Splenda

I love Splenda. I know that you hear all these horror stories about what Splenda can do to you, but I have to say, it has made it possible for me to stand so much diet food. It has opened up many doors that allow me to still enjoy life while maintain a strict diet. We are talking recipes galore.

Just tonight, I had Sugar-Free Mentos. Yum. I would not compare them side by side with regular, sugarfied Mentos, but these were really good. And you know why? That's right Splenda. My hats off to whoever discovered Sugar Alcohols.

Well I would like to introduce the newest member of our family. Before any of you get to excited, it's our new dog. After much discussion, we have decided to name him Dodger. As in the Artful Dodger from Dickens Oliver Twist. The name fits this little dog. We were playing fetch and Miriam being the faster runner would get to the ball first. Dodger aka Rocky (the name he had in the pound), would wait until Miriam brought the ball back, dropped it and then would pick it up and run in a circle, acting like he was the one that brought it too me in the first place. We tried Rusty for a while, but it was too close to Rocky, we wanted a clean break.

We were concerned how he and Miriam would get along. Miriam took a long time to adjust to Delmar when he moved in. No problems. It was as if Miriam looked at Dodger and said, "Finally someone to play with--these humans are so slow and that cat is so mean." They have been getting along great.

Election Day

Today, I am loving my job. As you maybe aware, today is election day and the schools in my county are out. So, without any kids to see, I don't have too much to do. It is still a work day--technically, it is just a lazy work day. And with the rain outside, it is a great day to have a lazy work day.

Oh yeah, and it gives me an opportunity to go vote.

HOWL-o-ween

Last night our neighborhood--again, was slammed. From all over the town, people were bused, hayrided, carpooled or otherwise dropped off into our neighborhood. It was a mad house. Cars and kids were everywhere. But otherwise it was not a bad night.

I do have to make an observation though. The later in the night it got, the older and less dressed up the kids got. Right down to an adult, yes, an adult, a grown up with no costume handing out his bag saying trick or treat. I am offically turning into an old fart, as I wanted to tell the guy "grow up, Halloween is for Kids." Of course, I also want to tell this to the high schoolers that turn up with one streak of red face paint on each cheek, but otherwise no costume to speak of.

Now the little kids, they were cute. I saw fairies and SpongeBob, I saw ghosts and goblins. All the kids were so cute dressed up, and I am a sucker for the kids that say "thank you."

The only problem. Well their were two. One, I now have a couple of clients (and their parents) that know where I live. That's a little too close for me. Two, I have two bags of candy left over and I am on a diet--is there any charities that have a candy drop off?

Pumpkin Carving

We have an emerging family tradition. The Sunday before Halloween, all the cousins and their kids along with my parents gather at my aunt's house (well, everyone that lives in the area). We eat lunch all together and then carve out our pumkins.

This, of course, got me thinking about family traditions. As I may have blogged before, my husband and I are trying to get some kids. We are participating in a foster to adopt program. Even though we do not have kids yet, the questions have begun to arise--what are we going to do with these kids? It's not the discipline stuff we worry about. Nor is it the scheduling stuff that I think will be an issue. It comes down to how are we going to pass our values down to our kids?

Pumpkin carving was a fun thing and a great tradition to start, but there were so many things that because I am a part of this family, I know that it is coming. There is a tradition of who is in the kitchen vs. who is watching football vs. who plays with the little kids and keeps them occupied vs. the teenage cousin acting cool and aloof. Then there is the sitting down at the dinner table where two prayers are said. That's right, two prayers. Two little boys both have to say a prayer. One is so proud to say "God is great, God is good..." while the other goes through a wonderfully long list of "Thank you God for..." When we get kids will a third or forth prayer be added or will my aunt be less indulgent (not because she is not accepting, but because these boys are her grandkids)?

Having received a degree in Marriage and Family therapy, I usually love to watch traditions meld and form. I love to observe others as they process through this change, the critical times usually being right after marriage and after the birth of the first child. Now I am on the cusp to this transition time and no longer the objective observer. It's a little overwhelming to think about.

What are some of your favorite family traditions?

Shocking??????

I was sent this article by a fellow school therapist. School of Shock It details about this center in New York that uses aversive shock treatments to teach. The principles are sound. I personally think a lot of what Skinner and Behaviorism says is valid--coming down to: 1. If we do something and it hurts us, we will stop. 2. If we do something and it brings us pleasure, we will do it again. I agree with using this in the most extreme cases, like the two children that were mentioned--Matthew was apparently bashing his head into the corner of tables and Sarah hit herself in the head so hard that she detached her own retinas. Here's the thing, Skinner himself saw through his experiments that positive reinforcement was more effective than punishment (aversive stimulus).

As I read through this article, my initial reaction was repulsion. Then I began to see the necessity of some of the shocks. Then repulsion began to creep back in as I read more of the non-life threatening behaviors that this was used to stop. I'm not talking about the precursors to an attack, but rather behaviors that are keeping the student from learning. Not to mention that the people delivering the shocks are techs with a high school degree and only two weeks of training. Is this enough?

I know this blog is not my usual funny anecdote.

Hornets

That's right, HORNETS. I got a wild hair to clean out our garden shed. So I start cleaning. I get things sufficiently moved around to make exit from the shed difficult when I move a piece of lumber and hear it... BZZZZZZZZZZZ. There is a hornet nest and they are mad. Their tails are up and they are about to swarm. I take off running, and climbing, and running some more. I call my husband and he was my hero--he went to Wally World for Hornet and Wasp Spray. He bought one can. "That should be enough," he says to himself. Ha Ha Ha.

So armed with my can of spray and a path cleared I go in spraying, and they drop. So I continue happily cleaning. Every so often I would see a straggler. I would spray it, and it would drop. I would spray it, and it would drop. I was coming to the end of my handy-dandy can when I happen to hit two hornets on the selves in the back of the shed and some overspray goes behind them. And I hear it again... BZZZZZZZZZZZ. Even louder than the first. And they do start to swarm. I pull out my spray and I am ready. I start spraying. I am confident in my hornet killing capabilities--after all I have already taken out one nest. Then the unthinkable happens--the spray runs out. They are still swarming, luckily they are slow because of the cooler wedding, but still swarming. I start running again. Oh yeah, and yelling "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit....."

When I go back to the shed there are about 200 dead and dying hornets on the floor. We invested in another can of Hornet and Wasp Spray. Amazingly enough, I did not get stung a single time.

Moses

My cat is very funny today. Moses is an indoor cat. He has always been an indoor cat. He has been out a few times, but usually is back into the house within the hour. Last Halloween was a time he got out. We had the front door open, and periodically would see this black and white thing jump in front of the screen door. By the time we got there, so would the next batch of trick-o-treaters and Moses would have run away. We finally found Moses at the end of the night huddled by the back door.

I would like to say that Moses was cured of the periodic desire to go outside. I can't. Just last month, during a rainy night, Moses snuck out. We did not realize that he had gotten out, until we came home from dinner. Moses was waiting for us by the porch and was soaking wet. Ever since, Moses has been wary of the outside. Who can blame him, he is getting on up there in age. But every so often, I can see the younger cat who longs to be the hunter.

Because the weather is nice, I have opened all the windows in the house today. Moses has spent his time at each window, running back and forth, to cover all equally. I think that he wants to make the rounds and just to be sure that there is nothing going on outside that he may be missing. Moses will sit in each window sil, leaning up against the screen, practically pushing it out of the frame. The friskiness is further seen today in Moses' willingness to pick fights with the dog. Usually Moses is too good to even acknowledge the dog's presence. Today, Moses is seeking out the dog. This is going to be a fun day. Having pets is great.

I am Remiss

I noticed today that it has been quite a while since my last post. I have excuses--lots of them. You want to hear?

I didn't think so. I have to tell you, sometimes working with kids can be very sad. I have a kid that gets the auditory hallucinations (hears things). I can't go into detail, but when the medicine is strong enough to combat the hallucinations, he has these horrible side effects, so the doctor backs the medicine off and the voices come back. And these are horrible voices. I cannot imagine going through my day, working on school work, trying to sleep at night, or play nice with my sibling when a very real sounding voice is in my ear telling me to do things, or just cussing and screaming at me. My heart breaks for this kid. I hate what trouble the brain can be when it doesn't work right. I hate that the kids I work with have to worry about what the voice is going to tell him next rather than having fun. Somedays, I just hate my job.

The Earwick

My husband has had a massive ear infection for the past few days. It really peaked on Sunday, so he decided to try the CVS minute clinic. Not bad. You are in and out, you get to see a nurse practitioner, and you can get your drugs right there in the store. Because of all the swelling, the nurse said the medicine would not get all the way down into his ear canal. So, she put in an earwick. An earwick is this square cottony thing that sucks up the medicine and delivers it into the right place.

Here's the good part, it started to really bug the snot out of my husband today. So he calls me at work, middle of lunch, saying "I got some tweezers, will you meet me out front and pull this thing out." I run out there and pull this inch long, nasty looking thing out of his ear. According to him, immediate relief. Honey, you are really loved--I was grossing out.

A Clean House

Looking back on childhood and adolecence, no one would have pegged me for a neat freak. But here I am now, maybe not truly Obsessively-Compulsively neat, but I definately have an anality about the way I love organization. First example, work. When I first began at my job, I was handed second-hand copies of second-hand copies to be my original forms for to make copies from (my 10th grade English teacher is probably having a stroke right about now from that run-on sentence). The packet was filled with papers that I was supposed to hand to parents and clients for them to fill out. At places, the type was crooked from so many second-hand copies and parts even ran off the page. Did the copier they use have the glass from a fun house? I searched our "forms" area in the H drive of the computer server and finally came up with some neat and pretty originals. Also, (here is the truly anal part) I retyped any forms that were not to be found on the H drive. I actually retyped them. I received quite a bit of flak for doing this. Working with mental health professionals, we all have a tendency to diagnos each other. Many options were tossed around. But here is the catch, although I was called every name in the DSM, they all wanted a copy of my packet of originals. (What could I do? I emailed them to everyone so that they could print it off the laser printer themselves--a second-hand copy just wouldn't do--that's how we got into the mess in the first place).

Second example, home. I actually have a chart for doing chores on a regular basis. A place where we can check off what has been done and what hasn't. The chart includes daily chores, weekly chores, and monthly chores. It tells me everyday that the dishes should be loaded in the dishwasher, that I should sweep, clean out the cat litter and take out the trash. Sadly enough, this chart even tells us to feed the pets. Yes, that's right, in my quest for organization, I have organized my life to the point that whinning puppy and meowing kitty are not reminders to feed, I have to have a chart that tells me to do this.

That being said, I will get off track a bit and say that charts are cool. I love making charts on excel. I have a chart for chores (as I have already said). I have a chart for my weight (sadly the line graph that comes from the chart is an up and down phenomen rather than gradual descent). I have chart for anything I can have a chart for. I really like charts and making charts.

Full Moon

I hesitated to write this blog as the spouse of the person in question tends to frequent here (Hey!!). But this story tells more about my thinking than my friend (I think).

So I have this friend who is an avid cyclist. A serious cyclist. Rides some ungodly amount of miles at some pretty amazing speeds for a bicycle. The other day he was talking about taking a "Full Moon Ride" with his cycling group. This is when I tell on myself. It took me a good two and a half minutes to understand that he was riding by the light of the full moon that was out this particular weekend. But, the image I had stuck in my head was of a group of semi-crazy people riding with their rear ends hanging out for the "Full Moon" effect.

This is certainly not the only processing issue I have had this week, but it is the funniest. Thanks TC for the humorous image in the middle socializing in Sunday School.

Quilt Show

I recently attended the American Quilter's Guild's national quilt show. I love quilt shows. I can get ideas and be inspired to continue working on my current project. I have be working on a rose pattern quilt for a while now. It is nothing fancy, just nine-patch interchanged with plain blocks. The cool part is that it goes from light in the center to dark on the outside. I feel like a big cheater though, I machine pieced it. The long and the short of the story is this; I am a purest when it comes to quilting. I know there are some absolutely beautiful quilts out there that are machine pieced and quilted, but I have always preferred and admired the quilts that are hand pieced and quilted. (Just in case you are wondering, this one though machine pieced is being hand quilted.) I did one other machine quilt, it was the first quilt I ever did and I feel that I short changed the people I gave it to.

So, my reasoning for attending the quilt show was to get inspiration to finish my quilt. It didn't work. Instead, I picked up a new craft. Well new to me. I am sure that my husband is flabbergasted that I can go to a show dedicated to one of my favorite crafts and come home with a new one, or maybe he just knows with me a new craft is inevitable. I love crafts and working with my hands. In the list of currents would be cross-stitch, quilting, crochet, stained glass, and now, needle punch. The list of "tried but didn't quite catch my fancy" is much longer.

I am very easily distracted. I usually have two or three projects going on at one time. One needs a workshop (stained glass). One is for in front of the TV (quilting, cross-stitch, crochet, needle punch). One is for travel (cross-stitch, crochet, and needle punch). My current projects is of course needle punch, my quilt, and a stained glass piece that I designed. Maybe I'm ADHD?????

Something to be Re-Learned

Did your mother (or father) ever tell you "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? Well mine did. As a matter of fact for a couple of years I think it was her favorite thing to say. Being my Girl Scout leader, she had to keep us sometimes catty girls in line. She would also say it to me and my brother all the time. I think it was her way of telling us to Shut Up without actually saying Shut Up.

As I have gotten older, I have realized, either this is something that adults really don't mean or they have thrown this lesson completely out the window. How much better would the world be if this was our model for all we said. If you can't say anything nice, then shut it. I got this epiphany in the shower, so follow me for a minute, my logic in the shower is not always sound. IF this statement was true, then really where would the world be. Think of the news on TV. They would have nothing to say as most of what they have to report and of course, comment on is the horrible state of the world or the failure of the latest politician. Newspapers too would be in a quandary. Take it off the world and bring it down to your family (oh no, getting personal aren't I). My husband and I had an intense negotiation last night, as married people sometimes do. I confess (but don't tell anyone) I have a tendency to focus on the negative, but what if my vocabulary was only limited to the positive. Wouldn't our "negotiation" have been much smoother. I know I am getting a little bit crazy. I am proposing an entire paradigm shift in thinking. Never going to happen you say. Ha! IF this statement were true, you couldn't say to me "never going to happen" because that's not nice.

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Wise words to live by, starting with me.

Glad to be Married

Can I just say, I am glad to be married. And this is not one of those thing I say because my husband is sooooo wonderful (although he is). I am saying this because I am glad not to be dating. I have a friend, not single by choice, rather single by lack of choice. And she was set up with friend of a friend's boyfriend. (I used "friend" entirely too much in the last two sentences). Now, she got the call back (great!), they made tentative plans and he was supposed to call back "beginning of next week" to solidify. What does that mean? "Beginning of next week." Is that Sunday, Monday, Tuesday? Surely it would not mean after Tuesday, because after all Wednesday is hump day, it is the middle of the week. I have to tell you, I have no idea what these dating phrases mean.

Here's another example. Another friend is doing the single thing from lack of choice. A co-worker wants to set her up. She asked my opinion. I have no clue at all. I have been married for the last 10 years. So here I am left shrugging my shoulders unable to give any opinion at all. I sympathize with all my single friends and must say I'm glad not to be in your situation.

Marriage is one of those amazing things. It is dynamic and alive and takes you by surprise all the time. If a marriage is good it can be such a self-esteem booster. Here is this man that knows (I mean KNOWS) all of my faults. He has seen me at my worst (and my best). And yet, everyday, he chooses me. I don't have to worry about "beginning of the week" or any other obscure dating phrase. I know his nuances. I know that when he says "beginning of the week" he means Monday, maybe by afternoon on Tuesday.

I am glad to be married.

Friends

I did not keep touch with many friends from High School. As a matter of fact there is only one friend from High School that I now still consider a friend. Before you think that this is all sad, it's not. We just went our separate ways, simple as that. But this one friend, we always managed to stay in touch. We grew up together, I have no memory earlier than knowing her.

We were reminisencing the other day about some of these childhood memories. Every year we seemed to be bunk mates at Church Camp. Me on top and AB on the bottom bunk. When we would wake up, I thought I was so clever to hang my head down and holler "Speak to me, Amy. Speak to me!!" It is good to just sit back and remember every so often.

Re-Ed

Because of where I work I belong to the American Re-Education Association. Re-Ed is this philosophy of practice more than a prescribed method of practice. It is based on 12 principles that seem basic and very common sense until you consider that these kids don't have these principles in daily life.
"1. Life is to be lived now, not in the past, and lived in the future only as a present challenge.
2. Trust between a child and adults is essential, the foundation on which all other principles rest, the gule that holds teaching and learning together, the beginning point for Re-Education.
3. Competence makes a difference; children and adolescents should be helped to be good at something and especially at schoolwork.
4. Time is an ally, working on the side of growth in a period of development when life has a tremendous forward thrust.
5. Self-control can be taught and children and adolescents help to manage their behavior without the development of psychodynamic insight; and symptoms can an should be controlled by direct address, not necessarily by an uncovering therapy.
6. The cognitive competence of children and adolescents can be considerably enhanced; they can be taught generic skills in the management of their lives as well as strategies for coping with the complex array of demands placed upon them by family, school, community, or job; in other words, intelligence can be taught.
7. Feelings should be nurtured, shared spontaneously, controlled when necessary, expressed when too long repressed, and expolored with trusted others.
8. The constant challenge in a Re-Ed program is to help groups build cultures that sustain children and adolescents in their efforts to manage their lives in ways satisfying to themselves and satisfactory to others.
9. Ceremony and ritual give order, stability, and confidence to trouble children and adolescnets, whose lives are often in considerable disarray.
10. The body is the armature of the self, the physical self around which the psychological self is constructed.
11. Communities are important for children and youth, but the uses and benefits of cummunity must be experienced to be learned.
12. In growing up, a child should know some joy in each day and look forward to some joyous event for the morrow."

(I did not wish this would take so much time to type when I started)

So, I just returned from their conference. 4 days of being around adults, who like myself, are stuck in school. I had some good experiences at this conference and some not so good. The workshops I attended, Top-notch. I got some great ideas for working with the kids I work with. My personal favorite is "Let's Play". We did all these group building activities. I am not sure yet how to apply them to individual therapy, but have no fear, I am very creative. First was a simple variation on the name game, you catch the ball, thank the person by name who threw it to you, say your name then toss the ball. Then we figure who we threw the ball to and who threw it us and then we timed how quickly we went threw the sequence. Then We took suggestions on how the speed it up and impliment it. There were 50 or so of us and our first run was 2 minutes. Our last run through (6 times later) was 5.8 sec. So, there was a sense of accomplishment, communication, problem solving. Good stuff.

The not so good experience, you may ask? I will start off by saying I am not a drinker. I may have an occasional adult beverage, Margaritas are a weakness of mine, but one has always been my limit. With that being said, each evening was a opportunity to cut lose and many people took the opportunity. I had a strange man banging on my door in the middle of the night, and kept trying his key in the door. With the safety bar firmly in place, I asked if I could help him. Apparently, he thought that it was his room. So, he then began trying all the doors along the hallway. I did not realize that there were so many people in my profession that felt the need to cut loose. Makes me wonder... Were they awake for the 8:00 am session the next morning or is this the reason that those sessions were sparse????

Blood Donation

I gave blood today. If you are squemish, I have a horror story so don't read this post. This is not about today, but rather the last time I gave blood. This would have been about 5 years ago and was not with the Red Cross (just to clarify). I was a seasoned donor by this time and had no worries. I went through the question process, no problem. I got the prick in the finger, not a big deal. Then I get out into the heart of the big bus to give blood. The lady chooses my right arm to use, seemed okay to me. And then instead of sticking the needle in horizontal to my vein, she sticks the needle in sideways. I don't know her reasoning behind this, she may have had a good one, but the problem came when the needle kept slipping out of the vein. It was still in my arm, just not in the vein. She would notice the bag was not filling with blood as it should and she would twist the needle back and forth until she found the vein again. I am not the fainting type, but this put me to the test. All in all she did this about 5 times before the blood finally clotted in the needle and she had to give up. My arm was purple from 1/2 way up my forearm to 1/2 way up my bicep.

So, because of this ordeal, it took me awhile to work up the nerve to return to the blood donation world. But they were having a blood drive a work. Seemed like a perfect opportunity. I couldn't let them down. I volunteered. After all I was going to be in Nashville for Defensive Driving (work related, not personal) anyway that day, so why not. Needless to say, I was a little bit nervous. And I will start by saying it finished well, without much pain, and they got a full pint off of me. With that being said, I think the person working on me was new. She was good, but unsure. The site doesn't even have a bruise. But she just didn't have her routine down just yet. Little things that I noticed because I have given blood a few times before. She lost the tape that she had put out to hold the needle in place. She picked the bag off the hanger before getting the sample vials for testing. She didn't take the squeezey thing out of my hand until I handed it to her when leaving. She left the tape on my arm and tried to pull out the needle. After getting the needle clear, she left uncovered. And worst of all, in my opinion, she did not instruct me to the cokes and cookies. As I said before, non are serious infractions in the blood donation world, just things that I noticed.

High Faluting Language

I had a conversation with a friend and she commented on the difference in my choice of words between what I say and what I write. Apparently I like to use a few 5 dollar words when I post and I keep it simple when I talk.

I have a few theories about that:
1. I must have some sort of speech impediment. I don't stutter, but I do have a tendency to stumble over my words when speaking. I have a tendency to self correct in my head and only say out loud words that I know I can speak with eloquence.

2. I blame therapy training. I went through 4 years of college and 3 years of graduate school. During this time I wrote gobs and gobs of papers on majorly impressive stuff. I went through diagnosing classes to learn the multiaxial assessment of the DSM. In Research Design I learned about significance and generalizing, correlation, blah, blah, blah. Then in group dynamics, well you get the idea. I learned a new language of jargon. And learning this language was tough, but I worked hard and I learned it. Then it came time for my first session with people. It was in my practicum. I was nervous. Not only was it my first session with a group of people, but we were being video taped so that my supervisor could watch it later and critique the session. It went well. I thought that I was on top of things. Then my practicum group brings their video tapes to supervision and I put mine in and push play. The first critique was, "I'm not sure your clients are going to understand these words, you must adapt yourself to them, not ask them to learn your language." Something like that. I had spent 7 years learning a language that I wasn't supposed to use. So I went through my practicum time learning to translate. I knew the book term, but to communicate, I have to simplify.

3. I like to pass myself off in my blog as smarter than I really am. No explaination necessary I think.

Unsolicited Advice

I have a complaint. Today, I gave the ultimate advice giver some advice. My mom has the philosophy in life thatshe is just giving you her two cents worth and who couldn't use two cents. She has always loved giving advice and being slightly nosey. The advice is not the problem, at least not 100% of it. If she could just give advice, drop the subject, and then allow you to make the decision, there would be no problem. Unfortunately, she gives advice in such a way that does not allow for any other legitimate alternative. Usually this advice will be repeated 2-3 x a week (in ever increasing increments) until the advice is followed. I have taken the slightly indirect, sometimes sneaky way of dealing with the advice. Slightly squint my eyes and look off to the side (like in deep thought) and then nod slightly as if the wisdom is sinking in and then do my own thing. 90% of the time, Mom is appeased and I am free to do what I wish. The other 10% of the time we go through a period of hostility and annoyance, because even if the advice is good I tend to be stubborn. Of course if the advice is good, it is usually seconded by my father who my husband and I both agree has great wisdom. (Clarification--my mom has wisdom, her presentation is what is stinky).

So, given this, I am very hesitant to give advice unless asked. Tonight, on my Birthday, I took advantage. The side story goes something like this. On my trip recently to Colorado to visit my brother, his wife, and my neice, the advice giving of my Mom came up. Her advice created anger and withdrawal in my brother (to say the least) and in his wife, it created hurt feelings and also some withdrawal. With this in mind, finding out about Mom and Dad's upcoming trip to Colorado, I braved the unsolicited advice world. I asked about their upcoming trip. I reminded my mother about how sensitive my brother could be about perceived criticisms. I laid the bait down thick on this hook. She wasn't biting. So I get a little more straight forward. Just refrain from advice, especially unsolicited. Still wasn't biting--she wanted to go into how those criticisms are truly just "perceived" on the part of my brother. Oh no, my husband could no longer stay out either, "You have to admit that you come across as critical," says my husband.

She did not say much else. I mentioned the importance of acceptance and not pushing (I think) in getting them to come here. I meant visiting more, Mom thought I meant moving here. And we were off topic.

So here is a little prayer going out that after some thought the unsolicited advice to the queen of unsolicited advice will sink in.