Corinne's Blog

So it’s Thanksgiving again and I’m thinking this year has turned around a lot from where I was last year at this time.

Last year around this time I’d just been broken up with my my ex boyfriend Craig, This year I am happy to say that I’ve been blessed with a handsome, caring and intelligent new boyfriend, David. Though David is unable to join my family and I this Thanksgiving because he’s busy doing work for law school I was blessed to be able to see him on Tuesday and he might grace me with his presence Friday also. I’m grateful to have a boyfriend who I can physically see and touch and interact with it’s a total turn around from having a long distance boyfriend who I could only interact with online. It’s nice to have someone I can actually reach out and touch who can touch me back when I want and need it. It’s great to have someone to hug and hold hands with, I’m Thankful this Thanksgiving Holiday for that ability.

My new handsome boyfriend David

I am also Thankful for my job. Though I have a sometime messy and frustrating job I’m thankful that I’m doing something at which I’m good. I’m really great with working with children and the fact that I am surrounded by children and I can play and do fun art projects with them really makes my life more exciting. Even though many of my coworkers are cliquey and even though every little thing I does seems to warrant a meeting with the boss and a threat of losing my job I’m thankful for being able to destress and take my job one day at a time.

I’m Thankful to have a roof over my head and good housemates who take the time to acknowledge my presence. Matthew one of my housemates who is a little older than me and at a higher level in school as I am at MCTC even tutored me through a Chemistry assignment the other night. And when he was making pizza he shared it with me. I am thankful for good friendly conversation that I get to have with my housemates (all except Alton who doesn’t talk to me) in passing.

The day our front tree lost all it's leaves.

Though I absolutely hate my commute, especially now that I’ve had my wallet stolen off a bus I’m thankful that I have a way to get to and from work and I pray that by this time next year I’ll have a brand new car to be thankful for.

I’m thankful for the ability to be able to go to school and get a decent education. My being in school this semester has really shown me that with the right work effort and established work habits that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to. I’m praying that with God’s grace I’ll actually pass the Chemistry exam that is coming up in a few weeks.

Nutrition Flashcards

I’m Thankful for family, My mother has been there for me when I’ve needed her this past year. I appreciate that bonding I’ve been able to do with my brother Eric while being on the worship team. And though she’s a pest sometimes I’m grateful and Thankful for my little sister for looking up to me and missing me, it makes me feel special. I hope next year I’ll have more to write about Tiffany, Evan, Tyler and my father Ronnie.

I am thankful for being alive under the grace of God and I hope I continue to live to make a positive difference in the world.

I’m Thankful for the friends I’ve had this last year, though I’m not able to see them as much as I’d like to I’m thankful that I have people in my life who check up on me and text me wishing me a happy Thanksgiving and who tell me they care about me. Adam M, Heidi W, Alex J, Mikey B, Ian M, Byron T, James, Cori, Alisa, Julie K, Peter P, Lucy, Tymisha and Dean, and all those people who I forget to mention. I’m Thankful for the people I get to interact with on a regular basis and I wish them all a great and happy Thanksgiving.

I’m Thankful for good food and decent weather, though I get tired of the snow of Winter about one third of the way through it because I must stand outside for Minneapolis Kids recess I’m Thankful for the changes in weather and that I have eyes to see the beauty in the weather. I love that fact that I wake early and I’m able to see the sunrise and that I get to go home and see the sun setting. I’m thankful for being able to enjoy all parts of my day and that I have well working sensory organs.

I’m Thankful for my church, and the people who support and counsel me even when I don’t feel like getting counselling. I’m Thankful that God created those people and brought them together for his purposes. I’m also thankful for the world church as a body working together to being the truth to all nations.

I’m thankful for our nation’s history and the leaders that are currently trying to lead our government even through all the grief and fault that take for the nations problems.

I’m thankful for those who are brave enough to stand up and fight for what they believe in, whether it be the Occupy movement or the oppressed peoples of other countries. I appreciate and am thankful for having a voice that can be heard even if I am small and even if I think I’m insignificant.

I’m Thankful for my past relationships that are no longer for making me the way I am.

I’m thankful for the ability to laugh and smile and feel pain, and cry and live a human life with all it’s roller coaster ups and downs.

I’m thankful for where God placed me in the world and where he’s put me in life, I really have goals set and I’m thankful that I’m taking the steps to accomplish the way of life I’m striving for.

I have a lot more that I’m thankful for, but I’m going to go make some cranberry mold and baked pumpkin with my little sister Cynthia.

I wish everyone a pleasant Thanksgiving.

I’m really getting tired of my commute on the bus along with having to get rides from people.

Taking the bus is annoying because people are so gross and dirty in my neighborhood, there are bums who smell bad and ghetto woman with their crying children who they can’t control. There are rude people who talk on their cellphones and cheesy guys who try to hit on me and who slip me their cards. I’m tired of having to stand on a crowded bus or having to make small talk with crazy people when I don’t feel like it. I’m tired of my commute taking forty five minutes to an hour when it should only take at max fifteen minutes on a bad day. I want to sleep in later :D and not have to rely on other people as much. I want more freedom to go where I want to go when I want to go instead of having to trust in others to get me and having to wait on the bus.

So I’ve decided that it would be wise for me to invest in another form of transportation than just the city bus and rides from fellow church members on weekends for work.

I’m thinking a scooter but a car would be more practical for Winter driving, but what time or money do I have to save to get one.

Solution: Figure out rides with friends or get the schools bus card.

We’ll see.

During the time when I was unsure If I would be able to continue working with Minneapolis Kids for the 2011 Summer program I went job searching.

I was searching for a job in anyway I could, I would walk around to places I’d dreamed of working and I asked for applications, I looked through jobs magazines and I applied to almost every craig list job posting that sparked my interest.

Luckily which was unexpected I was offered hours for the summer 2011 and again for the August 2011- June 2012 school year.

When I’d applied I hadn’t received any feedback way back in April and then all of a sudden in August I get an email offering me an interview for a receptionist position. I take the interview and I get the job.

Now this job was the best thing to happen to me and I was even more excited that every week on Friday that I’d receive a paycheck from one of my two positions. Everything for a few weeks was going swell and i was even picking up extra hours, but then one of my paychecks came in and it wasn’t correct. And then my coworkers started complaining because they were being added to the schedule without any notification of the changes made.

Being the Receptionist in a business where the manager/boss never shows up and you’re not filled in on anything is extremely hard, My boss Muzique was lucky she hired competent people who knew how to problem solve or the first week her business would have closed down because one of her receptionists didn’t even show up on the first week the business was open and was instantly fired and one of her therapists didn’t show up and was also instantly fired. My boss had a no tolerance policy for attendance absences and because she had a habit of firing people many of us who were left found ourselves picking up the slack.

I worked many times forty hour weeks when I’d only been scheduled to do seventeen hours on one weekday and on the weekends.

Basic maintenance things didn’t get completed like laundry being done and new products being bought on time. When the computers went down the first time we blamed the internet provider but when the internet was put back up and the music system was taken away because it wasn’t paid for I knew that I was in trouble.

Everything seemed to be shutting down…then I learned we’d been stealing internet from the neighboring company. And that we never had our own internet and they only changed the password.

Then my hours changed after she hired someone new and I was barely working and when I did work I was doing major damage control. SO ANNOYING to have to fix what another receptionist messes up. But it wasn’t always the other receptionists it was often the computer software itself that continued to allow people, civilians to schedule appointments under staff members who have been let go of.

When I tried complaining about my check being wrong I was told that she wouldn’t be able to pay me back all at once.

People were getting frustrated with the service and my coworkers were getting frustrated ‘at me’ about the lack of management.

It was all falling apart around me and I had no control over it.

I offered to do more hours to do more damage control. The bad receptionist quit after having a breakdown and walking out…I came in and replaced her and fixed everything from that day. Because the music system was shut down I brought in my own cd roms.

Everything was finally fixing itself and I was getting into a great routine of fixing major problems and turning them minor and then there was a Sunday I was working and the key went missing.

I called my boss, She told me to call everyone who worked and ask them. I did and everyone said that they had no clue where the key was.

Then I called my boss back and she told me to lock up like it was locked up but not to use the key as I needed to.

I did as I was told and the next day I get a call that the computer was stolen…the main computer, well all the employees have laptops they can use and the company would go smoothly as possible if they ran the business from their personal computers.

But instead my boss stops all shifts until further notice.

And a payday comes and goes and I don’t get paid.

I hunt down my boss and she tells me I should come get my check from her at the chuckie cheese where she’s playing with her daughter. Why is she playing with her daughter when her business is falling apart?

And the shifts are never un-paused and I hear from a fellow coworker that the shop is going out of business. And I call and call my boss but she doesn’t answer or return my phone calls.

She owes me money and she’s not returning my phone calls. So I begin emailing…no response.

this is getting really annoying.

So I call my coworkers and they know even less about what’s going on than I do.

Then I hear that my boss is looking to open at a new location.

What about my job? What about my money? Am I fired? Do I have a second job now? Should I start looking for another position?

This whole thing is just ridiculously messed up. Then I read about the scam that is my company online. And I really wonder who and what kind of entity I was working for.

Why did she do this to all these people? I haven’t paid my rent because I was expecting money from her, I was paying rent with my money from my second job and tuition with my money from the first job. This is all just getting worse and worse.

I haven’t been able to make up the money that I would have gotten from her and I’m 100$ short on my rent for this month and I owe rent now again next week.

This whole thing is ridiculous, I should go to the police I want to get paid for the work and hours I put in.

Why isn’t she answering my phone calls?

When I did so much hard work to work for her?

I hate this. Money situation is tight because of my new old job.

Tonight Instead of making my way back home to my house in South Minneapolis after my work at Euphoric Ambiance I made a detour downtown and to North Minneapolis to my mother’s house.

I’d had the intentions of coming around to these parts ever since my mom told me that my cat Snow was dying and that she had intentions of putting her to sleep.

I’m highly against putting animals to sleep especially when I can come home to my mom’s house and see my cat in the exact same health condition as she has been for months now.

The only difference between this cat and my normal cat is that she can’t control her bladder, that’s the beginning of the end they say.

Last Tuesday I completely lost it when my mother told me that she had intentions of taking my Cat in last Wednesday. I cried and cried and I refused to get out of my mother’s car and go home until she promised that she’d give snow one more day.

It frightens me that the vets will be taking my cat and making her die alone with gas or a shot that will slowly make all her vital organs just stop.

I love my cat dearly and I can’t handle not having her around after she’d been in my life my whole life.

I thought my mom was possibly lying to me but boy was I surprised to discover that my cat was still alive Wednesday afternoon after i got out of my class and I was headed to work at my second job. I wasn’t able to get out and to my mom’s house to see my cat until nearly nine at night when there would be no chance of me getting back home after the fact to change and get ready for Thursday day at work and school.

Thursday wasn’t any better and everyday until now Sunday…and my cat is still alive because I asked that I be able to see her before she is put to sleep so I can say goodbye in anyway I can.

Coming tonight though I am unable to see anything wrong with her which just frustrates me because she seems like she always is, a tired old cat just laying around and being cute, she’s walking around, eating and meowing for attention as she always has. She even spent some time following me around when I first arrived at my mother’s house.

She’s laying right next to me sleep right now so I’m sitting here thinking…to put her to sleep would be to kill a innocent, yet a little sickly  animal.
I go to my mother and ask her why she wants to put Snow down now that she’s showing such little signs of being sickly enough to die.

My mom says that she can’t deal with any stress right now, and I ask her what stress there would be in snow’s being the same as she usually is and my mom makes me sit down in front of her and she informs me that she thinks she’s relapsing.

My mom has had cancer for about two years now and she’d had Multiple Sclerosis for twenty two, she was diagnosed with it when she was pregnant with me.

“I’m relapsing Corinne and as hard as it is for me to deal with Snow right now I can’t take this stress while I’m relapsing.”

“Into Cancer?” I asked knowing my mom had cancer.

“I’ll always have Cancer” my mom said “it’s not going anywhere anytime soon” she says

“Than it’s the MS?” I ask

And she nods.

My mom has relapsed into MS twice in my life, the first time I was in Kindergarten and i found my mom laying on the ground in the hallway and she couldn’t get up, I remember I thought she was dying the second time I was about sixteen and i remember having to change her iv for the steroids they put her on to make her stronger. When she lapsed from stage one to stage two she was forced into taking shots daily.

This time my mom tells me she is having trouble with her walking, I noticed it today this morning when she didn’t walk straight up the stairs and she used the handle railing at church to assist her.

So I think this is the more than just a relapse, people with MS have lost their abilities to walk and have ended up in wheelchairs.

So this just became  an issue of if I want to cause my mom more stress and kill her or if I want to let my childhood cat be put to sleep.

I am having a hard time letting go of my childhood cat because I don’t believe in killing and innocent creature and that it is God’s place to do so but this whole business with my mother and the way she’s sprung it on me has me thinking that I have no other choice.

It’s my mother or my cat.

So in my last post Labeled “Work” I was nervous about having just been called into my bosses office.

When I got into the office I was asked about an incident the week before when my boss had been out on vacation.

A small frail looking child and I had been playing on the monkeybars. At Burroughs where I work there are swinging spinning monkey bars and this frail child had asked me to spin him on one of the bars. I should have said no but because he’d gotten up there in the first place I thought he could handle holding on if I spun him. So I started spinning him and he wasn’t able to handle the force of the spin and let go and went flying landing flat on his stomach in the sand.

Right away I could feel his pain for in the silent scream his nose started gushing blood and his sand filled mouth began to fill with blood also. I wiped his mouth out and started walking him inside. I was the closest to the situation, I am staff and saw what happened and I took charge.

On my way inside I asked one of my coworkers who I trust if she could help me clean the child up. She’d already been on her way inside and she willingly agreed to help. After getting the child inside we had him clean out his mouth and get out all the sand and dirt. I put on gloves and dealt with the bloody nose and I also checked the child’s ribs to see if they felt broken…none of them did. Then we asked the child how he was breathing because he was still taking frantic breaths long after the time when his breathing should have regulated. “I have something to help me breath.” The child said so we allowed him to use his inhaler. My coworker said that she knew how to use the inhaler properly because she carried one herself…we shook the medicine in the container and administered it. As soon as the child had gotten the inhaler his breath steadied and he calmed down, his bloodied nose had even stopped. At that point my coworker turned to me and said two things “You should fill out an accident report” and “In a half an hour if he’s still wheezing it’s fine if you give him his inhaler again.” Then I thanked her and she went back to working with her older kids and I went to the task of getting an accident report.

There was a risk that if this accident wasn’t documented that I could have been in a lot of trouble so I felt the incident report wouldn’t do any harm. One of my coworkers helped me get to the report which was in a tricky file cabinet drawer I had trouble opening myself.

When the rest of the younger kids group came in and the rest of my coworkers came back in I’d had the child sitting and playing innocently with Legos he willingly answered all my questions about how he felt and the incident report was almost complete outside of that I needed someone to call and inform his parents of the accident. When one of my coworkers saw what I was doing she instructed me that for playground accidents that an incident report wasn’t necessary and she ordered me to rip the report up. I was hesitant because my other coworker said I should fill one out.

Well I ripped the report up with the intention of asking another coworker opinion. When I asked someone else they informed me that incident reports were only used when a child broke a bone or lost a limb or in very serious incidents.

Not minor incidents like falls or cuts. But how was I to know that the child was alright when he may not have shown any signs of any long term damage done until later on. For example if he’d broken a rib of punctured his lung it may not have effected him till later when the shock wore off.

Also the asthmatic attack was worth reporting. When I’d asked my coworkers if it was necessary to call the child’s parents she told me that they’ll probably inform his parents at the end of the day when the child got picked up.

My boss called me into her office to tell me that I shouldn’t be filling out any reports and that I should away ask someone else to do them for me because apparently someone had told that I was filling out an incident report to my boss when she got back.

The crazy thing is that it was better that I did my job and took initiative to protect myself and the company lest something go wrong.

I was informed that the parents had never found out about their child’s condition and that the afternoon staff hadn’t informed them or even known about the incident from any of the morning staff after I’d left.

It wasn’t my job to make sure the parent got the information because I’d passed it to the channels of those who remained at the site longer than me. So hearing the chain of communication was broken I felt that I was really stuck in this situation.

It’s like there are so many strong personalities and too many cooks in the kitchen at my work place that I don’t know who I should talk to or who I should take orders and listen to.

My boss told me today that when she is present I should aways go to her…and never trust the opinions of my fellow coworkers. She said in the case of an emergency that my go to person should be someone i trust. I picked out of all my coworkers my coworker Brad who has the most experience with the program and who I feel is the most approachable in my group who has the longest hours in my age group and could communicate situations to the parents.

She also said that I shouldn’t think for myself or make assumptions because I am liable for my own actions and that sometimes it is safer to call another staff member over to help me who works with my age group (not like Karron who works with the older kids) and who has the Minneapolis Kids title of Permanent staff…which I don’t officially have yet.

This is kind of crazy that I can’t take initiative and do my job well because my title isn’t that which proves that I am capable to do a job when I have experience in that job and I do it very well.

This all sparks from a deeper situation about how I work independently from my team because they are really cliquey. I go to work everyday and I do my job get the job done and I go home. I don’t need to rely on my coworkers to work well and often they never inform me till the last minute about schedule changes when they inform each other.

For example: I open my own classroom up in the mornings, we usually have free play for a few hours then we go outside to play at 9am. We clean up around 8:50-8:57 and we head to bathrooms, drinks and to get sunscreen on the kids. Today April was missing because he grandma died to Colleen wanted us to take the kids out later. Colleen came to my classroom and told me 9:15 is when we’d be taking them out. But at 9:13 when I was getting my group prepared Katherine came in and told me that the other classroom had voted amongst themselves that they actually wanted to wait for Brad to arrive at 9:30 and to actually go out at 9:45. But they’d never thought to speak on the walky to ask or to inform me of this change…so I had my kids prepared to go outside 30minutes early and I had to transition them back into play mode which took ten minutes to have then play for fifteen minutes and have me try to a second time transition them out of play mode…which the second time was a lot harder. It’s getting frustrating this cliquishness and it’s the only part of my job I hate…I love the kids and love working with them and wish I could do it alone sometimes. It’s just my peers that make the work difficult…I don’t think I’d pass my peer review with everyone on my tail thinking that if it’s not their way it’s not the right way. They don’t even try to communicate with me and I have over half the kids that I must deal with in the morning by myself. When three staff members are in the one classroom I’m sitting by myself with no one to tell me if anything in the schedule changes.

I feel really isolated like I always hear things late.

Colleen asked me if my coworkers were approachable…and I wanted to yell HELL NO.

I said “some more than others”

She explained that it’s a group of strong willed people, and quite a few “leader types” when I myself can be a leader but I know when to back off and follow directions.

My mom sent me this email after I explained the situation to her:

I wanted to make sure this issue was clear for you.

The isolation you are experiencing is not in any way, your fault. This is part of what we deal with as educated, articulate, intelligent,

African Americans. You are not accepted in the circles in which you work. If you are working in a group of people,

they will make it seem as if you are not being personable, when in reality they don’t know how to approach you.

The larger the organization, the greater the chances of you finding like minded African Americans, or people of African descent.

The reason I say, of African descent is because you will find in organizations, they will try to separate those people by being friendly to the least threatening one and not the other. Feelings of resentment develop between the different groups and those groups will not get along and they won’t even understand why…i.e. African Americans and Somali, Somali and Nigerian. What you must do is be friendly to everyone.

Smile, do your job, document everything and stay in prayer. They will always critique your work as if you are not competent. Make sure you know your job and perform it well. Then go home and try to surround yourself with as many family and friends as possible. It’s a job. They will not be your friends. They may not even see you as human…so rest your heart.

___________________________________________

I think what she said makes sense…I’m done with jumping through hoops and I’m going to communicate my problems to Colleen and Brad and them only. I’m going to ask advice of them only and I’m going to do my job well and not worry about the rest of them.

I’m trying to be prayful about the situation because all I’m trying to do it do my job well so I can keep it.

I’m worried though…who is the person who told Colleen about me and how do I go out of my way to avoid that person in the future?

Work is so hard currently with this ear infection…I feel like I have tunnel hearing or that I’m in a box.

It’s kind of hard to maintain control of a classroom with only one way to hear…I am so much more visualant with all my hearing. I hope this infection goes away.

Colleen my boss asked that i touch base with her after I get off break and they take attendance, I’m a bit nervous because whenever they want me to talk to them it’s usually bad news like I’ve done something wrongly.

I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong recently and i hope everything goes alright and smoothly.

I’m praying that they find no reason to fire me.

this is the start of the fifth week of summer and I’m nervous about the fall already I’m signed up for so many classes…how will I pay my rent if I don’t have a job this summer?

Yikes I pray everything works out for the better and Colleen is just touching base with me in a good way.