Ayn's Multiple World

Is it ok to be more confused

Good morning this is me. It’s about 6 am. I’ve been up for an hour. Just fiddling around with one thing or another. I got showered and dressed – turned on the air. Then I made coffee and worked through the task of scheduling me for the day. We also adjusted the music … we’re listening to John Mayer. I think he’s next to download – most likely the live in Los Angeles one … He’s got a lot of tracks there.

I’m feeling good … at least good enough to put housekeeping on the schedule. I would also like to blog, go swimming and get some bills done along with talking to my sister and maybe catching a movie or sleeping until baby face gets in … then all bets are off. I can see him thinking OHHHH I’m so tired. BUT, he’s already put in a request for a back rub. You know we’re going for that.

Hmm, we’re waiting for iTunes to come on … what’s going wrong with that?

Ok, we’re all good with that. We were playing around with the iPod for a bit trying to see where all the music buttons led to.

Maury said that I made a mistake with the touch because it’s got like 16 GB instead of 130 some GB, but I don’t think I will ever have that kind of music collection, though I know he does. His doesn’t do all the programming. Not sure how much we said about that yesterday, but we’ve got Comcast coming out on Wednesday on our day off – one of the two. We got the last opening they had for the day and fortunately it is at between 10-1 pm. Those are good hours.

Comcast is putting in the Wi-Fi. It is only supposed to be $2 to add it to the desktop. I paid part of the Comcast bill too.

Needless to say with all the installation of what we needed in hooking up the cable and putting the cable in each of the back rooms – it was costly – plus, I think I missed a month. I’m afraid to look at my checking account maybe I’m going to cry – though it’s on the super-duper schedule we’ve got going … I think about 2 pm. I think we’re going to start doing some housecleaning about 8 am. So, we have at least an hour left.

We haven’t really cleaned since we started working out in the gym. That went very well yesterday. We walked 25 minutes and then biked 20 minutes – AND, we did most of the machines upstairs 3 times each. We recorded our numbers so we can see if we’re making progress. I know that it was progress to do 3 sets each. There were only 2 that I could do. But, now I don’t remember. Hmm, wait we wrote it down. Whoops … we’re missing some … we have to be better at saving between things.

We’ll try again next time.

Good good … we put our hair up because we noticed it had dried … that will be good for the housekeeping. I’m not sure how its goin to go … if I can walk 25 minutes – how long will I be able to clean for between sitting down. I don’t think I’ve really tested this out since we’ve been working out. I’m a little excited. Not so excited that I want to jump right into it, but while we’re here on the computer, we might want to come up with a game plan. I suppose we should fall back to the old stand-by … first we’ll do this table and the coffee table – get some dishes and garbage out. Then we’ll adjust pillows and blankets and make sure all the dirty clothes are where they need to be … AND, we have to decide what we’re going to do with that pile of fudgicle sticks and wrappers. We WERE saving it for Rich, but under our new motif of clean It won’t do.

I guess we have to throw them out? We were thinking the other day that we could make some kind of log cabin with all of them, but that might be a nasty chore in the end … best that we just throw them out. It’s always nice when Rich takes them from us and does that. If I were real ambitious I might think of doing some clothes, but then I don’t think we have quarters. I wonder – hold on we’ll see if Rich has any on his dresser.

Nope … just a couple nickels and dimes … BUT, we stopped and picked up the sticks and wrappers. I think I’m going to put Missy in the back room if she doesn’t stop meowing. It’s pretty soft now, but I don’t want to hear it. Ahh changed some underthing … the other wasn’t so comfortable. Feel less crabby now. If we’re going to clean we have to be able to bend over.

I think we’re going to set the timer to see how long we can go and how much it takes all together.

Hmm, that is interesting the stopwatch function has a start/stop, but in between it has a lap button. That’s a good idea. That way I can time how long we work, then sit, then work, etc. I think I’ll like that.

Can I tell you how cool this iPod touch is? It has a bunch of stuff on it.

Safari – Internet
Calendar
Mail
Contacts
YouTube
Stocks
Maps
Weather
Clock
Calculator
Notes
App Store
Settings
Hmm, someone put her blog on it too!
Ambiance music
White pages
Accufuel
Notebook
Todo
Music
Videos
Photos and
Itune

That’s pretty much it, but you could almost imagine how much fun you could have with all this. The iPod has the neatest touch cuz you just slide or tap, but it’s not like a real button, because just a little touch moves it to be doing anything else.

The most fun is the scrolling. It’s like on a very loose wheel. The little keypad isn’t bad either. It’s easier to just touch the smooth screen than pushing keys like on the computer or with the Motorola phone. Plus, the colors look so cool. I like too that there is only one button for stopping and starting. It’s got a nice lock feature too so you don’t press anything accidently.

I think that’s set to happen after 3 minutes.

Hmm, now I’ve been given the warning that I have just 30 minutes before we start to clean. Probably good that we open the curtains anyway even though it’s dark and rainy out there. We can have then empathy feelings for our squishy guy for being out in it. There’s a lot of rain going around the country.

Hmm, I wonder if I should pen in calling the boys … I would like to know how they are doing and I would like to see if we can get some time scheduled. I don’t know how long its been, but it seems like a while – especially Maury … we’ve been really spoiled with him stopping over … we haven’t called him just to go out. I’m not sure of Lauren’s schedule, but I think Maury still has Sundays off … Might be hard pressed for time, but then maybe he’d like to get out too? I think we’re about up to trying it with the girls again. Have to check the money situation though. Hmpf!

I’d like to do something to help Joe with his karate school. I wonder what I could do? Maybe he has some small tasks? If we’re being organized all is possible. I really liked going out there the other day with the candy – in that we haven’t seen him in the middle of the week for quite a while. He had a little less than 30 minutes but it was fun time because we were watching him do the karate.

Maybe we could say something quick about work, but we don’t feel in the mood to get stuck in all that. I felt obligated to say though that Friday turned out ok. We had the staffing and we had our African presentation. We also got scolded a little more for the staff training meeting, but that was doable. She wasn’t really scolding as much as reminding. So that wasn’t so bad.

We switched up our time after we got there, but most of it went to planning out the presentation. About 9 am, we switched over to planning the staffing. I should have done that before, but it’s not going THAT smooth.

The planning part was really just writing down all the elements and then pulling together that which was a little warbly. We talked to Karla and the group too and we practiced the little sketch. That was good. I knew that they were going to have some problems so I printed up some animals so they could hold up pictures instead of worrying overly about memorization. That worked out only so-so. I got some good pictures, but between presentations they’d put them on the table and several had forgotten to pick them up. I didn’t realize it at the time so I couldn’t remember to remind them. We also finished one more poster.

Soon enough it was time for the staffing. The leadership group had food prep, so we took over the Leadership group room.

That worked out fine. It was the client, his mom and sister, his CSO rep and me. No Sister Theresa. We could do it with her too, but its always much nicer without her. This was one of the mother’s who is pretty quiet. She accepted most everything … and on a few occasions added something too like telling us he was cranky in the morning, or that he washed dishes if he wanted something, but he didn’t make his bed so much. It was kinda a soft subtle meeting. I was tired when we’d finished.

The last part was talking about weight. He’s over 330 and is only 5’8”. Kathy is at a very high weight too and I felt uncomfortable that she was telling the family about weight loss when she had so much. Like do as I say and not as I do. It was the scolding part that I found to be offensive. At least when we talked I talked as someone who’d been working on losing weight … I went as far as to say I know what works is eating less and exercising more. Neither of these things is appealing to the client. We told the family that he’d have to find internal motivation to carry it through.

Enough said there.

The big deal was then the presentation. There was some finalizing toward the end around lunch time. They began at 12:30 pm. We went over the practicing of the dialogue part one more time and had them get out there masks and posters … we went through the order so they knew what was coming up. I’d forgotten about the fighting part they had wanted to do. After all they had swords! Hehehe I guess that’s then important. Four of the guys volunteered. So, we had a run-off with the one guy taking all three rounds.

Oh, I forgot too … a big part of it ended up being that we had gotten the two videos … I’d not figured out for a bit which one I wanted to use and I had to get comfortable using the equipment in the multi-purpose room. I finally decided to go with the dance one instead of the exercise one for the main part. After the room had cleared out and everything was done and over, we played the exercise one for the last few people still waiting for their transportation. But for the most part it was the dance that caught our attention. I played a little of the first two parts – enough to give the group an introduction, and then I played the third section that had the three dances … one was a snake, the second was an elephant and the third was a bird.

I’m getting ahead of myself though.

The presentation went really well. Sister had asked before whether I wanted to go 2nd or 3rd. I guess Maria’s group was going first … I thought about it for a couple of seconds and then concluded most likely our presentation was going to be more complete than Holly’s so we better let her go first and build up for ours. I knew we had the video and I wanted that to be played as long as they were tolerating it. This all turned out to be a good decision. Fortunately Holly’s presentation included some food. She had banana slices and melon slices. So that gave us a chance to get things ready. Sr. had indicated that we should slow down and drag things out a bit.

The first thing we did was to have a line come in of the 9 people. One of the clients was out so the new staff Karla played her part and did a good start for us. We asked each of them to come in with masks down and then when they got in the front of everyone they were asked to put up their masks. That was a pretty big deal for everyone … they got cheers. Then I had each of them step out one at a time and I introduced them as King so and so or Queen whatever. They liked that too.

Next I went into the interview. Not everyone had their parts down, but it was close enough and they were having a good time. Some of it was drawing laughs about the time I was hoping it was. And, we had our ringer at the very end. He was the one who knew his lines solidly. WooHOOO. We had a line where we said, I understand that your country believes in polygamy … could you tell us what that means. And he said very excited LOTSA WIVES! And, when we asked what happens if the wife doesn’t like that. AND he said with relish … Too bad, they are stuck with us Anyway! It went over very well.

After that we had the fight scene … and after that we gave 5 posters explanation. They were the boys and girls pictures, the maps of Africa, the part on the pirates, and the parts on Jane Goodall with the very loving-looking chimps. After that we explained that we’d cooked up some African snacks and I said we would interview two people. I called on the guy first that I knew thought the snacks were good. And, then we called on the person we knew who thought they were terrible. That went over really good too. The person who thought they were terrible had paused for a moment getting tension built up and then she said They were TERRIBLE! It got a real good laugh. No one expected that.

Then we went into the video’s … all in all it was a very good presentation. There was something extra special about the videos … One of our clients had said something about he would dance, so I asked him if he could lead the group. So when the time came I said He would be up front and asked if anyone else wanted to give it a try while most of our group sat down. There aren’t a lot of dancers and our chief girl dancer didn’t come in that day. One of the girls from the audience came up and between the two of them, they did the most BANGED-UP Job!!! They were excellent doing the animals and they had everyone’s attention. They mimicked the dancer very well and because it was a training video she was dancing too and explaining it as she went … so when she got to the part of the hose spraying everything with the elephant the audience was just delighted!

Afterward we ended the music and dance, but Sr. said why don’t we continue it a bit and let more people dance. About 12-15 people got up then and danced while others talked lightly about themselves. Sr. was out in the hall helping staff to put up the posters, and we participated in that too when it came time to put our stuff up. Because of the posters and Masks and spears, we took up more room than everyone and it looked terrific. We’ve got some pictures, hmm, maybe I could get them now. It’s almost time to clean-up but I think I could squeeze them in. Hold on.

Hmm, that didn’t work out and quite some time has gone by. It’s now about 11 am. I’m done picking up around the house. I wish I could take care of some of those clothes, but that would take some real effort getting up and down the stairs AND getting some quarters. I found 3, but I really need at least 16. Maybe I could get some change when I go out swimming.

Hmm, when was that supposed to be? Hmm, I’m a bit behind I switched more electronic time for some blog time, ate a late breakfast/lunch and still need to get out to go swimming. What will it take now. I think I will wait and go out about an hour from now. Better set the clock … I think last time the pool was almost empty at 12:30 pm.

Good good … we set the clock. The big one that hasn’t been accomplished now is the bills. I got the mail from the back, but we’re going to have to grab the mail downstairs on our way up. That’s a good deal. Then we’ll see about doing it about 2:00-2:30 pm … I think that’s about when it is scheduled. We still have to call my sister today too. We are letting it go too long, but am afraid of losing the time. We still have 9-10 hours before Rich comes home. Sure would be nice to get some of that laundry done. Maybe a colored load or two and mix some towels.

Hmm, place looks a little better … not so scary for my pork dumpling. Hehehe

Now … we finally have some clear time … what should we be thinking of? I don’t think so much happened with Dr. Marvin. I remember we were upset about the stuff we last wrote about – the staff training meeting. One of the repercussions of all that is that Sr. Florine won’t be invited to the meetings anymore. That is Sr. Theresa’s choice, not mine. I suppose there’s not much you can do … just that the lady is going to go stark raving mad without some kind of social circle. Sr. says that she’s going to find someone else to do Group 1 too and then Sr. Florine can work on fundraising. She thinks there she won’t cause as much trouble and she can back up staff when necessary. I think Sr. Florine would be happy about that too, it’s just that Sr. Theresa is going to have to try harder not to come down on her as much. She can’t be doing everything wrong.

Hmm, that’s interesting … we just discovered Baroque Pop from Indie Rock – from Alternative/Punk. It’s interesting … we’re going to listen to it a while. See what happens … I guess it’s more contemporary mixed with heavy instrumentals of the Baroque time period. We’ll see.

Ok, we covered the part of sweetie coming home today … you know he’s been gone since Wednesday morning. This has been kind of a long stretch for us. Hmm, ok, Dr. Marvin. I think we talked about stuff in general. We didn’t go into the old stuff so much … I remember at the end being really involved in trying to explain to him how we felt when he wasn’t there. It was hard, but rewarding at the same time. We were stepping into our feelings as they ravished our soul. Ok, maybe something like that at least.

Ok, ok … keep looking around we’re trying to settle in to some thoughts. Just been so long since we’ve had anything or any time to be doing so. I don’t know what I’d like to think about anymore. I’m tired of the part where we did this or that and then this other happened. I don’t remember how to get into thoughts that are more introspective. But, that’s where I’d like to go.

Most of the time we’ve been trying to get through the day being productive or at least more than we have, and then there’s an overriding theme where we’re trying to play up time to be at the gym/swimming pool. I think that’s what we’re doing best.

What could I say about that.

Well, there is one disappointing part … I don’t seem to be losing much weight even with the extra activity. Dr. Marvin tried to relay to us that it is very true that muscle weighs more than fat. I’d like to believe that is true. I know that since I’ve started I’ve gone down from Size 4x to 2x. That is very rewarding. But, I think I’ve been eating too much too. I need to stop that … feeling stuck there. I know I’ve stretched my stomach some and that is disgusting me. We’re hoping that it’s some kind of balance.

Ok, let’s go a little deeper … what do we want to get into. What has been driving us … ok, the gym. Let’s try to think something more complicated than what we’re doing. Maybe try to capture a feeling. It feels very liberating to be there. It feels like I belong – though there are a lot more people there than just me. I think they must have quite a few people signed up. I try to look for familiar faces, but it always seems different. There was one lady I keyed into that was doing really well running on the treadmill. She was a smaller black haired woman probably in her late 40’s maybe early 50’s … she looked fantastic.

We’ve seen the tall blond younger woman a couple of times. Both times I recall directly … she took the machine to the left of me. I don’t think that was because I was there, I think she normally takes that machine … It’s near the TV’s and for whatever other reason she might want to be there. She looks very complicated. I saw her over by the elliptical machine and she wasn’t as confident there. That indicates to me that she hasn’t been at the gym for a very long time.

I had a good time at the weight training part. There weren’t a lot of people there. And, I was very excited that I could do three sets of almost everything except a couple. I don’t think anyone minds me being there … though the guys put the weights at a lot higher weight than I could ever dream of doing. That’s ok … and they seem to accept me. I’ve never gotten a cold shoulder although everyone really does stick to their own business. We’re no different.

I felt a little conspicuous in that we had the iPod out and were recording sets and weights and such. But, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched. It gave me something to do between sets. I felt like it helped me pay attention more closely to what we were trying to do. Like I might stop after the second set … and then record that we were going to be doing one more set. That helped to push us on. It also gave me the feeling that we were really paying attention to improving ourselves. We didn’t know before what the machines were. We are a long ways from memorizing their titles, but it got us to begin paying attention. That was a good thing.

Hmm, is it about time we get a fudgicle? Hmm … maybe … My elbows are a little tired. I might want to get a towel for the table while I’m up. It’s been a while since I’ve typed more than two to three pages.

Ahh that went well. We forgot though that we hadn’t taken our medicine … and one more thing. When we were cleaning … we sat down a couple of times to work on table surfaces, but we went a half an hour without having to really stop. That’s a big difference from only being able to do up to 7 minutes max and winded. I am very happy with how things are going even though it’s not showing up on the scale. Maybe fewer fudgicles? Naw. Let’s not get carried away with ourselves.

I think in general what we’ve been working on this week is the organization. I’m not sure if I can explain all of where we are at with that. The biggest thing at the time is that we’ll be getting the Wi-Fi soon. I’m going to look forward to that. We’ve been in general working on integrating systems. There are a couple of major things that we’ve been dabbling in. The first breakdown is trying to make sure that both my home and work computer is working together and secondarily that my iPod and to some extent my phone are working with the first primary settings. I can get Internet on 3 of the 4 systems. On Wednesday with the Wi-Fi we’ll be able to get the last system up on line. That is important for the communication parts.

There are quite a few things that we aren’t able to do without the Wi-Fi.

Internet on it’s own being one of them. I don’t know for mobile which will be better between the iPod and the Motorola. I’m
not sure either which will be better for the email. I’m pretty happy with the phone for doing the email. Not sure how that will go with the iPod.

The most important services that we’re trying to integrate now are the calendar, the notepad, and the to-do list. In there somewhere is the contacts list too. I couldn’t even tell you right now how I got the contacts to work on the phone. I know that they are synced on the 2 computers and the iPod through the Memobile program. That’s supposed to integrate all my devises, but I don’t think phone is connected there the Me program does connect to the iPod. Hmm, how did we get stuff to the phone? That’s where the contact list makes the most sense, because it is the only devise that can call out.

Right now I’ve been dealing with the iPod to do list so much that I’m confused about the Me program. I know that somehow I’m getting Two sets of calendars and we have to work on that. I can get the Outlook calendar to the iPod when I sync it through itunes – that’s how the me program is helping I think. It seems to make the most sense to enter Calendar events from the computer at work, or when at home directly into the iPod. I’m know that the two calendars show up side by side on the iPod in either orange or red. There’s some confusion too in that we’ve been trying to set up the calendar at the beginning of each morning, or at the end of the day. The end of the day calendar is more realistic of what actually got done, because at work we’re making adaptations throughout the day … some of the schedule gets moved ahead if we’re not able to get to it directly.

I like being able to set the iPod calendar up by hand when just sitting here. I think that the calendars on the home computer are syncing automatically through the Me program, so maybe that’s all working as one and getting updated again when I’m syncing on the iPod. I don’t think it’s being integrated on the phone … though somehow on the phone I think through text messaging, we are getting messages about things that are coming up on the Outlook calendars.

Hmm, we’ve got an executive decision now. It’s time to go to the gym and we’re really just getting into the music. Hmm.

Hmm, our general Baroque Pop is over … now we’re listening to one of the bands we really liked the first time called, Belle and Sebastian. It’s so weird hearing music we’ve never heard before. Rich is still enjoying putting on the 60’s stuff, but there is sooo much stuff nowadays. I’m going to listen to the album The Life Pursuit. Hmm, does that mean we’re staying a little longer? Maybe … let’s see how long this is.

Hmm, didn’t find that, but I might have found the missing songs from Sting. Hold on going to see if I can get them to the iPod. Ok, that’s when I FINALLY get the iTunes up. They seem to be in a folder in my document music file under rhapsody and under my email. Drat they come up in a domain that’s pretty much unknown by my computer … it won’t copy over from Rhapsody to iTunes.

Swimming?

posted by Ann Marie @ 9/15/2008 04:48:00 AM Comments: 1