Ayn's Multiple World

Woo Hoo ... some free thinking and Staff Appreciation day moments away!

Good morning. This is me. I'm up! I guess it just takes Rich not to be here and then we can get up. It's about 4:15 am. We used the washroom, fed the kitties, and have turned on the coffee. Should be ready in a few moments. WooHOO!!! I have to credit the cats though for waking me up official. They don't mess around when it comes to their food. Serve me ... serve me ... serve me NOW! Uhuh, coming dear.

Oh oh am I going to have trouble here? I keep losing my WordPad document ... it goes back to the button on the bottom of the keypad ... you know minimizes itself. It's happened twice ... maybe we'll watch that ... maybe it's something we are doing like hitting keys wrong. I can't use word, I would hate to lose this too. Maybe we have to go to notes. Not sure. *Sigh*.

We had a good night last night, but it was a studious one. We listened to the debates after Dr. Marvin's. I think both the candidates did pretty good, especially Biden. I don't think that Palin could add much seriousness to a good amount of it and sometimes she said stuff that was just downright lame. There would be sentences that just faded into nothing. But, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it could be. She has the ability to talk right over herself when she doesn't know an answer. Good thing for a politician to do ... me ... I'd be likely to say ... hmm dunno? I felt she was a lot smarter in current events than I am, but I didn't think she did nearly as well as Biden who had specific stuff to say on everything.

I think the one point that was very honest and sincere - extremely was that he got teary blurred for half a second when she launched into her thing on being a mother on her own - when the cameras went back to Biden you knew that he was really hurt. He tried to recover immediately after his eyes started to blur, but the damage had been done. His point made on that issue was that he knew a thing or two as well with being a single parent. It was a pretty inconsiderate thing for her to say because she should have know that his wife and daughter had died in a car accident. But, that is pretty much like her. She's dimwitted sometimes.

I have more on the debate but not sure I want to go into that specifically. There were a few things in general, in that I thought the extra things CNN was doing with polling immediately the audience was pretty good. I didn't get too much from watching the newscasters rating ... It's a good system I think, but needs people who are more honest with their thoughts on the candidate. If you were republican or democrat ... you could see obvious preferences in your candidate. Pretty much I suppose as I do for more appreciation for Joe Biden. I think the broadcasters had it right in saying that it was a very kind debate. Nobody got really rough with one another. It's just that I had the impression that Sarah was working very hard ... but, my impression of Biden was that he knew his material, but was in a sense taking care of Sarah in that he knew she wasn't as steady. When she did come up with points, he took the time to say that she was or wasn't right - without attacking her. He made a point of saying that he could always respect the candidate where he couldn't agree with all of their logical arguments. He was a gentleman, but very strong and on target and in command of himself.

Another thing I liked was his references to what was really going on in the Senate. Maybe that was a little condescending, but you could better respect those people and it seemed ireligious to have Palin suggest that those people didn't know what they were doing - or that she could go in and straighten them out. It was as if she didn't know the value of respect for fellow politicians or that she was somehow above them. It was obvious she was the student and had a lot to learn about how to get along with people. I think in general there is a big difference in McCain and her view that you could change things by changing "People" rather than Obama's and Biden's perspective that you had to change ideologies. Maybe that comes down to the same thing, but more specifically ... it wasn't that one person was better than another ... it was an idea that you could carry an open mind. An open mind is what really made a person able to do change.

Again ... don't mean to go into things terribly ... but, most of that is my familiar inability to recall information. I think I got about 93% of what they were saying. I lost a little when they were bringing up a couple foreign names, in that I didn't have experience to understand fully what they were saying. I did feel I was understanding as Biden explained why they needed to go into Afghanistan and I was appreciative of some of his points like in 6 1/2 years they spent in Afghanistan the price spent in 3 weeks of being in Iraq. I've been hearing for quite some time Nuclear weapons being built in Iran and that the Taliban has hid itself in Afghanistan. It wasn't too much a stretch to think ok ... they are also in Pakistan, but I don't have much mental imagery of what it means to be in either of those two countries. I got two things ... that its mountanous and that there are tribes. Other than that ... I have a lot to learn. I'm more aftraid that Thom will be going to Afghanistan. Just figure they are going to need more front men in that country. He will be taught or graduate his first training by the time that Obama becomes president. We'll have to see then what happens.

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that the military chiefs are watching the debates - or writing on the wall as well. There's been so much talk of what a lame duck that Bush has been. I think in general he's pretty quiet and maybe reservedly so in that ther is so much negative talk of him. I think he has like a 30% approval rating. That's something that Palin didn't do so well - was to separate herself and her candidate from Bush. I think she carried the view that you had to respect ANYone who was President. I liked though the view Biden had that there would be a true working relationship between him and Obama in that Biden would be included in all top level decisions. He made it clear that he wasn't the one who was going to make the final decision - that would be Obama, but that Obama was looking forward to hearing his thoughts on important subject matters. I never had the feeling that Chaney was as included as Biden will be ... and I certainly don't think that MaCain will be asking for much of Sarah's positions - with the exception of a few things on environmental and such. Like he's given her a small amount of the pie instead of saying do you want to cook with me.

I liked it when Biden pointed out ... look this is a fundamental difference. Hehehe both he and Obama like to say ... "Look" Maybe it will be a colliquism in the next 4 years to say that term - and mean basically, that the other person is saying, "Wait ... pay attention here."

Ahh ... I just went in to fill my coffee and I got some pudding ... Hmm, I think somewhere in here I had my English muffin with peanut butter too. That seems to have been a pretty good decision ... I'm feeling pretty full now. It's about 5:14 am. So we have some good time left, particularly because we don't have to be to work until 8:45 am. That gives me almost a full hour than normal. I might go in a few minutes earlier than 8 am because I know that traffic is worse at that time of the day ... and thinking more than not ... we're going to get stuck by a train closer into Chicago. Blah!

I think that Sister is going to have some food available in the morning as well as coffee. Hmm, I might want to consider bringing in my own coffee cup rather than drinking out of styrophome. I know I have a regular cup in my drawer ... hmm, might want to use that ... Just got to get it clean. I like the familiarity of my coffee cup's design. It's nice when we're sitting around listening to a speaker. I forget what he's going to be speaking of ... I just know it is a priest that Sister admires. We'll do it.

As to Dr. Marvin ... I'm proud to say that we stayed adult for the majority of the meeting. We talked about the new car purchase and we talked about something else that was more toward housekeeping. I think there was only about 20 minutes about talking of the "hard stuff." That's the continual play that's been going on where there is more thinking of the past. We knew after he said it that last week something had happened, but we needed to be told that we were regressed AND withdrawn. We didn't recall it. He also said something just in the end about it having to do something with having a secret. As soon as he said that we thought Hey I know what the secret is. But, we didn't think of it until he mentioned it directly.

There wasn't too much time by then - 5 minutes to go into that proper. We had gone pretty fully into the car part. There was something on Rich too, because I remember complaining that his total objection to us getting a car interferred AGAIN with him coming in and being helpful with the decision. We were quite clear in thinking it was going to be our decision not his because we didn't like the direction he was going. I was surprised in how many contingencies the system had layed down as to why getting a car at that particular time. I think that other topic we might have talked about was the spending of money. In particular there were points made of our disconcern over not having a full rent payment. That is bothering us somewhat but not overly. I do remember now going over a couple things because Dr. Marvin had asked why we didn't have enough money. We listed for him things like paying for the car, the iPod, the gym, the iPod materials - music and audio and applications, and us paying the couple of things for Thom. Between this all there was certainly room for loss.

Dr. Marvin seems most curious of that thing we call a hole in our pocket. He says everytime we seem to be getting ahead, we then spend and put ourselves in the hole again. Good point! No answer though ... Maybe that's just our easy way of saying we avoid responsibility. I'm remembering at a time we saved quite well. I remember building up a large piggy bank after saying nickles and dimes and quarters from baby sitting, allowance, and so forth. But, then there were the long years of taking care of the family and business transactions. It was not as bad as now, but it was always about borrowing from one to serve the other account. I think there was more money put aside in that Maury would take money out to buy junk silver and such, and he'd always have his own pocket cash. BUT, the point is that we've never felt secure that we were going to get our needs met. I think we've always spent our full sums as an independent adult. We were more in debt with credit cards before the bankruptsy, but now it's like there's only school and hospital debt, but still ... never more than a tiny bit each check. It's actually pretty odd how close we keep it to just above sinking. Is that a habit too of my family growing up? Most likely though I'm curious as to now the more direct bridge between the two.

Wait better shut off Rich's alarm ... it's 5:30 am.

I think another thing we talked about is the situation with the AOL Journal and what we had to do with that. I don't have the security of thinking that AOL is going to be able to save or convert them. I take more seriously their position on it is our responsibility to save them. Somewhere we were on-line yesterday with it and there was something to say it was a bit of a countdown. Dr. Marvin said thought there maybe something about saving web pages directly. Maybe I better look at that now. If there is a way of saving more easily then that is what we should be doing. Both of us know how important the blogging has been.

Ok, we're back for a little bit. We were working the AOL Journal Transfer. We only did about half a month, because it took awhile to figure out the systems between word processors and pictures. I think we got a good system now, but it requires a save backup between each entry added. That is because we are using the more unstable Word program mostly because it copies over pictures too which is pretty cool, and it transfers over to the Word Pad document in case it become untenable. We're also saving a copy of the pictures ... we're in this nice phase now where most of the pictures are ones that we created ourselves. I really appreciate finding so much of my creativeness. We're still getting the shorter journal entries. Somewhere they are going to go from 2,500 characters to 25,000. I think that's really where we start losing people. It just takes too long to read the posts.

We talked to Dr. Marvin about that again last night. He went on to say something toward we didn't write it for others, we wrote it for ourselves. But, there's still this big part of me that wants to justify the attention to ourselves as being something that will help others. I'm not so positive always about whether or not I want to focus on theclients, but I do want to think that my thoughts are important for some reason or another. Lately, we've gone back to thinking that our thoughts will benefit in some type of research manner. Not specifically, but ... well, we thought of it last night when we were with Dr. Marvin. What would happen if we could use the notes as source documents, and then in a larger scope ... summarize things so that it makes sense to people wanting to read. We talked about larger global issues in our life as to how we're doing at work, our relationship with Rich and the boys, our own growth and development, etc. I think it would be important to figure out more of how the parts affect each other in our thoughts. It would take some brain work though to look for the overriding globalizing thoughts.

But, like what other thing is more important in my life. I really think that St. Rose is not a bad place to make a pay check, but my heart isn't into Developmental Disabilities as much as it is into my mind. I want to understand how it is we think and progress. I want to understand what difference is my life for having been a multiple. Last night something funny happened in that Dr. Marvin and I were talking and it came to us that we were dissociating our work ... then Dr. Marvin laughed and said something like after all these years you are just coming to the idea that multiples dissociate. I'm not sure of the exact nuances of what was said, but it did seem very funny ... Dr. Marvin said remember to blog about that. Hehehe yes multiples dissociate. I don't want to use that as an excuse for not paying attention, but if that's what is happening maybe it's a good goal to figure that out. Why is it that our mental apperatus is going toward escape and avoidance.

Hmm, just as a sudden thought ... it seems that if it doesn't have direct relevance to the growing of our body of thoughts and ideas ... it just isn't a priority. I know that we're coming up to pressures in that there is so much unfinished work at work, and yet we don't seem to be pressing into it anytime quick. I know that it has to get done, just can't make it a priority. We talked to Dr. Marvin last night about spending the time to make sure we are being scheduled in to get work done, and then as soon as the schedule is made, we just disregard and do whatever we want anyway. He said are we considering all the parts when we make the schedule. We think we are ... we even give ourselves time to cool down or to blog, but it doesn't seem to be enough time. Our higher priorities in life are in getting as much time to free think as possible.

We are still centering in on the bigger global scale of the Presidential election and economic turn of events. I'm not sure why that is holding us so firm. I think that it is driving Rich crazy. Every time he comes home and sees that CNN or such is still on, he makes a flurious move to change it to something lightweight ...most often fishing or poker. He just doesn't seem interested in what is going on other than the top by-line. I don't understand this difference in us ... or why now when we weren't so interested earlier in our life. But, it seems like bread and butter thinking.

Hmm, maybe we are wondering a bit now, but it seems that's what we've been trying to get to for a while. We just want to be in our thoughts and figuring things out.

But, we're soon going to be into the part where we are on our way again. It's about 7:45 am. We should be thinking is there anything else in this next 5 minutes before posting that is going to be important to get down? Not sure. We're focussing in on that today is again theoretically the best day of the year for work related events. It's a blessing to go to work and to be able to listen to a presentation where there's not any real work expectations. There's the dinner which is sometimes better than others, depending on sister's moods and the general ambience, but there is also the parts where it's nice because we go in late and come home early. Woo HOO!!! This is got to be one of life's true blessings ... again time off to think freely.

posted by Ann Marie @ 10/03/2008 07:47:00 AM Comments: 0