Turning a Corner

Good morning. We’re going to try for another entry. Most mornings of late have started like this. I get a few words down and after a paragraph or two I drift off with nothing to say or interested in something else, or too tired to keep my eyes open. At this point we’re alert and determined to put something down in one of our journals.

I’m having a real hard time without the journals remembering what we’ve thought of or been through. Maybe this is what everyone calls a writer’s block ... I remember this happening like in 4th grade, but not much in-between. I certainly do not like it. I figure this time, we are going to write anything our mind thinks of with no judgments.

What happens in our mind is a certain amount of aimlessness. Last night I followed the history of hurricanes. We’ve like no memory of being interested in this before. This morning, we heard James (our guy) give us news that some woman tore off a man’s testicles ... thought, hmm ... better look into that one directly. Well we never found the news story, but read for about 10 minutes about men who were experiencing numbness in their penis. Now answer me ... why on Earth would something like this be of interest or potentially a distraction!?? Possibly I’m related to Svengooli?

Ok, ok girls ... calm down. We can focus here.

We’re still doing good with not smoking ... We’re into day 9 now. It’s still a struggle, but we’re ok with that, because a lot of the time it isn’t bothering us. We’re getting much better with distractions, especially through music or the pet fishes we now have. Yes, yes ... the fishes are illusional like many other objects of our computer life, but still pleasant nonethless. We won’t bother to mention problems with over snacking ... Did we mention its been a struggle ;)

We saw Dr. M. yesterday. There were at least three parts out. Casey is definitely upset with this whole vacation/time off schedule. She was unwilling to bend. Ann seemed a little stronger than last time, but still way down on energy and spirit. At least it feels an ounce more safer. Kate was so-so ... kind of like business as normal, but she looks and sounds very tired. Barely could hold her body up which is similar to Ann at this point.

We talked about the regular kind of stuff like what is happening at work, new job potential, relationships and stuff. We’ve decided to turn down the job offer to the other organization. We will be meeting that lady today. She’s to be attending our 10 am meeting. In the end, we figured there was too much good stuff we’d lose without gaining much better, and in many ways things would be much worse. One of the no negotiation points was that you had to share your computer with a peer. I am so not into that! Plus, we’ve really taken to our soothing music we can play while we work IN solitude. It is really the optimal work experience.

We’re back to working with Dr. M. on how we are going to survive Sr. Tess’s tormenting. Not sure how yet, but we trust Dr. M.

Yesterday, we had a pretty good work day. It had been seven days since we updated our schedule officially, so after coming in late from a doctor appointment, we sat down and developed a new one. This is usually a very satisfying experience as was yesterday. In-between times, we maintain the schedule from the week before, but we handwrite completions, changes or additions. Sure was nice seeing a clean sheet EVEN if it represented more work. Hehe - we knew it was out there somewhere.

I felt particularly pleased, in that, we scheduled out for the day certain accomplishments we would like to have at certain points. As it turns out, we were ahead of ourselves! Wow! That’s different. At the end, we left feeling that we’d "completed" the day proper. In reality it might have been that we "X’d" out 5-6 things from a list of 60 or more. But, in and of itself ... very good feeling. We’ve been grouping our work by areas of responsibility. And for the first time in a long time, we were able to see the progress we’ve made in the area of annuals.

Today now we hope to finish that up for a bit. After 11 weeks straight we are up for the change. We have then four weeks off before starting the next round. I figure we’ll work then for parts of October/November before the next break. In the meantime ... we’ve cleared our schedule enough to be thinking we can complete some Qnotes. FINALLY! Theoretically if we did a dozen a day for the next month, we could be almost complete. But, that’s a lot of ifs.

I suppose the best idea would be to count on a minimum of twelve completed, but hope for more. Theoretically if you were doing 20 minute Qnotes, you could work only half of the day on them while doing other projects the other half. Hmm, wouldn’t that be cool! Hmm, officially, I think if we were to work on nothing else, we might be able to complete the project in about twelve days. Hmm, better chance of finishing a set of 20 in 2 days, nah, we’ll go luxury ... we need to finish a set in 3 days each 21 days total ... which means a minimum of 7 ... Nope, let’s go for twelve ... there will be set-up work too... Ok, ok all that’s in place. Think we’re going to finish them!

Wouldn’t that be something ... to be working in the current month. Yesterday, too I got the bug to be lookin at CARF again. Think if we can do these Qnotes this next month ... that’ll be the next major project. Maybe I can sneak in and snatch the 2004 book. It of course belongs in my care, but Sister will want to see us catching up on the other work before opening it. In that way, I think it be nice to be bringing her home to look over and organize in our off time. I know, I know ... there is a concern of working at home, BUT the thing is we are feelin a bit guilty in that we figure we SHOULD do some extra 6-8 hours a week to compensate for the salary that we are now receiving. Ok ... ok ... but at least something like this??

Yesterday, we finished collecting all the annual reports and ICAP assessments for the last 11 weeks. I’m not sure which our secondary agents have already, but we’ve prepared a whole set for them. We’re turning it over, even though we need four more sets of signatures. I don’t want the whole held up for something much smaller. We are feelin real good about this. Shoot, just delighting in general the feeling of going into State issues in February all caught up. I think today we’ll finish writing the goals/objectives sheets for all these reports and the final report and goal data sheets for the meeting today. Then we are going to take at least a half day to check all the files for outdated records. Maybe the other half day in getting communications out. The last couple of years, we’ve been waiting until January to do this ... This year, we figure we’ll be ahead of the game.

Very cool.

Hmm, nothing left to worry about? Hmm, there’s those Staff meetings problems. Naw, we’ll wait until next week to go through all that. Hmm, gotta remember to collect from our co-worker the forms, we’ll be needing.

Hmm, guess that would be all then. Figure we’ll jump in the shower a few moments early. Yep, yep ... let’s progress this day!