Ayn's Multiple World

Looking to Spring Fling and cleaning up the Paper Tiger Work Load

Good morning … this is us and its SATURDAY!!! WooHOO! I sure can get in to them!

Today of course, is the big Spring Fling. I’m a bit nervous, but I can’t really afford to be real nervous. It has to be done and I have to be able to do it or the whole center looks silly. I hope it’s going to go ok. But, we don’t want to over think it right now. So we might as well just go on.

Rich is up with us at the same time. We both got out of bed about 7 am. I had been up for about 15 minutes at 4 am, but decided going back to bed with him would be just too heavenly. We cuddled like crazy! Hehehe.

I think we talked him out of doing the clothes, but maybe it’s because he’s just waking up. I figured we could do it tomorrow and then not have to rush for the Spring fling … we have to leave by 10:30 am. So now we’re over here and he’s watching his fishy shows and we’re both sipping at our coffee. The next time up we’ll have to get our medicine, but not quite yet … too much to think about. I know today’s Spring Fling … like weren’t we going to not go somewhere with that?

Just a little longer please!??

*Sigh*

Last night Rich and us both got home about 5 pm and he wanted to know where we should go to dinner. He’d called earlier and stated it was going to be a date night … WooHOOO!!! We can’t beat that. I got home before him and cleaned up the few things that were in my car – just a couple wrappers and water bottles. He pulled up pretty soon after that and we took his car. There was a minute or two of complaining how messed up his car was, but he’s a little touchy on that so we stopped pretty soon in. It’s just that he has to move stuff around just to get me into the seat next to him.

AHA! We just asked him if we have a chance to do something with him this weekend.

And, he said, “What do you want to do?” And, I said, “Clean-up your car!” He chuckled and then said ok! So, it’s a do! That will make me feel better. I feel a little embarrassed for him. We can do some good organizing I think if we think through it and if he needs a couple of containers for stuff that NEEDS to stay in the car, maybe we can go over to Walmart for them. That seems like a plan to me!

*Sigh* I wonder whose car we are going to take to the Spring Fling though. There was a noise beneath my car yesterday coming home; maybe we can get him sometime this weekend to drive it to check it out. I thought at first it was a flat tire, but when I stopped it seemed to be fine. I hope I didn’t drive over anything.

Maybe we better take his car to the banquet though in case there’s something wrong with my car.

Ok, so then anyway …

*Sigh* So we figured we didn’t need to go anywhere in particular and it seemed about right so when he asked, we told him we could go to one of his Bohemian restaurants.

I think that makes him smile inside … he was going to take me to one, but it looked too tiny and cramped. I hadn’t seen that one and instead I asked if we couldn’t go to one of his others, which we did. The second one was fine. I never remember the names and locations of places he takes us. It might have been over toward Harlem Avenue.

The restaurant was a nice medium size. We got a booth that was like a 1 ½ size, but it turned out cozy because it was in a quiet back corner. It had some people in it, but wasn’t too full. I chose the view looking at the wall and I let him look out at the people and scenery … I think there was a mirror on the wall, because I remember seeing some kind of wine cabinet. I had one drink – a wine cooler. It had been a long time since having one, and then I shared it with Rich, because it seemed a lot to drink. We’d gotten the bottle and a small wine glass. I liked that.

Our waiter was a nice older man who was very polite and well-tuned into being an excellent waiter. That got the place points too. Usually we get some overwhelmed older lady who is being put out to bring us our food. This guy was more contained and gave you the impression he was really here to please us. I think Rich tipped him pretty good. I was glad for that. I think men in general get better tips, because people sense them as being family providers. I’m sure this guys family had grown up, but like I said he was very personable and efficient.

The food was so so. We’re in the habit of getting stuffed green peppers, usually some mashed potatoes, but no cabbage or sauerkraut this time. We get a nice plateful of tomato based gravy with that. There was also a beef noodle soup and rye bread. Rich on the other hand always gets pork tenderloins and usually that’s with dumplings, cabbage, and dressing. WooHOO! And, then there was a really nice dessert that was just a little pastry … Just enough for our sweet tooth. This one was better than average though 

We talked to Rich the whole time about what was going on with his work. FINALLY it was Al’s last day. I never thought the day would come. Wow! He explained the situation and pushing a couple of his guys to go to the party … I think there was enough people there and Al gave a little speech that Rich thought sounded like a Baptist minister that Al was on the sidelines. He was never someone I would go to, but just the same I was glad it ended on a good note. He’d put 20 years of service into the center. He thanked Rich for taking a chance on him that long ago. Who would have known he would last that long?

Rich talked about other business matters and I reminded myself to be patient. I think at the end of the week people in general need to unwind. And, that’s what Rich was doing. I would have preferred a mushy conversation, but those are far more infrequent. I’m so glad I won’t ever have another traditional Al story. I did think Rich seemed as if he was going to miss him in some way.

It certainly was going to be different. I think that the new production coordinator who was a former shipping clerk was already getting into the responsibilities of the new job. And, they are still waiting to see if the janitor is going to become a shipping/receiving clerk. It would save him his job, but he’s really not qualified – in respect feels he’s too old to learn computer. We’ll see. I don’t think he’s real well respected as to being a worker. *Sigh*

There was something of the conversation about Rich’s boss and the boss’ boss and how things were operating in that respect. He also talked about the Director of the agency and how things were looking toward the future. He discussed programs and accreditation and such. I really hope Rich will be ok after they close down the workshop. I don’t think it’s being a paid for service though Rich recommends they could use it as content to some of the things they are looking for like anger management, or other work skills.

He doesn’t credit too much the group of 4 people who are supposed to be doing the programming. He thinks none of them knows what’s going on. *Sigh* … Like we said Rich was just vocalizing his opinion. He had to get some of the frustration out.

Rich really does have a lot of management experience, but he always pushes himself to be a little thin so he has to make short cuts. We talked about him maybe taking over sister’s position, but I think the nuns are going to want another nun there. I know that Rich could run the management part, but other things that make it personable would be gone. We keep pointing to the part where like who would put the tablecloths out or practice our Spring Fling with us?

Hehehe … Rich says he’s in class today so I think that means he’s learning something from his fishy show.

Oh no that was terrible! I had just gotten up and gotten Rich some fresh coffee, but he must have tilted his cup after we’d sat down, because he spilled some on himself and he got burned. It was not a good thing. I don’t want to relive it now, but he was and is hurting. We made sure he got off his pjs and that he got ice on it. He talked about it for a few moments himself reliving the experience. It wasn’t happy and I could figure out how to help him enough … It feels terrible when someone you love gets hurt and I felt responsible cause I’d just brought him the coffee. I know this should be ok, it was nice stuff, but didn’t like he got hurt 

Pshwoo … we just stayed quiet for a bit and listened to the show … we wanted to make sure that he was going to be ok. He finally just sighed naturally. We know it’s going to be ok and that we have to keep writing … just a little shock to the system that always happens around danger. Kind of blows a hole in your feelings of being protected. Our senses are on hyper alert – Ok, shhh, calm down, calm down girls.

Ok, let’s think something else … I think we were pretty much done with dinner. We came home and Rich suggested we find a movie. This is pretty cool on occasion, so we were taking our time and put several movies in the instant queue, but by then Rich had found a lightweight movie with On Demand. So we watched that. It was a show about a black baseball team that was similar to the Harlem Globetrotters and their effort to become their own managers. It was entertaining, but nothing too serious. After that Rich was watching a Bill Cosby Comedy routine, but we only saw a little bit because we fell asleep on the couch – in between that all though we got some pretty nice massages.  

After that we went to bed with Rich and that’s that of the night. We feel so peaceful with him and just at those last few moments when he’s getting set-up for sleep then we usually rush in beside him and jump in first so we’re receptive of him getting under the covers. He’s such a lovey-dovey! *Sigh*

I was happy at work yesterday that we got some work done. We had a couple of groups too. There were two choir/sign practices and then we had Thinking group after the last practice. I figured they were pretty excited so thought we should do something calm. We got permission from sister, but we in general just watched a video on damns. It went pretty good, but I had to move one of my talkers … He just wasn’t respecting the part where I said no talking. He thought like I couldn’t hear when I turned my head. You know that’s kinda lousy logic.

This is a client who gets bored easily so we gave him a couple of tasks to do so he could get out of his chair and move. That seemed to be much appreciated. He’s a good guy. 

Rich says he’s doing ok and that he can feel the cold … that’s a good sign. We put the ice cubes in a bag and then wrapped a hand towel around it. It should be ok and help to take away the sting. It’s going to be ok, right?

Well, let’s go back to work here. There were one or two other things of the day.

We were finished with the Qnotes, so we had to get into something else. So we got out the CARF stuff and started figuring out where we are with that. We’ve got just a year now to get that all in order. It’s a slow process so we decided to use that bag that will be for our computer and we brought a stack of stuff home to work on over the weekend.

I know it’s like our thing now days to do playing on the weekend and not work, but there’s so much to be doing. I don’t know how it’s going to get done. Since the inspection is out of the way for the year, we’re not worrying as much about annuals. We had to do this one other year, but we’re going to have to catch up with the old annuals as the new annuals are coming up in June. That’s about the only way we’re going to be able to jump into CARF now.

There was a situation that came up yesterday with our CSO people. Sister said on the loud speaker that any staffings with CSO were cancelled because all the people we usually do business with were being laid off … These were all people paid by the state. That’s pretty shocking news and the first natural question is if they are going to be gone then how soon are we to follow.

I guess they’d been paying all their employees, but they hadn’t gotten paid from the state for 5 months. Only so long a business can go on like that without shutting their doors. By the end of the day the state had saw fit to get them some of their money and they were able to start up again on Monday. I’m not sure of their credibility with the state though and I’m not sure in the long run if the director will be taken out of the business for playing that kind of game.

In the process of going between sister and Rich in trying to get and understand the business, we had gone to the State site and downloaded an abbreviated copy of the state budget. It was meant for slideshows and was only 40 pages. So, we read through there enough to understand that one of the priorities was to pay providers like us that get our funding through Medicaid. That was a relief to see. They are going to be freezing our budget to last year’s numbers, but they said they were going to make a lump sum paying so that organizations like us weren’t being paid 90+ days in arrears.

Its one thing not to give us much money, but it’s quite another to not give us the few bucks they are supposed to be giving. I’m glad someone in the government recognized that as a problem. I think basically what happened though was the federal government stepped in and said that if we weren’t paid up so the money was no longer than 30 days behind, they would not get money from the feds to cover that portion of things. I guess that was a good motivator.

I had run into Sr. and seen how worried she was about our money, because she said they are still behind in paying us too. I hope between the budgets I gave her from the Governor and talking to Rich that she would get a better night’s sleep. It doesn’t mean the governor’s budget has gone through yet, but it helps immensely to know that his talking points at least include you in the picture. I took it in general to be a positive sign that things would be ok. It was scary though racing through our head to be thinking would we be next and would it happen this quickly … where someone just said … you are off and you can collect unemployment in 7 days.

Yeeks! A certain lack of certainty you are giving your staff. I wonder if any of them are going to use the occasion to jump ship?

We’re ok though … at least at this point. We hear the governor’s going to raise taxes by 50%. This is pretty horrific on its own. But, I think usually we get about $70-80 back from the state, so if they want to keep that money we’re ok with paying them our share. Just keeps the state running - please!

With the CARF we got back into the business with the Paper Tiger. The stack of papers I brought home was huge. I think we saved things correctly with the flash drive so we’ll have to see if I can now have all those records here and updated at home as well. Hmm, maybe I should try that next. Hmm?

Ok, we’ve got things moving just waiting to see if it transfers over. We’re doing an import from a text file. That side of the screen shows an hour glass so I’m hoping that it’s just doing a normal processing thing and it takes a while to bring some 20,000 files over. We’ll see. One way or another it shouldn’t slow down our work, because we could prepare the stuff on a Word document and then save it to Paper Tiger later, but we’re hoping that it works this way so we can keep up to date in the correct format.

WooHOO … let’s check it says we successfully imported 20705 records! Oh man! This is great … my whole work project is now at home and at work. We hope that at home we can enter the newer documents and then at work we’ll just pull the documents in there to be appeasing Sr. Theresa. Maybe we’ll have to change up there, but I think this is going to work.

Hmm, maybe we can show you in general what’s going on - hmm, in general? We sure seem to be using that term a lot today. Hehehe



This is a picture of our data base by location. If you can see the titles, you’d understand that we referenced all spaces in our office by this location maker. So if we ever got in high gear … not only all our regular CARF documents, but everything in our desks or books would be referenced for information too. This is a project like the deep tunnel … it would take years to get everything in order. We’re already getting usage of the program though and I’ll show you that in a bit.

Let’s get down the basics first.

Up toward the top of this location list you can see things with years this is pretty major to the project. The main thing for this year is the list collecting documents from various years, and then the part of standards and surveys. This means that information is coming toward us from these two separate CARF resource books.

Under the standard book you have a list of all the standards questions that we have to respond to. For example this is the top of the list … I’ll copy out a print-out page for you.



I’ve got all the standards listed in CARF placed into the data base and we’ve got all the standards in there by number … these numbers are the CARF reference numbers with the exception we place 08 reflecting this is from the 08 book … this is important because we’ve also got information in there from previous years and we wanted to see in a glance where things were at. The part where it says “– A –“ means that it’s an item from the Standards manual … that is important later on when categorizing things. You might want the information pulled up together by group.

There’s another identifier for pulling up things … that’s at the end of each of these item names is the letters leaz. This means all items here are in the “lea”dership group and the z … just identifies that code. I thought otherwise it was unlikely that someone would have a z in the call name. This will be especially important when you pull up information from multiple sources.

The Survey location is from the book that reviews each of the standards, but puts it in question or query format. This is the part that I’ve been working on at work.

This next section describes the sort of information that we are able to collect with having a database. Before we’d gotten to this point we’d added a lot of input into the data base. You will see things like (doc106). Each document that was added has information about what was in that document so that later when I pull up key search the things I want to think or write about will come up … for example this is what a set of documents look like …



You might have to click on the picture to read this last one.

So then going back to the survey location … we are able to pull a keyword for any particular survey question like on the next example we might have put in the search the word “language” and then we’d get a list like this …



These are a sample of all listings that include the word language. And, then after we get this list … we go back to responding to the survey question. In this case … we’ll go to survey question number 17 which gets put together like this …



This includes in response to … the area of language by: and then lists all the ways that these other documents feed into the question and also it includes the original document or source to get back to the original document or query. It’s actually pretty cool because it takes into account SOOO much information, but then it’s also time consuming and can boggle the mind down.

But, we gotta hold on here. We need to take our shower because we’re going to need going soon. It’s almost time, right?

Ok, good … now we’ve got a half hour before we need to get dressed.

I’m not sure if I explained what we are doing good enough, but maybe it would help if you looked at the Survey questions a little more closely with the results. For example …

When we ask how does our organization respond to the diversity of its stakeholders in the area of language, we come up with stuff from language as being checked as a potential barrier to services that the center addresses, as a program indicator in our performance analysis, in the means we interpret the same report in going through it with the clients, in using ADA recommendations to use people-first language, or even today’s inclusion of teaching sign language for the fundraiser. Basically, language comes up in various ways and our ideal to search through the data banks for every time we go into language to some degree.

It takes you might guess a long time to get all the keywords from all the thousands of documents that can be collected from any one center. But, the result is something pretty phenomenal and mind searching. The array of all that can be collected is just something very terrific and very incompassing of all that really does go on in a center. The trick of course will be in getting all the information in the data bank in a timely manner. Right now we’ve got about 3” of material that needs to be included and we’re just at the beginning with our responses to survey questions.

It’s really going to take a dedication of love. And, as we might have said earlier, we’ve only got one year now to get it all in, plus take care of the reports that have yet to be written. It’s going to take a full out effort and ability to concentrate. Right now I’m really psyched on the project, but am afraid of time constraints. Even the part of being on Facebook and on MP.com competes with time available to be getting this project done in time … It’s really a tough thing to do.

Hopefully, I will get faster as time goes by. I’m worried too that in a couple of months I’m going to need starting the staffings again and that’s going to be a really tough thing to do.

Ok, so enough of this for the time being … at least you have an idea of what we’re talking about when we mention that we are working on CARF. I was excited that we could get into it productively yesterday especially in just trying to figure out what was happening, but we wasted time in the morning in getting ourselves prepared. It shouldn’t be so hard the next time, but every moment counts. This is what happens already from putting so much off for one work or personal excuse at a time.

I know that Sr. Theresa is going to want results as soon as we get done from today’s events. She’s still going to want me to do staff training, CIRCLES and Thinking group, and anything else that turns up, but for now … this is just got to be the main focal point. Hopefully I will enjoy accomplishing so much that I don’t mind giving up some weekend time. If I can at least be doing most of my writing especially in the morning then it will be a little easier. Now if I can convince myself to do some work during evenings too … that would be real good, though I might be taking away my chances to rest and relax.

Time will tell. I don’t think I’m willing to give up my massage time with Rich at night when he is home. Ok, then … there just has to be some kind of limits, right!??

I think this is what comes from being obsessive compulsive.

Hmm, it’s now 10 am. That’ means its midnight in Thom’s world. I guess then he might be sleeping … He’s already gotten through this day … I would like to be then, but then I would have missed what’s happening today in our “Old” time. Well you sort of get the idea.

Hmm, we got dressed when Rich got up to take his shower. We’ve only got about 20 minutes now before we leave. I’m a little jittery. Better get something together here … camera, tickets, music … anything else? I don’t think we have any dollars so we shouldn’t have to bring our purse. Only thing we’re missing there is the option to bring a brush, but we should be ok doing it just before we leave. Worst case scenario we could put it in the camera bag.

It’s not been spoken yet, but we’re hoping that Rich is going to be taking pictures again. Maybe we have more energy this time to be up on our feet, but it’s a good thing for him to do too. I’d really like not to have to worry about any more than we are already worrying about, you know?

Hmm, ok everything is together. We might want to get this posted, hmm? We’ll need time for the pictures. Ok we can do this. I hope to be reporting all good things after the event. Let’s do it!

posted by Ann Marie @ 3/21/2009 10:16:00 AM Comments: 1