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Since my camera is busted like a meth dealer at a police pot luck, i thought i'd draw today's picture. That's us going on our walk. My ambition was to walk from
Pine Rest to Lee's Oriental Market, but we only made it almost half way, a little past 54th street, so i didn't get to expose Houston and Katrina to that store again. I love it. The lady who runs the place is really cute, and we've run out of decent ramen noodles. Which means we've run out. We can't eat normal ones anymore, which is a bummer since they're five for a buck, and the good ones cost about USD0.80 a pack.
Anyway, i had a really good day besides the whole not-seeing-spouse thing. I worked with staff i like, it was a smooth shift, and the walk with the progeny was really pretty fun. Although Division (if you looked at that Google Maps directions, it tells you to go on Highway 131, but i took Division instead...) is a really loud street, the sidewalks are filthy and bumpy, and there are no back roads which run parallel to it, mostly because of the trailer home parks which border it, and also the new South Beltline, which looms over Division and the surrounding neighborhoods with ridiculous ~20 foot walls, as though to protect the elite motorists from the scum below. Anyway... it's loud. But we had fun.
And i know i have made it my policy not to discuss things like... poop... and stuff on my site. Well, i'd like to continue that policy, but let me say that when i saw an ad for "non-stimulant laxative" i wondered to myself what in the world kind of stimulant they'd use for a laxative, and on the apex of our journey, i drank an energy drink. Well, i think i found that stimulant. It was horrible.
Read on for an anti-US and US media rant.
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Check out
this image. It's a screenshot of CNN's front page from today, August 31st, around 10:00pm time in Michigan, US. The
hurricane has done its worst down in the New Orleans area and triage is underway. Thousands are homeless, poor, hungry and perhaps dying. It's pretty horrible. But there's another horrific story over in Iraq, the
Al-Aaimmah bridge stampede.
Okay. Why is the stampede eleventh on the list of stories? (Counting the headline and accompanying story cluster as one story.) I know that H. Katrina is a big natural disater, and will have worldwide economic impact. And CNN is a US news company. But they put sick ladies and an inanely obvious quote from Bush before the stampede? Television news is worse, with mere seconds being devoted to a tradgedy which is comparable in terms of loss of life, and hours devoted to the hurricane. What, is it because we don't know of any Americans affected by the bridge stampede? Or is it because they're a bunch of Shi'a Muslims? Ooh, and gas prices are up.
Anyway, the media is stupid and sucks. But at least it's universal. As of now, the
Iraq Daily has two small links concerning the hurricane, way down at the bottom of the page, and it's just because the hurricane is in the same transcript they linked to as something having to do with Bush's policies about Iraq. Man, people can be so stupid.
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I don't have much to report today... i have lots of stories and stuff, like how badly messed up our Honda Civic was before we actually sold it, but i want to go to bed soon, so today, i'll just post a couple of pictures from today down below, so click the "more" thing. Oh yeah, and my camera is broken. The lens will not extend. It just sits there going "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-neeeeeee-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" over and over. The weird thing is i didn't even abuse it or drop it. I'm going to call Sony tomorrow to see what i should do. I
could take it apart and fix the little gears or whatever, but that would certainly void the warranty. So we'll see what Sony can do for me.
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I seem to have a theme running through my blog about fresh food. Here's a couple peaches my neighbor's friend offered us. He said "I picked them just this morning. They were practically falling off the tree." Yum! So many store bought peaches are as crisp as apples! That is Not Okay.
And here's the proud tomatoes grown in our very own front yard! They are delicious, of course, and fill our hearts with glee as we devour them, two or four at a time, when they ripen. Poor little tomatoes. "Yay! I'm a grown up!!! Huh? Ow! My neck is being torn in two!!! Hey! It's dark in here! What are enormous those hard thingschxsggrlglglg...." Rats. I
was gonna be vegan, but now i am against cruelty to fruits and vegetables too. I'm gonna become an airetarian.
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I wish i could take a little wire bottle brush and jam it up my nose until i can reach the locus of itchiness which is making my nose and eyes miserable... and scratch and scratch and scratch and scratch. Fortunately, the rest of me feels great, so i'm doing fine. But why does my nose and mouth have to react so dramatically? Or whatever the chaotic cycles of life in this area has flooded the air with. Sometimes i can feel a spark of allergic reaction in my sinuses or the roof of my mouth. Then my eyes start to itch and burn with the fire of a million pollen-shaped suns.
Then i take diphenhydramine (Benadryl), and now i'm knocked out. I'm typing with my head resting against the wall next to me, and have my eyes shut. I wonder if i made any typos? Huh. No typos. Okay, i'm gonna go to bed now.
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This morning was totally sweet. Katrina and Houston got along together, we got ourselves to church just in time to get them in their rooms (they were the capacity makers, both), and i even got to sit by Karen, who was at work. On the weekend days we both work, we only get to steal a brief hug and "Love ya!" from each other while we pass off the kids. Anyway, then i took a nice walk in Grandville, near Mars Hill Bible Church. We walked, or rather i walked and the children reclined in their strollers, until i figured i needed to turn around to make it back to the car in time to get to work, minus an hour to eat. We passed this little cute Chinese Buffet, so we popped in, ate healthy servings of cantalope, white rice, and hot and sour soup, and unhealthy portions of egg rolls and breaded chicken, leaving a mess around us worthy of the name
Katrina (heh heh... hurricane... heh...).
By the way, how they gonna name a hurricane after our sweet, gentle one and a half year old orange blossom of a daughter?
Right. We left a mess, and a very good tip which must not be common at Chinese buffet places since two people made special effort to thank me. Oh, and i accidentally used the girls bathroom for Houston's potty break. A very elderly lady was jiggling the handle when i left, and i said melodramatically "Oh wow, i was in the lady's bathroom???? I'm
so embarrassed!!!" and she said in a high, tremulous voice "It's no problem."
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Then, when i got to work, we enjoyed a few moments of light hearted fun, like taking pictures of the back of each other's heads. The image above is Michelle's enchanting throwaway messy-pigtails look. But then one of the worst work nights i've had made landfall, so to speak. One of the larger, stronger kids was going nuts, and i had to restrain her thrice. The third time, one of her peers forced her way through my heroically struggling coworkers into the seclusion room (empty room, locked door with no handle, all surfaces unbreakable) to get me off her, just as i was preparing to make my own exit. The girl i was holding down was struggling vigorously, but i could only watch as this other girl made her slow, violent approach.
I had to put my head down on the base of the first girl's neck (a proper restraint using our system has the Acting Out Person face down with the caregiver at an angle, chest to the upper back of the Acter Outer, arms entangled in a simple, but complex to describe, lock... so a flexible, determined person can use their head to make hearty contact with the face of the person doing the restraint) to keep myself from being head-butted, and as the girl who wanted to save her peer reached me and started tugging on my arms and back, scrabbling at my shirt, all i could do was pray for everyone in the room and trust God and my coworkers that i was not going to get my face kicked in. Michelle and Christina did get the whole mess sorted out - there was even a third resident involved, i was later told - with help from staff from other units.
Karen was awake when i got home at 12:30am, so we had a nice decompressing talk (she needed to get debriefed as well), and here i am. Bouts to go to bed.
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Thunder and lightening. The flash-bang strikes fear and trembling into our eldest charge (Graham, who must be almost six human years old), but our more genetically related cohabitants seem to be lulled to sleep by the noise. This morning's local thunderstorm masked Katrina's early whimpers, and she allowed herself to be lulled back to sleep by the warm blanket of rain noise and heartbeat of thunder. Houston's bladder woke him by nine, however, but Katrina stayed asleep past ten! Mornings like this are simply a random blessing from God. And while i thank Him for everything in general, i thank Him specifically and specially for such unexpected bonuses!
My lazy morning stretched into a lazy day until about two o'clock when i ventured outside with the kids, ready to go to work. The weather today was incredible. I wish i'd taken a walk, played in the sprinkler, taken the kids to a park - anything except stay inside. Maybe tomorrow will be as beautiful, and since i'll be going to church, i'll have a built in opportunity to get out and active! Sweet!
With this morning's rain, i enthusiastically endorse the weather recently. Not like it's up to me... but that's what's so cool about God. Even our most petty insignificant whim of preference is fully known, and He sets situations (and prompts our whims!) up simply to delight us. Awesome.
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I was gonna mention how the blueberries i picked Wednesday were a very slight disappointment. There were the two kinds of blueberries in that one blueberry farm, see, and the ones that were just aobut ready to quit being good to pick were less sweet. The ones that are good now are more sweet, but they're less interesting in texture and flavor. And the plants look different.
Of course, they're still delicious, and all the insane health benefits are still there.
I was also thinking about yesterday, when i took Benadryl and then read that silly and long article about tattoos, and how some of the plainest sentences would evoke acutal laughs from me. That's really weird for me. I must have a supreme amount of self control, because i never feel compelled to do anything - laugh, cry... certainly i
do laugh and cry, but i could intercept and shut off those responses if i chose.
I think the kids at work experience the opposite reality. Their internal state is overwhelmingly shaped by externals. I often get asked "Are you happy now?" f'rinstance: "I gave her her CD back, are you happy now?" My stock response has always been "Your actions have nothing to do with whether or not i'm happy," and it's true for the most part. Like, it's half true. I can observe horrors so awful i quail at describing them and feel a kind of abstract semblance of heartbreak. I do my best to respond warmly, but when my shift is over i can easily avoid thinking about work. When really great things happen, however, i feel genuine delight. And i'd like to think i have genuine relationships with my coworkers...
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Speaking of coworkers, Karen and i and our entourage of youngsters went to Shana's house today. Um, dang. Her house is like a mansion or something. So tidy! So tastefully appointed! So enormous! And Michelle showed us her Envoy. So enormous! So luxuriou! It swaddles and pampers! She said "My Envoy drives so much better than my old Blazer. [it was a 2000 two-door Chevy Blazer - very nice] I didn't even realize i was driving such a piece of crap!" So on the way to work in my '97 Ford Aspire, i looked around, trying to see my car as someone unfamiliar with it would. It's tiny. I can have my arm resting on the passenger seat back and lazily reach up and touch the top of the passenger side door with my finger. It's noisy. It handles horribly due to a weak suspension and pathetic tires, and the power and efficiency both are laughable for such a small car. If it was zippy i could like it more... but... i still like it. I wouldn't trade it unless a good deal on a smaller and/or faster car came along.
My first car was a '73 Chevy Impala - a four door land yacht with a gigantic V8 and ripped seat. It was very cool, but what i really wanted was a little teeny
Honda Civic. Never a monstrous SUV.
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Oh man, today work was annoying. We have a pair of cliques, who are plotting the slow deaths of the members of each other. Or at least, they are frustrated enough to threaten all kinds of bodily harm to random Others.
So i found myself reading a whole lot about
unfortunate tattoos and photoshopped highway signs on the same site, and found myself laughing loud enough to distract Karen for no reason other than i am no longer annoyed at work yet i'm exhausted.
And i want to get up with the kids tomorrow, so i'm definately going to bed now.
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oh yeah...
happy birthday Phoebe!!!!!!! a day late. Rats. Again, she's Doctor Moore, with the PhD. in ... uh... being smart.... (something having to do with international economics and relations - she'll make a great politician or diplomat). For years i thought that when we'd been fighting one time i cracked her wrist and almost broke her hand off. There was a hairline crack going all the way around it, and Mum told me "Juanito, you nearly broke Phoebe's hand off!!!" I was horrified, and only when i learned about anatomy and bones and stuff i realized that i must have dreamed the whole thing. Back when i was five or six. I also dreamed that Phoebe had eaten the end of a chicken leg bone, and thought that was real for years and years.
One time when she was maybe three she said, at the dinner table, "I'm not tired." A beat later, she flopped her head onto the table snoring. Heh. Pretty advanced humor for a very young kid. We all laughed a lot. Besides JJ, who probably went "Bleagah Goo."
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Today i worked with Michelle (first time in what seems like three weeks), took Katrina and Houston blueberry picking, where we spent about two hours, and then we walked to the grocery store. It takes me about half an hour to walk the 1.6 miles with two strollers and a basket full of fresh fruit. I know, because Houston was kicking his legs frantically the whole time, and i was telling him "wait until we get home to go to the bathroom, please!"
It was a very fun day. The house is a whole heck of a lot easier to keep clean if it's empty. It's still a mess, however, but that's becasue i got distracted by losing all my pictures from today (recovered using Karen's computer, thanks, honey) and two phone calls, one from my newly married brother (in law) Rick, and one from my friend Richard. Tim's brother. The day after Tim died, did the same walk to Family Fare with Graham. Back then it seemed like a forever walk. Now it seems like... uh... pretty much a nice little jaunt.
Katrina and Houston were incredibly cute today. They spontaneously hugged each other. That's the first time i witnessed that!
Finally, i'm grumpy because i've gained about six pounds since spraining my ankle. I've been getting every so slightly more slim and ever so slightly more muscular for something like a year now, but doing some stupid error like have an owie foot and be less active -
pow, you're less in shape. I guess that's all part of getting older. I will have to be more careful next time i get hurt. Or sick. At least i'm still more confident in my body. I think that might be the tan i worked so hard to get and is now fading like an old Ozzy t-shirt left under the back window of a Camaro in the Florida summer sunshine. Hmm, did i mention i just started reading
LolitaM by Nabokov? It's scary. The clever writing, yet so disturbingly demented. And it's been ages since i updated my book list. Gotta get to that. Check out the ___more___ link to see one of the best pictures i ever took! Hehehehehe.
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I'm wearing those pants today. The ones which Deanna and Shana could fit into at the same time! And now not only is Deanna no longer my coworker, but Shana is not gonna be full time anymore either. Rats. I'm not letting anyone try on my pants ever again, no matter how baggy..
Um... so i slept in today, did a small amount of cleaning, went to the store, and pretty much went to work after that. So i don't have much to write about. Hmm... not like that stopped me yestarday. Memories. Furthermore, i didn't take a single picture today. I promise i'll have a more interesting post tomorrow.
I don't know how all those bloggers who have some kind of theme figure out how to write new articles all the time. And how do they avoid getting all sidetracked? I guess most blogs are only updated a couple times a week. Okay, i gotta go to bed soon.
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Houston's getting pretty good with a camera. He seems to have an uncommon fascination with
his knees, but since he spends a great deal of time looking at them, i don't blame him. I remember being little and thinking that my thighs looked really silly squished flat by being in a chair high enough that my feet dangled. I'm sure there was nothing wrong with my poor little thighs.
I also can plainly remember thinking how comfortable i was being my hight, and how awkward it would be to be all tall and gangly like grown ups and teenagers. My own teenage years would prove me correct, since i had a reputation of falling down at the slightest provocation. Sometimes with no reason at all! When we learned how to play organized football in PE, i was played tight end since i'm fast. The opposing team could always tell when the play had begun, because first thing, i'd fall down. Like, "One, two, three,
HI(Juanito falls down)
KE!!!
We were in Peru when i was in eighth grade when we did the football session with the high schoolers. Well, everybody had a chore to do after school, and they rotated. Mine was to sweep the science room this particular week, so i was sweeping Peruvian jungle mud dust from the unfinished hardwood floor with an old style straw broom after an unsuccessful PE school day. One of the upperclassmen named Joey Walter (great guy - he
wrote a song) was walking home, and he stopped by the room and mentioned football.
I launched into self-flaggellating excuses, but Joey stopped me and said "No, I was going to tell you that you obviously are trying really hard, and i appreciate that. I wish everyone put as much effort into playing as you do." Well... being so encouraged by a cool, popular upperclassman clearly made an impression on me.
Paul's site has lots of info about our little corner of the Amazon river basin. Browsing there may give you an impression of what it was like, or prompt some fond memories if, like me, you were there.
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Okay, i don't know where my days got messed up, but today is actually ISO Standard Day number two hundred thirty three. Sorry for all those of you who were all confused.
On to today's post: That's Eric's daughter balancing on his hands. Sweet, huh? She's got good balance, and Eric's pretty good at holding her up and all. I got some other funny pictures of his and Jackie's kids, so if you wanna see those, check out the "more" section.
Today was a day for church, family, and now computers. Or at least weblogging... which is what i've been doing for the past hour or so, interspersed with even more fiddling with my silly, obstinate computer trying to figure out how to salvage my Windows installation.
Roight! Last night i ended up reading a lot about Creation Science, and what's going on in that camp, and i got really bummed out, right before bed. I think i tried to block it from my memory because i forgot all about it until this morning when i got bummed again when i remembered it. But i don't feel like going into it right now, because Karen and i are gonna watch some movie "Galaxy Quest" which i have not seen. I'm sure i'll like it.
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My little boy jumping. He loves it.
And no caption could possibly improve on this picture. Except one that is self referentially humourous, like... if i said "Hmm, should i delete this caption?"
Oh, since i'm trying to be funny and all, i have been trying to make up a funny joke for a couple weeks. So here is my only vaguely successful effort so far:
My neighbor came up to me the other day and said "I'm going on vacation, and while i'm gone, i wonder if you would feed my dog, take him for a walk, feed the fish and clean out the tank, water the plants, mow the lawn and take in the mail?"
Well, i'm a nice guy, so i said "Yeah, of course! When are you gonna be back?"
He blinked and said "Tomorrow."
I'll quit typing for a minute so you can wipe the tears of mirth from your eyes and be able to read again...
Okay. I'm pretty discombobulated by not having a proper computer to work on, so i can't figure out how to get myself to write any actual posts about our vacation besides the post yestarday. Karen's posts are fantastic, though, so go
check them out! She's so cool.
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Yay! We just had a great vacation. Being able to spend time with the whole family is a blessing. In disguise, perhaps, the disguise making the whole experience look a whole lot like a reality TV show cleverly entitled "How Much Whining, Complaining and Ultrasonic Screaming Can You Tolerate Before Bashing Your Own Brains Out With a Burning Chunk of Firewood TV???". I'm happy to report that if we had, somehow, been on that show, nothing would have been resolved this week, except that neither of us were even close to bashing our brains out with anything at all really! ha ha!
But that shallow disguise, lies the blessings of spending time together, providing amazing memories and experiences for the kids. The highlights of the trip for me would include the Air Zoo, with the very accessible displays of various airplanes and their parts... like, did you know that in static rotary engines, (the kind of piston engine where the cylinders are in a star around the center, and the cylinders don't rotate, the crank does) there's a master connecting rod that the other connecting rods connect to? And that in the older ones the exhaust valves vent right into the atmosphere??? That's the kind of stuff i thrive on.
The other highlight... probably the rainstorm we experienced last night while sleeping in our tent. It's totally waterproof. We know that now. What a great tent. And we got it for, like, a nickel. Not really, but pretty dang cheap.
Hmm, my computer is suffering from not enough Windows installations that actually work (still using Knoppix and safe mode) so i can't be bothered to actually edit any pictures today besides the banner. Eight hundred by six hundred?
Puh-lease!!! And also - if you've been trying to get our site and it doesn't work, that's because for some reason, our router decides to drop our internet connection every once in a while unless my computer is on, connected, and not in safe mode. I know that's impossible, but that doesn't seem to bother reality.
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Today was totally taken up for me by going to
Michigan's Adventure with six kids from work. It was a really chilled out trip, with only a few moments of "
what??? you have to go to the bathroom again!!!" and other girly interaction issues. The water park half of the park (the jingle that says "Two parks for the price of one" is inaccurate - you also have to pay for parking. However it's also much cheaper than a premium park like
Cedar Point, so it's really three parks for the price of two (if you count paying for parking) or three parks for the price of a half, since Cedar Point is probably twice as expensive as M's A) was really fun. I've never been to a water park before, and it was really much more fun than i had anticipated. Of course... i like water, swimming, slides... so anyone who knows me would think a water park and me would get along well.
That's pretty much the story of my day, except that they had to close down the park, because there was a brush fire right across from the parking lot. We saw as it was just starting, and i took some pictures of the smoke billowing forth from the fire as it filled the parking lot. Before it got to that point, we observed a small group of golfers trying to combat the fire by whacking the ground with their golf clubs. Turns out that's not too effective, answering finally the question so often asked "why do firefighters carry around hoses and axes instead of woods and irons." Perhaps they had made the wrong club selection. And i didn't get a picture of that stupidness.
Anyway, i will post pictures once i get my Windows installation running again. Right now i'm using
Knoppix, which is an installation of the Linux operating system which runs directly from CD. You pop it in your CD drive, boot up, and about a minute later, you have a complete Linux system running, complete with email, instant messenger (but nobody i know is on to show off for), word processing, music players... but i can't get my camera memory card working. Computers are cool. Linux is cool. Why are you laughing at me? Yeah, go check the ___more___ link to see if i got Windows working again.
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Gah! Michelle got an
Envoy. I
guess i can still be her friend.
And, we're letting our friend Crazy Klaus house-sit for a couple days since we're gonna be at the Air Zoo and Cereal City over in mid-Michigan. We'll have lots of good pictures when we come back.
Here's the smoky parking lot. For some reason the girls' faces are all blurred out. I guess it has something to do with "confidentiality" or something, and how we're not allowed to
blah blah blah. I'm working on a way to make it look less creepy. So far, i have simple blurs and the frightening squished face effect like in the movie The Ring.
And here's the result. Shivering Timbers is closed. I wanted to ride on it. It's a classic "out and back" wooden roller coaster. It's long. The fire damaged a power line close to the park so they had to close the whole park down (besides the piped in muzak... that should be number one on the list of things to shut off in every contingency, including "spill in aisle four"... hang on, i guess they do turn off piped muzak to make that kind of announcement, but not for long enough), which meant everybody had to go home at once. The parking lot was a parking lot, like, as in the sense of the freeway becoming a parking lot. Nevermind, i have to go to bed.
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On the way home tonight i put almost $25 in my gas tank. My little, underpowered Ford Aspire. I guess we're almost approaching the point where we Americans are paying the same price as motorists worldwide are paying. Austraila pays about $3.25 US for, uh, petrol, and Brits cough up about six bucks for a gallon of the stuff. That's uh-spensive!
I guess the reason i complain is that $25 is a lot of money for me. That's the kind of sum i don't just spend without consulting Karen first. If i want a double-CD set or a nice pair of pants (yeah, i know, $25 doesn't really buy an actual Nice Pair of Pants), i feel like i have to fit it in our budget. And we do.
Oh well. We're in no danger of starving, and we can afford ridiculously luxurious things like... two whole cars that run, and nice digital cameras, and computers and a house to ourselves. But the idea of rich people getting extremely rich by selling poor people something they are required to buy if they want to keep their job makes me furious. Low key furious, you understand...
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I guess i like food. Yesterday we went over to Karen's parents' house, where we hung out while we waited for the frozen white bread dough to thaw, and then we made elephant ears.
You know, yeast is a component of almost all the very best foods. Wine and beer are just juice and grain broth without the nanobot molecule snippers called yeast. Fresh bread simply is not fresh bread without the sinus filling burst of yeasty aroma radiating from every new slice. Marmite and Vegemite are made with yeast... although there's yet another area of my taste with which i expect nobody to agree. Baggy pants, techno, the Scion xB, and now Vegemite.
Who would have thought that a little single celled organism which cuts carbohydrate molecules apart, releasing carbon dioxide and alcohol would be such an amazing addition to our cuisine? Anyway, i will refrain from railing against brown-n-serve rolls and italian-loaf-in-a-tube, both of which contain no actual live yeast, and move on to praise the wonders of frozen bread dough.
You can get it in any grocery store, and when thawed, you can let it rise to make actual loaves of bread, or you can stretch it into large circles (please don't roll it) to make pizza crust, you can roll it (rolling is fine for some things, just not pizza curst) into enormous rectangles to make cinnamon rolls, extrude it into long snakes to make pretzels, or.... stretch it into elephant ears. That's what we did yesterday.
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Recipe:
Thawed frozen bread dough (will thaw much faster if placed on an aluminum tray over a pot full of hot water... you can brush vegetable oil on it to keep it from drying out)
A couple of inches of canola oil heated to 400 degrees in an electric pan (canola is one of the healthiest oils, and has a very high smoke point, so if you use a thermostatically controlled electric pan, you'll be fine) (please ignore the
urban legend which says canola oil will kill you...)
Cinnamon sugar... you know, sugar mixed with cinnamon. Or you can use powdered sugar. Or whatever the heck you want, i guess. Mmmm, used transmission fluid!
Cut a chunk of bread dough, and shape it into a big elephant ear shape. It's better to use a little oil to keep the dough from sticking to your hands and counter, because flour will sink to the bottom of the oil in the pan and sit there burning. Fry the dough until browned lightly on each side. Drain as well as you can manage, and coat in cinnamon sugar. Serve while hot (and yeasty), warning everyone that while there's nothing particularly unhealthy about them, they sure have a ton of calories.
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There's a picture of Houston typing the last letter of his name. So amazing. He read the word "deaf" today.
Today was my last day to be the Shift Supervisor at work.
Hmm, maybe i'll try to explain my job. Even though most bloggers seem to think where they work and go to church and stuff is somehow top secret information or whatever. Even the names of their friends. I guess my blog readership is pretty slim... and random.
Somebody found my blog by searching for "tiny bugs with wings that die right away". I was at my parents' house (who live in Wilmore, Kentucky), and Josiah and i were looking at how people found my site, and we laughed for about ten minutes at that. Tiny bugs with wings that die right away. Wha??? If it explains it at all, the person was using a Macintosh computer. I'm not worried about anyone stalking us or invading our privacy or anything. Like, my whole life is right on this weblog anyway. Who could possibly want
more information about us? There's no value without scarcity.
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Wedgwood has eleven residential homes where troubled teenagers and some pre-teens live. We provide top quality "service" to these kids, whose "primary issues" (quotes indicate that the real reasons kids come to us are infinitely complex) include substance abuse, sexual offense, neglectful and abusive home environments, developmental problems, personality disorders... being a yahoo... whatever. I work at Delta. We'll take pretty much anyone referred to us as long as they got ovaries and are between ten and eighteen. We have beds for thirteen kids. The doors are locked, so nobody can go outside without a key, and only staff have those. We provide therapy, scheduled activities, school, and countless daily opportunities to learn and heal.
We do a really good job. We get lots of money (250 bucks a day per kid, sometimes more!) from lots of state funded agencies to do what we do. And we're openly and actively Christian! Ain't it cool? Our excellence comes from our aknowledgement of the reality of the human soul, the God given soul which bears God's image, and needs healing treatments right along with the mind and body. We do our best to lead by example, making our foundation of faith clear, while respecting the efforts so many people make to find ways to think about reality without an omnipotent, omnipresent, imminent, personal spirit which is love and truth and glory, and which we have no hope of understanding. Church and devotions are never compulsory. And we had a girl once who wanted a kosher diet. We tried.
And i've never heard anyone adopt the trite message so often heard, the message that goes something like "GIve your life to Jesus and all your troubles will be washed away!" Sometimes people stand up after this and say how they quit taking their meds after they gave their life to Jesus, or they never struggle with anger anymore... and i quietly bang my head in frustration. We're told that God will make us strong to deal with trouble, not remove trouble from us. Our feet will be like hind's feet, not all rocks and hills will be gone.
Oh yeah, i was explaining my job. We have four or five staff each shift, a Shift Supervisor and three others, which usually include one or two full timers and one or two part timers. Since my job is not to run shifts, i'm always the "second"... the most senior full timer. Actually, only our supervisor and one of the therapists have been at Delta longer than i have, so i'm the most senior contact worker. Go me! Well, my hero coworker Michelle was on vacation for the past week, and i work four out of five shifts with her, so i just ran four shifts in a row. I don't like it very much.
It's not the leadership. I can make decisions quickly and deal with the repercussions. Usually things work out okay. Plus, when i'm running the shift, i get to have the last word of authority, which guarantees that the way i understand the rules is how they are, for that shift, enforced. It's pretty cool.
It's not the responsibility. I can deal with responsibility.
I think it might be the area of responsibility. My brain doesn't hold details well, at least not details like who needs meds when, and which girl is restricted from this thing, or who has family visits... These are the kinds of things that the Shift Supe is responsible for. Thaleaha, who has featured on these pages often, has the most amazing head for that kind of stuff.
When i'm running shifts, i'm straining my brain the entire time trying to remember details. I kind of ache, mentally, when i'm done. And i spend whole tens of minutes wondering if i forgot anything or if i could have done anything better. I jealously, perhaps fanatically guard my brain time, and if i'm not on the clock, i don't want to think about work, at least not the boring parts.
But when i'm somebody's second, i'm not responsible for the details, i'm responsible... for... the milieu, i guess. I've got to be where staff is needed. If a girl is acting up, there i am! If there's a game of Land Marco Polo going on, i'm there too! If a girl needs to be restrained, i'm there! Or i'm with all the other girls doing impromptu therapeutic triage... "Yes, Beulah is screaming pretty loud, but the staff out there are keeping her safe, and let's remember times when we've been frustrated by blah blah blah." But i'm always looking for the part of the house which needs me most. Or i'm cooking, which i really enjoy since American culture teaches us that food is love, and good food is good love. Or at least when the kids eat delicious food, they feel like somebody cares about them.
Finally, i miss Michelle. She (as do her fellow shift supervisors) makes her job look easy.
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There's Katrina's look which totally says "Daddy, why did you pu
