hospital visits

The other day I looked at all 3 years of my yearbook. I couldn't see myself at all in the random pictures the yearbook committee took. I realized how important a record was, so I am recording this for myself later.

My grandmother needs care and attention and the nurses at the hospital aren't paying enough of either to her, although we pay them with our insurance. Are we doing something wrong?

I go to her at lunch, she's already propped up in a chair. There's a small tv that is turned on with speakers on the bed. She sees me come in, and starts a little.

I say "Hello grandma, how are you doing today?" She then asks me a little bit about my family, like where's Maya? or how's your mom doing? Then I begin feeding her with a tray of food.

"Let's see what we have for lunch today..." I describe the food to her. She stares at me with glazed eyes and a blank expression, although her mouth is always frowning. I talk, mostly to myself. It's hard to know what makes her the most comfortable, but it's probably better than silence. I talk to her as if she's a kid. Once she had dentures on, but most of the time her upper lip collapses into her lower lip. She eats one spoonful at a time, and swallows the mouthful with difficulty.

Buddhism

I've moved into the living room. The good news is my roomate is nice and offered to buy me apples from metro last night.

I've also started learning about the buddhism philosophy and the four noble truths. It has made me feel better about a lot of things, and taught me the importance of being mindful and aware of yourself. I'm thinking of trying meditation soon, but I feel like all these bad thoughts will come out and I won't be able to embrace them fully or let go of them.

This weekend I'll be in london, and next weekend I'll be in calgary. Last weekend I was in waterloo. 3 weekends ago I was in Victoria.
I saw my friends Kevin and Sunny this week, and it was a refreshing change.

I called my parents and they are at the hospital tending to my grandma. They gave me all the gory details, and I don't think I was ready to hear them. She is having trouble eating and they had to force-feed her and it's unclear if she'll get better at this point.

at waterloo

I am fatigued beyond words. I kept falling asleep on the greyhound last night, and my sleep schedule is very crappy. I've mostly been writing things down here, but it's 14 pages and i don't know if anyone has the time or effort to read it. I'm at a computer lab now, hanging with Nina.

From my last entry things have gone downhill for me, emotionally. I've been to victoria and back, which was great, but I've been sad and unmotivated. The doctor told me I should exercise more. First I gotta fix my sleep, though. I paused to ponder what sort of voice i should write in. I came to the conclusion that I can't have a worldly experienced voice no matter how hard I try, because that's just not who I am.

I've recovered from that period and am taking it one day at a time.

end of the semester

I arrived in Ottawa April 19, a little stressed about taxes and what I'm going to do over the summer. Over time, the stress faded.

Lab

Wheeler lab is full of interesting people. Today I talked to Tanya and she said there may be some work for me to develop an assay testing for a new biomarker ANG2 for the DMF devices. However, Darius came by and said I was not being paid for this but to make devices... When I talked to Chris later he said that they'd appreciate my help and use of my time should be paid for. Tanya is going to e-mail Aaron and run it by him. I also talked to Julian about the reagent testing but halfway through his explanation Alex and Chris came in to tell him I can't be a part of that because it involves skills and more advanced experiments, which could go badly if I messed this up. I'm not sure if Tanya is going to e-mail Aaron either, maybe she'll forget. Thins never happen the way I imagine them to, whether by chance or they were just never meant to be. ?????

Islands in the stream

i am reading the bell jar from nina. it is such an interesting book. I really like how she weaves events together with bits of opinion sprinkled in between.
For ec=xample:

I slid into the self-service elevator and pushed the button for my floor. The doors folded shut like a noiseless accordion. Then my ears went funny, and I noticed a big, smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face. It was only me, of course, I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used-up I looked.

Today as I was taking the GO bus from square one I was looking out the window and had some deep thoughts.
My consciousness followed the stream of scenery. I fell into relaxation among the soft afternoon shadows cast by the setting sun. Grass and trees whizzed by, leaving a pastel smudge of scenery as an afterimage behind my eyes as we zoomed towards our destination. When we entered Toronto the green faded to a murkier blue-grey, because the sun was now reflecting off of more and more apartment windows.

I kept thinking about nina's apartment, a place filled with glasses and various food items. I felt sorry we didn't clean up the coconut milk jars. It made me feel more responsible for the mess. Jennifer and I played melee with nina's roomates and they were good, but nina wasn't into it as much.

Last night Jennifer educated both of us on the full story of Narnia. It was very nostalgic.
I need to be careful. If I just read and absorb the books I choose to read like an outsider, I'm not going to get much out of these books. To immerse yourself in literature is to read everything.

this author can inspire through any format, even pdfs

I really sympathize with this paragraph from Eugene Mirabelli's Renato, the Painter. I should buy his book on thursday when I go see Margaret Atwood.

Each time the teacher gave me my report card it surprised and frightened me how low the marks were, because I knew that my mother would read it and hand it back, saying, “You’ll have to give this to your father yourself.” And after my father read it he would shout, “Do you want to be a ditch digger? at’s where you’ll end up, digging ditches! Is that what you want?” at’s where dumb Italians ended up. No, I didn’t want that. Being a ditch digger would mean working beside people like that pig Norman Oldacre who liked to make loud farts and told bathroom jokes and who took me aside in the school yard one morning and beat me up so hard my eyes watered. But I didn’t feel stupid and I knew that the stupidist kid in my class wasn’t me but fat Collins. The teacher told him he was the cow’s tail because he always came in last, but Collins just sat there being fat and smiled and blinked his sleepy-lidded eyes and said nothing. He wasn’t my friend but I thought it was cruel to call him the cow’s tail and make fun of him just because he couldn’t memorize.  

I like how these monologues always have another kid who's being picked on, but the picked-on kid isn't the narrator's friend. I guess it shows that the kid has insight but still, wouldn't it be interesting if they were friends???