Hi everyone on this first Saturday of July. Wow, can you believe the first half of the year is over with already? I certainly can’t. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I just had my afternoon coffee, but the other residents are probably still having theirs. Let’s have a coffee and let’s catch up.
If we were having coffee, I’d start out by asking how you are. How’s your weather? Ours has been mixed. Right now, it’s about 23°C and partly cloudy, but we’ve had daytime temps as high as 29°C and as low as 19°C and a mix of sun and rain and thunderstorms.
If we were having coffee, I would share that this week was a mixed bag. I’ve been struggling quite a bit with all the new staff being introduced to me over the week. Now I hear you say what my staff have been saying too: isn’t that better than temp workers? Yes, it is and, thankfully, I didn’t have any temping staff all week. However, on some days, I had two staff introduced to me in a day and this generally meant at least one of them was orienting to my one-on-one shift. This means they’re with me literally all the time and this means I have two staff with me all the time, who are sometimes chatting among themselves about their kids or whatever (sometimes under the guise of the new staff telling me about themself). That cost me a lot of energy. By the middle of the week, I had thankfully been able to get it through to the staff that I don’t like this.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I’ve been struggling a bit with the discrepancy between my emotional development and my intelligence again. I have been reading up on emotional development as it relates to people with developmental disabilities and, though the theory makes perfect sense to me, this does actually create intense turmoil inside of me. This specifically relates to the situation in which staff confront me with my challenging behavior, trying to let me know it’s unacceptable. I am not even always rationally able to see their point, for example when it relates to the temp workers and new staff, but even when I am, it is sheer impossible for me to grasp it emotionally.
If we were having coffee, I would share that, on Monday, some evangelicals were handing out flowers near my neighborhood supermarket. As a progressive Christian, I agreed with a lot but not all of what the woman doing the evangelizing to me said, but I didn’t feel like challenging her. After she started challenging my staff’s Catholic beliefs and all of us noticed the conversation became awkward, I accepted the flowers and moved on. I do feel that this, odd as it may seem, came at the right time, being that it was my birthday and I’d just had a really hard appt with my nurse practitioner. At least yesterday, the flowers still looked quite good.
If we were having coffee, lastly I would tell you I’ve been very crafty lately. The creations I shared yesterday, I had finished late last week. This week, I’ve been experimenting with the plunger cutters I got from the new student staff on Wednesday, as well as with my extruder. I didn’t actually create anything using the extruder yet and I might’ve broken it already after all. Today, I did create a sort of Earth charm. I originally wanted to do the continents much like they are on the real planet, but that didn’t work out.
How have you been?
A Multitude of Musings 
It’s been hot here, but it’s supposed to be a bit cooler this weekend 🙂
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*coastal SoCal
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Oh, so glad it’s supposed to get cooler. Although I mind the heat less than the cold, hot weather certainly isn’t my favorite either.
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Sometimes, it is best to just take what the Evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses,etc.. offer and just move on. A debate helps noone.
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Yeah, agree. I did make sure these weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses or some kind of sect.
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Thank you for your weekend coffee share. I hope your weekend is going well and you have a greater week next week, just the way you like it to be.
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Thanks for stopping by. Hope you’ll have a great week too.
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If we wew having coffee I woild tell you that I have had an emotionally exhausting week! BUT God has been with me every step of the way.
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I am so sorry you had such an exhausting week emotionally, but I am so glad you felt God’s presence in it.
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And the flowers are so *tactile* too – with contrasts
[eg the flowers on the right – roughly 0200 – are very prickly
and the 1100 flowers are so soft].
The 1200 flowers are very knobbly and squeezy – and, well, vertical.
I think there are some extending at the 0900 position.
Staff need their orientations too – and I am glad that they are listening and you are getting through.
This Earth charm is very intriguing, Astrid!
And I hope the extruder did not come to too much grief. They can be very delicate objects [especially in the pasta and cooking world – squeezing cheese for instance].
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I’m not sure what those numbers mean you use to refer to the flowers, but indeed the flowers are very tactile. The woman was going to find me the flowers with the most apparent scent but then her fellow people were about to move on so she couldn’t.
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The numbers are the clock positions
[you may have used a clock to indicate relative positions of things at rehab – like three o’clock is on the right and nine o’clock is on the left and six o’clock down].
military – European time.
Glad to know you too find them tactile.
Also the stems and the leaves.
It is hard to find scentsy flowers when you’re pressed for time.
And sometimes the most apparently odorous flowers – are not the flowers you want to smell.
Sometimes they smell a whole lot like the earth.
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Oh, thanks for explaining! I positioned the vase on my table for the photo and can’t remember whether, after putting it back in the windowsill (where it was too sunny to take pictures), I positioned it in the same way, so I’m not sure your description is very helpful. I agree about the most scentsy flowers not always having the nicest smell.
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Hi Astrid,
Sorry to hear that you’ve hit some bumps wit your new staff.
You depend on them for so much that it must be troubling when changes like this don’t start well.
Perhaps now that they know you better and you’ve had some time to get to know them that things will go smoother now.
Stay positive and look for things they do right for you and let them know that too.
You’ve come a long way and I bet you can build the relationships you need with these folks.
Blessings.
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Thank you so much for your encouraging words. Yes, I agree, I do try to let the staff know things I appreciate about them too.
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Our weather is finally feeling like summer. I planted some flowers in containers over the weekend. That was so interesting what you shared about emotional development and intelligence…I appreciate when you are transparent and share things whether struggles or victories.. it helps me understand better. Those flowers are so pretty and a late happy birthday. I hope this week has been going well for you
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Thank you for your kind words and the belated birthday wishes. I’m so happy your weather finally feels like summer.
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New staff can be very draining because you have your job and you want to make sure the new staff are doing their job correctly. The thing that does frustrate me though is when new staff shortly leave the company because it does take a lot of time and resources to train them.
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Thanks for sympathizing. I understand. FYI, I’m not their coworker, but a client receiving care from these staff. That being said, it is equally hard for me to be introduced to new staff after new staff, knowing that some of them will probably be leaving pretty soon too.
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