Posted on 09/07/2022 5:07:40 AM PDT by Red Badger
And female associates.
Yeah, they have all kinds of boxes and they aren’t that expensive. Especially since most that the grocery stores use get recycled before moving folks can get to them.
I bought several boxes at a time, each time I shopped when I was going to move here.
In my conversation with my FD this morning, we decided I’m depressed. Yes. I am. I’ll get through it. It’s just going to take a while. Like knowing I’ve moved up the wait list another notch. Then I can begin to feel like there is life ahead of me.
Indeed!!
What person, as a child (and even older) hasn’t wished at least once to be invisible, just for a few minutes, or an hour? OK. A week.
I rode a motorcycle for most of the three years I was stationed in El Paso.
I know what it is to be invisible. People will look you dead in the eye, and then drive into your path.
They’re looking to see if a car is coming, and you are not a car.
I’ve ridden pillion in places like LA and Vegas and have also seen the evil that car drivers try to do to motorcycle drivers in St Louis.
All seem designed to make the motorcycle (and its driver) become invisible.
Remember to use your moon lamp, especially when it’s rainy!
I put away the Christmas tree ornaments, and DP dismantled the tree. I need to sweep and mop the area before we can move back the table that goes there.
Princess Leia emailed me this morning about plans for next week. She’s going to the Finance Council meeting - I think it’s next Thursday - with a bee in her bonnet, fire in her eye, and the Diocesan Guidelines in hand!
I pointed out that the amounts groups like Stewardship or Hispanic ministry are asking for are basically *nothing* in the whole parish budget, and we usually don’t spend everything that’s budgeted. It’s just being mean (stingy, niggardly, chintzy) for the Finance Council to say we all have to do everything out of our own pockets.
Leia said that she was in once FC meeting where a member said, “We can just cut all their budgets in half, and they can hold fundraisers.” In the first place, that shows no sense of priorities as to what kind of activities the parish values - just cut everything - and in the second place, it’s been years since we were allowed to have fundraisers.
I think, if I’m forced into saying it, that the moon lamp has only had a total of a day’s rest since I got it, and saying that, I think I’m basically afraid that I’ll burn it up before I can make the move. I don’t want to do that. The alternative is, of course, allowing the depression to take over and I just can’t afford that. I need to be able to focus.
The fact that I don’t want to write to anyone is proof to me that the depression is deeper than I thought. Writing letters or journal entries has always been fun and productive for me. I just can’t seem to get to it these days and that’s never happened. At least, not in a very, very long time.
Taking down the tree is a sad thing, and I really wanted to leave mine up, especially since it was so cute.
Seems like the FC meeting might be rather exciting next week when Princess Leia joins the fray! Oh to be a fly on the wall!!
And yes, “It’s just being mean (stingy, niggardly, chintzy) for the Finance Council to say we all have to do everything out of our own pockets.” I don’t know of any place, any more that allows fundraisers. Unless it’s the Girl Scouts and their cookie sales.
I got my clothes ready for church tomorrow, but I don’t know if I’m even going to make it. Right now, I have an ache that runs down the left side of my neck and I don’t know what it’s from. I just know it’s new and I don’t like it.
I’ll get you a new moon lamp if the current one dies, so don’t worry about that.
I had an ache in the neck like that earlier this week, but it’s gone now. Maybe it was stress over the funeral. I already had it before the van issue, so it wasn’t that.
I just emailed to Princess Leia that we, the church volunteers, aren’t concerned about the funding as much as we are about the disrespect to us and the open defiance of all the systems and procedures we have in place.
Last year, several of us concluded that it would be really good to have a Parish Communications employee, a one-stop-shop for getting information to the parishioners. Instead of having to deal with five different people for different media (bulletin, email, social media, slides on the viewscreen on Sunday, etc.) one person would take the information and get it out all different ways.
We put together a proposal. The youth director presented it to the Parish Council. They agreed. She presented it to the Finance Council. They agreed. The pastor agreed. Then, instead of advertising the job in the parish, diocese, etc., the business manager offered it to the young man who had been Middle School Youth coordinator, but had been offered a job at another parish.
He’s a nice boy - I’ve known him since middle school - but he would have been terrible at the job. His social skills are worse than James’s or Vlad’s, and his organizational skills were sufficiently lacking that Lourdes and Josefina said, “Good!” when told he was going to another job.
Anyway, he turned it down (good), and then the parish council, goaded by the Stewardship cabal, asked what the delay was in advertising, taking applications, interviewing, etc., and the business manager said since we didn’t have anyone yet, she had decided the church really couldn’t afford it and wasn’t going to try to fill the position.
And as of now, still nothing has been done. I need to remind Leia to bring that up on Thursday! It’s not the first time there have been shenanigans about hiring. When the Director of Religious Education post was vacant a couple of years ago, Tom the Son was (semi-ironically) interested in applying. I called the secretary and asked about the qualifications and application process, and she said, “You’ll have to talk to the business manager.”
So I called her, and she said, “Well, we don’t have a job posting with the qualifications and an application form yet.” I blew a gasket, because they’d done a mystery hire the last time the job was vacant, and the person turned out to be terrible. The next time I saw Leia, I explained the situation, and that the program was in trouble because of the jerk woman foisted on everyone, and that if they weren’t transparent about the entire process and using the widest possible advertising, so that the parish felt good about the person hired, all the volunteers would quit.
And the person eventually hired has turned out to be good. They also had a good process for hiring the Middle School coordinator boy, with an interview process that included parents of children that age ... and he wasn’t truly bad at it, just not all that some would have liked. (His mom was helping him for a while, but then she got involved with her own mother’s illness, and the son started to flounder more.)
Thanks for the replacement moon lamp! ;o]
I wonder if that neck ache is a virus? I recall once (when we lived in a really sunny spot, like Tucson) that there was virus that affected the neck, but it was the right side. I dunno. I tried nitroglycerin and took a painkiller, and it’s still there. No se’.
My goodness. There sure seems to be a lot of shenanigans going on by people who want to be Queen Bee. I guess I’m amazed by it because all the positions in the church are voluntary. Only the Prophet, his counsellors and the Apostles are given a stipend, which consists of living expenses. The rest of the money they spend is their own, from prudent living and/or smart investments.
As far as supplies or other things, we have to submit a request (is it necessary?) and the cost (how many estimates do you have?) and who will benefit. If the bishop and his counsellors say it’s a go, the person either buys the items and submits and itemized receipt or the bishop has a check drawn (requires two signatures) for the exact amount.
I never realized how easy we had it! LOL!
It’s pretty much all one person’s shenanigans, backed by a handful of enablers.
I asked Princess Leia which side the Education director is on: Rebels or Empire. It will be interesting to see what she says!
Yeah, I get that it’s just one person’s shenanigans. But that’s all it takes to sabotage a company. Or a picnic, or a grocery shopping trip, or a vacation.
“I asked Princess Leia which side the Education director is on: Rebels or Empire. It will be interesting to see what she says!”
That it will!!
The boxes are here! The boxes are here!!
I’m sure word is going to go around the complex in a hurry, now because Kay’s door was open and the boxes were leaning against the chair she has between our doors. I can probably finesse it for a while, but eventually, they’ll all get wind of it.
And that’s OK. The weather has done this and that’s all they need to know. It’s just far too wet for this ol’ gal!
That’s a factor. And for my purposes, it’s the only factor they need to know.
I put a cold pack on my neck for a while and that seems to have helped somewhat, so whatever it was is muscular. That in itself is good news!
Congrats on the boxes! You’re right: all you need to tell the other residents is that the weather is bad for your health.
Exactly so!
I guess I need to start fishing for a new Undead Thread, since we’re almost at 4000.
It’s true, we are coming along on this thread.
The dining room looks spacious again without the Christmas tree. I thought about leaving up my one string of lights outside, but I’d have to take them down eventually, and then they wouldn’t be with the other decorations.
I hate when I do that. Then I unpack and say, "Well, where is...??" and I may or may not find it until much later. Then I have to decide on whether I want to search for the original box or let it go.
I'm getting cold and I have a headache, so I'm going to call it a night. I'll see what I can find tomorrow that we can slither into, otherwise, we'll be stuck here for a while.
I told the boys to look for some of the decorations this year, and they didn’t find them, but now I know where they are for next year, since I packed up stuff today. Boys aren’t good at looking for things.
Adorable!
I was here. I just didn’t feel like talking. Insomnia.
Not going anywhere today.
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