Things seem to be progressing
Good morning. It’s me … the usual person that lives and writes here, though there may be other parts … that be normal, right? How are you this morning? You doing fine? You want to pet my cat for me? He’s nice and appreciative … No … well ok, maybe next time.Hmm, took a minute but I got some music on … listening this morning to Corinne Bailey Rae. I like her … a lot … shes like the Norah Jones music that I like so much. I like the soft jazzy/soul sounds.
Hmm, Rich wanted to give me a lesson on toasting … so we were like ok with that, but then he wanted us to get our lightbulb, which is something that we want to do, but by then it was interrupting our writing. I know gives us something to write about, I know. Just I am writing about being frustrated. He was standing in the bedroom right next to the light. I’m terrible aren’t I … probably work that guy to pieces. But, then when I got in there and took out the replacement light … 60 for 40 watts, then he said it was too hot to take out. Like Gees … plus in a minute we’re going to have to do our English muffin.
Ok, that’s a good part, right? It was nice to have the protein yesterday morning. It helped us get past the grief we were feeling.
Ok, ok … we’re progressing through the morning. We ate our muffin and we talked to Rich for a few moments. I’ve already gotten my kiss and now he’s feeding the flower. WooHOO someone got an extra kiss, but he said we don’t get a sloppy kiss cuz of the peanut butter. Wow! And, one more kiss cuz he forgot his coffee and had to come back for it. That draws a smiley face :) :) or two.
Now it’s already 6 am though … I am going to need taking a shower. HMPF! That’s no fun. Oh yeah we’re a water nymph now … yep yep that’s about how it goes. Better get in there !
Pswhoo. Finally worked myself into a little time … at least a half hour. We took our shower, got dressed, took our medicine and packed our bag. I know we say this almost every day, but for us its still a process … we ask, did you do this, what about this? What do we have to remember? We are getting better at thinking through the gymwear, but it’s still an extra process to figure out all the little things we need. Hmm, speaking of that … we forgot our hand towel, brb. Ahh… we can do this.
Still listening to Corinne Bailey Rae. Ok, are we ready to settle down?
Ok, let’s touch basis with yesterday before we forget.
The first thing that comes to mind is the gym. Yesterday was a swimming day. We were a little late getting out so we didn’t get to the pool until 5 pm. That’s like the absolute worst time to get there, so we developed a back-up plan. We geared ourselves up to walking in the gym and going automatically to either the sauna or whirlpool instead of the regular pool. Lucky thing too, because that pool had too many people … there were 4 people in the easy side. I tried to be patient as I watched the one guy floating around and around with a face mask … forgot what it’s called – where you can breathe under water.
Scuba something probably.
And then there was another guy who was going soooo slowly – mid-age guy in not terrifically bad shape either. His face looked as if he were mildly retarded. He did one lap to 7 of ours. And, there was this other guy and a woman who was pretty much holding up the side wall. Be patient, be patient, right? I waited a good amount of time then I went in and stood in the corner for a few moments, and then someone left and I squeezed in. There was one of those Chinese guys in there too … he squeezed in before I got in though he came after me. That was cool though because after I’d done about 17 laps and I noted he was still in a corner, I asked him concerned if I were in his way. But, he said no he liked the corner. He eventually made it to the other end of the pool, but the nice part was that we smiled at each other as if to call a cease fire in the competitive area of gaining lap space in the pool.
The guy moving at slug speed came back to the pool several times while we were there. I could tell he really didn’t want to get out of the pool, but in the same consideration he wasn’t doing much to be taking up a lane. He should have stayed to the side. I dared too while in the sauna to say something to someone … it wasn’t much. I pointed to the space next to him and asked if it were ok if I sat there. He said fine in a nice way … so I made sure to smile and say thanks.
I noticed that a lot of people don’t smile so much in the swimming area – or even the other gym areas. Everyone is so serious.
So, I made it a point to enjoy myself with smiles as I was going back and forth … Not overly engaging ones, just a look of acceptance and pleasure in what I was doing. It was an honest expression. I think for all those people over in the whirlpool toward the end of my swim need to see something different than all the seriousness. Why can’t we all be having a good time.
Most bodies I’m sure are feeling fine floating around.
I notice that today though I’m having trouble picking up my elbows. I did 72 laps and then I floated for a bit by the side of the pool. By about the 40th side there wasn’t anyone in the pool – maybe one or two periodically, but most people don’t seem to stay as long … well except the serious lap swimmers that don’t take as many rests. I notice a good amount of people stopping for long rests between their swimming activities. I would rather go continuously … like I’m doing. I might not be pressing myself as badly, but I’m getting more continuous usage of movement. I don’t think you get as much from sitting in the water relaxing too much and I think it’s harsher on the body to start and stop.
I think as we get further down we’re going to have to make our exercise harder for less laps … mostly because it’s time consuming and so putting a drain on the pool if others want to be in it. But for now we’re doing fine. I’m thinking we might end up using some kind of flotation device that will make it harder to move arms and gain speed. Will wait for us to get stronger though. I know that one lady who does the sauna and power walking … is doing something harder, but I don’t like the aggression shown in her moves. For the benefit of the doubt though … she actually said hi to me yesterday. I think she’s appreciating that I work hard like her and am coming back more frequently. I was really surprised when she passed by for the hi. She did a little more work out, but I think it was more a gesture of some kind of friendship. She still scares me, because she’s an extreme, but anything is an improvement.
As to work, maybe will get into it a bit later, but there were several things happening. For one we did the regular stuff as to doing Group I and doing the staffing. The staffing went well, and sometime soon after we started, I felt a relief in that it wasn’t going to be as hard as I had thought. I was in some kind fo a groove. It was just the client, his sister, Kathy from CSO and us. Kathy seemed a little unnerved because she got extra work added to her day, but it just made her more mellow at our staffing.
The biggest part of the day … well there was one other part. There was a lot of pressure relieved from Sr. Florine who took advantage of me having come to ask her something for her to be relieving her stress caused by sister Theresa. We talked to Rich about that last night in pretty good detail, because one part included him. Sister Florine said something about if they let Rich go they’d be afraid of losing me. My first out loud thought was … good thinking! Because I would most likely go if Rich weren’t there. I think Sister might be under some other pressures. I didn’t want to make Rich worry, but then if something were in the wind … he’s got a right to know what we know. He’s got to get off the fence and be doing something for the center. I think his other contract is up in a week or two so that should be freeing up more of his time. Well sort of up. He’s going to be cutting his time in half at the other center, so SOME time will be freed up.
Ok, there’s no time to talk about it now, but the other part that I was alluding to was that we took the bull by the horns and had a very productive day. We got through the Whole room as to picking up the 3-4 inches of paperwork that had been gathering. I know better now where everything is. Doesn’t mean I’m caught up, but it makes a difference to get things in some reasonable semblance of order. We made sure too to have something down on the calendar that we tried hard to follow.
We did a reasonably good job, but have lots of room for improvement. I need to learn to make notes in between things. AND, I have to get back to CARF … Sr. mentioned that at the Administrative meeting. She’s holding me TOTALLY responsible. And, I know if there is one thing that’s going to keep me in a job it’s going to be CARF.
Ok, ok … we need to get going … let’s have a good day out there, k?
posted by Ann Marie @ 9/09/2008 06:59:00 AM
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