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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. |
| Yesterday, at work, we were reminiscing about Arlene, who was the crisis supervisor in our office many years ago. There is a picture that hangs in the waiting area that commemorates the dearly departed lady. “Lady” was a term bestowed to her only after she passed away. In living, breathing reality, Arlene was a broad. Arlene had spent the early years of her Mental Health career working the back ward at the State Hospital. Patients rousted from their med induced stupors were herded into the glass fronted day room where they passed the time between, meals, meds, and arts and crafts, by puffing away on packs of cigarettes. Staff frequently sat with the patients in the day room “observing.” Together, they smoked, drank coffee, and worked puzzles. The nurse’s station was invariable opposite the windowed day room, and was also furnished with ash trays. I do not know many people who worked in Mental Health in those days who did not smoke. By the time I met Arlene, she was a forty year veteran of the smoking industry. She had a voice that could have inspired Marge Simpson’s sisters, Patty and Selma, but it was more New York, and packed more phlegm. There wasn’t a lot to Arlene. She sustained herself with coffee and cigarettes. She was rail thin and perpetually cold. In the winter she spent her lunch hour out in her car with the heat cranked. It always looked like she had one of those special effect fog machines in the car. In the summer, she still smoked in the car, with the windows up so no fresh air could dilute the pure joy of carcinogenic haze. She’d sit out there on a sea of asphalt with the sun beating down on her car, and bask in the heat like a snake sunning itself on a rock. Arlene was THE shit. She knew it all, and had seen it all. She was a true veteran of the system. It is easy to forget that it wasn’t all that long ago when as a nation we locked away people who were mentally ill and or mentally retarded. We warehoused people in huge, understaffed institutions where they were stripped of their basic rights, and victimized not just by staff, but by each other. Arlene had worked in that system, and she never for a second let anyone forget the things she had seen. Anyone who studies history knows this lesson. “Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.” Without looking up the dates and such, I’ll get my facts all wrong, but starting in the very early 1960’s President Kennedy pushed for reform. What followed were a series of Mental Health acts that were designed to close institutions and move the patient population back into the communities from which they came. Problem was, many of these folks had been in the hospitals for so long, they didn’t remember anything else, and the communities, either didn’t want them, or didn’t have the resources to support them. The process of de-institutionalization was only marginally less tragic than the process of institutionalization. In 1964 congress passed a mental health act that not only mandated the development of community mental health services, but provided matching federal funds to achieve the end result. Arlene moved from the hospitals to the community along with the out flow of psychiatric patients. She was a pioneer in that brave new world, and saw both the best and the worst of it. When I came to work at the agency, I was fresh off a stint of working as a tech on a Mental Health unit at a local hospital. She did my crisis training, and we shared “war stories.” At the end of my training, I had to cover the crisis calls for a day with Arlene on stand by to back me up. I wasn’t too worried. At twenty five, I thought I knew a lot more than I did. The first calls were easy… someone who just wanted to talk, someone asking for an intake, someone needing medications. By lunchtime, I’d yet to have anything that was a real crisis. By afternoon, a woman called who was screaming into the phone with well founded hysterics. Her husband found out she was having an affair and after beating on her, he was now he was threatening to jump out their apartment window. She was certain he would really do it. I was holding the phone in one hand and desperately flagging Arlene in with the other. Arlene came in, and with the callers permission, we put her on speaker phone. “What floor do ya live on, Hon?” Arlene rasped. “It’s a first floor apartment.” “In that case,” Arlene said “you might let him go ahead and jump, but lock the doors so he can’t get back in.” When we hung up from the call Arlene gave her rattling laugh and advised me, “when it comes to jumpers, always ask what floor they’re on. I’ve had people threaten to jump out windows when they’re living in basements.” Arlene died on pneumonia at the age of 60. Until yesterday, I hadn’t thought about her in years, but I’m glad to have known the “old broad.” |
| So my dear friends, we've made it to the end of another week. Unfortunately, the end of this week finds my writing well a bit dry. I will try pushing fluids later (I'm thinking about an appletini), but for now I'm dry. It has been quite a week. Many of the highlights of the week I can not share with you because of the nature of confidentiality and because... there is just no good place to begin, but at work and home, it's been quite a week. I'm gonna kick off the weekend with a "top ten list" for lack of any other way to capture these gems which, can only be shared out of context. (It seems that spring is in the air and people with developmental delays are sexual beings... there must have been a lot of pheromones being released). So here we go... The top ten things overheard at the office this week. 10. "So... say I go out with my buddies and have too much to drink. Can I call that night to say I'm gonna be out sick, or do I have to wait until the morning?" 9. "Your sister doesn't need to know you had sex with him. Your neighbor doesn't want to know, and the bus driver doesn't care. The only person who cares is the guy you did it with and he wants you to shut up about it." 8. "All this time you thought this was a thoughtful process, but really, I'm like a trained monkey. I just sit here hitting buttons and hoping it comes out right." 7. "I might fantasize about it, but I wouldn't really stab him. I'm too afraid of going to prison. Do you know what they'd do to me in prison?" 6. If only medicaid would pay for a prostitute. Couldn't we call it recreation or something like that? 5. "I think the wellbutrin is working pretty well. I've only had three relapses in 6 weeks, and every cigarette I smoked tasted really nasty." 4. "Oh come on! Who hasn't been accidentally touched by a penis in a public restroom? Those things happen." 3. "So who's gonna call and ask them if the penis was erect at the time it... uhmm... made contact?" 2. "Maybe they can install some type of 'erection detection' device." 1. "Some day, I'd like to try blowing stuff up. Not for a job really, but maybe just as a hobby." If anyone else is suffering a dry well, feel free to use any of the above as a writing prompt.  |
| Most days I arrive at work 10 -15 minutes late. My son’s bus doesn’t get to the bus stop until 5 minutes after my work day is supposed to begin. My boss doesn’t care, because I am always a half hour late getting out of the office at the end of the day. This morning when I walked into the office I noticed something was amiss. I looked around and there was no Alan. Alan is my new employee who just started on Monday. I stood in my office and listened - no Alan noises. In fact, the department was very quiet except for the tapping of computer keys. I glanced at my phone, and the little message light was not lit. Hmmmm…. I felt the beginnings of an emotion. I’m not sure if it was concern or hope. It didn’t have long to form though because I found out Alan was out at an appointment with another caseworker. Still, the ill defined emotion caught my attention. Was I hoping he would just stop coming to work? Sheesh, I was honestly pretty relieved when my last employee quit after 3 weeks, but did I really want this guy to be a no show after three days. Maybe. Turns out that interviewing, and hiring, might not be my strong suite.  I think back on my life and it seems that my initial impressions about people have been wrong as often as they have been right. In hindsight, I probably should have waited for a new civil service list to hire from instead of batting clean up with the old list. Hindsight is a bitch! I can’t get too worried about it today. Today is not a day conducive to worrying. It is a beautiful, mild day. The snow is melting away from the edges of the lawn like a rapidly receding hairline and now there is a big bald spot in the middle. I can see my little daffodils again, and they are peeking up through the snow. The deer are in close nibbling whatever green they can find. I’ll have to go out this evening a spray some repellent. I’m not sure anything will really deter a winter-starved deer from the first green shoots of spring, but I’ll give it a shot. I even spotted the first bloom of spring, but you'll have to go over to my garden journal to see it because I already posted the picture there.  Today I did some spring cleaning around my port. I rearranged some folders and moved some items around. I also cleaned out pages of email. I don’t know why I let it accumulate so much, but it feels good to have things tidy. Thanks to everyone who commented favorably on the new handle. I don't know how special I am, but I'm a bit of a flake, so I guess it works.  Breaking news... He might not be so bad. Already he seems to be learning to modulate the volume of his voice. Maybe it is just that he is a man and therefore needs intensive training in how to act around a bunch of women.  |
| Every now and then I stumble upon something that manages to really capture my imagination. Construction is slated to begin this month on what is being called the "Doomsday seed vault," "the Noah's Ark for seeds," and the "Agricultural Fort Knox." The Global Crop Diversity Trust, in cooperation with the Norwegian Government will build a holding facility for up to 3 million seed samples collected from 1400 seed banks throughout the world. The seed for every major food crop in the world will be housed within. It is a monumental effort to protect the genetic diversity of food crops against disaster (both natural and man-made), disease, and climate change. The location is a remote island within the Arctic Circle. The storage facility will be at the end of a tunnel that will penetrate 120 meters of rock and will be maintained at a constant -18 degrees celsius thanks to a layer of permafrost. Additionally, it will be located 130 meters above the current sea levels to allow for rising oceans. The facility will be highly secure and remote... not to mention the ferocious polar bears in the area. It will be the only seed bank in the world that does not rely on refrigeration. It is a fail safe to the existing network of seed banks that are susceptible to budget cuts, mismanagement, and regional instabilities. The samples in the Svalbard International Seed Vault will be made available only if all existing supplies have been exhausted. Here is a link to the website. http://www.croptrust.org/main/arctic.php?itemid=211 I think it is the gardener in me that is so intrigued by this. When you think about it, agriculturists have spent years breeding crops that exhibit the traits they favor. Whether it is flavor, yield, disease resistance, or what have you. Hybridizing is a selective process which means much genetic material is selectively eliminated. Think about it... there are close to 100,000 varieties of rice. There is no way of sustaining that many rice varieties through conventional agricultural practices. Farmers will grow seed that is the most reliable and available. Without preservation efforts, the varieties would not all survive, but some obscure variety of rice may contain important genetic code that might make it resistant to an unforeseeable blight. Diversity is THE key element to sustaining, and preserving our most important resource, food crops. |
| emmyloo commented that she was curious about my name. Well... I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but I must say it isn't anything terrible or made up, it's just uncommon. I did a little research on my name. The Social Security Administration keeps excellent data on the popularity of names in the US which you can see at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ I checked to see if my name cracked the top 1000 names of 1972 (the year I was born). It did not. (Late breaking news... it did!... I was wrong!) A sampling of names that were more popular for baby girls include: #915 Griselda #919 Ernestine #946 Willie #965 Latrina (Is this the feminine form of Latrine?) #1000 Eric There were a mind boggling 118 baby girls named Eric in 1972. Since my name did not make the top 1000, that means there can be no more than 116 of my contemporaries sharing my name (in the US anyway). ( Again, I was wrong, but my name was still less popular than Mildred, Windy (no typo there), Esmeralda, Geneva and Ethel among others. )So I thought maybe the popularity had picked up. I remember a time when my name couldn't even be found in the baby naming books, but they have become much more comprehensive and I figured maybe... just maybe the name had picked up a following. I checked the baby names for 2005 (The most recent year available), and I am still not in the top 1000. So what Unique names were more popular (Unique was #937 by the way) well I'll tell ya. #302 Diamond (Although it would be more politically correct to name the baby Conflict-free Diamond, don't you think?) #553 Precious (I once had a cat named Precious... Precious and Frisky. Fortunately Frisky didn't make the top 1000 names for baby girls.) #926 Essence (Maybe I've got my mind in the gutter, maybe I've read too many steamy romance novels... ya know... where essence is something he spills with one final satisfying thrust... but... EEUWWWW!) #943 Fabiola #1000 Maryjane (What the hell? It was shocking to see such a seemingly normal name at the end of this very strange list. Was it the pot smoking Hippies or the Spiderman fans that were naming their babies Maryjane? Either way, they are clearly freaks!) Okay, so I have a bit of a morbid curiosity about strange baby names. Hope I haven't offended anyone by listing your name, or your babies name in my blog today. One last thing... Special thanks to gardengirl for the merit badge! It is much appreciated! |
| Yep... It's Monday. Yep... It's snowing. Sometimes a girl just can't catch a break. Thanks to all of you for your comments yesterday. I was overwhelmed by all the wonderful comments about the picture I posted.  Yesterday I went to Lowes, and they had all the riding mowers and grills displayed out in front of the store and they were all half buried in snow. It was pretty funny to see. I tried to take a picture, but the battery on my cell phone was dead. Imagine that! I was surprised to see another Kay floating around the blog page. Kay is my middle name. My first name is (in this country anyway) so very unique that I never run into anyone with the same name. Actually, that isn't completely true. Once in my entire lifetime, I heard my name, looked up and realized they weren't talking to me.  So anyway, I'm not used to this whole sharing a name thing, and I'm trying to figure out what to do. I can: 1. Live with it. 2. Change my handle (*Barbara Maria*  had a whole list of cute names in her "name that puppy poll," and I could pick one of those. )3. Pop for the premium membership again just so that I have a customicon to set me apart. I can't think of a #4 or # 5 so my list is inadequate. Yep... can't catch a break. |
| Yesterdays entry was admittedly whiny and self-indulgent, but I'm over it now. Today is a new day, and beautiful day at that. The snow is crisp and sparkling and the sky is a vivid blue. The dog and boy both wanted to play in the snow, so off we bundled up and off we went. There is a little stream that borders the back edge of my yard, and the dog was having so much fun plowing through the snow. He would run down the bank, skate across the frozen stream and then run up the other side. He had great fun with this until the ice gave and he went into the icy stream. My dog is probably the only retriever in the world who doesn't like water. He walks around puddles! Needless to say, he had his fill of the stream bed. This is what the stream looked like before he tore up the bank with his puppy crazies. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** After the icy plunge, we moved around to the front yard. My front yard slopes from the house down to the road. My son loves to sled on this hill, but it in order to maximize the thrill, we need to make a couple modifications. At the top of the slope, the previous owner used landscaping timbers to build a couple raised flower beds that rise up in steps toward the house. With proper grading and packing down of the snow these beds make a very wicked sled launching ramp. With 15 inches of good packing snow, my son and I went to work. We built up the top tier at a nice sharp angle which dropped smoothly to the second tier and then the ground at a 50 - 60 degree angle. We slid down the hill repeatedly, trampling our way back up to make a well packed super fast run for the sled and to ensure that we reached the maximum possible velocity before reaching the street. I was working on building the ramp up so I could add a wicked Evil Knievelesque jump on the end, but Zachary got cold and wanted to go back inside, so I abandoned my project (which was probably a very good thing now that I think about it), and the boy, dog, and I trudged inside for hot cocoa. It might not feel like spring is starting tomorrow, but it was still fun. |
| Remember how I was all excited about spring? Neither do I. It is snowing fast and furious. It started this morning and schools were closed. I went to work, but the office closed at 1:00. I'm thinking that maybe I don't want to move anytime soon. It is really convenient to work only a couple a miles from home especially when the roads are terrible. After I came home, I ate lunch, and took a nap. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. It is still snowing. If anything, it is picking up. The kids are all rammy and bored, and I'm bummed. At this rate it will officially be spring before we make it out of the house. Since I haven't been to the grocery store in a couple days, we might starve to death before then... Okay, we won't starve, but we might run out of ice cream and diet coke. |
| It must have been a good day today because I laughed a lot. I'm not talking about a little giggle here and there either I'm talking about breathless 'omigod it hurts, now give me a tissue to wipe my eyes' type laughter... the kind of laughter that makes you glad your bladder is already empty. I love to laugh! What was funny? Well... I don't know! Probably nothing. I think laughter is a lot like sex. When you are in the right mood anything can seem sexy. You're just looking for the turn ons. The 'almost' smile, the way he wears his watch on the inside of his wrist, the smell of the rain when he comes in from walking the dog... It's a frame of mind. Laughter is like that. On days like today I just laugh more readily, and... it feels good. In the spirit of laughter (and sex) I'll share another joke. A young woman goes to visit her Grandmother after being away for some time. Her Grandmother is a recent widow and so the young woman asks her what happened. Her Grandfather had been in pretty good health right up to the day he died of a massive heart attack. "It was Sunday," her Grandma explains. "Grandpa and I always had sex on Sunday mornings. We'd pace ourselves to the slow ringing of the church bells. I'll tell you what," Grandma said wiping her tears. "If it weren't for that dang ice cream truck going by he'd still be alive today." Go ahead and laugh... it'll make ya feel good. |
| I had my annual performance review at work today. It was 10 months overdue, but I wasn’t complaining. I sat down with my boss this morning and now I am basking in the afterglow of the dysfunction. My overall rating was "commendable." I am not a person with a lot of ego, or with unrealistic ideas about my abilities or my shortcomings, so there were not a lot of surprises. That said… the ASSHOLE identified communication skills as an area where I could use some improvement! He was very vague on this. “I can’t really put my finger on it, but there just seems to be some break down in the communication, and I apologized that I’m not being more specific but I really don’t know what to suggest you to do different, but maybe you could just be more aware of the issue.” What the….? Sheesh! The ambiguity here is that it isn’t MY communication problem! I’ve got a pretty good handle on where the communication breaks down. There are many good things about working for my boss: 1. He doesn’t watch the clock. He trusts me to put my time in, and if I’m a few minutes late coming in, it is no big deal because he knows it is balanced out by days that I don’t get lunch, or get stuck at the office until late. 2. He has a very good sense of humor, and we often end up laughing about things. 3. He is thoughtful. By that, I don’t mean considerate. He will, however, take whatever information is available and mull it over and arrive at a well thought-out decision which he will stand behind. I feel like he hears me and takes my arguments into account when arriving at those decisions. 4. He trusts me to do my job, and make decisions with minimal interference. 5. He recognizes the many obstacles, both large and small that crop up on any given day, and he is sympathetic to how overstretched things are in our department. Everyone is wearing so many hats that we have to duck to make it through the doorways. I could make a list of five not so good things about my boss, but I’m focusing on the positives here. It took me the better part of two hours to make it through the mail, the voice mail and then the email that I had waiting for me when I returned to work today, but it is a beautiful day today, and I’m so glad to be feeling better. All in all… it is a good day. |
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