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OMG, an entry of consequence!

Yes.  Like the header says.  Actual stuff discussed here.

Had the Take Back the Night March at school tonight.  We had a really great turn out, considering the size of the school and the area and such.  And the fact that it didn't get hyped very much, really.  Anyway.  For those of you who don't know, Take Back the Night is meant to promote awareness of violence - esepcially sexual violence - against women, and to promote making the streets safe again.  It was really great, even though I had a headache for about four hours due to all the screaming and shouting we were doing.  XDD

Update on the porter stuff: Joan is still gone, Lane is an awful place to work (though it does have a phone now), and a couple of us have already quit.  I have ended up with more permanent (that is, guaranteed) hours than I did on the old system, but I would still rather have Joan and the old system back than be guaranteed twelve hours a week instead of ten.  At least we got issued keys for the Lane and Mount porter's offices if we needed them, which is good, because before that we had to call Security to come and lock the Lane office.  Which was irritating, and Secrutiy wasn't veyr happy about having to do it, either (though they seem perfectly willing to walk/drive us home at 0400 if we aren't comfortable  going alone, which is nice of them).

And I just realised I only mentioned this in one quick post last week, but one reason I was so upset and frustrated by the meeting last week was the timing, as I was already having a really shitty week.  My dad called me Wednesday night to tell me that my great uncle, Leo, died; the last I had heard, he was out of the hospital and getting better, not that he'd spent a week dying in palliative care.  So I was more than a little shocked and upset to begin with, then that whole porter mess Thursday night.  Ugh.  Dad called my cell about halfway through the porter meeting last week and I went out in the hallway to answer it and just about burst into tears in the middle of the Nicholson basement hall just from hearing him say "hello."  Not fun.

Friday I left on the noon bus to go home, and then we left my house around three to go pick  my grandma (Leo was her older brother) up at the Truro bus station before continuing on to the hotel in Sackville (NB) where we checked inand changed before heading out to the wake at the funeral home in Port Elgin (NB).  The wake was, well, a wake.  Though I got to meet a whole goddamned load of my family that I had never met before.  Holy shit, I have second cousins and second cousins once removed and third cousins and all these relations that I don't even know what to call them.

Anyway, at the wake I saw Sister Ellen, Leo and Grandma's sister (she's a nun).  She looked really tired, and really upset, though god forbid you mention it to her, haha, as she's bit of a battleaxe or... I don't really know how to describe her.  But she had (obviously) never married, and neither had Leo, so she spent a lot of her time on the farm with Leo, especially after she retired from teaching, and they were really close.

So the wake was a wake (I admit I felt really uneasy leaving the body alone in the funeral home at the end of the night... superstitious, I know... ^^;; ), but the funeral (at Leo's church, Saint Bartholomew's in Melrose, near Port Elgin) was really nice; the priest was actually having trouble not crying, because he'd known Leo for years.  Dad was a pallbearer, but he was the only one of myself, Mum, him, and Grandma to have a part in the funeral.  Then we walked across the highway to the graveyard for the burial, and I got to see Isabel and Joseph's graves afterwards.  They were also family - Anne Marie and Bill's parents, though I'm not sure if any of the other people I met were their kids or not - and Joseph died in... hm, 2001 or so?  I never went to his funeral.  Isabel died a couple of years later, and I wanted to go to her funeral, but it was during exam time (I was in high school), so I couldn't, so I really liked finally seeing where they were buried.  I remember running across the field between their house and Leo's house, going to visit them when I was quite small, and it was summer and there were lots of flowers.  I can't remember who was taking me over.  But when I got there, someone was playing piano, and I think there were cookies.

After the burial we all went back to the farm (that is, Leo's farm - but everyone always calls it "the farm") for the... well, whatever the hell those things are called after funerals.  The party-ish thing, but calling it a party feels wrong.  Anyway, there were a lot of people there, and food, and I asked Sister if I could take some pictures of the farm (it just felt wrong to take pictures of her home without asking, though I only took some outside, and none inside) and she said yes, and to make sure I took a picture of the orchard and the woodshed and Leo's car, which I had planned to anyway.  So I got pics of the barn and the outside of the house and the orchard nnd the car, and the spring house (which I have always been inordinately fascinated with, and as a child thought it was so strange that they would build a house with a hole in the floor!  I was still fascinated even after Leo explained WHY there was a hole in the floor.  XD) and stuff like that.  If anyone is interested, I'll post the pictures?  Let me know.  (If anyone is even actually reading all of this massive, huge, probably-tedious Entry of Doom.  XD)

We were all summarily evicted from the house as people started leaving.  That is, everyone but Sister ended up outside, and she locked us all out, haha.  She's never really been one for actual goodbyes, and she was really tired (she slept just an hour the night before the funeral, she said), so she was even less for goodbyes than usual.  Then Anne Marie realised her coat was still in the house and hoped she'd be able to get Sister to let her in so she could get it, haha.  But then we all left, Mum, Dad, Grandma, and I driving back to Truro and having something to eat before taking Grandma to the bus for Halifax, then came home.  Then Dad and I turned around and left only a little while later for him to drive me back to school.  So I was gone from campus only about 30 hours, but they felt sooooooooo long because we did so much driving and there was so much emotional stuff going on.

I'm not particularly sad over Leo, now that the shock has worn off, which sounds terrible, but he was over eighty, so it isn't like he was a young man, and he didn't have much pain, which was nice.  The farm is probably going to be sold, though, since there isn't really anyone who wants to/can afford to take the property - though I have no idea what it says in Leo's will (Bill is the executor).  It's really sad that the farm will probably be going, so to speak - that land has been in my family since they came over from Ireland about... 170 years ago?  I don't know the exact year, but it was before the Potato Famine and the family paid their own way, they didn't come steerage, thankyouverymuch.  (You don't even think about saying in front of Sister that you think we Murphys came here in steergae and/or because of the Potato Famine, haha.  XDD)  But yeah.  So we've had this land for a long time, and now it's probably leaving the family, and it's kinda depressing.  Although the house isn't the original house (it burnt down in the fifties, so the house on the porperty now is new) and I neve reven lived there or stayed overnight there, I'm still quite attached to the farm.  The connection to my family, and to my past is really important to me.

...But holy shit, I have a lot of family.  That side of my family - Dad's side - is absolutely massive (I honestly have no idea about Mum's side - I haven't met hardly any of them other than aunts/uncles and first cousins).  I saw, let's see how many of the people I was related to that I can remember... well, there was Anne Marie and Bill, who I already knew, Brian Murphy, Mike Murphy (as in the NB Minister of Health.  Yeah.  XD), Marie-Helena, the lady in the pink shirt whose name I think was Helen, Karen, Kevin; Maureen, Gary, Donald, Raymond, and... shit, I've forgotten her name, Jim and Cathy, Sister Ellen and Grandma (obviously), Aunt Tara and Uncle Rennie and Logan (Rhett, Logan's older brother, didn't come, and boy did I give him holy hell for it!  My brother didn't go either, and I am not impressed.), uhm... yeah, that's all I can remember right now.  And that's not even including anyone's KIDS.  Srsly.  The New Brunswick Murphys are more like a clan than a family.

I also met Dan Strang.  As in Strang's Potatoes (hopefully someone will know what the fuck I'm talking about?   beautydreaming ?   daimeera</lj> ?  You're pretty much my only hope here.  XDDDD)  My family knows and/or contains the randomest frigging people... Dan Strang and the NB Minister of Health... what a combo.  XDDD

So.  Moving away from the weekend (especially since I don't have all that much more to say, haha), I worked at Lane last night at midnight until four this morning, which was a shit shift, and I had to deal with some stupid drunk bastard who was trying to get in to see his friend who wasn't home.  Then he got all snippy at me when I told him to leave since he didn't have anyone else to visit.  Then he said I have no authority to kick him out or do something like call the CPs/Security/RCMP and I was like screw you, yes I do, "you sure you want to test me on that?"  Then he left.  Ha.

Before that shift last night, I had actually worked form eight Sunday night to 0400 Monday morning at Lane.  Which was awful, because I was exhausted from the weekend, and because I was so tired I was freezing, and I only had a sandwich to eat because there's no microwave there so I couldn't take anything that would need nuking, and I didn't even have a phone to call people, so I was a useless, nonfunctional porter.  Ugh.

Then when Seurity came and locked up the office (we hadn't been issued any keys at that point) and drove me back to my apartment building... well, as I approached the building I could hear a fire alarm going off and was just praying it wasn't my apartment, and when I went into the lobby-like area... there was water pouring through the ceiling at the light fixture.  No wonder the alarm was going off.  So I ran back outside and waved at teh Security guy who drove me back to please come back so he could call it in and wait for Facilities, and I wouldn't have to, because I wanted to get to bed.  So back he came, and since I had to go to the second floor anyway, he came up with me to check and see if the problem was in our laundry room.  It wasn't - the water was coming from the third or fourth floor laundry rooms.

So then I went to bed.  limetreebower  woke me up a little after nine like I had asked her to, to make sure I wouldn't miss my 0945 class, but then I was still so tired I was barely coherent so I went back to bed.  I slept straight throught until almost twenty to two that afternoon, missing three of the four classes I had that day.  Oops.  Oh well.

As an example of just how zonked I was, apparently the firealarm thingy in our apartment hallway - so pretty much righ toutside my bedroom door - went off around six AM.  I slept through it completly - I didn't even know it had gone off until daimeera</lj>  mentioned it... or, Tuesday, maybe?  XDD

I have an appointment at the campus clinis tomorr-- er, today.  I need to get tested for haemochromatosis, and iron... well, the opposite of deficiency.  I can haz way too much ironz?  And too much iron can cause organ damage and all sorts of other unpleasant things, such as death.  XDDD  It's genetic, and Aunt Marion has discovered she has it (her irons levels or 1100, and they should be about 100), so Mum probably has it since they are identical twins, so I really should get tested for it.  Though it isn't usually discovered in women (without the genetic test) until after menopause.  Because before menopause, we women have this wonderful exodus of iron each month.

Speaking of bleeding out my babymaker: I'm sick of it.  It has the Worst.  Timing.  Ever.  The day I have to pack the car for moving the next day?  Starts bleeding.  Have to work backshift that evening?  Starts bleeding.  Funeral to go to and many hour sto spend in a car?  Starts bleeding.  So I've decided I will go on the pill, and just skip the sugar pills.  So no period ever except when I want to have one.  <3

...Yes, I am aware of the irony of wanting to take a pill to stop a loss of iron when I may have a disease that is essentially the excessive absorption of dietary iron.  Shhhhh.  I can just donate blood when my levels get too high - srsly.  That's what the treatment for Aunt Marion's levels are - she goes and gets bled for a pint every week until they are more normal.  Unfortunately, since she has spent more than three months in England since the magic Mad Cow date in 1980 or 1981, she can't actually donate this blood to CBS, it just gets tossed (it goes by total amount of time spent in England, not amounts of time at a stretch, or else she'd be fine to donate it).  So she's going to see if it can be used for research or something, because it seems like such a waste.  I, on the other hand, would be able to donate any blood that I had to get, well, bled from me on the off chance my levels were too high.  I'm still two weeks under the magical three month accumulation.

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So . . . one method of controlling this is to be bled? Seriously?

Fetch the leeches, Good Master Physician! This woman's humours are imbalanced!


But yes. Because the thing about haemachromatosis is that the patient can't get rid of their on on their own. So... yes, we need to be bled. And, apparently, if you have haemochromatosis you can't donate blood. I asked at the clinic this morning. So if I have it... booooooooo.

Awwww, hyu oven needz recalibrating, I see!

Und vot beautydreaming sayd.

Hindeedz it doz. Und now I haz vat I needz to be recalibrating it vit!

Speaking as someone who does not bleed monthly... oh cod IT IS AWESOME. Very liberating not to need to worry about it, anymore.

I got some tricyclen today from the health centre... but they have three different dosages on the three different weeks of the hormone pill, so I'm not sure if these are the ones I want to take, seeing as I plan to, uh, skip my period entirely? XDD Do you mind me asking what you take?

Depo Provera. It's an injection you get every 12 weeks. Takes a couple months to stop the bleeding, but I only have 1 actual period since I started it. The rest was mild to heavier spotting when I would ordinarily bleed.

Can have some mood swing-like side effects, though, for some women. I had that when I was on the pill, and it sucked. If you find your mood is taking a down-swing, try a different pill.

(Also good for protecting me from teh babyz, without me needing to worry about taking a pill at the same time every day.)

Ahhh, see, I'd much rather do the pill thing than the Depo thing. I'd like to be able to control (for the most part) when I'm going to be bleeding.

(Teh babyz thing is less important, seeing as you have to be having sex with a guy for it to be a concern. XDD)

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