I finished my last lot of paid work for the year on Wednesday and I talked about what happened on Thursday afternoon in my last post. Monday and Tuesday were just a grind, work-wise.
She asked me if I wanted a gift. I was initially skeptical, but I quickly agreed. She pulled out a gift wrapped plum pudding that had a chocolate Santa and a Raffaello packet included.
Friday, I woke up to one of my few remaining tomato plants looking like this:
The actual tomato of the plant is the womb and this was a last ditch effort to try and form seeds for it's genetic survival.
I ate the tomato. It wasn't big enough to house seeds yet.
I've already started emptying the older pots of their contaminated soil. I had a fruitless tomato plant nearly waist high before the fungus gnat larvae did their worst.
I will try gardening again in the new year, but I am going to have to do more research into soils beforehand. Fungus Gnats lay eggs in the soil which get bagged and sold at gardening stores. Just add water and the cycle continues.
Before that though I checked my letterbox, and there was the annual maintenance bill for my hearing aids.
It's only AU$50 or so, but it's worth it for the free hearing aid batteries and maintenance.
Today wasn't cheap and even though I got paid yesterday, it's not really enough to cover me over Christmas or give me the financial confidence to move towards my goals.
I was offered a shift on December 30, so that will round out the year ahead of where I was last year, still far short of the predictions I made in January. "Pride goeth before a fall" apparently. I'll recap the year later.
The urge for lunch drew me to the Samnang Bakery again and it was a chance to see when the Pho Linh Vietnamese restaurant was going to be close over the Christmas period.
Most shops are closed for Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, then open again on the 27th through to New Year's Eve. Many just take an entire week off. Some companies don't resume business until halfway through January.
It's really frustrating when you want to find work.
This meant that my shopping stayed on the scales of the self assisted checkout machine longer than it liked, so it kept repeating the "Please remove your items..." message as I did a last minute scan to make sure I had everything as I left the store with my backpack still open in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other.
I made it to a nearby bench so that I could zip up my backpack and heard the machine still asking me to remove my items. In the confusion caused, I stepped back to check to see if I had left something. I didn't.
But my movement caught the attention of a female guard who asked me why I had gone backwards. I explained, as she heard the voice of the machine again.
She understood and we proceeded to chat.
I seemed to remember her from highschool, but I said nothing. I could still be wrong after all.
We chatted about security work and she told me that working in supermarkets was worse than crowd control at nightclubs. People will fight over a stolen cucumber!
She told me about how much the security course was and who she went through for work, seeing as she goes through different employers, sometimes doing 16 hour days.
Apparently there is a lot of work around this time of year for security guards. I'd just need to do a course, get a driver's licence and pay the application fee and wait. Although it doesn't seem like a job I'd particularly want.
I also came home to find a pair of wire cutters and near the fence near my home. I hid them behind my wheelie bin until I could talk to a neighbour. We don't need tools available for thieves to break in with.
How was your Friday?
Thank you for reading.
Shaidon
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