annemariedemyen

Religion

January 19, 2020January 19, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in life

I grew up in a French Catholic home. Religion was a big part of our heritage and a big part of our daily life. I left the church many years ago because I could no longer be a part of it. At first I put my religion in the background, as my husband at the time had become negative and disrespectful towards it. I felt he was doing our children more harm than I was doing them good, by having religion in our lives. Then, when I left my husband, I left the church completely because the powers that be frowned on divorce and I refused to be frowned upon for getting myself and my children out of a terrible and dangerous situation. I did the right thing, and to this day, I know what I did was the right thing.

I am hardly the only person who had legitimate reasons for leaving the church. There has been every type of abuse by clergy in the church and many who used their authority to support it and conceal it. There is no denying this and there is no excusing it. Victims need to be compensated and supported and abusers and their supporters need to be held accountable.

It would seem that organized religion, especially the Catholic Church is a floundering institution which, at some point, will permanently drift into obscurity. A lot of people would like to see this happen. I am not one of them. Although I do wonder if it is beyond saving, I do feel that it is an institution that has always been worth saving and it grieves me that it probably will not happen.

Growing up, the Catholic Church was an important institution. I didn’t believe that it was ever infallible but I felt it was important in my life.

– We were fortunate to have dedicated priests and nuns serving our parish. I remember many of them today. They were a valued and respected part of our community and our lives.

– We were fortunate that we were taught basic morals and values – that we were taught rules that have helped us live good lives, rules that we could pass on to our children so they can live good lives.

– We were fortunate to have a strong sense of community. We celebrated births and we mourned deaths, together. We made time to gather every Sunday and many times in between. Our priest opened the church hall up to all of the teenagers in our small town (and surrounding areas). During the week we shot pool, played shuffleboard or table tennis, and practiced singing for our glee club. On weekends, we had dances which featured local aspiring bands. Father L’Heureux was our sole chaperone. I can only remember one incident. One young guy thought he would sneak in a mickey of alcohol. Father L’Heureux stepped in to escort him out and took a punch to the face. There was no blood but the good priest was not happy about having his cigar crushed. 😂

– We were fortunate to have many women (nuns) who devoted their lives to taking care of the sick and the elderly in homes and hospitals. These facilities were anticeptic, brilliantly, CLEAN. The food was nourishing and healing. The nursing was strict but compassionate . I spent a month in a public hospital a few years ago. I could not believe how we now treat our sick and suffering. The place was disgustingly dirty. The food was just plain disgusting. It was in no way edible, much less nourishing. Other than my cardiac specialist, who was amazing in every way, care and compassion was pretty much non-existent.

– We were fortunate to have a place to gather with others to experience a living faith. It was a moving and uplifting experience.

There were, and are, many positive contributions that religion, and specifically the Catholic Church made to society. There were a lot of truly dedicated and devoted clergy in the church who spent their lives serving others. I am so sorry that their lives and good deeds have been lost in the noise of the corruption that has rocked the church over the past few years. I am sorry for all that we have lost, especially since we have nothing of comparable value with which to replace it with.

Positivity

January 17, 2020February 20, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in career, family, life

If one is happy and grateful and stays focused on seeing the best in life, every day will be rainbows and unicorns. Except when it isn’t. 😟

Today it wasn’t. Today started with a windchill of 48 below zero. I got to work and my ex showed up. I haven’t seen him for years. I was fine with that, but today he showed up. Then his car froze, so he could not leave for hours. Then I had a tense discussion with my boss about a messy tender that I have been working on, followed by an argument with his son. Lunch was wieners and beans, leftover wieners and beans! The afternoon brought two more messy tenders and too much work for too little time. By the time I got home, I was struggling.

I fed my dog, worked on my jigsaw puzzle and made myself toast and jam for supper. Still struggling! I finally went to take a hot bath.

In the tub, I suddenly remembered a moment at work today. A client called to complain that he couldn’t find an email we had sent him. My boss told him to look in his junk. Ok, my bad but I thought that was too hilarious. 🤣

Then I remembered that my husband had brought home cinnamon buns for me and my office mate, Kori this morning. I remembered Kori had picked me up for work because my car is in the shop. I remembered my son had thanked me for being understanding and civil to my ex. I remembered the power had come back on when I got home so my house was warm and toasty. Best of all, I remembered tomorrow is FRIDAY!

Bottom line, today was not all rainbows and unicorns, but it had more than a few good moments, good people and a pretty good dog. I have enough warm and fuzzy memories to get me through the night and off to a fresh start tomorrow. Today, I will take that as a win.👍

Life in the Frozen North

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in life

My poor little car is down for the count. I am not sure if this is even a thing, but it would seem my automatic steering fluid has frozen. Whatever the problem is, my power steering no longer has the power to steer.

We are lucky that we do not live in an area where we generally see hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or the like but when our temperature drops down to the minus 40’s things tend to seize up – especially vehicles. Aluminum rims shrink and tires go flat, fluids freeze, batteries die, doors freeze shut. It is too much fun – especially when it is too bloody cold to deal with all this fun stuff.

Fortunately, I live a block away from where my workmate lives so for tomorrow we will carpool and Dan will drive his Jeep, which I usually drive when he is working. Even more fortunate, the temperature is supposed to start going up this weekend. 😊

Nightmares

January 14, 2020January 14, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in family, life

Years ago, during my first marriage, I had nightmares on a regular basis. There were two nightmares that were particularly recurring. The first one would vary but I would dream that I awoke only to realize I was still dreaming. This would repeat over and over throughout the night. It was exhausting and frustrating. In the second nightmare, I was dead. The dream changed from night to night but I was constantly seeing my dead body. In one dream, my dead body was propped up in a child’s sandbox. It totally creeped me out that people were just letting their children play in the sand and no one even considered moving my body. It was disturbing to say the least.

After my first marriage ended, I read that the first dream was typical of someone who felt they were trapped in a hopeless situation. Relative to the second dream, I read that death in a dream represents the end of a situation. It blew me away how both of these dreams had been such an accurate depiction of my life at the time.

In the years since, I still tend to have very vivid dreams but I would not consider them to be nightmares. Most are just very wierd and it seems rediculous how realistic they seem at the time.

This morning, Dan left for work at 4 a.m., which is usual when he works the day shift. Kat got up to see if she would get fed, which she did not. As usual, she tried, and as usual she failed which meant coming back to bed and waking me up in the process.

I had two hours before I had to get up. Fortunately, I promptly fell back to sleep. That was the end of my good fortune. I experienced two hours of the most vivid and disturbing nightmares that I have had in decades. There were any number of details that I felt could be symbolic of something. What that would be is totally beyond me. I do think that overall these nightmares were relative to my current situation with my daughter. I have no idea if they were a good sign or bad. I looked them up on an online dream dictionary this morning but was none the wiser. Now I am annoyed, tired and confused. I hope this is not the beginning of another trend!

194 More Days

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in retirement

194 Days until I am retired! I cannot wait for the freedom to get up and know I am free to plan my day around the weather and my personal whims 😊

I really thought that I would face retirement with some reluctance. The truth is, I am READY! I have enjoyed my career, especially my current position, but these last two years have been so frustrating and stressful an the past couple of weeks have brought so much miserable winter weather. I am just so ready to start this new chapter of my life. 💃💃💃💃

Injustice

January 10, 2020January 11, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in Social Issues

Today our local paper carried another article highlighting the obscene injustice in our courts.

In 2015, a forty-two year old (caucasian) man picked up a twenty-one year old prostitute and took her to the outskirts of our city. When he could not perform the sexual service he had contracted with her, he pushed her out of his truck, naked from the waist down and locked the door. In an effort to stop the man from driving away with her clothes, purse and cell phone, the woman ran around to the front of his truck. The man drove forward, knocking her down and drove over her legs, leaving her injured and unable to summon help. The woman managed to walk two blocks to the highway, where a good Samaritan picked her up and drove her to the hospital.

Last year, this man was found guilty of assault with a vehicle. This week he returned to court for sentencing.

The judge sentenced the man to ninety days in jail, to remind him and others that a vehicle cannot be used as a weapon, although he did note that he did not feel the man intended any harm but he was ‘wilfully blind’ to the harm his actions would cause. He also sentenced the man to a three year probation order, personal grief and trauma counselling as well as addiction treatment. Finally, to ensure this man did not feel too hard done by, the judge ordered that his jail time could be served on weekends so he could keep his job. It was noted that this poor deluded SOB had a record involving a number of serious offences but this was the first time he had ever been given a jail sentence.

Other than a few words noting that the victim had entered a victim impact statement in which she mentioned that she still suffers from nerve injury, there was no mention of the victim. There was certainly no indication of compassion or consideration towards her, as far as the judge was concerned.

There is so much wrong with this picture that I cannot even begin. Why are there so many of these entitled losers causing so much grief and harm to women? Why are the powers that be so reluctant to hold them accountable? This is disgusting, already.

Winter in Saskatchewan

January 8, 2020January 8, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in family, life

The mercury is dropping out of the thermometer so thought I would share a few pics of our winter season. These pictures are of years gone by as we have not gotten a lot of snow yet this year. We have however had a few days where the temperature has dropped to obscene nether regions so will take any sympathy I can get.☃️

On our way home from my son’s. They were having such a blizzard when we left that Dan could not see their driveway and drove over their lawn. We couldn’t resist sending them this pic when we stopped on the way home and saw this sign.😂

My favourite – icy roads at the crack of dawn😟

Angry & Frustrated

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in life

Genie was not really upset or angry – she was just slightly indignant that her mother stole the cherry out of her milkshake (she got over it).

There are, however, a number of people in Saskatchewan who are truly angry and frustrated since our federal election last fall.

While I understand that they feel their livelihood and lifestyle is at stake, I do not agree with their attitude. Anger and frustration may give people the motivation to step up and take effective action in some situations but I do not see that happening here.

I just see a lot of angry, frustrated people. I see people call friends, family and neighbours derogatory names for not using their vote to support their cause. I see people being rude in service stations, banks and stores, elbowing their way past others or deliberately smashing their cart into someone else’s to pass them. I see people cutting others off in traffic and in parking lots. I see people on social media posting or sharing false ‘news’ to make ‘others’ look bad. I see people trash talking ‘others’ for being different. I just see way too much rude and ignorant behaviour and I see way too many who justify this behaviour because they are angry and frustrated.

I do not see how this type of behaviour helps anyone. I do not see how this encourages others to support our cause. I certainly do not see how this type of behaviour encourages other industries to look to Saskatchewan as a place to expand their businesses, which would help our economy to move forward.

We live in a province with a lot of potential. Our ancestors always worked together through difficult times and made it work – across our province and across our country. Now we are facing a time of economic versus environmental challenges in Saskatchewan and across Canada. We need to calm down and work together to resolve these issues – maturely and responsibly.

Saskatchewan

January 5, 2020January 5, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in family, life

My family moved to Saskatchewan when I was three. The province had, and continues to have, plenty to offer. Our air is clear, our water is clean. We have lakes and forests which offer summer and winter activities. We have small cities that are reasonably easy to navigate, while offering a variety of services one would expect from a larger centre.

Lunching at one of our many favourite restaurants

Our weather varies from one extreme to the other throughout the year, but overall it is predictable.

We have our share of social issues, but for the most part it is a relatively secure place to live. We have a number of industries – mining, agriculture, oil & gas, construction, to name a few – that offer a reasonable level of employment.

We have international airports in Saskatoon and Regina that offer us access to the rest of the world as well as local airports in smaller centres.

I would like to move back to Manitoba one day, but for now, Saskatchewan is home. 💖

Own It

January 4, 2020January 4, 2020 by annemariedemyen, posted in career, life

I have been working for over five decades now and have decided to share some thoughts on problem resolution in the workplace (or in life in general). There seems to be a need these days🙂

The most successful and effective people I have known are the ones who recognize an issue, give it some serious consideration, and deal with it.

There are several ineffective ways to deal with an issue and I am pretty sure I have seen them all.

1. Blame someone else – This does nothing to address the issue and abdicates any power one has to deal with the issue. If you are absolutely responsible for causing an issue and you try to blame others, it will be obvious. 😐

2. Make excuses – Nobody cares and it does not resolve the issue. You may have to explain how the issue arose but that must be followed by a resolution or at least a commitment to find a resolution to the issue. 👍

3. Ignore the issue and expect it to go away. If it is your issue to address, it will not go away. It certainly will not go away without causing further damage. If there is truly nothing you can do to address an issue, you can still choose an effective way to react to it. 🙂

4. Allowing yourself to be the helpless victim. It is all there. Victims are helpless. Even if you were totally innocent and have been hurt deliberately in the worst possible way by someone, do not allow yourself to be victimized. Even if the only thing you can do is work on resolving your own pain and suffering, do that. If you wait for someone else to resolve a situation or repair the damage it has done to you, it will never happen.

Acting the helpless victim at work is particularly non-helpful. Employers, employees, co-workers, customers, suppliers and other business contacts are looking for you to be competent and effective. If you are looking to succeed in your position, that is the face you need to show. 🙂

5. Lie, cheat or steal. Any negative response to an issue is not going to have a positive result – ever! 🙁

6. Act oblivious and clueless. Seriously, is that how you want people to see you? If you want to be treated as a professional, act like one. 🤔

7. Scream, swear, throw things, kick things. None are mature. None are helpful. None are professional. 🤯

8. Avoid the issue. If there is work to be done, or an issue to be addressed just do it. This is not the time to take a week off.

One final thought. Accept that some situations are hopeless. If there are ongoing issues that you do not have the power or authority to deal with, work towards a viable exit plan. There are options but think them through and ensure you are not leaving one bad situation for another.