ANGRY! AMANDA SMASH!!!

Something horrible happened today.  My mother was fired.  She's never been fired in her life. According to (I want to say 'the insufferable cunt' but will leave that in parenthesis) Lark, there were complaints about my mother's treatment of the residents.  These residents adore my mother.  Before she came along they had nil for entertainment.  Mother volunteered there for a year before they actually decided they needed an activities director.  And when they DID make it a job - they hired someone else first.  That person fucked up and was fired.  They hired mom.  Oh, gee, how nice of you to think of finally paying the person who's worked for FREE for a year.  Anyway, mom kept doing what she'd already been doing and even more.  Mother did their nails regularly, held poker nights, bingo days, luaus, led them in group exercise, and spent lots of her own money making sure that everyone had Christmas and Birthday gifts.  My mother isn't perfect by any means but she is pretty damn close when it comes to this sort of stuff.  She's like Pinkie Pie!  She loves to make people smile and loves to throw parties.  Sometimes she's a little annoying with it, but she usually manages to give everyone a fun time.  Well the lady who fired her said that there were complaints.  Three of them, to be exact.  (And why didn't mother hear of about complaints after the first one?  Because Lark doesn't give a fuck that's why!)  One of the complaints was over Christmas which floors me.

During the house parties (not Christmas morning mind you) she brought gifts that she fucking bought with her own money for the houses themselves as share gifts.  So she opened the gifts and passed them around so that no one would complain about 'not getting to open a gift' since there weren't enough for everyone to open one.  Apparently someone complained saying 'she didn't let us open our own gifts!'  Or perhaps it was someone on staff or a family member (someone obviously with their head stuck up their ass) who said, golly she's opening the gifts herself!  What a horrible person!  Never mind that she gave them ALL gifts for Christmas.  Never mind that these gifts were for the HOUSES and NOT individuals at the house party.  Never mind all of that.  There are more things I could say but basically it comes down to this: Lark's sister is a resident and this sister doesn't like my mother.  Period.  End of story.  Sister doesn't like my mother so Lark doesn't like her.  That is truly the be all and end all.  This company goes through employees like an alcoholic goes through a twelve pack.  Anyone who stands up for themselves, who dares to be human, who doesn't click with the upper crust - they are gone.

The worst thing is - my mother became friends with many of these residents and Lark won't let her visit.  My mother is 'banned from the premises.'  She can't even take them their Easter baskets which she already bought was already working on filling.  Banned.  Like she's some sort of danger to them.  I want to know if a resident's family member could be banned if Lark's sister decided she didn't like them as well.  Horrible, awful, unethical.  I am so enraged over it all.  If they had let mother go amiably that might be one thing, but to be mean to her - to make her bawl - and to ban her from seeing her goddamn friends.  No.  Just no.  Fuck you, Lark.  Fuck you Lark Haven.  I'm so sad for the residents of Hilgren and Thames - they lost one of the only people who really gave a damn about them.  Lark cares about their money and that's where the buck stops.  She treats her 'private pay' residents at the Honeysuckle and Reed houses like gods but treats the medicaid and medicare residents at Hilgren and Thames like they are children who aren't allowed to get into the fridge on their own.  Sickening.  Below is snippet from the website.  My mother invented most of that 'wide array of activities' by the way.  She INVENTED games activities and spent hours doing craft projects at home to make sure the residents could participate.  I could go on and on but I need to leave it be now.  I'm so angry.

LIFE ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES

Our activities calendar is designed in keeping with resident’s individual interests and capabilities. There is a wide array of activities to choose from each week.

Birthdays and Optimus Prime

With the help of some wonderful friends, I managed to throw Hannah a surprise Birthday party on her actual Birthday.  I don't know that I've ever been able to surprise her like this before.  We went to Spokane to celebrate the Crow Moon - my parents came up separately and set up a shit ton of Monster High dolls and party decorations in a spare room - and afterwards one of the members of the Pagan council took Hannah aside and I ushered everyone into the party room. Then Hannah showed up and we screamed surprise at her.  She immediately ran away.  Which was fantastic. I dragged her back into the room and we sang Happy Birthday. She opened gifts while the pagans ate cake (a lovely cake that my mother made for the occasion) and drank sodas, coffee, and tea. It was a great evening and afterwards we went to Dennys with two friends and proceeded to have one of the most inappropriate conversations we've ever had... in public. That, too, was great.

In other news, my friend, J, who is more like a sister than mere friend, gave birth to her third child today.  J texted me during labor, talking about contractions, the epidural, and all sorts of things.  I felt like I was part of it and while I wanted her to stop texting and focus on getting the baby out, I actually really enjoyed the back and forth.  We now have a Kaylin Marie in the world.  J had to have a Cesarean because the little baby wasn't as little as the doctors had first thought.  I'm glad the baby's here.  She was supposed to be here a couple of days ago and then she would have been a birthday twin for Hannah.  Oh well, the seventh is a good day, too. 

In other other news, we are taking our friend Fi to Seattle in two weeks and her parents, wanting to make sure our car was road worthy and reliable, fixed my car at no charge to me.  There were many things wrong with good old Optimus Prime (the least of which being fucked up fuses and misfiring codes) and Fi's dad, who is a mechanic at Dave Smith, took the car in and fixed pretty much everything he could find.  I'm very excited for the trip now and I'm going to make a concentrated effort to be as mother-fucking positive as possible.  This was truly a blessing and I am determined to treat it as such and enjoy every moment of this mini-vacation that otherwise would not have been possible.    

Slow Going, Sick Galen, and Mermaids

These last couple of weeks have been a headache.  I've been applying off and on for about every job I am "qualified" for, been working every weekend at the bra shop as I am the only CA who can work over a five hour shift at the moment, and been spending 4-6 hours every day working on my novel.  I'm exhausted.  The novel work has been intensive and rewarding but so very slow going.  As I read the YA craft book by Regina L. Brooks, I realized that what I had done wrong from the beginning was to start this story without a clear idea of the setting.  The physical setting has developed and evolved over the past year and now that I have it set in stone (with some flexibility as nothing is ever truly set in novel writing) I've had to restart, rewrite, redraft, and revise.  I learned from this mistake and am going to flush out setting prior to drafting the next time I tackle a novel project. So anyway, it's been slow, slow, slow going.  I am not going to have my full amount of pages for the upcoming packet.  I feel bad. 

After being ill and after revising everything and creating a new outlook on the story and plot, I had a hell of a time getting back into the habit of writing everyday.  I'm back!  I've been practically living at the library and Starbucks is my Patron. (By the way, the Caramel Flan Latte is pretty fucking amazing!) This Monday I am going to spend the whole day at the Library again.  Basically I'm hoping to have thirty good pages for my mentor and then send her another thirty as soon as they are ready. If I have to go in chunks of thirty then so be it.  I just want to keep making progress. She's really excited for this novel to come together and so am I. At work today I talked to the new ASM about which characters live and which ones die and her excitement about the relationships between the characters got me very excited. She told me she would love to see my ideas translated on screen. She hasn't read the material but just hearing her say that was very encouraging today.

Galen, our mini-panther, has bronchitis and is taking antibiotics and steroids twice a day. Consequently, my fingers have become pin cushions. Sometimes he takes the pills well and sometimes he chomps down on my fingers like a wild beast! I really hope he shapes up soon. We lost Yoda a little less than a year ago and we're not ready to go through that again. 

For the past few nights, Hannah and I have been reading about mermaids. We rented a book from the library and each night I read a chapter or two aloud as we cuddle in bed getting ready to go to sleep. I learned about the mermaid fakes. Did you know that mermaid (and sea monster creation) fakes were so popular that the fakes themselves have a name? They are called Jenny Hanivers. I immediately felt compelled to someday write a mermaid tale and include a Jenny character who might have a friend named Haniver. The origin of the name is from the French for girls from Antwerp. We've actually learned quite a bit from the mermaid book so far. Tonight we'll finish it and tomorrow we're going to start a kids book about Chinese Folktales called Auntie Tigress.