Generosity of others

Sorry there haven't been any updates in the past couple of weeks. Both of us have been depressed and stressed out. Julie never received pay for the last four weeks she worked at her job. She's in the process of filing an official complaint with the Employment Standards of Alberta because of that.

In better news, she has been hired as an executive assistant to the Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association. She'll be super busy but I think she'll do awesome at it. It doesn't pay as much as her old job (about a $9,000 pay cut) because it's non-profit, but she'll be in a lower tax bracket, so she could possibly end up bringing home close to what she used to!

To help us cover December's rent, Julie's parents surprised us with an incredible gift of $450. We are so grateful - that plus all the overtime I've been working to make up the rest will get us squeaking by with just enough for the time being. My mother also surprised the hell out of us by showing up the other night with three bags of groceries and a pack of paper towels and a pack of toilet paper (the big ones from Costco). We had tears in our eyes, we were so happy. All Julie could manage was to stand in the middle of the kitchen and just stare in awe as I unpacked the groceries.

"Look Julie... cheese!"
"Oh my god... we haven't had cheese in..."
"Yeah, I can't remember the last time either."

"Look Julie... chicken breasts!"
"Oh my god..."

"Look Julie... vegetables! Holy cow, I don't remember the last time we had fresh vegetables!"
"..."

And the same dialogue happened for the oranges, the bread, the tuna, the juice, the crackers...

Needless to say, we've been living off of Kraft Dinner (Safeway had a 'buy one case, get one free' sale a few weeks back) and soup for the past... oh, I don't know, two months? And now we have a cupboard and fridge full of healthy stuff that we haven't had the luxury of buying. I have to say, for being poor at the moment, I don't think I've ever felt so rich.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the gay boys downstairs slipped a card with a $50 Swiss Chalet gift card under the door. Wow... the generosity of friends and family while in a crisis so amazing. I get teary-eyed just thinking about this past week and the help we've received. It's definitely pulled us out of our depression, that's for sure. We can and will survive this speed bump in our lives. December will be ridiculously tight and nobody is getting any Christmas presents from us, but we'll get by. : ) It's so powerful to go through something so hard and come out okay on the other side. I shouldn't say that quite yet because goodness knows something horrible could happen, but I'll chance it anyway. ; )

In other news, I'm finally getting used to wearing contact lenses. I do miss wearing glasses though... too bad mine got stepped on by accident (they fell from the coffee table...) and the frame bent too much. I looked for a few months to see if I could find some frames that would sit okay on my crooked nose (by the way, yesterday marked a year since I was hit in the face by the puck at a hockey game! *shudder*) but I was unsuccessful. Perhaps one month/year I'll find a good pair... in the meantime, I can wear the contacts and avoid red, strained eyes and monster headaches. : )

And lastly, I'm almost afraid to mention this as it seems that all I do is talk about what ails me, but for some reason all of sudden the anti-inflammatory cream the doctor prescribed me to put on my shoulder has caused me to break out in a rash. I've been using the cream for nearly a month now and have had no issues until today. Now, right where it was rubbed on, I have all these small red bumps that are itchy and annoying. I put some aloe vera on it and took an allergy pill and hopefully that will reduce it and/or make it go away. I guess I won't be using that cream anymore!!

That's it for tonight... oh wait, I'll mention that I made Julie pull out our little Christmas tree and watch Christmas Vacation the other night. Heh... I just felt in the mood for Christmas... who cares if it's over a month away. : )