Mid-Autumn Fes­ti­val is com­ing up! :D We enjoyed some moon­cake while we stopped at my par­ents’ over the long weekend.

 

The next stop was Mike’s par­ents’. Bal­le­ri­na flow­ers on the front porch. (Can any­one help me with the plan­t’s real name?)

 

Then, a game of Mas­ter­mind. Appar­ent­ly award­ed “British Game of the Year” in 1973. It was indeed quite fun.

 

The pre-cel­e­bra­tion banana fos­ter :D 

 

The pre-cel­e­bra­tion ani­mal-farm vis­it. The ani­mals polite­ly decline our offers of food.

 

A goat peer­ing at me through the fence :S

 

Did­n’t have a lot of time before it start­ed to rain and we must head over to the cel­e­bra­tion, but I must­n’t leave the farm before vis­it­ing my favourite farm ani­mals :D

 

 The cel­e­bra­tion! My niece’s plush pup­py and I enjoyed a piece of wed­ding cake after the meal and speeches.

 

The bride made ceram­ic mugs for every­one! It was an incred­i­ble amount of work to make so many mugs. And they were so beau­ti­ful. Noth­ing express­es love bet­ter than handmade.

 

Post-cel­e­bra­tion, I head­ed home with thoughts heavy as the clouds hang­ing over us. Well, there’s my return­ing to school. And then there was an upset­ting news — I found out over the week­end that I was­n’t sched­uled to work in the com­ing school year (I am to be “on call”, what­ev­er that means).

I was only able to work 5 hours a week any­way, so even though extra income cer­tain­ly helps, los­ing the job isn’t dev­as­tat­ing finan­cial­ly. Actu­al­ly, the first thoughts that came into my mind when I received the news was: oooh, then I get a day off to craft! And maybe I get to keep Favourite Things Fri­days. And the still, small voice in my head tells me that it’s prob­a­bly a bless­ing after all:

More time to do school work + more time to attend to my emo­tion­al well-being (i.e. craft­ing) = bet­ter results in school work = bet­ter chance of get­ting into grad­u­ate pro­grams (if I choose to apply) = more options.

5 hours of work a week at min­i­mum wage OR more options? 

“Duh,” says the still, small voice in my head. 

 

So I was­n’t too upset about basi­cal­ly los­ing that spe­cif­ic job (“on-call“ my foot). I think I’m upset because I place a lot of val­ue on hav­ing a job, how­ev­er small that job is. As if oth­ers would think of me more respect­ful­ly if I can say that I go to work on a reg­u­lar basis and I have an income. Being job­less is ter­ri­fy­ing (even though 5 hours a week at min­i­mum wage with no con­tract is as close to job­less as one can get with­out being actu­al­ly jobless).

That, and I felt total­ly dis­re­spect­ed, that I was being treat­ed like I was total­ly dis­pos­able and unim­por­tant in the way I found out about my job situation.

Feel­ing dis­re­spect­ed, for me, is far more dif­fi­cult to get over than los­ing a job.

When we got home it was ear­ly evening. And as I looked out the win­dow I saw that the sun­set sky was purple.

 

… which reminds me of my sis­ter. Her favourite colour is pur­ple and one of her favourite things to do is cloud-watch­ing. Then I remem­ber her atti­tude of for­giv­ing eas­i­ly, and always giv­ing peo­ple the ben­e­fits of the doubts, and always giv­ing her best with­out think­ing about rewards, whether it has to do with finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion in a job sit­u­a­tion, or peo­ple’s recog­ni­tion in a vol­un­teer situation. 

Then I thought if it would be pos­si­ble for her, then it would be pos­si­ble for me, too, to let this all go. And move for­ward. Start afresh. Who knows what open doors tomor­row may bring.

Indeed, school starts tomor­row :D

Thank you so, so much for your encour­age­ment after my “back to school” post! I will car­ry your wise words with me as I step foot in the class­room tomorrow.

All my best wish­es for the new adven­tures in your life this fall!