Ayn's Multiple World

Prelude to a weekend!

Good morning … this is us. It’s about 5:15 am so we have a little time, but not a lotta time. We’ve been listening to the news on the day about President Obama. It seems that he’s so visual to the news that we get more stories about stuff he’s doing. It’s a really nice change and it seems to agree with my internal more obsessive needs to be seeing or hearing from him.

In other news … we’ve got our custom-made kitty in our arms and he’s close to being purrable.

Ack there’s a bunch of women on TV complaining because only 6 of the 21 cabinet positions went to women. This is terrible. Not that there is only 6, but that it has to be such a great concern. It would be like let’s get X amount of Latinos, and X amount of gays and so forth. They talk about domination of men, but who are the people that are being passed over? Are they better than the people hired? Or is their only value because they are female? I just don’t get the quota stuff. It’s not like Janet Reno or Hillary Clinton have lightweight positions … it’s not that women are being ignored really are we?

*Sigh*

Hmm, I think after this commercial we are going to see or hear about Obama’s sneaky phone. It’s supposed to be really spectacular high tech. I had heard it’s really top notch security. I mean that makes sense if you were Blackberry and getting all this attention wouldn’t you do your best to please him? Well, except it’s called a Smartphone - Sectara Edge. They showed one … it’s pretty cool. It’s about $3300 and it has security and non-security options. If it shows the red background you’re like on the Hot Line. It does the same thing for web sites. You can go to secure sites or unsecure sites like all of us go. It was a pretty smart President not to let go of his devise until they gave him something approvable.

Yay Pres!

Ok, we can let go of the TV a little now right? We wanted to get in a little of yesterday. Part of that is because we saw Dr. Marvin and part of it was because we were doing a few things we wanted to note at work. The primary thing was that … well we were half an hour late in getting there, but we did get there and in so doing found out we were getting the Leadership Group for the majority of the morning so from 8:00 to 11:30 am we took care of that situation and then we got Group 2 for CIRCLES and then we got the staff for Staff Training, and then it was after 2 pm, so we got a little more done, but we were also kind of zapped. We had to do the paperwork for the first group, though we’d done the majority of that work while they were at chapel or on break. That part made me feel good.

Basically what we did with them was to start with their general ideas on how they’d done at work. We transcribe their thoughts and then later during Holly’s time after lunch they would type them out on their computers. They seemed to have a lot to say. I think they are really looking forward to that time to talk about their life … I’m really glad that Karla is encouraging that. I do hope though she returns to work today.

We did follow her book for the most part - except we substituted the singing part.

I’m not really hot in that area and I didn’t know where or what music they were supposed to practice. After we went through their stories on what had happened at work, we went into the part on the news – especially the President. We’d found some short synapses at an AOL news briefing site that allowed the byline for about 1 ½ dozen stories that were really recent. I was glad to know that I knew about most of them.

The group did so-so with them. It’s still hard for them to pick up news that isn’t about them. There’s more interest in Obama though so that part is good. Some stuff they could dialogue with some parts were just listening. I think they enjoyed it sorta … well, we’ll let that one go.

The next part was more interactive … I think that it followed after the break – they had a good time with that because they were interacting – dancing with Group 1.

There were only 4 of our guys so it was nice for them to have that kind of company.

We had gone into Carla’s social skills project where there was discussions on expressing feelings.

I thought the group did very well with this one. The best part was that we had them at one point expressing something good about themselves, and then they had their peers expressing something good about them. They were very appreciative of the comments and happy to know what their peers were thinking about them. I let them feel that for a few moments before going on. The next part of the exercise was similar but different. It was a different way of doing the first subject. I’d copied some worksheets and the group all met at one table by the small blackboard.

We went through and asked the questions that were sorta like what would you tell your best friend if he’d gotten a gold medal at the Special Olympics, or what would you tell your Mom if you found out she was pregnant. That one caused some groans, but I thought they really did well. We wrote 2-3 phrases for each on the board so they could spell them out on their paper and they were different enough so that they got their own ideas across which seemed important to them.

So that was about that. The time goes past fast. We didn’t do any goals, but goals are traditionally done in the afternoon. Holly should have done that while they were typing up their morning’s work. I don’t know how far she got with that. Like I said we did the paperwork portion too so we had to record their sessions and time spent on each and then we wrote out a long paragraph chrono note fore each of them.

I figured that would really help Karla when she got back and it was nice that Imelda had taken care of her group of clients so that everyone had something stated for the record.

We had a little lunch, but pretty much worked through it. We had been prepared for the 2nd group, but needed to do some organizing work for the 1 pm staff training.

There we were going over policies and procedures so there wasn’t a lot of background work that needed to be done other than obtaining copies for everyone. I thought that session was a little dry, but we made do … there’s not a lot of excitement in talking policy.

We had also a little trouble with Sr. Florine, but not much … I think she was on-guard with us because we’ve been holding a pretty tight-line. She’d really tried to get attention with the bread baking, but we didn’t give her too much space before we caught her attention and closed our fingers like in … Sr. wrap it up. She apologized right away and we tried to tease a bit, but we were serious. We didn’t want to go into all the information she wanted to convey about her private project.

I don’t know if the others think I’m being too harsh on her, but I really need the sessions to stay on track. It’s the same in the back. I felt a little bad at one point, because she came and wanted to shut the door so she could be on her private calls, and she said it was so that I wasn’t interrupted, but then when she made the business calls she opened the door. I don’t like the feelings of being manipulated. I tried though to appreciate she has a right to some private time.

The other group was the CIRCLES group. We did the same general things as we have been doing. There was a little squabble at first by someone who thought another client was bothering her, but we laid down the law pretty firmly. Just don’t need to waste my time by misbehaving. We emphasize more that people become involved in the project so we have them active and that usually doesn’t given them that other need to be looking for attention. I’d always told the boys they could look for good attention or bad, but the good attention would be better for them.

We had people up at the wall going over the number order of the CIRCLES mat and we had them working on their gestures by both color or number. One of the things I did differently this time was that I had them responding in groups. I grouped them by 3’s – basically one side of the table group compare to the others. On my side of the table, there was just one person, but he’s always been a favorite and he really put out real good effort to compete well. It seemed that working together in three’s instead of two’s helped the majority of them in their tolerance arenas. This group has the worst time in dealing with one another, so I was proud of them.

There were other parts too – oh I remember one … we had made those colored cards and they all seemed to appreciate them. We made it around the table. I had hoped more of them could do the cards (putting them in order) better than they did, but we did allow that they could look up at the board if necessary. I like that we were encouraging them to use a resource and that they were still putting together the order in their head by doing that study. I thought that was more important than in letting the peers tell them how to do it. They were biting at the bullet there.

They really wanted to tell each other their mistakes. YEEKS!

Ok, maybe now when we get back we can discuss Dr. Marvin - right now though it’s 6 am and time for our shower. BRB.

Pswhoo. Back. We did the shower, pack, medicine, loaded dishwasher and cleaned counter. We figure that be a nice surprise for Sweetie. Hmm, I might have woken him though … I hear sounds coming from that direction. Maybe it’s just the kitties. It’s about 6:15 am now so we’ve got a little time. Whoops, we were right he’s up. We nuzzled him up a little, but pretty much let him tropple over to the couch where he could wake up slowly as is his preference. He’s having a nice cup of coffee. I’m not sure if he’s going to let the news continue or whether he’s turning it over to fishy stuff. Either way … it’s ok, because I just adore having him in our space. I don’t mind if he turns it to his space too.

He teased me for being domestic … our only question was … did it turn him on?!

Hehehe ok, this is just us being terrible. We can move on.

I’d like to try remembering what was happening with Dr. Marvin’s. I don’t think there was much on St. Rose or the Sisters or anything. There was majorities spent on talking over the process of having worked on the charts and then the other part was on the situation with the on-line store. There were other in-betweens, but these were the main stories.

Let’s see we’ll do the charts. We told him what was happening without looking at the copy on-line. I thought that the explanations were good enough. We confessed our misgivings about the funny numbers. We are pretty sure there are more scientific ways of handling the numbers; just we don’t have a good sense of math.

Let’s see what do we now remember from all that.

I don’t recall what his thoughts were on those issues. Shoot, this is going to be another mental block isn’t it. If I could just grasp some tag of the events. I don’t’ remember what his thoughts or impressions were of us having discussed what we had talked about. Man … this is soooo disappointing. We’re freaking out a bit because of our loss of memory. Ok, girls … let’s get calm … what is it that we do remember … we need an anchor. Calm down.

Yeeks … brain freeze. Just gotta relax. It’s going to be ok, right? What can we think of that is safe?

Ok, let’s get a grip on the time. It’s now about 6:30 am. We’ve got some time.

Just gotta relax. We just went over and snuck a kiss to Rich. His lips are so sweet!

Hmm, we just talked to Rich for a few minutes. We’d gotten some coffee and served him. He’s such a life pleasure! He’s working out in his mind a situation of taking care of his mother so that Bud can get out to the Grandchildren’s birthday party. I think he’s going to ask his son to stay with his grandmother, because she doesn’t want to go to the event and Rich has already gotten his big fishy party of the year at that time. I volunteered to go out there, but he said not yet. I know he appreciates me asking, but I wish he’d be able to take me up on it. I think I could handle it and that we would have a good time with his mother.

Ahh … just used the washroom. That was a relief. I know … too much information.

*Sigh*

Hmm, time is just twittering by. We got Rich’s glasses so he could tape something on Air Force 1 and Obama. He couldn’t believe how clean his glasses could be is just some nifty person just washed them a little bit. Hehehe.

We keep fading over to Obama news on TV and for little tidbits of conversation to Rich. I love him just so dearly. He’s talking now about getting going earlier in the morning. He’s even suggesting that we get to bed by 9 pm. WooHOO! You know that we are going to like that idea! Earlier up is a good deal for us. It’s been a while since Rich got up early enough to be taking care of business before we got up and going. I think he’s talking about waking up by 5 am. That’s a good time for us, though we prefer 4:30 am.

We’re still lingering over the thoughts of what happened at Dr. Marvin’s … maybe there will be more of that tomorrow when we have good Saturday morning time. I know that he was giving cautions on the storefront idea, but then he started talking more positively about it. He encouraged that we didn’t have to be pressured by the sales person and to slow down and take our time thinking through it. We told him about the idea of making a multiples’ store and he thought that was interesting, but then we talked about narrowing our market too much. He recommended the thoughts that we could include a store for other diagnoses like OCD and depression and such. I don’t know if I could please all those groups, but it sure be fun to try. I’d have to really do a lot of studying about that.

The part I worry about most is giving it sufficient time with everything else going on and my tendencies to overbook our hours. We keep coming up with things we want to be doing … and we remember being in school when all of our hours were getting booked up especially concerning our writing. I really liked shopping for items though. It is really satisfying the thought of going through 2 million ideas and coming up with just the things we really want.

I think that there was that site we’d run into not so long ago with the psychiatric message boards for the different diagnoses. It be a really good place to see if there were things we could put together that would be of interest to the different diagnosis. I could imagine having separate links for each group like aisles. It be a great psychological experiment, but it reminds us how much we don’t know about the other disorders or more particularly, even what people with anxiety or depression or bi-polar might want. We’d really have to get some feedback for others.

For now we just have to remember that we don’t have to sign on any dotted line until we are ready. We talked about getting a couple pieces of information like we want to take a look at some more storefronts from others and we are going to want to get the name of the company and do some checking into others’ web comments to see how other people like the services. It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to figure that that sort of thing could be found on the Internet. Ok, ok … better get going … time to get to work, right?

Oh yeah ... one other thing I know we talked about. We talked about Obama news and got confirmation that a lot of people are talking in session this week about him. It's like the whole world is giving a sigh of relief. Hmm, and just for the record too ... Dr. Marvin does have an iPod. I probably should have known that before, but for the record let's note that he's really super cool!

posted by Ann Marie @ 1/23/2009 06:57:00 AM Comments: 0