More talk of After School - talking to the Director of Teen Reach
Good morning. This is me. I’ve only got a little bit of time today … it’s already 5:30 am. Rich is trying to get us to be responsible – so I’m trying to avoid him.He wants me to give the air conditioner a break and we’re thinking we don’t want anything like that to happen. We like a cool room when we come home at the end of the day and we want to know the kitties aren’t suffocating while we’re gone.
*Sigh* He’s gone now. I miss him already. Why is that about guys … what makes you crave them so much … under the covers is great, but I can’t believe that’s what’s holding our attention. Well, some of it.
We just had a small cup of pineapple. That was chilling! No, not enough to turn of the AC. Hmm, cat seems to have got our tongue. Oh dear … I hope he gives it back! Hmm, hmm, hmm, hm-hmm.
Why do I exist? Let us travel upon this magical journey. I believe I exist to drink a good cup of morning coffee and write some jibberish! Well, maybe this journey isn’t so magical. Why don’t we figure out what was done yesterday?
Hmm, I know one thing … we went to see Dr. Marvin earlier today than normal. This is because he’s going on vacation for the rest of the week and all the way through next week. I suppose Dr.’s get breaks some time so they can spend all that money.
*Sigh*
We talked to him about 45 minutes on the regular stuff. We talked about Rich and the boys, and work, and diet, and Marines and such, but then we got to looking at the clock for the last 15 minutes and we thought what are we actually doing here that is hard? Are we working on anything? Nothing came to mind. Dr. Marvin reminded us that we HAD been working on the surgery and the result of that, but that both of us thought that could be put on a back burner for the time being. Nothing much to do now, but eat reasonable. We told him that sometimes quantity is still a problem, but that is going to be an on-going nuisance. Basically, we needed something new.
I don’t remember how it was that the next part came up, but I do remember him starting with … what do you think? Yep, yep … that’s why they are handing him the big bucks. All the hard questions he just throws back on me. Blah! Somehow though it came to be that we might start working on our confidence. He seems to think that we doubt ourselves and our abilities because of the past and he also said something about imagining the worst is going to happen. He used as an example something we’d said yesterday. I had told him while reading some information on Joe’s After School program, we’d fallen asleep and the result of that was that we were overcome by the feeling that the whole project was worthless because we wouldn’t be up for the task.
Dr. Marvin said that that was a big jump to go from 100% into it to 100% out of it.
He didn’t use those words, but I am thinking that’s about what he meant. I think we’re still bothered a lot by negative thinking and shame. So, maybe he’s got a point, maybe we could focus on that a bit and see what turns up. I have to admit in a negative cowardly manner, that I was already starting to feel uncomfortable just talking about it … so maybe he’s right that its causing more problems than we’ve admitted in the past.
I know that sweetie got home just after we finished eating some thick soup in a burrito type wrap. We let him rummage around for a few moments, but then we went into the bedroom where he was and we laid down, which is very normal for us. We waited until he’d turn to give us some attention. That took him quite a bit of time. Then when he did he was preoccupied in finding something he’d lost. We just wanted OUR time to be rubbed. He did it for about 5-6 minutes, but then stopped.
He was feeling hot and wanted the air conditioner, but I was very hesitant to give up the ground I’d reached. I was comfortable on the bed and knew what would happen in the living room.
Sure enough when we finally got up and met him … he was lying stretched out and the only place for me was a sitting up place … and it was placed so that I would be rubbing him. We weren’t in the mood for that … and so much resistance had formed in not wanting to leave the bedroom that we were tired and crabby. Pretty much we just complained laughed at each other until I saw that it was late enough about quarter after 8 that I should be going to bed. But, of course, by that time he was feeling a little friskier so it became a lost opportunity. I really that when it happens.
Basically, I think I’d tried to avoid the negative feelings left over from Dr. Marvin’s by playing around, and when that didn’t seem to work – again we were covered in the negativity. We were trying to lighten it up so we were both giggling at the absurdity of my mood, but that didn’t allow us to get out of our tired feelings. We just wanted to collapse in bed. I’m pretty sure we were out of it soundly by the time he reached his bedroom just feet away. Damn. It doesn’t help knowing that it will be a week and a half before seeing Dr. Marvin again. Not much to do though beside wait. We’ll see what comes up next. Now though in general … it’s a feeling of foreboding. Pretty sure something terrible is going to happen.
Shoot. Now Stop that!
Yesterday at work, we didn’t really work too much. We did the first hour, which was fine, but then we ran into conflicts with a couple of clients. Not our conflicts, but theirs. One has been having trouble getting used to her new teacher, and the other had gotten upset with a snoopy sister into the business of her and her boyfriend. That put both of them in cranky moods and both one after another had been sent to me to “fix.” I guess that’s my job though right? It got better, but then it got worse for the one who ran into MORE reasons why she shouldn’t like her teacher. We told her that she was coming in too much and that she had to work it through with the teacher. I don’t want to become her crutch.
Then after the program, I was called by the secretary to meet up with Sr. Florine.
She shouldn’t have called through the secretary, but nonetheless I needed to go up front. For the next hour, she complained about the client, just like the client had complained about her. UGH! I think both are holding out illusions how they want the other to be. The teacher wants some quiet respect and the client wants to be given special attention. I was taken by how much the client had thought out that the teacher wanted her to be like a girl. We thought … hmm, you are a girl. What do you mean? She had an interpretation of a girl as being someone who was submissive. I thought that was pretty profound thinking and she was probably right. Sr. appears to want “sheep.” I don’t mean that as negatively as it sounds, but she basically, doesn’t want to get all involved in the clients real problems, she just wants to go in there and teach at her teaching level – which is regular “stuff,” even though the client(s) are hinting she teach at a deeper emotional level which would be more helpful to their REAL lives.
I think I’d like to present it to Sister in hope that she can just say a word or two that would help the problem go away.
Sr. Florine was defensive yesterday, because I’d gone over with her the errors she’d made on her chrononotes. She was excessively like … well, what do you think … as if she didn’t know anything. I know that I probably did that on my own by correcting the mistakes on paper … I’d made a mess of the paper in that I wanted to point out where the errors were being made. She had figured out of course that I’d done her work over for her twice. I had told her in the morning though to wait for me and instead she’d done it on her own again. She didn’t make the same mistakes – and it was easier for her because she had fewer clients and no work in the workshop to record, but the problem was that she had again taken it to do her way. I think that’s a sign of pride. I don’t mean to take that away from her, but I didn’t want to be left with the thought that I’d HAVE to do those sheets again. My confidence in her work had been shaken.
Beside that … I can’t say that I did a whole lot yesterday. I felt I had to decompress from all that I’d gone through the last several days, and I would have to jump into again on Thursday. I couldn’t get my brain to focus right when not with people. I had remembered too later that I was going to check on the licensing for the program we’d talked to Joe about. I found more information from the state. I talked to the Director of the Teen reach program who has about 220 providers throughout the state. He was very helpful, although not totally optimistic that we’d get connected real soon. He said in January the RFD’s come out for the fiscal year of July 2010. It be a long climb, but the way I can figure it there is an abundance of information from the state on how to run a program, we could set it up properly and get licensed, and then eventually work our way into becoming a provider. In the meantime we could establish a good program within the private enterprise zone. There’s a lot of work to be done yet. AND, we don’t know if we are even barking up the right tree. Still need to hear form Joe and Sensei Steve.
I don’t know what either would think about putting this much work into something that just might not happen. I think the last I talked to Joe … he seemed to be backing out of the deal. It was before I talked to him about government money, but I think someone had said to him – too much work, and we’ve got enough space – just not running it efficiently, so why get more space to run inefficiently. I’m going to talk to Joe about getting the program on the right keel … but, it is going to take quite some amount of work. I’d have to be very dedicated to it and optimistic it could be done better. We could start with the program he’s got going now and stick to the Karate for a bit … until we get some licensing issues taken care of.
In the meantime, I talked to Dr. Marvin about one more thing. We talked about getting our “books” in order meaning the work we’d done with editing our stuff. He seemed to think that was a great idea … and for the record – he really liked the idea with the after-school program. He mentioned quite a few reasons why he liked it, but I think in general he thought of it as an excellent opportunity to work with Joe and in doing something worthwhile to the community. I think he realized what a change like this would be for me professionally. Now I think of back to the “What if” scenario something were to ever happen to Sr. Where would I go and what would I do. If I could help Joe’s business to the degree we could both afford to live from it … then that would be fantastic. No, I don’t see that coming anytime soon, but it’s definitely something worth dreaming about.
posted by Ann Marie @ 7/23/2008 06:55:00 AM
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