Random Ramblings Are Random

Today my mother died. I always thought that I would not be affected by her passing away, but I am currently a snotty, blubbering mess. It wasn't COVID that got her. Apparently her kidneys shut down and then her COPD got in on the act. She died in the hospital some time today. I spoke to family I whose voices I hadn't heard in a very long time today. My brother messaged me on FB and told me to call him, giving me his number. So I did, and I was absolutely surprised at my reaction. Then I saw that my cousin Liz had been trying to contact me...so I gave her my cell number. I learned that our mothers went the same way as each other. I bawled my face off some more, and I got my parents' phone number...didn't even realize I had it in my phone until I dialed it. I spoke to my sister Dani who sounded so much more grown up than I ever remember, and then I spoke to my dad who sounded absolutely ancient. I think that made my bawl even harder. Somehow I need to get the funds togeth

After a stressful few days at work, things have quieted down thankfully. Thursday night things had blown up after some of our senior estheticians found out what the newest esthetician makes per hour, and I thought for sure that I was going to walk into work Friday to there not being anybody showing up to work. Only two call-outs though, but only one was legit. Oh well, such is life. After that, things settled into an even keel for the most part. Which is the way I like it. Sure, I had a couple of really long shifts on Friday and Saturday due to a front desk person calling out sick. But it means more money for me when payday rolls around. My boss was back today after taking a few days of vacation off to get away from the stress that work has been for her. And she was very pleased with the decisions I made in terms of having our esthetician student shadow one of our girls during a pedicure and then having her do one as part of a group appointment - it helped us save three appointments, a

I'm pretty sure I'm being groomed to take on management of the spa - the past three days saw me run the spa while my boss takes a few days off. She is back on Wednesday and it should be interesting to see how things go. The next couple of days the spa is closed and we reopen on Tuesday. And I'm in charge again on Tuesday when the spa opens back up. It's not often that this sort of thing happens, but apparently I'm trusted enough to be left in charge for more than a day or two. I also made a couple of arbitrary decisions in the past couple of days that I'm not sure if my boss would have felt comfortable doing.  One, a friend of mine wants to work with us and my boss is over the moon over it, and my friend was asking yesterday about when she could come in to start training - I said it's really up to my boss, but that I felt that having her come in next Saturday would be a great idea. Saturdays tend to be fairly low-key, which is good for a new employee, so I t

On another note... My friend Jenn stepped in as bartender this past Saturday for a wedding my work place was doing at one of our properties. She pretty much saved our asses because we are stretched so incredibly thin right now, and we needed one knowledgeable employee at the hotel/spa as we have complete newbies working right now. And as part of the management team, that fell to me. My boss is trying not to work herself to death so she was at the hotel/spa until 2pm when I started - at one point she would work at the hotel for eight hours and then go help with the wedding/event until food service was over. She was stressing out over every little thing and while she couldn't recognize it, I sure did and told her as much. Sure enough...within a month after the last big event we put off she went out on stress leave for two months. Mind you, those two months are also how I proved myself to be a very valuable asset to the company because I took on a good portion of the normal management

Yesterday a couple of friends and I ended up taking a day trip out of the city as it was the first time all three of us had a weekend day off at the same time. First stop was Avondale to go for a train ride - out of the nine people on that ride we were the only ones that didn't have a kid with us. And we thoroughly enjoyed it! I have many photos and videos from the ride that I have yet to post anywhere. I just have to edit some of the videos before I post them on my FB and tumblr. The train ride started at the old Avondale railway station, which is the oldest surviving railway station on the island. It was originally used as a repeater station for the first telegraph line that served St. John's before it became a freight and passenger station operated by the Reid Newfoundland Company from 1900 to 1949. From Confederation in 1949 until closure in 1984 the CN Railway used it at their terminus for Conception Bay South. It is now a museum and runs a mini-train ride for guests at $5

I swear that customers are just getting more rude and unreasonable lately. They seem not to realize that staff shortages are everywhere right now, and they blame the staff who does show up to work. It's been driving me more than a little crazy lately. Today we had two separate clients tell us that we had to hire more people so we could book their services at the spa. As if it were just that easy - it's not like estheticians and massage therapists grow on trees. These people need to have graduated from registered programs, and the massage therapists need to have federal and provincial licensing in place. None of it is that easy to come by, and due to COVID shutting down pretty much everything there are not a lot of new estheticians and registered massage therapists being churned out of the schools. So, where the fuck are we supposed to get more staff from? Add to that the fact that there are jobs out there that pay more with a lot less stress on the body - we have lost a couple

So...I got the news that any family member of an openly homosexual man sort of half expects and dreads. My brother was diagnosed with HIV on February 4th, 2020. As one would expect, it hit him really hard when he got the news. But he is healthy and in a good head space, all things considered. Number one being the fact that he's in the midst of divorcing his abusive soon to be ex-husband and dealing with COVID stresses on top of it all. Part of the reason it hit him so hard is that he's spent the better part of a decade teaching others how to not get HIV/AIDS, and here he is sitting with the diagnosis. But he put a positive spin on it because now he can teach others how to deal with it if they ever get that diagnosis, and he can use himself as an example for how seemingly-harmless behaviours can still see you get infected. He's got a great health team around him, so that's a huge relief off of my mind. It can be so difficult to get that sort of thing, especially in the c