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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| Wow, it is a good thing this is a short week because so far it has royally sucked! That said, there have been a few bright spots. 1. Yesterday I got an email from a friend I haven't talked to in years. We exchanged current numbers, and last night we had a chance to chat. She was my closest friend in college. We met freshman year and went through all the trials together. She was there when I broke up with my then boyfriend to start dating my now husband. She was in my wedding, but when she graduated she moved out to Colorado. Distance and time take a toll on friendships, but it was a lot of fun to reconnect. I told her I was writing, and had a blog. She said she has never read a blog before, but wants the link to mine.  I've only given the link to one other person who actually knows me, and it still feels kind of weird to me. 2. My Daffodils started to open. They are kind of short, runty looking things this year, but the sunny yellow is always welcome. I'm enjoying it while I can because the extended forecast is showing a chance of snow showers stretching from Thursday through Sunday. 3. Played Frisbee barefoot with my daughter (and did not hit her in the head). While we were playing I heard my beloved "cheeseburger" bird for the first time this spring. I do not know what kind of bird it is, but I call it the "cheeseburger" bird because it's call sounds like "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheese."  4. I talked to my work buddy Bob today, and that always brightens my day. It was especially fun because I found out that an employee from another department had gone onto the website for the Office of Medical Assistance Programs, and had posted a question about trying to locate MA funded summer camps. Unfortunately the place he posted the question was the "Customer Complaint forum." Well this is mean of me, but all customer complaints have to be investigated by Bob's office and I thought it was pretty funny that he had to follow up on this misplaced question. Muwhahahahaha. Tomorrow I might have to check to see if complaints can be posted anonymously! Not really. I wouldn't do that to Bob. He's a good guy... most of the time. 5. When I pulled our billing for the month of March I found out that my department had set a new all time record for the most billable time EVER in a month. This is good a thing because our fiscal office likes to whine about us not generating enough revenue to support ourselves. The March numbers should keep them quiet for awhile. So... this is me focusing on the positive. Soak it up folks because the strain may become too much. I'm just not that good at focusing.  |
The last person I hired quit after three weeks. This one bought a brand new car after two weeks. I guess that means he isn't going to quit. The jury is still out on whether or not that's a good thing.  Ah... it makes me so painfully aware of my own need for a new car... or at least a newer car. My car is a 1997, and I bought it used about 6 years ago. The good news is I bought it out right, so I haven't had a car payment in 6 years. The bad news is that I haven't had to budget a car payment in 6 years, so this would be a new expense  It has been a good little car, but my experience has been that once a car gets to a certain age, the cost of maintenance starts to catch up with the savings of no car payments. The problem is my husband's car is similarly in need of replacement. I have never, ever had a brand new car, and I must say... the temptation is there. I've just gotta check to see if the money is there! Back when I was working on the behavioral health unit at the hospital, I'd sometimes get stuck doing "one to one" with a patient. "One to one" meant you stuck to the patient like glue and did nothing but watch the one patient for the entire shift. This was for patients who were hell bent on harming themselves. It is amazing how many different ways a person can come up with when they are really trying. I once had a patient grab the patient phone off the hook and start wrapping the cord around her neck while I was doing the "one to one." Anyway, it was usually an extremely boring job because folks who are that ill get a lot of medication. They spend most of their time in bed sleeping it off. In order to amuse myself and pass the time while doing "one to ones," I'd set myself up at the bed side table and play make believe. At the top of my paper I'd write whatever the latest lottery jackpot was up to, and then I would systematically work my way down through every last penny of it. Fifty percent off the top went to taxes. Next I'd guesstimate what it would cost to clear all debts. Then there were kids to sent to college, and money to invest for the future. How generous would I be with the money? How nice of a house would I buy? What cars would I buy? What would I splurge on?... Travel? A Vacation home? The luxury of never working another day in my life? It was my very favorite way to pass the time. I'm not sure my new car shopping is realistic, but I've always been partial to make-believe. |
| Happy April Fool's Day! On Friday at work, my friend Trish was looking for someone who was planning to go to church today. She wanted someone to pick up palms for her. Someone suggested she could get palms at the grocery store. "No, that's just not the same" Trish said. Hmmm.... Somehow it seems to me that if you don't personally go to church for the palms, it really becomes irrelevant if the palms come from Church or a store, but that's just me. To each their own. |
| Back when I was a kid living in Iowa, my brother had a wart problem. He had quite a few warts including a cluster of them on his thumb that prevented the nail from being able to grow properly. My mother went through a lot of Compound-W trying to treat the warts at home, but it wasn't effective. Finally, she took my brother to the doctor to get the warts treated. I don't know a lot about the treatment of warts, but the doctor's approach involved "freezing" the warts. He had several treatments that summer, but as far as I could tell he still had warts. We had bigger issues though. We were moving. My parents were in the process of trying to sell the house, and my mother had a method to the madness. In the morning we all tidied the house so it was ready to show, and then she took us all to the pool for the better part of the day. Keeping us out of the house went a long way to maintaining its perpetual state of "readiness." One day, we arrived at the pool as usual. While I cautiously backed down the ladder into the water, waiting to adjust to the temperature, my brother made his less subtle entry with a flying leap into a cannonball. Upon surfacing he paddled eagerly to the side of the pool calling "Mom! Hey Mom! Come here." Mom made left her deck chair and came over to the poolside where my brother beamed proudly up at her. "Guess What!" he shouted. "When I jumped in the water, all my warts must have fallen off! Look at this," he said holding up a now wartless hand. The pool seemed less crowded that day then during the whole rest of the summer. |
| Hmmm... another Friday. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad it is the weekend, but where does the time go? Overall this was an interesting week. I'm pretty sure that my brain grew from all the video game stimulation. In fact, while I was in an outlying office today, I helped our IT guy fix a computer. I'm almost never helpful in those situations. It must be the video game. What else happened this week... My daughter got glasses. The child has passed every vision screening she has ever been given, but she had started complaining about having trouble seeing that black board. We took her to the eye doctor and found out she has VERY poor vision. She has 20 / 200 vision!!! Well, who knew? All this time I thought she was just clumsy. Seriously, she reads without trouble, she doesn't squint or complain about headaches, and I just never would have guessed her vision was so poor. Amazing how we adapt to these things. She got her glasses same day. Her Daddy took her, and she had them on when I came home from work. "This is so weird," she said "everything has an outline." She was pretty excited about wearing the new glasses to school today so now I've gotta just work on the boy. I know he needs glasses, but he fights it tooth and nail. Last time I took him to the Eye Doctor, he kicked the poor guy. So I really didn't have a very interesting week at all, but I did learn to throw shoes, so you'd better keep the helmets handy. "I've been sane a good long while now, and change is good." Can anyone place that quote? It is a favorite of mine, and it comes from a scifi TV series of which I am a huge, closet fan. (See... you learn new things about me all the time.) Can anyone guess the series? |
This is my week for being on the road, and I'm very grateful for the fantastic stretch of weather. Yesterday I was up in Scranton, and today I was in Allentown. Tomorrow I'll be in one of our satellite offices. All the driving around is to attend meetings, meetings and more meetings, which brings me to this disclaimer: Warning!!! Rant Ahead Before I get to involved in the rant part, let me say this... I like my work environment. I mostly enjoy the people I work with. I think it is wonderful that we bust the stress with laughter, and don't take ourselves to seriously. That said, as much as I like my work environment, MY JOB SUCKS! Why does my job suck? Well... we are part of a very screwed up service system that lacks leadership, clear communication and adequate funding. Every criticism that has ever been leveled against Medicaid programs, or gov't human service agencies, can exemplified by the work we do, day in and day out. Okay, maybe that is harsh, but then again... We've been kind of on a down hill slide ever since the Feds decided that they needed more accountability as to how we were spending federal funds. Yesterday I was at a meeting where it was explained that we were in a blackout period for fiscal information because the head fiscal officer for the State-wide agency is bird-watching in the Amazon for the next 3 weeks. One of my colleagues from another county asked them, "How do you account for the lack of fiscal information for the other 49 weeks of the year?" That was pretty much the high point of that meeting. So... we have a list of assurances that the state has made to the Feds regarding how the programs are to operate. Todays meeting was to review the assurances and also to learn about how the State plans to monitor county programs to make sure we are complying with those assurances. Damn... I just gave myself a headache! This stuff is painful! Anyway... I think the State folks were trying to add some levity, so they told us "we aren't asking you to crawl in bed with these new assurances, but it'd be good to dream about them, and maybe cuddle up with them. I think a more apt analogy would be this... "You don't have to be 'in the mood,' but we expect you to 'put out' because the way we've got this figured... someone is going to be F ED!!!At todays meeting I ran into the man who had been the head of our region until he retired three or four years back. He is now working as a consultant and he was at the meeting. We got to talking. He and I have a history of being pretty candid with each other, and I have a great respect for the extent of his knowledge and experience. I told him that I did not know how we can possibly meet the assurances when the case managers are carrying caseloads of upwards of 60 clients. He looked shocked by the number, and said "There's no way to do this with caseloads that size. I feel really bad for you, but it just can't be done." He's right, and we all know that. It isn't getting done now, and hasn't been for quite some time. The whole issue with the Assurances is going to make it obvious that we are falling short, and one of two things will happen. 1. They will be forced to give us the resource that we need to actually do the work. or... 2. They'll decide the county has failed to comply with standards and they'll bid the program administration out to a private company. The current administration seems to favor privatization, so it may very well go that direction. I used to think that would be a really terrible thing (because... there goes my job), but I'm kind of getting over that now. Whatever happens, happens. If I lose my job, it will compel me to try something different, and that could be a very good thing. Sheesh... if you actually made it this far, I thank you for reading this long winded rant. I'm home with my family, it is a lovely evening and all is right with the world. I might still be standing on the decks of a sinking ship, but at least there is a glorious sunset turning the clouds of pending doom into lovely shades or orange and pink. |
| I stayed up too late last night. Go ahead... ask me why. True confessions time... I was up playing with my daughters Nintendo DS. She has this game called Big Brain Academy, and it gives you all these activities that are supposed to work different areas of the brain. It then gives you a grade. Problem was... I couldn't go to bed until I got at least as good of a grade as the kid. LOL! I topped out at a C+ and then started to backslide because I was tired. One of the activities that I had the most problems with was "counting blocks." It's a classic, but I'm no good at it. You look at a picture of an arrangement of blocks and quickly answer how many blocks. Well, that's how it is supposed to work. I'm not so quick. There were other activities that I wasn't so good at. Memory and Calculation were two of my best areas. I am also really good at matching objects to their shadows. With another 18 hrs. or so of practice I might be ready to go head to head with my 11 year old.  I'm falling behind in reading and commenting on Blogs. I'm having focus problems in part because of the beautiful spring weather. It is the story of my life. In college I was always more of a fall semester student. I was an excellent student for 4 months out of the year. I'll catch up though... it will eventually rain. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My crocus are blooming.  When I got home from work I only spent the minimal time inside before changing my clothes and heading outside. I couldn't drag myself back indoors. All around me I saw the signs of spring and I sat outside drinking in the warm sun, and bird songs. I didn't bother with shoes. I know this may pain some of you, but shoes are overrated. When I walk in the door, the first think I do is kick off my shoes. I'd much rather be barefoot, and there is nothing like walking barefoot in the spring. When the sun fades and the air cools, I walk up the concrete steps to the house, and they are still toasty warm with the heat of the day. When I was a child, we lived in a community that had a pool a couple blocks from our house. We would walk to the pool in the summertime, and seldom wore anything on our feet. In June, we would run across the street with the blacktop scorching our soles. By August our feet had achieved a leathery resilience. I asked my daughter if she'd play badminton with me today. She said "as long as you don't hit me in the head." I couldn't make any promises, so we decided to skip it. |
| “Take Tufferin… it doesn’t kill pain. It builds character.” I have no idea where it came from, but there it is… a phrase that evolved into a long running joke in my family. “Should I break out the tufferin?” became a nice way of saying “suck it up a little, I’m tired of listening to you whine.” It didn’t apply exclusively to physical pain either. Emotional pain was always fair game. It wasn’t as if my family was cold or unfeeling, they just lived in the real world. In the real world, bad things happen. “Life’s hard, get a helmet.” My parents believed that they were not doing us any favors by sparing us from experiencing the consequences of our actions, or some of the inherent unfairness of the world. As parents we must nurture and protect our children, but we must guard against sheltering them so much that they miss out on some of life’s most valuable lessons. With that in mind, I started to make a list of learning opportunities every child should experience (ideally in a loving, nurturing environment, and without serious injury.) 1. Every child should experience the agony of being caught in lie. I’m talking about being stone, cold busted when the stakes are high. Oh yes, I remember this. I was in second grade, and had stopped doing my spelling homework because it was spring and I wanted to be outside playing. The situation had escalated, and I had to have my “bad tests” signed. Fortunately, my father had a rubber signature stamp, and I had an older brother who was pretty good at using it. Notes were sent home, but I did not deliver them. Finally… the teacher called my MOTHER!!! By a fortunate twist of fate, that phone call corresponded with my brother being brought home in a police cruiser for throwing a water balloon into the open window of a school bus. I was still in deep, deep trouble, but at least I wasn’t the one in the police cruiser. 2. Every child should experience the heartache of being the one who didn’t get invited. I’m really opposed to the current trend of inviting every kid in class to a Birthday party so that no one feels left out. Everyone should get left out once in awhile if for no other reason than to learn how it FEELS. It hurts, but there is some valuable character building in that pain. 3. Every child should experience losing an argument even though he knows he’s right. Somewhere along the lines adults started mediating and settling all the arguments. I think this might have started when they started organizing, coaching and referring all the games. When I was a kid we didn’t have that. We played capture the flag, and kick the can, ghost in grave yard, and a lot of kickball. It involved a lot of arguing. “I tagged you.” “No you didn’t” “Yes I did! I got your jacket” “I didn’t feel it!” Most of the time, the argument was resolved by the group as a whole. “Come on! Let’s just play. She’s being a baby, Just let her say she tagged you.” 4. Every child should experience disappointment. Oh but it’s hard! As a parent, it is so hard to watch their little faces fall in disappointment, but parades do get rained on, tickets sell out, and cookies sometimes don’t turn out right. You’d better get pretty comfy with this concept kid! When my daughter was four years old, she had her heart set on “Bubble Fairy Barbie.” She could think of nothing more magical than the doll on TV who whirled about making oodles of super fun bubbles. She finally got the coveted Barbie for her Birthday and sat anxiously chewing her nails while I untwisted the fifty twisty ties that posed Barbie so prettily in her packaging. Once free, Katie attached the bubble wands to the ends of each of Barbie’s tapered arms, and grasping her firmly Katie pulled the string in her back. Barbie spun violently flinging bubble solution into Katie’s eyes just before the plastic ringed end of the pull string snapped against her fingers as it tangled around Barbie’s well endowed torso. A million tries later we were convinced that “Bubble Fairy Barbie” would never produce even a single bubble. It was a bitter disappointment, but a valuable learning experience. 5. Every child should experience pay backs… from both ends. If you are going to sit and flick playing cards at your sweet little sister, you should expect that eventually she’ll have had enough and will flick one back. You should also expect that through Divine intervention that the card will sail true and hit you just beside the eye. It will hurt like Hell, and you’ll have learned a lesson. Likewise, any child who decides to play the game of “Copy cat,” or “I’m not touching you,” or “Stop hitting yourself,” should expect to get popped one in the end. As a parent, whenever I hear “Mommy! He/she pushed / hit / kicked / licked me!” my response is ALWAYS “and what did you do to start it.” With my kids, it never starts off physical. Wow, there are probably a lot of other lessons kids should learn, but in the process of writing this, I reminded myself of a funny story. One day when Katie was about six or so, she was out playing with the neighborhood kids. They were all older, and usually bossy. I’d coached Katie many times that if she didn’t like they way they were playing, it was always her choice not to play. Well, they’d been out playing with walkie-talkies and Katie came in with her walkie-talkie and started watching TV. Pretty soon, the neighbor boy is calling her on the walkie-talkie, but Katie was ignoring it. “What’s going on?” I asked her. “Nothing” she shrugged. “Why aren’t you answering him?” “I don’t want to play anymore.” “Did you tell him that?” “Yes! I told them, but they won’t leave me alone.” By now the tears are starting to well up in Katie’s big brown eyes, and I was feeling the rising wave of Mama Bear protectiveness. You'd best not mess with Mama Bear! “Let me have the walkie-talkie, Katie. I’ll handle this.” Taking the walkie-talkie I called to the neighbor boy. “Josh,” I said, “this is Mrs. Kramer, and you need to know that Katie does NOT want to play anymore.” “But who is going to let us out of the shed?” “Excuse me?” “We were playing jail and she locked us in the shed. We can’t get out.” After I pulled myself together from the hysterical laughter that had me doubled over in side splitting agony, I walked over to the neighbors shed and released Katie’s four inmates. I’m thinking there were lessons learned that day too. |
| What a beautiful day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the garden is coming to life. It's Spring. Yesterday and today I've been outside working on spring clean up in the garden. The dog keeps me company while I'm out there, and he's been especially pleased to be out in the lovely weather. Yesterday though, he recovered something dead from along the stream and brought it up into the yard. He rolled around on it until he smelled very much like something dead, and then proceeded to dismember the remains. Needless to say, last night he got a bath. Today there were parts scattered all over the lawn. Yuck! Fortunately, Tony took care of that clean up. I am eager for the ducks to arrive. Every spring we get a pair of ducks on the little stream the runs behind the back yard. My daughter and her friend dubbed them Polly and Quacker many years ago. I always wonder if it is the same pair that returns from year to year. Today I could hear ducks flying over, but I didn't see any setting up house. My son likes to sit in the front bay window when he plays his games, and he keeps coming over and wanting me to feel how warm his back is getting. It makes me laugh, but this whole concept of warm sunshine seems to have been forgotten over the winter My daughter just came inside from practicing softball with her father. They were out throwing the ball back and forth and my poor baby took one to the HEAD! She is fine... a tough kid all around, but it hit her in the forehead over her left eye. There is a clear red imprint of the laces! Poor kid. Poor hubby. He is feeling pretty guilty about it. I've got to go throw together an ice pack now! Happy Sunday!   Here is a picture of my poor baby's forehead. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Fortunately, she's no worse for the wear, but it does make me wonder why they call it a 'soft' ball. |
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