To Heck With Winter

It's a bright sunny day. However the wind is howling, making the present 30 degrees Fahrenheit feel even colder.

The cold weather and I are not the best of friends. That is why you will never find me complaining about the summer heat and its accompanying New England-style high humidity.

Let's face it. I love the heat. I am most happy when I am warm and toasty and get to wear the minimal clothing.

I would be very happy living in a much warmer climate.

In fact I revelled in Arizona, where the temperature remained consistently in the low 100s. Coming home to a 40 degree difference did not sit well with me. If I could, I would go back to that desert in a heart beat.

As you may have guessed, I am not one of these people who enjoys the transition of the four seasons.

Not me. No way.

Give me a place where the only precipitation is rain. And give me a place where my fingers won't get stiff and numb from the cold.

Right now my cold, stiff, and numb fingers are counting of the months until the warm weather arrives.

Learning and Adjusting

So, what do I think about my job so far? People ask me if I like it. But I think it's too early to make that kind of determination.

What I can say is that I do not dislike it.

I am still learning and adjusting. And believe me, there are a lot of things to learn and adjust to.

I am amazed at the staff, particularly Karla, the Program Director. Running a house is not an easy task, especially w/all that paper work and accountability.

And I am slowly getting used to the girls who live at the house.

There truly is a lot to learn and a lot to adjust to.

It's a very humbling, though at the same time, exciting experience.

More Than Meets the Eye (of the Hurricane)

Working at the group home is more than just being a parent and role model to 5 autistic and/or mentally retarded young adult women.

For one thing, there is a ton of paper work. I don't think I've seen that much paper since the time I worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

Each girl has a set of goals that she must meet daily or weekly. The Program Specialist needs to keep track of these goals and their progress.

What also needs to be tracked are behaviors, any new marks or injuries on their bodies, and the management of their ADLs (Activities of Daily Living). Then there is also the Communication Log Book that must be reviewed at the beginning of each shift.

Yesterday there was much to record.

Apparently one of the girls had a difficult day. And she made it difficult for the staff.

For 6 hours straight, Sally engaged in truly challenging behaviors.

She pulled out thick hunks of hair from her head 3 times. The scalp on top of her head was red and raw.

Sally put 3 holes in her bedroom wall. She overturned a small table. She broke a mirror. And she threw a tall table lamp and fake tree across the room.

I didn't get to see any of this because I had the other 4 girl downstairs in the rec room to keep them away from all the action, while Karla and Sue (another staff member) were busy with Hurricane Sally.

Whenever I heard a loud thud upstairs, I talked louder to the 4 girls. The biggest concern was that Sally's rampages upstairs would create a chain reaction downstairs. Thankfully that didn't happen.

All during that time we had to carefully migrate around Sally while trying to get the girls ready for their meds, showers, and bed.

Karla had to administer 10 protective holds on Sally throughout the duration.

By the time Sally finally was calm enough to go to bed, there was a guarded relief. Karla was sore, tired, and ready for bed herself.

Sally remained in bed when my shift was over.

New Year ~ New Job

The holidays have finally gone by. And I feel as though I can breathe again.

Even though I have not made any resolutions for 2008, changes have been made for me.

For one thing, I now have a job.

Yes, a job.

I am working as a Program Specialist for human services organization that I interviewed at in December.

(Please note that all of the names of staff, clients, and their families have been changed own out of respect for their privacy and in compliance with HIPAA, the great slayer of trees.)

Program Specialist does not mean that I am working with computers and writing computer programs. Far from it. What I am doing instead is working as a mental health worker in a residential group home setting.

The home where I am working at has 5 young women in their mid 20s who have autism. Most of them also have mental retardation.

Now what ever possessed me to get into this kind of work? I don't even know if I could answer that myself.

It was sort of like awaking up one morning and deciding I wanted to work in human services. And what made my choice feel even more right was that I actually felt comfortable in accepting a non-preferential shift and working on weekends and holidays. Typically I would have balked at such a schedule.

Also, I must admit that the organization offered a killer benefits package that was out of this world! Not only will I be getting health insurance, the organization will pay for any schooling that I would want to pursue in the human services field.

Just think, someone else would be paying for me to go back to school! How cool is that?! I could actually go for a Master's Degree! Woohoo!

I started work 2 weeks ago, on the 7th. The first 3 days were spent in training at corporate headquarters just south of Boston. Then, a few days after my training session, I started working at the group home.

The first week and a half was kind of boring. I had to shadow Karla, the Program Coordinator, and do lots of reading.

I had to read each girl's case files, the policy and procedure manual, the emergency procedure manual, etc. Basically I had to read everything, just falling short of reading the side panel of a cereal box.

Then, I had more training sessions to go to. This time they were on the Cape.

This place is very big on training.

So far I have managed to survive 2 weeks.

Time Keeps On Getting Away

I did it again ~ let a whole bunch of time fly by in between posts.

I even missed Thanksgiving, in more ways than one. Oh I was present to indulge in turkey and all the associated goodies. But I was feeling so out of it that it took all that I had to keep my face from falling in the plate in front of me.

That whole week was spent horizonally. I really wasn't good for anything but sleep.

Oh, there really are a lot of things to catch up on. But for the time being, we will all have to content ourselves with my being a "woman of mystery."

Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, it's time to prepare for Christmas. And I am still trying to figure out a way to muster up some excitement for the holiday.

But right now, my most immediate thought centers on tomorrow's interview. Not only is it an interview, it is THE 2nd interview. With 1st interviews hard to come by as it is, a 2nd interview is really something to get excited about.

I'll be interviewing at a human services organization south of Boston for a Direct Care/Mental Health Assistant position.

And while human services job are notorious for poor pay, the May Institute does have an extremely great benefits package. My God! It even offers pet insurance!

But the perk that really caught my eye was its free training and education programs. I could even get a Master's Degree and have it paid for! For a perpetual student like me, that sounds like a dream come true.

So cross your fingers, everyone!

Operation Silver Fox

I read about Anne Kreamer's book Going Grey in either Time or Newsweek. Then 2 weeks before that, my local paper carried a story about the same book.

So I took that as a sign.

I had a hairdresser appointment scheduled on Halloween. My original intent had been to have my roots covered over with a color rinse.

But then, when the newspaper story came out, I took it as a sign that I should give in to the little niggling in the back of my brain and seriously consider going back to grey.

I had never been one to be swayed by the dictates of vanity or even current trends. Sure I colored my hair. But while many women were camouflaging their grey, I was off in other territories having my hair colored in ways that were immediately obvious that I was not interested in concealing my true age.

After all, what woman approaching 50 would be interesting in getting bright pink highlights in her hair?

I wasn't interested in obscuring from the world my real age. I could not care less. If anything, I wanted to flaunt the fact that not all women my age choose to stick to safe and normal colors and look as though they leaped out of an L.L. Bean catalogue.

There were some of us who didn't give a rat's patootie over age. There were some of us who wanted to have fun ~ 50 be damned. We did not believe that once we reached a "certain" age that we all of a sudden had to act in way that society expects of that age.

Whose society was that anyway? Certainly not mine!

But still, every few months I would hear these words, "Mom, you gotta do your roots."

Well, roots be damned as well!

As much as I loved my extreme hair color, getting those damn roots taken care of was a bitch. And even though I would let months go by in between hair appointments, it was still an expensive undertaking ~ especially to get the color that I was interested in having.

Let's face it. I'm an artist. One-dimensional color is oh-so-boring. It does not speak to my creative side.

So finally, I decided (thanks to Anne Kreamer) ~ once and for all ~ I was going to let it all hang out. I'm going to go grey.

And why not?

If I can pull off having bright pink hair, and if I can pull off having my hair buzzed to 1/2" length, I can most certainly pull of having grey hair.

So, on Wednesday ~ Halloween ~ the first phase of Operation Silver Fox began.

And who would have thought that that would have cost me far more than it would have cost to just have my roots covered over.

I suppose that I could have avoided all that cost had I simply decided to let my roots roots grow out and have Ariana buzz the rest of my hair with dog clippers. After all, it wasn't the first time that I had Ariana buzz my hair.

But no, I did not want to give up the length of the hair that I had. After all, my hair was getting close to my being able to have a "pob."

I did not want to set myself back several months from achieving that goal by buzzing my hair down to half an inch ~ that is not to say that I haven't done that before.

Despite my desire to keep the length of my hair, I had an even greater desire to get down to the "root" of the matter.

So just before I started my new job, I did indeed have my hair buzzed down to the roots.

Let the pob wait and unleash the silver fox!

Skinky, Stinky, Stinky

I had to have a plumber over today because there was this HUGE hole in the pipe under our kitchen sink. It was so large that I could actually put my finger through it. (Not that I wanted to.)

How could I have gone so long not knowing that there was this huge hole between the elbow joint and the garbage disposal? (At least that explains why I had so many fruit flies after I got back from Arizona.)

And the odd thing is that I would have not known about it. It was only when I was looking to grab the bottle of Sal Suds under the sink that I discovered that something was wrong.

I didn't grasp it right away.

I grabbed the bottle and noticed that the bottom was wet. Wet? Why would it be wet?

Then I looked under the sink and noticed that the basin in which I kept the Sal Suds had about 3 inches of water in it. Not just any water. But very stinky, gaggingly smelly water.

Greatly restraining the urge to gag, I pulled each sopping item out of the basin. Bottles. Jars. What have you.

There were even rubber gloves and a couple of sponges that had deteriorated. Can you imagine what it was like to reach in with naked hands and grab those things?

If there was a direct connection between my hands and my brain, I would have surely barfed.

But I didn't.

However, that doesn't mean that I did not experience my fair share of disgust and want to throw up. Believe me, I did. But I maintained great self restraint.

And the smell! Oh! The smell! For once there was something in the kitchen that stunk worse than the gigunda litter box underneath the parrot's cage.

It was Sunday. And there was no way in hell that I was going to pay premium price by calling the plumber on a Sunday. It wasn't an emergency like the time my pipes froze in the winter time on Super Bowl weekend.

So come first thing this morning, I gave Roger the plumber a call and left a message on his voice mail. (I would have been VERY surprised had he answered the phone himself.)

So many hours later, Roger called back and said that he would be at my house in 5 to 10 minutes.

What was interesting was that Roger did not even have to ask for my street address. That's the advantage of living in a small town and using a local guy.

(We knew Roger. In addition to his son having gone to the same school as Ariana, Roger was also the same plumber who came to our rescue when our pipes had burst in January.)

While waiting for Roger, I decided that it would be a good idea to clean out the litter box. Not because it stunk (not that you would noticed the smell over the standing water in the basin under the sink)~ because it did ~ but because it was rather full.

Roger came before I was finished with the cat box. And he was done just minutes after I finished. I was amazed how quickly it took for Roger to replace the rotted out fitting with a brand new brass fitting.

It took all of 15 minutes for Roger the plumber to take care of things. And it took much longer for me to bail the smelly water out from the basin under the sink.

I told him to send me the bill in the mail.

But at least now the kitchen doesn't stink any more.