ack. I'm tired. I don't know if I make any sense any more. I just keep wanting to say, "You've won a free play. Would you like to buy the extra?" Last night I dreamt about lottery tickets. endlessly. Oh well. eventually the superseven will go back down to a reasonable number and people will stop being so gaga about it. Kirsten was reading something in a magazine recently that said that last year two people in Canada were killed by being run over by lawn tractors. She figured it out, and your odds of winning the superseven, at 1 in 62 million, are worse than being run over by a lawn tractor...

things seem to be moving along. My new booth is cosy, and not surrounded by video games and people looking for Wal-mart. as a matter of fact, there is a Telus store right next to me with four televisions hanging from the ceiling, with closedcaptioning on. I watched the Simpsons for a while last night when it got slow, and the little cutie who works there brought me a remote, so I can change the channels if I like, as they can't see the tvs inside the store. Today was the busiest lottery day I have ever worked... I literally stood in one spot all day and dispensed tickets. For a good portion of the day I had a line up of about four people in front of me at all times. By the time I finished with one, another had added to the end of the line. All pretty good and happy, though, as I'm fast and I laugh at all their jokes. Anyone who started questioning me about the old owner, I just looked sympathetic and said, well, Wednesday was his last day, I'm sure you'll all miss him.

There is also a comfy chair, and the security guard is a woman I know from Woodgrove, and lotsvof my old customers came and said, "What are you doing here?" and when I told them I've moved, they all said, "Oh, we'll come buy from you here". Now I just have to deal with my homework...

So, just for fun, the fire engines showed up in the middle of the night. Seems the neighbours had a bonfire, and when they were done they put the embers into their compost heap. At 4am, the compost heap was burning away merrily, along with the fence in the back right-hand corner of our yard, and two trees that were in the same general area. Firemen came and chopped down the fence and drenched the area, and then everyone went back to bed.

Bonfires, in this town, are illegal. Backyard burning is banned. And even if it weren't, what species of idiot puts the remains into the compost heap?? We had to put up orange safety fence this afternoon to prevent the dogs from running mad in the neighbourhood. Which is also illegal. But perhaps we should let them anyway. Perhaps I'll give them little fire hats. They might need them.

Strange thing is, the neighbours don't seem to think it's nearly as funny as we do. Although I often find that to be the case.

I don't know how people who have seven or so kids manage... we used all the dishes in the house making pancakes for seven children this morning. Every room seemed to have at least two children in it for most of the day. I hid in my room (gotta love laptops) and tried to write my paper on exhibitionism. It's not due for three weeks but I get the idea that the next couple of weeks will be a bit scary.

To recap:

I have seven papers and a presentation due by Oct. 11.
I take over a new booth on Thursday this week, but I have to run my old one until someone is found to take it over. Lottery folk say this will take 2 weeks, tops. we'll see.
Two of the people I have filling in for me at my current booth are on call for the ferries, which means that if the ferries call they will abandon their posts.
M's job is teetering as usual on the verge of collapse. The major shareholder has maxed out the company AMEX card buying groceries, as no money is coming in. The government has given them an ultimatum, Sept 30, pay up or else (they owe more money than I like to think about).
wheeee.

somehow I have managed to end up with all the children's friends sleeping over tonight, Rachel's friend Jade, Ian's friend Llewellyn, and Kirsten's friends Caitlin and Ted. Yup, Kirsten's friend Ted is sleeping over. His mother is apparently ok with this, although his dad did, I'm told, have something to say in the background about it being Ted and Two Girls...

I'm tired. I'm apprehensive about this week, I hired someone to help out at the Woodgrove booth while I'm doing the other one on Thursday but I have to train her on Monday. I hate training people. And the Super 7's gone to 20 million dollars. Ack.

Yup, got told on monday that they're letting me have the busier booth. unfortunately my stomach hates me currently, and is trying to kill me. not helped by having to fire Alison for chronic unprofessionalism. Which I did yesterday. I'm taking over the new booth next week, so am scrambling around to get all hookups etc accomplished, along with trying to write a paper on exhibitionism and a short paper on penal ideology. and it was open house at the school tonight. my children are smart but deeply strange, it seems. I'm kidding. Rachie's class has a guinea pig that is going to have a baby, and Rach insists on calling it a "he". Kirsten's teacher is dealing very well with Kirsten's current nonchalant phase. I'm impressed. Ian's teachers have picked out a new friend for him, an equally studious boy named Ryan. All in all, successful. Next week, I take over a booth that has been run by a legend named Roy for the last SEVENTEEN years. How long before people stop asking "where's Roy?" I'm thinking, oh, 2007.

today was one of those days when all the loons come out of the woodwork and tell me their little stories. One woman came and told me that she had to buy a new teapot because the handle fell off her old one, so she glued it back on, but then every time she made tea, the glue melted and the handle fell off again. Strange thing is, she wasn't actually even buying anything, she just walked up, told me the story, then left.

yesterday there was a really loud bang in the middle of the afternoon, which wasn't an earthquake, according to the earthquake website.

I was lying in bed reading a book, and Ian came in and said, "what are you reading, Mum?" I showed him, the Forensic Sexology Handbook, and he said, "I wish I hadn't asked."

had the rather gratifying experience yesterday of training someone who absorbed what I was teaching her and ran with it. A few of my customers who have complained about Alison came by while I was training Liz and said nice things to her, and to me. My biggest critic, a crazy little man who runs the dollar store around the corner with the dubious assistance of a fleet of surly "nieces" behind the counters, came by and told me Liz was "very good, you will have lots of customers now". I will still probably end up working some Saturdays, but not ALL of them.

I'm researching exhibitionism. too much fun.

nosology, apparently, has nothing to do with nostrils... but rather the classification of diseases. I'm reading about psychopathy, the last few days, and the fun part is that (if you believe in the concept of psychopathy, which is problematic) therapy doesn't make them better, it makes them worse, because they learn, as this article explains, how better to manipulate people. Tricks they hadn't known before...

p.s. -- anybody know what "nosology" means?

back to school. And I like my new courses, the reading load is a lot lighter, I can carry it all to work in my backpack without hurting my neck.

I've hired someone new to replace Alison on the weekend. She seemed quite happy when I informed her of this fact... The company M works for has until September 30th to make the government happy, or they're going to lock the doors. I don't know what will happen then.

just in case anyone reading yesterday's entry thinks that I'm feeling sorry for myself, or sorry to be myself, or just plain sorry, let me rephrase...

vertigo is a trip.

It's like the world becomes a very mobile and unpredictable place.

Once I sort of get the hang of a particular outbreak (I don't know what else to call it?) I can roll with it, it makes me feel quite literally as if I'm always just pleasantly drunk. Without any of the annoying side effects like telling the same stories over and over again. Or wanting to kiss random people. (Oh, no, wait, scratch that, the random kissing urge still happens. not related to the vertigo)

This evening I went to my police volunteer group meeting, and for some obscure reason I left my purse sitting on a bush in the driveway. Along with my coat and my notebook. I got to the meeting clutching a pen I had in my pocket, and Dale, who was sitting by the door said, "You'll need some paper" and I said, "I've left my bag and my notebook sitting in my driveway." He said, because he's 67 and worries about these things, "You should phone home and tell them to bring it inside" Then I realized my phone was in the pocket of my bag... One of the officers lent me his phone, but I could tell by the look on his face that he had filed me in the "dippy chick" file, and that if I ever call to report anything missing, he's going to tell me to check the bushes in my driveway.

The lottery people called me today and asked if I'd be interested in another booth. One at a mall closer to home. That makes a lot of money. I said yes.

I have been, for the last three weeks or so, having a nasty bout of vertigo. I fell in the kitchen last night, quite worried Kirsten. I still haven't gone to the doctor, but Mum actually came round one day and looked after the kids. I had woken up in the middle of the night to find that I couldn't get out of bed because I had bed-spins, despite having nothing contributory to drink since Graeme was here. Mum called in the morning while I was still in bed, and after I answered the phone the room started to spin and down I went. When I explained what had happened, as I had dropped the phone, saying, "Oh, no big deal, I got dizzy and fell down", she said, "I'll be right over." I argued with her, saying, no, I was ok, and she hung up, only to call back two minutes later and tell me she wasn't taking that for an answer, and she'd really be right over. Kirsten was horrified, and told me disgustedly that she could have looked after me. I didn't really need looking after, but Mum made pancakes for the kids, which they appreciated, and I had to go to meet my territory manager in the afternoon, and it was useful to have someone to drive me, if nothing else.

I think, however, that I am going to wait a bit longer to see the doctor. I don't want to hear that it's "nothing, just stress", again, and I equally don't want to hear that it's MS. So, until I get thoroughly disabled, I will continue to work and volunteer and study and tell people, "I have floaters" when they ask why I don't drive, and "oh, this hand is stupid", when they ask why I'm wearing a wrist brace....

because I am such a good mom, (feel free to laugh, I won't be offended) I agreed to go down to the Bingo Palace tonight and be the designated money-handing-out volunteer for the kids' school. The parent group, to which I do not belong and never will, is supposed to send two volunteers six times a year to help out at a four-hour bingo session. The poor man who is in charge of getting volunteers has a hell of a time convincing people to come out and help. I like him, he's very earnest, and I don't mind going and spending a late evening in his company. He told me tonight that I'm the only person who never turns him down / stands him up. I've come every time he's asked me. Even though I hate it and there's too much smoke, which makes me have nic fits in the morning. What I find amusing is that all these other parents have plenty of time to go to meetings at the school and be the parent committee, but when it comes to bingo, which makes us a whole load of money, they either say they'll come and then don't, or they have much more important things to do...

well, it was a good holiday. Camped at Green Point, on the beach at Pacific Rim, Saturday to Thursday. Only a little rain, the first day, which of course soaked the tent we had borrowed and made it so we were slopping around in wet oogy sleeping bags for a few nights. Once something's wet, on the west coast, it stays wet. Unless you take it down on the beach and bake it in the sun for a while. There was a bear in the campsite but we didn't see it. On Tuesday there were frantic messages on my cell phone that no-one had turned up to work at the booth... as I expected. Boys. He'd slept in, but it wasn't Dylan, the new boy, it was Joseph, who for some reason had agreed to work for Alison, who for some reason was in Parksville. When I said I was leaving her in charge, I kinda meant that maybe she'd work? And not parcel out her shifts to the unreliable? Whatever. By the time I persuaded my cell phone to make outgoing calls (by standing on the hood of the car) Joseph had arrived at the booth and was deeply apologetic.

It was fun to lie on the beach and watch the others swim. I find the water too cold (read: I Can't Feel My Lower Extremities) and am quite happy to leave the fun to them. We headed into Tofino one of the days but there were too many people so we just bought chocolate and went back to the campsite.

The boy who is working for me this week, while I'm on holiday, is hopeless. The other booth in the mall hired him and trained him, and sent him down to me when Joseph, as I mentioned before, the boy who was supposed to be working for me while I went on holiday, got a job on the ferries. Yesterday I heard that they'd fired him, and since he insists on showing people his newly pierced nipple, and fancies himself a ladies' man, I'm not surprised. He called me, just after I started writing this, to see if I was coming in, and I said, yes, at 4, because it's payday, but he wants someone to work a few hours this afternoon while he "does a few things" before going to a friend's birthday party... Won't be me. I'd not much like to be him in a while if he calls Alison, either.

I'm worried that he won't show up next week. And I'll be at Long Beach...

miraculously, although I was called in to work on Sunday, I have managed to have Saturday, yesterday, and today off. So I've been baking, and reading, and mucking about in the garden. I've made biscuits and blueberry muffins (courtesy of a fabulous case of blueberries that I froze two weeks ago) and pavlova, which I've always wanted to have a go at, and was happily gobbled up tonight when Mum and Dad came to visit. I've read a big fat Jilly Cooper book about a bunch of loons making an opera movie , a hitherto unread Ruth Rendell, No Night is Too Long, that Serra who used to work for me was in the movie, and Margaret Forster's Have the Men had Enough, which made me miss Grannie. I've weeded the bean patch and made a salad with the harvest, and also weeded the front garden, which was beginning to look like tiger habitat. (Observe behind the dry grasses, as the tigers play with their young...) Also I've been making coffee and drinking it, reading the newspapers from cover to cover, and Rachel and I have been to the park and to pick blackberries.

So far, a very satisfactory vacation.

last exam tomorrow. Had one on Tuesday, I think it went well. My eyesight is fuzzy with this hot weather, and my right hand doesn't want to do what it's supposed to. And the vertigo is still lurking, waiting to capture me if I turn my head too fast. I'm contemplating going back to the doctor next week and telling him that I still can't drive, and seeing what he has to say. I also had to give up yoga, which was sad, because the vertigo gets really evil when I try to do the moves where you stand up and then bend over, lie down, come back up, etc. I get really massive nausea, to the point where I have to go to bed afterwards and lie there for an hour or so until the world stops going round.

Anyway. I'm still mostly upright, which is good, although I'm having to train myself not to nod my head in response to people's questions at work...

hate my job. hate hate hate. jumping up and down putting my tongue out and thumbing my ears at customers hate. I hate it that people keep coming round to complain about Alison, but when I want to know why their reasons are very vague... that she's sitting down, that she's reading a book. What exactly would they like her to be doing? I think what offends them the most is that she's overweight. They actually feel comfortable saying, "That fat girl", to which I am not sure how to reply. Apparently she merits no consideration. No-one has told me that she's dishonest, or rude, or unkempt, just that they think she's "lazy". To be frank, it's a damn boring job, as I think I've mentioned. I keep my sanity some days with difficulty. If I was tall enough to sit down and still be able to reach the machine and the cash drawer, I probably would.

I'm studying in earnest now. First final on Tuesday next week...

I was supposed to have a day off today, but Alison who works for me's mom had a stroke last weekend, and needed to go for tests in the hospital today. So I agreed to work so Alison could accompany her, because I know how much it sucks to go for tests in the hospital all by yourself. Also, strangely enough, with the fact that the mall's air-conditioned, I get a lot more studying done there in the cool without kids and dogs than I do here. Apart from the interruptions from customers, of course.