Double Entry and One Tough Night

Good morning! It’s a wonderful Saturday morning with nothing ahead, but blue sky! We’ve been up for a couple of hours, but we find sometimes its just nice to putz her and there in regard to our J-World. You know an update here, a catch-up there... It’s very relaxing and leaves us feeling at ease.

I apologize for not having updated sooner than I have. Specially, to my one faithful visitor, of journalist fame, "Sir Vincent." I’m sorry Vince ... want to do better by you. :)

As soon as we write this entry, we’ll be going back to the work on the Hall of Fame Journals. Christy and Kathy have left us material to update, but we heard through a previous link with Christy this morning that she’ll have to discontinue her services to the Hall of Fame Journal (mabey). Leaves me with a lump in my throat. She’s been terrific, but has to touch base with her non-J-land life. She is to be moving, and quite possible (Sensitive material) not going to have an Internet/AOL connection! My heart goes out to her as we wish her a speedy return and an especial, "God Bless!

*Sigh* Ok, ok ... it’s going to be ok. Vivian is hot on the track of obtaining a few more volunteers. We made sure to tell her "DON’T SQUEEZE them VIV!" This has to be a labor of love, or its no good!"

So, if any of you come across anyone looking for good honest work and a very, very good side benefit of getting involved in new journal reading and contributing to the big overall One year Anniversary celebration, then this is the place for you!

We are about 55% done with this first phase with a self-goal of July 19th. We could finish this part of the work load in the next 6 days if we were able to work through about 40 listings a day between all of the volunteers working on the project. If you are working fast, one can complete approximately 10 listings per hour. Hehe - you all do the math! I’d like to be a little ahead of schedule, because it takes some time getting everyone emailed and the responses to be placed into the program. I think we’ll be ok. I know it will happen somehow through the Grace of Higher Powers.

Now ... let’s see, any other "Et al" news?

Seems like things have recovered well with the Dr. M. "Stuff." Annemarie and Casey were out again. I forget at this point if there were others. The most surprising turn of events is that they were asked by Dr. M. a question in regard to what they were seeing when they are not able to look at Dr. M directly. There were some very interesting images that they saw in their mind’s eye. Casey talked about a couple of people being with her, one blue and one black. One fell in the shadow of the other and neither of them had hair or faces, because she said they were waiting to take her hair (step into her body). Then later she added that they were laying on an inner tube waiting for the changes.

Annemaries image expressed was that she were in a room like an operating room and that there were people above her in a peanut-shaped window who were looking at her as she lay crumpled trying to hide from them. She said that they were talking about her and that she couldn’t close the shades because they were on the opposite side of the window. We thought wow! Never entertained those thoughts before. Then Dr. M. said something quite amazing ... he asked/said something about us ordering drapes for our living room windows. Never would have got that in a jillion years. I think this is why these guys are paid the big bucks! He had known that our present shades only cover 2/3's of our double balcony doors which opens to the main street and neighbors. Thinking this is a "MUST-DO" today! Ahh, a Sunday morning note ... the drapes have just been ordered!

As I write, thoughts have crossed my mind from some of the others who are asking themselves, if too, we all (20 parts) could be some of the viewers to poor Annemarie behind those windows. Have to admit for the last year, there has been quite a bit on introspection in her regard. We worry about her and her affect on the rest of us. There was only one person she observed at the time. He was a older gray haired man with a beard. The thought that comes to our mind now is that he followed the image of Freud. I know ... we’re strange.

Back at work ... I’ve been working on a few projects, particularly meetings, but other than that I’ve been feeling rather distracted. I left last night with both desks covered in work, that I couldn’t settle my mind to be calmly sorting and putting away. I just wanted to leave ... hehe was being taken out to dinner and Marguerites!

There was one pretty big meeting with Sr. yesterday as we tried to progress the situation of scheduling staff and clients. She’d asked me to study the situation, so we did with our traditional fine-toothed comb. We prepared six new schedules based on half hour projections and in all there was perfection! But, then without even studying the first one, she dismissed the whole because it looked too complicated.

We told her that we weren’t able to study the situation without adding order, because the present chart she’s using is terrible. But, she decided she has been using the same format for 7 years and that it would continue to be just fine. I looked at the situation as that the DSP’s had scheduled 61 hours of programs incorrectly, based on the results of the Administrative Benchmark figures. She asked out loud, Maybe we’re being a little hard on them. I just shook my head and stated, they’ve directly circumvented in total disregard coming close to what the expectations were. She *Sighed* and said we’ll use the whole next staff training to go over the figures. I feel the project already a lost cause.

There was another meeting with Sr. in regard to the Annual Report. The secretary had sidestepped a portion of it while we were gone that she’d been given responsibility of, and Sr. was of the mind that the report was complete. That took a while to go over. So, as a direct result ... I’m going to have to go over a year’s worth of parent’s and client survey’s and condense the findings down to 2 pages. Sometimes I feel, I’m never making headway. Plus, we’re going to have to come up with an idea of two more pages of report to balance the two pages that will be added. Shoot, have no clue there at the moment, but no doubt we’ll come up with something.

Hehe ... sometimes we’re just so d*mn smart. I got it! We’ll do a two page lay-out of a timeline, especially in regard to outings into the community the individuals took over the year. Pretty good? Took about 3 minutes. We’re being pretty quick this morning.

Actually we were sneaky ... we just looked up "Annual Reports" on the Internet and the first good one we opened had some kind of review of the year by date ... and we figured that was smart thinking. Especially, because every year Sr. does for the center a pictured chronological album for her bosses up on the north and for the big sisters over in Italy. We can just summarize that and add a time line which would be kinda snazzy.

We figure we can use our flowchart program for that ... hmm, come to think of it, I bet the program has time lines already! ... Hmm, just looked up the program. Sure, enough ... I haven’t used that portion of it, but it does time lines too! This is not so bad ... kinda like this kind of work! ok, ok ... enough of work planning for the weekend...

As far as other meetings, there was the Staff Training on Thursday and the client’s Thinking Group on Friday. *Sigh* That took some emotional effort. :)

There were only four DSPs at the staff meeting, but I’d prepared the agenda as is becoming routine. I had first thought Sr. was going to take up half an hour with scheduling, but the other Q didn’t show up so Sr. gave the meeting back to me and anything on our agenda. Thing is ... she only gave us an hour to prepare for this change. We place this in the "general not fair" category. But, proceeded anyway.

I found a program written by one of the University’s on Behavior. I’d come across it when we were at a previous off-site meeting. It was pretty good for defining the antecedents, behaviors, and consequences and allowed my version of thinking behaviors in general. And, since our last Staff meeting had asked what was the "worst of it?" And, they’d responded to the behaviors, I thought fine this will work. So I wrote down one client from each of their groups who exhibited the worst behaviors and I thought this will be a good meeting.

Before I was even able to fully outline the agenda for the day, one of the DSPs who weren’t paying attention, because she was reading ahead, stated loudly, "I’m not going to do this! It’s in violation of the client rights to be talking about them." I thought lordy, this is going to be a session. I’m not used to this kind of conflict, so although it started well, I thought I had pretty quickly developed into a power struggle. I know this DSP is well-adapted to be doing this, although out of the meetings, we get along pretty well.

I went with it for about 3-4 minutes. Then I just held up my hand and said, "Enough!" She was very loud and was cutting off my responses to her charges. I’d been trying to tell her that we were interpreting the situation differently and that around the lunch table, one should not be discussing clients, but at a Staff meeting TO provide staff and client support, this is exactly what we had to do. I also stated that we could check with Sr. Tess after the meeting. I knew at the time Sr. Was handling on her own 38 clients in the multi-purpose room. Not a good time to chat.

The DSP still continued, so we asserted very clearly ... this WAS going to be our task of the hour and if she did not want to participate because she felt the directive ethically challenged, that she should LEAVE!

I was kind of surprised by our behavior and a little threatened by "my" own conclusion. But, there it was hanging over the table, with nothing to do, but wait it out. This kind of "outspokenness" happens sometimes when you are a multiple. I’m certainly not as umm, like that, as say Kate is. But, none of us have been put here to question her judgment.

As it happened, the DSP chose to stay and do the work. It only took her a moment or two to reach this conclusion. And, we were relieved that she stayed. I really don’t mind this person, but she has some terrible bad emotional habits. After that ... the rest of the meeting progressed as it should, although I may add there was a little more formality and people were a little more guarded. After the meeting was over and we’d retreated to our office, the woman came in to "talk." Absolutely no malice in her voice. She still held her opinion, but I’d reiterated that tomorrow morning when Sister wasn’t busy with the doors, I would present the situation to her. Then the DSP proceeded to talk for 20 minutes about client problems she refused to admit to during the meeting in front of the staff presented. *Sigh* People are hard to figure out.

Just remembering there was one client incident I wanted to note ... Sometime fairly early Friday morning on the way to the center’s internal mail boxes, I opened the glass door that shuts our end of the building from the original. I could hear the angry cries coming from one of our clients who is in the lowest functioning group. I peeked in, but the staff was not there. So, I sat down next to the girl. She stayed angry for a bit and is known for closing herself off from challenges outside her own mind. We began to talk to her gently. We thought we might distract her so, we went to the cupboard and got out some cards which we knew she liked. Big 10" brightly colored squares with simple cut out pictures on them such as bell, square, moon, etc.

The individual didn’t pick them up, but she did pick up the papers that we’d been carrying. This was ok to us. She began the work of straightening them and sorting. We continued a light dialogue. This is a person who doesn’t speak full sentences, nor could she walk down the hall on her own. Somehow a miracle happened in that she gave back the papers. I thought of it as finally an invite to her world. So, I took the papers and arranged them like she was. Then I offered them back again for her to rework. By this time there was only a little whimper. After abit, she put down the papers in away that I knew the "game" to be over.

But, instead of crying, she picked up the bright picture cards. She is able to say two-three words at a time that are intelligible, but at first it was more like she was complaining. We started to identify the pictures and after a while, she not only took to and contributed to the game, but she began to laugh and smile. I’d never had this experience with her before. It was WONDERFUL!  She even teased me by calling several items square, then laughing at us in our pretend grumbly voice, "No, Star!" or "Pear!"

Then a little bit later, we figured out a new game with wooden blocks. We were teaching her and three of her peers to pick up the blocks we were pointing at and placing them in the nearby box. To greater or lesser degrees there were small successes. But again, this client amazed me ... Although, she started to whimper when I stopped her from picking up wrong pieces ... contradicted her will, she allowed it! I don’t know ... might not mean much to anyone beside myself, but it was a real good feeling.

The last meeting of the day was with the Clients for their thinking group. I had been preoccupied before the meeting, until I heard the group announced 10 minutes ahead of the meeting. I grappled through the papers on my desk, and one was picked up ... It was a copy of the Individual Preference Interview. Without thinking at all, we figured, "Why not, sounds good."

After the introduction to the group (to catch their attention), we decided would could make a game of talking about their preferences, we split the room and half and they chose to be the blue and red teams. A volunteer said he would do the blackboard tally. There is about 32 individuals in the group. And, sometimes it’s a chore to keep them moving in the same direction, but a game was something that interested them.

The three categories we got to were their living arrangements, the people who they lived with and relationships (friends). It turned into a thing where after one member from each team would respond to a question, both teams had to decide whether the person was telling the truth, or fibbing. We coached that effort. I wanted them to think through what people were saying. Sometimes the individuals have tendencies to say what they would like to happen rather than the truth.

Such they might say, they went over to a friends, when we know that kind of thing isn’t happening, or that they have a fridgerator in their bedroom, when we know that’s not true either. This was a way to talk about real things in a light playful way. There were some instances where we felt it wasn’t appropriate to challenge their beliefs because they were so strongly held and important to them. But, if a person said that he was dating Michael Jackson? That be a pretty far stretch.

There was one point, where the two main leaders amongst the individuals had begun to argue out a point, but we were quick to step in ... didn’t want any Jerry Springer type thing. They were separated by two tables and about 12 feet, but I recall only the part of blocking them visually from each other by walking in between them, and the best "tension-breaker" I could figure out at the moment was that I challenged the more stubborn of the two with the fact that I was now coming over to sit on her lap! I figured that would contradict the situation. It worked ... umm, not that we sat on her lap, but between her surprise and all the laughter, oohs, and ahhs from the big group, she lightened up some. Then we pretty swiftly settled things out and skipped ahead. It was a fun hour for them, AND us!

Umm, this is where the break comes in. It’s now a day later (Sunday morning). Before I could complete the entry, we’d been working on for Saturday morning, my oldest son called with an opportunity to meet he and his family at his place for lunch. Well, you gotta know we’re always open for THIS type of meeting.

To our surprise though ... he got the youngest one to come over too. I haven’t seen Jacob, nor heard from him for nine months. It went pretty good at first in that he allowed me to ask all the Mom, "How the hell are you questions." But, he didn’t want to talk about the length of time since seeing him, or when I would see him again. This got me near tears. There was another problem in that the two boys and my daughter-in-law didn’t ask me questions about my life, but preferred a round open discussion of my ex, his wife, and his families interactions with the boys. This included being over at my other missing sons house, babysitting they were doing, down at work, and vacationing in Michigan. I just sat there pretty dumbfounded with a silly smile on my face.

I decided after a while, I really needed a smoke out on the balcony. They were all laughing and having such a good time. There was another complication, in that, my granddaughter was having such a good time crawling and playing with Uncle Jacob (she’s 3 now), that she dis-included me in her joy. She’d also decided she didn’t want Grandma Ann to see her new bed. We were understanding that she is a young child, but we were fragile enough by then, we felt very isolated and depressed. We figured that out on the balcony and thought we should be going home. Macadam, my oldest son got up to give me a hug good-bye, but my eyes had started to tear, so I turned to walk down the hall. But, then we heard my youngest son. He’d gotten up and was saying, "What? I don’t get a hug too?" We came back and fell into a big deep hug, then the same thing happened with my granddaughter in asking for her hug. I left pretty confused. By the time the door had shut and we were to the end of the hall, we’d started to sob. We knew our heart was breaking.

It wasn’t until after a couple of correspondences and the effort of our friend over the phone, that he was able to talk/tuck us in. We’d been crying non-stop for three hours and at points we’re hysterical like, it had hurt so bad. It’s not that I doubt my three sons love of me, just that we miss the younger two sons involvement in our life. We didn’t think we could hold up our end of the solitude for another 9 months, while they outgrow this stage of being young and carefree. They are at this point, more like untamed stallions eager to meet the world. We are trying to understand, but it just hurt. I don’t want to hear anything bad about them though, they really are terrific kids ... just they don’t need me as a mother. I just have to deal with this somehow. Apron strings and stuff.

I think it is harder in that I don’t have any other family. There are neither no exchanges for birthdays or holidays, nor to greet me at the door at the end of a long day. Sometimes, we get to feeling very sorry for ourselves. We just have to deal with it, I know. Kids are kids. I think by nature, they must be built to be tough on Moms.

This morning, we woke up tired, but we are doing much better. No tears. Feeling the strong need to get out a communication to our journal. Not only because someone might be thinking of us, but because its our way of letting go of whatever it is that gets held within. Pretty much. We’re figuring that it would help if we got back to work on the project. I am very pleased to announce that Debbie has now volunteered to help out. There is times when dissociation helps more than other times. And, that is our next chore ... oh, and we need to take a shower! I’m to understandit will help the soreness in our face and eyes. *Sigh*

Think we'll start, right over here ------------> 

Yeeks, sorry Vince ... only 16,006 characters ... just call me a lightweight!

Eh!  That Floralilia!  It was a very mean, lean efficient 64% verbiage!  :)