It's Obscene, It's What It Is.... by BlueEyedBrigadier

BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER'S BLOG

BlueEyedBrigadier

It's Obscene, It's What It Is....
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

...that my last real blog around these parts was 2 years and a day ago! Honestly leaves one a mite speechless from the vapourlock effect of not being around this place for that long, other than a few temporary stopovers

I honestly have to say that it has been an interesting (in the old Chinese curse type of way) 731 days since I last put thought to paper, so to speak. On the employment front, I no longer work for Verizon's DSL division as a tech support agent...the call centre I worked in downsized its employee numbers in March 2009 and I was one of the unlucky numbers given their 2 weeks' notice. Wasn't a bad 14-month run, overall...barring the stresses of dealing with constant negative events in the lives of Verizon's Internet customers and the changes in working hours a bit too often at times to make things easy. Spent April to late August 2009 unemployed, but found work again as a Customer Service Representative/Service Professional (gotta love those vague and PC titles

) for the satellite TV arm of Bell Canada. It's via another call centre but the environment is friendly and I'm not solely doing tech work anymore, so there's less overall negativity when I'm working with a customer (cover tech support, programming changes, billing, customer inquiries, etc.)...plus I seem to be capable enough at my job to have earned the second highest bonus payout for my pod of Bell CSRs for the month of December 2009, so I think I'm in a better place re: employment.

To counter-balance the overall improvement of my employment situation since last I blogged, I have to report I lost my mother to a stroke on March 13, 2009...one brought on directly by a heart attack that caused a piece of atrophied heart muscle to break off and block off an artery to the brain... BUT indirectly caused by her less than stellar dietary habits. Almost 11 months later, I'm still not sure how I truly feel about this...my mom's health has long been something that has had an effect on my family, between things like breast cancer and diabetes and debilitating headaches; it's just I am struggling with the realization that her death was probably preventable had she - and the rest of my family, by extension - done more to ensure she ate right and more often than she did. Guilt and anger have been things that have been floating through the back of my mind...I think I have become more in-tune with what Joss & co. were doing with Mal at time with his struggles to cope with what had happened to those he cared about in his past interfering with his present. My father, brother and I are coping the best we can, and a visit with family in the UK this past June and July did some good for us in helping to ease the pain some what...but the knowledge that my mom had wanted for years to see Britain again (she was born and raised Canadian like I am, but she went to school in Wales for her Bachelor's in Library Sciences and it's where she met my Dad, who was studying at the agricultural college attached to the same university as her College of Librarianship).

So...guess you have it, if not entirely then for the most part. Stuff like my recent woes with my laptop having it's HD fail and losing vital data that I hadn't backed up yet or falling down a set of stairs with it and buggering up the LCD less than a week after getting the HD fixed are amusing tales, but they honestly pale when compared to all I've noted above. That and my debate of what kind of smartphone to get to replace my badly beaten Sanyo SCP-7050 that has taken one too many dips in the toilet and falls out of my pocket...military-grade ruggedization, my left buttock!

Alun aka BEB

COMMENTS

Sunday, November 7, 2010 4:28 PM

BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER

Thank you once again for your thoughts, FutureMrsFillion and VeraSamuels!

Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:46 AM

VERASAMUELS

:::HUGGLES:::

Monday, February 15, 2010 3:09 PM

FUTUREMRSFILLION

I am so sorry to hear about your mom. I hope that you all begin healing soon. My hopes and best wishes are being sent your way.

(with lots of hugs)

Thursday, February 11, 2010 8:34 PM

BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER

BYTEMITE: It's nice to know I've been missed...been a long, hard treading of water until I could find something to pull myself up onto for a breather.

And yeah...definitely with us in spirit, but I know I'd give a lot of things to have her here in the flesh. Even more difficult when she and I were very close, in that she and I shared a lot of similar interests and beliefs so she was a valued friend on top of being a beloved parent.

CLIO: Yeah...tumultuous is one way of phrasing it, I suppose. Still...things are on an even keel for the most part and it will help in the continued grieving/coping/healing process ;)

ALIASSE: Now now...please don't slap poor Bytemite around! I get the impression she used a plural in an attempt to convey your wonderful words without really knowing I'm a owner of a set of man parts or not ;)

And I'm glad to be back, though I have to admit I'm rather behind in things...especially in your spectacular ongoing tale re: the crew and the recent need to sacrifice Serenity for a greater good. Too many fics from too many authors I enjoy needing reading and commenting upon...and never enough time in the day :(

STINKINGROSE: I know it's a part of the grieving process to feel like more could have been done when it was something that was rather uncontrollable...but it's just extremely frustrating that hindsight made her ailments all so clear when at the time, it seemed like she was just having one of her semi-frequent bouts of just being sick as a dog. As I noted, we're coping and every day leads to another step along the path to being able to breath fully...just hard as one would expect.

Thanks to all who've commented...it helps more than you can imagine :D

Thursday, February 11, 2010 1:58 AM

STINKINGROSE

I'm sorry to hear about your mom passing. Do not beat yourself up over your mother's health, it does no good for anyone. I am a nurse, we try to explain this stuff to people every day and they mostly just don't seem to get it or believe us no matter how many different ways you explain it. It's my JOB and I can't even prevent it. You are most certainly not [/] responsible for your mother's illness and diseases, nor her ultimate demise regardless of the cause. You are experiencing a normal stage of the grieving process, and you will pass through it if you give yourself permission to do so.

We have most definitely missed you here.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 11:03 PM

ALIASSE

It was me. (Except I didn't think you were a plural *slaps Byte*). Sincere sympathies. Glad to have you back, older and wiser n'all.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 4:33 PM

CLIO

So sorry to hear about your mom, BEB. I was thinking about how I hadn't seen you around, recently – sounds like you've had a tumultuous year. Glad to know the new job's going well, and I hope we'll see you around these parts a bit more often. :-)

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 11:55 AM

BYTEMITE

Hi! We've missed you! I quote one of the Mal/Inara authors, I think it was Aliasse, who said, "Where is BEB? I miss them. They had such open enthusiasm and love for all the writing and stories."

I'm sorry about your mother. Sounds like she was with you in spirit when you went to England, though.

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