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episode 84 season 2
One women’s view of her life
First, I hope everyone is safe and is looking forward to a little humour today….I’ve personally had quite the 2020 start off…folded ROE in a nice white envelope, coming upon my window looking like a spider web – SMASHED! And now like you Covidiot Syndrome. Oh yeah did I mention homeschooling and carpal tunnel – okay enough complains about my exciting life – NOT!
I’ve always been a home-body, grounded at home, love to cook and sew, and CREATE and READ – as in my new theme for 2020 this maybe my new theme forever who knows.
First up, this white envelope, I had a feeling over the last couple of months of 2019 that the projects were dwindling and the bids were not getting awarded. I worked for a Vancouver company being their representative here…yes people I’ve been packaged out. After 5 years I was handed the white envelope and walked out the door. I needed some time to reflect and think about this. I was assured it wasn’t anything I did and it was a company decision, but you still feel this sucker punch that you were chosen to be handed these – scripted beautifully papers – and asked to sign on the bottom line before 4 pm today. If you haven’t experienced this it’s a shock to say the least. Once I swallowed this huge lump in my throat and stomach I stated to tell a few people outside my main circle, and guess what I wasn’t alone – that so many people have gone through this. Two of my colleagues recently felt the same and so many people I reached out to were in the same place – and now so many people are in the same boat as me. I’m safe, I’m working on my side hustle, I’ll get EI – eventually (when I called EI their recording said that they couldn’t take anymore calls today), I can make my payments in life…but so many people are truly struggling now with this cover situation.
So I’m looking for work, but when I can take a job or get picked for a job – the jury is out – I need to be home now with my child, which by the way is coming up later in the show…
So it had been a couple of weeks since I was without employed, me and London were heading to karate and proceeded to park at the front doors at a handicap spot under the bright parking lot lights, in front of the church where we train. I hid my purse in the backseat on the floor. We proceed to our class. After our class commences there is a hockey team that arrives shortly after our class. In the meantime a guy, comes and checks out all of the vehicles with flashlight – under the watchful eye of the security cameras. This villain proceeded to come into the church and scope out what was going on then proceeded to smash my window and steel my purse. Yes I had credits cards and debit cards and my drivers licence and of course my health cards for both myself and London – as we just had an appointment so I had them on me. I recently took some cash out to head to my dads for the weekend. Within under an hour this culprit shopped and shopped. So, after cancelling all of my cards this day – and reporting everything etc. it was a gong show!
And totally triggered London from our last robbery instance. There was glass everywhere in the car..UGH nightmare.
Did you see the Jimmy Fallon video with his kids? there’s a link in my show notes but it basically goes like this, he’s sitting on the couch, his girls look to be 5 and 7 maybe, are hanging off him, while he’s trying to do an advertising monologues skit – he telling people to buy toilet paper from CVS – he asks his kids if they think his joke is funny (which it was) and they say ‘nope!’ – insert laugh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDd38-EVCs
So my side hustle of producing audio books has exploded a) because I have time to take on more projects and b) people like my voice. One thing that is so funny is the people who hire me are from Italy – yes Italy – why I’m not sure but almost every contract I’ve received is from Italians men and women…weird and interesting right? My husband thinks this is so bizarre. I’ve sent an email to ACX to see if their’s some algorithm that is triggering this. When I ask the ‘Italians’ they just say that they like my voice from my samples. Strange tho right? So the genre I’m best suited for to date are – Self Help books like meditation, sleep, being mindful and also diet books, keto and intermittent fasting diet books. I’m enjoying this so much…Have you ventured into this as a side hustle? Reach out to me I’d love to be able to chat with someone else in this business. It’s a tricky thing to read, edit and produce to the quality standard required by ACX for Audible. But it’s making me learn and keeping me connected and going though this weird time in our world.
As a bit of a downside tho I’ve contracted – no I’ve acquired carpal tunnel through my hand and up my arm – it was brutal, I was icing this and taking breaks and as such being late on my contracts. My hubby went out and purchased a new mouse for me. This is a mouse that when held is in the position of a ‘handshake’ and it’s released my pains by like 80%. So if you’re experience any of pain in your hands, elbow and up into your neck I’d suggest testing out a new mouse. I bought the Logitech mx vertical mouse – check out my site for a link and picture. I would also love to have a treatment like massage and or osteopathy but I’m scared to head out and honestly I’m not even sure if they are working…if you have any ideas for stretching that have worked for you please send these to me.
So, I’ve been EATING – READING and of course CREATING during this time, I feel like I want to do everything to just keep me grounded and keep me from not freaking out. How are you feeling during this time? Did you buy all the groceries you think you need for a while, did you stock up on your favourite things? I did my big shop on the Friday before this gong show started. I went into the roasterie in Kensington on Sunday which was only allowing 6 people in the coffee shop at one time to get a hot chocolate to share with my little munchkin. I’m not comfortable going into a store – are you?
CREATING MEMORIES
So I’ve been busy CREATING – every once in a while we purge London room, toys and clothes and bring to the salvation army to donate. We have a batch of old books, and toys in the back of my car as I haven’t been down to deliver these yet – I wonder if they are even taking deliveries… Anyway I felt like CREATING so I dug out all of my scrapbooking stuff to start scrapbooking our trip to Cancun…I haven’t printed any photos (we went before Christmas) but I started putting pages together with recipts, brochures, paper etc that I gathered while we were away and this surged an intense feeling of scrapbooking so…here’s what I did.
I went out to my car and dug out one of the books that we were going to donate, The Berenstein Bears collection in hard cover, once of London’s favourites. It is signed by her cousin Jarvys who gave it to her for her 1st bday (she will be 9 this year) and I just loved that he signed it. So I dug out some random printed photos that I’ve had laying around and started to build this book into a scrapbook with random memories…there’s pics on my site and on Instagram but here’s some of the goodies that I saved hopefully this will inspire you to scrapbook those memories near and far.
. I have an old pencil case from when I was younger then London is now, inside this home-made case which is made with denim from an old pair of jeans and a green zipper – I have cabbage patch kid pencil crayons that I got for Christmas one year I think I was 6. Also in this case is badges from a camp I went to when I was 11 years old I’ve scrap-booked the badges, which bring back and awesome time in my childhood – do you have any badges that you’ve held onto from your childhood, make these into a page or a card or something to inspire you.
2. I knew I wanted to take the signed inside cover from Jarvys who is London’s 2nd cousin and make it into something worth looking at. His writing and all…so I put a frame around his signature, took out cardboard letters and wrote the word cousins and then I added a note card that read: Jarvys Dad is London’s Great Uncle
3. There’s a picture from my stash of London in the tub when she was 3 months old
4. There’s a pic of me from 2010 holding my cat Tig, before she howled at the moon and I was 10 years younger
5. Then the last picture is one of my husband before we were married, it was taken in 1999. He came home to meet the parents. My dad and his wife. We met the year of 1999 when things were going to come to a STOP when the clocks and computers rolled over in 2000 – remember y2k? Then we got married on September 8th, 2001 – 3 days before 911 and now this…right around my 43 bday. This picture of my now hubby I carried around in my purse for years it’s all tattered and warn like a good book.
EAT – READ – CREATE
I’ve also been Eating and keeping grounded cooking at home, tonight I’m making pizza crust also from scratch – usually I buy the dough from Lina’s up the street from me but I’m not ready to step into a grocery store yet. I’ve made these little protein balls, for a quick low carb snack. I’m still making my bread every few days – this is definitely a staple in my house a -go-to- item that I’ve made for over 5 years now. What’s your favourite must make on a continually basis. Me, it’s bread and soup on Sundays…weather is my homemade soup or my Aunties soup – souptacular, there’s always a pot of soup at The Moss’ on Sundays…
Well if I can give you any takeaways from todays show…CREATE something a card, a letter, a story, read something even if it’s just a small little joke to give you a chuckle and EAT something that is your favourite that you’ve made…if you want the recipe for my soup and my protein balls let me know. You can text me to my email valerie@valeriemoss.ca
Until next time, take care of yourself and your favourite people. I’ll leave you with this clip of London, when we were in Kensington, we were trying to have fun avoiding people enjoying the sun and making memories…he’s the audio part of this video…she might be onto something here…as a reporter…
