Up-to-date 8-17-09
Good morning. This is me. I'm not sure how much of my stuff is being posted, most likely because most of my stuff is still in our head ... some of it rolling around like lost marbles and other of it pounding on the door for release. Ok, ok ... we're not this psycho ... But we are really at a deficit with the posting. Right now I think I will be able to put something out. The conditions are right.I'm not to hot or cold, I'm on the little computer which has the nicer keyboard, and it am sitting on the couch listening to CNN in the background. The house is quiet because Rich is still asleep and it's about 4:40 am so I will be ok, until I take my shower - maybe we'll try 5:15 am. I've been up for a while. I was making a quick Facebook note, but then I found ourselves looking at quilt patterns over where the one we had worked with came from.
It's really mind-whelming. There's so much to look at and I know there are probably hundreds or thousands of designers.
Yeeks ... been following along a piece they are doing on drug and people smugglers in Mexico. It's pretty terrible. I don't know in my mind how to get over those thoughts on a system gone wrong. It's very difficult not to be able to problem solve. I hear people all the time and sometimes I do it too where we think ... all they gotta do is ... but, this one there are no ready answers for. It seems there is a lot of corruption because the smugglers are so strong, trained and viscious. No easy answers. It's like a gang, but trained militarily in the most extreme situations. For example the person talking was saying that they got rid of extra people who couldn't pay by chopping them in little pieces. I don't want to think that's easily done like in an assembly line, but then I don't have anything to disprove the information. It couldn't seem more horrifying.
Maybe my mind is thinking like others. At least its not here ... but then I'd have to deny that I am working on the south side of Chicago and sometimes bad things happen there too. Most often I consider it a nice Spanish working neighborhood. But, I know that some of the smuggling is directing people in this direction. Chicago has got such a big area of immigrants both legal and non-legal. I'm thinking all this because of my closeness to it while thinking I have to push it further from my mind such as ... yeah, but the really tough stuff is only happening south of the border, right? Denial, reality ... we're all in a place juggling between the two.
Maybe we'll go back to the safety of our quilt projects. I'll try to include a picture of the quilts we cut out over the weekend ... well maybe at least the one I did on Sunday, because it's handy. Ok, ok ... I'll get both. Hold on.
Ok, there are three pictures here. They've already been seen over at FB, but I'm really cheating myself out here since this is the better of the two for longitivity. There are a lot of pictures we've placed over there rather than here, because its quicker and more easy to share directly. We're still having a bad reaction of the situation with Jillian. I know she hasn't done anything directly, but it was threatening to us to have her thinking poorly or insecurely in concern of our writing. She looks at it as being very protective of her father, but it then denies that her father and I share our lives and I'm between us the writer. It's only inevitable that I write about what happens between us.
I think there was more involved with the feeling of being threatening in that Rich acted at the time from her view that I might be hurting him. But, then this would be our baby. I think it's an important love story to write about because it is MY relation with bunny and that makes it the most important relationship in my life not to lose. I don't really want to get stuck here though. It's so hard to get us this far where we are writing anything at all.
Looking at pictures now of kids going back to school. I'm real proud. Uncle Marky is going back to school today too. He was hired last week and is starting today. He's got to get his program and classroom set up in a brand new school. It is a small private magnet school, but much bigger than the one he had just come from. I think its tied to Catholics and has the Milwaukee school superindent on its board of directors. AND, it's not run from the basement of a church basement. He's got his OWN REAL room and everything. Chances are they even have science books!
I think school is starting in a couple of weeks. CS talked in her blog about going to the store with him to pick-up some new shirts. I sure hope Uncle Marky is going to be ok as to working two jobs again. I don't know what his hours are going to be, but most likely he's going to go from classroom hours to cleaning hours at the church with not much time in-between. I don't know how they are going to do it, but I'm thinking they will be much more comfortable with the amount of change in their finances. From what I understand it is still most likely half the amount he was making in his heyday, but I think at this point ... teaching period would be just fine ... especially in this economic environment.
I have to give Uncle Mark a lot of courage points for being able to start over as he has. He had worked a long time for the West Bend school district and then he lost his long-term position and this then would be his third attempt back into teaching with his third school. Both the first two wore down in corruption of programs that failed due to what seems like money laundering on the backs and hearts of teachers and students. I think both situations ended with the hierarchy taking what wasn't there's to take. I have a gut level feeling this school isn't anything like the other - not with this one being supported by the Milwaukee Superintendent directly.
So there's all this excitement of the weekend. I felt really fortunate in that I had been at CS and Mark's last weekend and it had been a long weekend, because we stayed overnight Sunday too and stayed through most of the day on Monday. The main reason was probably the quilt we were working on with CS wasn't to a finished enough position yet, and another reason was that the weather wasn't conducive, but then there was also the reason of wanting to wait and see if Mark was going to get the new position.
I was almost ready to leave - gathering up stuff when the call came through. Mark had picked it up in the back and he looked fairly stunned coming out to say something about having gotten the job. He was definitely in need of a hug. CS reached out first naturally, but I think I snuck in a big 3 way family hug. Just so proud of him and my sister for having stuck things through until they were able to get back on track.
A lot of work has gone in with them making things work in the meantime. CS has an income because of her disabilties and Mark had one through the cleaning, but they were in trouble. They were almost near to the point of losing there home, and we might have written about this before, but my sister figured out the system and kept income coming in, insurance, and she worked through a brilliant deal of getting their mortgage lowered. I can't get over that they are paying about the same amount we are, but we're renting an apartment and they are owning a 3 bedroom house that's BEAUTIFUL!!! I have to give her a lot of credit. She's pushed for what she wants and it seems to be working in her direction.
I am just remembering when I'd first talked to her about 1 or 1 1/2 years ago. Basically, we were just getting to know each other again and she was talking about the problems she and Marky were having - not between them, but they were struggling through together - like the poorer schools, lack of money and medical problems. They've gone through a hell of a lot and seem to be coming out of it now. I know that Mark is going to be excited to pieces about working as a teacher again. CS really helped him not give up and keeping his foot in the door with applications and interviews. As well Mark's faith too played a strong part. Pswhoo. Ok, it's going to be ok, right?
Maybe we better get in our shower so we don't mess up Rich's up time. AND, remember ... we're making breakfast and his lunch too, right?
We're back again. We took our shower, did our medicine ... whoops forgot to make lunch, but did make breakfast for Rich and us and his lunch and took the few moments to eat it with him. We ate out in the living room this morning so not to wake Maury in the back, so that gets me back to writing much sooner. Probably less talking to Rich though because he's drifted toward the TV, but then too often he's not really up while in the kitchen to have real conversations anyway. Hmm, if not this thing then the other.
It's now 6 am. We're trying to get to the point of getting ready about 20-25 after so we're more on-time as to coming into work early. Just that half hour makes a lot of difference in being able to leave a couple hours early on Fridays.
Ok, so now what do we want to talk about. Rich just got up to take his shower, so there's some clear time ahead.
We think about Dr. Marvin for a second? I think the first thought is that he's not going to be there this week. I think we can do without him for a week, but it is a loss. I don't know if I can bring to recall what happened last week. I would like to, but it's pretty hard. I remember something about staying a few moments late. AHA ... I remember he sent something to help us remember ... let me look that up, k?
Hi Ann,
So, the summary from the session was centered around the meaning/ role “defiance” has had and currently has in your life and among the parts. My thought as we talked was that defiance was a means to preserve your independence, safety, security, pride, and individuality. Because you couldn’t trust those around you growing up, it was difficult to accept their guidance/advice on how to live life. Everything got thrown out. Now as an adult, you can make more reasonable and logical choices about what to do, i.e. it makes good sense to brush your teeth every day. The defiant part(s) still get in the way because that’s what they know how to do, and might not know how to separate things – past from present. That would be the work to do – help them to separate those ideas. You can still be proud and defiant but take care of your needs.
Have a good weekend.
-Dr. M
Hmm, this might be the week before
I think this was brought forward, but it's too hard even now to skim over it. I'm afraid I'm not going to be good in remembering stuff. I think though that some part of it ... maybe a better part of it was that we talked about the new programs we've been looking through with the Evernote, Jott, Xpenser, TSheets, and Outlook. I can't remember specifically how we did this or how it took up so much time, but I remember the part about Dr. Marvin having Evernote too. He says he uses it for his medicines and for recipies. That was pretty cool. I think some of our time late last week went into exploring the Evernote in particular. Much of the time over the week at work went into figuring those systems out and trying to figure out how to apply them to my work and personal life. We're not at a good point with it yet, but we're trying.
Part of all that is learning to use our old and new devises. We had the iPod and phone before, but now we have a bluetooth headset, a devise to connect our iPod through the Bluetooth, and the Mi-fi to connect the computer and iPod to the wi-fi. There's room for 5 devises in total which helps at work, because Rich then can connect also to the Internet without the ahrd wiring. The next deal is going to be getting the $100 eye-fi. That's going to be for connecting the camera and the phone photos directly to our computer and in especially the Evernote. This will make it easier to transfer pictures immediately without the extra gizmos.
It's pretty tough right now in general, though we're working on it, but to connect all the wries in the charging battery stage so that all our devises make it through the majority of the day. We're bringing cords along too so that we can maximize the potential of the devices, but it would probably be a good idea to go back and figure out what the battery life on all the devices are. I think we're in the range of 3-4 hours to get the bunch of them through, but I'm not really sure in total. I do know that between the computer, phone, Mi-fi and headsets there are 4 cords that need to be plugged in and then the 5th cord goes from the iPod to the big computer. If I can count through that I can make sure that everything is good to go.
Pswhoo. That's a lot of messing around.
I talked to Thom over the weekend through IMs. That was nice. I think in general that he and Alexis are pretty much over with their marriage. He's sent her a separation agreement through the mail. She has to sign it and return. He can't get divorced overseas, but I guess this is where its heading. They weren't able to figure out how to do the marriage thing long distance and from Thom's point of view she would have at least had to try closing the gap, and from her point of view - she wants to enroll in the air force and go wherever that takes her.
He seems to be ok with where that all is or at least as ok as he can get. He's working on his becoming a corporal. He's in some kind of competition with 5 others and there seems to be two parts. He came in first with the first part. He said part of that was reading 6 books in preparation. I think if he completes it he will either automatically or without any complications soon earn the rank up from Lance Corporal to Corporal. The big thing he is saying is that he will be able to go off-base. I think he really needs to get out. He would have been able to do that if his wife were there, but now it comes with rank. I think the Marines want to make sure people are responsible before letting them out to cause damage.
I'm hoping though Thom wouldn't cause damage.
I told him about my computer advances and about Maury and Joe not getting along as to each of their financial values. I think we wrote about this earlier though ... basically Joe is being too frugal and Maury is not being frugal enough. Needs to be some balance. Thom basically said ... they'll get over it.
Whoops ... Rich was just in .. He's ready to go to work now and is wondering why I'm not ready yet. We clarifed that it was 6:22 am and I didn't have to get ready until 6:25, but now it's 6:26 and time is wasting. *Sigh*
Maybe we can continue for a bit after we get to work. I really missed how easy it is to type on this machine. The keytouch is just magic. Better get this posted, hmm?
posted by Ann Marie @ 8/17/2009 06:30:00 AM
Comments: 1
