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| Yuseong and I |
For a brief time, before the second lockdown, I was able to meet up with friends, celebrate birthdays and return to an almost normal Portland lifestyle. I was balancing three days of work, while half attending online university and slowly began seeing a glimpse of future social gatherings. This fleeting moment lasted through Halloween. For the remainder of the Portland Metro 2020, our governor issued a new Covid-19 freeze. For my 2021, I am enjoying that my work schedule will be busy for hopefully the last half of the Covid-19 virus. My work schedule has become my social line, and hopefully I'll start to see an uphill in finances, rather than a downhill. |
| Odella |
Somewhere around the end of September and beginning of October, I finally was able to purchase the pet I have been wanting to get since returning from South Korea; sugar gliders. It was in South Korea that I first heard of these pets. Jin from BTS, has sugar gliders, and after researching I was hopeful that they would fit my lifestyle. I was able to buy three girls, a mom and her two daughters. For the first couple of days I had them, they were not open to me, or the apartment, but in time they warmed up. The mother is named Bat, because I knew I wanted a sugar glider named Bat. I find it amusing when animals are named after different animals. Her two daughters are Odella, named after lake O'dell on Lake of the Woods, and Eretria from Shannara Chronicals. Odella is by far the most social one and always runs to the cage door when she sees me. As soon as I open the door she jumps out on to me and will hang out on my shoulder, or runs around the apartment exploring.  |
| Pirate by day |
On Halloween day I worked at my brain
rehabilitation residence. For the Halloween spirit I pulled out my corset, and puffy shirt for a pirate gypsy. During my shift at work, one of the clients was giving up a beautiful black tuxedo kitten, that I shortly attempted to convince my friend Yuseong and my boyfriend to look after. The kitten however, found a safe home at one of my co-workers homes. After my shift, and a quick costume change I headed to my boyfriends apartment for a small gathering of six as a samurai. We spent the night eating pizza, playing games and enjoying our last bit of social enjoyment before the next unknown lockdown. The morning after Halloween, I returned right back to work, in my normal clothes. |
| Calies, Georgie, Shar |
A silver lining around the storm clouds, was having Calies come visit the West Coast during the second week of November. Unluckily for her, she got here just in time for the city of Portland to begin its preparations for the new Covid-19 guidelines. Our restaurant choices were limited, it was raining the whole week and not many places were open. However, we still made the most of our time together with a photoshoot, window shopping (and actual shopping) at malls, and I even took her to a drag show. The first day in Portland we spent the day exploring downtown around my apartment doing a wet, Portland fall photo shoot. Georgie and Sharmaine drove up from Salem as well to join us for the evening before heading home again. Another day we all spent window shopping at the mall and eating Korean fried chicken back at my place. The next day Calies and I went out for coffee, walked around the mall again some more and ended with empanadas at a tapas restaurant and ended with Voodoo donuts. Calies's take: they're not worth the hype; which I agree. For Calies's last day we drove to the outlet mall during the day and viewed the drag show at night. I took Calies to the well known Darcell's XV, which is listed as one of Portland's must sees and we were lucky enough to be able to get a show in before the freeze. And just like that, the week was over faster than it came to be.  |
| Zoom |
The remainder of the days in November leading up to Thanksgiving fell into a routine of work, and school when I remembered. Thanksgiving almost snuck up on me this year and due to Covid-19, work and finances I celebrated in Portland via zoom. The day before Thanksgiving, my boyfriend and I did a mix of making some food, and ordering the chicken from Popeyes- yes, including their new chicken sandwich. For Thanksgiving day, we had the leftovers. Thanksgiving morning, like many other families, was celebrated with various zoom calls.
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| Providence |
In December I started my second job at Providence St. Joseph Hospitals. For now I'll be working as a "Health Access Monitor"- just a fancy name for temperature taker, and working at my brain rehabilitation job. These two jobs will take me through the last six months of earning my bachelor's degree at Portland State University and hopefully will set me up to begin shadowing an occupational therapist and a recreational therapist at both locations. For now, that is the goal and plan for my 2021. Again, with Covid-19 protocols keeping everything in Multnomah county closed, and with bills to pay, I'm working six day weeks between the two jobs. I come home to sleep, and eat, and play with my sugar gliders, before getting up the next morning to go to work again. With that being said, if you want to help support me, please check out my work-in-progress LinkTree for important links. :)
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| Pioneer Tree |
For Christmas, Roy and I celebrated early since I had to work Christmas night. On Tuesday we went got dressed up for our "second" date at Southpark Seafood. The seating was outdoors and Roy let me sit closest to the heater, so I'm sure he was cold. We ended the night by going to Pioneer Square to see the tree and all the lights. For our actual Christmas Roy opened his presents on Christmas Eve and I got to open mine after the Christmas weekend. Christmas morning was filled with zoom calls with both sides of my family before I finally headed off to work. After the short break I had for Christmas my weekend was packed with as many hours of working as I could squeeze in. Between my schedule at the brain rehab center, I worked my first overnight shift in the Providence ER. Luckily for me, the shift ended up not being too hectic and I was able to find an on-call room to sleep in for a few hours before my next shift in the western wing.
For New Years, Roy and I spent the night in, watching tv. At midnight we stepped outside to the river to watch the fireworks, then at 12:05, we went back inside and went to bed. Now for 2021, I'll be heavily utilizing my google calendar as I balance, two jobs (a total of 70 hours a week) and two online classes.
