What is wrong with the world?

I am boggled by the lack of imagination or willingness to make the world a better place - both at the micro level, when I interact with people - and at the macro level, when I look at world/national policies and actions. I feel like I am my father's daughter when I question the choices of humanity.
Are there good and generous people out there? Yes, of course. Are there people working with all their energy and time to move the world in a better direction? Yes, and that gives me hope.
But the pettiness and the me-first or whiny attitude that many Americans bring to the table (and I doubt it is only Americans - they are just the population I know best) is totally aggravating. No wonder my blood pressure is off the charts on a regular basis - I can't seem to let go of the aggravation I feel - probably because people keep doing new aggravating things! Maybe if I became a hermit I would have better health.
Here's a micro example. My mother is beginning to get better but is far from back to where she was before she got sick. She has only left her apartment building with me to go to doctor's appointments or to go to dinner. But since she is getting back her strength she thought she would try what should be an easy outing on her own. She lives in an apartment building that offers an "errand-run" once or twice a month to help the senior residents take care of business. So she signed up, requesting that they take her to the nursing home where my father is. They say they can't do it - that it's too far! Despite the fact that it is right next to a mall that they take people to on a regular basis!
I have tried to access a number of senior services trying to see if they would take her to see my father - but they all have said that they do not take seniors to see family members in nursing homes - they only take them to things to help them take care of their lives: grocery stores, doctors' appointments, etc. Well, she doesn't need that - I do all that for her - which is why I don't have time to run her out to see my father!
Being old is not for sissies...

Why do I feel like I am pushing a boulder up a mountain?

I just feel so overwhelmed and frustrated. I try to do my job but I am distracted by the overload of things that I just can't manage. I try to take care of all the people I am responsible for but I just keeping thinking about all the things undone. I have dropped so many eggs (metaphorically speaking, folks) at this point that I could have made a dozen soufflés.

I just keep trying to move forward - and I'm fine with the client sitting in front of me - I can still listen and empathize and care what happens to them and know that that comes through and reassures them. But in the meantime, I have forgotten to look up therapeutic activities I intended to use with another client, and I have forgotten to find the resources that I told 2 co-workers I would find for them, and my paperwork is so far behind that I might die before I catch up, and while one student/client fails to show up for whatever reason, some other student/client shows up in their place so I don't have time to track down and deal with the first one & whatever issues they're having.
And I may have made 4 doctors appointments for my mother which I will have to accompany her to & which will require many hours of my time and so I may feel like this is an accomplishment to have figured out how to make these happen, but there is no one who can take her to see my father, because no one provides that kind of service, and it's taken me many phone calls and false starts and bad information to get to that point, and that feels very deflating (doubly so because it has been 4 weeks since I could find time to go see him - and she hasn't been to see him for a couple months - I can only have nightmares about how much worse he has gotten). And I still have to make an appointment for a consultation about which Medicare D plan is best for her, but it can only happen on Wednesday morning because that's the only time they can do it (and then it's only every other week) so I have to arrange to take the morning off work (c'est la vie?) ... but I can't see paying $500 for a prescription which is what her current plan relegates her to until she pays for $4000 worth out of pocket... ("in the gap")... And the appointment has to happen soon because there is only a small time window during which you can change plans, and everyone acts as if you should be grateful for whatever little scrap they offer you...
And I have to teach a class to students who are overwhelmed in their naivete about life and graduate school, and I have to reassure them, when all I really want is for someone to reassure me!
It's been a long bad day... one of many lately.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Day!
I give thanks for my boys, and my partner, and my parents and my home.
Pen says his brother, his mom, his dad, and his cousins.
JT says his life, his family & math, soccer and animals (?!?!)

Hoping yours is filled with many blessings to be thankful for. We stuffed ourselves with all the usual suspects and are now heading for dessert!

oh just put me out of my misery

I give up.

Ok, I give up

So I am getting nasty emails from students upset with me about my class now. The icing on the cake - assuming that the icing consists of fecal matter and the cake is rotten. I wonder if I can just give up and take my ball and go home?

Ok... what am I doing wrong?

Ok. Obviously the universe is sending me some directions which I am getting wrong. I continue to feel like I am banging my head on the wall or trying to overcome roadblock after roadblock - and that's just a little too frustrating. Not that life is supposed to be coasting, but I don't think it's supposed to feel this.

My mother is so confused and all I try to do to get her organized so she can maintain and not have to go to a nursing home just doesn't seem to work. At least she isn't wandering the way my father did. And at least she doesn't try to turn on the stove and burn her apartment down accidentally. But she calls me in a panic and leaves messages at my home that sometimes I don't get and she can't remember to call me at work during the week - I'm lucky she can remember to call a number connected to me - although I do have all the information posted in large print signs on her walls to try to orient her. But her clocks stop and she doesn't read the reminders and I am just so frustrated and overwhelmed at the moment I could cry. And I know it's very scary for her. And maybe my friends are right and I should send her to a nursing home - but that's a one-way street. You don't come back from nursing homes - as evidenced by this recent stay she had - I cannot put into words how much ground she lost. And I am so angry at the hospital for causing this - and the nursing home for exacerbating it - and the fact that I keep getting bills from them that I have to pay makes me want to call them and tell them off or threaten to sue them. It is just too totally insane - I have to pay you for problems that you caused? That is like Alice in Wonderland. (or the Bush regime).

Sandwich generation

Is that what I am? A sandwich? Hopefully not ham.

My mother has been really sick and is now having some real cognitive problems as a result. So I definitely feel like I am sandwiched between everyone else's needs. And what a sandwich - triple decker I think. Maybe more?

And the mustard on the sandwich - tangy & biting - is that I have been stepping on another person's toes and not even realizing it. Like I put this additional layer in my sandwich while sleep walking and spread it thick with spicy horseradish mustard and wondered why it was so overwhelming - not even realizing what I had done. And the person whose toes I was stepping on didn't tell me I was stepping on toes. Probably didn't want to offend me. Yet I clearly trampled them. Finally someone told me off. (so of course that feels like sh#* because I think how could I be so stupid?!).

You'd think that as you get older you'd get wiser but I have my doubts at the moment.

crazybusy

So, I am back to feeling crazybusy and not particularly effective and wondering what the point of all my crazybusy-ness is. I feel like I am working too hard - that the end result is not always justifying the things I have to do to get there.

Sometimes I think that is part of being a social worker - that for any number of reasons there is too much bureaucracy which weighs the job down. Sometimes I think that's part of working in a school system - 1) I am a guest and as such I always have to remember I am a guest (and noone likes a bad guest) and 2) schools are also full of bureaucracy (ditto above). Sometimes I think it's just that I am a workaholic and people pleaser and will go above and beyond trying to meet everyone's needs and make everyone happy (impossible scenario).

But I know that the results are important, even if it feels like it took too much effort to achieve the result. The results usually deal with someone's life (and don't we all think our lives are important?) and helping them to reach some level of what they or society consider success. So in reflecting I can say, yes, I am glad we achieved that. Even though I may say "Why did it have to be like forcing yarn through the smallest needle eye you can imagine?"

Back to the Middle School survey question

This is really a two-fold question.
One, I think there is the bigger question of why people do or do not get involved when there is something amiss going on. I think that sometimes we have had experiences where our perceptions have been negated by others. Like I will hear from teachers that they will not interfere in bullying situations in school because they have been told in the past by students: "we were just joking around" (or something similar). Or police officers who are called in on domestic violence calls, only to have both parties turn on them or the victim defend the perpetrator. So when that happens you don't want to do anything the next time (Learning theory = avoid negative outcomes; none of us like to be told we are wrong, especially teachers and police officers :-) authority figures that they are).
Two, what do you do when you see something bad happening? I think that there is no preparation teaching us to jump into intimate situations and put ourselves at risk. It runs counter to our survival instincts. And often there is no sense of "what can I do in this situation." Personally I love having a cell phone for this reason - I can call the police and not have to put myself at risk. I see a car broken down or an accident or whatever and I can just call and feel I have done something... But if you are 10 years old and you are walking home from school and see bigger kids take some other kid's glasses, I think you have no idea (if you even have a cell phone) who to call and what to ask for. And you would have to be crazy to run over and tell them to stop (unless you hope the humour of your challenging them will cause them to collapse in laughter allowing you and the other child to run away).
And yes, it depends on the situation, and tons of dynamics, and if there are no simple answers as an adult, there certainly is no easy way to help kids.

Interesting blog I found

I found an intriguing blog (while looking for information on a therapist I wanted to refer a student to), which prompts me to think I could do so much more with THIS blog - at a professional or personal level (since my professional and personal seem to be so intertwined these days). Any way - here is a link to the blog in case you're interested in checking it out.
http://gandalwaven.typepad.com/intheroom/

so we really are in middle school SURVEY

So, here is a question - what do you do when you see some one trying to hurt someone else? It's one of those questions that continuously runs through our humanity... Kitty Genovese in New York City... or the student whose glasses are being stolen by some bigger kids.

What did you do when you were in middle school? What do you think the right thing to do is? What would you tell a 12/13/14 year old to do?

Take a Deep Breath and try to collect your thoughts

Well, it has been incredibly hectic, with lots of chaos. But today was Rosh Hashanah and schools were closed, and it was an incredibly beautiful day. Life is good.
JT loves middle school. He thinks it's wonderful. He even loves walking home 1 1/2 miles. The only slight glitch was during the first week when he would not do his homework because he was too busy reading or sneaking and playing video games. But then we set up a schedule and an agreement that there are NO video games until the homework is done, and so far (a week) it's worked very well. (knock on wood). He now has reread all the Harry Potter books for I think the 4th time, so he will have to find some other reading material. (He's waiting for the sequel to a number of books to be published -- I used to hate that -- it's part of why I gave up reading science fiction and fantasy books, by the time they published the sequel I had forgotten most of the details in the previous book).
PB seems to be adjusting ok to 1st grade. It's harder to be sure with him. Most of the time he seems to like it. But there's still a sense of "but...." The school itself it going through such upheaval and angst and the adults there are clearly stressed but being very professional with the kids, but you know that the kids have to have some sense of things being tense because kids usually are so good at picking up on the tone of things even if they don't understand what's really going on or why.
My jobs are crazy crazy crazy. Teaching a new course at University is such a huge amount of work - and you know me, I always get anxious about it! And the high school social work stuff is just lots of intensity at the moment... I don't know if it's the phase of the moon or karma or what! It's just stressing me out.
So a day with no work and just my kids and hanging out and taking care of life business (banking, groceries, and going to the book store) is blissful.
Happy New Year!!!

Vacations and Return to School

Well, we made it home in time for a mad rush to get back to work and get ready for school.

JT starts middle school this year - which I fondly refer to as a "black hole." However, I have to admit that I loved the one junior high that I went to for 7th and half of 8th grade. So I am trying to keep this more balanced perspective in mind.

I just know that it seems like a lot of kids have negative things happen to them during middle school - whether it's teasing and bullying, or getting sidetracked with social things and losing their way for a while, or setting the stage for adolescent sex, drugs and rock'n'roll ... But the reality is that I think hormones are running high and you go thru so many changes (physically, emotionally, socially, etc) and you lack life experience to put it all into perspective, so no wonder a lot of teens (and adults) I may talk to have negative experiences to recount.

The reality is that we probably have too much time to reflect on the nuances of it all, so it all gets magnified. And what is the meaning of life anyway? Personally, we are at the pinnacle of human existence: We're all alive, healthy, live in a suburban land where violence is extremely unusual (in our lives personally), we can eat ice cream for lunch every day, and we can read a book or play video games until we get hungry (or mom kicks us off). We have green space to go play in out our front door. We have our choice of exotic fruits from the store. We can do our little things to make the world a better place, while not having to personally put ourselves at risk... As long as we don't want to be millionaires, what else can you ask for?

Random Thoughts on Politics and Blogs

I have been reading quite a lot - just none of it for preparing for the course I'm teaching this fall. Trying to wade through a backlog of magazines and keep up with the newspaper.

One of the articles I read (in Mother Jones) was talking about blogs and the internet and politics, and I found it interesting that basically most political blogs are run by white men and that the internet's role in politics basically reflects what happens in the outside world in politics in the USA - most energy and power is focused around white men, with women and minorities playing a very peripheral role. I know that while politics interests me, the time constraints of being a working mother mean that I don't have time to go to a bunch of evening meetings to keep up with what is happening in city council meetings. Let alone any political party meetings or caucuses. And I do not have cable (saving money while I save our brain cells) so I can not watch the recordings of meetings. And the reality is that the minutes of meetings, when they are available on-line, leave out much of the nuances and nitty-gritty that you get when you go to meetings in person.

I wonder if I would approach things differently if I were in a country where it felt like politics had a vital role in my life. I think politics have a big impact here, but my life is so cushy here in the USA that I wonder if it allows me to put politics on a back burner. Or is it that politics is such a huge bureaucratic animal that there is no sense of how I can have an impact. Sure I write my senators and congress people (usually email them), but it always feels like my voice doesn't really count. Either they will do something I agree with - because they would do that anyway, or they do something I DISAGREE with - which is also what they would do anyway. While I appreciate all the nice letters and emails to me from their aides, I can't say that I feel like my voice really has an impact.

And as far as local politics is concerned, where you think you could have a real impact, people seem to feel even more disconnected, or if they aren't disconnected, they are small-minded and vituperative. Which is not about to make me want to get involved. Life is too short and the issues they are up in arms about seem meaningless when I look at the big picture.

There are not really any open doors that invite people into the process. I have seen the way that outsiders get treated - like they are annoying or irrelevant, or to be appeased to their faces and talked about behind their backs, or just out and out ignored. Or they give you the round-around: "that's not in our jurisdiction, it belongs to so-and-so"... with everyone just passing the buck (or the hot potato) because they don't want to invest the energy it would require to do something meaningful.

And I get very angry and frustrated with the lack of visionary people in local politics, and that is NOT good for my blood-pressure, so I'd rather put my energy in other places than to bang my head on a door that seems to already be closed and locked.

But am I making a big mistake?

Good things about being a parent - book recommendations from your kids

I think it's really cool when my 11 year old recommends books to me, saying "mom you have to read this after I'm done - you'd like it" (or "you'd find it interesting," etc). It makes me think that maybe I have done something right as a parent. It's also just really cool to see them become their own people. I can't find the time to read all the books he thinks I should read, but just the idea that he is enthused about them and that he wants to share them with others, and especially that he wants to share them with me...

I wish I still had that kind of time to read for hours immersing myself in a book. Although I did manage to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows within 3 days after its release - which isn't bad, since JT had to read it first, and then I had to read it around everything else I was trying to do! But it's not the same as staying up reading a book until 3 or 4am - winding my way through the ups and downs of the narrative and soaking up the printed pages. But hey, sometimes the best life can offer is compromises. And compromise isn't always a bad thing.

The Frustration of the Mundane Tasks of Life - the GROCERY STORE

I think that grocery shopping has to be one of the more frustrating re-occurrences in my life. I have to go to the grocery store every week, and spend hours of my time engaged in the process from start to finish (from leaving my house, picking up my mother, driving to the store, shopping, returning home, and putting the groceries away). And it has to be done over and over again, requiring an on-going commitment of my time. I cannot choose not to do it. But the truly irksome part is that the stores themselves tend to be filled with annoyances.

So the rude clerk, or the high (stoned/whatever) bagger, or the outdated food, or the inability to find what I'm truly looking for, make the experience psychologically exhausting.

I found little amusement in the bagger Sunday, who was obviously high, and couldn't focus on even putting the groceries into the bags. I bring my own cloth bags, yet he kept trying to put the groceries into the store's plastic bags, realizing his mistake and muttering and moving them into my bags. Then he left half the bags sitting on the checkout counter as he went off to bag on another checkout!

Of course my on-going problem with baggers is the fact that they have never had a fresh fruit or vegetable in their life, so they have no clue as to how fragile fresh fruits and vegetables actually are and they shove them into bags with canned goods or other heavy items or things that have sharp edges. I get home with bruised or smushed things, and I am stuck making the best of a bad situation or paying for the gas to drive back to exchange things (which with current gas prices is just not worth it).

I think that grocery stores should make baggers eat all the fruit and veg that they mess up, so they might have some clue what their impact is!

Swimming

There is something incredibly grounding in the process of swimming. I feel like I could swim forever... the pull of my muscles as I move through the water and the water flows around me. And to swim the back stroke outdoors looking up at the clouds drifting past as I glide through the water is as close to heaven as I can imagine. Floating on my back just staring at the sky makes all the yuck disappear.

Growing Old

Growing old is painful. I watched yesterday as a store clerk was polite to my mother's face and then pulled faces and acted exasperated with her slowness behind her back. And I thought "I know I don't like the alternative to growing old but I think I still agree with the Who - I hope I die before I get old" (although some would say I'm already there).

I know that maybe I should have told the clerk off, but having over-reacted to another situation (that I had misread) a few days previously, I chose not to react externally at all this time. But I clearly filed it away in my head. It still bugs almost 24 hours later!