Ayn's Multiple World

Letting Go Some Time ... It's an adjustment to being in Post-CARF

Good morning … we’re back again … still feeling groggy … but this morning I think some of that can be blamed on the alcohol that I drank last night … least it seems to be coming up on me. We drank 3 drinks … 2 Margaritas and a Kaluha-Chocolate Chip ice cream drink. Sweet!

We had planned a night going out with Sweetie Pie for yesterday and he had heard about this place that his son went not so far from our place. It was a Hollywood movie designed place with nice comfortable single seats and dinner served. Mostly though they kind of pushed the alcohol. All the seats were auditorium like, but there were long rows of tables too. The waitress came to get your orders starting before the movie, but they were back through it. Sort of like the Renaissance place close to here. Except there you only get one dinner and here they serve lots of stuff. Good appetizers and desserts and sandwich kind of dinners, but an interesting variety all named after different movies, stars, or directors. I could see going back again, but I’m not so sure about drinking so much … I don’t like this slowed down slushy feeling I’m having now.

Sweetie and us watched Spideyman. We are like someone way different there though … We had some trouble watching it … felt like we were absorbed and breathing it up, but we were scared and I’m afraid Sweetie might have clench marks in his thigh. It was INTENSE! We didn’t get too much other than that as to what was happening in the movie … I know there were like four things happening … something with Spiderman, and the black one, and the sandman, and his friend. That was a lot to keep up with … and there were two girlfriends. I can see how close we still are to all that … better not think too much of it for right now. Maybe later.

Ok, we have to concentrate here. How else was our weekend? Hmm, well it was sort of long and I liked that part. The first two days though were spent by ourselves. I didn’t like that all together, but it allowed us to do things we wanted to at the computer … so that wasn’t so bad. Sweetie Pie stayed out on Friday night … he went fishing with his best friend and a few of the others. And, then he got home around midnight or something and went to bed … and then he got up Sunday morning and had to leave by 7 am or so to see his son and his mother for the day. He got home about 11 that night. But, he was ours on Monday. We went to see the house, but it wasn’t going so good even on the way … we were trying to adjust to some of the negative thoughts. He didn’t say much of anything and never got into conversation with the realtor all the time there. I was pretty upset by the time we got to the car. I asked just to tell me what he was thinking … He wouldn’t say anything much about the place – a couple things, one good thing, two bad. And, then he said we should keep looking, and since the other place needed immediate attention if we were going to do something, I figured it was out. He didn’t like that there was a church parking lot going up in back of the place and that he thought the little woods beyond that would also be developed. To be honest to me the place felt smaller the second time through. But, the problem was of course my emotions on being let down. I know now that the things I was finding while decorating can be used on another place, but I know now that I won’t look again until his divorce is final… It was too much emotionally. It gets more complicated than that … but I don’t want to go down that path too far … think it’s a trap. The bottom line is that we are doing this together and it has to be the right place for both of us. I knew that unless he was taken with it on first glance, that it wasn’t going to work. So, we’ll see.

You’ve already seen all the planning that I went through on Saturday, so I decided on Sunday to try a different path. I worked on a longstanding project … the collection of our writing work in a book format. That was quite a bit of work, mostly because our on-line connection was bad. I tried several things and finally came to the thought that I could unplug the cable and get another ISP connection. That seemed to do the trick … but, we were pretty much into the day by then. I still was glad to have come to a solution.

We tested out doing something right from the Blogger account – back in November 2005, but then we found ourselves back to August, 2003. There is really a lot of writing … we managed to get through the first two months. There were about 85 different entries, but they were back in the days that there were only allowed 2,500 characters per entry. That comes out to about a page a post. I am surprised by going over the old work how much I remember as I am reading. It’s going to take a long time to put it all together … the part where we are figuring out what our life is all about. I’d like to hold a more collective idea. It’s a start. It’s like life barely happened before my father had died. That’s the point where we’d started blogging. We’re coming up to a 4 year anniversary soon. That’s a significant amount of time. So far in those 2 months out of 46 months we are up to about 125 pages. So, it’s going to be kind of a behemoth book. I figured we better get some more ink cartridges before we start trying to print that out. Part of the reason that it is so long is that we’re painstakingly including pictures. That takes some time. But, it’s the way I want it … I think it will be easier when we get to the Blogger ones, but for right now it means clicking on each one and saving it to Snagit and then to a file, and then opening the Word document and inserting each picture one at a time. Of course, it does give some pleasure to see the pictures again. I started reading some of the material, but it is a lot for me to do right now. We’re trying to get just into the part that it’s moving along and it’s an efficient project with interest.

I’m guessing that its going to be over 10,000 pages before its done. It’s going to take someone with a lot of interest to get through it all. I’m not so sure if its exciting enough to be making movies out of it. *Sigh* It’s pretty hard to make a million jillion dollars. Hehehe ok, maybe not that much … but as long as I get a couple copies out … I’m pretty sure that I will be carried forward in time. I keep thinking that its going to be my Granddaughters that will end up with the project, but maybe we could do it first and save them the trouble. I think we’ll have to start living more an exciting life for that. I’ll have to live through the thought that I can be a famous couch potato. *Sigh*

Ok, on to the business of the day … we didn’t write during the time the CARF person was here. It was too much pressure at the time and the time was spent in just trying to do the right things. We went in about a half hour early each day.

I think my first thought was that it was a disappointing experience. But, as far as the accreditation went, I think we did ok. There was a lot of recommendations, but none of them was too serious. She tried to minimalize them. Sister seemed calm enough so we were ok with that. The two big markers that were negatives were that she never mentioned performance analysis, barely put in a few words about the business improvement reports, and she didn’t seem interested in my computer system. Beside that it was just business as business goes. We had had a problem because of trying to get caught up with Qnotes. We had spoken to Dr. M about this … he had told us that it was a risk, there’s more but I don’t want to get into my morality at this point. As it turns out the surveyor never looked at my peers materials, nor did she talk to Rich or the other Q. That was a bit odd. She did say something nice to me in the beginning for my extra work put in. I thought that was nice of her. She didn’t need to do that. She did a lot of reading of material. What wasn’t there already, she asked for. Sister seemed pretty calm through out. It’s always extra tension to have people around, but the part I didn’t like was that the lady was making herself hard to read … you can tell she was relaxed around us – the center, but she wasn’t giving a whole lot of information. The last one talked more about our business. This one just gave summary notes at the end. She read off a lot of positive stuff and then the negative stuff. I took notes and will try to type them up in a little bit, because Sister has already asked for them. There was a good amount of information at the end, and as always, they are trying to get out fast.

I liked the lady enough … she had my respect for what she was able to do. But, I didn’t like some of her suggestions. Like she was real big on getting our clients to be doing work with animals – I think this was because the animals were so accepting. I don’t like that this kind of thing could be a recommendation. No where in CARF does it say that we have to get our people involved with animals. But, if we got a fish tank out of it … that would be ok. Pretty sure that sister isn’t going with the bird idea. Hey, she put that out not me! Sister doesn’t want to have dogs and cats around. That was something another Sister had tried.

I will include a copy of the notes I type up as to the entirety of what we were able to get down. This is the first Friday of the month, so sister is going to want the notes for the staff. When it got down to the brass monkey … I was the one to ask, well, did we pass? I guess it’s in the rules that she can’t say – basically, people have to wait the 4-6 weeks for CARF to make things official. But, when pushed, she did manage to say that she thought we should be able to sleep through the night. I took that to mean that we were going to be ok. We’ll just have to think the best of the situation. She didn’t seem as if she was going to make other recommendations. I think they read through most of what they are going to submit to the bosses.

Hmm, maybe we’re up to all that … just had a small orange … it’s almost 10 am and I’ve got the notes out. Let’s see if we can find some sense in all those 8 pages of scribble?

Hmm, just looked at those again … they really are a work of art. They clearly let people know where everyone was at … equally well done though, I believe, is the observations. I would give these to any police officer looking for our clients, because it really expresses the majority of their immediate ability. Ok, let’s go on…

In general, Colleen said it was a very pleasant experience. She said that she had easy access to all her materials and that she found it very pleasant being here and she enjoyed celebrating mass with us. She thanked us for making the stay enjoyable and commended us on having a great organization. She had found that all the people she talked to including the funding and parents had complementary things to say. There was little advise being offered by the people she spoke to.

Colleen then said she was going into the strengths first. She began with community integration. She prefaced this by noting the difficulty of our area being urban and poor and that that was challenging in itself. She said that we followed our stated missions and there was good strong communication with the individuals served beyond what was expected. Colleen also stated that we had very strong leadership. She said that we integrated our mission in daily activities and involved families in the community. We solicited information and had numerous accesses to input. She thought that the work showed organization and she also stated she enjoyed Town Hall – it was great!

Something was said – that I don’t recall concerning the Blessed Mary and staff members. She said in continuation that we were appeared to teach self-sufficiency and values and it was apparent that we worked together as a team. She appreciated that there were weekly staff meetings that allowed for plenty of input and she felt our program very structured and our assessments thorough. She thought our goals were meaningful and that it was good to see some of the work translated into Spanish. She also recognized the picture enhancements. She thought our level of concern over safety showed that we had clear priorities and that the center felt warm and welcoming. She stated that the program outcomes were clear.

Colleen said the center had a positive reputation and was responsive to the people we were serving and committed in quality as advocates and educators, which included our work with the State legislature. We were financially sound, well-managed, well-organized and complete. We received an exemplary performance because of our Personal Preference Interviews.

As to the business standards, Colleen reminded us that recommendations do not count in the data base, but are included as part of the survey. She says that CARF collected information in a data base that was weighted. She said this to caution us in keeping perspective over the recommendations given. CARF is a part of a quality assessment and to she hoped it would enhance our program.

There were no recommendations for the CARF Business sections for either input or accessibility. There was a suggestion to wrap the sink pipes that might be used by people with wheel chairs.

Toward the technology plan and information management, she stated that we had a good amount of information and did well with program evaluation, which she thought concluded with meaningful summaries. She stated though that we should look into broader security for the computers by installing firewalls and that if we grow bigger we should graduate into having passwords that would allow access to different levels of staff or administrator and that should be put in the plan. Our backup didn’t offer any specifics – who, where, when … we need to put it in a plan so that someone else would be able to access the information than if Ann were gone … someone needs to be designated. She said also that we needed a disaster recover plan in case all the computers were to crash. She saw the intranet as working into a positive change. If there were a brown-out, we would run into multiple problems – so think through a plan to recreate the data. She wanted to be assured that we were all backed-up all the time and to formalize the plan so that it was clear. She mentioned Norton as an example that could safe guard our system. She also mentioned that we should clarify rules on downloading. We could easily have someone come in to make the system better.

Our rights were excellent – no recommendation

We did a good job on health and safety. She suggested thought that we have an ongoing record of our driver’s records being checked – perhaps each 6 months – not a clear timeline, but ongoing. She stated that this might be something our insurance company or risk management could run for us. She stated as a consultation that regardless of the consideration in our tape, which said not to use the fire extinguishers in the vans, that by right of the standards, we should have extinguishers placed in all vans. She also stated that we should simulate, minimally on a desk top, a review of safety procedures.

Toward human resources, she stated that we should write-in when that the job descriptions were reviewed annually – just a notation, not even typed. She also said that that the Rich’s contract needed to be reviewed. She said this should be a formal evaluation. As a consultation, she stated that in our job descriptions, we should list the physical demands and that at current; we would have trouble legally with ours. We were to list things specifically like lifting and bending, or that the people we served could act-out. This protects us and assures that the employee understands. Also, as part of our performance evaluation, we could enhance the job functions by putting down more meaningful tasks that are being asked. There should be 6-8 major things for each level of staff – somewhat like is being done with the Q’s.

Under Leadership there was good accountability-responsibility, etc and no recommendations.

Under Legal, we should have had a procedure for what to do in case of a subpoena being served at the center. This was something that could be done by Risk Management. She didn’t think this would happen often, because we were a controlled environment (locked front door), but we should prepare for papers being served to the center, staff or people served. Colleen also had a consultation on reviewing and updating the by-laws and that the Governance Board Secretary should sign.

She said of the financial section, “What you did, who can complain. No recommendation.”

For program individual services, she thought that we showed quality in our in-services, and that the information applied to everyone. She said with this standard we did a superb job and again emphasized the Personal Preference Interviews. She said the records were very well done and it was easy for her to find everything – organized. Colleen said that staff was available to people in-house and within the community, but that we should still help them out.

She looked at two parts of the community standards – access she had no recommendation. Community integration she had one recommendation. She said that our vocational development focused on the workshop and that we should continue to explore more with community integration because there was so much to explore and as one of the staff mentioned – they act differently when out in the community. We should look at assessment and what we hoped to gain long-term. She thought it would be good to get more staff out in the community and bringing only a few people at a time. The more integration, the better – there are many opportunities and she talked about using volunteers.

Colleen then went onto talking about animal shelters and the therapy work they are doing with them – such as therapeutic riding. She said there were many physical and mental advantages and that the animals being used were non-aggressive and easy to interact with. It also gave the individuals an opportunity to care for others. It was here that she mentioned being in Group 4 and having watched Karen B. slapping Carlin for not doing what she said. The suggestion was made to move the hand rather than having slapped it. She said that the animals are very accepting. She asked us to look into opportunities to bring someone in for the afternoon, or if a staff had an animal to bring it in.

She then went on to mention special camps, churches, food pantries, child care, etc. Also that we should check in at the volunteer center and that many had long lists of organizations in need, but that we’d have to work with small numbers, but to get everyone involved. She said this would be great natural supports for 1 or 2 people at a time. She said that we should challenge the staff to brainstorm.

And then she said, “That’s it.” That it was a lot of information for two and a half days. She thanked us the opportunity to meet with us. When pressed in responding to the question of whether or not we passed, she said that we could sleep soundly. She said that she had not seen anything significantly wrong and that it was mostly little tweaks. She said that we could start making the small changes on our own time-line before CARF mailed out the recommendations, but that they were doing pretty good in sending out the formal letter in like four weeks. Thank you.

Dear Dr. Marvin,

This is me ... if you want to get on to the CARF part exactly read the attached file. It is the the final report. I guess they don't answer directly when you ask if you pass, but after some finagling, she said we should sleep well. It might take 4-6 weeks.

Now there is this other part where we're going for the next hour. I had to work hard this morning to type the Interview ... pretty much because I don't even want to hear the CARF word. Matter of fact ... the two or three times over the weekend when I heard it ... we directly went to something else. Didn't want to think about it in the least. To be fair the surveyor was fine ... she was thorough - though she did not catch my cheating. Actually, she was quite pleased with the books and especially the Preference Interview. But, in all the time here, she did not interview either Rich or Holly, nor did she look at Holly's files. I think she said something I caught in my notes toward the business improvement or performance analysis, but she did not let on or out much. She stuck to easier stuff. She was a good fast reader. It just seems there is so much information going into the lady ... there should be more coming out. She said there was a whole point system thing that CARF analyzes, but I'm not so sure we're getting anything of that back. The report will probably repeat most of the stuff that I've written down from the Exit Meeting.

I'm probably in general beaten-up with the whole process and in need of a break. Traditionally, I have to do the big annual report in June and start-up with the Annual meetings in July. Feeling like for now ... I have no game plan for nothing. I brought up the report on the exit thing to sister and she was talking about Imelda taking a vacation this week. Then I thought oh ... I should look into that ... so she harassed me for a second on needing to know how many days I have. When I looked, it said 6 days and then hearing that ... she pushed me to be taking it soon ... then specifically, next week. I don't know ... no plans made. Rich is always talking about doing something or taking off days together, but I am guessing next week is too soon to plan anything. I don't know just having the opportunity to be doing something is inviting. Just don't know what to do.

I guess I could use the time for trying to figure out how I can do things ... plan for the July work on meetings without Mirza, but I don't know ... Just don't want to think about much. The weekend was ok ... the first day I obsessed in the condo/apartment. If you looked in my blog you'd notice that we'd done a lot of window shopping. Rich was fishing again that day ... had stayed overnight Friday. Then he got back around midnight and left again Saturday to be with his oldest son and mother. I think the poor kids been feeling lonely. Rich says he doesn't have a best friend. That smarts. Rich got home at 11 pm that night. But, on Monday he was with us. We had an appointment to see the place in Elmhurst on Monday at 9:30. Rich was crabby about it going in ... talked about 3 words the realtor and thanked her for coming out on a holiday. That's it ... he left the other to me ... and because he wasn't saying anything I surmised we had a big problem. I told her I would figure out what was going on and get back to her. Rich said after getting back to the car that we weren't going to decide anything until after his divorce and that we could keep looking. I pretty squarely in the chin took that to mean that since he wasn't impressed to talk about the last place that we'd just been in that I assumed it meant no. He didn't say anything. So then I didn't. It went a while like that. I was more lost and disappointed than mad ... I knew going in that we'd both have to like the place. He just said that he liked the layout too, but he thought that they would build in the little bit of green that was left in back. That was it ... no more comments or discussion. I swear to God I will shoot myself before I look at another place - especially before the divorce. I did tell him that no one should expect that he could live with friends until after the divorce and that certainly he could look for a place. But, he thinks that if he does anything or if anyone knows he's living with me it will prolong the divorce. His family thinks he's living with Doug two blocks over. That be fine as long as no one bothered to follow him home, look for his car or hire a detective. It's all pretty obvious.

Pretty much that whole situation leaves me feeling frustrated. He is willing to throw all this money at his wife ... for her 34 years "devotion," but he's not willing to put some money down on a place to stay? Ok, ok ... those are my crabby feelings. The more grateful feeling is that he wants to stay with me. And, truth be said the place looked a little smaller to me than I'd remembered. I wasn't sure it would fit my couch. And, with two or three people in there it felt filled up. That's the truth part ... and I acknowledged it to Rich, but he took us out once then and once later that day to look at places. And, I didn't want anything to do with that. I told him that it was too soon. I had told him that I needed to get over the disappointment I had after putting so much energy into it. Chances are that there was feelings of disappointment from CARF too. I didn't give him much trouble though, because I really like Rich more than the disappointment.

After we got home, we both started cleaning opposite ends of the apartment. I was taking the top layer; he was focusing on the bottom. We didn't talk too much while it was happening. We just worked. He gave me a break in that I could still take my 15 minutes break between rounds and I used that to calm us down on the computer. Then there was some nice make-up sex :) ... I think I fell asleep for a little bit, because when I got up he was gone. I knew he was going to do some grocery shopping. Afterward, we planned on going out to a movie, which after 14 years was a first. His son had told him about Hollywood Blvd. Theatre in Woodridge ... I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's a place that serves food and alcohol in the theatre ... I liked that idea. It's sort of like that Renaissance place Medieval Times, but you get your choices ... mostly appetizers, sandwiches, dessert and drinks. Emphasize drinking ... *sigh* we had 3 ... Umm, then we had sex again ... no not there at home ... We had watched Spiderman ... we left clench marks in Rich's thigh. I think I was pretty tired. Don't remember, but Rich said he put us down to sleep.

The only other thing and something I might have to lean on is that I was working on the concepts of putting my "books" together. It doesn't have to go real publishing, but I wanted to make hard copies of all the blog writing over the years. I keep thinking that something is going to happen to me and I will be lost because nobody will know who I am or what I thought or cared about. I figure if someone puts me in - papers - in a closet for a hundred years someone will finally look at it and think I'm great. I don't know isn't this like what people do when they write ... hope someday someone cares? *Sigh*

Ok, we might be feeling a little depressed. Natural after a survey is over and the minds been wasted.

There was this one other part about Joe getting a job, but he's put himself into a mode where he's looking more seriously at target. He had two interviews at one store and they sent him to another, and there were two interviews there and now he's waiting for a call because there will be another interview. I called him just before writing you ... he said that he's working on this job so he'll just have to say no to the one offered through Rich and Sean. It made me feel totally defeated that my son would go into business rather than social service. But, I didn't say anything ... just ok.

Man I am feeling down. Today was the day the sisters from Italy came in ... the Mother Superior one. They were here when I got to work. So other than looking put together from that and some writing work ... nothing was accomplished. I really feel toward work ... BLAH! I'm thinking could I start vacation tomorrow? Probably am going to need a brain reorganization. Trying to baby those Weekends into the plan ... The next thought is to take off Friday and the entire next week, and then take a Monday at home ... that be a nice break. I think unless Rich offers something else ... that's about it. Just then I will miss the First Friday of the month meetings. That's probably pretty important. Especially, since so much of it will be weighted on CARF.

I think the only thing that could really excite me at this point would be to think of being a program manager instead of a Q. Sure be sweet if Joe could come work here. But, he's not interested in hard - no money - no respect for others in need. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Damn I don't want to have a vacation where I go no where and just stay home depressed. I don't feel there is nothing to look forward to. The next check goes completely to rent and car. Is it ok to cry?

Mi

posted by Ann Marie @ 5/29/2007 04:14:00 PM Comments: 1