Ok, just getting through a Saturday morning ... you do know we like to write?
Good morning. This is mi. I know, I know … like usually I’m the one that’s been showing up anyway, right? Uh huh, Uh huh. We’ve got your game covered. Oh that’s my game? Umm let’s start again.Good morning. We’re a little sleepy behind the wheel, we don’t tiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
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Hmm seems to be a problem here … we got woke up by someone, but now gotta stay up by ourselves
Ok, Now it’s about 9 am … we’ umm went back to bed. I think we had failed the behind the wheel/keyboard test. *Sigh* We’re good to go now though
So how the hell are you? How the hell are we? Whatcha been doin? Everybody ok? We’re makin some fresh coffee, so that’ll distract us in a sec, but not much. We’re having some very cold weather in Chicago and I think this is going around. Deb keeps us informed as to how much snow they are getting in Colorado and I think when they run out of places to keep it, they send it here. With all those mountains though, they got plenty of places. Right now it’s 9 degrees here, but the wind is coming in at 23 mph, so the “feels like” temperature is 13 below. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going out in that, but I do have to go out Monday when the temp is expected to be at 5 degrees. We won’t warm up to the 20’s until Thursday … and that will be the LOWWWW 20’s. Eh, bout then we’ll all be sporting swim suites! Oh yeah we’re expected to have snow flurries to this morning and afternoon, but only an inch and the low for the next 3 days is going to be below zero … down to 5 below. I sure hope the bums headed with the Bears to Florida. Not a good idea to be sleepin outside in this weather.
Hmm, one more thing to check … it says that we are at the local level of activity for influenza. That means its been reported in some regions of Illinois, but not in all of them. Regional would be if it was in less than 50% of the state, but taking over whole geographic areas by city, county or district, and widespread would be if it had reached geographic by more than 50%. Sr. was talking about flu and that it had been reported like up north at their sister institutions and at other places, but that we had not had it here. The other Q had brought up handwashing, but I wasn’t so sure of that … think we’ve been lucky. So, we brought up the handcleaner by purell and that it could disinfect by 99%. I do think that our center does a lot more cleaning than most, like washing down desks and stuff daily, but I don’t think this other would hurt. She said she would take a look at it. Hmm better send her something now.
Ok, I feel pretty good about that … we shopped around and found the best deal for Purell hand sanitizer products in both 12 ounce bottle sizes and 2 liter refills.
We also stopped for some literature on pandemic flu and prevention methods and sent it to Sr. The one thing I know is that she doesn’t mess around and if she’s interested at the time, she means to strike when the metal is hot. She is the greatest boss as far as getting things accomplished. I think the sisters got together and did a fair talk on germs, because she seemed pretty concerned. If you’ve read us with any great frequency you know we’ve been an advocate for hand sanitizers for a bit. Just makes good sense.
Ok, here … we’re ready to move on. We wrote last on Thursday night so the only thing worth mentioning here is what happened yesterday. Hmm, just a note too … seems like we lost another advisor at school the last one made it about a month and now we’re on to someone named Steve. Yah … right we’ll see.
Ohhh I don’t know if you saw this information yet … it starts here … this is the big project of the week … I’ll give you a start and stop so you can skip it after getting the gist. It’s about 9 pages long so skim down quite a bit. BUT, don’t lose me!
Starts HERE …
I changed my mind here look just hit the link … that way we save format and don’t mess so much with my flow of content.
Click here for Written Requirements doc
Ends HERE ...
Ok, pretty much what all of that meant were that that is what we have to check-up on before the CARF people get here. It lists all the documents CARF wants and most of them are listed as to what kind of documents they are. For example a report or policy. I really have to give credit to the boss. We had made copies for her and the administration team and yesterday she just did a few notes for the regular admin meeting, and other than that … we skimmed over to this document and a few others. One had been a new policy on the way we train for safety at our clients worksites out in the community, and the other was how to use the CARF database. But, of course, at a whopping 9 pages, this report was the toughie. The admin team went over the entire thing pretty much item to item. That took a lot of fortitude from our leader. After a while I got the gist of how the meeting was going and toleration points, so we helped to skim or zoom it along by saying things like … ok all I got to do there is blah, blah. I know that each of those points I was skimming would cause me some hassle, but I didn’t want the administration team to get bogged down in the details that I would have to straighten out. The most important thing was all three of the others … the boss, our friend, and the other Q were actually reading about CARF requirements and that this was such an important list for them to know about. It is the most substantial CARF training that we’ve had to date. I can’t say they all stayed with it all throughout, but it was a pretty good meeting.
I’m proud of the entire team for sticking it out. AND, it gave me an excellent opportunity to see the reports and such due from their eyes. The team always minimalizes work to be done with what they remember of what is already out there.
And, it got sister into thinking well if you don’t know just ask because collectively, we all really do know quite a bit. In this aspect it was a very exciting meeting. And as we mentioned it was pretty zippy!
I can’t say that the new policy and procedure on safety in the workforce went so well. That one took some battering. They kept repeating this is excellent, outstanding, wonderful. BUT, then they said let’s not do it. We don’t want to be responsible for anything more than we have to be. I was getting a headache listening to all that mess, because I always think we should do as much as is essential in our training program, whereas the three of them think shortcuts and as they would put it legal responsibility. Like they didn’t like the idea of making sure our clients understood the outside workforces safety policies because that would leave us liable, EVEN though it would be safer for our clients to assure they were being fully trained in safety. BUT, I wasn’t winning any ground on that front, so I said great maybe then “our friend” could look it over and make necessary changes, we will meet once more and just GET ON WITH IT! Pretty much that meant that I was telling them I haven’t the faintest idea the degree of minimimizing you want to do … someone else then should do it, and I wash my hands of it. Man though our policy was great. It was 2 ½ pages and came straight out of OSHA standards.
They had 7 points, we had 7 points. *Sigh* Was not to be though and we needed/need to move on.
The other document written on the procedures for the CARF database … wasn’t gone over at all. Sister wanted to make an issue of needing more instruction and we told her that we just needed people to read it over, we could give a demonstration, and THEN I would do more writing on the subject, but I wasn’t going to write more before they seriously did their share in trying to understand. The program IS very easy and its important that they all learn it for the sake of CARF compliancy and because of back-up. It’s an excellent system and should be used just in case I drop dead tomorrow. I might ask our friend to do a dry run with him first to get my training technique down with someone much easier to teach, and then I would go on to Sister. I don’t think it will be very hard to train the other Q either, because she also has more computer knowledge than Sister. That all in all won’t be something too difficult … it will just take time. The time will be very worthwhile.
The next notes have to do with other training … there were three projects going on during the week … the biggest one was in teaching the new CIRCLES program, then the staff training meeting, and then the Thinking group. Starting backward, yesterday we went over a review of what we’d covered in the CARF questions with the clients.
They weren’t real ambitious yesterday and so we went with the flow. We worked again on getting everyone settled in. It’s usually the same people who have trouble getting settled in each week. They like to come in late, or spend too much time getting their coats and bags in order, or do too much talking with their peers when they shouldn’t be. It really does take a full 10 minutes before everyone is settled enough to start. We usually sit somewhere … this time toward the front and we orchestrate attention to whomever is being the broken wheel. We give a running summary so everyone sees what is happening from our perspective. This is not a good time to start up a problem such as “well, so and so doesn’t like me or called me a name.” I’m reeeeealy not happy about that kind of dialogue and it usually stems from one or two people. My take on that is that if they were concentrating more on the group, they would have less nitpicking, so that’s where we try to get them to.
There wasn’t too much really exciting with the material. It might have been partially my fault in that we weren’t bouncing up and down making things exciting.
Basically we had two meetings previously that were high tense and we were getting tired out. The first of course being the admin meeting and the second being another of the CIRCLES meetings. Oh yeah first the staff meeting on Thursday. Well nothing too dynamic happened during that meeting either. I gave them an introduction to the CIRCLES program, for those who had not been introduced so far. I might do that each week to keep up the folks who are not in training such as the other Q, the staff of group 4, and the staff of group 1 who does not come on the days her group is in training. We also used the time to pass out our general plan to the people who had not received it yet. I need to maintain that written plan each week, because I think it is a very good way to focus everyone, including ourselves. After watching the short clip, we went back to answering CARF questions. I started by intruding the work we’d covered last week with program analysis was really the hardest part and that the rest would be much easier. We made it down a good part of the list, but there was not as much examples given as had been the week before. We just wanted the staff to be introduced casually to the elements and to continue from there. I also passed on that we would conclude the CARF material next week and after that we’d be going through sections on Universal precautions and material on OIG training.
I’m trying to think now if anything stood out in particular. I don’t think so … it was a good meeting in that it was busy and there weren’t any major problems.
Everyone seemed to fall in sync with one another.
The other meeting as we’ve led up to so far was the meetings on the CIRCLES program. We taught one group a day – the first 3 of 4 groups the first lesson in the program. It astonishes me that even with the same materials how different the program is for each according to ability. We had the second group first, then the lowest of the four groups and then the highest of the groups the last day … Group 1 (or the second group) will be on Tuesday, and then Wednesday we start the 2nd session with the 2nd group. Hmm, I hope that wasn’t too confusing. Like mentioned before … we start off with the same program, but need to change-up the presentation. In each of the three groups, they start with watching the 7-8 minute movie. They are given some information prior to the start, but not much with the exception that we’ll be listening to Susan and she’s going to tell us about the purple private circle. The video is about that and Susan showing us her bedroom which is her private space. Next we have the clients go over to the table to the back side of the room. We have spread out on the table the large 10’x5’ mat that has the painted logo of the six circles. Some of the lower group we gave the instruction to touch the purple circle on the mat before sitting down. We have each of the groups go through picking out images that seem most like them and then coloring a graph – just the purple circle, and then taping the picture representing themselves on the graph they each get (that looks like the big mat.
Then we do some changing up. The second group we went through pretty much as was listed, but we did the extra thinking questions listed at the bottom of the lesson.
These were questions about “what if” scenarios like if someone wasn’t treating their private space properly. There were a couple of girls in this group who gave the most thought, and after the group got over, Sister recommended us working with a couple of problem people. One who was in her private world, and the second who traditionally falls asleep. My general way of dealing with this is to ignore it because if the girl doesn’t go to bed at night, then I figure its not up to me to punish her by impressing she stand up, wash her face, etc. But, we can do some more with this. After that meeting we talked to the DSP and she appeared as normal quite nervous. She was very conscious as was I that Sr. sat through the meeting and she was worried one of her group was going to bring up a lot of sexual things in front of Sr. We assured her that we were comfortable in handling these kinds of things.
It was a tough group, because we were trying to encourage they share feelings and sister was saying whether these thoughts expressed were correct or not. It’s been always my understanding that feelings are private and they cannot be “right” or “wrong.” It was funny now in retrospect, because at one time, I had fallen to the “listing” phenomena. I wanted them to remember what was in Susan’s room.
Sister hissed at me saying that basically I was soaking the clock … it was like yes maam, moving on. Especially, now that its over, I don’t mind saying … I’m grateful for the extra direction, and we know that we’ll work harder at it.
Our friend talked to us later and one of the DSPs did as well. Sister isn’t saying a whole lot of what she thinks, but if she’s not complaining I know that we’re doing ok. She wasn’t as sure if the Group 3 could get as much from the program, but as much as they are a difficult group to teach I felt it would be a worthwhile effort.
Both our friend and the DSP didn’t know exactly what Sister had said, but they both came away thinking it was a very good program and that I’d taught it well. It is a new experiment in that in all of my 7 years, I’ve never attempted to teach the same general material to 4 different groups individually. It’s a challenge. The second group could pretty much cut out and color although they needed directions reinforced. The third group needed the staff to cut out pictures and two of them needed hand over hand experience with the coloring. (Just a one and a half inch purple circle). With Group 3, we brought in an exercise where we had taken purple construction paper for a lesson on personal feelings, and we’d cut out for each of the six pictures of unhappy faces. We talked about that and then handed them each one of the pages. Then we tore out pictures of happy faces from a magazine and let the two staff present trim them and ask the group members who wanted the particular picture. They gave their group members plenty of choices and they each were given the picture with double-sided tape and told to tape it in one of the 3 circles we’d drawn for them on the purple construction paper. Then we went around to each one and worked with them on pointing to the 3 pictures of 5 that were happy. This went pretty good. I liked it.
There was some more time, so we went over the elements of talking, touching, and trusting. We had them raise their hands when I was talking and lowering them when I’d stopped and then I let the staff do the same. We also gave examples of self-talk. Then we demonstrated touch and brought to their attention people in the group who were touching themselves. Like if they had hands on chin or lap. After that we gave examples of trust by saying what if I were going to “hurt” this person who would you “trust” to tell. We gave examples of kicking, hitting, choking, etc. and in the end, they all could point to their DSP as a person they could trust to tell.
With the most advanced group, we skimmed that part quickly, but then spent more time on personal examples of exercises to promote self. Let me think for a moment … there was one where they had to look at themselves in a mirror and say something good about what they saw, and there was another where they had to stand up and think out loud about something personal they liked. For example I said when it was my turn that I liked to learn. There was another example on sharing … we wanted to get across that they were the ones who decided whether or not they would like to share.
We came up with examples such as would you share a diamond necklace or a deck of cards. Oh yeah … remember something now from the 2nd group. We had them practice privacy by extending their arm outward or inward to represent a door, so that if I knocked would they let me in or tell me to keep out of their space. We think these exercises went over pretty good, because the groups each seemed to have fun and laughed etc. Many of the exercises, but not all came from some sort of version from the book.
Sister attended each of the three meetings. This was kind of a strange thing and it took some getting used to. She stopped criticizing as much as she had the first time and started to relax a little into it. She got a little restless with the slowness of the lowest group, but she worked her way through it with us. I know she will be in the group on Tuesday too, and then from there I think she will spot check, because she really is too busy to take this much time out. In the Group 3 there was me, Sr. and two DSPs for six clients. That’s pretty intensive staff coverage. I know that Sr. has to make a decision to keep or send back the program because it is going to cost her $1,100 for the year’s lessons. And, she wants to make sure I’m good and the program is not too much (sexual) with the clients. I’ve checked out the DSPs each time and they are all a little stunned to be with their clients so directly at the same time they are with not only me, but Sr. It will get better though. This week it took up quite a bit of time, and we’ll have to work with this. It took an average of an hour for each group and an hour prep time for each. That’s 8 hours we didn’t have to spend. AND, we knew that it was going to be important this time to write notes afterward of the meeting. We know enough to know that self-reflection is one of the best self-training techniques.
So that’s pretty much of that. I’m in general grateful of the program and have hope in it. I’m pretty sure that sister will keep the program. I’m not too sure she is going into the parts where sexuality is covered in itself, or for that matter masturbation. I think everyone is comfortable with touching self at this time is like resting hand/elbow on face/table. I would have wished to hear what was said to my friend and the staff at the staff meeting. This month we did the Thinking Group and the other Q was in the staff meeting. We’ll just have to make do. Our friend said that Sr. thinks we’re an excellent teacher, but he wouldn’t give out more details, so we don’t know if she thinks that or is embellishing. *Sigh*
Ok, I think that about covers work for the week and you had our take on what happened at Dr. M’s. We haven’t given that much thought since, but we did send our friend and Dr. M. the post. Dr. M. didn’t comment back, but if he had the time to read it it would be good feedback. I’m still a little worried that we were so close to blind-explosiveness when his assistant came over toward us while waiting for Dr. M. I think it was passive-aggressive on her part and that she was frustrated for having to wait for Dr. M. and whatever feelings she has about us. I’m afraid of the danger part, in that Dr. M. will come to think that we belong out in the general waiting room instead of being able to wait right next to his office where the psychiatric interns usually wait for him. It’s not a very formal waiting area, but it feels connected to Dr. M. and that’s very important. It also helps us make the adjustment toward being with him safety and emotionally-wise. He’ll have thoughts on it by next week … I’m not sure we’re helping our case in telling him how we are feeling, but I know it’s a process and it’s never a good idea to lie to one’s psychiatrist. That gets frowned on and before you know it your labeled a psychopath. That’s a pretty bad deal.
On the other side of the coin … It’s probably a good idea to do some exploring with him the mother contact that was made … that most likely generated some of this concern. We’re going to try staying away from that now, but we sent him copies of the letters that were written this month. There was one about the 17th and two from her since, one from us. The last one from her didn’t get to us until after we’d written the one to the blog, then sent to Dr. M. it basically said that we’d given her too much information, and from there she said something of her husband’s eye and that was pretty much it. Oh man what a space trip. I’d felt so much pressure that I should be writing her and then to be told after we’d tried to explain, that none of the explanation was needed she just wanted a simple phrase … we are ok, we are not ok. We haven’t thought it out, but under the sense of not letting it build up to the degree it had with Dr. M’s office assistant, it is at the surface a very discrediting, guilt-provoking situation to be told by one’s parent that she really doesn’t want to know what we are thinking. That thought mimics a childhood of never having talked to her about our personal thoughts. She wanted to know that we were behaving and no more. Sometimes she might have asked why we were misbehaving, but I don’t think it was one of those things where she really wanted to know, she just wanted to state her disbelief that we could be so bad.
I’m thinking now that I should review the correspondence, and in doing so we’re thinking that we might put a copy down here for the record. There is a little part about privacy … and toward that we think. No one in the world would know how to connect her to being my mother, she doesn’t even have the same name. AND, since she gave me the emails I consider them mine to do with as I might. I think there is no secret in that we have told her about this sight though that had made us uncomfortable. I have no idea if she would read this site, but my guess is that it is again too much information for her. There is no secret that we feel quite apt to be writing about everything that happens to us … so all that said, Let me go back for a second and get some copies. I will make sure her husband’s name is changed to further hide their identities.
1-17-07
Hi Ann Marie,
I don't know how it has come to be the middle of January already but it seems as though we have been in the car more than at home. We have been to the cities at least part of the past six weeks. We have had four friends pass away in the past two weeks. We went to the wake for two of them and had to miss the other two.
Fred has been at the doctor a few times in the past few days. Last Thursday he got up and couldn't see anything out of his left eye. Friday he had a doctor's appointment already scheduled so we went to that early to get started with his blood work. When he got into the doctor, he told him about his eye. Doc asked him who his eye specialist was. In less time than it takes to tell it, we were from down town ... to ... in a building by the hospital. The doctor says that he has a blood clot floating in his eyeball which makes everything look like he is looking through frosted glass with that eye. He had to go back Monday and then Tuesday morning. They do not think there is a problem with the retina but he goes back in a couple of weeks again. If it does not clear up within two or three months, they will do surgery to remove the stuff but they want to give it time to clear up on its own first. If it isn't one thing, it is another!
Grandma has been doing pretty good but has been busy with holiday visitors, etc. She did go to dinner with us at ... which gave her a couple of days of left overs. It doesn't take too much to get her tired out though. She wanted to go without her walker, especially when I went without my wheel chair but she is used to using it and is unstable without it. Our friend … had other company so we stayed in the guest room at Grandma’s Place. It is hard to not be with her so much as to tire her out, yet she probably thinks that we should be with her more when we stay there. When we are in the cities, there are usually a string of errands that need to be done which all take more time than you would expect. Oh well, one of the good things is that in the dining room at Grandma’s Place is a never ending pot of the best coffee, always ready to pour a cup.
I am in the process of making another baby afghan. Fred’s oldest grandson son and his wife are having their first baby which will make it one for each of her children. This one should be here around Valentine's Day which is coming up faster than I am going to be ready if I don't get some serious at home butt time.
I have a box full of fabrics that has been waiting for me since early November which I am going to try my hand at making table runners, etc. before I commit to trying to work on a quilt. The patterns and thread and everything is in that box except the time to be able to get involved. There is always something else than needs to be done first.
How did your visit with your family go? Did all of them get there? I see by the bank statement that Jacob has not cashed his check yet which was in the graduation wish card we sent to your place. I hope he finds time to do it soon. It is the last check outstanding from last year's book.
Enough run on chatter for tonight. Time to get back to my project.
Love, Mom
1-30-07
Hi Ann Marie,
I am a bit concerned. I have not heard from you for so long. I sent an e-mail the first part of January but you did not answer.
Are you o.k.? Are you angry? Are you just busy? Are you working on your college stuff?
What is happening?
Love, Mom
2-1-07
Dear Mom,
I am sorry I haven't responded lately by phone or email. I don't have a specific answer as to why this is happening. The closest I can come up to is that in a "Multiple's" system life can get pretty complex.
Things that are important to one part may or may not be important to others, but collectively we need to be responsible to all the parts and the parts responsibilities. There are parts that are equally concerned why we haven't been able to contact you or Grandma ... we're trying to figure it out. We don't mean not to communicate ... but, we are aware too that is what is happening. We have parts that have been intimidated by the last series of communications.
We can pinpoint our last priorities were of talking to you all on a regular basis and with Grandma in particular working with her to record her life perspective. I know we'd contacted you because we wanted to make sure that it was ok throughout your all system. But, then the next several times I talked to Grandma, she seemed almost angry that she'd waste her time thinking of things or toward the project. I didn't know or trust that forces I don't know too much about were against my contact with Grandma, but I wasn't being told directly that there was a problem. I think we felt ashamed that she was upset - that we could cause her frustration. We've been trying to deal with her not going to be here, so the project had become very important. I didn't know if you or someone else had anything to do with her frustration of being asked questions, but I didn't think at the time questions were being asked (of history) that there was a problem. I had sensed going into the project that she was happy that someone would show concern over her life, but then after we'd talked to you, she was strongly saying that no one would be interested in that kind of information, or they would have asked, and that she had more important things to do.
We'd invested into the project and after many months not hitting the right key, we had purchased a couple of books on doing recorded interviews from family members. I thought this was an especially important project for me and for my family because they aren't in an active relationship to her, and I'd thought maybe some of the other family members too might be interested one day. Mixed into this was that we ran into Grandma's busy season due to Christmas. Our take on that was that she didn't have time to go into those matters and there was another problem in that I'd called several time and been put off by other things that were happening for her. Basically, she would talk to me when she wasn't busy, but I couldn't figure out when that would be. We took that internally as if we weren't a priority in her life, and we were afraid it was because of having recorded the session with her and wanting to do more of that. I'm not angry, just there's a lot of confusion as to everything we are trying to sort out.
We've been trying to figure this out, and yes mixed into this situation was the return to school. I found out that my medical leave ended the last of December. I had to go back or I would risk each semester a lower probation status. Also, money had already been reserved by the school loans people, and there is some risk in sending that back to the lender, because they might think I didn't want their money, AND, we were afraid we'd have to start paying loans back already if we weren't in school. As it was they said that we had $3,900 in our account. $1700 would go toward the new quarter, $700 toward an old school bill balance, and that would leave $1500 coming back to me IF I went back to school. The new quarter started the same day and so a quick decision had to be made. We had at the time been going through dentistry also and the bill for a partial would cost $1500. So, it seemed that the best decision was to start up again and try my best. We kept thinking that as soon as we got school work done, especially on a Sunday night that we could call someone and ask for help in straightening out the above, but I've struggled the last three to four weeks in just trying to get and keep caught up. I have another paper due by this afternoon and we are robbing Peter to pay Paul with our time.
A day or two ago, I did send Grandma an article from the Chicago Tribune on a woman who was reported to be the oldest Bears fan. She is 103 years old and in the interview was as forward about passing on her thoughts to Rex Grossman as I could imagine Grandma to her Vikings players if given the same opportunity. I wrote a little note on it that I would try to call. It seems sometimes that the squeakiest wheel gets oiled, though we are trying to get around to all of them. Dr. M. stated that what we'd need to work on week to week and day to day is getting around to everything so that one particular area didn't consume the time of all the other areas, because that is what leads to my feelings of being overwhelmed, which leads to stronger problems with our depression and suicidality.
I didn't mean to put anyone off ... just taking a while to make sure everything is attended too. The one other big pressure is that I still have the three year accreditation pressure coming up ... They've given us a date of May 21, 22, and 23rd for the inspection. To give you an idea of the work load ... I'll send along a cheat sheet I made for myself this week. All the paperwork in reports, plans, policies and whatever has to be complete and in good shape for the inspection. I am responsible for all of it. We're probably only about 40% complete. So, like we said we're scrambling. There was one last pressure I guess ... we'd been trying to negotiate with Sr. and had been given the go ahead on a new position going from the current held QHSP (Qualified Human Services Professional) that we've held for 7 years, to getting the position of Program Director, especially since I'm doing that kind of work now. I had wanted to pass on my "caseload" to the new Q we've been training, but, in the process the Intern Q turned down the caseload ... because it was too much responsibility for the money offered. She is now looking for another job with less responsibility and more money. This has taken a tremendous toll on me because not only does it mess with my plans toward the future, it puts the burden of things we've given to her back on our shoulders. One last thing ... sister decided to start a new program for the clients on relationships and boundaries. Then she decided that I'd be the only one capable of teaching it ... so I'm back to working directly one-on-one with four of the five groups each week. All in all this is giving us a headache. Nothing I do is past my ability, like we've got 500 points out of 500 points in school right now, just everything takes time and energy.
I write this to you now that perhaps you can be more help than not. I don't think we're as angry as we're just feeling too much pressure. And, we historically don't do well when we sense others anger and frustration at us. We didn't' want to hurt Grandma. We don't even know if this were the case, but have felt to vulnerable to our own emotions to check it out. I hope this explains at least where we are at and how much we've progressed so far. I wish I could say it was over, but to be real ... we're basically just in the middle of our life and am trying to muddle through it. Please go ahead and share any part of this email to Grandma, but our hopes is to contact her ourselves over the weekend. Though not during Superbowl time.
One last thing if you get to Grandma before we do, make sure she knows we owe her a thank you for the Christmas money. And, we got Jacob’s check for $100 from you to him on Sunday. I think he was planning on banking it right away. He is appreciative of the gift. I apologize ... that last one was my fault too. I'd fallen behind on getting mail again ... so it had sat down there until we got your email ... I'm sorry.
Let me know what you think,
Us
2-1-07
Hi Ann Marie,
I did not mean to put addditional pressure on you, I can relate to and appreciate what pressure can do to your operating systems. Mine tend to ignore and shut down until I can't put it off another minute.
I do appreciate your reply and the time it toook to put it together. A simple "HI, I am fine but busy" will do occasionally. I do worry about you and your well being. Also, I am not the world's best communicator (which is one of the things I have put off).
We got back from the cities tonight. Fred had an eye doctors appointment to see if the icky mass in his ete is improving or if they will have to remove it surgically. Seems to be getting better and they have postponed his next appointment for six weeks. Fantastic news.
More fantastic news. Great-grandbaby has arrived two weeks ahead of schedule. There is another little boy, Avery Fred who arrived on the 29th. Had the chance to see and hold him for the first time today. Parents and baby are all doing well.
Thanks for the information about Jacob. We both appreciate it.
Grandma had a bad week last week but doing better when we were with her today.
Love, Mom
Ok, that’s the end of the emails. I don’t want to put too much on her in that … reading it … we did give her a lot of information, but it seems that we are at one extreme and she is at the other. I’m like right now … it’s too much to deal with on a personal level. We’re going to move on to the next part. Not sure what that is, but I’m sure we want to look at something different.
Ok, next.
Hmm, think the only thing we haven’t mentioned is that our friend came over last night. As normal for us the time was splendiferous. All the right triggers were tripped and we shared a Chinese meal. He had talked to us prior to the admin meeting. He was under a lot of pressure for various reasons. He said that he was in bad enough shape that he was going to ask sister to skip out of the admin meeting. That thought horrified us, because it meant that he would miss all the CARF information that was building up and needed to be dispersed. So for about the next 45 minutes, we went through some of the problems he was facing. I think most of them had to do with his other job. I know when we are making headway, because he goes from talking about business to talking about fishing, to maybe even a little talk about how our lives are connecting. I think that seemed to take some pressure off. Mostly, because he went to the meeting and seemed to be doing fine. This meeting isn’t really pressure on him; it’s just a task he has to accomplish once a month. He contributed well. Last night we let him talk about some more stuff. He is a good talker about stuff and we like to listen. It makes us feel like if we can understand his world we are able to help him protect it just a bit. And, of course, things lead to things when stress is reduced that make everyone just a little happier. *Sigh*
Ok, almost done here … it’s almost noon and I know I will have to get working on school … not there quite yet, but it wouldn’t hurt now to talk some about it. We managed SOMEhow to get the last assignment done before our teacher closed down the room. I know how close we were because she scored us minutes after having handed in the assignment. She kept the room open until about 3 pm on Thursday. I just couldn’t get to it a second before we did the work. We didn’t have such a good school week in that we only got 69 points for each of the last assignments, but we were so happy because that was better than 0 points and missing papers. Previously, we had gotten 500 points out of 500. That will give us an average of 91. YEEKS! Doesn’t take much to mess up a good grade.
We’re going to want to check things out pretty soon. The last two papers were done more personally than should have happened. It was ok though in one sense, because it gave me an idea of how the papers were valued. I knew how much work I’d put into the first set of documents, but I wasn’t reading things too well in that I was getting 100’s for everything. I didn’t know if everyone wasn’t getting the same thing. I will want to put definitely more work into it this round. I should probably though before we get too far do some commenting on other people’s papers.
I have left out a few, but not many. Why don’t we pull down the school menu now while we are thinking about it. Oh wow! She changed one of my scores of 69 to 100. So now the average is 94.83. WOOOHOOOO. She also said that the one project score (another 100) wasn’t included in the average. So that can only help later down the line. She asked that if anyone received a score of 69 or below that we write her asking why. So, we did that right away. I’m going to need focus on commenting, then reading, then writing paper from Tuesday, and then writing paper from Thursday, and then putting forth some work on an annotated bibliography that is going to be due by next week. That’s a lot of work. I’ve got to start with reading comments, and I’ve got 52 I haven’t gotten through yet.
I think what I should do is get this post posted, and then start another one that goes along-side our school work, although I know by experience if I can just start the school work there is not as much posting to the side. I got to be ok, because of all the school pressure this week, I can be sure I am more motivated to being a good student – even if I’m just starting midway through a Saturday. So let me post here … bbs.
posted by Ann Marie @ 2/03/2007 12:08:00 PM
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