Ayn's Multiple World

Ok, not all these thoughts are postive, but we're doing ok, right?

Good morning this is me. We have a little time left, but not much … it’s 5:45 am now. We’ve been up for about a half hour, but have been taking care of stuff including trying to sync properly the iPod. We still haven’t gotten the right series of downloads. We’re still trying. We took some of them off that we haven’t liked, but yesterday some new untested ones were added. I think we’re just under 20 or so podcasts on our machine … times of course however many we’ve got left on each. It’s picking up some and not others and not always catching the most updated ones. We did get rid of few of them that only played for a couple of minutes … most often we need the longer ones and are doing something else in the meantime and don’t have time to be turning them all on every one to five minutes. After that … we just have to let it go for the next hour or so, because watching all the podcasts really is a drain on the batteries. We try to keep it charged here at home and at work, if we’re not moving around too much.

I can’t believe how important the iPod has become since getting it. I still would like to have my music, especially at the gym, but given the cost of music … we can let it go. All of these podcasts are free.

Ok, good we got things adjusted … we’re listening again to the podcasts – Obama at this time. The last time we recorded we took the ones that we haven’t listened too. So, hopefully today we’ll go through the list and see what we have. Ok, enough of that.

Hehehe I just tipped my kitty. I love doing that … It’s like he’ll sit in the middle of the table space between the computer keypad and us, and we’ll just lightly pull him toward us so he’s out of our way and warming our chest. WooHOO that works with me. Missy’s still not happy with this arrangement, but I can only do one kitty at a time and there’s no doubt that at this time of the morning, it is Chief who gets the hot spot.

Oh shoot, looking at my clock it seems that it’s already about time we get in the shower. Yesterday we got behind Rich, which worked out because of him then shoveling off our car, but we can never tell what his needs might be … best to get ours out of the way.

Ok, let’s do that 

We’re back. It’s now 6:15 am. We took the shower, checked on Rich, got our medicine, and packed the bag. WooHOO … pretty much 45 minutes clear now, cept getting dressed. I like to wait until Rich has his eyes open before we turn on the closet light. Oh and we got some more hot coffee! Thadda girl!

Hmm, there’s a few things I want to get in this morning. The first thing is about a dream I had last night. I often talk about my most problematic client when I refer to clients. Yesterday, we started something new. We set her up with a tape recorder, so she could vent and then listen to what she said. That seems to have worked out pretty good yesterday. It gave her an avenue of expression without disturbing the rest of the group. She also brought over a friend after a bit to tape with her which seemed to say she could let go a tiny bit of her egocentrism.

I think the part I’m getting to though is that this client was in my dreams/nightmare last night. I don’t usually have dreams about the clients. In this dream she was pretty much driving me to our wits end. She was situated in a grander image of the center and she was going from one thing to another picking up things that weren’t hers. Through the dream she became more and more aggressive and had to be watched fully. I remember at one point knowing that I’d have to call her mother, but the mother had taped a message on the machine saying that she was not going to deal with her daughter and that she’s off on a new tangent and that we’d have to help because she didn’t know what else to do. It was a hed on match with her and it was hard.

I don’t know why that is so important to me this morning, but I can feel there is still some distress involved. I think this got messed up with some of our own distress from yesterday.

Yesterday, we’d gotten an email from my mother and she’d mentioned looking in the mail for something … I presumed it was the check she normally sends. After we got to work, we started to respond to the email. I think I’m going to paste here a copy of the letter as it unfolded. Hold on.

Hmm, still waiting the aol mail seems to be stuck. We’ll get back to that in a couple minutes when it unfolds. The end point was that we’d figured that we’d go visit her during the week we were off. In general about 5 days saving the weekends both before and after for being home with Rich. Ok, here it is hold on.

Good morning!

Thanks for the long email. It was nice to wake up with this morning. We're at work now so this won't be a long email, but I wanted to make sure to thank you in advance. I'm guessing that that whatever you sent, I might be looking forward to a Christmas gift. I love being on the receiving end of your good wishes. I wish that I could be better at giving back. Usually, I use money that you send to pay for the boys Christmas gifts. This year I'm afraid it's going to be closer to $50 per instead of $100. I have to do the bills one more time, but I think I'm at about $6000 I owe ... Well, like maybe I have about 32% of that, but everything is paid just some each month. That's the American Way.

We're doing pretty good and it sounds like the two of you are doing good as well. That's always good news. We're not sure exactly what we're doing for Christmas this year. I'm very much looking forward to some time off though. Thom is coming home around the 25th to January 5th. Usually, I see him for just a visit or two. It's ok ... I really like to know that he's with his wife ... always feel bad for the time they dont' get together. Thom's hoping that Alexis gets the part of her job where she can do it from home, then he would try to encourage her to come where ever he is after he gets settled ... that should be in about end of February.

I talked to Thom last night. I asked him how he was doing with his classes, and he sounded optimistically. There were only 12 people in his class throughout the US (super sneaky spy stuff) and by now he says half the class were let go of. The pressure they are under to be learning is stupendous. He feels at this time they are learning stuff that is easier. Maybe his mind is more on track with it. We're not sure, but think they either send these guys to the west or east coast, Hawaii, or Japan. We'll have to wait paitiently.

Maury and Joe were over last weekend with Maury's two girls, Joe brought a girl friend and Alex the boys adopted brother came as well. We had a very good time. Rich did almost all the cooking though I did a spectacular job at cutting ptoatoes, onions, celery and apples for the dressing and pie. Ok, maybe I didn't turn out to be such a good cook, but I was trained to be a good eater :) The boys were helpful in getting my computer speakers back on-line. The system had crashed and I had lost them for a bit. Joe was the one to figure out I needed to download a new sound card. Pswhoo. Handy to have smart kids!

We will be at work until the 24th, and then I have off until the 5th. We've got no real plans ... just a general idea of working through projects. I've been learning how to do what they call a business contact manager on the Microsoft Outlook program. It's pretty intensive. It's main areas are business contacts and accounts, and then it has a portion for developing opportunities, and then managing projects and tasks. I've been trying to sort out how my work fits into these models. I'm always looking for a more efficient way to do business. I had previous a list of the majority of tasks I do, so I itemized them all out in the program under services and then I estimated using my hourly rate how much time each service lasted - and then estimated the amount of work I really felt I put into it. Sometimes my job seems to be at 68% effort, others more, not often less though. It all went into the difference between unit cost and unit price. So for example "Assisting staff with indivdual service problems I figured to generally take about 18 minutes so equaling $6.68 as a unit price and the unit cost being about 83% effort or costing $5.55. That gives me a $1.13 mark-up. If I acutally work a half hour then my "billable" time is worth $11.13 while my cost or amount of effort is $9.25 giving someone a profit of $1.88. WooHOO!!! I'm thinking that somehow the mark-up profit is giving me coasting points. No, we better not go into that ratio!

Just us being goofy.

No, it doesn't make any sense to be doing this except I might be a trifle bored with how things are going in general. I like to make new ways of thinking or figuring things out. The accounts are all tied to business contacts, so we can be charting the progress or lack of progress in everything we do. I like to think that at the end of the month I can pull up a report and find proportiantely what I did with all my time. *Silly grin* Ok, most of it seems to be going into computer software, but you never know where one business will lead another. I watch closely how the state respects or doesn't respect Human services. I think were on the low end of their budget, so enough room to worry about future work. Of course, then if we can REALLY get rid of Blagoevich. He's never done anything but take away from people with Developmental disabilities. So happily so long to him!

Hmm, maybe I should get back to working? I've got some Qnotes to be doing in 11 minutes. I figure then we've got a Circles meeting to lead for 45 minutes, but will go back to Qnotes. We have a goal to get the notes done before the end of the year. There's about 70-80 to go over within the next week ... Pshwoo!

One more thing that I don't want to say because its just an impulsive thought for the moment, but maybe we should plan on sometime coming up to visit. I don't know if that would be sooner or later, but I would like to do it. Rich doesn't have off as much time as we do, so I'd have to worry about the drive, but then too ... maybe we could work it out so that I catch a train. Checking on that now it looks like I could get about 80 to 100 miles from you. It seems there are Amtrack stations in Staples and Hinckley. I think Stapels the better deal in that the other other is really just a bus stop without a waiting room and it would take getting of on a transfer bus, Stapels is a little closer. It would be on the Empire Builder. It would cost $303 round trip. I would consider taking the 2:15 pm train on Monday Dec 29th out of Chicago Union station, but I'd have to arrive at a horrendous time of 1:42 am on Tuesday. There are no alternatives. Then I would leave out of Staples on Friday January 2 at another terrible time ...4 am. I would get back that same day around 4 pm. That would give me time with Rich on both weekends before and after Christmas. It would also give me some time to be with Thom and family during the holiday.

Well ok, these are just random odd thoughts. I think it would be a good Christmas gift to you ... if I can be of good company, but then it would require preparing the place for a very late minute guest. I just left a phone message on your machine.

Why don't you think it over and call me back. It's just that we get almost 2 weeks off at Christmas, I hadn't gotten close enough to it before to make a plan, but now feels about the time. Don't feel bad if you would have to say no. And, I know I'm going to get static from Rich who believes being tucked away at home is the safest alternative, but pretty much these kinds of decisions I make on my own. Rich will be working that entire week, so I don't feel we're losing much. I would really like to come up and see you ... again ... just give me a call. We need to make reservsations soon. The other train is already full.

Well, I guess this is enough surprise for one letter, I'll email it now. One way or another Merry Christmas!

Ann Marie


-----Original Message-----

From: Carol Setterberg
To: Aynetal3@aol.com; connietsc@aol.com
Sent: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 3:35 pm
Subject: Your Mail Box
Hi to both of you,

Please watch your mail box closely and open the envelope right away!

I have finished all of our cards and even those from the church which is a job I just inherited. I pruned the list from the last lady by at least a half and if I have to do it again, it will be cut again. She didn't have anything else to do with her time so she sent cards for birthdays, anniversary's and anything else she could think of. I might go for get well cards and for sympathy cards but not for birthdays. I am sure I will hear if this trick backfires. Should be interesting.

I got my hair cut this afternoon, which feels like a five pound weight loss, at least. We are going for a senior dinner of liver and onions and then we are going to the high school for their Christmas concert for the bands and choirs. They do a marvelous job. I am really looking forward to it.

It has been outstandingly cold with a ton of snow and wind here. It was down to -27 this morning with windchills of -35 to -45. It is had to tell exactly how much snow was dumped because of the drifting left 4 feet some places and bare ground next to it. It was really pretty when you are inside looking out. John has had the blower out enough to get out, then a friend plowed out the mess the city plows left at the end of the driveway. I hope it warms up enough to get the rest of the driveway from the garage to the street widened and then we will talk about the driveway that goes back to the storage building, maybe before the next messy round comes in. We were hoping to get the fish house out this year and it has been so cold that the lake had been making good ice until all of this flakey stuff came which acts as insulation to slow the freeze process on the lakes. The one good thing about it is that for those out of town, it helps to keep their ceptic systems from freezing which we did have in the area the last couple of years. Now that is a major mess!!! We have city sewer here so we are o.k. (I think). I have heard of some with frozen water pipes where the insulation is not good which is also a messy proposition.

I feel so good about having all the cards in the mail, I think I will go read my book.

Love, Mom

________________________________________

Actually what you got was her letter to us and then our letter back to her. But, the problem came in when we got a call and she told us that it wasn’t a good idea.

We’ll go into that more later maybe, but the general affect was to say the least a bit devastating. It came out particularly about the time we were going to bed and while finishing up the fudgicles we had a chance to talk with Rich … we were at a more regressed level and there were tears involved. I think we made Rich cry too, but that made us feel bad. We weren’t able to pull it together mentally. I think she’d made some pretty lame excuses for us not coming up, but in general we felt hurt and rejected. It took us a while to fall asleep after Rich left us with a kiss. We got to bed by imagining ourselves with Dr. Marvin. For the most part we don’t fall into over thinking of him when things are going well, but as soon as things feel terrible … we need to put him in our mind and hold onto our thoughts of being with him.

Tonight we have an appointment with him, so we’re thinking that we’ll most likely touch basis with this later, so we’re not going into things too much at this point.

Again rejection I think was the primary point. But, later.

We just woke up sweetie pie. We snuggled with him a moment and got a little rubadub. WooHOO … our guy is hot!

Ahh … now Rich just came in the living room. He’s setting up his computer. We’ve only got about 15 minutes, but we managed to get in a little more smooching.

Someone said something about us eating too many fudgicles. I don’t know what’s going on there and don’t choose to delve too deeply into it. That kinda stuff gets us in trouble. Yikes!

Ok, what else should we catch up with briefly. I’m not sure what we did yesterday.

I remember one part about doing group 1 for Circles. That went pretty good. We did a review from the week before. Next week starts Christmas vacation and I guess our last day is on Tuesday. We talked to sister who came back to our office yesterday.

She said that we weren’t going to have more than a few moments for staff training today. She was going to speak for a few moments and that would be that. So we talked to her about since there was only one group that would fit into the shortened schedule that we not have the Circles meeting with the one lone group that would be here next week.

I’m always touched when Sister comes back to talk to us casually. I feel important when she does this. The talk was interrupted by my mother calling back, but we’d already told Sister we were thinking of going to MN for the break. So, she knew when my mother called that I needed to take the call. Unfortunately, today we’re going to need telling her that things fell through. We don’t want to go more into that right now.

On the easier side, we talked to Sr. about watering our plant over the break. We agreed that we could leave it in our office and she’d come back to water it every 2-3 days. She commented on it was thriving. I felt proud of myself for being a better gardener than we’d been before. Good Ann!

I think we must have spent some time getting our Outlook system more in place. I know that we got our business contacts from here in line with the business contacts at work. It seems though it was the regular contacts and not the business contacts that transfer. We’ve got to check that out … there might be someway to get the other to move over. But, if it is the case, then we’ll have to use the contacts for a transfer case. I think the hard part though is that if we don’t get the Business part to transfer, we’re not going to have contact with our accounts to business links. That part isn’t tranfering. I know more time spent today in figuring that out.

I’m trying to think now what we’d done toward the end of the day. I know that we went home just after 4 pm. Right now that’s a dead end block.

Ok, that’s probably about it for now. We’ve gotten dressed and figure we better post to get out of here in the next 4 minutes. That will put us outta her on time.

So, I guess for now … we’ll see you again soon.

posted by Ann Marie @ 12/18/2008 06:57:00 AM Comments: 0