Ayn's Multiple World

It's a fishy man day!

Good morning … Today is Friday and I have a little more time for a bit. I am playing hooky from work. Well actually I took a personal day, but other than that we’re planning on enjoying ourselves. As it turns out Bud’s not going with Rich, though I’m not sure why and we ARE going with Rich … just feeling real lucky. Rich said that we have to leave by 5 am so you can imagine with all this excitement that when I woke up just before 3 am, I decided to stay up. It’s now 3:30 am and we’ve taken our shower. Yup, yup … not going to miss this bus for anything! I’m really looking forward to the day.

I think we’re going to hear a lot more boat conversation on the trip. Hehehe I feel so sneaky … the more conversation I can sneak out of Rich on his excitements the better. I feel so engrossed that sometimes I wish I could crawl down his throat and pull the stories up. Yeeks! Well, maybe not quite THAT bad, but pretty close.

Last night he got back just after 10 from his fishy meeting … it was the holiday one just between the guys. They do a gift exchange and before the meeting Rich was complaining that he’d just like to more or less get that part over, but last night he was very excited and he’d said his part went really well. He had found some boxes of the helicopter lures that we used to sell at JVS. That product line ended though over 10 years ago. He said that the maintenance people must have pulled a skid aside, because otherwise it would have been gone a long time ago. But, if you got a skid, you gotta ask yourself, how many lures can I use?

The other thing he found on that skid was several boxes of hooks. There’s no sending anything back, because the company had gone out of business ten years back.

Certainly no one wants the stuff now. So for Rich’s gift he brought a tray of the lures and the 5000 some fishing hooks. WooHOO!! The guys really loved it! There were plenty of courses enough to share with anyone who wanted them. But, our Richiefishy didn’t stop there. He’d also brought from one of his contracts some samples of Christmas stockings with fishy stuff in them. He gave one of them to everyone and that went over real big too.

I know it was a good deal, because Rich was feeling very happy. Hehehe I guess I should have capitalized it and brought him straight to bed, but from what we were seeing he was looking pretty tired. I don’t know if he even read before bed. I know he was thinking of getting up at 4:30 to get the boat. He’d planned that I get up the half hour before him and shower first. I asked him, “Why me?!” Why don’t you shower first? And, he said something I know I’m never going to hear the last of … God bless him, he said, “because I own the boat.”

At this point of our life it still tickles me. We asked a few questions on what else we were going to need learning as the back seater. He started up optimistically … something about making sandwiches, but by then he was in the other room and I though, shhh better be quiet or we’d hear the part of swabbing the deck.

Wow … that could be cumbersome! Hmm, I wonder if we could keep our smaller little dirt devil like vacuum in the car – or close to it … Maybe down in the storage closet so we could vacuum when necessary. Just want to make it easy. Yup, yup … the boat even has carpet. Not sure what kind? It has to be weatherproof, but the fact remains - we’re real happy about the boat turn of effect.

Ahh hot coffee and a pudding!

Ahh that was good. I’ve got a little bit of a meowy kitty though … not sure if I’m not going to have to do something there. I hope not, because right now I’m still waking up and it would upset my space AND coffee. Blah!

Ahh … we are petting her while she’s still on the ground. I wonder how long that will last … in that when I stopped petting her finally, she still thinks she should be complaining. I think she’s going to hop up here in a minute. Shoot, I don’t want to concentrate on this. I want to be able to right. That’s the thing about animals though … they pretty much decide when you are going to be loved and/or inconvenienced. Sheesh!

Hmm Kitty decided she really needed a good pet and that priority was obviously more important than my writing, but it turned 4 am and Rich’s alarm went off … this is the time I’m supposed to get up and take our shower. AHA! Beat him to the punch!

Also, he scared poor Missy, so we’re done with our petting job. At least with Missy I know the petting usually lasts no more than 10 minutes if it would have been Chief we’d both be here until my arm fell off. He was actually here earlier, but between us a bad mood enveloped … He wanted to eat my iPod cord because I didn’t want to accommodate him, and we were pretty cranky about that. I think it’s not fair for the animals to be mean to get their way.

*Sigh* though I’m sure they think the same of me. It’s a draw. Most the time we’re all plain cuddly, but something about early morning and crabbiness. You gotta figure if your up at that time in the morning you should at least get to do what you want. It’s just my wants don’t include petting and hold Chief, where his needs say, “Well, yah! Of course you want to pet the kitty. Aren’t I the star?” *Sigh*

Maybe we should move on.

Yesterday was a pretty productive day as was most the rest of the week. We’re sticking pretty much to work at work and in-between all the group meetings we’ve got a lot of Qnotes done. We were half way done with the 12th client and there are only 22 of them. So basically, we figured we’ve got 10 to do in the next 7 work days.

We obviously didn’t include today as a work day. I don’t think we’ll take off any more time between now and the holiday. I AM pretty sure I want to get this done.

We’re close enough so that I am feeling it in my bones. It’s going to be a challenge though. It could work better if I could count on full days to do at least 2, but I don’t think it’s quite that good. I think though yesterday I finished the back half of one, another entire one, and the front half of the next. So, there is progress being made. Just gotta keep working at it diligently.

The meetings have been going pretty well. The group likes what is happening in the Circles program so far. I’m really glad when they get into it. We do a lot of challenging them on an intellectual basis. It was funny it came up yesterday in staff training. Poor Sister Florine … she has a couple difficult people to work with … the one is one that tries to cut-up in her group on a daily basis though he’s only in the program two days a week. She can’t seem to understand. She said that Bob and us are both doing programs on relationships, but that the client likes coming to our meeting and not Bob’s so she can’t understand that.

It felt funny enough to almost be taken seriously, but not quite. We explained in a little bit put-out way – don’t you think we might be running two different programs and means of interacting with the clients? Then I used that to get into some of what we are doing with them. I told her that last year we followed more exactly the training listed in the book, but this year we’re trying to get into the underneath stuff that gives them real internal knowledge. I used for an example the colors on the circles. Last year we taught circle by circle, but they didn’t do too much in remembering the circle and how each circle affected a given relationship like parents, family acquaintances, strangers etc.

I never quite know how much the staff understands when I talk, but I had a pretty good sense yesterday they were listening to what we were doing. I think it helps to have Sister there because if she’s not talking there seems to be good focus on the more scholarly parts. Yesterday Sister came in, and I turned to her like ok, let me know when you’re ready for me to talk, but she was like … I don’t have anything to say … my mind thought quietly, you mean you aren’t going to sabotage my meeting for 35 minutes? WooHOOO! I had plenty to talk on and I was appreciative that she gave me some time. Mostly I think it was that she was tired. She had cataract surgery this week. I think that had to be hard emotionally though sister would never let on to that kind of thinking.

She took like 1 ½ days to do what she needed to do and then she was back. She had a patch and intervenes bruising and then on the second day she was doing without the patch, but also without her glasses. I assume by Monday … she’ll be at 100%. Age just does not seem to recede this woman. Like hey … what’s 80+?

So anyway … there were two parts to our staff meeting and we divided it neatly between the two. The first part was to explain the circles program and the second part to explain the information about the Qnotes and how their work on goal data sheets fed into that effort.

The circles program for the week ended up being – and I will say here by taking off today … the leadership group is missing out, but I guess that kind of thing has to happen. I made several charts this week. The first one was for tallying their responses to the 4 part lesson. We had also printed out a sheet that we recycled during the week. The sheet had 6 circles of the 6 colors on the Circles wheel. The first task in whichever means the clients can do things – more for the top groups than the low – but they had to identify the six colors. Not all of them could do this.

The second task was to identify each of the six animals I had brought with me in my bag. This always causes them delight, because somehow the equate the stuffed animals as more fun than learning. So for each of the groups I pulled out the animals saying this one is a duck, this one is a fly, and this one is a monkey. The last three animals were the toughest. I had three bears. There was a Mama bear, a girl bear, and a boy bear. I wanted them to label these animals exactly like they’d been taught. Like this is a girl bear not a female bear … just a girl bear. It was important to get down concretely what we were going to call these animals, because we were setting a precedent that I would feed more into about listening to what I was saying.

Do you think this is easy? Naw. It is amazing how many people couldn’t even in the top groups remember what we called these 6 simple animals even though the names were as close as I could conceive possible to identify them as they were and still be able to distinguish between them. The first several times we introduced the animals to the group as they giggled and laughed through it, but then in each group we went through one at a time and worked with the client wherever they were at in being able to repeat the animals back to us, or at minimal to at least point to the animal I was naming out loud.

I’m always amazed when I do this in a circle even though they might be quiet and appear to be paying attention – to how little sometimes they are picking up. If I just spent 5 minutes with one client you would think the next client to be that much more prepared, but sometimes its like calling them in from the rain … everything is fresh and new. It is like until you teach them and check out what they are learning … you don’t really now. This is a concept I’m trying to get through to the staff.

Most of the staff teach to the group so what gets disregarded is the specific tasks necessary to make sure each group member know what you are saying … It’s time consuming, but I believe that you can hold a group for 45 minutes and they CAN learn something from being supported and from hearing their peers being supported in this method of teaching … basically … we are drilling … we say this is the information, and then we ask, what is the information? We redo as long as I feel they are not being overwhelmed.

Hmm, not too much time for much more. We took a break to wake up Rich and then got dressed and packed our bag for the day. Gave us a chance to go through the old bag’s stuff. Never remember what I put in there. Some of it expires and other stuff it’s like hmm? Rich said to make sure and take our medicine too because he said that we will eat dinner out with his Mom tonight. I’m like WOOHOOO!!! Double treat!

I think I’m already … just need to post … I will give Rich a chance to get out of the shower though. I have to think is there anything else I’d want? I might get a chance to use Rich’s computer when I’m on the road so there is hoping for that. I decided not to take the bills as we’d considered last night with Dr. Marvin and I do have pictures of the house to go back into those thoughts. We’d let them sit untouched all week. I also have a business week. I can’t imagine right now getting into something with much more grit. I’m finding on trips with Rich I just want to be light and conversational. Plus, we’ve recharged our iPod so if we’d like quiet time, it will be listening to our news programs from last night. WooHOO!!

Hehehe good good … just whistled at my guy as he passed by. He sure is a good looker! I’m going to try not doggin him this morning, but it might be tough. Whoops he’s in the kitchen apparently working … we want no part of that! Oh good he’s back now in the bedroom. We sure don’t want to spoil fun, by thinking of work! Nope, nope … I’m only a fishy person today!

Whoops gotta get my hat!

posted by Ann Marie @ 12/12/2008 04:57:00 AM Comments: 0