Who needs a guard dog when you've got 20-somethings with paintball guns?

There's an elderly couple that lives down the road from me. They're 82 (him) and 75 (her) years old, and they'll never let you forget it, because they're still farming. Bad ass, I say. I wanna be that awesome when I'm old. He's deafer than a doornail, and walks slower now, the product of a hip and knee replacement, and if she doesn't have osteoporosis, I'm a monkey's uncle, but they still run their own darn farm. Epic.

They've had a strawberry patch for my entire life, and you'll never have better berries in your life. They're a hard to find variety, and they're grown with no chemicals or artificial fertilizers. I look forward to them every year. The patch has gotten smaller as they grow older, and its just them picking now, instead of the U Pick they used to offer, but they still let me pick berries any time I want to. They're the type of people that would give you the shirt off their back, if you needed it.

Recently, they've had problems with theft from their garden. Its becoming increasingly obvious that it is human theft, and not animal snacking, because plants are yanked out of the ground, and footprints are in the mud. They mentioned it while a friend and I were out picking berries today, and told me to watch my garden too. Theirs is far enough from their house that you could be out there with a flashlight and they wouldn't notice it.

The thought of someone stealing from the cute little old couple made me angry. Irrationally angry. Sometimes I hate humanity. But instead of sitting home being angry, my friend and I devised a plan. We gathered two more friends, and loaded up 4 paintball guns. With permission from my lovely elderly friends, we sat underneath the evergreens that line their garden and waited. Sure enough, two bodies come creeping...not from the driveway but from the trees, flashlights guiding their way. We waited until they were reaching for the berry plants and opened fire.

In seconds, our friendly neighbourhood thieves were covered head to toe in paint and what it sure to be paintball welts, because all 4 of us are country kids that have deadly aim with weapons. After a few yelps and some swearing, and us shining OUR flashlights in their faces, they ran very quickly to leave the property. It felt fantastic to bust them, because that business does not go down out here. Not in my backyard, baby.

And somehow, I doubt they'll be back. Win one for the good guys.

It's That Time Of The Year

Well, folks...it's that time of the year. Summer in the life of the rural folks means work, sleep, work, sleep, rinse, repeat (weather dependent, of course). If the sun is shining and its not raining, I'm outside and on the go from about 6 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night. It's long days, but it's the life that the farm community lives at this time of year, particularly those who grow their own crops AND have a summer job in agriculture. (Hi, that'd be me. No, I'm not insane, why do you ask?)

Anyway, if my absence from Twitter/my blog/e-mail/cyberspace in general is noticed, I promise I am fine. I'm just really busy and once I finally end up in my house at the end of a 14 or 15 hour work day...I want to sleep, plain and simple. At that point, sleep almost always trumps blogging, reading blogs or catching up on Twitter. And Twittering while driving tractor...well, its like texting while driving a car multiplied about about 362362 stupid points.

Anyway, the point is sorry for what is sure to be an MIA me, don't take it personally.

It's me, not you.

My security blanket

I realized something about myself recently. I'm not sure when the "Ah-ha!" epiphany moment happened but it was there somewhere. I have friend commitment issues. It's a strange thing to be afflicted with, but I am entirely convinced that I am, in fact, falling prey to this commitment issue business.

See, I have some of the greatest friends that anyone could ever ask for, and believe you me, I do not take them for granted. But the reason these friendships seem so natural to us are because they've been there our whole lives. We "met" as babies because our parents know each other. Its like being someone's sibling...it doesn't take effort, you just are. We've always just...been. I'm good at that.

Making new friends, however...an art I never fully mastered. Making new acquaintances, I'm a champ. That's easy, for someone that's outgoing and generally friendly. I make new ones every time I start a new class at school. But inevitably, the semester ends and other than random Facebook "Happy birthday!" messages, we fall out of contact. Class friends are always temporary friends; immediately gone when you realize what you shared in common was said class.

I can't handle the sudden BFF types. The ones you just met 5 minutes ago, who want your cell number and invite you to their birthday, all during minute 6. I don't share intimate details of my life with, well, anyone except a select few. I can do the quick and comfortable conversation but the fast bonding, the instant "Let's be the most awesomest friends ever" doesn't work for me. I'm guarded. I'll listen and offer advice, but rarely a story about myself that's not superficial.

I realize, in a big way, all of this is going to come back to bite me in the ass in adult life. I'm realistic enough to know that, as much as I'd love it to happen, I won't live within 10 minutes of my childhood friends forever. We're going to leave university one day, start families and live and grow apart. One day, we'll remember where we end and the other begins, even if we don't right now.

That day is going to suck. Particularly because there isn't a person outside of that circle that really knows me. Right now, they know me so well that a lot of the time, I don't have to explain much. Its comfortable, like an old blanket. I know every tear, every stain, every spot. But one day, someone's going to take that old blanket away from me, and give me something brand spankin new. It'll be a perfectly nice blanket, I'm sure, and capable of keeping me warm, but it won't be my blanket.

I just have to start finding ways to make it my blanket. The tough part is figuring that out.

Stop stepping on my dang toes

I'm always pretty vague about my job on my blog, and Twitter. Its mostly in the interests of keeping my identity equally as vague, because this is supposed to be a place to blow off steam about people that wouldn't appreciate reading it about themselves.

I also don't need to be that chick that gets fired for her blog. Because seriously. SERIOUSLY.

That aside, work has become a hot button topic for me lately. We're going through one heck of a growing pain right now. The bar-like/pub-like business I work for is on the campus of my school (hence the vague), and is run by a combination team of a full time adult manager as well as a few assistant managers, and student assistant managers. The student management changes annually, because many of the managers are upper year students and upper years have a tendency to...yknow, graduate.

I have been promoted to student manager. This is a new position. Previously, it was a team of assistant managers, and none of them outranked each other. I now outrank them all; head of the house, so to speak. (It is a team of 8 that will be under me, if you're curious). The problem right now is that the student AMs that have been my superiors since September are now my inferiors. I didn't just jump one level up and become an equal...I'm their boss now. Awkward.

Some are taking it quite well. The non returners frankly don't care, their days are numbered. However, there is one that is making my life difficult. She's the quiet type, and unaccustomed to power. When she was my boss, she barely had the guts to approach me, but now that I'm hers, she feels the need to...I don't know, test me? She's doing the passive aggressive shit, overriding my decisions behind my back, and I have very little patience for it, and I'm having a difficult time trying to find the middle of the road to deal with it.

I'm a firm believer in "Give an inch and they'll take a mile" in situations like this and I want, and need, her to know that this isn't going to fly, and I'm not putting up with her constantly undermining me. But at the same time, as a new manager who needs a cohesive team of assistants under her, I don't need to bring the hammer down on someone without a really good reason. Even if I really, REALLY would like to. Ahem.

And thus...the politics of management begins.

Any advice is actually welcome on this one, even if you haven't been in a similar situation. Sometimes, an outsider's assessment sheds light on something I didn't even see. So feel free to comment.

Life Update

Sorry I haven't written for a while. Things have been a little insane.

Ben deserved his face time at the top of my blog, because that kind of hate and hurt from parent to child needs to be stopped right now. See my last entry if you're wondering what I'm talking about.

Otherwise, life has generally been insane. The end of the semester always brings insanity and papers and sleepless nights of studying and this one was no exception. That's really all that needs to be said.

Work, on the other hand...I could talk for days. I'm now a manager of 3 businesses, all owned by the same entity that I work for. Between said 3 businesses, we need to hire about 160 people, thanks to student turnover at the end of semesters. This means I am interviewing over 270 people. In ten days. For those of you that have done interviews, you know my pain. For those of you that haven't...be glad you don't understand.

So school insanity just wrapped up but work insanity is just beginning. Welcome to my crazy life.

Ben

His name is Ben. His parents have made me more angry than I can recently remember being.

His name is Ben. He's my dance partner for a performance.

His name is Ben. He's my friend.

His name is Ben. He's gay.

And his parents disowned him for it.

*******

He came to morning rehearsal, looking upset and was asked multiple times what was wrong and evaded. Blamed lack of sleep, end of term papers, etc. Can't say that anyone was buying it but it eventually got dropped.

While we were alone in the studio, I asked him again what was wrong, and he was near the verge of tears when he asked me to sit down because he had something to tell me. And so I sat. He took a deep breath and finally told me he was gay.

I say finally because I've had a feeling since I met him. He's not the effeminate very-obviously-gay type at all; he's the opposite. He looks like a jock. Acts like one of the boys. But I had a feeling, but never pushed the subject, figuring he'd tell me when or if he wanted to.

When I told him that it didn't matter, didn't change anything...that he was still Ben and I was still me and nothing was different...the tears finally did spill over, and he told me his parents didn't have quite the same reaction when he had told them the day before. Understatement of the century. I'll spare you the nasty things his father said to him because they near brought me to tears, but the closing remark was, "No son of mine is a *insert gay slur here*, so you're no son of mine." His mother drove him back to school in silence. Not a word from either of them since.

I sat there with my friend, while he cried, and I did my best to comfort him, despite the boiling rage that was hiding just beneath the surface. I told him all the things I should: that his true friends won't care, that it doesn't matter who does, that he is the same person as he was before he decided to come out. But what can you do to soothe the hurt of a parent's rejection of their own child?

*******

The rage is still here. I thought this was the 21st century. I thought this was Canada. I thought we were accepting...not just tolerant, but accepting. I thought a parent's love for their child was unconditional.

Apparently, I thought wrong.

My friend is hurting like hell right now. Not because of some random stranger yelling a slur at him, or a jerk at school. Not because of someone who's opinion doesn't matter to him at all. No, he got cut much deeper than that, by his own father, while his mother stood idly by.

And that is WRONG.

Ben deserves better. Everyone like Ben deserves better. And it makes me sad and angry that they don't have it yet.

An open letter to the love gods

Dear universe,

It is entirely unfair that the hot guy from class (who happens to be in the Army Reserves and has the body to prove it), who also works security at my job, who is friendly and flirtatious, and immensely intelligent 9and contributes to class on a regular basis) IS TAKEN.

Because now I feel uneasy about the fact that we've been talking for the past couple HOURS. No lines were crossed but I doubt that would matter if his girlfriend (who I didn't know existed until...oh, 5 minutes ago) heard about that one.

NOT COOL, universe. Not cool.

Sincerely,

Me