Erin's Journals

A few times a year I’ll share with you scams that are going around. Either they’re proliferating and making the news or – as in the case of the PayPal rip-off that was aimed at my sister (and later my aunt who’s selling a car online) – they’ve hit close to home. Forewarned is forearmed and all of that, right? Well, who would have thought that Rob and I would fall for one too? But here’s our story.
 
About a month ago, I got an email through this website. It’s easy to find me: the link is right there at the top of this page. Here’s what this email from a Bill Shreefer said:

Email Address: bill1265@sbcglobal.net 
Phone Number: (773) 866-5300 
Comment / Message: 
Hi, Erin. I hope all is well with you. I produce audio plays out of the midwest, and I am currently looking for a voice that can fill the role of an older lady (late 60s/early 70s). This is for an audio play for drama students. If interested, will you please do a read of the audition piece below? In this role, you are the mother of a middle aged set of twins. One of the twins went bald due to a nurse’s mistake at the doctor’s office, and you are very upset. Please sound a little frazzled and shaky as you do the read, like you are upset. 

Hmmm. Drama students. We knew it wouldn’t pay much, but we decided just to dive in. I gave him a couple of variations on the script, which was a couple of hundred words in length. Then Rob took his usual care with the audition: he took out the breaths, cleaned up any re-takes, put it in a file and sent it to “Bill.” 
 
We waited for a response. Nothing. We waited some more. 
 
I emailed to ensure he’d received it. No response. 
 
That’s when I got suspicious and wrote to my friend (and experienced voice artist, who’s also married to one as well), Lisa Brandt, and said I thought we were scammed. Here’s her response:

I just did what I do when I get something like that and looked up the web address in his email – sbcglobal.net. It doesn’t exist I’m afraid. Also, if he had his own company he wouldn’t need to have a hotmail-looking address like Bill1265. That would make me suspicious.

I asked Derek what he thought because he has seen it all. He suggests asking for a reference (how did you find me?) and where you can hear their work – stuff that will make a scammer run. He thinks this guy was a scammer. Sorry. But it happens a lot or they wouldn’t keep doing it. You’re not alone!

Well, that pretty much sealed it. I wrote again with no response and then called, only to learn that there’s no one at that number and no such business. So it was fake from beginning to end.
 
Luckily for us, we didn’t lose anything but the time and effort we put into doing this stupid script for him, but my question is this: what’s the end game here? Did they get me to voice something they’re going to use without paying me? Because that’s pretty low.
 
The voicework industry is not a lucrative one (for the most part) and there are people who bid and will actually take the time and make the extensive effort to voice audiobooks for $150. It’s pretty desperate out there. So why would someone just steal the time and talent of someone else, when it can be bought so cheaply?
 
Like most victims of scams, I am guilty of not doing my homework. I should have followed up, but didn’t want to scare off a prospective employer with “too many questions.” (Don’t want to be seen as high maintenance, do we?) I should have checked the website or even Googled his name. (Maybe having “reefer” in it could have been a hint?) Anyway, live and learn. And who knows – maybe he didn’t like what I sent anyway! For once, I hope that’s the case.
 
Back with you here tomorrow. 
 

Here we are, nearing the end of another school year. I remember so clearly how deliriously wonderful these last days felt, especially in elementary school when parties were held, projects were taken home and the whole delicious summer stretched out ahead.
 
High school didn’t have quite the same abandon: there was the panic over which exams would have to be written and whether I’d be exempt from any (as some of us with higher grades could be, in a three-semester system at our high school). It’s a time fraught with emotion as you prepare to say your good-byes – sometimes for the summer, sometimes for life. (Well, of course, that was before Facebook, when people could stay connected forever. But you know what I mean.)
 
It’s amazing how some of those teachers who guided our way through the months and years of education have stayed with us. I remember a few who stood out: Sister Joanne Culligan who taught me in grade five and found a way to use Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” as a metaphor for religion. (I also later realized that when I thought she was praying with her head down on her desk, she was napping. Those must have been some early mornings at the convent!) 
 
I remember the Grade 11 drama teacher who laughed so hard at a pantomime I was doing (to a sped up ragtime tune) that she couldn’t catch her breath. My first A-ha moment of the joy of making someone (who wasn’t family) laugh.
 
I’ll always be grateful to Bryan Olney, the Loyalist College radio professor who was speaking at a careers day when I was in Grade 13. The two speakers I wanted to hear were fully booked (I got there a bit late) and so I went to hear Mr. Olney. It was like I was struck by lightning and five months later I was in the course; seven months later I was on the radio in Belleville.
 
Just two weeks ago, after they connected online (about which I wrote here), Rob and I played hosts to his high school media teacher, Sterling Campbell. A fellow former Ontarian who’s moved to BC for the climate, he joined us for dinner and Rob got a chance to tell this man, now into his 70s, just how he had influenced his life.
 
Sterling said it was disconcerting to learn that some of his students were now themselves retiring! But there can be no doubt that it meant a lot to him to learn how much his year teaching Rob, and the course that he helped create for Sudbury Secondary School, meant to us. I mean, had Rob not taken that course, he wouldn’t have gotten into radio and we wouldn’t have met! I guess I should have thanked Mr. Campbell, too.
 
Have a lovely weekend – Happy Pride in Toronto! – and I’ll be back here with you next week. I have a story to share about getting scammed. Here I was warning you about a con a few weeks back, and I got taken by one myself.
 

By the time you read this, summer will probably have begun, having arrived at 3:07 am Pacific time. Of course, that’s the astronomical start of summer; for so many parts of the world, it’s considered to be June, July and August. Whatever – Happy Summer!
 
Rob and I have embarked on a road trip and we’ll have stories to share when we get back, but I’m going to make sure you get journals until that time! I will write new ones, but I also want to share a few favourites, like the one I’m linking to today. It reminds me of one of the absolute best things about summer in Southern Ontario and who knows? Maybe it’ll spark a few ideas for you, too.
 
Please click here to enjoy today’s journal and its pictures and come on back for a new one to wrap up the week here tomorrow. And again – Happy Summer!
 

Thank you for your kind notes and posts about Miss Molly yesterday. We’re really at peace with everything and we wanted you to know that. She seems to be in pretty good shape (especially for a pup going on 14 years old) and we hope she’s going to be around for a good long while – just as long as she enjoys her life. That’s all we want.
 
Of course, if you know anything about me and my husband, Rob, it’s that we always find the humour in even the worst things. Don’t forget that the night of Lauren’s first memorial in Ottawa (there was a second ten days later in Toronto), when something that was on the menu at the bar in our hotel was no longer available, we told the smiling waitress that this was the worst thing that had happened to us all day! I mean, if you don’t laugh…right?
 
So, Molly’s head has been cocked at about a 45 to 80 degree angle since being diagnosed with these awful crystals in her inner ear. Mind you, the angle has lessened with each passing day, so that now she can run around outside and if you didn’t notice that she was going in circles, you’d probably not even see the angle her head is at. But it’s been going on long enough that we’ve given her a nickname that sounds like the phrase “I lean.” Yes, there’s a lot of “C’mon Eileen” being sung around the house these days. Poor sweetie.
 

 
You’d have laughed at us as we were trying to fulfill the vet’s instructions when first she was diagnosed: get a pee sample. Wait, what? As a human, it’s a fairly easy endeavour (especially if you’re lucky enough in this instance to be a guy). But a dog? Keep in mind that Molly is a little dog and is very close to the ground to begin with. What was I going to use – blotter paper?
 
The vet said when they get samples, they use a soup ladle. (“From the Dollar Store,” she added, as though I thought she was hauling out her grandmother’s silver.) But I thought, There’s no way I can slide a ladle under the business end of our pup without distracting her entirely from the job at, um, hand (mine, I guess). So I had to come up with something better – and I did!
 

 
Meet our corn on the cob dish! Okay, let me rephrase that – our former corn on the cob dish; we have ceramic ones that I was given by my sister, so we retired the plastic set. But when I needed something long, lean and shallow, that’s what came to mind. It worked perfectly and even had a little pouring spout at the end so I could hit the sample bottle when we were ready to fill it. 
 
Sometimes I’m just too smart for my own good, wouldn’t you say? Tuck that idea away. I don’t know if you’ll ever need it, and I hope you don’t, but I was pretty darned proud of myself!
 
Talk to you here tomorrow with a welcome to summer that is quite likely just down the road from you.
 

In the life of every pet parent, there come dark days. Our last sad day was in the summer of 2015 just a few months after we’d lost Lauren. Pepper’s condition deteriorated due to age and, at 17-and-a-half, we had to take him on his last car ride to the vet. He was such a good dog and we knew that when his life was no longer fun for him, it was time to let him go.
 
This past week, we turned a corner and are seeing our future with Molly. She usually runs like a puppy when we get home every day, tearing off in circles and diving for a toy to bring to us. But the other morning when we got up, Molly was staggering as though drunk. I thought she’d had a stroke. I alerted Rob, we got dressed and took her immediately to her vet, just a few kilometres away. 
 
As we approached the clinic, that familiar heavy tightness had overtaken my chest. What was this visit going to mean?
 
Several blood tests and a thorough examination later, we learned that our almost-14-year-old had not suffered a stroke (thankfully), but seemed to be experiencing crystals in her inner ear that were throwing off her balance, her vision, her depth perception and any number of other functions. This vestibular neuritis is not too uncommon in older dogs and (if indeed this is what she has) it will dissipate within a few weeks. Until then, she staggers and tilts her head in a state of confusion, although it is getting better by the day. 
 
We did get other news, though, that won’t bring such a happy ending: Molly’s living with kidney disease and we have learned that this will probably be the cause of her (hopefully gradual) demise over the next while, perhaps even years. It’s hard to imagine even writing these words when she is so puppy-like in her behaviour and appearance!
 
Now we come to the time in our lives where decisions have to be made about her care while we’re away. When Pepper was becoming an elderly pup, we were with him almost all year round (or took him with us on trips to Ottawa) as I was still working full-time. But over the next several months, our travel plans are laid out and some of those include leaving Molly at home.
 
We’re so fortunate to have friends coming into our home to take care of Molly while we’re away, those times we can’t take her with us. But we know there might be hard decisions to make when we’re away, too. It’s an awful thing to ask of people, but we trust them as devoted pet parents who have adopted and rescued dogs and love them dearly.
 
As much as we adore Molly, we know that the circle of life has a beginning and an ending. We were always meant to make her life as happy as she has made ours and we know that that includes providing an end for it that comes when she is ready. 
 
That time – we hope – is a long way off. For now, we just continue to love every day we have with our miss Molly Malone and we remember to be grateful for everything: every beginning and every middle and even every end.
 
Have a gentle day. Tomorrow, a few ways we’ve found to laugh over our situation with our sweet girl.