Thursday, January 24, 2013 @ 9:03AM
Good morning, this is us.
And me … so you get the whole thing this morning. We are picturing above a German apple pancake
or what is otherwise known as an Apfelphannkuchen. J This isn’t the one Rich cooked last night –
we didn’t remember to get a picture of it, but this IS a stock photo OF what he
DID cook. Maybe we should be saying though
baked. It had gone in the oven. It was soooo good! He had never made one before, but had been out
with Bob for breakfast and Bob had ordered one ahead of time. It gave Rich the bug. Word is that EVEN his Mom has never made
one. So it was a first in the household
and household extended. YAY!! Rich! Rich
and I split one and we really stuffed ourselves to the gills. Added to that was some maple syrup and we had
the meal of kings!
Well, ok, you can see why that might top my list of things
to write about this morning. This guy –
he treats us like a Queen! Ok, some of
us want to be instead Princesses, but you get the general drift. It was GREAT!
As to other news, there is not too much going on. The last time we wrote was on Monday, and it
seems we had a Dr. Marvin appointment AND we had several days of editing. We have finished the third chapter as to this
level of editing. I can be quite sure
that each time we go through it we find more, but for the time being we’re
doing pretty well. I’m not sure how many
times we went through the third chapter, but after we’d gone through it “enough,”
then we went through a couple of times where we were reading from the start of
the book up to the present third chapter.
One of the reasons we’d decided to do an entire make-over was that it occurred
to us that we really had to take out all the ellipses. Those are all those triple periods (…) that we
put in-between so many of our thoughts.
I think what I am seeing through the editing is that it has allowed us
not to speak in complete sentences, though as a writing form it doesn’t make
good sense. A lot of things like our
abundant capitalization and excessive punctuation we left in because that
captures more of our enthusiasm. We
found we really do get excited easily and we want that captured too.
I am pretty happy with what has happened so far in the
story. It might be different if it were
the only book we’re writing, but because we’re doing a series it doesn’t have
to capture the same thing each book. In
this particular book – the second, the first chapter talks about the virtual
trip V and us took to Paris and China, and then the second chapter ends with us
writing the paper for the self-esteem project we did with the clients. The third chapter has to do with Thanksgiving
and the build-up and problems that were caused emotionally by that event. I am eager to do now the fourth chapter –
December. I could guess that it will
lead to being off for Christmas and working our way into the start of a new
year. We aren’t reading ahead though so
I have to wait and see how the next chapter occurs. Maybe we will get to it either tomorrow or
Saturday. Tomorrow at 5PM we are going
to meet Jasmine and then Saturday at 11:30AM we’ll meet Jade so those things
have to be worked in too, but the general thing will be to start the next
chapter. The only thing challenging that
schedule is the part about writing. I’m
really finding that writing every three to four days is working in that there’s
not always a lot going on. Like I’m
really not so sure what we can add on editing other than what we’ve done.
I guess we could say that over the last couple of days we’ve
felt a bit driven with the effort in that we seem to take only small breaks
from it and then we are anxious to get back to it. Yesterday was kind of fun with Linda because
she seemed to be working on the same fast/eager pace as we were though she was
sewing and we were editing. We did meet
a couple times during the day and that seemed to spark more interest in general
and then again the duo-effort to be getting back to our own assignments. It’s really nice to have a friend who has this
kind of flexible, but also committed to project hours as we have. I can’t imagine what our life would be
without her. At this point, we’re just
grateful.
We just stopped to talk with Rich for a few moments before
he left out of the house. He is flying
now. He remembered about twelve minutes
into the conversation that he was going to put a roast, potatoes and other
vegetables into the crockpot. Both of us
will get home about 6-6:30PM tonight and so everything will be ready. I’m really grateful too that he takes care of
us so well. He’s such a blessing in our
life.
He’s been busy on the phones and computer this morning for
about three to four hours. He has to now
meet with customers. I think he’s going
to be home around 1:30PM and then he has to leave at 4PM for a single
game. After we both get home, I don’t
think there is going to be anything pressing.
Our schedule doesn’t have much, but we DO get to see Dr. Marvin
today. We should leave here about 3:15PM
today. Usually, on a Thursday we would
leave at 3:30PM, but we want to leave a few minutes early because we need to
pick-up one medication that we’d not gotten last time. The word came back to Dr. Marvin that
Medicaid won’t pay for the medicine, but it is about $20 so it will still be
affordable. This was the one that
Medicaid will only pay for if it is for children with ADD, and obviously that
is not the case here. Dr. Marvin says
that it supplements our depression medicine.
I thought it was more for concentration and focus, but we’ll let that go
for the time being.
As to Rich and our conversation, it was mainly about
business and what was happening directly for him. I think it helps him to talk and relieve some
of the pressure he feels in coordinating all the events. He seems to know how much he has to make to
make everything work, but he’s low on his set numbers so is worrying about
covering all of the bills. We got a
pep-talk on why it is important for me to relieve stress by doing little things
around the house. I had already gotten
the litter box and had steamed about four pieces of clothing so we were on the
right track. It would be better if we
washed something in the washing machine today, but that would require we move
pretty quick and that’s been really tough for us of late.
Being able to wash clothes was actually one of the hot conversations
between Dr. Marvin and us. He’s probably
made thousands on trying to get us through laundry. I wish it were easier or maybe that I was
less lazy, but it seems every time we get past one of our excuses then another
one pops-up. This last time we discussed
doing the laundry when Rich wasn’t sitting at the back door. Somehow it seems like with Dr. Marvin that
trying to escape past him or Rich is difficult.
It’s a confusion that builds-up in our head and then seems impossible to
get past in thinking through what could otherwise be considered a simple task.
At this moment there is no Rich at the door so it would stand
to reason there is nothing blocking us from doing it right now except to get
dressed. It’s just a few moments until
10AM so might be a good time to try?
Ouch-ouch we’re back.
The back is really aching today.
Someone had their clothes in the washer so we put them in the dryer for
them. We’ll go down in about an hour and
hope they’ve moved the clothes. It didn’t
seem they had a back-up load and you can never be sure how people feel about
you touching their clothes, but the bottom line is that it hurts too much to do
all those stairs to include another effort of going up and down to see if they’ve
come down and moved their load yet. This
way their task doesn’t really slow us up.
Hopefully, they will come down and take their dryer clothes out within
the hour, but if not, they will go on top of the dryer. It would be nice too if they paid back the
dollar, but for so little money, we’re not going to lose sleep over it. Thing is that we had clothes to do and we
just don’t handle well people slowing down what has to happen in turning over
those shared machines. We’ll see. I’m good until about 11:05 AM.
There is one more frustration in that in the past nobody was
really using the machines on a weekday morning, but now it seems they are. That adds to the competition and pressure to
get things down there earlier. We’re
going to have to now sooth that over in our mind. Ok, ladies?
Let’s let this go for now, hmm? I
can appreciate that we are very anxious now about laundry, but maybe some of
those feelings will dissipate, because we do have our laundry in the washer so
all is good. Next?
It seemed that Linda stopped by, but then must have had
computer problems because it looks like she’s signed off after dropping a short
FB message. She had said she had
problems with one of her scissors and that she had stayed up late last
night. We had seen her later, but there
wasn’t a lot said. We had stayed up past
Rich who went into the bedroom to read at 10PM.
We had been up and then fell asleep and might have been up a couple more
times, but about 5 AM after feeding the kitties we crawled back into bed
proper. The other times we had been
sleeping on the couch. I believe we
woke-up about 8:30 AM, so we seem to have caught-up on some of our missed sleep.
We had thought we’d get done with the editing enough to do
some ironing, but the real edits weren’t finished until 9 PM. Rich and I had planned to watch the DVR of
the new NCIS, but it turned out they had a rerun. So, we went back to the paper
for another run. This time just the last
chapter and we didn’t need to get out the marking pen. WooHOO!
As to Dr. Marvin this week, as noted, we spent time on
trying to figure out this long-lasting battle with laundry and other
housework. One thing that he noted was
that it could be that we are actually angry with Rich and so it is coming
through in not helping him around the house.
I’m thinking at this point, it would be passive-aggressive. Dr. Marvin thought it was most likely a fallback
from not getting the house. I guess
internally we’re doing a bit of a pout.
No one likes to hear that kind of thing about them, but at the time it
seemed to strike a bell. We had also
read in our editing work that there are parts of us that pretty much seem to be
here just to say, “I don’t care.” Or,
likewise, “I don’t want to be bothered.” That pretty much describes our position on
doing things around our place. Rich
touched a nicer note in encouraging that he feels more like working and being
here when the place is picked-up and although we didn’t say it out loud, we
would have to agree. It’s nicer when
things are taken care of.
I have to think now what else we talked to Dr. Marvin
about. I think there was a portion of
the meeting where we were talking about the last post and still being mad at
Rich’s mother. I don’t really remember a
discussion about it though so thinking it had gone toward another part. I do recall that there was quite a bit of
time rocking and sitting on our hands until they were useless to us. I think we’d entered his office riled because
the “paper” lady next to him, jumped in front of us, and then after Dr. Marvin
dismissed her, she leaned back with another few questions. We know we don’t do well with this scenario
and we tried to be calm about it, but it took several minutes to let it go past
us without being a direct bother. Dr.
Marvin and we both realize that it’s a problem to us, but like several other
things that affect our physical boundaries, it’s not at a level to be fixed
right now. Just need to get through it.
I think we were teasing Dr. Marvin again about not working
hard enough because we were looking for some harder stuff, but then he gave us
some and then we decided we wanted back to the easier side. I still can’t remember the majority of things
that we talked about. I do recall
thinking before going in that I wanted to be able to really feel the connection
between us. And, I think that happened AFTER
we got past just relaying what things had been happening. He almost always seems to bring himself to
the event of meeting … just sometimes we are more scared to connect to him than
others. I like it sometimes when we get
so bold and daring to be able to look at him while we’re talking … I have to
say that its very sensual – though we are not thinking sexual. But, the energy that plays-out is very “hot.” Ok, ok get your minds out of the gutter we
are talking on a level where she LOVES her psychiatrist, but is not “IN love”
with him. Meaning we’re not looking for
any relationship other than building the best one a client can have with her
doctor. He’s just got so much
vitality. It is hard not to want to
tune-in to some of that. He is such a
gracious doctor!
Ok, girls … tongue back in mouth! We seemed to have babbled-on through that
quite uncomfortably. I really do mean to
say that sometimes being in the room with Dr. Marvin leaves a stronger impression
than even the conversation that ensues.
We still have some fear that he would be taken away from us one day –
most likely because he costs so much.
Breathe easy girls, breathe easy!
Next?
Soooo, it’s time for peanut butter rice cakes? Ok, yes that’s the stuff! There are 15
minutes left before we go downstairs.
Hmm, I don’t THINK it’s too early for a pop? What do we usually drink at this time? Between Rich and us I think we run the pot of
coffee out sooner than later. Ok
girls. Really? Really this is so important?
Ok, ok moving on.
Thinking here this is where we are sometimes with Dr. Marvin
when we might ask, “Could you give us some hard stuff?” It is a little bothersome that he doesn’t
have to reach back far before we are saying squeamishly Ooh L If he were here right now and looking over
this last week, what might he ask about?
We did talk to Rich about our hidden well of anger between
our thoughts and feelings and doing housework.
I know, I know … its ten years later and she’s still having problems
with her domestication skills. I know
that Rich heard what we say, but I don’t recall if he responded to it. I don’t have a recollection of going much
more into the housing problems that we’ve been facing this month. If I were to take a guess at it, I would say
that Rich has since focused his attention on to what he can do for himself –
such a work, that doesn’t rely on his Mother finding some sensibility. In our minds we’ve left the whole topic go
PRETTY much. We aren’t taking looks at
the pictures anymore. I’m sure we still
have some anger in those regards, but we’re not directly facing it. I suppose we could peek-in and revisit our
thoughts with the aim of clearing things in our mind. I don’t think we can look at the house
pictures without feeling the yearning things that we’d done before.
Ok, ok … maybe in a few moments. We started the slideshow, but then stopped in
about three to four pictures. We’re
thinking that since we have to do laundry in five minutes, it would be better
to do it after we got back upstairs.
Pswhoo! Back upstairs with achy back again. I can tell when we’re having a bad day
because after we climb the stairs again it aches so back that we’re not sure we’re
going to make it from the back door to the front living room. It has been like that today. The person that we put in the dryer, we had
to take out of the dryer, because her load is still unattended. I wish people wouldn’t do that. It really is a put-off to the other tenants
of the building to have to wait on someone.
We are pretty careful about setting our timer so that we don’t mess
someone else up. It’s just common
courtesy. Ok, girls let’s bring it up a level? We were going to look at the pictures,
remember?
Hmm, ok … we looked at the
pictures. We set it on slide and just
let them click from one to another in front of us. I have to admit it felt that we had some
walls up that we were peeking at from behind.
We wanted to see things, but we were trying hard for ourselves not to be
upset. It has been on the market now for
111 days. It is such a shame for such a
gorgeous place. Maybe somehow a miracle
would happen and we’d be able to still get it, but the chances for that are so
low, that I know we shouldn’t even entertain the idea. There has been some mental break thinking
that Rich’s Mother wouldn’t live with us, but that makes getting a place like
this that much more difficult. I just
don’t see it happening. It was hard to
look at some of the details that we’d really loved in particular. There’s a lot of things like corners,
windows, and special walls, but especially because they were each painted or
surfaced in exactly the right way. The
counters, cupboards, walls, floors, and curtains – EVERY thing was done just
right. I’m feeling more sorrowful and
upset at this point than I would have wanted.
If Dr. Marvin was looking for hard stuff today, I think that the sorrow
for not being able to purchase this place would end up on the top of the heap.
Not sure how to handle the
feeling other than wanting to escape it.
I don’t want to put our thinking parts with our feeling parts, because
it might lead us to be sharp and accusatory.
But, the bottom line was that I couldn’t buy this place for myself, so I
had little right hoping that someone else would buy it for me. I’m not so settled that I can glibly look at
the other without blame, but intellectually, I know that I would have to
perhaps do this for myself and that it wouldn’t be anything that Rich or his
family could do for us. I do appreciate
that Rich is trying for both his benefit and mine to bank toward our future as
to procure housing that could be paid off making our small retirement amount go
a longer ways. Just maybe today it is a
little too sensitive to talk about. It
would be nice if we could just take a quick look in the future to see if we’re
still on disability or if by then our 10-12 books would have been published and
we were making a higher income there then we would on disability. It seems this is an unanswerable question
though something we’ve been asking for a long time, because we’ve already seen
the hope for publishing in the second book we are now working on. We also at that time had posted a picture of
another house with about the same amount of space and cost. The other had been in Bolingbrook and the
neighborhood wasn’t as secured. I’d like
to say that we’ve made some advancement, but I don’t think that’s the reality.
At this point … our feelings are
doing a dive. Sort of like – it doesn’t
matter we’ll never get there. Sometimes,
I wonder what people who own houses think of in their spare time if people
without houses spend so much of their time trying to figure out how to get
one. I suppose through real life or TV
we’ve seen enough houses to know that what goes on within them as to peoples
living conditions vary a lot. We’d just
like to think that we’d have a nice space.
Most likely we’d still be asking ourselves how we keep it up, but having
things like washing machines, dishwashers, and vacuums would certainly
help. Mostly, I wonder what security
would feel like to know that you would have a home to live in for the rest of
your life and you wouldn’t have to worry about the kinds of things renters go
through, like the building turning from one hand to another, the costs going
up, or the possibility of doing something wrong that might evict you. Plus
there is just the plunging of our money.
So far, we have put $120-140,000 into the building through rent. It is an awful lot of money for something
that we don’t get to keep. As happy as
we are here, all it would take is a note on the door, and we’d lose everything
we had in a home. It’s really not very
secure.
I suppose people in houses have
equalized problems in that they worry from month to month being able to cover a
mortgage and if that mortgage wasn’t covered, the bank could come in and take
the property too. So maybe there is some
problem there. But, in the way we dream,
we’d be able to pay off the property very quickly, or relatively quickly. Unfortunately, it still means Rich receiving
his inheritance from his mother. And,
for that matter that my mother gives us the $10,000 she’s offered. I have to be
careful because it is so sensitive in the area that our worth is so low.
We’re back. It’s about 2:38PM right now. We’ve been “about” for the last period of
time. I think last time we were knowledgeable
of being here was when we were waiting for the clothes to dry. I think that was about what? Noon?
I seem to remember that the clock went off about 1 AM and we did take
the afternoon medicine, but we aren’t remembering if we had clothes folded or
hung by then. I think that we took our medicine
when Rich came home though and he was home about 1:30 PM. We talked for a bit about some of the stuff
that had been happening since he was gone.
Of course, he had to listen to our spiel on the lady downstairs not
taking care of her laundry. It’s just
the way it goes.
The next part we talked about was
what we’d been working on with school loans.
We tried to progress it some, and I think that we’ve gotten now forms to
be filling out from our email. We worked
through the issues of Rich being on our accounts so that he could read stuff
and explain it to me. The school
apparently sent an exit interview, but we can’t figure it out … we lose our
concentration very quickly and am unable to read what they want me to know
about the school loans. There seems to
be some kind of test at the end … I tried reading the first question and we
couldn’t make sense out of it. It seems
to require that we read the other part of the agreement, but it’s just not
happening. We did find on that paperwork
a number from the Department of Education Ombudsman. My understanding of that would be that they’d
be an advocate of the student in trying to straighten things up. We went through some trial and errors on the
phone in trying to connect with a live person, but at some point, someone
called me back (instead of waiting online).
We explained our situation that
we had been in school, and then had had to take a medical leave, and then we
weren’t able to go back to school and the school wrote saying they had to drop
me. We explained that we were on
disability so wouldn’t have too much money to pay, but basically, what was it
that we are supposed to do. She said
that the papers we were looking at were from the school and that we’d have to
take care of that with them. So, we said
ok. But, then she said if we were 100%
disabled which I believe we are because of being on disability through the
government, that we should apply for something to let go of the loan or cancel
it. I understood at that time that it
meant we’d never be able to apply for student loans or go back to school. But, I just don’t see that as ever happening
again. We have found in the last year
that the problems that we were having with St. Rose in keeping up and being
able to take care of our stated duties has also been impossible with the goals
we’ve tried to do here at home. I think
that the last upset was in trying to work on the NEWS blog. It seems that we just can’t make things
happen and after ten years we are still struggling with simple things like
trying to wash a load of clothes. Part
of the disability is in being so immobile and the other parts are mental. We’re not going to go into that right now
though.
We took a lot of notes when we
talked to people and we’re going to try getting some of that down here before
we lose our connection to what had been said.
Basically, the ombudsman told us that we had two loans and that they
were through ACS and Great Lakes. That
wasn’t something we knew. She gave us
the contact numbers and we made it through mazes trying to find someone to talk
to. Both calls were similar in the end
with both of these loan places. It turns
out that we have through ACS $34,726.41 of loan and through Great Lakes we have
$21,870.45 of loan. We told both of them
the advice we’d gotten through the ombudsman and both agreed to send paperwork
for us to fill-out and then there would be a part that Dr. Marvin would have to
fill-out too. We got through these two
companies and through the school which we called too to assure that Rich was
able to call any of them and ask questions, because things were so difficult for
us to understand, especially the second lady.
She was going quickly from one thing to another, and we couldn’t get it
written down to study later. Basically, what I got was that we should
fill-out the information they had both sent us, and with the help of Rich we
would be able to take care of that and we’d have to have help finishing up the
papers from school. My understanding is
that after the school gets our paperwork, they will tell the loan companies we
are no longer an active student, and then we can finish paperwork with
those. We have to remember that for
Great Lakes, they couldn’t take care of something until they got notification
from the school so she had said that we should take care of that and then call
them back. I think what we wrote down
and would have to ask them for at that point is the form for economic hardship.
I think what we got was that the
economic hardship would put our account in deferment until the other part went through
and that the long part in proving longstanding 100% disability would take three
years from the start of our disability.
We’re going to need some assistance from Rich and Dr. Marvin to make
sure that everything goes in. It seemed
like a whole lot of documentation all at once and we’re going to need not
getting lost in the shuffle. For the
record the number for ACS is 1-800-835-4611 and the number for Great Lakes is
1-800-236-4300. I think that’s the
majority of what we’ve had written down and still understand. It seems that we went into deferment while
going through school since September 1, 2011.
I know now that one of my loans is 7%.
I put the four notes sent to me through these contacts in a file under
Rich. The forms are for total and
permanent disability. We still have to
talk to Dr. Marvin and assure ourselves that this is the right thing to do and
if this is really our status. Basically,
will ever get better?
It seems that this writing about
our day to day moment to moment life is about the only thing that we’ve been
able to do consistently, although even with this there have been months we were
distracted and couldn’t even write here.
We still have the aim of writing toward books, but after getting only
about $200 over two years, I don’t think that would mean we are not
disabled. Basically, if I were a real
author I would have to be able to make an income from the writing. I still have hopes that one day that might
happen, but as to the present … the only thing I can do is continue to write
about how we are getting through life – the good and the bad parts.
Hmm, thinking we better get
dressed. AND, as also something we are
having trouble with … we need help from Dr. Marvin on how to become legal as to
our driving. We’re still without a
driver’s license. Unfortunately, it’s
one of those things that happen in our mind that we get such fear and anxiety
built-up we can’t do the stuff we know that we are supposed to be doing.
Ok, we’re dressed now and only
have a few moments. I hate this part …
the part about having to leave my comfort zone here at the computer to go
outdoors. Maybe that would get better if
we had our license. But mostly, we just
have to try not building-up too much anxiety.
It’s like ok … you took your shower, you got dressed, now you just put
on your coat, grab your phone and go out the door. We go through our own paces getting there
like setting the cruise control no more than three miles over the speed. Ok, girls you gotta go now! Shoo!
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