I am very excited: I went to the lottery last night for an Immersion Program in the next town and Mudd, Dmitri and Guy were all accepted in to the program. There were no openings for Calamity Jane or Basil's classes but they were both drawn first to be at the tops of their wait lists. The laws of averages are on my side that people will drop out of the school and the teachers expect it, so I am excited and pretty much planning to get them all in. My house will be covered in sticky notes as we learn a New Language.
I will get the Greek eventually— my tutor wanted to cancel as Lent has picked up. I know the sounds of the letters now. I can follow. I have to get the kids speaking and understanding a new language decently by September. I start doing something and something else comes up, it’s a constant with me and annoys me. Such is life—I will learn Greek one day and I know I can learn it. Do you know the song Anywhere Is by Enya? If I ever become famous and important, that song will be my theme song in the Story of My Life.
I walk the maze of moments
But everywhere I turn to
Begins a new beginning
But never finds a finish
I walk to the horizon
And there I find another
It all seems so surprising
And then I find that I know
One of my psych profs in college compared me to a "sexy sports car with a random gear shift going 120 down a curvy road." I saw him a few years ago and we had lunch and he said I'd not changed, only picked up speed!
~~~~~
Now I am on a country road in life.
I have realized that for a long time I was volunteering in some heavy duty groups because I was good at them as well as because I needed to get out of the house. Now I am holding on to my moments with the kids, but for the past 12 years, I was just overwhelmed! How did I manage to get through the years with no help from my mother or any close friends, those long years of seemingly doing nothing but going from one baby to the next. Poor Darin would come home and I was out to yoga or wherever. I look at other large families and they have support. Having all the kids potty trained has been huge for me! I am like, "Wow! I have extra time!" I really can feel a difference. I don't have the need to be gone or get validation as I once did.
Darin tolerated me for 12 years of me being on autopilot. It is only now that I am seeing his huge sacrifice and appreciating him, but I don’t know if I have seen the full amount of what he has done for all of us—- me and the kids. I don’t know how he put up with me. I told him all that I just told you and he kissed my forehead and said that it meant the world to him that I had seen it, but he said that I too was being crunched and had demands also put on my body that he didn’t have. I have started massaging oil into his skin every day to show him that I love him. He says that I don't have to make it up to him but that he won't talk me out of trying!
Now I am volunteering doing things that play into my strengths. At the charter school, I will be volunteering with the kids, probably doing something with drama. I am doing a radio show and I am doing a reading hour with children on Saturdays that I love. These things are a blast. I don't like doing them-- I love doing them and I get my energy from them.
~~~
We are finally redecorating our bathroom. A dozen years of showers by often 7-11 people per day took it’s toll and it’s been in bad shape for 2 years but something always took higher importance. It has to be done right now. I had seen some things that I liked online and Lowes sells them so I remembered the names (Moen, Kohler) and not the prices and went down to pick them out with a budget of $2,500. The one faucet that I loved turned out to be $500! The vanity top was $3,000, although he told me that I have excellent taste. I am glad that the salesman told me and shifted my dream instead of Darin as there would have been a projectile hissy fit. I was very hooked on a certain look. The salesman asked me what I wanted when I realized that I couldn’t afford it and he said, “You want a clean, pretty bathroom with enough bath towel holders for the kids, and a working fan.” He walked me through the stuff they have on site that cost twenty per cent of what I had wanted.
The faucets are works of art! OK, the ones I didn’t get are works of art. I found out that grout is just not practical with an over worked little bathroom that so many use. We will start work on this in a few weeks—- Darin has to get a window put in first as well as clearing out our bathroom for the time being for everyone to use. I feel like everything screams, “This is what I can afford”-— not, “This is what I love.” I will love it when it gets put in. It's "mine."
He is also going to let me come up with a Trompe-l'œil mural in the next year or two. I will get my marble tiles if I have to paint them into a wall, gosh darn it!
Showing posts with label volunteering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label volunteering. Show all posts
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Managing Myself
In my last post, Steve commented his position of priests serving and of my potential for burn-out. I was going to just respond down there, but I will bring it up into a real post.
I've decided to only do this for another year or two. It's all I can really handle. I have a good friend in prison for something that he should have known better over-- he keeps me grounded. He's upbeat and is my muse and he tells me what the people who I work with don't tell me-- what he is actually seeing. It seems like on the days that I come home thinking, "Oh these poor people!" he is there in the form of a letter saying, "I watched this drug dealer totally BS a religious volunteer!" I put his letters in my night stand and it is interesting that if I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what I had seen or heard, the nightstand reminds me of his letter and he is saying it all over again. (I wonder if he ever gets woken up, thinking that he is dreaming of me waking him up to talk to him! "Tell me again what you said about the drug dealers.")
I am getting on to some boards that serve prisoners and I think that after doing the front line work, I will volunteer exclusively on the boards.
For years I have believed that politicians should do boot camp before they run for anything by washing the feet of the poor or serving in some capacity to the lowest of the low.
I have done Hospice and loved volunteering with it, and I have worked in extended care. I've done Compeer, CASA and trained with STAR over the past 20 years. I even trained with Childbirth Education Classes but never did it because I left my ex mid-way through the classes.
I am constantly going to the store and making eye contact with someone and they come to me and tell me something tragic-- I have one of those faces. When I was younger, I felt honored to hear the stories, but now I am busy with my own family. I care for my blogger friends and my real life friends, but I don't like random strangers (or flipping DENTAL ASSISTANTS) making me hear the latest. I have allowed to people to be very rude to me and when I have not responded with curtness, that has set off an emotional response. It has gotten bad enough that I often avoid the stores because I don't want to have my Empath encounters. I think that my time is coming to focus on my art and my writing. Surely reporting will throw me into the same situations, but it's a little more controlled.
I've decided to only do this for another year or two. It's all I can really handle. I have a good friend in prison for something that he should have known better over-- he keeps me grounded. He's upbeat and is my muse and he tells me what the people who I work with don't tell me-- what he is actually seeing. It seems like on the days that I come home thinking, "Oh these poor people!" he is there in the form of a letter saying, "I watched this drug dealer totally BS a religious volunteer!" I put his letters in my night stand and it is interesting that if I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what I had seen or heard, the nightstand reminds me of his letter and he is saying it all over again. (I wonder if he ever gets woken up, thinking that he is dreaming of me waking him up to talk to him! "Tell me again what you said about the drug dealers.")
I am getting on to some boards that serve prisoners and I think that after doing the front line work, I will volunteer exclusively on the boards.
For years I have believed that politicians should do boot camp before they run for anything by washing the feet of the poor or serving in some capacity to the lowest of the low.
I have done Hospice and loved volunteering with it, and I have worked in extended care. I've done Compeer, CASA and trained with STAR over the past 20 years. I even trained with Childbirth Education Classes but never did it because I left my ex mid-way through the classes.
I am constantly going to the store and making eye contact with someone and they come to me and tell me something tragic-- I have one of those faces. When I was younger, I felt honored to hear the stories, but now I am busy with my own family. I care for my blogger friends and my real life friends, but I don't like random strangers (or flipping DENTAL ASSISTANTS) making me hear the latest. I have allowed to people to be very rude to me and when I have not responded with curtness, that has set off an emotional response. It has gotten bad enough that I often avoid the stores because I don't want to have my Empath encounters. I think that my time is coming to focus on my art and my writing. Surely reporting will throw me into the same situations, but it's a little more controlled.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Bad Within
There was an article in the paper last week that shamed me. At a local seedy motel, there were some broken pipes—some people of an ethnic group got into it, and water pipes were broken in a fight. The fire department was called to what must have been surreal: a woman of a certain local indigenous ethnic group from a village was bare-bottomed and came out and started asking the firefighters if she could see their penises. (That's the paper's word, perhaps not hers?) Turns out she was wanted on an outstanding warrant and was locked up. The story was funny. It would have been funny with frat guys, too.
What makes this story worthy to tell you all is that I accompanied clergy to the prison later that day. One of inmates started telling me about how she was attracted to the drink that her people can’t metabolize and how it’s taken a toll on her family and her future generations. I studied this in college in my social work degree, and when I worked with “them” I was always nice, but I was working and responding to a population, not to individuals. I didn’t think that I was at the time, but I was and am ethnocentric. I am way less now that I have come to a jarring realization of it, but I know that it probably will seep out. from time to time when I don't realize it.
Listening to that woman tell me about some of the things she did when drunk, imprisoned for a crime that she may or may not remember, I think of the woman at the seedy motel and wonder if she will remember what she said to the firefighters—there had been an arrest warrant out for her when they ID checked her so she is now in jail. I’m not saying that people of local indigenous groups who commit crimes don’t belong behind bars, but they have some brutal circumstances that created the situations they are in. I have no idea, but I am ashamed for how I have been without knowing it, even with doing no known harm to anyone. There were people in my degree who felt as I did and graduated and wanted to work with ethnic groups. They seemed sensitive and we thought that laughing at the situations was a sense of humor to protect us. Isn’t this kind of evil—and yes, it is evil, because it can grow—the kind of evil that allowed people to stand by and kill 6 million Jews? If you can blow something off, "Those crazy _____'s!" you can dehumanize them. Certainly I would never wish harm on them, but they become almost caricatures in one's mind. If I want humor in my life I can read Far Side, not chuckle at the actions of certain ethnic groups. I should have been devastated at the humiliation that that woman would suffer and how it reflected on all females of her ethnic group.
Drunken frat guys can laugh it off in court, the allegations later cracked up at 20 years later, and be sheepish on the stand. A drunk indigenous woman? She’ll look terrible in court, surrounded by educated people talking down to & around her, acting like she is public enemy #1 and the prosecution possibly forgetting about her later that evening or laughing about it, "Just another _____. . ." Her family may be illiterate or not letter writers-- she probably loves her children who are far away, who speak of their mother in jail like it's no big deal because lots of other kids in their village have moms in jail. What pictures will she get of her children? Will she even understand the court process? It's confusing to lawyers!
I am so glad that I did not go into social work. I would have thought that I was helpful while condescending my clients without knowing it. As time goes on, I think I'd be better, but I think that I want to stay away from it. I will probably only stay with my prison work for a year or two before I get out and be strictly on the board of directors and not work directly with people on the front lines. For now I am learning a bit and becoming aware.
What makes this story worthy to tell you all is that I accompanied clergy to the prison later that day. One of inmates started telling me about how she was attracted to the drink that her people can’t metabolize and how it’s taken a toll on her family and her future generations. I studied this in college in my social work degree, and when I worked with “them” I was always nice, but I was working and responding to a population, not to individuals. I didn’t think that I was at the time, but I was and am ethnocentric. I am way less now that I have come to a jarring realization of it, but I know that it probably will seep out. from time to time when I don't realize it.
Listening to that woman tell me about some of the things she did when drunk, imprisoned for a crime that she may or may not remember, I think of the woman at the seedy motel and wonder if she will remember what she said to the firefighters—there had been an arrest warrant out for her when they ID checked her so she is now in jail. I’m not saying that people of local indigenous groups who commit crimes don’t belong behind bars, but they have some brutal circumstances that created the situations they are in. I have no idea, but I am ashamed for how I have been without knowing it, even with doing no known harm to anyone. There were people in my degree who felt as I did and graduated and wanted to work with ethnic groups. They seemed sensitive and we thought that laughing at the situations was a sense of humor to protect us. Isn’t this kind of evil—and yes, it is evil, because it can grow—the kind of evil that allowed people to stand by and kill 6 million Jews? If you can blow something off, "Those crazy _____'s!" you can dehumanize them. Certainly I would never wish harm on them, but they become almost caricatures in one's mind. If I want humor in my life I can read Far Side, not chuckle at the actions of certain ethnic groups. I should have been devastated at the humiliation that that woman would suffer and how it reflected on all females of her ethnic group.
Drunken frat guys can laugh it off in court, the allegations later cracked up at 20 years later, and be sheepish on the stand. A drunk indigenous woman? She’ll look terrible in court, surrounded by educated people talking down to & around her, acting like she is public enemy #1 and the prosecution possibly forgetting about her later that evening or laughing about it, "Just another _____. . ." Her family may be illiterate or not letter writers-- she probably loves her children who are far away, who speak of their mother in jail like it's no big deal because lots of other kids in their village have moms in jail. What pictures will she get of her children? Will she even understand the court process? It's confusing to lawyers!
I am so glad that I did not go into social work. I would have thought that I was helpful while condescending my clients without knowing it. As time goes on, I think I'd be better, but I think that I want to stay away from it. I will probably only stay with my prison work for a year or two before I get out and be strictly on the board of directors and not work directly with people on the front lines. For now I am learning a bit and becoming aware.
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