Unconscious Mutterings Week 212

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Soldier :: war injuries


2. Lipton :: tea


3. Reason:: rhyme, out of time


4. Terms :: of endearment


5. Positive :: thinking


6. Example :: teaching guide


7. Legacy :: what's yours? I'm afraid "they" will only say about me that 'she was a nice lady'...


8. Solo :: act


9. Instrument :: more frequently, mine is a computer... should be a guitar, a pencil, pastels, paper, a needlepoint needle, a crochet hook.... it's past time to dive back into using all of those


10. Later :: yeah, it's way past my bedtime. Later.

Weekly word list at Unconscious Mutterings

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elucidation

"... and those are just the sites we know about. We don't know about the sites we don't know about."

~a guest whose name I didn't catch on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 , speaking about Iran's nuclear program

Listening to talking heads is just so illuminating.



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still collecting pieces

"Some of us are lost and some of us are found. ... Some people don't have that many questions and lack that belly of fire when it comes to their encounters with the world. They're content in their predictable lives, where everything that lies before them is like a re-run of 'Jeopardy'. They already know the answers and how the game will end. They don't have the urge to travel or to ask the questions that boggle the mind: Who am I? Why am I here? Is this all there is? Instead there's a certainty about themselves and the world around them. They work. They go to church. They take care of their families. They know their beliefs are correct; they know that anything different is wrong or bad.

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might one day solve, if only we collect enough pieces. The idea that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us.And when it does, it fills us with dread." ~Lisa Unger in 'Sliver of Truth' (novel; 2007, Shaye Areheart Books, N.Y.)

I don't know about the dread part.. Frankly, it has occurred to me time and again that there are no answers... or the answers will be ever elusive... or the questions aren't the right ones... or....



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Growth

I was flipping pages in More magazine   (for women over 40) and ran across a quick bit entitled "Life's a Mess and Then You Fly" which was actually a quick review of a new book by Sara Davidson entitled Leap!.

The thing that caught my eye and made me think I ought to purchase the book (which was just released 2/20) was the reference to the title of chapter five:

"Change Is Gonna Come, or Another F---ing Opportunity for Growth"

yeah...
just insert the tiny wry smile here...

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Abstinence and recovery

"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."

Not really apropos of anything in particular, just something that struck my eye today, and sounded very true. Then again maybe it is apropos.

I said last month, that I would be back in a few days. I was of course, "back", in the sense that I traveled from California to Indiana and back again, but I didn't make it back to the blog. I kept tossing the words around in my head and into the private journal, but I couldn't find the words to write about any of it here.

I sometimes find it difficult to draw the lines clearly between sharing and being open and completely laying myself bare. When emotions are new and raw and I write them out for just anyone to pick over, the words are often something I cringe to see later. Reason, logic and rationality might be things I am entirely too prideful about (even in error about possessing!). Feeling as if it is one thing for anyone else to lay emotions of the moment bare and something else for me to do the same, is a double standard for which I haven't figured out the meaning.

Words, words, words....
a lot of words....

My father is making steps forward (literally and figuratively).. doing much, much better now that I tattled on his wife for continuously pushing his morphine pump instead of him handling the self medicating. Somehow she didn't see the connection between trying to keep him from feeling any amount of pain whatsoever, and his depressed breathing, inability to be weaned from the oxygen, dizziness, inability to walk and so on. When the doctor's heard about it, they stopped her immediately.

His vocal chords were paralyzed, either from the surgery or from the cancer, which strangely enough meant that he couldn't swallow. If he couldn't swallow it would mean the recovery from his extensive esophageal surgery would be very complicated. In the past few weeks since he has been off the massive amounts of morphine, he is slowly coming 'round. He is in a rehabilitation home (nursing home) now, and was able to swallow a bit of applesauce yesterday. He is walking several times a day on his own steam and working bit by bit on gaining strength. It doesn't sound like much, but the applesauce is a really, really huge deal. One of the things that going home requires is the ability to swallow.

My sister continues to heal too and every day she is a bit stronger. Chemo and radiation are in her future, but for now she gains strength, too.

I hope I've broken the spell of staying away and will be back here regularly. There is a balance. I've simply to claim it for my own.

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"and the beat goes on..."

"Everyone needs to work. Even a lion cannot sleep, expecting a deer to enter his mouth." Hitopadesha (14th century India)

My office is full of brand new service coordinators working for one of six supervisors. Over half of the case workers have probably been around a year or less. A generous third have been working this job six months or less. There is a six month probationary period where one can be let go without the usual rounds of warnings.

On Wednesday, one of the ladies who was just about to complete her six months, was fired. She was a very, very, nice woman, who seemed to be handling her work well, and it was a huge shock to all of us new workers. There was quite a bit of fear and stunned whispering in the office yesterday afternoon. The mood was only slightly altered today. To everyone's credit, I've heard no bad gossip, only the whispered shock, worried about how she was going to manage and how she might be feeling, and who might be next, because no one can fathom what she did wrong.

There is a huge amount of paperwork and constant deadlines for this or that, some of it federal, some of it exposing the state to legal actions if it isn't completed in a "timely manner". We must handle phone calls, emergencies, vendor problems, consumer problems, regular visits to consumers and vendors... and paperwork documenting everything as well computer database case notes to ensure billable hours. There is probably an art to keeping the flow going and all the balls in the air, but I think one has to love the work to begin with. All of the new service coordinators that I've met are hard workers who seldom come out of their cubicles (I want to call them cubbies ;-) )except to travel to the printer, their supervisor, their hard case files or to head out to see consumer/clients and vendors (oh and the various trainings and office meetings). We nod at each other in passing and have minor conversations on the way to somewhere else - there just isn't a lot of time for socializing. It made the whispered conversations and expressions of quiet shock, stand out that much more.

My reaction to all of this was also one of shock and a touch of fear. I have a mostly closet case of insecurity that comes out into the light of day now and then. But being the fairly direct and honest type (and only because I needed his initials on some paperwork), I asked my supervisor: "Should I be worried about my job?" In the ensuing conversation, he said I didn't have to worry, that I was doing fine. I haven't decided if I really believe him.... which is what an unexpected coworker firing does to the folks left behind, I think.

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