STARTING THE NEW WEEK

TUESDAY, October 25
Yesterday I accidently posted my writer's blog on this site, but I decided to just leave it here and recopied it on to "Living the Writer's Life" as well. It was quite a strenuous and exciting weekend and I'm all recovered now, ready to start this new week fresh.

Something troubling, though...I went to visit A. yesterday and he seems to have taken a turn for the worse. I hope it's just one of those 'bad days' but it looked pretty grim. I promised to visit again today but I'm stalling off til later. It's so emotionally draining, keeping the 'stiff upper lip' and all that (yesterday his daughter told me how they'd been talking about me -- how I'm always so positive when I come to visit. She doesn't know about all the times I cry when I get home.) This weekend my German friend Patrick is arriving on a special trip to visit A. so I hope and pray that he will rally again before then. It is meant to be a huge surprise to boost his spirits but the last couple of times I've seen A. he's been out of it -- the meds are muddling his brilliant mind, not eating properly and distressed and depressed. It's such a tragedy!

One good thing this week is the end of the teacher's strike, so tomorrow I can resume teaching my night school classes and the money will once again come trickling in. I've somehow managed to get through the past two weeks with generous donations from Guardian Angels and yesterday a friend paid me back some money unexpectedly which I'd forgotten I'd loaned her. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

Today, I joined my former grad class ladies for our monthly luncheon. One of them fronted me enought to buy lunch which was generous of her. I will be so glad to get out of this deep financial hole I seem to have plunged into since the summer. But it's pretty clear now that I am NOT going to get any more daycare calls. It seems I am 'retired' now whether I wanted to be or now. Funny business going on there. I had a talk to with a co-worker and it's the same old story -- the director seems to be pushing out the long-time staff in favour of her relatives and other Asian girls much less (or not) qualified. An unhealthy situation but I've seen it happen over and over again in daycare. And that's one reason why I gave up working full-time some years ago.

Anyway, I have lots of work to do with my writing, trying to finish my novel and get some more travel stories written. So it's a matter of disciplining myself to get busy and focus on the task at hand (which I should be doing at this very moment!)