Man, do I love Saturday mornings!
Good Morning, good morning!I woke up this morning and was sooooo pleased to know that Gab was on duty last night! She’s gotten the message through with DA emails notifying people that we are offering this service. I putzed around over there a little, but feel comfortable enough to let it run its own course for a bit. So excited with its opening today.
I’m not sure what I have left to talk about, but since when has that stopped me from a long post on a wonderful Saturday morning! Just have to get my mind in order.
I’ve been pleased to pieces to have T back in town. She’s talking though of multiple trips in the near future. Wow! Does that woman move! Hehehe She says though she’s bringing her laptop with her for most of the next trips … soooo, I guess it’s going to be like we’re all on the road. I’m hoping at least she keeps us up with what’s happening out there. I am looking very forward to hearing her thoughts as she is working on a new mural. YAYYYYY!!! AND, she didn’t seem to be upset with the mess, cuz Vince cleaned most of it up! AND, she brought us all back a new buildings of our very own! Wooo HOOOO!!! She sure knows how to treat us all well!
We’re looking forward to our next purchase. We bought from Amazon speakers and microphone like thingy to post more verbal messages in the posts. You all won’t have to listen to them, but it feels like a really neat way to communicate. I’m toying with the idea of entering verbally the posts that are written so that people can hear them instead of reading, but I don’t know if that isn’t redundant. We’ll have to see. I’m hoping they get here by Thursday, because I have my things sent to the Center and after that I’ll be on holiday! YAYYYY!
My sweetie pie has left another card, and yesterday he left me a message during the day as to how things were going. Lordy … his people can sure shop! I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not, but he’s gone to see his daughter graduate from collage. My thinking is that he is a very proud Daddy!!
I’m not sure if I mentioned Dr. M. appointment … this is an excerpt from an email to sweetie-pie in that regard.
Half of the time with Dr. M. was spent talking about the memory test, I think he wanted to make sure I was decompressed after taking them. He actually brought up the subject where we'd forgotten about it. I'm not quite all that sure what happened, but during part where we were remembering the first MMPI, we got into a bad space of remembering the Clinic staff in MN attacking us and us going blank for quite some time. Just remembered the kicking, thrashing, and head pounding against the tile floor, as they were taking me apart, and then waking up on a mattress laid on the floor in a corner. Alone. In an unfriendly place with the door locked.
It was a very bad experience and was pretty traumatic yesterday again. It had come up in the fear we felt of the MN people having tested us with the MMPI and had told us that we were lying and had purposely thrown the test. We hadn’t. That was the worst about that whole experience there was absolutely no trust in either direction.
Anyway, we’re trying to put that other bad experience behind us. The testing at the U was nothing like that. It was long, but not unpleasant.
The other half of Dr. M.’s time was talking about the excitement around here with the blogs. It used to be that he was asked by us to read all of them, but over the last year, he’s only read a few posts that we wanted him to specifically see. That’s the neat part about him, not only has he got a tremendously smiley personality, he’s willing to do anything within each hour I ask … well, within reason!
We were asking this time more specifically about the ideals in the DA blog. We wanted to know if he thought it would work. I think he said something more where time will tell. Shoot, we wanted a magic forecast! Heheheh. He was still complimentary of the Teams effort and I know he understands our strong views on community. I enjoy talking over the events with him. On the way out the door, we apologized for being so silly during the hour and he looked at is and smiled and said, “Your Happy that’s a good thing!” Hehehe yup, yup.
There’s nothing much to report on work this week. It was low to average in the amount of work accomplished. Pretty much I kept clean the surface, but did not go into much detail. Nothing to do, but try a little harder. We had a pretty neat session with the staff training this week. There were only 4 of us out of their and 4 were missing, so we decided not to hold to seriously a session on abuse, which was the original plan. We had already talked last week about it, so this week, we did a little bonding. We talked about relationships we had past the center and how well that did or did not support the upcoming holiday and time spent away from the center.
During my portion, I talked about all of you and the blogs. I was surprised to see how interested they were. None of them are really Internet savvy, so they didn’t know about rooms, IM’s, or blogs. Shoot, that’s pretty incredible if you ask me! Their familiarity covers looking up stuff on the Internet and emails. We had had a session on that about a year or two ago, when we had advocated to Sr., that all the staff get laptops with some of the government grant that we had gotten. At the center bought my big computer and 11 laptops for either the staff or upper leadership group of clients. It was a pretty big deal at the time and I’m still pleased with the decisions. There are a couple of staff who weren’t there yesterday, but have spent a little more time poking around the Internet, but I guess it takes a certain kind of person to get so involved in relationships over the computer. I sure am glad to think we’re one of that variety.
Nothing much is going on at school. We tried to contact our school counselor on Wednesday, but that’s usually discouraging. She runs characteristically about a week behind efforts to contact her. And, I’m really disgusted with how well she has her people screen her calls. Anyway … my guess is that we are going to fail out of the present course, which may or may not affect my funding. We’ll have to find out down the line. I need to talk to the counselor to know if I can even sign up for the next course starting January 3rd. We’ll have to wait and see. It didn’t come up with Dr. M.
Ok, and as long as we’re housecleaning here. “Yes, V … someone forgot to get her kitties an x-mas present” Shame, shame abounds! We’ll take care of that matter this week! And, as an aside from that situation, I figured out a Christmas gift you could give us. Any possibility I could send my camera and directions to you, you figure it out, maybe take a few pictures, and I’ll pay to have it sent back. And in the process you could tell me how the hell I get it to work! It’s been almost a couple of years now with no progress in that direction. That be a reeeeealy neat thing to do!! Cuz, someone’s kitties are complaining they want you to know just HOOOOOOOOOOOW beautiful they are. Let me know, K? Whoops here is Missy complaining again. Ouch … little jabs!
If I were really daring and knew how to use a camera I might think to take a picture of how vveeeeeeeeery messy my desk gets, naw … we’ll send over the polished image!
Ok, ok … that ‘bout brings me up to date. What’s next, what’s next…
Oops, more coffee and better take the medicine. We’re late …
Ahh better. Hmm, while we were away we figured out there are a couple of things we wanted to check on that we didn’t have time for during the week. Let’s look into that now!!
Wow!!! Just looking over Bon and Mal’s puzzle … I think I understand the gist of it now … they sent special instructions (YAYYY!). Thinking this is going to take one of our smarter minds hmmm. Wow! That’s pretty incredible actually. I figured with the example given (Lori’s) that the top left hand box had to be F or I, but there are sooooo many things to account for! Can you let me know if most people like use a lottttt of scratch paper hehehehe
Woo Hoo … Just had a flood of email mostly through Gab! Man is she fast! On top of everything she is. Sure am glad she’s on the Team. She has a tremendous amount to offer and is always first in line when it comes to taking on more work. YAYYY! All that is settled down for a while, and it is time to get back to my other thoughts. The next series belongs to Bon and Mal.
I just wanted to say thank you guys for sending us the links this week to some of your entries where you talk about getting together. It was especially useful to get your thoughts on how to engage in an excellent relationship. We want to congratulate you for 36 years of marriage. Anyone who has ever been married knows this is quite a feat! I think a lot of people start out in love, but don’t have the wherewithal in making all the necessary adaptations being a couple entails. You two are inspiring. I love it that you are able to be so giving to each other and honor the relationship daily with your best care!
Christina has also blessed our world this week with new thoughts to think through, the latest on colors. I am new to the color world, still working through my insecurities with black. But, I’ve made improvements. The biggest change has been with colored pencils. I think they are a darned handy tool to sit at everyone’s left wrist! We’ve now got a cup of about 36 colors, and a cup of about a dozen colored highlighters sitting here next to us. And, you most likely now know of our gift to the clients this year. I love the clients artwork, because they expose so much of their thoughts through their artwork. But, I still think color is all! One of my favorite songs back about ’79 was Harry Chapin singing/telling a story of a little boy who loved to paint all the colors in the rainbow, though in school he was punished for this. He ends with the statement, “But, I will paint colors … every one!” *Sigh*
Ahh that was just the thought. I didn’t see the song in the purchase area, but I turned on the “radio” part that includes 89 of his songs. Maybe I will hear it!
Another of Christina’s posts caught my attention. She quoted Einstein as saying “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The next thing I think of is from over at Vince’s in his title of “To Grow is to be Anxious” by Rollo may, Ph.D.
I’m thinking at this point the insanity then would come from refusing to grow by the avoidance of things that cause anxiety. When I was in college the first time, we thought of this from our readings as the “walking dead.” It seemed like the qualification of being alive was being aware and active in the present, and not “living” by default of responding or reacting just to the same pattern or literagy of how things were in the past or perception of things in the future. This is not to say we can’t go back and reflect, or plan toward the future, it’s just that people have to maintain presence and relate directly.
I remember the feeling of being repetitive especially in having grown up with my family and wanting real love from them and the same in my relationship to my ex-husband. In each situation I kept repeating the same kind of efforts over and over again to receive not only love, but some sense of approval. I recognize this in current time by trying to win favor with my boss, especially when she yells. It’s taken a lot of work to be aware of this and try not to “react” as we do in our personality regressions. It’s hard because we need to train our whole system not to buy into her negativity or negative messages that we are less than “good people.” Another lesson learned is in accepting that we make mistakes.
We note this most often when our friend or V try and help by giving good direction. Shoot, we’re trying guys! You’ll notice it when we say, “Thanks! But, umm we’re going to try it this other way whether or not it’s right or wrong just to check out the theory, or figure out to what extreme we can safely go.” It’s sort of like watching your youngster get closer and closer to the curb without rebounding after him or her. I think the best thing is that we’re learning to trust ourselves more as well, were trying to trust our friend and V more in following clues without sticking our hand our hand repetitively in the fire, expecting not to get burned! YAYYYY V!
Ok, enough said here. I think we’ve caught up our longstanding thoughts of the week.
As it is now noon, we’re going to post now and then try to figure out what next to do, if not just start another post hehehehe. Eh, we’re like that!
posted by Ann Marie @ 12/17/2005 11:58:00 AM
Comments: 5
