Ok, trying to look forward to it being Friday ... work ahead.
Good morning. This is me. I’m up about 4:30 am this morning, but it’s now about 20 minutes past that. We talked to bunny-face a few minutes. He is in the shower now. He’s doing VERY GOOD on his diet. I’m really proud of what difference a week made. He’s now at 282 where a couple of weeks ago he was 10 pounds heavier. I think he lost water weight first, because it came off quickly as he started, but now the idea is to not get frustrated if he sees it going up or hovering at the same amount.I think one of the tricks I use is to focus on the low weight. Like today we’re at 270.0 and that’s a low weight for us. I might go up a few pounds before I lose again, but the idea is to keep thinking how I’m never far from my low weight. I noticed that I gain a pound or two before clearing the weight for good. At the same time – right now – I’m looking forward to getting into the 260’s. WOOHOO!!! I’m working at it. Ok, this is going to work, right? 3 more pounds and I’ll be at 40 pounds weight loss since surgery. That makes THREE goals. I want to break my low weight, I want to get in the 60’s, and I want to get to that 40 pound mark. This is well worth some effort!
Honey bunny is out of the shower now and is getting dressed. I made the coffee and poured him some. He doesn’t have long in the morning, but maybe we’ll sneak in a few moments.
Last night he didn’t get home until probably about 9 pm. We were still up and at our computer. We didn’t take the medicine until late. We had gotten some mail from Barack’s camp and we saw that he was sending a current video. So, we watched that and a few more. The main one was his 25 minute speech in Germany yesterday. I thought it was good, but I was nervous that he may insult the people of Germany … there was quite some talk about the war and us being allies, which I thought of as a strange set of statements, but he obviously looked at Berlin and the aftermath where we were working to build West Berlin. He also talked about the cold war and being at odds with communism. It was hard to think he was talking about things that could be upsetting to other world leaders. I like the impression that there is room to negotiate – even with communists such as had happened with Ronald Reagan. But, overall, I think he was well received. I appreciated the cheers and clapping during many points made during the speech. I think that to me Barack feels like a national level candidate. He looks intelligent and as a good representative wherever he goes.
As part of that experience I hung around the my.barackobama.com site. That seemed very warm and inviting. I guess I’d been there earlier in the month, but had only a small trace of that. Last night we hung around for a couple hours discovering stuff. Like we added new friends or at least invited people to become friends. We chose from a group of people in Brookfield. We also blogged and checked out events near our area. There really is an excellent set of people to get involved with.
Everything seems to be about either making donations – which we thought we should, or about making stronger networks to others who believe in Barack like we do. If you haven’t gone there yet … try my.Barackobama.com – it’s really fascinating. I’m tied for 159,677th place as to points on the board. Everytime you get more involved, you move up on the scale. It’s fun.
As to other things happening yesterday? Hmm, we did the group in the morning, the other group after 8:30 am, then we did staff training in the afternoon, and we did work on our chrononotes after that. We have thoughts on Sister’s situation … Sr. Florine, but that wasn’t all positive. She came to the session in the afternoon, but sat there and gossiped to start the meeting, said toward the meeting sarcastically – “Yes, teacher.” And then kept the group 20 minutes grandstanding an audience. Sr. Theresa said to release them 15 minutes early … and that time just went up in smoke. She’s already publically starting to undermine Sr. by portraying her as old and a bit unnerving. Like “I need to get home in time so Sr. doesn’t get upset.” I think what good does that do the staff. She’s trying too hard to be popular. I don’t think she’s going to get there from where she is going now. I don’t like her direction. I also didn’t like being “dismissed.” After the session she stated that I didn’t need to come to the front “to help her out.” While this is positive as to independence, I have not decided that she is worth cutting off quite yet. It was just earlier this last weekend and Monday that I was making all the corrections to her work.
I think she has feelings that aren’t pro-Ann. She’s most likely seeing that I can be a bit sticky. I think she’s resisting being taught. I did make one sour comment that could or couldn’t be taken positively. She complained about the one client voluminously … later with all the Sr.’s chattiness … we thought that she wasn’t any different that the client. We said that somehow not quite the same, but really close. It only made her pause as she then picked up the speed and was talking all over the board again. It seemed like she was entertaining and that fed the “lazy” parts of the staff who would enjoy sitting there laughing over sitting there learning. Unless you could consider they were learning about sister.
I think to be honest … we didn’t have a plan yesterday … when Sr. started making jokes of the client’s and the other sister, I laughed too. It was funny, but it was also mean spirited. I started to regret what was happening that much farther into the session. I’d called it off quarter too, but people continued to listen, I couldn’t give up my seat, because then it would be totally out of control in that I wouldn’t know what she was saying. It was like she was holding her own meeting. I think she liked that kind of power and I think she needed some humorous relief from the clients and the sisters in general, but I don’t think she realizes that it implements the staff to think that that kind of behavior is appropriate. I feel bad this morning, because even though I slipped her a couple of “slow-down” messages, she seemed to roll right over them.
This morning while showering I thought about where do I put on the breaks … is it a good time to be talking to Sr. Theresa. I don’t want to lose trust with the Sr., but I think she needs to know my allegiance. It seems to me we always get to this point, and it is usually sooner, than later. I feel as if I should talk to Sr. Florine first, and I think I might try, but already from having corrected her twice she’s giving me the brush off. We’re going back to being dismissive of telling me I didn’t have to come, instead of me releasing her. Maybe what is happening is a bit of a power struggle. But, I don’t think I can afford to have her take over the relationship to the staff where she is in charge. In that respect I should be talking to Sr. because it is not for me to be working against a sister. Especially, one without personal boundaries. I think today that we’ll go to talk with the Sister after the program hours, whether she likes it or not. We need to talk about the meeting and expectations of each other. I can appreciate she wants the camaraderie, but she shouldn’t get it by putting the clients, me, or Sister down.
It doesn’t look good for us and it certainly doesn’t speak well of her.
Ok, that’s enough of that … Otherwise … regular kinds of things went on yesterday.
I worked with the one client in the morning from being over-talkative … I don’t think she liked it at first, but she seemed to come back later. The point was that after non-stop chatter, it was time that the group has some quiet.
With the leadership group, we went through and worked first on getting our thoughts out as to the groups’ working situation. We ask, “How did it go? Did you learn anything, and Is there something you want to improve?” I copied down their responses, and then we saved it to be typed later. We then went over a story in the news on Africa about pirates near Somalia. We took down their general impressions.
I think the group had a hard time following along the story. It seems that it was farther out of their realm of interest. Given some discussion time though they started adding in their thoughts on pirates. They remembered the movie Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean. They also remembered small things like pirates making enemies walk the plank. I think they were confused as to whether or not the pirates were good guys or bad. They seemed to have a glorified view of them.
Afterward, we worked on the Interviews … we finished writing out the dialogue and then practiced. We’ll work on it again today.
Afterward, we decided we better work on the masks. There was one client who had already done it, so we gave her the opportunity to be on the Internet, which is one of her favorite things to do. The other three people worked on first a practice mask, and then a real one on the cardboard. They did a real good job. They finished the work after lunch. I had planned things to be doing afterward, but I had forgotten Holly was going to be taking the group. She actually only had an hour, because the group went to Town Hall. I had asked her specifically to work on goals, and she said that’s what she was planning on doing. But, she didn’t do that. Instead she worked with one client on drawing in the animals for the menu. I think that might have been nice for the client, but in the meantime, she disregarded the other clients … who she just set up to work independently on the computer, and she didn’t get to the goals at all. I was very disappointed.
I think that today, we’re going to need making up for the lack of progress with the goals. There will be a big group today. We also are going to be doing cooking.
Sr. didn’t seem to think it was a problem to pull together some of the basic ingredients we are going to be using to do food prep. We are going to work on an African snack. Hmm, good thing I remembered, because we needed to remember bringing a spice that we figured we could use from home. It’s been a while since we did food prep, and it’s going to require a frying pan, but we’re trying to remain optimistic.
Well, I think this is about it for now. We need to get going. Everything is ready with the exception that I need to get dressed and head out the door. Let’s make it another good day, k?
posted by Ann Marie @ 7/25/2008 06:48:00 AM
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