Moving Along Here...

Mornin ... Mornin ... Figure we better start the day FIRST with an entry ... seems we’ve been askew the last couple of days. We’re ok, just seems that we’re burning the candle from both ends and falling behind in the middle. Each of the last couple of days, we’ve been up, but then have gotten tired and fallen back to sleep until there is no time left ... including to drink our morning coffee which perpetuates a bad cycle of events. Certainly a routine, we don’t want to foster!

I think the majors have been at work. Sorta, Monday was off *Giggle* - NO work then! Tuesday’s projects were primarily to work on staff training, then the book collection. Wednesday, we worked on the Performance Analysis, the staff meeting, and the follow up to the staff training. Seems this staff training is going to be pretty preoccupying.

Ahh, that’s better ... we’ve finished eating our cereal and reached for the coffee. We’ve been having lately the Quaker 100% Natural Granola with oats, honey and raisons. Just LOVE this cereal! We’re doing pretty good with measuring too. We’re under the allowance of one cup. Think we’re coming up soon to a need to order more groceries. It’s kind of intimidating to us to figure out, we have to do this every couple of weeks. *Sigh* I think we’ve stretched it now to past 3 weeks. Maybe on tomorrow? Yeeks, only two days supplies left! Better get on that...

Ahem ... I saw that note diet buddy ... you know the one, "couple of beers I like to have in the evening and the "not" eating..." Seems adjustments have to be made? :) Maybe we should arrange some time over the weekend to check over with each other "the plans..." :) :) Double smile just in case that sounds a little scary! Hehe

Ok, ok ... where are we at? Oh yeah ... we’re working on a sneaky project too ... that took a little tiny bit of time yesterday ... but, it’s sneaky so we can’t talk about it. We’re still not done with it though :)

Maybe we should work this through a little. Hmm, first one is the book collection. We’ve been in touch with Macadam who has been handling the estate affairs of my father and Sandy. It’s been over a year now and the closing of those priorities will be a blessing. Pretty much when we think of all that, we try to focus on the book collection. The money should be here today or tomorrow. It is a perpetuation of them. When I think of my father and Sandy not being here ... I feel a sadness and a sense of concern like, "Is it going to be ok?" and, "How can they be gone?"

Taking care of what happens with their gifts left us seems like a proactive thing we can be doing in their absence. I have a sense of wanting that all to progress. We’ve been trying not to get upset with our brother for not releasing furniture and dishes that were supposed to come. Mcadam had been working on an arrangement to pick up the weekend after next, but now my sister-in-laws saying, "Maybe the end of July."

The two main items are just their kitchen table and chairs which I will use for my new computer table, and the recliner I’ll use to read. My mind has long since integrated these items with Dad and Sandy’s care of me. Mcadam and Lee will receive his Great Grandmother’s wedding china. I have the feeling of passing down something that is important. I want them to have it very much. There’s also a small roll top desk. I’m torn whether to keep it here in the living room and move the expandable desk to the spare bedroom, or put the roll top in the spare bedroom. We’ll have to see.

None of the things I own is of financial value. Many of the items are as old as my early marriage and at that had been picked up second hand. It seems to fit my life style. We’re going through discussions with our friend. He points to the flaws in some of my furniture such as the sagging couches, or table where the veneer is chipped off or the legs have long since been reverted to a scratching post for the kitties. He says, "These things should be replaced." It’s hard for us to let go of the sentiments attached.

Cant imagine it will be any different with Dad’s and Sandy’s pieces, like our holding my Great Grandmothers’ tea cart and treadle sewing machine. They’ve been through about 20 moves with us. Seems never a reason to replace the space they hold in room or heart. We’re just kinda like this. Maybe a little tattered. Thinking of a children’s book we keep on top of our hutch at work. In bright shiny red letters it says, "Raggedy Ann." This is pretty much us!

We’d been talking about the books. I know we’ve talked about them before ... it’s just that we’re now within days of being able to order them. We spent time Tuesday placing the majority of them in our wish list at Amazon. The only thing remaining is to push the buttons that say, "purchase now." We’ll still need a few things over at the AAMR site. But, that will happen just as quickly.

My first instinct 27 years ago after entering college was not to become a psychology clinician as much as to become a researcher. Just can’t tell you how excited we are to be getting our own collection. Sister has decided it should go that way ... stay in our own hands instead of donated directly to the center. She is going to let us keep the books in our office and we will still be able to lend to whomever might want to read. But, we won’t press that issue.

Last night after the others had left, we stayed at work until 7:30 pm. We would have wished to have the books there and then. There should be solutions in the book that we haven’t yet fathomed. As it were we had asked the staff for one of their test questions, "What are you having the most problem with?" There wasn’t much time to do anything except make a small list, because Sr. came to the meeting and preoccupied the first 20 minutes. I know, I know ... be patient ... there are many kettles on the stove...

It seems that each of them is focused on just a particular areas. One of the DSPs was on vacation, but the DSP of Group 3 stated that her problem was the behaviors, the DSP of Group 3 stated that her problem was in communication, the DSP of Group 4 stated her problem was having the individuals move physically, and the job coach said, she was having problems with the individuals listening.

We figured that we were going to need to go around sneakily behind their backs with teaching our "Objectives" lessons, because there never seems enough time to do it directly. We figured we’d do this by giving them direct lessons using the materials. We were able to think of some kind of change for most of the problems with the exception to group 2. She wasn’t ready to admit she had problems that were out of her control. As soon as she said this, one of the other DSPs jumped in to list out a few problems in the group, but for my purposes ... I need the staff to realize first ... they do have problems that are affecting their groups, and there is help.

It’s kind of funny in that I could realize from the way the individuals acted or through the Qnotes that there might be problems, but it isn’t the same as the DSP admitting the same thing. But, last night ... hehe after the initial shock wore off that we’d stepped into what might seem like a quagmire of quicksand, that we actually could think through steps to progress each of the situations. We spent the remainder of the night working through the issues of the first DSP. We picked out aseries of lessons for the DSP of group 4.

We thought of using a manipulative that usually just sits in her closet. It is a board with 3 different sets of brightly colored metal loops (large/few, medium and small/many). On these loops there are from 5 to 10 large beads. We decided that this board would work for all her clients. Their task or "work" would be to move the beads over one loop. Hehe - no easy feat! The first thing she has to do is capture their attention and get them to move out of their seats - to the board. Then it will be hand-over-hand to move a bead. We’re not talking of all five over multiple loops. We’re just talking one bead over one loop. The individuals are going to be pretty "put-out" by this effort! They all tend to their favorite chair or manipulative and rarely go far past that.

We broke the task down to 5 separate scenes, but each follows Bloom’s taxonomy of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and conclusion. It was very much like writing a play that the DSP will soon be directing. The clients are the actors and actresses. Every move is choreographed. Such as the individual will follow the DSPs finger directing her eyes to the bead or the individual will trace the loop with her finger. At first this might mean holding the individual’s wrist - palm and physically moving it over the loop. Or that after a certain action takes place the DSP gives the individual a big smile while saying, "Good job!!"

We are confident that each objective will support the next. We’ll have to slow the process way down though. Those 5 scenes might take 6 months or more to accomplish. I think it is a tendency for this DSP to figure out ... since it took all that effort to get the individual over to the beads she will have to repeat the pushing beads until all of them get to one side of the board or another. But, in our eyes, the pushing of one bead is plenty sufficient, and in fact before this ever occurs with the client, the DSP will model the experience herself for weeks before she asks the clients to more actively participate other than watching. It’ll take them a while to get comfortable with the task.

Hehe - we gotta start somewhere!

Last night, we felt like a scientist in our establishing of the task. If anyone would have walked into the office to see us moving those beads, they might of thought us off the deep end. It took a while to establish "the game" of it. After we started, it was like being on a high. We figured also that this task could be used for one of the other groups. We have in mind the group that is being job coached out in the community. We have five individuals working at grocery stores. One in a department store placing clothes on hangers and one assisting in a kindergarten room.

Basically, we have another beaded board that is like giant in comparison to the board we’ve set up to use in Group 4. I’m sure many of you’ve seen these boards before ... the big one is like a jungle of brightly colored loops extending two feet above the board. Often their seen in waiting offices where small children might congregate. Each loop twists and turns with wooden beads on its track. We figure that if the job coach is having trouble getting her people to listen, then they are going to be trained how to listen to the directions of pushing these beads from one side of the board to another.

We know the clients each have their own difficulties in comprehension, speeds that are too fast or too slow, or that they get distracted. So, as these problems come up ... adjustments will be made. Although our job coach isn’t real confident, we’re hoping this will be something she is able to do. After gaining their trust ... she’ll be better able to give directives at the job site itself. We’re hoping.

With Group 3 ... we need to set up separate tasks. We’ll go into them more later, but primarily they will be adapting the environment to particular behaviors. Such as when one of the members start distracting others a verbal warning will be given, then the individual’s attention will be gestured over to an envelope, last physically a move will be made over to the envelope to drop in the note which will go home at the end of the week. If the individual has controlled his behavior ... a note describing his better behaviors will be placed in the envelope. With another individual when given to distracting the group, the staff will move over to the individual and respond directly to each interruption. They usually come bundled many to a set. After the individual is able to again self control, the staff can then move away.

Hehe - I think we’ve distracted ourselves in regard to the books again :) It’s just that I dream of a world, where I will be able to turn to references for ideas that have been tested. I want to become a resource for the staff so that as problems come up, we can direct them to the proper piece of knowledge that they are missing. When we went over the book list on Tuesday, we had figured out instead of getting the dozen Spanish books, we will get instead a set of higher priced psychological books. We are ... underline are going to figure out behaviors! Because if we can’t get a grasp of these, we are never going to get through other more formal lessons.

We had also accomplished something on the Performance Analysis report. Man ... is this a slow process ... just to find the time to work on it has been a problem. We advanced it though yesterday to having one of the two objectives met as far as effectiveness ... we got bogged down in the efficiency part though. Today we’ll go back and make some quick decisions and push forward. This part of the report is actually 3 fold. We have two measures to show effectiveness, one measure for efficiency, and three measures for satisfaction. Sure hope the format is good, because all this thinking is pushing us to our limits! Hehe.

Today, will be an interesting day in that for one, Sr. will have left for the airport by the time we arrive at work. FOR A WHOLE WEEK!! Yippee! Think it’s the first time in 3 years, she’s taken a vacation :) In her place, Sister Janice will hold the reins. She is the Administrator for the North Chicago facility which is much bigger. I don’t know why, but I like this Sister. She is very quiet and unassuming, but very tactfully efficient. She’s like a stealth nun :) *Giggle* We’ve been trying to "train" her to say, "Good morning," and "Good night" to us. Please God don’t smite me dead! That’s all we really want from her. Just a simple acknowledgment that we exist. Maybe we can get to the point that we’ll concede to her quieter ways of just moving past her path. We ARE really looking forward to the week, plus with gaining no new tasks from Sr. Tess, maybe we can finish something up and surprise her. :) Very happy!