for the SPED aide job today. I am highly qualified but up against 7 natives.... So most likely not getting it. There is another aide job being posted after Christmas.
But the job I really want, I have an interview for January 6, weather permitting. It is a lab tech job, so phlebotomy and running tests and such. Just what i have been trained to do and they do more training. I already have the college classes they need taken and have done phlebotomy. Plus, I do not need housing from them like they have to offer some employees. I am meeting with the head of the laboratory for the entire health district for my interview. She is flying in from another village. It would be a year round job but with 4.5 weeks vacation time and better benefits than the school I have heard. Since we are planning to stay, it would be awesome. I hope for the best, but I know that whatever I am suppose to be doing, I will end up doing. I trust that. The "I Love You" was the first note he wrote on a window for me. He left it in my craft room. I have since drawn on the window as you can see. It was very sweet and unexpected. Since then, we have also started playing Tic Tac Toe on the bedroom window and writing on it. Over the weekend, I saw the next note. "Rob Loves Christine". So sweet! I just wish I could figure out how to play hangman on the window, when we do it in passing... He is always doing little things to make me happy. He has been buying Christmas decorations at the store each time he goes. Maybe just a glittery bow or some ornaments, but it is very sweet. He actually does not care about decorating for Christmas and never buys decorations. He just does it because I was sad about having no decorations. Now we have the tree from my mom, lights, and cards. Hooray!
Picture that a student drew and gave to me
We are at about 6 hours of sunlight. It makes it very hard to get up on weekends when the sun does not rise until 11am. I just found out that I did not get the library job. The Tribal Council voted against me and chose a native. Which is acceptable under the law here, but sucks for me. I will interview next week for the SPED aide job.
The principal is very upset by the Council always saying no to hiring me, even when I am a top pick. There is nothing you can do about it, either. However, the Council woman I was most nervous about because she is not fond of Gusaks did score me highly, just not as highly as the other woman. So I am glad she is fair. Some of the native school employees who have been on the interview panels have done some unfair scoring in my interviews, like giving me a 1 when there was no reason for the answer to be that low. My boyfriend says he has never seen someone so determined to hire another as the principal is determined to hire me. He wants me because he says I am intelligent, dependable and hard working. Today is just a bummer day, first with that news and then there was no work for me to do. I interviewed again for the library job, now that it has been posted all over town in the appropriate places for the appropriate amount of time. We shall see.
It rained for days and the dirt road ended up being the evil icy road of death on Monday. I got a ride to work in the school truck, but we were watching 4wheelers slide into the ditches, and one almost hit our truck because they tried to drive around us. The walk home took forever and I was so sure I was going to side down the ditch. The reason I was extra nervous is because when I fell on the ice during the fire drill last week, I ended up with an awful bruise and could not move my shoulder all weekend. I am fine now, though. It has now snowed a lot which makes walking a lot easier.I actually saw a snowmobile picking kids up after school. |
AuthorI am a Colorado native who moved to Alaska for love and adventure. This journal is going to track my journey. Archives
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