What's Really In Their Minds

It's now been 3 1/2 months since I started my job. And all this time the learning curve has been very steep. I have been naive in my expectations, and thus humbled.

For a job that is straight forward, it's been a tough haul. And it has given me plenty food for thought.

While I had personal experience with specific mental health issues, I had no experience with autism and, especially, mental retardation and developmental delay.

Each day, I see the young women, who live in a residential group home, sit in the living room with the TV on. Yet, I never see them watching the TV, let alone interact with each other. Instead the girls appear to be off in their own different worlds.

And just what are these worlds?

What do these girls think about? Are their thoughts chained by a neuro-psycho chemical glitch in their brains?

Is there an imprisoned genius languishing in the brain that is not capable of expressing thought?

Being an individual who thinks, I find it incomprehensible to envision a mind where there is no thought. So, once again, what is floating around in these girls' minds?

In working at the group home, the staff has been trained not to talk about a resident's behavior in front of the other residents. We been told that the girls know more than we may be aware of.

And what may that be?

Ah! Spring!

This morning looked like the start of a perfect spring day.

The sun was brilliantly shining. The blue was a robin's egg blue. Green leaf buds were starting to explode on the trees and shrubbery.

And the temperature was warm ~ warm enough for me to shed a couple of layers.

Summer, here we come!

Yippee!

Spring Has Come...

...but where is it?

Oh sure we've had days that were bright and sunny. But they were far and few in between.

Most of the time we've been dealing with damp and dreary days with overcast clouds. And sometimes it would even rain.

Today is such a day ~ overcast, chilly, and in general, yucky.

Here I am sitting in my studio freezing. My body simply refuses to generate heat. Where's a hot flash when you need one?

The only place where I can feel warm is in my car. In about one and a half hour, when I'll be heading off to work, the heat will be blasting.

And my little piggies will shiver no more.

Pockets

What is it with women's clothing? Most of women's clothing is designed without pockets. Or if pockets are included, they are so shallow that everything falls out every time I sit down.

I suppose it may have something to do with maintaining a smooth silhouette, clean lines unbroken by any disturbing and distracting bumps and bulges.

To hell with bumps and bulges, I want decent pockets to carry the stuff that I use on a regular basis. I want my commonly used articles near me and readily available. I don't want to hunt them down in a pocketbook that is on the other side of the house.

As of this moment, this is what I have in my jeans pockets:

• the right front pocket contains 2 different lip balm and a newly bought sketching fountain pen
• the left front pocket contains and eyeglass lens cleaning cloth because I am very obsessive about having clean lenses, a lighter, and a tiny micro Swiss Army knife
• the left rear pocket contains a sheet of paper towel for blowing my nose, because those mamby-pamby Kleenex tissues just can't cut it
• the right rear pocket contains a bank envelope with money in it

Even my hoodies, jackets, coats, etc. have to have decent pockets. Heck! I even insist that my PJ bottoms have pockets.

Let's face it, I'm nuts about pockets. I am nuts about any kind of article of clothing that will permit me to carry my needful things without having to resort to a purse.

The purse is there for larger things that cannot easily fit into my pockets. It is pretty much, at that point, an extention of the pockets in my clothing.

Please don't get me wrong about purses, handbags, and pocketbooks. I love them as much as I love shoes ~ even though I tend to stick to the same bag and shoes for weeks and months at a time.

How Goes the New Job?

The delinquent blogger is back again.

This time, let's hope that I could stay with it, despite my changed schedule.

For the past three months, I have been working second shift at my new job. My days (or should I say evenings) are no longer my own. I hardly ever see my family anymore.

However, there is something to be said for second shift. It's easier to make doctors' appointments. I can have the whole house to myself ~ just me, the animals, and the constantly ringing phone.

Working a 32-hour schedule, I have 3 days ~ Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday ~ off in a row. It's like having a mini vacation.

Seeing that I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, my Friday is somebody else's Monday. And my Monday is everyone else's Friday.

So come Thursday night, I am doing what everyone is doing on Sunday ~ dreading the first day of the working week. Sounds a little bit backwards, doesn't it?

People of ask me how I like my job. And I can honestly say that I neither like it nor dislike it.

There are things about the job that I enjoy doing. There are also things that I'm not too crazy about doing, making me wonder, "What have I gotten myself into?"

Thus, I have been instructed by my therapist to give the job 6 months.

6 months feels like a very long time, especially when I am such a clock-watcher on the job. And I discovered that many of the staff are also clock-watchers.

It's tough enough watching the minutes go by. And it's even more tough watching the weeks and months creep along very slowly.

I'm already half-way there. Let's see what the second half will bring.

Signs of Spring

Today is the first day of Spring. Warmer weather is on its way.

For most people the first signs of Spring may be sighting that first robin or noticing that the crocuses are up.

For me, I have a different set of signs of Spring.

When I hear the starlings return to their nest in the defunct clothes dryer vent that is above the first floor bathroom, I certainly know that Spring is on its way.

I used to have another sign of Spring years ago. That was when my neighbor across the street would take out his motorcycle for its first spin down the road.

However, as the years progressed, and as our young and carefree days gradually morphed into respectable adulthood, the motorcycle became permanently retired.

At least it retired for my neighbor across the street.

The Wearing of the Green

Here, people say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day.

Unlike in Ireland, where St. Patrick's Day is primarily a religious observance, here it's a day of celebration, indulging in green beer, and dressing in green.

And today is the first day in 38 years that I gave up boycotting the wearing of the green on St. Paddy's Day.

It all started when I was in 8th grade. That was the first time I had attended a public school ~ a school where I didn't have to wear a uniform.

St. Patrick's Day came around, and I was desperately looking for something green to wear to school. With the exception of my old school uniform from St. Patrick School in Providence, I did not have a stitch of green to wear to school.

I enlisted my mother's help. She offered me a sweater that she had knit for herself. And although I wore the sweater, it's olive green color just didn't quite do it for me.

So I desperately searched among my clothes and those of my mother's for something else ~ something more "Irish."

Alas, there was no true jazzy Irish green to be found. So my mother in all her (unknown to me) naivete, suggested that I wear my orange pants, saying "Orange is also an Irish color."

So off I went to school, in a heavily Irish neighborhood, sporting a drab olive green sweater and screaming bright orange pants. Little did I know that once I crossed the school's threshold, I was going to be subject to numerous death threats on account of my extremely conspicuous orange pants.

There was no way I was going to endure a full day at school getting harassed and possibly even beat up. In fear for my life and safety, I summoned forth a stomach ache before first period so that I could go down to the front office and be dismissed from school.

Early dismissals were handled by the vice principal, who happened to be Irish down to the core.

He said nothing about my traitorous orange pants, but he must have recognized that they were the source of my acute stomach ache. He also noticed my tears of fear.

In order to dismiss me from school, he had to first call my mother for her permission to allow me to leave school and go home.

At first he could not get in touch with my mother because the line was busy. Now mind you, this was during the time when phones had rotary dials and there was no such thing as Call Waiting.

As such, the vice principal had to call the operator and ask her to cut into my mother's line.

A minute later I was liberated from potential bodily harm. I must have run all the way home in order to avoid confrontation and having rocks thrown at me.

I made it home safely ~ body and orange pants intact. And I let my mother know that her suggestion merely got me killed.

So from that day on, I made sure that I was never going to experience that type of trauma again. From that day on I swore to not wear even the slightest shred of green ~ right down to my socks and knickers ~ on St. Patrick's Day.

But today I broke away from my 38 year boycott. Today I planned to wear green.

I did not do it so much for St. Paddy's Day, but for the girls at the residential home where I work.

The girls were looking forward to today. Yesterday morning they went shopping for St. Patrick's Day tee shirts.

When I got to the house at 3:00 PM, the girls were in the process of applying green frosting to the cup cakes they made to bring to Day Hab the next day. As tempting as those cupcakes were, the girls restrained themselves from polishing them off in one day.

So my deliberate wearing of the green was not so much in honor of Ireland's patron saint, but in honor of the girls who looked forward to the fun to be had on this special day.

And this time wearing a drab olive green sweater was fine by me.