Mediation

There's always two sides to a story; but what do you do when the two sides are on completely different sides of the spectrum. That is the problem we have run into with what occurred on February 16.

When I was talking with Marie and Will about what happened on the 16th on Friday, I was dumbfounded at the blatant lies Sallied told Marie in an effort to get me in trouble. She told Marie she went to talk to this resident. She closed the door and began talking with the resident. The resident became aggressive, stepped towards her, that she called for me, I didn't respond. Sammie banged on the window, I didn't hear it. She yelled and banged again, I still didn't respond, so she started kicking the Control Room door but I still didn't hear it. She basically told Marie and Will that I was too busy paying attention to the computer to hear her. I told them her version was a bunch of bullshit, which it is. I am confident enough in myself to know I am probably one of the more attentive staff members. I would have heard the first knock had she knocked at all. I don't buy the story at all and think she is attempting to create drama and get me in trouble for no reason. Just writing this angers me. Of course the valid question came up. "Why would Sammie lie?" Besides the possibility of Sammie not being loud enough when she knocked once, I told Marie that Sammie and I had a falling out several months ago. Due to the fact that our stories are on complete opposite sides of the spectrum and our falling out Marie and Will have scheduled a mediation between Sammie and me for either tomorrow or Friday.

At first I was gung-ho and wanting to have the mediation. After further thought though, I'm concerned about the mediation. I was talking to a couple coworkers about it and in their words they said they'd love to be a couple cockroaches in the room. They also said this was going to be the fight of the century. I couldn't agree more. I'm afraid the mediation could make matters worse for us. I'm concerned with how they plan to mediate Feb. 16. In my mind I keep seeing us going back and forth calling each other liars. I don't see Sammie admitting to lying and I'm telling the truth. I'm also concerned that Marie and Will could take a side on the story. They may think there is no reason for Sammie to lie and so she is telling the truth. I personally don't see her as this poor innocent person she portrays herself to be. I'm hoping to be wrong on this but I just have that gut feeling.

My other issue with the mediation is I don't want my dirty laundry hanging out there. I don't want our personal reasons for having our falling out to be talked about in front of Will and Marie. I also don't want to discuss the problems I wanted to discuss with Sallied in private that she was so unwilling to talk about before. I'm over them. It's all in the past and I want to keep it there. I don't like Sammie, more so now than before and the mediation isn't going to change that. I don't have a problem with the way we work together now. We avoid each other and only talk when necessary. If this mediation isn't done right, its not going to make matters better; its going to make matters worse. I hope Marie and Will know what they are getting into because we are two of the most stubborn people working there and this mediation is going to go poorly, regardless of whether it is done diplomatically or not. I'm dreading the next couple days as im not sure if this is happening tomorrow or Friday... and tomorrow will be the first time I see her since her lie.

Only Time Will Tell

Only time will tell... a phrase I used six months ago pertaining to mine and Sammie's friendship. Time has told its story. Looking back at that blog post I think I sensed something. In mid-December Sammie and I began our falling out. I got mad over a petty issue and with the help of Sammie's words the issue got blown into a friendship ending issue. I was mad at her and Alissa. I didn't want to talk about it then in case I said something I may regret in the future. Sammie informed me I didn't care for her or respect her. she said if I didn't tell her what was wrong I was jeopardizing our friendship. In her mind, the incident was friendship ending; in mine it was her words.

In the weeks that followed, I attempted to talk to her about our differences but she had no interest in hearing it. Since then her and I haven't talked. It still bothers me that we have let such a thing ruin our friendship, but as noticeable in my July post, I think it was coming down the pike. I tried on multiple times to get her to talk about our issues but she has been unwilling. We threw it all away. I still wished we could've mended our friendship, but its dead and there is no chance of revival on either of our parts.

You see, last week she talked to a resident that requested to tall to her. I was playing on the computer when she started to talk to a resident. I heard her tell the resident to return to their room. I looked back and saw he wouldn't. I started watching them until he did return to the room. According to Sammie I never paid attention and was too busy on the computer. a completely false allegation. I am now having to defend myself and show I didn't do what she is saying. An uphill battle. I was blind sided today when I got called in the office. I couldn't even remember what they were talking about. Not until to went back to work did I realize what event it was. I have a meeting with Marie and Will to hopefully clear my name. I have to say I am shocked Sallied would stoop to that level but it truly shows we will never mend our differences. this really saddens me. I just hope I don't have to watch every little thing I do now out of fear that Sammie will lie to get me written up or fired. I expected more out of her, even as we were not on speaking terms.

2010 Resolutions

I can't believe I am saying this, but MTV has finally come out with a decent show that is actually worth watching... I will admit I have a guilty pleasure in the Real World, but the Buried Life is the show I am talking about. I'm not going to get into the premise of the show here, but the show has really made me evaluate my life and how I would like to live my life as though today is my last day on Earth. I want to live with no regrets. I've held myself back so much in life and I am ready to really live my life how I was meant to.

The majority of my friends would probably tell you I am a passive-aggressive person. As things have unfolded the last month or so of my life, I have realized how much passive people irritate and annoy me. I have realized it is actually a pet peeve of mine for another to be passive or passive-aggressive towards me. If that's a pet peeve of mine, how can I allow myself to be passive or passive-agressive any longer? As a result of my realization, I have taken a more active stance in my relationships and started to build a backbone for myself. Another issue I am beginning to see in myself is I don't allow my friends to be passive or passive-aggressive with me anymore. If they have a problem with me, I want to hear it. On the flip side, I'm going to let someone know when they've done something that doesn't make me happy. I don't want to let it sit and simmer. I've been at this for a couple weeks now and I think it is improving my life and making it much less hectic and stressful.

I think something that is almost synonymous to not being passive and passive-aggressive anymore is to not allow people to walk on me as much as they have been in the past. I've always stood up for myself when it was necessary, but I allowed the not so large things to just go by. I would give people an inch and they would take a mile when it came to things. If I give an inch to someone I expect them to take an inch and nothing more... don't expect me to do things automatically. This has been more of a challenge for me. It's so easy to just walk away, it's hard to confront the issue.. especially when your emotions are so wrapped up in that moment. This will be a bit more of a ride this year, but I'm ready for it!

2010 is a new year. I did pretty well on my 2009 new years resolutions and I hope to do even better in 2010. It will be a roller coaster ride for sure.

Top Chef: Gays Venting

My favorite television show is Top Chef. The new season started last week and of course I have been watching it religiously. Tonight's episode sort of gave me the urge to vent a little bit. It is fairly obvious the show has quite a few of gays and lesbians, just as the culinary field does. The elimination challenge was to cater two parties; a bachelor party and a bachelorette party. The guys were responsible for catering the bachelorette party and the girls were responsible for the bachelor party. After their preparation, the day before the parties, a few lesbians started complaining about the challenge. They felt it was wrong they had to participate in it, because the homosexual caterers couldn't legally get married in most states in the U.S. Now, I can understand if they mentioned this once, but they said it quite a few times.

I'm not officially a part of the professional culinary world yet, but I think I have a fairly good grasp on it. As chefs, we experience various walks of like at restaurants as well as through catering. I would even bet to say the majority of the business a caterer gets is weddings. My point in saying this is it's not the fault of the people coming to the restaurant or asking for a certain company to cater their wedding, it's the fault of the government for allowing people to vote on the rights on a minority when there is such widespread bigotry and ignorance out there in regards to homosexuality. If you don't want to cater for a group of straight people getting married, you shouldn't be in the culinary field in the first place.

As a member of the gay community, I feel the primary message we want to get across is loving and acceptance of all. People are allowed to disagree with us and not have to fear persecution. That is the best thing about the United States. We have a long road ahead of us to fight for equality, but we shouldn't suppress and complain about one group of people just because we don't have the same rights as they do, particularly when we are catering for them.

Vacation!

Hopefully with this post I can catch up with my blog spots. I went back to work this past Friday after over two weeks off. It was a nice break. After Pride Float, a friend of mine from Canada that I had never met in person came to visit me. Donnie came here for nine days. Before he came I was a bit concerned that we would get into it with each other, but I didn't really think it would get as bad as it did.

A complaint most of my friends had was that he talked too much, which I completely agree with. He would talk about the most random of things and go on and on about things that no one really cared about. Donnie didn't have much tact either. One night we went out to a bar in Branson and he talked to a group of women that were sitting next to us about a drag show he did one night and a guy hitting on him. I think he forgot where he was, because that is not something that is a comfortable thing to discuss with random people in the states. To me, it was an interesting story the first time I heard it, but it got rather boring the fifth time it came around.

Although we did a few fun things while he was in town. On Tuesday when he first got in town, he flew into Kansas City. Brandon, Donnie and I went to a place called L.C.'s BBQ in the heart of Kansas City. I had heard of the restaurant while I was flying to Pittsburgh from KC a few months before. It was an interview by Iron Chef Cat Cora. She had recommended the restaurant and said it was one of the best BBQ places in the country. I can now attest to that fact. It was one of the best BBQ places I have ever been to in my life.

Thursday, Donnie and I went up to St. Louis so he could see the St. Louis Arch. We went up in the Arch, which was nice because I hadn't been up in it since I was a little kid. I was amazed with myself, because I have agoraphobia and it didn't affect me too badly. Although I felt a heightened level of anxiety, it never got to the point where I felt the need to escape, nor did I have any severe anxiety attacks. After we spent some time up in the Arch, we walked around downtown for a little bit to pass time and so Donnie could see some of downtown St. Louis. The All Star Game was played in St. Louis a week or two before we went down there, so they still had a lot of the exhibits outside and around Busch Stadium. I took a lot of pictures of all that stuff as it is a once in a lifetime sort of thing.

We got to St. Charles a little sooner than I had planned, so we went around the town and I showed Donnie he different places, such as where I lived and went to high school. It was sad going by the old house. It was the first time I had driven past there since my sister moved out a year or so before that. After spending some time in St. Charles, Donnie and I went to my friends Jody and Tyler's apartment so we could go out to dinner with them. We ended up going to the Pasta House. A little while after dinner, we headed back down to Springfield.

Branson was next on the agenda. Donnie and I went down to Branson on Thursday. We started the day in Branson at the Titanic Museum. It was a nice change of pace. I had wanted to go to the museum since I knew it was down there, but never really had a reason to go. At the beginning of our voyage through the museum, everyone is given a boarding pass that has a short biography of an actual passenger on the Titanic. You go through the Titanic exhibits and at the end of the museum you find out whether your passenger lived or died. I suspected my passenger was going to die. I suspected this, because they actually had a small exhibit of my actual passenger. He was seen trying to turn passengers to God before they could possibly die. He was a minister afterall, and was going to the United States to give a sermon. He ended up dying, but his 6 year-old daughter and sister survived the trip.

After the Titanic, we went to the Branson Landing to kill some time. We just walked around and did a little shopping before we headed to Dolly Parton's the Dixie Stampede. They served a fairly delicious meal at the Dixie Stampede. It consisted of each person getting a whole chicken, pork tenderloin, a potato, corn on the cob, broccoli soup and an apple turnover for dessert. The only real downfall to the meal was that we had to eat everything with our hands. The show was fun to watch. It took place during civil war times and had a north versus south type of mentality. There were different races involving horses and ponies, primarily made up of races. The south, which was the side we sat on, won! It was a fun day in Branson and had been a very long time since I had been to a show there. Although the prices for shows are rather steep, Dolly Parton's was fairly reasonable as it included a meal, where most other ones don't. For some family fun, I would recommend going. We were going to go to Silver Dollar City another day, but I just didn't have the money.

Saturday, a couple friends from St. Charles came down to visit me. We all met up with my friend Jessica that lives in Springfield and went to Cheddar's for dinner. Cheddars is one of my favorite restaurants in Springfield. After Cheddar's, we went back to my apartment for a little predrinking before going to Martha's Vineyard; one of the gay clubs in town. They were having a drag competition that night, so the cover was a bit steep, but we still had a great time. Strangely, I got really emotional when I drank that night, which never happens for me. I felt embarassed about getting emotional, because it was the first time one of my friends had seen me drinking and I didn't want her to think I was always like that.

Donnie ended up really pissing me off and I nearly kicked him out, but thought better of it because he wouldn't have had anywhere to go considering he didn't know anyone else. We didn't talk for most of Sunday, but ended up putting our differences aside and I took him to try some Springfield cashew chicken. My friends from St. Charles left Sunday morning.

Jessica and Sammie came over for dinner on Monday night. I made crab cakes which were very good to say the least. I made that along with a roasted red pepper dipping sauce from scratch, which was also very good. I was afraid it wouldn't be good to me, because it had ingredients I had never had before as well as sour cream and mayonnaise, which I am not a big fan of.

A couple days later we headed back up to Kansas City to hang out with Annie and Brandon before Donnie had to head to his next destination. Donnie and I didn't really talk much after the incident on Saturday, and when we did, we tended to snap at each other. It was nice when he finally left on Thursday, although I had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to take him to the airport. After I dropped him off, I headed back down to Springfield. I returned to work on that Friday.

Pride Float 2009

I've been procrastinating on an update, but what else is new? I just went back to work after being on vacation for two weeks on Friday. It was an all right vacation, but it wasn't the best vacation I have ever had, although it did involve some of the best moments of my life.

On Thursday the 16th of July, my friends Launa, Julie, Ryann and I went to an event called Pride Float 2009 along the Niangua River. It is a five day long camping and floating trip for gay people and gay supporters. On Wednesday, we went shopping for the float trip, and went out for a late night snack afterwards. We ended up finding out that Julie lives in the same apartment complex as I do, which is sort of cool to know. It will be much easier for us to hang out.

We were only there for four days, but it was a lot of fun. I got the nickname of alcoholic for the weekend, because I drank the majority of the weekend, but hey, I was told the purpose of a float trip is to be drunk the whole weekend. That is what I intended to do. After all our friends had gone to sleep, Launa and I went for a walk around the gay pride side. Although we went for the pride float, we stayed on the other side of the camp because Julie's grandparents work there and we were able to stay there for free. The side we stayed on, we dubbed the straight side. As Launa and I walked back to our camp site, we passed a group of guys. They asked if we were staying on the gay side, which I said no. Launa got a little irritated I didn't say yes, but I wasn't going to take the chance of getting beat up by a group of guys. The guys yelled out, "Thank God!"

Friday, we spent the day wading in the river. We met up with our other friend Tiny, her girlfriend Amanda and their friend Erica. We sat around talking with each other, meeting new people, and Julie and Tiny played beer pong against a couple of guys. After spending the day at the river and severely burning my legs, we headed back to our camp sites to hang out there for the night. When dinner was done, we went over to Tiny's camp site to hang out. Later that night, Holly and Lindsey joined up with us for the rest of the weekend.

On Saturday, we went on the actual float trip part of the weekend. Julie thought Pride Float was floating on Saturday, but we found out they were floating on Sunday and so we weren't going to be floating on the day we'd planned... we were going to be floating with a bunch of straight people. It ended up not being too bad. We did run into a couple snags, but they weren't too bad. Just ignorant homophobic people along our voyage down the river. It became more entertaining the further we went down the river, the more drunk we all got. Cass, Erica's girlfriend joined us for the float trip too, and she ended up getting wiped out by a tree at one point. Erica and Holly jumped in after her, but the raft got further away and they had to swim to get back to us. Holly was trying to swim against the current and ended up having to be "saved" by us putting out an oar for her to grab onto because she was basically swimming in place. Showing how small of a world we live in, I found out Cass knows my friend Sammie.

One of the homophobic people we ran into was trying to get the girls to stop on a bank so she could have a "party." She assumed the girls were straight, so when they asked her to show her boobs, she got quite offended. The rest of the trip down the river, the girl would occasionally pass us. Her other friends were trying to talk to us, while she gave all 9 girls on the raft a death stare. They ended up being on the same bus back to the campground. The girl stole our cooler, but we got it back when some of my friends went out looking for it. How childish.

After the float trip, I took a shower. I was a bit more drunk than I thought I was and while in the shower, I fell flat on my ass out of the shower for everyone to see my naked body. I was embarassed, but pretty much finished my work and went on my way.

Saturday night, we went over to the Pride Float side, where they were having a "parade" type of event. They were making people that walked by show their penis or their boobs. I didn't do this because I never walked passed and was never seen walking up, which was lucky for me... not that I would have shown. The people staying in the campsite next to us came through and one of the guys showed his penis, while some of the girls showed their boobs. They were gloating the next day about how they were the life of the party. It was rather ridiculous they thought they had that much influence on the parade. They didn't do anything special that others weren't doing. On Friday night, one of the guys in the came site fell asleep in his car and kept laying on his horn at 6AM. None of us were very happy to be woken up by him laying on it and his friends yelling at him to stop. We were ready to shoot someone... not that we had a gun to do it.. we weren't happy needless to say.

Saturday went and passed. On Sunday, we packed up our campsite and headed back home. I got home, parted ways with Launa and got prepared for my friend Donnie to come to town...

The trip was a lot of fun and I would do it again in a split second. I'm hoping my friends plan to go back next year, because I would love to go again... especially because the web site says there are big plans for the 2011 float trip. I never thought I would enjoy floating down the river as much as I did, but it was some of the most fun I have had in quite a while and it has given me the opportunity to grow closer to my friends and develop new friendships.

With that, I think I will wrap up this blog entry. I plan to update on the rest of my vacation in a day or so.

Work and Other Things

Work has been extremely hectic and creating a lot of stress for me lately. We have a girl there right now that doesn't function at a high level and is always being restrained it seems. She has assaulted staff members, spit on them, thrown fits, etc. Tonight at work she was restrained twice and was in leather restraints for over five hours. She's been with us for the majority of eight months. It is so frustrating that they have not been able to move on her case and it seems it could be at least a few more weeks before anything is done. I hope she is kicked out of detention soon enough, because I have been dreading going to work and having to deal with her, as I am sure my coworkers have too.

Sammie got a promotion at work. Casey, the guy that was in charge of the evening reporting center got recalled in the military and has to go to Iraq for a year. As a result, Mike got promoted to Casey's spot and Sammie got promoted to a 4-12 deputy juvenile officer. The jury is still out on how I really feel about this. On the one hand it's a great opportunity for Sammie and I am happy for her, but on the other, I am afraid her supervisory role could change our friendship. We haven't been hanging out as much as we used to, and I just hope with her promotion it won't make us hanging out obsolete. I guess time will tell.

I've realized in the last few days that my dad and I have only talked on the phone with each other twice since I came out to them at the end of May. It's starting to weigh on me as we used to talk every week to every two weeks. I love my dad and I know he loves me too, but I wish things didn't change and that my parents weren't creating a distance between us. I'm the same person, my parents just know more about me now. I know they wanted me to grow up to have a wife and children, as that is what I wanted for myself too, but my mind and body say differently. I would wish this gay away the first opportunity I was given if I could, but I can't. I met with a PFLAG lady at St. Louis Pride and I am tempted to send my parents some PFLAG information, but I don't know if it would be unwarranted, or how my parents would respond to it. I've also thought about sending them a letter to express my feelings, but I don't know how good of an idea that is either. I want to bring us closer together and not create a rift between us.

I hope in time my parents will realize the error of their ways and come around.