Enemy of Entropy

My therapist, L, is no longer with the practice I’ve been seeing for the last couple of years. It took a year to get to her - first, they assigned me to M, who was a total pain in the ass and didn’t listen. Not that I was inclined to talk to her, anyway. And she didn’t return phone calls.

So I finally got beyond the “getting to know you” stage with L, and she understands our family and some history and such, so she can put things in context. And I think they fired her! They weren’t even going to tell me she wouldn’t be there for my appointment this evening. I called to ask her something and her number had been disconnected, which prompted me to talk to the office idiots.

I. Am. Not. HAPPY! It’s a major PITA to break in a new therapist. I mean, it is for anybody, but when you have a bunch of interlocking issues and heavy history crap, then you add in chronic illness/disability, and just for fun mix in that whole bi/pagan/poly thing, believe me, it’s worse. And some therapists aren’t up to it. In fact, the one I saw a couple of times before seeing someone at this practice told me and Sam at the second session that she was in over her head and needed to refer me elsewhere.

Oh - the new person doesn’t do evening appointments, either. Which means that the only way I can be sure of getting there is to take a taxi, as I have not had good experiences with using MARTA for anything time-sensitive. Expensive, but not as difficult as having Sam take time off from work. But L coordinated my appointments with Katie’s appointments with another therapist in the same practice, which was nice. Who knows if this one will be as helpful?

Grrrr.

Today’s post is at Fibrant Living. I want to talk about working with a chronic illness, or returning to work after you’ve developed one. Please comment there!

I’ve successfully completed 1/4 of the semester! Without using any kind of accommodations!

I realize that’s a fairly pitiful thing to celebrate, but I have to take what I can get.

The project management course is actually giving me useful experience using MS Project, along with information that is applicable in the “real world.” There’s also a ridiculous amount of verbiage that I’ve never heard used in the workplace, but maybe there’s been some sort of PM revolution since 2000. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

(Continue Reading …)

I got through NaBloPoMo, as ridiculous as it was to commit to posting at least once a day for a month. So of course that small success has led me, in a moment of more-than-usual-lunacy, to sign up for Blog365 (otherwise known as “Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire”).

The purpose is fairly clear: to post at least once every day of 2008. February 29 is a “rest day.” Posts may be written on any site, rather than sticking to just one blog, so I’ll try to spread them around on mine/ours. If I can’t get something on the actual site on a particular day due to net connection issues or whatever, I have to write (yes, write! like, cuneiform or something!) a journal entry and transfer it to a blog as that day’s entry.

It would be far simpler to have a system of some sort. Maybe I’ll create a rotation:

• Fibrant Living - health, living with a disability, podcasts
• Academy Caritas - homeschooling, education, college
• House Fireheart - polyamory, particularly my and Sam’s approach to it
• Heartsong Handicrafts - home of my original needlework patterns, and soon to be home for the rest of my stitching information
• Cyberstalked! - internet safety and privacy issues
• Cynthia Armistead - my professional portfolio, where I put the geeky stuff
• Enemy of Entropy - here, of course, where I put general stuff, book reviews, and the like.

Hopefully there will be new podcasts up soon. There will definitely be more music, as we have that lovely concert piano we received via freecycle all repaired and put together. It’s beautiful and sounds great! Not at all bad for one drive to pick it up and less than $200 in repair fees! (Sam wanted to just take it to the nearest authorized repair center rather than doing it ourselves.)

2007 wasn’t a stellar year, but neither was it terrible. Sam has a steady, secure job that he enjoys, in an organization that’s allowing him to advance. , Katie had a lot of health problems, but I’m hoping that we’re on the right path to resolving them. Shelley passed away a little shy of her 18th birthday, but since we’d been told in 1999 that she only had a year (at most) left, we felt that we’d gotten an “extra” 8 years with her anyway. Kioshi has grown into a nice companion, too.

We really kept to ourselves a lot through the past two years. When you’ve been betrayed and hurt as deeply as we were by our former housemate’s sudden craziness in 2006, there’s a lot of healing to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever approach Thanksgiving without trepidation again, but we had a good one anyway. The stress did contribute to the deterioration of my health, and that does make it harder to get out. We’re working on it, though. We certainly learned who our true friends were, and we’ll never forget that.

So on to 2008, which we hope to be full of more time with friends, better health, much more music, Katie spent last night and almost all day today with friends from the school she was attending as well as her new beau. Sam and I spent the day gaming, upgrading some web sites, eating good food and watching movies. If it’s true that whatever you do on January 1 indicates how your year will go, we should be just fine.

Not from the grave, oh no, not yet!

It’s been too long to do a real “this is all that has happened in my life.” Writing it would exhaust me, and reading it would likely bore you. If you want to know about something in particular, please ask.

I’ll be posting a few things shortly that I had “ready to go” and just didn’t post, for whatever reason.

The girl is enjoying life as a teen, or as much as any teen can. I wouldn’t want to go through those ups and downs again! She’s always my most precious, beautiful Goddess gift baby, even if she will be 17 this week. That’s our “big thing” right now.

She continues to amaze me with her creativity. She’s the head photographer (or whatever they call it there) for the yearbook, which has had her running around to all manner of events for which there must be photos! Now! Yesterday! Couldn’t they hold Homecoming in July? Come ON people! And she loves it. She completely filled her 1GB compact flash card with live photos from Friday night’s football game, then had to switch to her smaller, older card and be very judicious in her shots to finish the game. She obviously needs a much bigger card!

Yes, she uses her own equipment. Her camera is head and shoulders above the quality of those the yearbook staff owns, even the few digitals. That makes sense, considering the expense of them, the time it takes to really learn to use a digital SLR properly, etc. Most of what they have are point-and-shoot 35mm film cameras, which aren’t such big a deal if a student loses or damages them.

Sam is still working at the same place, helping people with computers and networking and phones and so on—even A/V equipment at times. If you can plug it in, his department is the one everybody calls first for help. I’m surprised janitors don’t show up with vacuum cleaner complaints sometimes (and I don’t know that it hasn’t happened at some time at the past).

The helping people part is, of course, the most important thing. He loves it, he does it well, and he finds wells of patience that must come from Somewhere Else.

I’m registering for fall classes (DeVry is on an odd schedule, but you may have noticed that). We’re looking for a place to move to, but not finding what we can afford where we want to live. I suppose that’s an eternal lament, isn’t it?

I’m still a gimp, and now have a (manual) wheelchair of my own. I really need a ramp for the front entrance of the house, but I’ve delayed trying to have one put in here since we want to move.

We’re still in limbo with Social Security. In Georgia, the wait to have your case heard by an administrative law judge is (according to the SSA office near me) about 36 months, average. That’s the level I’m at now.

It’s damned frustrating not to be working, not to be able to work. I don’t want to be on disability or need it! I want to find a job I can do for a decent wage!

But I’ve had yet more icky health stuff, so… Sam and Katie are more of a blessing than I can say, certainly far more than I deserve.

I really want music. I mean, to make it. Nothing else seems to be able to replace having a piano (not a little keyboard) in my home. That’s when I sing the most, as I accompany myself. (I don’t play all that well, so I don’t play in front of anyone else.) I was thinking of taking a new vocal class Elise Witt is offering, but it conflicts with a family commitment.

I’m re-reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals and poetry as I mourn her passing. Yes, there will be a separate post about that, but for now, I’ll leave you with a tiny quote from her:

I learn my lessons slowly, seldom once for all. Continually they have to be learned and re-learned, not with solemnity, but with awe and laughter and joy.

Namaste,
Cyn