Ayn's Multiple World

Back Date 8-11-09

Good morning this is me. I think I've got a little time this morning unless I fall asleep. I think if I were going to I would have done so by now, but I'm glad I haven't fallen asleep. The main thing was apparently to get warm under the blanket. We're doing that now :) Instead of sitting on the couch, I'm trying to kind of sprawl out on the recliner. It is all attached to the desire to lay down and be up all at the same time - being of a womanly nature having problem making up my mind. Go figure.

One of the good reasons to have gotten up this early was to plug in all my devises. Shese! We still haven't figure out the wi-fi connection on our netbook, but I think if there is any money left at all we're going to see if we can bring it in today. I'll have to talk to Rich in that I know ABOUT where his place is, but I'm not positive and I don't know if I have to call before I go there. We'll see. It's driving me crazy not to have Internet on this computer though.

It is Tuesday now about 4:15 am and all else seems to be going fine. Rich was in kind of a crabby mood when we got home, but we tried to get past that and eventually did, but for a bit I thought I was going to need going through the night without my special topping! Man that sure didn't frost the cake!

Rich had a hard weekend fishing I think and he had problems at his new shop Universal. I think the guy running it is thinking he's not making enough profit. I think that's frustrating Rich because of whatever reasons, but to go along with that Rich is now having a back ache. I think mostly its due to tension. We were like man ... you are getting old right in front of us! That of course wasn't very nice ... but then, refer to statement above on ONE of us being somewhere the other wasn't :(.

Ok, shhh ... that worked out.

There's one thing to note there ... Just that Rich had made a wonderful rib and corn on the cob right when we got home ... and there was something said similiar to "Woman get me my Margarita!" Hehehe no, he doesn't say it exactly like that, but its pretty close :)

Before that? We'd been at my sisters for about 3 1/2 days. THAT was very nice. There weren't any problems really between us - very little friction - though there was some between Mark and Connie Sue. I think most of that had been they were on a job interview for Mark late last week and they had to wait until yesterday to find out what was going to happen.

And, do you know what?? About 15 minutes before I left, Mark got the call AND he GOT THE JOB!!! Everybody was just so excited. Mark is a science teacher AND he's doing janitor work for the church. I think it's very humbling to be doing the latter, but he takes his work there as seriously as he would the former.

Mark's new school is something Educational something. It is a fairly nice size charter school and the superintendent of the school district for Milwaukee is sitting on its board. That goes a long way in vouching for the school as well as it having already been open for about 7 years. I'm not going into the problems of the last couple charter schools, but we'll say as much as Mark's last science classroom was like a couple tables in the basement of a large room shared by others. I have to think he learned something from all that.

Mark had had a job in the regular high school, but they laid off teachers like him that were on the top of the pay scale and got other cheaper teachers instead. Mark toward the end was like - let's forget about how much I used to make and that Master's degree and just get Uncle Marky hired! Between he and my sister - they've gone through a lot, but in the meantime ... they had gone through unemployment, almost lost their house, but came out on the Obama plan with just 1/3 of their mortgage and now Mark will have his two jobs along with CS's disability. I figure they will be bringing in close to $5000 - though I don't know the real figures, but the way I'm guessing is that their mortgage on a very nice - could live here the rest of my life house to be only then 20% of their income.

I think the both of them work hard and do very worth while things, so if they saw some financial relief then that would be a good deal all around. I think there was something that had happened or process we'd gone through before, and basically, I think that if something were ever to happen to Rich, that I might go up to WI and live with my sister. It might be some relief to think I could afford to live under some situation.

I'm not sure if I wrote about it yet, but I think not ... basically, that same weekend or close to that when we'd gone out with Bob and Marsha to fish and we'd got with Rich to Bob's daughter's wedding then Rich had surprised us by taking us to a few places he'd found on-line that was within what he calculated to be his means of living. Basically what he was looking at was condos or townhouses within the $200,000's and by that I mean low $200,000. I should have been more posiitve, but I was pretty shaken up by it.

Basically, figured at the last point that I wanted a place twice as big and expensive as what he was putting down on the table. My thought on things like that before were if you couldn't go all the way it was better not to go at all. I was very frustrated. I think he's put aside some money though and he was thinking getting out of this place as soon as October. He's looking at the end of the lease. If he were going to do something he would have to do it pretty soon, because there's a whole mortgage process to go through in the meantime.

I didn't think of it much directly on the way home, but I did try to expand my thoughts to we could do this for a bit, but when I made my first BIG money ... I would want something better. Of course that's pretty much a BIG dream now and not much more, but we talked to Dr. Marvin about making the next leap forward.

Without adding too much fanfare ... we had looked before going to Wisconsin this weekend at a program where we'd go back to school. I know, I know ... why open that can of worms again :(. But the thing is that it's still the most important thing that I could do. I would like to think when I go down that line of thinking that I could complete not only masters, but as well doctorate. I know this is probably past what I can really do, but if you are going to dream, dream big!

The Masters program that I was looking at was through another on-line school - this one is more well known than the last and is called Walden University. They are offering a MS in Instructional Design and Technology. Every class is good. It's basically a progrm that would help me analyze learning or training needs and then design technology-supported instruction materials. The courses are 1) Organizationtions, Innovation, and Change, 2) Learning Theories and Instruction, 3) Instructional Design, 4) Advanced Instructional Design, 5) Multimedia Design and Development, 6) Foundations of Research, 7) Distance Learning, 8) Project Management in Education and training, and 9) Program Evaluation. There is then a Capstone project and there is a specialization segment that has two additional courses - 1) Performance Improvement, and 2) Training and Development.

If I could do this and then go on, the next thing would be to get a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. I'm not going to list out all the classes, but basically the gist of it would be a foundation class, then a set for Principles of Social Change related to Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, Principles of Human Development and principles of social systems - all related to Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. They then have a core research sequence of four seminar courses and two areas ... the first being Principles and the second Leadership in Curriculum, instruction, and Assessment. I would take the Principles because I'm more interested in human learning, research and practice than in leadership of that whole thing. They've got also a couple courses in advanced research that includes doing pilot and field studies and one on communicating knowledge and educational research. Last is the Dissertation. That's like a whopper! Basically there are 6 credits for the foundation course and then 98 credits in-between, and then 30 credits toward dissertation so that dissertation is nearly 30% of the program.

Mostly it would be giving my whole 5th century to learning. It would have to become a lifestyle, because the program would take at minimum between masters and doctorate - 7 to 8 years. That's a lot ... it would put me at the end of my career before I was able to do something with my education. The whole thing there would be that it pivot on producing practical research in putting together programs for adults with developmental disabilities. That was the whole main thing all along with the other program, but that program wasn't as direct in getting to the goal. This one is very face forward AND it includes the technology support that the other program didn't have.

I think that even with adults with DD, any program worth doing has to have an element of on-line learning. It's just part of being in this generation. ESPECIALLY, if I were to be doing MY learning on-line, wouldn't I want to expect that from someone else?

I would have to ask myself what is the value of becoming a specialist at the age of 58-60 years of age. Shouldn't or wouldn't I like to be retiring. I think this is the bane of it. The way it is going now, I'm not going to be able to retire by the age of 60 or even 65 or 68 for that matter, because I'm still going to need earning an income. So the thing I see then would be if I need to earn an income ... wouldn't I rather be earning it at home writing and publishing materials on program development? This seems to have been the goal for the majorty of our 10 years at St. Rose Center and if I've developed a specialty, this would be my thing.

I was thinking last night if there were any special considerations it would be to cut down my hours by 15%. This comes out to about 6 hours a week ... so primarily I would change my hours to be 7:30-3 pm Monday through Thursday and 7:30-2 pm on Fridays. This would give me the reprieve I need to be working on homework. If I looked at the majority of my study to take place in this abbreviated time span, I would still have time for leisure with Rich. I would get off work on a typical day, get back to town by 3:30 pm go to the gym for an hour or so, eat dinner and by about 5 pm and be studying til about 8 pm and then spend the last hour or two of the day with Rich. With this plan could get done with studying in about 12 hours during the week, and then anything I could add during the weekend.

There would have to be new considerations on the weekend, because I would still like to get out and do things with CS and Rich - although some of that time too - would be spent most likely reading. The way I figure we can do without about 6 hours of work is that it would save Sr. over 7000 and we could make it work, because it comes out to about $400 less a month which is the amount of school loan I wouldn't have to be paying all that time I was in school

We mentioned the gym thing. That's something important in this whole mix. Basically, we talked to Dr. Marvin and we set it up in our minds - though haven't worked through the details. Basically, the deal would be that we would have practice being consistent and making good effort by pre-staging two things before going back to school. The first thing would be that we need to complete CARF before this other happens. The second thing would be that I would need to get back into a regular routine for going to the gym. That way I could show myself to work on or complete long term goals which is the stamina-type material I would need to continue in school.

He didn't say so directly, but I could tell that Dr. Marvin liked that idea. I haven't talked to Rich about it, but I think he would like it too. I think he would have to be more sold on doing the education thing though because education is still competing with his hours. I think he would rather have me so flexible that I could take off whenever he needed me to. By arranging gym and 12 hours of study during the week with 1-2 hours for him - then that's helping ... and not tying up my entire weekend would help too.

We'll have to see ... primarily I'm not ready to talk to him about it. Who knows in 15 minutes it could be different? But, for now we're going to take a couple more sips of coffee and then get in the shower. I think we need to find our way back to usual schedules. Maybe I'll have time to write more about the quilting part after the shower and waking up Rich hmm?

Hmm back. Some stuff worked out and some didn't. I did take my shower, got my bag ready and took my medicine all in less than 15 minutes. But, Sir Sweetie Pie? He didn't make it ... he mumbled something about his back and that he didn't sleep well and that he was going to try sleeping longer to help his back. Well, that's the gist of it at least. So, it looks like we got the next 45 minutes pretty much to ourselves. We're still trying to get to work by about 7 am. I figure that's a good deal to show up a half hour early ... it really helps the appearance of stuff and seems to be working in getting me started right away. That's a good deal.

Hmm working on resituating kitties ... They seem to be a little needy this morning. They were casual enough when we got back last night and grabbed up some cuddly time. Rich had gotten back the night before us - we stayed because it had been raining bad up north. That might have been just the excuse we were looking for in that we weren't ready to come back.

As to the weekend? We spent most of the time working on CS's quilt. We got a LOT of work done. There were 13 pieces to sew together on one block and there were 80 blocks so that meant sewing together 1040 pieces. Pshwoo! we had gotten 92% of the work done before we left ... this is at least the front top part of the quilt - the picture part. I'll get a couple of pictures when I sign on to post so that you'll be able to see what the stuff looks like. But, it's pretty cool. Each piece had to be sewn, then ironed, and then trimmed. It was a lot of work that was going along pretty smooth. CS did the sewing part and we did the ironing and trimming.

CS has a lot of neat tools for doing EVERYthing! The first part was though to pick out the design and material and CS did most of that before we really got into the project. But, after the project started, she let me help make decisions on which fabrics to use ... next and next. The quilt was called a log cabin so you might see in the picture how each block added and added to the next. The design was such that the darker pieces were on two connecting sides and the two lighter pieces were on the other. When you add the 80 pieces together, you sew four dark sides together and, then four light sides are exposed for the next sets of light to touch them, and then they go back and forth in making like crosses of light and dark. It's REALLY pretty nifty!

It was a good design and we decided during the process that we would like to have one done for us too. Or CS decided or ... well I think it was a joint effort thought. There was something neat coming out of the thoughts of having matching blankets. I think that's what she was going for. I think the plans are to make Joe and Cari one too. Basically, there is plenty of this particular material to make 3 blankets. And, these are not small blankets. The blocks are like a foot long and wide and there are 8 across and 10 down. Pswhoo! Big blanket!

I was thinking that if I got that blanket though that maybe I should give up the blanket that I got already. That was yesterday thinking. Now we got that blanket wrapped around us and we're not so HAPPY to be thinking that we have to give it up. BUT, it would be selfish to have too many blankets? We have to say this because there's another one that CS said she was going to make for us. It was one we looked at and was very happy about.

Oh oh ... someone fell asleep for a little while ... maybe a half hour. I feel refreshed, but now gotta get a move on ... bbs.

posted by Ann Marie @ 8/17/2009 06:29:00 AM Comments: 0