addition to my cv

My mom is teaching a summer course for brock univeristy for teachers upgrading there skills. the course is on special needs, and today they were talking about learning disablities. WELL she asked if I would be a guest speaker as someone with a learning disablity. Steph says that blogging is cheaper then therapy . . .well try getting paid to talk about your expereinces thats a pretty good deal!! I went through and talked about the problems I encountered throughout elementry school and high school and the stratigies that i used. I talked about the testing and accomidations that I got in university. They were a captivated audience with plenty of questions. It felt really good to talk to these people about it, only in the past few years have I started to tell anyone and at first I felt really insecure--it was like coming out all over again. Now I am completely comfortable talking about my difficulities and stragites that I use. Some one asked me a really good question about how I felt about the workforce. I told them that this is a concern of mine since workplaces are not as supportive as schools but I assured them since I was in the field of equity my places of employment should be more supportive then others. They all laughed :)

I actually wrote a post on this a few weeks ago, the post that was erased. Sal and I had a long chat by the beach about how we were going to contribute to the revolution. We talked about using your strenghts and everyone doing there part. I know that language is not my strength and although I am in school and want to continue working on my writing in the long run it will not be what I'm doing. We talked that day about using your strengths with the perpective of equity. For example working at Rucis camp, an activist camp that sal went to with his free tibet group in highschool. There I could utilize my strengths of athletics and education while maintaining a framework of equity. we say sal working as a teacher, those of you that know him know that he is a fountain of knowledge and a wonderful educator. I say him working at the highschool level and touching many peoples lives both in the class room and in the groups that I'm sure he will be a part of if not start. Part of this idea is realizing that as one person you can't do it all, everyone has their strenghts and weeknesses. It is important to be independent and find stratigies to function dispite your weeknesses but just as important is knowing your strengths and finding like minded people to work with who have complimentary strenghts to your own. That day at the beach we walked away feeling very positive realizing that we are going to do great things in our lives. I will have to remember to look back at that day when I get frustrated :)

the good, the bad and the ugly

the good:

I have been biking from Etobicoke to downtown. A few days ago after a great party at cherry beach I biked over to kims and stayed over, the next morning I biked home from Broadview all the way to kipling. Then this morning I biked to work kipling to hart house, it took me 30 mins. My legs are going to be so strong!!!

the bad:

since the job I had set up fell through, I have not been motivated to find a new job, it is so discouraging . . . so here I sit just working 10 hours a week basically unemployed.

the ugly:

the other day I was painting at my old apartment, as I was leaving, my ex-landlady called me over, see said that the garbage I had put out back was a mess and I had to clean it up. I went to the back alley and was completely disgusted. Here is the story, on saturday when I was moving out I took all my garbage, all of sals and all of the other roommates garbage into the back alley. I wanted to clean up so my bro would not have to worry about it. I remembered that my landloard had once said that I could put garbage back there and he would take care of it. So I carried 9 big bags of garbage to the back, saw a pile of other garbage and assumed that was where I should leave it. WELL aparently I had put it in the wrong spot and someone was angry about that. They toar through each and every bag looking for clues to who it belonged to. When they found a letter addressed to me they told the landlady that I had to clean it up. So here I am looking at 9 bags of garbage that are scattered all accross the alley. It was so disgusting and compleatley unnessissary. I'm sure that they were able to find out whoes it was without distroying each bag and leaving me to clean it up. It took a full hour to rebag all of the garbage and put it ten feet over on my ladlords property. I was so angry and felt so dirty . . .it took allot of brain power to place myself in a good mood again.

mission one: retrieve cat from hiding space

my moms house has a back yard . . .I want Cali to be able to enjoy the summer, since she has always been an indoor cat, I bought a harness and leash for her. That way she can play with out running in to the big streets. She is a bit scared of outsided, so we have been taking her out there for brief moments. This technique has worked as her fear starts to fade, but this morning she ran out the back door with out us noticing. I'm calling her and she is not coming. I found her hiding under the shed in the back yard, she was too far in for me to grab her so I sat and waited. I grabbed the third harry potter book and started to read about Hagrids first class, every time I looked under she was peering back at me. Until the moment she was gone . . . she had stuck out the back my heart dropped when I noticed the gate was open I ran to the front and she was no where to be seen. I was about to start a grand search mission when my mom noticed her underneath the deck. There is a few feet of crawl space under there, so I went in slowly moved towards her, we kept eye contact the whole time and she didn't flinch. I grabbed her crawled out and brought her back to safety. . .mission one is complete.


finally my favorite song has a reason to be posted . . . .its by doria roberts, download it people its beautiful

Let’s take a picture now
I do not want to forget
The way you look at me when everything is perfect
A perfect memory of when things are so good
And everything has worked out just the way we knew it would

I bought a picture frame
I made room on the wall
I hold you close to my chest
Because I’ve made room in my heart
You ask me what I’m doing
I say displaying our love
I can see you when I’m awake and you’re the one I’m dreaming of

I love the sun when it shines
I love the sky when it’s blue
I love the color green
Because it reminds me of you
I’ve been thinking about you all night
A warm bed and a cozy fire
You put you arms around me and lift my head
And then you kiss me…

My first day back in Etobicoke, I'm quickly coming to realize how it is only part of Toronto by name . . . people here go on bike rides but don't ride there bikes to go places or do things. There are no bike lanes and no where to lock up your bike. People look at you like a freak if you are running errons on your bike,as if you some how failed them by not getting your licence at 16 and driving an SUV. It sad how I havn't even been here 24 hours and I'm already counting the days till I leave, the thing is its not like I don't get allong with my mom because we work together just fine. And its not like I live unbelivably far from everyone and everything . . . I can be at my old ap;artment in 20mins, its just that I kinda feel stuck here, I feel that I can't be sponaious. I can't just jump on my bike and be somewhere in 5 mins. The other day for example I biked to pride pub at UofT on my way to dinner with a friend. I realized that I forgot my bank card at home(so typical) adn biked back home . . .had dinner and went for a walk(never once wondering when the subway ended) and biked her home. .. when I got home I checked my messages and there was one from cbyb, I phoned him and biked over to his house. In the middle of the night I couln't sleep partially cuz it was to hot in his house so I biked home to my fan. NONE of these things could have happened if I was in Etobicoke.

In the evening my mom and I went on a bike ride in this path near her house, there were sooooooooooooo many little bugs it was disgusiting, I had my mouth shut the whole time and my helmet was being used as a defector, we decided to get off the path and bike home on the streets. On this adventure home we passed a pool that I use to work at, and that cbyb worked at the year afterwards, the year I met him. I had this sudden feeling of relief, I was sooo glad not to be working for the city anymore. Even thought I was promoted to suppervisor I can't deal with the people. I saw a few girls that I knew, all with long blond hair wearing little bathing suits . . .I'm so glad that I'm away from the extream heterosexuality faternity enviroment that is city pools. The hetersexism that is the norm in these enviroments is enough to make me sick. And the pool raids, don't get me started on the pool raids. I swear you would think we were up in western at a frat house with the stupidity that goes down. Needless to say my sence of relief came from my decision not to go back this year. I woulde rather be poor that have to deal with that enviroment again.

I'm not going to let living in Etobicoke get me down today, even thought I missed the pride events yesterday I'm heading down today in my boyscout uniform. It not like I would want to bike down to pride anyways . . .no where to park and with that many people you are just asking to have your bike destroyed. So here I go on day two back in Etobicoke, looking forward to seeing queer people everywhere. . . .