It be a blistery conversation
Good morning … or best afternoon! This is me again and not getting too far in life. We’ve been going over something we’ve been doing at Facebook. This is the gist of it.
Ann
Back again … well you can see where that pretty much went. There is one more part that might get added – well maybe two. I will have to see if Cody answers this Sheree’s last statement and I will see if Mike Laudenslager answers to it as well. One of our other friends Deb Heim from High School told Cody she liked his response to thread and then Mike asked where it was and that he might want to look at it too. So, I left Mike a friend invite. I wanted to b friends with Mike, but I was too shy earlier to do so. He was a pretty big guy back in high school and had a few very humorous parts for the school plays. He’s friends with about 6 of my other high school friends, so I see that as maybe an open door. We’ll see. There’s a certain pace to people responding on Facebook.
There was one other connection that I tried to set-up today … there is a person I used to know as the Doe-nellie (Donelle) part of Tim and Doe-nellie. I can’t think for the life of me where else we were connected, but I seem to remember being friends with Donnele before she and Tim went out together. They were a longstanding item, but did not make it past high school. Maybe they broke up senior year. I’m not sure. But, she was really nice and friendly. I remember looking for her face – just to say hello. Anyway I sent a note to her today … so maybe there will be that one more friend.
You really gotta feel fortunate for the high school friends and you hope for some new connections to them. I was really surprised that Cody responded to this other person. I was glad he did. I did disengage with the Sheree person from Facebook. She’d been accepted as a Pirate friend, but I don’t really need those kind of negative pompous attacks on the people I consider more as my friends. I’m not saying that all my friends have to think alike, but I really don’t understand people who are homophobic and wrapped in political right wing.
I do have one other contact that writes notes being really right wing, but I let that one go, because she doesn’t come out attacking me and my friends. She does attack Obama – but, as I said I don’t generally discredit friends on their beliefs. Just didn’t like it when I was told I wasn’t religious enough because I didn’t believe the King James Version of the Bible as being the only Holy document and WRITTEN directly by God. Yeeks! That’s just scary.
Hmm, one more squeaked in before we left. This was from the Mike we'd mentioned ... I'm not sure if Cody will respond one more time, but it should be buried ... too much played to this person - Sheree of the Sad.
Just a stray couple notes
Good morning! This is me. It’s late in the morning, but I finally feel up to writing again … It’s 10:30 the day before Memorial Day. On that end I want to say a special Thank-you to the people who have served and are serving. No one could know the true devotion they have shown to all our cause of living freely. And, because I’m Thom’s Mom especially – may God Bless him and all those who serve with him.
Wow … something else happening here we are waiting the shuttle Atlantis landing right now. It’s coming down in CA instead of FL because of weather. It’s a pretty darn amazing thing. Wow going right into Edwards Air Force base. They say at this point it’s just a glider. Wheels came down. Just about to touch down. WoooHOOO there we go Main gear touch down!!!!
She’s on the ground! For later reference this is the mission that went to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Pswhoo it looks a little worn out or dirty. I hope they let us see the flight crew come out. They said it was a thrill from start to finish.
Hmm, they have to go through some stuff first … NASA must have known we needed a commercial on Celebrex. YEEKS! Anti-climatic!
I haven’t looked at the last time we wrote, but it might have been a week or so. I feel a little out of touch here. But, I figure I’d like to lay off the Pirates for a bit … I’m checking on it, but it seems that we spent too much on armory and it took most of our loot … and so now its taking forever and a day to get enough money to do anything and what gets done isn’t very much. I had been getting like 5.8 million and now I’m only getting 2.6 million … *Sigh* it will be ok, right?
Rich isn’t expected home now for almost 2 hours. I think he had 2 games today. He left here about 9:30.
Hmm, back into the news … they talk about stuff that I feel a need to catch up on whenever they have a new group of speakers on – even if the new group is familiar as regular CNN correspondents. Right now they are talking about the flash of the Republicans and how they are using their attacks on Nancy Pelosi. Newt Gingrich. I don’t know if that’s how to spell his name, but just the same – in my opinion he doesn’t have enough strength to hold up as the Republican voice – but I also think that I forget his name, but the radio personality is even MORE of a bad example of Repulblican party.
Something interesting is going on is that Colin Powel has stepped up to the limelight affirming that he remains a Republican although supporting President Obama. That would make a good challenge to the democrats … Sometimes it seems that the Republicans are soooo far to the right that they can’t see the balance that would be best for all.
Rush Limbaugh – that’s the other guy I was just trying to think of. That’s guys just a loud mouth, but he’s reportedly got an audience of about 20 million. Lord Protect us – and I’m not sure we’re talking the same Lord here.
Hmm, now there is some soft fluffy stuff with the Mayor of Las Vegas … ba humbug … back to our stuff. Yesterday or maybe the day before I guess I did something with the OneNote program in that I was off the Pirates and taking some loose notes with a couple of the stories. I might try some more of that this weekend. I think the idea is good. It got us to think of a couple issues in a manner that could help us to comprehend the totality of it all. I think the hardest part of listening to the debates over issue is that everyone is coming in at such different spaces and reference points that we don’t get to figure out what the hell they are all talking about. I’ll show you here an idea of what we’re talking about … they aren’t the big stories, but the ones that were playing when I decided to take the notes. The version I’m showing is the version that came after the initial copy … I tried to make a little more sense of them with the second copy … Hold on … I’ll show you.
CNN Friday, May 22, 2009 @8:19 pm
1. John Legend interview after commencement speech
2. Root problem is there is a lack of truth
3. We demand truth, but we don't want to hear it
4. Truth often gets denied
5. The last call is that we don't want to hear about truth or stand up for the powerless
6. Average people don't want the government to tell us bad news
7. Average person wants to run away from real problems
8. Our political responsibility is to hold President Obama to honest candor
9. The public (and show biz people) has to watch and hold the politicians accountable
10. We don’t know if the young generation going through the recession is the lost generation whose silver lining will be that due to lack of posh jobs, they will be able to get involved in the service industry
11. Unsure if Americans can do REAL poverty though Legend suggested that it could one day be any of us and that we should all be in this together
12. We need to decide as a nation what level of issues arenot tolerable
13. We should ask what will we do to get involved and what are we prepared for?
14. Resources are listed on CNN impact page
CNN, Friday 5-22-09 @ 7:40 pm
15. Representative Maloney discussed issues such as fees and interest rate hikes
16. Hikes are being charged even if payment is on time
17. Changed to 45 or 60 days grace before rate change- clarify
18. Issue - should there be a cap on the amount of interest rates charged
19. Issue - would a cap be more protective to the consumer
20. Interest credit cards can change?
21. Banks paid politicians 7.8 million in 2008
22. Senator Dick Durban states banks own politicians
23. Suggestion: keep balances low as you can
24. Suggestion: pay full amount or at least more than the minimum
25. Credit card crackdown will allow the consumer to competitively make choices
26. Crackdown will assist with the worse bank abuses
27. Congress stood up to the industry and they are helping level the consumer playing field and it will give them more tools to work with
28. Example of injustice - vet put medical on credit card and rate was raised to 27% retrospectively on money already used
29. Concern - interest rate cap should stop rate from going up on money already borrowed
Ok, pretty much see what I mean? I’m not sure if this makes sense to anyone else, but it is what I would like to do – or would at least like to see as replacing the game of Pirates. Just that Pirates was supposed to be more relaxing and the same with Farm Town. I’ve let the seeds go to waste over the last week and I don’t feel overly motivated to go back. With the slowdown I explained with the Pirates I sorta feel the same there – though I’m more apt to go back to that. I could see though not fighting so much and just watching my hourly balance pull up some kind of speed.
Thing with that though and the part that keeps me really into it is that I’ve fought for a good Pirate name for myself.
Stats
Jobs Completed 887
Fights Won 4433
Fights Lost 445
Defeats 18
Keelhauls 63
Booty
Total income 11,404,206 / hour
Total Upkeep -8,740,000/ hour
Cash Flow 2,664,206/ hour
I’m not sure how this looks right now after it gets to AMW, but this is my stats.
You can see here how much money I have made and how expensive the total upkeep got in comparison to a healthy cash flow. You can also see the part where the fights lost in relation to fights won is so close to 90%. I’ve worked very hard to hit 10% and I would really like to do better. For a long time I was at 87-89%. If I don’t continue to fight then this number I’ve worked for is going to be lost.
As to why this number is so important to me I have less thought of figuring out. It might have more to do with regular low self esteem and my obsessions than anything else. Dr. Marvin thought that I might continue with Pirates until the end of CARF.
That made me think some … Really it is CARF that I should be working on with my spare time … and have just said a little earlier – the project with CNN news and learning to listen better – well they’d both be a much better idea than following Pirates – AND we still have the part where we haven’t been doing even our mainstay as to the blog. Something is really wrong there if we’re not writing as much as we aren’t.
Maybe for a little while I can let all that other stuff go. I would REALLY like to set aside for that CARF project too … just write now I’ve got writing up and this is soooo good … we want to concentrate only on this. We’ve already let an hour go of not doing much other than listening and skimming our thoughts without writing. When Rich gets home he presents himself sometimes as a distraction by doing necessary things such as laundry. Yeeks the next you are going to hear is that someone should be doing bills.
I’m so far removed from all that it’s unbelievable. I’m thinking what … now like 3 months since paying regular bills? I’m not sure, but it’s up there. I can’t tell you all of where we’ve been … our jumping off marker though was that we were trying to deal with legal issues with Rich’s wife and then being watched so carefully and protectively by Rich’s daughter. I felt very much invaded and it seems that for a long while it had become dangerous for us to even voice our thoughts out loud to ourselves.
I think in there too came not only Pirates, but the parts where we were going to see my sister. I don’t think being with Rich was as disruptive. With my sister – it became more important to handle the situation, feel our way along with her talkativeness and being out of the normal environment like with simple things of listening to CNN in the background. I think writing takes more concentration and focus then I’ve been able to give due to all this above.
One way or another I’d like to fight for my writing sanity again.
Wow just stopped for a moment to use the washroom and refresh the coffee. John King has been on and he just finished introducing a new Google Earth feature. It ties together a whole lot of memorial information on fallen military from their home towns to what caused their death to where in Iraq or Afghanistan that the fell. It does a whole lot more including things like sometimes their obituary and then there’s also a space to write a message to the family and to search for people backward and forward … Let me figure out that address.
Wow that’s incredibly difficult. I think my Internet is all messed up I can’t get Internet Explorer to be using add-ons again and I think that’s what is making finding web addresses so difficult. There’s a place at the tool site for mananging add-ons but it isn’t highlighted so I can’t press it to change the setting. And then I’m having problem with my alternative address bar with FLOCK because I can’t get it to move toward any new address unless I’ve already been to that site directly through a link in its history.
I’m way too frustrated with all that to give it much time and concentration. Let’s leave it to the reference point to get to the new Google Earth thing can be found by going to CNN.com and then to politics, and then to State of the Union with John King – and then 1/3 down and to the right is a link to the map – hmm, have we been able to find it? We just used the search bar we never use on the bottom of our tools bar – maybe put out by aol or something let me try that.
Hmm, well maybe that is going to work … I found something saying I have to download Google Earth first and it is taking a while to do so. I don’t recognize the extracting tool, but I gotta give it some time to do its thing. Need to depressurize here.
Fareed Zakaria GPS is on CNN right now … and I would really have to focus on that to understand it … Fareed presents the hardest stuff that CNN has. He does a lot with the middle east and I don’t understand enough of it to figure out the cues that are being given by Fareed and his guests. Some part of that is the name of people and places that they talk about … it just isn’t on my auditory track. *Sigh*
Ok, this is a little forward, right?
Good morning this is me again. I’m sorry if me again hasn’t been here as much as I should be. In one respect I think that things build up and then I have to spend extra time, but since I can remember so little it’s not extra time at all. It’s more like a vacuum of time.
It’s about 9:45 am and I’m at work right now. I was just up front on a few errands and had to stop by to correct one of my clients whose behavior problems landed her in Sr.’s office already this morning. I spent a good part of the morning with her yesterday as well. I can’t go into the details, but there’s no doubt we will stick with her until we see a change in behavior that people can live with. Rules are – you can’t hurt yourself and you can’t hurt others. If you violate those principles you have to deal with staff. *Sigh*
We’ll go up in 15 minutes to see how she is doing. She was give 5 things she’s done wrong in the last couple of hours. She has to remember them and hopefully draw a picture representing those things. We’ll see. If she’s come also under the thumb of Sr. Theresa no doubt the client will be in for a long day.
Ok, let that go.
JuDee just sent a picture of a truck that is all decorated and detailed with pictures of heroes and we sent it on to Nathan through CS. He does truck and trailer detailing so we thought he might appreciate the work of someone else. Maybe he’s seen it already, but just in case.
We’re going to try to get back to work in not too long like we did the other day.
I’m not sure though if that day the writing had gotten to the blog. Pretty haphazard I’m afraid. You’ve heard this drill before. Somewhere between Facebook and the Pirates, I’m getting lost. That’s not such a good thing. I am going to have to get more orientated back to work and writing, but as a I say that I wonder … how are my Farm plants and trees doing? Yup, yup also on Facebook. They opened up the doors too so that you can have more neighbors. That seemed like a real good idea. We took for neighbors only people who were actively playing the game and had progressed some.
Ok, now it’s 11:20 am. Might as well not have mentioned the farm – we had to accept the gifts from people because they were stacking up. We had 36 of them waiting at facebook and 95 of them waiting at the farm. We still now have about 85 left, but we took the animals out and placed them in their pens – as you can imagine the rest of the gifts are various trees.
We finally got to level 15 so we were able to buy more land. We just planted potatoes and watermelon on the two sides where they added on to our plot. This puts the part with the farm animals into the farm a bit, but that’s ok. Everything is up for grabs the next time I go in. I’m not sure what we’re going to do next. It’s off-centered and some of the trees are hard to harvest so I’m going to need putting some walking space between them.
It’s never predictable what kinds of stuff you are going to be gifted, so it’s hard to plan on how to plant the little fruit forest. If you are not planting trees close and to the back or sides of the farm then they cover over good planting areas. I think that’s one of the purposes. Trees don’t pull in as much as plants so you want to have space left over for them to pull in any kind of income worth having.
Ann. Why are we thinking of the farms when there is work to be had. Hmm? Girl … this is a bit sad. I know. So you don’t want to talk about stuff like that? Ok, well I’m not really saying that directly, but we do have stuff to be getting done. Hmm? I know, but I don’t want to do that stuff. SHHH… let’s not even go there.
Why don’t we make it a process to get past something to be going somewhere? If you want you can add pictures from yesterday in later … Because all the pictures have been going to Facebook and not to the blog. Have you noticed that?
Hmm, while we are here … why don’t we try clearing up a few things? There are a couple things about family that I especially want to get noted.
Rich came home last night and as he often does – he’s riled up by the time he walks in the door. He had just seen his daughter, so I suppose I could have guessed that much. The only thing I heard about the visit was that she reading me on Twitter.
She’s still doing searches to find things about me. Rich pointed out two things she now knew. First was what Bob ate the other night out – but actually that was a partial truth. I didn’t put down what he ate, I just put down that we’d gone out.
The second thing was that I like peanut butter on torillas. Well as you can imagine none of these things could really hurt anyone, but she’s using them as an excuse to her father that I’m dragging his name all over the Internet.
She had done this before with the Gastric Bypass site, so I should have expected I suppose that she’d continue to look. I really hope she’s got some better things to do because I’m not of that great of interest, but obviously I am of interest – most likely because I’m new and because Rich won’t talk about me. She’s searching for anything which could be informative.
There’s something that I haven’t gone to Rich about yet because its still new to my thoughts, but I’m wondering if this is going to be a pattern that Jillian spends valuable time trying to warn her father that there is something wrong with who I am or what I do.
That part hadn’t occurred to me before – that she might be protective and think of me so negatively that I become some kind of threat or danger she must ward off. In general, I don’t know how girls in general think about their fathers. I didn’t have a good relationship with my father, but I knew I entertained thoughts of “the other woman” who was interested in him – Sandy and how they were getting along.
Most often I thought of Sandy as someone I hoped wouldn’t leave my father, because if she were gone, I might expect to need taking care of him myself. I don’t think Jillian has that kind of relationship with her father directly, in that it can be long periods of time between her checking up on him and it seems that most of the business between them is “checking in” on other family members and very little of it is about what Rich is actually doing.
She might now about Rich going fishing with or without Bob – or that the boat was purchased or that her father had gotten out to do cards or golf. She might know he’s doing a game or had a hard day at the office, but she has just a little idea I think of what all that is about. I don’t think that Rich explains much of his work with the kids or much about fishing except for the fact that he does it. I don’t think the kids really want to know much about the ins and outs of the father’s life.
Most often over the years the kids will connect through, but more than anything I think they bring their problems – especially monetary to Rich. Other than that – I think they check in with each other in general and when talking to one, they are generally asking questions of the other. Somehow I think if you can hear what someone is doing or thinking than your world is more organized as you slip the assorted details into place.
I can see this when thinking of Jillian, but I have to admit that I’m probably not much different. After Rich gets home from visiting family, friends, work, or and an event, I am also asking for information so that I can sort it and put it into my “Ann’s” place.
I think this is why sometimes I get to the point of not talking to people very much. It’s just a matter of sorting information. I know that new thoughts or feelings can also arise, and those feelings of joy and pleasure make it worth while to grasp the meanings various people hold.
But, somehow the word testify comes to mind. I use the term lightly because I very rarely use the word. But, in this general way – we are testifying about the life of others. When someone has information on another, then they feel like somehow they’ve captured a bit of its essence. This wouldn’t be very different for when we do tasks or events. If I travel to Mt. Rushmore, then I hold it somewhere in my head a set of explanations to justify my thought processes of the event or location, or perhaps the people that I met on the way or in getting there. More visits I would like to think would make me become a more rounded human being capable of seeing past a very small internal world.
Some of this is what I enjoy about watching the news. When I watch CNN – incessantly I am taking in the world at it’s farthest reaches of general news coverage. It’s not quite like tuning into public broadcasting or the Nat Geo stations, but its something like that. If I were more interested in the World through Federation Wrestling, baseball, foods, or basket weaving, I would devote more of my time to all that.
Mostly though I think I’m into trying to explain to myselves what is happening as I make small contacts in the world and at that … I have to make very small contacts, because I tend to get overwhelmed.
It seems for a length of time we’ve been trying to process the difficulties Rich’s family present. This is in one respect through Jillian and her curiosity – we’d like to not think she’s vehement; Chris through his anger and frustration, Jon through withdrawal or the mother through her charges and upsets.
One of the things that happened yesterday to Rich was that he went to the courthouse for the first time in over two years to see what was going on with his trial. As expected the attorney asked to be dropped from the case and this was granted by the judge. Rich was surprised I think in that he wasn’t able to speak at all to the judge. We’d told him this beforehand, but he was still in a mindset that of course someone would listen.
I don’t know what he thought directly of being that put-off. He did seem to speak up at least once in what he calls defending the wife. He questioned why he continues to do that regardless of what she’s hitting him with. He basically explained that although the judge wanted to progress the case in 3 weeks – his wife was going to be out of town for 4 weeks.
He seemed to think that the other attorney was appreciative of this so that he didn’t have to break a court date when she was found not to be home.
I am not clear as to what next has to happen. I think basically, that Rich needs to receive from the wife’s attorney their counter-proposal and then he has to say fine … then let’s have it settled. I think he asked the attorney and the attorney had to ask the wife if it was ok that he mediate the situation – I have a sense of this being ok with the lawyer mostly because Rich seemed to indicate that he’d pay both attorneys fees just to make this all go away.
Also added to that was that both men though the wife was still lost in lala land as to my kids paternity. I don’t know why she keeps doing this.
After Rich told me about the Twitter account and his daughter, I went back to make sure that it was ok. I had erased most of it it turned out, but not all of it. I had given a Readers’ Digest version of my life including critical junctures which included Rich coming into my life.
After looking at that I decided as I must have the last time – that I was going to leave it up for Jillian and her mother. I know that if Jillian knows most like the mother is soon to follow. To some tired extent of the situation it is a choice I am making though I know that it isn’t Rich’s choice. But, there has to be some point of me putting my foot down and in saying enough’s enough. One day I will tell the world of me – MAYBE … so I might as well start here.
Maybe its not overly traditional, but neither am I. I think I’ll jog over there and get a copy of what I wrote. It struck me last night as kind of complainy and a bit chopped up, but it gets the general stuff down. I guess in one respect I’d rather have her read and understand where Rich comes into my life rather than to put my boys through the idiot testing which would make it feel like she has more control over my sons than I do. I know if this becomes an inevitability I’m going to need getting over it, but I think I’ll save a little room for being pissed off in the boys defense.
Ok, hold on … for better or worse might as well include a copy of the material in question now. You could figure that Rich wouldn’t be overly pleased, but I figure this is about me and my life and as indicated throughout our life I have severe problems in not wanting to dissociate any more of my life than is necessary. Rich let it slip again last night his intent and he knew I caught him up with it, but it was too late to take back.
Basically, he’s setting up me being in hiding from his family for an additional 10 years or more. I just remembered complaining loudly – you WANT me to be INVISABLE FOR TEN MORE YEARS?!!!
I’m REALLY against that thought.
I’m a writer person who wants to be heard.
OK anyway here’s the Readers Digest
Readers' Digest Version
I was born in Minneapolis, MN on Wednesday, July 18, 1959. I am now 48 years old. My mother was 18 years old and I was her second child. My sister soon followed. I was born on a hot, uncomfortable day and they had trouble crossing town because of a parade that is held every year in Minneapolis. My first house was a small two-flat. We lived on the second floor and when I was about 1 ½ years old, my brother about 3-4 years old fell out of the porch window. After that we moved to the NE suburb of Blaine, which was about 17 miles away. It was a new development and everyone had dirt in their yard. We were one of the first four families to move in on the block and had one of the only four 2 story houses. All the other places were ranch homes.
I was abused as a child. My grandfather sexually abused me, my mother and father physically abused me and the family in its entirety was psychology, emotionally, and spiritually destructive. It was very bad.
That being said, you might guess that I have some issues. Our first suicidal attempt took place when we were about 11 years old. We received some help with that through a counselor, but we got through most of it by paying attention to what was going on in school and in scouting. Although, our early years we struggled trying to keep caught up, by the time we got to high school we came out of the fog and decided to try applying ourselves to school seriously – most likely for positive attention. We received mostly straight “As” and was in band, doing office work, and participating in volleyball, cross country skiing, and softball. We were captain of the team in two of the sports. We lived for doing well for the coaches where we couldn’t do well in our family. We were still getting hit and kicked there at 17 years of age.
By the end of my senior year something amazing happened. First, my father was hospitalized for being depressed and suicidal, and then after that my mother and father decided to get a divorce. My brother was away at school, so there was a meeting with my mother, father, sister and myself. Our parents gave the two of us a choice of which we would be living with … my sister bawled. It was one of those times in life you know you are setting precedent for the rest of your life. I saw three things … my father was stating a new view on life, where he admitted errors in bringing us up, he was on the road 3 ½ days a week, and I didn’t like the thought of moving in with my mother’s new boyfriend. So that being said, we stayed with my father and since he had my sister and us, we got the house.
That didn’t last long, because by fall of that year, I was going to be attending college in Winona, MN 2 ½ hours south of the city. It was the most beautiful campus I ever saw, was small, and they seemed to want me. There was a lot of work in between. My father had told us my senior year that he didn’t have a penny to go toward school, but the good news was that I should be able to get a loan, because he was very poor. Was like ok. That’s not really fair, but he also said that from that point on, we would be on our own, and it wasn’t as if he had anything to say about my future, my grades, or my nothing. That was excellent incentive to be moving on. I couldn’t stand the house, my family, or anything that had happened.
I can’t say at that point I really understood the abuse. I had blocked out a lot of the sexual stuff, but not the overtones, made at every family gathering. The abuse with my grandfather had stopped one Christmas when he reached around to grab my breast and I knocked him down. Well, not really that way, but close. I swung around at him, and because he was drunk, it didn’t take much to topple him. That was enough of all that. He apologized on his death bed. Hmm, that happened when I was 17 too. It was a big year.
I met the Christian brothers before I started my actual classes at the St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. There were 3 … one was Brother Julius, Brother Jerome, and BJ for Brother John. I was in the human development program that Brother Julius taught, and I knew the other two through cross country skiing. It was a small school and the recruiter had told them about me. The brothers had groomed a trail through the bluffs around the school and they invited me to ski with them the Birkebeiner. Believe me … it’s a very long race.
I met my future husband a couple months into my freshman year. He was a senior who had taken a good handful of psychology classes. I was on the volleyball team and had met him through some of the other players who were doing intramurals. Patty had gotten me out to a basketball game with him and had said, Maury … you will like Ann, she asks lots of questions, and then turned to me and said, Ann … you will like Maury, he has all the answers. We were pretty much swept off our feet. We’d had a light romance our senior year, but it wasn’t like this. This was much more. We met in October, and by about December we were umm “messin around.”
We had talked and because of his Catholic background and me not knowing about anything serious in that nature … we tried to hold back and I never used contraception or birth control. This worked for about 3 years. For my junior year, Maury went north 6 hours to do an internship, and we decided to go to Norway because we could. My “good” grandmother was Norwegian and it was a sense of connecting – doing something important all on my own. When we got back though and he’d come down for a big intramural game, we were umm together, and got pregnant.
We were married at about 5 month’s pregnancy – June of 1980. My son Maury was born in November, 1980, my second son was born April 1982, and my third son was born February 1984. Umm, then we had our tubes tided. It had been ok though, because during school I was taking courses in Human development, and I thought this was a natural pause in developing some humans. Eh, it was “our line.” We lived near his parents in Chicago and Oak Park. There were many stories there. Mostly though, he was a Victorian House Painter, we helped him with the business, and we bought and sold houses that we’d live in, fix-up, and then sell.
We lived in two Oak Park houses and two Elgin houses and had 3 apartment buildings before we divorced. I can’t tell you all the reasons why … I remember that was about the time we were really going crazy and his mother was pushing him to get out of the marriage. He had also been going out without my knowledge and fallen for another woman. They moved in-together in a house bought also without my knowledge before the divorce was final.
How crazy was I - pretty crazy. When Maury Pat was 4 years old I had been angry for the two older kids for trashing their bedroom, and I picked him up and shook him. I went downstairs and was so distraught by my behavior I opened the yellow pages and called a counselor. I started sessions immediately and have never stopped since.
Another was added later who could do medications. At first they thought that I was bi-polar and depressed. I loved my kids like the dickens and was protective of them, but our energy seemed often zapped. It was better about the time of moving into the big 18 room Victorian in Elgin, because I’d gotten involved in the Boys schools and education. But, with the marriage I was being stressed because of the amount of time he was out of the house.
In 1990 I ended up in the hospital on the mental ward. I had scheduled ourselves to go back to finish school, but was going up against my husband a lot. I just remember there was a lot of anger. After about 7 weeks in the hospital, the insurance money had worn off. Money from extra apartments we’d owned were quit deeded over to other family members and my husband put me on disability with the state. The hospital said I couldn’t stay without insurance, and she said I think you are still suicidal and my best bet would be that you get out of the house by going to school. So, I left. But, things didn’t get better. I was hospitalized while at school in the hospital in Winona, and then again after my husband told me that if I went back to school he’d make sure there was a divorce, I would never see my kids, and the doors to the house would be locked.
That was the thing keeping me in the marriage. I couldn’t see how I could get out with my kids … I had no means to support them. I was afraid of my husband and he had told me and the doctors that he had wanted to kill me. I couldn’t and never did understand why. I’d never hurt my kids after that first time. I was a doting mother, and I had been his best friend.
Things got really crazy the second time hospitalized in Winona. I was put in a locked room with only a mattress. The only visitors were the two brothers Jerome and BJ. BJ brought me my slippers to protect my feet. When they visited they sat near the cold floor with me. The hospital didn’t know what to do with me. We were strange and we were suicidal. A favored brother-in-law was egged on by my sister-in-law to come up and get me. If he hadn’t come up they were going to release me to the State insane asylum. The promise he made them was that I be brought immediately to another psych ward in Chicago. He found the University of Illinois because they were reputed to be good and they accepted the Medicaid and Medicare funding I was on now.
That stay was 2 months long. They had made a new diagnosis of me after meeting in a very large room with about 30 staff present. Dr. Philip Woollcott had presided and I found out from one of the male nurses I’d started relating to that I had depression and I had chronic suicidality, and I had dissociative identity disorder.
I asked Joe the nurse what that was and he said I had multiple personality disorder. He helped me piece together some of my behavior changes. I think I’d seen Sybil, but at that time I had no real knowledge that I could be like that and be given that kind of a psychiatric title. I could handle depression – hell almost everyone has that, right? But, MPD … that was different.
The hospital was going to release me under the care of Dr. Woollcott, who I would initially see three times a week, but the condition was that I couldn’t move back in with my husband. It was decided financially the only way to do it was to move into one of the lower floor apartments on our Victorian. So my husband lived upstairs, and the kids slept up there, but would go back and forth from one household to another. For the second time in my marriage I got a job. I was a cashier at a large hardware store. That lasted, and my marriage lasted for 1 ½ years. We did the marriage counseling thing, but he’d started going to AA meetings and that’s where he met his future wife. The divorce took about 2 ½ years to finalize … I ended up with the house, which was enough to put money down on another and enough to pay for the divorce lawyer. He was crooked and took from us $18,000.
Much to the Judges dismay, Maury finally gave up the custody battle and let me have the three boys. That lasted for 3 years. I had tried to be a court reporter, and had ended up under the guidance of the state. When the court reporting didn’t work, they decided to put me in a program in Chicago – JVS. I was pretty high level, but their highest level was to teach people computers so we could become a secretary. I learned how to do word processing and was assisting the staff when I got the calling for my first REAL job. The same agency had needed someone to do payroll for the workshop portion of the program. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I was recommended to Rich by Sean, who got the recommendation through Dianne the typing instructor.
It was a bit hairy at times, but it seemed to be working for the most part. I would catch the metra 2 blocks away from my new place with the boys, and get out at Union Station and only have to walk two blocks to the JVS I was stationed at. I worked the full 6 months that my part-time status would allow, but they didn’t want to lose me. So, they gave me the title of shipping and receiving clerk. It was more money and it was full time. That was a pretty big deal. There was something else that had happened. Rich and us fell into a relationship by the end of October that year, 1994. He was my boss and had seen me affronted by several other male relations. I think he felt protective of me, but was also interested in me because of my intelligence, which was something I didn't believe in at the time. The thing with Rich was that he was married. He told me that I wasn’t to worry about that part, that that was his part. Well, naturally it wasn’t that clean, but it was the basics. 1 ½ years into employment I became the production coordinator. I was responsible for getting the work out to 100 clients – who would be trained by 3 specialists to do the work. I shared an office with Rich, his middle man, and the payroll computer. I kept doing payroll til I left.
Basically, the end had come after many attempts of my ex to come back and change up in that he decided he wanted the boys after all which I wasn’t for. It got very bad, and very expensive. I put about $20,000 on one credit card and about $10,000 on another fighting for custody and trying to put groceries on the table. Finally, we saw our accountant and he told us convincingly how bad the situation was. He said that we were going to need looking for subsidized housing. But, I swore on that trip home, to my son Maury who had accompanied me that I wouldn’t make him and his brothers live through it. Several things then happened. The boys went to live with their father; I lost the kids, the animals, the house, and my life. I had seen Dr. Woollcott for 7 years, and we’d been back to the hospital for smaller spurts, but this was too much for us and we again were back to the hospital.
By good fortune Joe the nurse was still there. What he said was basically, we were at the bottom of our life, and that there was nowhere else to go, but up. He said this would be a good time to go back and get our education. So, we gave up the job and boyfriend and doctor and went back to Winona, MN. Well, mostly. The boyfriend stuck it out with us. He’d come visit about every 3-4 weeks. We still went under.
The biggest problem was that the relationship that we desperately needed with the brothers fell through. BJ our favorite Christian Brother over 20 years had turned our relationship on one occasion sexual with one of our younger parts and that proved too much for us.
We had another major breakdown and ended up at the Mayo clinic where they did an ECT – six times. I couldn’t remember much after that. But, I got the assistance to finish school when the cobwebs cleared by the good Dr. Luttmers who was the head of the academic psych department. He was the one that I told about BJ and he’d made sure I got the help I needed, even though things seemed at the time to be so extreme. I didn’t know a month from graduation what I was going to do. Rich had the biggest hand in that. He convinced me that the boys needed me to be in a relationship and I needed them and he needed me and maybe I needed him. He helped me find my job and he helped me find my apartment all within about 3 days. He had done some homework.
I’ve worked now at my job for 8 years. I am a cross between a counselor and a social worker for adults with developmental disabilities. I work at a small Catholic non-profit so I also do accreditation work, staff training and program development. There were a couple of hospitalizations, one when my dad and his wife died. But, things are going pretty good now. It’s been about 4 years since I was in. Dr. Woollcott was going to retire, but he hooked me up with Dr. Marvin, and we’ve been seeing him now for the last 8 years. Twice, then once a week he has given us his patient ear. I can’t stop the part about being a multiple and sometimes depressed, but he’s made life possible.
There are a couple of other things of importance. We haven’t been able to stop eating since the incidents with BJ and the shock treatment. We went in ten years time from 140 pounds to 330 pounds. We’ve picked up problems physically with the weight, such as diabetes, sleep apnea, cholesterol, and arthritis in our spine and knees. Because of all this, we can only walk or stand for about 3-5 minutes. This puts a serious dapper on most things that we could be doing with our life. As negative as this seems, something else happened this year. After 14 years of being Rich’s mistress, he finally broke free in April of this year. We’ve been living together since. I’ve got more reason to live than I ever have had. I love my boys and they love me. But, it is different when someone wants to live and be with you … To this I say God Bless.
Ok, if it’s weight surgery we need to survive, then that’s what’s going to happen … good luck to us, good luck to you … you do now see the part of living in the zoo though, right? Just things are better now.
Ok, so that’s about it. Now we’re back in real time. I read over it again after I cut and pasted … there were a few grammatical changes, but for the most part I left it pretty much the way it was. I don’t know which part of us wrote it, but I didn’t want to interfere too much.
Hmm, then for us to be more just like us we checked on our Pirates. We’d earned enough money to put down on a trading center. We had extra bays sitting there before hand and because we got a couple more crew members, we were enabled to buy another banana plantation.
That didn’t take too long. We’re trying to make sure that we don’t actually play out the fighting game. That’s the part that takes the most amount of time. These changes might seem insignificant to you, but to us … every step in the right direction helps.
I’m not sure where we left off with Jillian and her father and all that stuff that puts me in their eyesight. I might have said it before, but we’d be just as good to let Jillian and her family knows this much about us. It’s the basics of where we have come from. I know that Rich would rather paint this rosy picture of us, but the truth is that we’ve come from some really messed up corners of the world.
Up to the doctors taking over and then Rich knowing us through work we’d been pretty crazy. Some of the time since has been the same. To be fair though if you knew mental illness you would see the progression of having gone from an abusive family to what became an abusive spouse and then we added to that some additional abusive relationships.
I guess that might call to mind – could we think of our relationship to Rich being abusive. I haven’t thought about this in so many words directly. I have to say up front that as far as physical and sexual abuse – Rich has never even hinted that he was anywhere other than honorable. Rich has always been gentle with us, which I suppose is one of the reasons the doctors have always accepted him as our love relationship.
The one that would be more called to question is Rich’s emotional abuse. I’m going to start this by immediately saying that NO I don’t think Rich is emotionally abusive, though there are some things that would be called into question.
The first part is Rich’s protectiveness. I don’t know if he would be like this without my particular problems, but then again I see it with his marital relationship. Rich is extremely protective to the point where sometimes it gets frustrating. I’m talking about the kinds of stuff like me getting up from my place on the couch or computer chair to leave the room and Rich wants to know where we are going. This hasn’t been evident all along, but we are conscious of it now and so will say something to its affect.
When I’m aware that he’s asking a question, I try to put it in the context it originated from. Most likely Rich is showing an interest in me and I should appreciate his concern. BUT, it’s just the living room. I should be able to get up, go to the bathroom, get something from the kitchen or possibly change my clothes in the bedroom without him knowing where or what I am doing.
I don’t say this to hurt him, because I think his major concern is making sure we as a system don’t do anything wrong. Where it is at my most frustration is when I’m doing something that I want to do to please him – like when I get up to go for the coffee pot so I can fill his cup. Ok, sure sometimes it’s for sneaky stuff like getting a fudgicle – but still even at that – I shouldn’t have to get or not get Rich’s approval when I’m doing something as simple as taking something from the freezer.
Rich has complained many times because I haven’t gotten up out of the living room to be doing something for myself, but the situation is that if I hadn’t stayed at home and done very little he would have probably been driven up the wall. There’s been a long standing joke about him telling me in a surprise about his whereabouts so that I can get rid of the other guy. I have to smile tongue and cheek as I’m saying this, because he knows that I go barely any place without his knowledge – and most often by his consent.
Maybe though at some point he questioned whether or not I’d find someone to replace him. I think that BJ was in a position of trying to replace Rich, but we hadn’t put him in that situation. I think BJ figured that if I’d go out with a married man that I might also be with him and carry that secret. I don’t want to go into all that, but there was no way we could have done another secret relationship or to have turned our head to the allowance of a younger part being out and abused. We’d gotten way past that. It was a shake to our system by what happened with BJ and maybe now in context it is easier to see why Rich is protective of us.
I don’t know what his end was in knowing that while he stayed in Chicago, I was up in Winona having been abused by BJ, and helped by those professionals into the hospital and into sessions of ECT. I suppose that Rich couldn’t have though much other than I was in the hands of reliable professionals.
I think that Rich came up sometime while I was in the hospital, but then again maybe he didn’t. I remember him telling me to write down his name and telephone number with an explanation of who he was so in case I came out of the treatments without my memory – I would have some contact back to him.
I did lose my memory for a month or two. But, I’m pretty sure if Rich hadn’t come up while I was in the hospital, he would have come up afterward to check on me for himself. I don’t know how he felt about that entire situation, because we weren’t capable of taking in the situation for ourselves. There are just a few things I’d remember.
During the hospital I remembered going down on a bed and waiting for the treatment with other clients waiting too. I remember finding myself in the lounge area and having someone tell me – you don’t remember anything do you? Do you remember who I am or why you are here? We didn’t. I don’t think I even remembered who we were – just that we were in a hospital and we just needed to do whatever they said.
I don’t know why I’m going back into all that. I’m not sure the connection from this point to where I was before we talked about the hospitalization.
I know that it’s in general a warning situation when we start thinking too much about hospitals as some kind of safety opposed to being out here in the real world.
We are worried about our lack of interest and concern with what I’m supposed to be doing for work. Sister thinks I’m doing stuff like CARF, but we haven’t picked it up again for sometime.
Outside it is a gloomy rainy day. We have the window cracked open and we’ve appreciated the extra hushed quiet. I’m thinking though that I wish I could see Rich again or hear from him. I think he was supposed to come in today and I think he was supposed to go to a game. I don’t know if he WILL come in, because I think he had to go be a manager at JVS, but I’m pretty sure there will be no game. More than likely he’s going to want to go to the grocery store tonight, because he was trying to squeeze it in even with the game.
He says that we’re almost out of fudsicles which is his response when we tell him that he doesn’t have to go. We can’t jump our mind over the fear of not having fudsicles. In that respect I know we have to do whatever it is that is necessary to let him go – and that it would be better if we could go with him.
We’ve reached some kind of compromise in that he says now that we can spend $5 all by ourselves. Hmm, I think this is what we were talking about. Rich was so protective that he couldn’t before trust us to go to the store on our own because of his thoughts that we might spend too much at the store that would be bad for us.
I think in any outside arena it could be called into question whether it was odd that we as a system couldn’t spend $5 at the grocery store all by ourselves. We have to give Rich credit because he would know if things were too hard for us more than anyone … with the exception of perhaps Dr. Marvin. Sometimes we will stretch our abilities with Rich or work or any other part of our life, but then we still go back to Dr. Marvin to talk it over and check it out. Is this ok? Do I have a case here … can we tell Rich we really want to spend at least $5?
Somewhere in the figuring out phase of all this, Rich had said he would give us $10. We then backed him way up and off of that point. No way $10 was he crazy??? We didn’t know if we could handle $5. That almost be like throwing the baby away with the bathwater! Unfortunately, in some ways it might seem almost literal.
Rich is pretty much I guess going into his preparedness stage before he goes away.
Our mind has had a hard time grasping that he will be gone for such a long time. I don’t think anything has been said over the last couple of days, but his fishing partner had to have backed out and they weren’t sure if Rich were getting a replacement which meant that he might be fishing on his own.
Rich really isn’t against that thought because it gives him more time and space to figure out his new boat and it would allow him to be going fishing tomorrow instead of Friday night. He’s really all for going early.
Rich in general is pretty stressed out. Yup yup we had to have emergency relations last night *giggle* Well you know … ok, we’re not going there but … there IS a lot of stress for him! We’ve been trying to accommodate Rich’s needs in that he’s had a couple days of not feeling well. His stomach was bothering him and he was in and out of the washroom. He said that seemed to pretty much go away after getting past court yesterday. I know him well enough though to know that it would really help getting him back outside and fishing.
BUT, that means that we need to help him in taking care of ourselves. I’m not sure why the need exactly to have us go shopping at this time of our life, but I can see the writing on the wall.
We did good in massaging him the other day for a couple of hours when he was sick and we did a pretty good job of following him to the store on Saturday and Sunday.
I think. Now I’m not sure. I think though maybe Friday or Saturday we were with Rich? I remember going to his mail box, the library and maybe somewhere else with him. I think though that he got sick and had to come home which had upset us because we had it in our mind that we needed to go get a gift for his mother.
Oh yeah … we also went to the fishing store. That’s when we asked if we were staying far enough back … meaning he’d gotten ahead of himself in walking and we found ourselves following him aimlessly. I think what happens in general are that guys get toward the fishy store and they start going loose at the knees. I’ve seen a lot of guys jogging down the aisles cuz they can’t get close enough to their chase without being besides themselves in eagerness!
Rich answered the phone at one point and then as soon as he was off he was telling me something about what he purchased. I asked … did you even hear what that other person said or were you shopping in your head. He looked at me and admitted shopping. I said, “I thought so.”
At one point he had me go sit down because we’d found a place and I’d been getting dizzy. I didn’t think I could go on for long, but he still had other needs. It was ok, but we were still in a place in our head that the world was coming at us at an overwhelming pace. I remember there being a woman with her child and she was having a hard time controlling him because all he wanted to do was to go up and down the escalator. The escalator seemed to much for us and we remember admiring the boy’s confidence in himself.
I think we went out one night maybe that night to some place we got some rib stuff.
I don’t know which city we were in … just knew it was one of those western suburbs.
We had a heck of a time figuring out which bottle of hot spicy sauce we would use on our French fries. It kept us entertained for a long time while Rich was eating. We forgot though about eating our rib tips, so not much got eaten before we’d filled up on French fries. That and lemonade. They have good lemonade.
Sometime too we figured out with Rich that we might be breaking out because of the pillow or pillow case. We noticed it because it usually happened on only one side of our face. That’s the precedent that happened when Rich came in last night because he had two new pillows. He’s been complaining for a long time about needing a new one and our concern put him over the top in need to do something now mode.
That was really nice of him, but somebody gave him a hard time saying stuff about keeping loyalties to pillows of over 30 years. He really wasn’t going to be lured into that argument, but it’s still fairly something we got to get over. I think he made concessions by saying we could use the old pillows in the living room, but that wouldn’t take care of the original problem in us breaking out.
Are we following any particular conversation btw? I don’t know what we are trying to say, but there’s this other part we should say something about too. Mostly because we went with Rich on Mother’s Day shopping for his Mom and then we went to her house and then too there was stuff we wanted to say about the boys.
I don’t know how it is that we’ve been able to think of anything lately, because we aren’t processing our thoughts proper. I think this started about the time of needing to go in for the deposition and in Jillian’s over-abundant need to insert her in the relationship between Rich and us. Is it like that? Well maybe not all the way but something like that. We still haven’t figured out if she has noble reasoning with her thoughts. So far though she seems to be protecting Rich from us because she thinks we’re out to ruin him. That’s not such a good place, but she’s absolutely no reason to trust us. She’s only read a couple hundred pages from us.
I know that seems to be enough from her viewpoint to be coming to some headway, but there’s a whole lot more to us than just that. I really haven’t been taken with her patience, but then again for the most part she’s just living her life independently with her woman and however that gets split up … Her father seems to have stayed away from it except when Jillian’s in need. What I’m trying to say here is that she’s figured most of her life out on her own so in that respect with her work AND her being a student – she’s showed a lot of self-patience. So for now we’ll think about things on the good side.
Maybe if we go out with Rich tonight we can figure out some other stuff. This another 10 year plan … well that’s not going to go. I could see the need to finish the divorce, but sometime we gotta meet and that’s going to be pretty traumatic and scary and even traumatic and scary to Rich. But, usually those things work out.
I’m really happy with where we are going with the relationship to his mother.
Ok, I think we’re up to this part now. We should say something of Sunday … our apology for all those other days we’ve missed I don’t know where we were. I’m sorry.
Sunday we got ready to go so that we were leaving the house at 10:30 am with Rich.
We went to IKEA. Rich and us on the way home from dinner the night before had gone through a lot of figuring. I think if Jillian were here, she could go through this sort of thing too, but well for now it’s just been Rich and us. How it happened the night before was that we started talking about what kind of things that could be gotten for Rich’s mother’s day gift. I would say an idea and then Rich or us would add to that to either continue the shopping thought or to dismiss it. We went through this for about 40 minutes. I would say how about this, or how about that.
At some point we’d suggested new crystal serving dishes, because his mother serves meals out of pans and plastic dishes. Rich took that up to be a good thing, but he wasn’t so sold on the crystal part. I was worried that he wasn’t going to get something good enough, but I’d seen during Christmas that not so much gets spent on gifts so to some degree I’d have to settle down and pick his choice. Before we got to that point, I told him that I didn’t trust him and that the decision would have to go through my approval. Rich was very patient. He said how about I let you contribute to ideas, but that he would make the decision.
We gave it a quick think through. We know our case was sunk in the water. He was right in that it was his mother and it would have to be his choice. Ok, ok … so be it, but he had to listen to us too!
Hmm maybe this goes back to the part about getting a $5 bill to spend money at the grocery store – no matter what!
I’d never been to IKEA, but Rich knew about it through Jillian. It’s where she’d gotten her bedroom furniture. On that concern to make a long story short – I HATED THE PLACE! I’m pretty sure you could get a good deal, but it was a lot of generic items, not many choices, and they thread you through their complete store by making you follow arrows and only going through narrow passage ways to get from one part to another. I’d never been to a store where they treated you like you were on an amusement ride. MAN! I was pretty beat when I finished. This whole idea of shopping is fairly new to us and it didn’t take a whole lot before we were overwhelmed.
There was so much around us and everything was barely presentable on skids and pallets and I felt like in the game candyland … I was never going to make it to the end. Then to make things worse they shoved at us a whole lot of self serve cash registers and only a couple real employees. I think the store must have had at least 4 people … half of them were trying to beat up customers!
Rich let us go though when we very crankily asked to find some place to sit down.
They had a small deli type thing by the door and from there I’m pretty sure we were horting and snorting. YEEGADS. NEVER would I go back in a store like that.
It took me a while to calm us down. We were all out of sorts. We couldn’t believe it that when we found Rich again that he’d paid for the items but that they were not in a bag. WHAT is UP with THAT! He said you had to buy bags and so he didn’t want one. OH MY GOSH that set off a whole new thing in the cheapness of a place. BUT then we hadn’t been shopping for a long time and so we asked Rich if that was peculiar to this store or if they weren’t all like that. He said it was pretty much just this store. YEKKS!
He calmed us down by a couple of things. He said that we’d stop at Walgreens closer to his mothers and we’d pick up a bag and tissue and we asserted and a card too, right!?? Right!
We don’t remember much of the rest of that car ride except at one stop or another there were cookies involved. I think Rich was still trying to settle down his stomach from the day before and he probably knew it would calm me down so we all went with that.
As far as the actual purchasing of item – We had not much say about the dishes.
Rich got one large bowl and three veggie size bowls. We didn’t like them because they were just regular and not crystal and they were PLAIN OFF_WHITE! BLAH! Rich’s point was that they would go with anything. He couldn’t remember what color dishes she had, but thought it was something white or blue. I didn’t think it seemed like a very warm and inviting gift, so I came up with the idea of getting placemats too.
I reminded him of the ones we’d used the last few times that hadn’t been washed or maybe were too old to come fully clean. I DIDN’T want to embarrass her but I figured it be a good idea in giving them with the bowl.
I overran Rich on the quantity item. He thought 4 placements and I thought 6.
Actually the ones he let me choose there were only 6 left so that really worked out, but my thought was there would be enough for Bud and his mom and us and Rich and his brother and one more for the stuff in the middle. Or any other arrangement. It wouldn’t have been enough to cover Rich’s two nieces being there and I felt bad about that, but we were stretching Rich’s limits. He insisted that his mother wouldn’t use a candle … HMPF! Warm, we needed to bring it more warm!
When we got to the Walgreen’s Rich went in by himself encouraged by me. We were still too close to the other store where a cow seemed to be delivered through our internal shocks that we figured it be better for us to stay in the car and reconnect with the computer. Rich had made sure we knew no computer at his mother’s house, but as it turned out he spent most of his free time with Bud on their computer HMPFF
Rich came back in an average amount of time with his stuff. I was waiting patiently
while he packed stuff in the back. I did call out not to forget bringing up the card so he could sign it before we got there. He followed through and we said as he was adjusting himself – let me see, let me see! He opened it up for us, but then we saw something that seemed a bit odd.
We said it says birthday? Rich says yeah it was his mom’s birthday. We said …. No I don’t think so. But, then we got confused. We knew enough to figure out though that it was really supposed to be mothers’s Day. We had to repeat that a couple of times before Rich figured it out. He’d gotten a card and bag that said Happy BIRTHDAY! Oh Lordy … he said he almost got birthday tissue too, but something changed his mind – BUT it wasn’t that he’d figured out the day.
I felt so bad for him. YEEKS I gotta GO though! More later …
At the lake with Fishy Face!
Is this easier to see? It’s hard to say. This is a new day then the other post that we’re going to be adding about the same time as this one. I played around most of the day and so am just getting to write a little something down and it’s about 5:45 pm. We’re out at a small lake with Rich and he’s practicing his casting, and then too we’re talking to CS in text messages.
We’re going over the part that she just learned that Scott will not be coming to the wedding because he had to see his step-son off to Afghanistan. It was an opinion of both of us that if the stepson was going to Afghanistan 3 times he’d probably be able to take care of himself. Eh, not my life.
From the sounds of it though Ellen my former sister-in-law might be coming to the wedding with my niece – Nathan the groom’s cousin. I’ve always liked Meredith and I have to admit that I liked Ellen the first wife more than Deb the second wife, and now I understand though the grapevine that Scott and Deb are talking about a divorce. Eh … not involved and not going there.
So anyway … Here we are on a beautiful day. Just above 70 I would guess with a slight breeze. Rich just changed his lures. He’s not trying to catch fish, he’s just watching the play and his ability to toss. It’s really relaxed down here.
There’s the smell of barbeques. We had chips and a roast beef sandwich with us. No beer. There are other people around, but no one is bothering anyone else. It’s a small enough lake that you can see around it entirely.
And there is a gentle sloping of the bank so it looks like it’s own amphitheatre.
It’s pretty cool. And, then you know as far as life goes – you give me a computer and I’m fine about anywhere you set me except in the rain. Oh oh he’s going to want his lure box again. Oh good he’s only come over to get the chips. I asked for one and he gave me two. He got the kind that are organic and have sea salt and black pepper. Whew … they’re hot.
A duck just floated back. Whoops mighty fisherman now laying next to me on his blanket. I asked him what part of fishing is this and he said this is the analyzing part. Funny I have seen pictures of the guys analyzing on their pictures too!
I have to be quiet when he is analyzing he says. Hmm, I wonder if his eyes are open?
Ahh just finished the water. I think we’ll last until I have to go to the bathroom.
I think though before we go home, we are going to Walmart. I don’t ever remember going with Rich to Walmart before so it will be a good experience. He says he wants to pick up a little grill and we’re going to want some kind of seating situation – mobile, but big enough to hold us too. I’m thinking I’m too big for those kind they fold up and bag. Maybe we’re going to need looking for a normal folding one, but then I think if we were going to get one anyway, we might as well get a lounge chair. That work better for me using the lap top. I think. I’m really going to have to check it out when we see what they got.
Hmm, I asked Rich if we couldn’t go to his fishy store to get the stuff, but now he’s saying that he’s thinking of not going because he has to look around some to see who has the kind he wants. Boo Boo!!! He finally got me out and now he wants to take me back? This means I won’t most likely get to go with him when he picks it out. He says he doesn’t have any money now anyway. BUT, he’s got to get it before we go next weekend – because mostly I think we’re going to do some old fashioned BBQing! That doesn’t happen enough so I miss it, especially on a day like today when I can smell it in the air. I think it’s not way old fashioned though because he says he’s getting a gas one. Uh huh uh huh … well that’s not really roughing it!
It gets me to thinking of the vegetables I used to make and love so much. We would do the hard crispy kind and put in tin foil with butter and then throw it in with the charcoal. Mmm was that good!
Ok, we just had dinner, remember?
Hmm, thought that guy next to us caught a fish, but it was just a long weed. Well it was almost exciting.
This is a good exercise in stretching out my legs. I don’t suppose I’m going to be able to stand on them when I get up, but I don’t really want to leave now. I think there are little snoring sounds coming from Rich. I think this is going to work real well over the summer. Just have to be able to handle the bugs and heat. But, then there is this part too where everything seems so peaceful as if not a care in the world.
I can’t say that I’m thinking too much yet. I think earlier I was able to say that part that at least we had the groups to pay attention too. I had Admin group … I think I told you that part. On Friday I also had the Thinking group. That was pretty fun. I have to try and remember now what we did.
Oh wait I almost got it. Something about handing out metals (paper). I’m not remembering yet. Hmm, I know something with Bloom Taxonomy. I was finding verbs that they could test out for me like in summarizing, counting, recalling, etc. And, if they could do it they got a metal – and there were tons of them and sometimes if they could do one that was a little harder, then they got a couple awards, and then the winners were the ones that got the most metals. Two of the guys did it. I was happy for each of them because both were the kind that cared about this kind of thing.
I left right after the group – well within a half hour.
And, there was Dr. Marvin too. I think for the majority of the time we talked about how I was doing with my sister. It has some ups and downs, but pretty much I think he figures that this is a good thing and something I wouldn’t have been able to consider doing in the past. It would have been too threatening. I’m pleased that I’m making some progresses, but I’m not getting a lot of support by anyone other than Dr. Marvin. Most of the guys here are still thinking that I’m going to break down because the contact will prove to be too much.
I’m really hoping and praying that if I keep working it out slowly between the relationship and discussing things with Dr. Marvin that it will work. We’ll let him know about my brother’s part learned, but it doesn’t feel safe enough yet. I could see Scott thinking everyone is going to be here so that he has to make a entrance … like he was King instead of being disregarded.
I guess it’s natural to have thoughts of him because he’s in close relation to some stuff going on. I really don’t want to get into the control issues and other problems. Best to let it go and just admire the soft ripple on the water.
Rich had started to wake up before as if we were going home, but we put the hat back over his sunglasses and said noooooo we’re having too good of a time … just relax. We got more typing to do. This is actually the strongest I’ve felt in typing for a while.
It seems at home lately that my thoughts are getting clunky and hard to manage. This morning I started off feeling more responsible in that about 6:30 am, certainly before Rich got up … we went through the whole house and cleaned stuff up … at least the parts that were joint or of my own mess-making. That worked pretty good.
I think it helped Rich too, but then we had a problem with the computer getting that bad adware stuff and so we were grouchy about the time Rich was announcing he was going to the store. He was right not to ask, because we were way in past our ears in trying to get control of our computer back.
On the way over here though he said something even though we were by then almost out of grouchy … something about him doing the groceries and we said we helped because we’d gone out to the kitchen to help him put things away. Then I realized he was talking about the way hard part of going to the stores and lugging things up the stairs. And, then he said something about doing the clothes. And, again I felt a little insulted. I told him I helped with the clothes.
I guess he wasn’t talking about the folding part that I did though … he was talking about going up and down the stairs. There’s no doubt that he did the hard part.
The only thing I can do is be more and more conscious of volunteering myself even when it is hard like going to the store. I think he wants to maintain control over that … and I think we last left it that he had to let me choose at least ONE thing or I wouldn’t feel inspired to go. Yeah right. Not even one thing?
*Sigh*
But, as far as good things go. Rich is up again and throwing his lure into the lake. He’s reminding me that it’s about time to go so I have to finish things up here. But, It has been very nice and beautiful, right?
Being responsible is very tiring ... well thinking about being responsible is tiring
Good morning. We’re going to try something different this morning. We thought we’d try writing. I can’t remember the last time we did this. Hmm, Maybe on Sunday when we went out to the nearby lake with Rich? I’m not sure at that if it was put in the blog. I don’t think we had at the time of writing a computer connection. It would be on the small computer, but I don’t have that one up right now.
We’re trying to catch our breath. It is very hot and muggy in the room. I’m having a hard time breathing. I had some sugar too so that is making things none the better. I did something I wasn’t supposed to do in that I opened the window. We needed to get some air because I thought I was going to pass out.
It’s a little bit better now, but I still feel lightheaded. It will get better, right?
I was frustrated with the pirate game because it seems the work computer is slow and one out of each 10-12 screen changes it loses my screen through Internet Explorer.
We’re thinking that would be a good detriment to our playing the game after we get to work. Not to say though that we’re willing to give up some of this time we are sanctioning to be ours. I know it just works like this.
Yesterday seemed to turn out ok, but was not spectacular. We had spent too much time with the pirates. Doing that a lot lately and we’d talked to Dr. Marvin about that this Tuesday. We didn’t want to talk about anything serious – least of all bills. Apparently someone made an agreement with him though to be looking at bills at quarter after the hour – giving it 15 minutes.
We told him at that time that we still didn’t want to do bills and he said ok. But, then he started asking the questions I knew were going to follow. Hey! I said I didn’t want to and then he said, but you also said at 5:15 pm. Like oh … yeah. Ok, *frown* I guess.
I can’t say I remember much about that part of the session. I know there was a key word dropped – choice. I think he wanted us to think of the bills as receiving things that we want and having made those choices.
I’m not willing to go all into that right now, but again we have another weekend approaching. Hmm, we’re going to be with Rich fishing again though. Maybe we’ll try to bring it in the car with us. I think it’s going to be a 5 hour trip to the lake.
Rich was going to check out a few things, because we are getting a restriction from his mother that we have to be back by 1 pm for dinner. That frustrates me because it is my weekend too and I wanted to get the most out of the fishing. I don’t want to only do 3 hours on Sunday if we’re not getting down there ‘til late into Saturday morning. Rich has a game though tomorrow night. The best deal would be if the game was rained out. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about canceling and we could leave Friday instead of way early Saturday morning. He’s thinking of leaving like 3-4 am. Well I’m game for that because I like being up and could talk, fall asleep, or work on my computer since up.
Think it’s a harder day though.
Hmm, it’s a little later. It’s about 10:15 am. I found myself back over on Pirates and then checking up on a few other things. I seem to be pretty hopeless. Rich was going to come in and I thought that might help, but he should have been here by now – at least 45 minutes ago. So, I don’t know if he had a change of plans.
I don’t know why I might need that kind of structure. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’ve heard ourselves doing this before with our avoidance of work we’re supposed to be doing. It’s like what happened with school. I know theoretically life would be better if I just got some work done. I don’t know where this anxiety is coming from – maybe from NOT doing it?
I think it’s been hard to concentrate on work because I’m having so much more fun on the game and it isn’t nearly as stressful. It seems that since we had the legal troubles, we’ve been in and out of our ability to focus.
Sr. came by and asked about CARF yesterday. We said something fairly lame, but it got by. I think that in many ways I must be thinking like a criminal, because I’m stealing her time. I just don’t know how to stop. I could hear my V-mind saying don’t think … just do it.
Dr. Marvin said yesterday too that people in general don’t like doing things that feel like work or in paying bills, but these things just have to get done. I don’t know sometimes I feel we’re sabotaging ourselves.
I didn’t get much time to talk to Rich last night. He had his monthly card game over at Ron’s. I think I fell asleep on the couch about 10:30 pm and he said he got in about midnight. I forgot to ask him if he won bunches of money. He had tucked me in to bed, gone to use the washroom, and I don’t remember seeing him again until the morning. We were really zonked. Rich then slept in to about 6:45 am. Good Rich
We’ve done a few things over the last couple of days at work, but not much. We got a required thing with a client request from social security and we got the pictures to Rosa – who’d been waiting not so patiently. I’m afraid she knows us enough to know that if we aren’t getting done with something we might need a reminder. I don’t know if she does that on her own or through Sr. Theresa, but none-the-less it puts stuff in the double red dot file. That’s the file that gets work that should have been done yesterday.
I stopped on the way to work this morning and I got some donuts from 7-11. I’m feeling guilty about that right now.
It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about weight. I know I’m about 260 now. I don’t remember if my low weight was 250 or 240. It seems to have been put back a million miles from the front of the pack. It just seems in general if it’s important and can be avoided it is. I’m pretty scared to just be thinking this much. I don’t know how else to start the process of tuning back in. I do seem to recall that I have to find the work and put it back on top of my computer screen.
I’m not sure how to do that or where or what my work is. I know it has something to do with CARF … Someone left the thick survey preparation guide in front of me between keyboard and screens.
It hurts my brain to think of what might have to be done with that. I keep looking over at the empty mailbox as if something from that direction could pull me back away and into something else less threatening. If I could only just get something done, right?
Ok, If I was going to try setting something up I’d have to look in probably a word file for something we might have been writing. Let’s start there. I’m going to look in the Word Recent docs to see if there is anything in their CARF related.
Oh man … this is hard stuff! I can figure out now what we were supposed to be doing. There’s three things I discovered. There’s a document that we were writing … I had remembered that something like this had existed, because we told Sr. something about making 4 line summaries. It seems that we’ve been summarizing from the survey book stuff from the first chapter of CARF. It looks like we’re on the 4th part of question 3. There’s probably about 120 questions and some of them are very long … like there are 7 parts of question 3, 12 parts of question 4, and 2 parts of question 5. That would summarize the first section on leadership.
Maybe if we can take this one little step at a time we can get ourselves back in it. I would really like to turn in something to Sr. Theresa.
The question we are on now says, “How does your organization respond to the diversity of its stakeholders in the area of sexual orientation?” This is a tough question on its own, but I know that we have to find some resources to back up what the center does in this area. I think this is where we got the third thing. First thing was there is a Word document with the answers we’ve given so far, and then there is the survey book we’re getting the questions from, and then there is the open Paper Tiger program which hopefully is going to give us some clues.
I think the game was to type in a few key words and see what comes out. I’m going to put something here of the answers and then I’m going to add to it within my blog document. I know I’ve been avoiding both, but I’ve been missing the blog. If I concentrate on doing it here maybe there will be more incentive to own up to what we’re supposed to be doing. We need some kind of structure until we get more directly back into it. So if you’re not interested in CARF skip this Next part, k?
CARF start
1.A.1.a. Define the structure of your organization’s leadership.
St. Rose Center is owned and operated by the Daughters of St. Mary’s of Providence. It has a Governance Board, an Advisory Board, a Behavior Management and Human Rights Committee, and it has a Safety Committee. St. Rose has an Administrative Team with an Administrator, two QMRPs and an advisor. There are nine Trainers, and an Administrative staff of secretary, driver, bookkeeper and art/substitute.
1.A.1.b. Where are the roles and responsibilities of each level of leadership defined?
Each role has a formal job description outlining his or her responsibilities and there is an Organizational chart that outlines the roles each position has in relation to others. There is further information in the Corporate Compliance Plan. In addition 119 regulations and policies and procedures give a deeper understanding of roles. Rosters for each of the committees are kept in folders with the minutes.
1.A. 2. How would surveyors see demonstration of leadership guiding the following?
A. Mission and direction of the organization
Through its mission statement and strategy plans which are updated annually. Through the upkeep of the Performance Improvement report, in compliance with policies, procedures and regulations, through both IDHS and CARF surveyors checking the quality and quantity of the work completed and through collecting information from persons served and other stakeholders.
B. Promotion of value and achievement of outcomes in the programs and services offered
By adherence to a SWAT survey, in recruiting and retaining staff members who are focused on the individual, through our policies and procedures such as the Leadership Guide, through our level of commitment to community services, through teaching responsibility to individuals served the Performance Analysis Report and Mission statement
C. Balance between the needs of persons served and other stakeholders
Through surveys taken by the individuals served, staff, parents and informal surveying of customers through product satisfaction, in balancing our financial accounts, in addressing cultural needs, practices and diversity, in staff training of finding solutions to everyday problems, through interviews, observations, through meetings and meeting minutes upheld.
D. Financial solvency
From Previous surveys from the IDHS and CARF stating clarifying our history of solvency, in meeting legal and regulatory requirements as to financial budgeting, in preparing fiscal policies and procedures, in reproducing the results and measuring the results of financial measures, and in including financial efficiency in performance improvement.
E. Compliance with insurance and risk management requirements
By maintaining a leadership guide policy and procedure in compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements, by having comprehensive insurance coverage and ability to secure assets, by having written risk management plans, by working through potential risks and liabilities, by qualifying the priority of coverage through SWOT, and by our policies and procedures on wrongdoing.
F. Ongoing Performance Improvement
By the collecting, analysis and reporting of information from the Performance Improvement report, in short and long range planning of performance improvement systems, by attending to performance goals and objectives, through support of the technology and system plan, by reviewing surveyed items in need of improvement, by analyzing critical incidents, by gauging risk reduction in performance activities.
G. Development and implementation of corporate responsibilities
Through the Leadership Guide of policies and procedures as corporate responsibilities, in promotion of value/achievement outcomes, in balancing expectations of persons served and other stakeholders, in receiving input from program service development and program planning, through implementation of annual reports, and in recruiting, retaining and training of trainers and QMRPs.
H. Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
By upholding standards required by ADA and Department of labor, by reviewing legal documents such as required of the contract with IDHS, in agreement with state and federal salary and wage requirements, in preventing litigation, malpractice and other violations of ethical codes, through risk management, through our corporate compliancy program, and maintenance of public and private documents
1.A.3. How does your organization respond to the diversity of its stakeholders in the area of:
A. Culture – Through disability awareness of the ADA such as history of ignorance, fear and challenge, through proving access and positive interactions of various cultures, and in protecting cultural rights as stated in our rights for persons served as by accepting cultural challenges such as social problems, wealth, resources, poverty, unemployment as well as transportation and multicultural tension.
B. Age – Through staff training of age and normalization in compliance with state regulations under administrative requirements, analyzing test scores as ICAP age equivalence, surveying program performance by following age and effect of time spent in the program, in including age ranges as demographic variables such as the annual report, and in declaring it a non-discriminatory factor
C. Gender – In meeting IDHS regulations for training including gender appropriateness, in analyzing program effectiveness, by charting demographics program participants, in the annual report, on policies of affirmative action, equal employment and equal access, in advocacy against sexual abuse as noted in human rights policies and procedures, and as a non-condition for eligibility to the program.
D. Sexual orientation -
CARF End
Well this is the first part that was already done. I think I’m going to have to go back and skim through it to get some idea of how we’re writing this stuff. Whichever part does this and has been taking off – MOST LIKELY PLAYING PIRATES!
It’s time to come back, K?
Hmm, this is hard. We had a distracting phone call from the telephone company asking me to pay a past balance. I suppose this sort of thing could happen if one doesn’t pay bills. HMM???
That’s funny. I remember someone telling Dr. Marvin when he asked what we have to do next with the billing – that we needed to wait until someone called and threatened to stop our phone service and then someone would pay. And, that’s what happened so maybe this has been in the works? We’re still too scared to check the account balance, but since we haven’t been paying bills there must be money in there. We have made the proper deposits.
Ok, back to regular stuff. I skimmed the above and then decided to put it back into it’s own document. We’ll have to look at them side by side for now. It was too confusing. We did make a few simple corrections and we left the formatting with the double column and the 10 pitch. That seems to be easier for us to read, though it was easier to count length of section by 4 lines instead of now having 8-9 lines of the shorter stuff.
Yes. There is no end of the worrying over not much that we do. I think it’s part of the obsessiveness. I know this started up real bad again when we had the court stuff, but it’s died down now for a week. We have to be trying very hard to get back into it. Ok?
Hmm, what’s next. I think we had it printed out to see if that was easier for us to concentrate on. This back printer isn’t working again, but the front one is … hold on we’re going to get out of our chair and look for it. BRB.
Ok, I read it the second time and this time I tried harder to stay with the document in our thinking through the words being read. This is a very hard thing for us to be doing right now. I have to get past the difficulty though and into the part where we are writing those kinds of words based on the facts of the program. Maybe the best thing then is to try it out again. We’ll cue in the keywords and see if they provide any assistance for the sexual orientation one. Right off the top of my head I see that is supposed to come up in our non-discriminatory practices, but the last time I added, Sr. took it out again. I wonder if I can challenge that so we can put it down as being done? Let’s look. Ok, be strong!
D. Sexual orientation – In helping individuals served obtain access to community resources and services, by compliance to all legal and regulatory requirements of federal, state and local governments, by developing staff competency for supporting people and involving them in decision making, from policies and procedures acclaiming individual rights, health and safety, and in individualized and comprehensive services.
E. Spiritual beliefs -
Hmm, well we got this far and then it seems we rerouted ourselves back to the Pirates. Hmm, that reminds me somehow about something Dr. Marvin stated last week.
He said that we didn’t really have anyone modeling the bill payment. We told him about my mother giving us the job of bill paying and then when that didn’t work until the time she left through the divorce, she just stashed the bills in a drawer in the dining room. My father had found this drawer after she left.
That’s not an excuse, but would give a little inclination of where were coming from. I remember telling him we worked since we were 12 years old at my father’s gas station. That would have seemed to be a better direction for us to have gotten responsible, but to tell the truth we learned probably more bad habits there then not. We did go outside when the bell rang because we had to at that time fill gas in the car and we washed customers windows.
We also did inventory once a month AND there was one other thing. My father had a card box of all the shelves in it and each employee had to take everything off the shelf and clean two of them a shift. We managed to do that, but it was spotty.
Pretty much what happened there was a lot of talking. We were like 12 and there were guys there between 16-18 years old that we’d be paired up with.
I remember some other things that were more sexual in nature going on and the running around like chasing and squirt guns and that sort of thing. There was Chuck, Doc, Mark and Bill and Pat … there were more, but these are the guys I remembered. Doc was a mortician by day and had some of the absolutely best stories. I don’t know where Chuck came from but the others were neighbors or boys scouts from my brothers troop.
This is as much as I want to remember of that time period. I can’t say we were responsible then either. We took advantage of not being forced directly to do work – except when the air horn sounded. Then it is like now where we go into looks like we’re working mode like when sister or one of the staff come back here.
Lordy … we mess up so much in not doing work. I look at other people doing their jobs during the regular course of the week, or even the day – as we look at the staff. Everyone seems busier than we do. WHY does this give us SUCH GRIEF!
Why is it that we can’t take very seriously that we have real responsibilities.
I wonder what happened to Rich today too. He was supposed to be a good example to us. Help us get on track. I know we can’t lay this on his lap. What are we fighting against?
I know we’ve gone down the checklist. Are we lazy, uninspired, bored, or worthless? Maybe any of the above will do. BUT, that all doesn’t seem to make me more motivated, so of what use is it?
There’s like a weight in my head in the forefront of my brain. I can feel the heaviness between my two eye brows.
Then she lets go of a heavy *sigh*. I’m waiting out the clock. It’s about 2:15 pm now. Karla is hustling in her room almost ready to leave. We haven’t been talking lately because she’s busy, I look busy and I’ve been going home earlier on Friday.
Thank God it’s almost Friday.
Tomorrow should be an easier day because of the Pirates and then the Thinking Group. That’s 3 hours of the day that are going to go very quickly. I got a call from the lady at CSO saying I have 3 clients coming up in June for a annual meeting. I agreed, but noted I hadn’t done anything with them yet. So we set appointments for June 3rd, 10th, and 17th. Two of the parents have called back to confirm the meeting date and time. I think the 3rd parent works. Maybe I’ll hear later today or tomorrow sometime. It’s the kind of information that could easily be given to the secretary if I’m tied up in meetings. Shoot that’s a whole set of hard thoughts I don’t want to think about.
But it seems to break some kind of internal dilemma. I am going to be required or forced to work. It’s nice that Holly isn’t going to be here for a month, but that means that Sr. will be visiting back here more often than usual. Sometimes she just likes to talk things over.
Wow did I call that right. I had slipped back into the game and then Rich called because he’s having a real problem day, but before we got into that too far, sister came in. We heard her coming so had released the call from Rich and then after Sister left we talked to him for a few more minutes. He’s having a lot of trouble with his lawyer who is pressuring him on the bill. Rich has wanted so long for this divorce to be over.
It seems that the part of my boys paternity is being sidelined. I think Dr. Marvin really gets a lot of credit for that. They would have had to – the both of the lawyers gotten together to go over why that was so critical. I know they got more in billing, but it’s really irrelevant as long as money hasn’t been siphoned for these “imaginary kids” of his. I can’t believe that her lawyer isn’t really socking it to her too and that it’s most likely coming from her inheritance money.
It almost has to be since it’s not coming from the house, nor does she have a job.
Rich says that there is a court date on Tuesday. We think that’s the date … it really has to be confirmed so that he gets there in time. I think that the lawyer may make a movement to dump the case. Rich just said he paid like an additional $2500 and he owes $4500. That’s really not a significant amount to drop a case. I think he’s been paying like 1000-1200 a month.
I think the lawyer is pushing too that Rich fills out another discovery, but Rich insists nothing has changed. So at that impasse – it’s hard to know what’s coming next except by next week something is most likely going to break and in the meantime – Rich had a hell of a time today. He went through the house I think making sure all his papers were in order.
It didn’t come up today, but it has come up this last week that apparently Rich paid about 1000-1200 on a riding lawn mower for his son. I feel that’s a situation where the son took advantage of his father. If he was going to take over the lawn … and there’s no reason he shouldn’t since he’s not doing anything for the house – like paying money, but to go that length saying I’ll only do it if I can ride the lawn mower … damn that’s just tragic.
I can remember getting the boys a lawn mower … I had bought it for the house because I mowed my own lawn and then they took it with them when they went to live with their father. It was a push lawn mower and the kids used it to earn money by cutting their neighbors lawn. I bet Chris uses it max 3-4 times and then something is going to go wrong and it will sit and he will continue to do nothing and Rich will have paid, and then he will have to pay too for it to be cut by a pro.
I don’t mean to dis Rich’s son. I’m sure he’s fine. But, it doesn’t seem fair he can ask for so much free, then ask for more, and then not talk to Rich because he and his mother are mad at him. Something there has to give and it seems Rich is the only one that gives especially with any consistency. Just makes me mad.
As to sister coming in – that was something that happened also almost by Q. She asked specifically what I’d done today. I showed her the work I’d already done from before. She seemed to appreciate it a lot, which leave me that much more ready to feel like a heel.
I’m almost grateful for one thing though … If sister keeps up with me – it will force us to work for real. This is probably a good thing – sorta like when the bill companies call to shut-off services then we pay, Or when my father was around we looked more work dominated.
This is such a huge character flaw of mine it makes me feel sick in writing it.
But, this is honestly who I am or who we are. Even now I’m looking at the clock thinking just gotta make it through one more day. It’s about 3:30 and we’ve resolved not to do any playing on the game, but to deposit the pretend check at 3:36 pm. We’ve gained 21 of the 70 strength and we’re going to need that to give us something to do after we get home.
Rich said that he wasn’t going to be home until about 8 pm. He was getting ready when I talked to him to be going to the ump job. I told him then maybe he could get home early enough to get some sleep. But, even when we reminded him he was up til midnight – he still thought he’d gotten enough sleep. I don’t think so though. I think it is part of what made the day hard for him.
It will be better all around if Rich can get through this next week AND there is progress on his court case. That will take off some of the stress. There is no way to cut it – getting a divorce is a very stressful hardship. Rich says that he’s given her everything extra she asked for there should be no reason it is still going on. If I can get through it without having to sacrifice my child to some fucked up test … then that will be good for me.
Mostly though the good will come in having seen Rich through this ordeal – he said something in the end about having a good Margarita waiting for him when he gets home. Today I won’t complain as I make it. I will try to wait for him at the door. No, he’s not asking that … just seems he deserves. We were thinking how happy we were that between the two of us we came up with this whole massage deal. I think more than anything else it allows you to baby the other when he or she is having a bad day.
So in some way you can give to that other love and be doing something that makes him happy.
We did talk the other day about stuff. It was after the Dr. Marvin meeting on Tuesday. He had come home late and while he was eating or more so after he was done he’d asked how the appointment went. I told him something about the appointment – but, the ready conversation pretty much started with the part of trying to be more helpful to him, but that if I go to the grocery store, I should be allowed to buy one thing and even that the price could be set. We’re thinking here like one $5 item.
There I buried my treasure right on Cue. I now have $6,726,359. I know with all that I should be able to get something at the store all by myself.
Rich didn’t see the point though. He went through a few arguments that I know he would go like trying to save money and such. Well yes, that’s a point, but then my way of thinking is to then let us get something worth $2.50.
He couldn’t understand nor could we explain well enough why this was a control issue we were trying to get through. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but I know right now it’s a block or as CARF would say a barrier to me getting to the store with him.
Rich tried to explain all the order that went into his patterns and decisions. He questioned his whole principle of being the bread bringerbackerer. I tried to tell him he was doing a very good job, but then he couldn’t imagine why I would want anything different than what he brought me. We tried to tell him about independence and free choice and being given the luxury of picking just ANYTHING … within the budget of course.
But, then he said he would let me buy something but it would depend on what I wanted to buy. I was like knocking head against wall frustration. NO DEAR … that’s just it … I can buy ANYthing within my locked in price. That’s where he went into explaining that I would make a bad sugary decision. We agreed, yes we might. But, we would be responsible for that decision.
That’s about when the conversation turned to marshmallows. There was one day about 5-6 months ago that I’d found his stash of marshmallows. I didn’t eat them all, but I did get sick because my tummy was full before popping the handful of marshmallows. Apparently, after I’d lost them to the toilet bowl monster – they must have been too airy to flush, because Mr. Marshmallow inspector man found it.
He didn’t bring it up right away, but he did use it strategically down the line, and he’s been holding us to that same obvious argument ever since. See, see this is what I mean … you aren’t able to be in control of yourself … thereby meaning he will get to make the decisions.
It’s not like that when we go out to eat. He will let me get what I want. That’s not to say he doesn’t add input frequently enough when he sees fit. He’ll warn me to watch the fried stuff, or skip the drink or not eat too large a portion.
In my better times, I know this is Rich being nice to me and making sure that I’m going to be ok. But, on the flip side … it’s a lot of control. We’ve been having this long standing battle of me trying to get things done before he tells me to do something. I DON’T WANT TO BE TOLD! That means I have to be preemptive.
I think in general what’s happening is that Rich is somewhere stuck between the responsible parts and the irresponsible parts. He’s so used to getting the ones that whine, “I don’t want to go to bed!” That he over does the guiding to prevent us from going down that route. I couldn’t blame him. It’s obvious we’ve put a few gray hairs somewhere … though he doesn’t yet really look like he’s graying. I’m pretty sure I’m a challenge. Or, more likely … WE’RE challenging.
Hmm, if I were to sit back this whole length of writing is probably one contradiction after another. One part is that we don’t want to be responsible for bills or work or anything that doesn’t resemble Pirates. On the other hand, we want to make our own decisions – especially it would appear at the grocery store. There must be some clear line distinguishing our needs and Rich’s needs. Couldn’t we be a better Ann? Would we then be more compliant or more independent?
Most likely we would have to do the things that we are supposed to do. It wouldn’t seem there to be much room for doing only the things we want to do, because given to our own devices we are sitting here between writing and game monitoring. We didn’t actually do much work today accept one paragraph and a little moving things around.
I couldn’t bet on that Sr. would come back here again today to ask about the work, but I know in the past when I’ve given her this kind of trouble she’s had to revert to being a little more conscientious of keeping us on track.
It should really bother my brain today that she relies on me so much. Because we want to scream back … WE’RE NOT RELIABLE!!!
Maybe that’s something we have to think more on, but it will be on the way home. It’s about time to start closing down the office. Because maybe … tomorrow we’re going to want to do work. What was it that Dr. Marvin said … somewhere it has to be an option we want to choose. I don’t think he said it exactly like that, but it would have to be close. We need to think of these things we’re now fighting against as options that can also make us feel good. *sigh*
