Mel's Sunday Update (on Monday)

What with working yesterday, I completely forgot to post this ...

Our insane attack kitteh currently has cabin fever.  At aged 4/5 months she has come on heat.  The vets wont neuter her while she is on heat or at the moment anyway because she is too small.  The only answer has been to lock her inside the house for two weeks or risk her getting pregnant.  Every entrance to our home (doors and windows) have all been sprayed by multiple male cats .... we are under siege!  (without Steven Segal!)

So for the latter part of last week and I suspect the next 10 days I wont get any stitching done.  The kitten simply goes feral when I pick it up and she has actually stripped the needle from the floss and carried the needle off, (while I'm trying to catch her) too many times already.

Pause while I clean up and change clothes.  Eating coco pops, blogging and fending off bored attack kitty at the same time is a dangerous occupation.

Anyway, in the earlier part of last week I did manage to finish off Part 7 of Vienna Ball.  The peacock.

Album here.
Peacock here.

Hugs
Mel.

Today's Good Point: 26 Aug 2009.

A very good friend recently said to me: "keep looking around and find the good things in each day, and each bend in the road.".

I'm going to do this daily to focus on the positives in life.

Today's Good Thing?  My friends!  I have an incredibly generous, tolerant, sassy, classy, intelligent, patient and thoughtful group of friends!  I love each and every one of you.

Thank you!

Life stuff

Things here have been a bit rocky as one might expect from two independent people moving in together away from all of their family and friends.

It culminated a month ago with with a shouting match (us) and tears (mine) and decisions were made for the sake of the relationship i.e. that I would continue to work part time and do all the housework, post office, dry cleaning etc, unless I am offered a job at a high enough rate that I can contribute half of the joint expenses. We also decided it would be best to move back to Melbourne when the lease on this house expires next May.

During that time I asked Stephen if he still loved me or did he want me to move out. He didn't answer me, but things seemed to be getting along better after that.  We were working better, we were spending more time together etc.

Mum visited for a week and my birthday was a great day when all three of us played board games and card games and wii games together. As soon as mum went home, things went back to the bad old ways with Stephen doing his own thing every night and not even sitting with me during dinner.

Then he finally admitted that when we move back Eastside he wants us to move separately.  He believes we don't work well living together. He also admitted that he fell out of love with me a long time ago, even before I moved over here.  He suggested I move over here as he felt it was his responsibility to look after me financially.  He felt he was the reason I moved to Melbourne so he felt obligated when the Melbourne job fell through.  Even though his feelings towards me had changed, he felt he could not break off the engagement when I had just lost my job.

I don't think the relationship has been given a proper chance. He made his mind up before I even got here. We haven't been intimate, not even hugs and kisses since I've been here.  He's always had excuses.  It makes so much sense now.

I asked him if he wanted to give the relationship a proper chance, a second go now that we are both here and both getting used to living with one another. I asked why he fell out of love with me? Is it something I can work on? He still has not answered any of these questions.

So because he felt obligated, we are in masses of debt, I am over the other side of the country with very few friends and no family, and I can't see a way home without incurring more and more debt.

I know grieving for a broken relationship takes five steps.  I seem to be stuck at "if I had known the truth I would have made so many decisions differently" and of course the self-pitying "why aren't I good enough for anyone to love?"

Between next week and Christmas I'll be putting most of my stash up for sale on eBay. Closer to moving time I will have a yard sale and try to sell most of my furniture and I will sell my car at that time for whatever I can get for it.

Any other suggestions for raising cash and reducing the amount of stuff to carry back?

I'll basically be moving back to my mum's with my cat, my bed and a couple of suitcases.  And starting over.  Welcome to being 38 Mel.

Just figured you guys would want to know.  Also you might have some practical ideas :)

Mel's Sunday Update

Morning all,  Well I finally managed a little stitching time this week, and finished off the lamppost in Vienna Ball.  That's seven parts done now :) 

Album here.
Close-up of lamppost here.

Hope everyone has a good week this week.

Mel's Sunday Update

Yes for a second week in a row I have a stitching update :) :)

{Looks up - no ... no the sky isn't falling in just yet ....}

Lets see this week I'm back to working part time but then I'm also doing all the cooking, cleaning, running to the vets, getting the car registered in this state etc etc so my days are as full and certainly more draining than if I'd just been sitting at a desk full time.

But even then, these other things still have to be done, so I'm grateful for any stitching time even if it is only at night :)

I was invited to a Saturday get together at Colours Down Under yesterday.  There were six of us there and great amusement, merriment, stashing and a little stitching was had by all. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and plan to attend next month's gathering too :)

I used the time there to get a significant portion of Vienna Ball Part 6 completed.  Starting Part 7 tonight I hope.

I also stashed a little. I deliberately didn't go into the shop and just looked at what was brought by others to the table we were stitching around.  As it was I still brought home:

• Passione Ricamo Serendipity Fay
• Passione Ricamo Over the Rainbow
• Passione Ricamo Calipso
• Mirabilia Bluebell
• Mirabilia Magnolia

Hmmm - yes well.  Its my birthday next week ... I'm allowed to :)

Oh speaking of which, my mum is flying over to visit me for a week!  I"m so excited!  Mum flies in on Wednesday night after work and flies out again next Wednesday morning.

Guess I'll be spending Tuesday morning getting the house ready for visitors.

Other than that, I hope everyone else had a great week and some relaxation .....

I'm off to drool at the Polstitches site - I think I like the fabrics for the Passione Ricamo designs as much as the actual designwork ......

Gluten-free thoughts

I've just started reading "Gluten Free Girl" by Shauna James Ahern.  I've been a devotee of her website for a while.

In the books she specifically addresses the issue of people like me who "cheat" and has "just a bite" of gluten-containing foods ....  

She says "The ability to shift to living gluten-free takes a psychological shift. It is a shift that must happen, however.  How many people spend years mooning over the man who broke up with them, still wishing he was the one? Think of gluten as an abusive boyfriend."

She also talks about the tiredness and listlessness a lot of people experience when eating gluten.  Thinking about it, we eat junk food when I'm too tired to cook.  I'm too tired to cook in part, because I keep ingesting these foods.

This may be a vicious circle ....

I'm going to cook some of the recipes out of her book.  Only problem is anyone know where I can source sorghum flour or Pomegranate Molasses?  Some of the most delicious sounding recipes have ingredients that I just can't source at my local supermarket :(

But isn't that always the way and isn't that part of why I think they sound delish? Because they are flavour sensations I haven't tried before?

Hmm - more good food thoughts ....

Food for Thought

This afternoon while grocery shopping at our local store, Ballajura IGA, my partner and had a bad customer service experience.  This has given me thought for how this relates to other workplaces and other situations.

I have food intolerances so we went looking for a specific brand of frozen food we knew was gluten free.  I found three packets.  The use-by dates were:

• 19 December 2008
• 11 January 2009
• 24 March 2009.

Today is the 2 August 2009.  I looked through the speciality gluten-free frozen  section and found almost all of the products in there were past their use-by dates by at least five months, some almost a year out of date.

My partner took a selection of these up to the service counter and informed the manager of what we had found.  The Manager's reaction was, to paraphrase "So they are out of date? So what?"

We have had concerns about that particular store before.  One of the freezer units is known to be faulty and the ice cream is regularly frozen and thawed repeatedly while still in the store.  When I brought the second tub back, I was given a refund by one of the staff without a murmur.  She informed me that this happens regularly and all the staff and their families know to buy their ice cream at a different store.

Today was the tipping point for us.  We are considering informing the relevant authorities tomorrow of what we found and we have decided never to return to that store.  If anyone asks, we will be quite open as to why we have made this decision. As a customer, today's incident and the manager's lack of care or consideration was the tipping for us.

As people earning a wage, we are often on the other end of this scenario.  Just about all people who earn a wage have customers.  Some deal directly with members of the public.  Others have "back room" or support roles for the front counter people.  In this case, the front counter staff *are* your customers.  For those in IT support, your customers are the rest of the organisation.

How do your customer service skills shape up?  How would you have handled today's issue if you were that manager?  Would you, as a manager, have allowed the procedures to get to the point where those issues arose?  Finally, how would you fix it?

On a smaller level, when dealing with a client who has issues, how do you recognise when the client has reached the tipping point of finally acting; of voting with their feet, of boycotting your store or products or just spreading ill feeling towards you and your section?

How can you determine when the client or customer will let things ride and when they finally make a stand?  I have found over the years that it is the body language and the general attitude of the customer service representative that determines the level of the customer's reaction.

We decided today that "enough was enough" because the manager patently did not care that his store was selling out of date and potentially dangerous goods.

How does this relate to your workplace?  If your section screwed up, is it really that "weakening of power" for you to apologise and give assurances that steps will be taken to investigate the matter?  Is acknowledging a error really going to leave you open to a lawsuit? Is brushing off a client because you don't care about your business really the right thing to do?  Is this really how you earn your wages?

Is there any job, where you as the manager are too busy and too important to acknowledge when customers raise issues with you?

A few years ago I worked as a Branch Manager for a public library service in another state.  I had regular customers who would bypass their local branch to come to mine.  This was a combination of the respective layouts of both buildings and the customer service attitudes displayed by staff in both branches. 

In my branch the large print fiction was located near the entrance to the library and all my staff would go out of their way to assist elderly customers in finding the next book in a series or books from authors who write like their favourites etc etc.

In the other building, the large print fiction was held up the back of the building and staff were encouraged to leave the fiction readers to their own devices.

The end result is my large print fiction circulated 200% more than the other branch.  I had to go and collect "my" large print back back every couple of months because their customers would borrow the books from my branch but return the items to the closer branch.  The returns bin was at the front of the building and there was no staff interaction required.

I'm not an expert in customer service.  I've just worked in this sector for long enough that I can recognise where blatant ignoring of customer issues will damage the reputation of your section or your company.  Is your ego, your pride, your negligence of your customers, really important enough to let your business suffer?

Life, the universe etc

So what's been happening lately?

Well first Trubs.  My dear sweet grumpy old lady has had reasons for her grumpiness.  She went under anaesthetic the other day and had X-rays taken.  She has arthritis in her elbows.  Said arthritis is actually *worse* that the arthritis in her knee joints that we have been treating for the last couple of years.

While she was under they took various blood tests, cleaned her teeth and did everything they could think of that would need doing sometime in the next little while so they wouldn't have to put her under again.  Apparently this is a very risky procedure for cats of her age and they don't want to do it more times than necessary.

She is now on an oral liquid pain killer each evening.  And will be until the temperatures warm up.  After that we can administer it on an "as needs" basis.  We are also giving her Cartrophen booster injections every three months instead of just the yearly set she had been getting. 

We are also looking into heat pads for her basket such as this and adding more fish oil and possibly glucosamine into her diet.  As she is only 14 years old, the vet says the arthritis will move into her feet and toe joints as time goes on, so we are looking at long term strategies to help her cope.

Just having the oral painkillers on a daily basis is definitely helping.  She was moving more freely in the sunshine this afternoon and is much less grumpy towards us and Abby so we think she must have been in considerable pain this winter.

I'm very glad we changed vets :) This one has a much more sympathetic outlook on long term management whereas the previous vets were just, well we've given her the yearly shots, you should expect elderly cats to have aches and pains!

We spent this afternoon out in the warm sun with both Trouble and Abby playing in the overgrown backyard.  Stephen took some photos which have been uploaded to his flickr account here.

Abby is growing well and is at times a little terror and at other times is a poster kitten for adorableness.  She is at various times named Abby, Polly, Insane Attack Kitteh, Psycho Kitteh .....  See Stephen's pics, she is growing up so fast :)


In other news, I've not been looking after myself the way I should and my weight has ballooned out to nearly 100kg (216 lbs).  Before I moved to Western Australia I had dropped my weight to 83kg (183 lbs).  I've also been a bit too lax on the gluten front.  Stephen eats a lot of gluten containing products in his daily intake (as normal people do) and I've been adding in "just a bite" here and there too many times.  This culminated in a massive digestive attack while we were out a restaurant last night and may also explain the dry scaly patches and rosacea on my face and neck since moving here.

To test this out, I'm going completely and utterly strictly gluten-free for the month of August and see if it improves overall energy, happiness levels, weight management and skin health.

No other news to report. We're getting along OK here and finally slowly settling into routines so things should start looking up sometime soon.

Mel's Sunday Update

Yes I have actually been stitching!!  It took throwing in a part time job *and* getting the flu to do so - but I have finally been stitching.

I stitched up a segment on Lyne's RR And a Forest Grew.  I basically did a hodge podge of motifs to finish off page two and do all of page three up to the surrounding for the wording.

Close up of motifs including mine:
Progress on Lyne's RR as it was posted onwards:

I also finally finished Part 5 on Vienna Ball.  This was a simple piece of six shades of grey with just a touch of backstitching around the vases, but it took me all month to find the time to get it done.  I finished it 2 hours before Part 9 was released :)

Part 5 Close up
Whole piece at the end of Part 5.

And that's it for this week.  Hope everyone else had a productive week stitching.