Ayn's Multiple World

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*

posted by Ann Marie @ 5/07/2009 03:54:00 PM Comments: 1