Sometimes even going organic isn't enough...

I just found this investigation into Fairlife Farms and it was horrifying. So, a little background, I've been doing research on brands that are either certified humane or animal welfare approved. Even if you buy dairy, it may still come from a factory farm that abuses its animals. It's something that sadly most people aren't aware of. But you want to see how bad it is? Check this out.

There's multiple organizations out there such as the Cornucopia Institute, the ASPCA, certifiedhumane.org, and GAP (Global Animal Partnership) which list brands of meat and dairy which are humanely raised. I'm not sure which ones to believe. Either that or go vegan, there's plenty of meat substitutes out there now that are really good.

Returning to College

Well, I've made up my mind. I'm returning to college. A part of me wants to get that vocational certificate for cybersecurity, but another part of me wants to study enviromental science at some point. Maybe that's what I'm going to end up getting my 4 year degree for.

There haven't been a whole lot of posts here for some time. I've been keeping a journal and I have to say some of my dreams have been weird. Also I've been looking up addresses I've visited in the past on Google Maps. I think I mentioned Ruth Smith either here or on my private journal, but I remember weeding for her out at the house on Denker Rd. She offered to be my grandmother in the past but I got unreasonably offended by the offer. See, I never knew my grandparents very well, they all died before I was old enough to remember their faces. All I have to remember one of them by was the stuffed Giraffe I kept that my grandmother gave me, but I can't remember if it was from my mother or father's side. In any case, I kept it as a cherished memento. Getting back on track though, when she had that fatal head injury from falling down the stairs, I never ended up going to her wake or funeral...

That wouldn't be the first time either... I never paid my last respects to Louise Newby either. She was another friend of the family. When I was in grade school, I was sick when she came to pick me up because my mom was busy. She offered me some split pea soup but I didn't end up eating it... After that point she got on my case about eating my vegetables EVERY single time I saw her. The last time we spoke was in the hospital. I came to visit her but it was apparent she wasn't long for this world, I had a feeling in my gut about that. But I never went to her funeral either...

One of these days I should buy flowers for both of them. Maybe something that says "I'm sorry." or "I haven't forgotten." I'm no expert in the language of flowers but this is the only way I'm going to pay my last respects to those women who have been there for me when I needed them, whether I realized it or not. It's the least I could do.

I had something else I wanted to write about but I forgot. I did a lot of adulting today and never got the chance to have any fun. But it's too late, I'm already ready to go to bed, this job has me going to bed early in the evening just to keep a schedule. I'm hoping eventually I'll be able to work daytime again, this is going to be an enormous strain on my social life. Anyway this is peace out for now. See you guys on the next post. Maybe my thoughts will be more coherent and not so "stream of consciousness" this time.

... But sleep won't come.

Even though I had read 2 chapters of that book I still found myself waking up at night due to restlessness. Or could it be sleep apnea? IDK, my sinuses are always congested and it seems like it inhibits my breathing quite a bit. But anyway, I read the accounts of Virginia and Delores Waggoner at this point. So now that I've caught up a little bit and remember, the book is about the Waggoner's but per Virginia's testimonial, Ruth Easton was related to the Waggoner's mom in some way. There's some documents tucked away in our copy of the book but from what I can tell we're distantly related to the Waggoners by the Easton family, and the Eastons were related to our family, the Scott family. Scott is a pretty common last name, actually, through my great uncle Delbert's papers, there was a sheet in there about the Scott coats of arms. Which ones are our's, IDK, but if I decide to do a family tree at some point, I will hope to find out.

That being said I wanted to share an experience I had growing up. As per a previous entry I grew up on the corner of Oak and Simpson. Growing up there was at least 4 notable families that lived near us. We weren't THAT close with a lot of them but I think one of them was running for Governer of Geneva or something. The people living next to us on Simpson were vetrinarians, when we had our first dog, Daisy, he was the one we'd take her to. She was a border collie, I distinctly remember whenever she would bark she sounded like a seal, it was a bit of an in-joke for us.

So I was good friends with a kid named Matt who used to live on what I think was Oak St. It was just a short street and they lived in a blue house near ours. We grew up on a lot of the same stuff though he must've been half my age. What really irks me is that our parents thought the age gap was too great between us for us to be hanging out, but we liked a lot of the same stuff, the Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, that sort of thing, stuff us 90 boys liked. I also remember the people who lived at the house behind our's, they had 2 kids, Sherry and Amy. I was close with the latter girl, Amy. We used to play games like tag, hide and seek, and bloody murder (we'd hang out at the field behind the fence at night, the guy didn't seem to mind, he had all this space in the backyard and we never did any harm or anything). It got to the point where we had a pretend marriage. Well, when I was 10 one day I ended up ditching her during a game of hide and seek, she came in to look for me. I don't remember what I said to her but I remember her crying her eyes out and we weren't friends after that point anymore. It's something I still deeply regret, and IDK what the reason was. I suspect I got bored and wanted to be left alone with my NES. Honestly because of that I'm worried about introducing my nieces to video games too soon, I don't want them to have a similar experience like I did.

There was also some apartments down the way, the entrance was down the street as you get out onto State St. (At least I think it was State St.? It was the one that ran through downtown Geneva, across the Fox River. Further down there's a bridge and there was a bike shop. Mill Race Inn also used to be there). I remember the Strahota family used to live in those apartments, I think I remember one of the kids jumping the fence there from that one guy's backyard. Like we didn't know the guy but he had all this land out in his back yard. The fence there was broken so there was a place for us to slip through from where Oak St. ended. We did visit that place again maybe a few years ago? IDR how long. A different family lives in the blue house it seems, and the backyard, well now it's a park. I wish they would've left the place alone, I miss all the trees being there, it was almost kinda like our little forest out where the street ended.

Further as you went up the street you had the green house where the Millers lived. I knew their son, he was the one that would always come to our house for snacks. They moved away and my parents were talking that he might not live to even be 10 years old, but he managed. I think they moved to Arizona or something, IDR but I think they sent us a picture. It was actually pretty thoughtful of them, it's a shame we no longer have that picture. The kid was heavy and had spiky hair. Anyway that's the neighborhood I remember growing up in. It's crazy how much it's changed. I thought about moving back there, but there's mostly going to be different people living there.

Actually I remember a few other things. There used to be this rumor about some girl we called Crazy Mary who lived there. We'd see her from time to time, she... Had issues. It seemed like she was re-living some moments of her life. I feel bad about the rumors thinking about it, and IDK if she ever got the help she needed for her mental health. She lived on a different road, but it wasn't far from us. You' have to have taken a couple lefts, One off of Simpson and another onto the next road. There was also Brad who I think was a cousin of my friend Chris, we'd sometimes hang out with him. I remember he had a Game.com we used to play with. Looking back that thing was a piece of crap though, it was made by Tiger so that should tell you all you need to know. God, Tiger electronics were everywhere back in those days. Finally there was this one Downsyndrome guy that lived in the neighborhood further down the street. I used to talk to him but my mom didn't want me to, so we grew kinda distant until I eventually ceased all communication with him. Later on in life I met this kid Bryce and I realized he didn't live too far from me. This was at a different school though. We never were close, I remember him reciting old TV shows, but I showed up to his house one day out of the blue because I knew it was his birthday. I found this wind-up Clefairy at Babbages, and we both liked Pokemon so I knew he might like it. Man, even for as shitty a teenager as I was back then I could be a pretty generous person. I consider this to be both an asset to my character and a flaw, my mom often worries about me giving away too much of myself, and I worry that if I'm not careful that generosity could lead to outright enabling. What I need to learn is how to help people without that help becoming a problem. I only recently became aware of it, and it's something I need to think carefully about. Well, I'm glad this post at least turned out to be substantial, hopefully it's a good read, and it gives me a chance to relate parts of my childhood. Maybe later I'll talk about when we lived in St. Charles, there was a small move before we made the BIG move to Iowa, something I was not prepared for. It basically ruined my relationship with my dad for several years.

I wanted a journal for Christmas.

I didn't get one but to be honest Livejournal IS a journal. I'm glad it's still around but is it just me, or are all the options in Japanese? I actually studied it casually in my early college years. I was a big weaboo, not gonna lie, but I learned to read Katakana and Hiragana. I have a huge textbook of Kanji that I got from Barnes & Noble, never finished it or properly learned Kanji subjugation. Japense is such a different language from English but I digress.

So, I'm starting to post stuff on there that only I can see. Something to keep track of my thoughts, for the sake of my mental health. Maybe it will help me clear my head, but I'm struggling with feelings of guilt. I don't want to get into the "why" here, but there's a reason I've lately been blaming myself, I feel like I handled the situation horribly. How do you convince someone who has been in constant pain and suffering all their life that life is worth living? Basically what's bothering me is I felt like I handled my relationship with Liz as a friend poorly. I DID try to bail her out the time she shoplifted from Target but I couldn't do the same for Reade, we would've just been fortunate that his case got thrown out if Liz had stuck around for just a little longer, then this would have all turned out alright. Like maybe I shouldn't have gotten involved. Come to think of it IDK if I even knew where she was going when the car crash happened. It was her brother Jim's car that she crashed, I can't even imagine how awful she must've felt about that. There's just so much I didn't know about her life's circumstances, I was poorly equipped to help her out despite my immense desire to do so. But in the process of that I think I may have been bad for her. It's like I'm re-living certain moments of my life thinking of what I could've done differently to prevent this from happening. I could also be overthinking it though, but I still feel horrible about it.

On another topic though they say everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame and I've had family members that have had their's including my father. He was a train driver for Union Pacific, back when they were Chicago Northwestern. The guy hated unions mainly due to union dues, and I guess they had a strike once. I still feel like unionized labor is better than the alternative business model we have today, ideally how a union should work is that people can set their own wages, and if working conditions are bad they can go on strike. That's how it SHOULD be, workers should be able to demand good pay and good working conditions, but I guess in practice there are flaws that need to be worked out. No system we've come up with so far is effective, and hypercapitalism is the worst of it. But that's a whole different can of worms. Going back to the driving trains thing, he drove a train through the set of F.I.S.T. which is ironic because it's a movie ABOUT unionism. I wonder if there's more of a story behind it? I should ask him about it sometime.

Aside from that though I'm related to the Easton family. My dad had a cousin named Rex, I remember we went to his house one time, he had it pretty good. He had a trampoline in the backyard and a Sega Genesis, I remember playing that thing in his house while he was entertaining my folks. I had nearly beaten Sonic 2 that day, everyone was impressed by how good I was at it. But again, I digress. Point being there is a book that documents that side of the family, and they mention the birth of the twins, my fater Don and his brother Jon. The book is called Ten Sisters, it's about this custody battle. I hadn't read much of it but my sister has a copy of the book and she's letting me read it. So, that's what I'm going to be reading tonight to help calm my mind down. I also get a chance to learn about my family in the process.

One last thing before I end this post, I expect posts to this blog are going to be more infrequent. I need some time to write in my journal, too. The stuff I'm okay with being public will be posted here. I'll keep the private stuff for Livejournal. Good night for now.

Making up for lost time? Who knows...

I went for a walk to clear my mind after yesterday's mishap and it occured to me, sometimes we treat animals better than we treat each-other. Think about the type of relationship a person has with their pet, if they're a good owner then of course they love their pets unconditionally. And the pet, too, will treat its owner with the same. As I was perusing my FB I saw a video of a cat being dragged away from the grave of its owner. IDK if it completely understood, I think the cat just wanted to be close to him. In another instance it was a dog trying to comfort his owner as paramedics were trying to help him, they had to blind the poor thing so the paramedics could do their job. Talk about loyal...

Here's the conundrum, people don't tend to treat each-other with this same unconditional love, and if they do it's very rare. But then you look at groups of animals and they're kind of the same. More often than not if you get a group of 2 or more female cats in the same room they may fight unless they've been around each-other for a while. Cats are very territorial and independant animals. Animals of the same type (even us Humans) are hardwired to communicate in a certain way, it's how we're hardwired and how we organize. But the bond between us and different species of animals is so perfect it's surreal. I guess it's a little bit saddening that it's so difficult to find that with other Humans.

Well, yesterday sucked.

Here I had gone and found some motivation to do something meaningful with my life and then in comes an experience at work that made me want to strangle someone. So in case it wasn't obvious I'm working in customer service for a very large corporation, and we had a caller that called in about an expensive dunebuggy, just one of the most douchebaggiest (not even a word but whatever) gifts you could buy for someone and I guess it was a birthday gift. Well, this woman went off the rails and started abusing me and the other agents, it was pretty bad. I mean I can understand people being upset when they don't get a service but that's really no excuse to make someone else's life difficult, and we didn't even have any indication that her package was even lost, turns out the carrier had nowhere to leave the item in the end. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

I can't recommend customer service to anyone if they can't handle abuse. Especially if the company you work for has some crappy policies in place that ruin the shopping experience for their customers. There's issues here every day that don't even get addressed, and nobody from Tier 1 can do anything about it. Most of the team tries to be supportive but it doesn't make it any less sucky.

Anyway, no word from my friend yet, he's supposed to let me know when the place is move in ready. My only experience prior had been living in the dorms. Heck, I got an actual scholarship, maybe I could do it again. I still like the idea of trying to do ecological work, but it presents an interesting conundrum, where would the money come from? How well would it pay? I honestly wish I didn't have to do things for profit and did work that was actually rewarding, not for the monetary value but just for making the world a better place to live in. Granted Humans will probably continue to be assholes to each-other but I wouldn't mind a culture where we treat each-other and nature with at least the bare minimum of respect. Nature moreso just because to me without it we wouldn't be around, we depend on many of the other species we share this planet with for survival, so for Humanity to collectively damage the ecosystem just seems baffling. Sure we have some immediate comforts but at what cost? We can't sustain this way of living and I'd feel awful if something happened to this planet. I don't care if we colonize other planets, this planet's my home and I don't want to leave it for anything.

I think I should return to college.

Even though I did okay with programming, I don't really think that it's my passion. I mean, yeah, I would be creating useful programs, or even video games, but it's a business discipline. I don't want that for myself. Maybe I can apply some of that to my new pursuit because scientists use programming, too. I did a little bit of looking around and seeing what an ecologist does and I saw some postings for positions in ecological restoration in Lombard. So, I will test the waters and see if this is something I want to do. I think I would enjoy restoring ecological systems, so I think it's only fair that I look into studying Environmental Science/Ecology. But first I need to get my residency stuff in order, I think you pay in-state tuition for college when you've been living in the state for 1 or 2 years. I'll be moving to Elgin before too long, maybe this weekend or next. That gives me plenty of time to do some research, and I will admit, it would be nice to dedicate my life to Mother Earth.