I heard of places like this.......

Last night was my first night being paid as a RCA (Resident Care Aid). However, I can see some problems with this job. My Pay. The average pay of a Certified RCA should fall in the 19.00 - 21.00 catogory. I have heard of some places where the RCA's make more then LPN's wich is over 25.00 an hour. I have also heard of places where RCA's make much less. I found a care home that pays well below the average.

But thier are some pro's and con's here. The more money you make, the more skill sets you need to perform. The less money you make certian skill sets are left to the nurses. At this care home I don't perform bowel care and I don't perform urinery care. I provide just provide the basic care that, really anyone can do.

So do I see my self at this place for long peroid of time. No. But I will use this place as a stepping stone to build my resume. I can see my self being here for four months. So yes I will be sending out an other batch of resume's soon. Maybe next week.

This is just crazy....

I have already found a job. I am not sure if it will be part time or casual. I just got a phone call to come in for an interview at another care home.

The crazy thing is I only sent out 5 resume's Two weeks ago! I have had 3 invites for interviews. One landed me a job, the other I turned down because the hospital was to far out of my driving range. And this invite just happened not even 5 minutes ago and it is with one of the care homes that I have done a praticum with.


Crazy.

As promissed

It is done. I have a job and I start tomorrow. I don't know how much I will be making and I don't know for sure if I have the part time position that is open. I am hoping for at least 19.00 - 21.00 an hour, heck, I don't know what union I will be under. After I finish my orientation I will find out all of the above. All I know is that this job is important because I am right know building up my resume.

Soooooo Orientation is like this. 2 evening shifts. 2 day shifts. And night shift. After all care is 24/7, 365 days a year. Being that I am a newbie in this line of work. I am sure I will inherit the worst shifts. So that is that. Now all I have do is work out day care that I am hoping will start next week. (Yes....I am now scrambleing day care for this week - yikes!)

It is going to be an interesting week.

10/4

(I work night shift on MY be day b-day - yuck)

Last week of Summer.

Summer is slowly coming to an end. The days are shorter, the ambiance of the sun no longer feels like a summer sun, but more of an autumn sun and some of the trees are trying change colour. My Shasta daisy’s are done flowering and have already dropped their seeds and my Snow peas are no longer eatable because they are now producing seeds of their own. But I am happy to say that my Petunia’s are still going strong and the same with my other perennials that I still have not identified - they came with the lot that we rent.

Walmart, Costco and other department stores are overflowing with back to school necessities marking that anticipated time of the year is coming soon when the children go back to school. It is time to dig deep in my wallet and pull out a hundred in school supplies and dig even deeper for an additional hundred and fifty for school bus transportation. It is hard to believe that last year this service was for only Sixty dollars and this year the cost of a seat on the school bus has gone up so much. Yikes.

I remember when I was a child I secretly learned to hate my birthday - End of August - because it meant summer was over and it was back to school. And now I don’t like my birthday because it means that I am another year older. I am glad that retirement is no longer mandatory in Canada.

It is time to think about gathering firewood for the wood stove, to think about storing our summer paraphernalia and dig out the warm slippers and decorate my sofas with my warm synthetic blankets. Time to get back to my family post summer schedule; can’t wait.

Today is Interview Day.......

Here I am. My house is quiet because the kids are still sleeping. Makes me wonder why I had started sleeping in with them. I forgot how peaceful it is to have a shower with out someone needing something. It is so nice.

Anyways, I am slowly getting ready for my interview today at 11.00 a.m. with a cute little Care Home downtown Victoria. I have all the documents that I need all lined up. They are my TB test results (Tuberculosis), My Criminal Record Check, My Basic First Aid Certificate. My Graduate Reference letter from my last teacher, the only thing missing is my actual RCA Certificate. The College won’t give it up until they see the rest of my tuition. This is really quite fair because I was told that this would happen at the very beginning of the course 11 months ago when I decided not to take a student loan and go with a payment plan with the college. The tuition would have been paid in full by now if it wasn’t for the dame recession.

On a bright note, I have been invited for an interview VIHA, (The Island Health Authority). All I have to do is arrange the time…………


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I just got back from the interview and I think it went well. This was not the typical interview where you sit in front of someone’s desk and you converse back and forth. This interview was rather fun. It was a group interview between 7 hopefuls and 3 heads of staff. (Head RCA, Head Dietitian and the Director of the Care Home.) The interview lasted 30 minutes. We all were asked 12 questions by Director and after the questions were given, we were then asked one by one at random order our individual response to the questions. One question - What is the first thing you do in the morning to start your day. Another question was to follow instructions in drawing a small diagram and then tell what you see. And then there were the more serious questions regarding confect resolution and how you would deal with it.

At the end of the interview it was explained to us as a group the reason for doing the interview this way was to see how we interacted with each other. To see who would lend an extra pen out, who was more vocal, extra, extra, and extra. I liked it.

I will find out if I get a job next week. They have one more group coming in at 2:00 to day.

See we will see.

I almost got excited.

Just I was about to type this post, Blogger announced that this post would be my 100. Would this be a mile stone with my Blogging past time, I would like to think so. I tallied up the numbers and something didn’t compute. I went through my post organizer and found that Blogger had counted the Drafts that I made over the months as entries. So really I only have 92 posts all together. Darn. I almost got excited. I so close to number 100.

But it got me thinking about why started this Blog. It started because I was bored. I had this idea in my head that my Blog would be out of this world. I would have photo’s of the things that I found neat and exciting. I would have a funky template that would be exciting and loved by all. I would have a million visitors. My visitors would love my quick wit and humor. I have been some what delusional. In reality, I have a hard time finding the time to make an entry. I just picked the simplest blog template available out the choices that we Blogger’s have. Plugging a camera in to the computer is really beyond my capabilities. I need my 9 year son to help me. And usually after I am done spending 45 minutes or so collecting my thoughts and typing, revising my thoughts, spell check and then posting. My house is up side down and the children are fighting. (This is going on as I type right now. I have my 3 year old yelling/crying in my ear about yogurt and her brother is saying…..what ever)

I don’t regret starting my Blog. It keeps me connected to family. I do somewhat get excited when I see someone from Washington or somewhere else visiting my Blog.

My children are unusually quite. Got to go.

OMG!!!!! I have a job interview!!!!!

With what little résumé’s I had faxed out and e-mailed last week and the one only this week, I have a job interview. Well, I still need to call back and arrange a time to go in for the interview – nevertheless, I have a job interview.

I am I nervous about this. Oh god yah. This will be my first “real” interview in 7 – 8 years for a career that I want and worked hard to earn in college. I have butterflies in my tummy. I am worried about what I am going to wear. I know sometimes when I am nervous my tongue forgets to work. Other words I stutter. I am excited about pulling out my old scrubs and more importantly talking my husband into letting me buy new ones. (There are some very cute scrubs out there. Some of them remind me of Christmas wrapping paper. Go into any hospital and just take a look at what the Nurses have on for work clothes. You will see what I mean!)

Well, I should go and have another cup of coffee and get my nerve up and arrange that interview!

Hummmm I wonder if Blogger still has the count down Widjet?

******************

Found my nerve, interview arranged for next Wed. @ 11.00.

Meteor Shower

WOW! What a show Tuesday night.

Tuesday night was just what the doctor ordered. For those of you who didn’t know, just like I didn’t know, was the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. This particular Meteor Shower is an annual shower that takes place every August around this time.

I was outside having my last cigarette for the night before getting ready to go to bed when I looked up in the sky and seen a Meteor. It was so bright that when it fell behind the tree line, it illuminated the trees. Thinking to my self, “Wow, a person does not see that very often,” another Meteor appeared in the sky. I decided that there must be something to this (not very often you see two Meteors in a row). So I logged onto the internet and sure enough…………..

I quickly went to my son’s room, forget my other family members, woke him up and told him that we are going to watch a Meteor Shower. He looked at me and said “What’s that?” He got dressed and we went out onto the patio together. He just kind of stared out into the darkness and said “I don’t see a Meteor Shower.” I just looked at him and laughed. I told him that it was not like a rain shower and that he needed to look up into the stars and just wait, a meteor will appear. Sure enough he seen one go by. He didn’t look all that impressed and said “I just seen a shooting star and I made my wish, I am going to bed.” With a smile on my face, I told him that was a meteor and he was going to see more. His face had the biggest smile and we got our blankets and we stayed out side for almost two hours watching the show. I figure that we had seen at least one meteor every 10 to 5 minutes

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We had one of my sons friends have a sleep over/ Meteor shower party last night. After I got my little one to bed, I took the boy’s out to a quiet area and watch the meteors. They had lots fun with the flash lights and being side in the dark at midnight. We had seen lots of meteors but as not spectacular as the night before. Still we had lots fun.

Communication....what a powerful thing

This entry is more for me then anything else. Last week was a horrible week. Things had happened to people that are to private to talk about. So those things I won't talk about. But what I will talk about is the powerful thing we call Communication. What is Communication? How communication was explained to me from a learning point of view is this. There is a A Sender, A Reciever and A Message. There is a Context and then the Environment of where communication took place. The Context referes to the situation at the time of the communication taking place and the Environment refers to where the the communication was taking place. One other thing to take into consideration is the feedback from the Recivier to the Sender of the communication. Now the message can be anything from from two people talking about the good time they had other day over beers going over the highlights of the day. Or the communication can be in the form of Gossiping or Slander - a part of Defamation: any statement about another person that is untrue and that causes or is designed to cause an injury to the persons good name. Libel/Slander fall under Defamation. Libel is the printed form of communication by means of print, writing or pictures. Slander is the cummunication spoken by word.

Now for typing the above, there is a quote from Martin Luther King that comes to mind.

"People don't get along because they fear each other. People fear each other because they don't know each other. They Don't know each other because they have not properly communicatied with each other."

Is he saying the the lack of communication is the problem? I think so.

Know it would be hard to beleave that communication has prisciples. But it does and they are very simple.

1. It is truley impossible not to comunicate. 10% of our communication is only spoken. The other 90% is our body language and tone of vioce.

2. It is meant to happen or totally unexpected. Sometimes our words are spoken with care and other times we had lost our tempers and said words that came out wrong or wished you never said.

3. It is irreversible. No matter what had happen with our communcation we can never take back the words or the deeds that have been done.

4. It is unrepeatable. The "Same" words and "Behavior" are different each time. No communication can be repeated the same way twice. Our body langage, our tone of vioce, the context and the envornment and the message are a very uniqe thing.

Communication is a very powerful thing. We can do a lot harm or we can do a lot of good with it. There are Two more elements to communication and they are the Barriers or Communicaiton Blockers and Perseptions. But I will not get into those.

Like I said, this entry is more for me then anyone else. At the end of the day it is a matter of "owning our communication and every thing that came with it."

Know I feel better.