Wednesday, February 5, 2014 @ 10:31 AM
Good morning. It has been a
while AGAIN since writing and we’re trying to balance that out, but it seems
there is so much to be doing most days that we’re still fighting time to be THE
one to be writing. I know, I know …
other things too. I think our main
things are writing, sewing, Multiples, piano, Domestic Goddess and Facebook –
not in any particular order. We’ve been
working on a few projects. We will
include here our piece on Interviewing for Multiplicity 101. Ready?
It takes a few moments to read.
Sorry about that. Just you know …
we write long J
Interview
with the Ann’s
~What is
your education like?” When we were a body age of 18,
we worked on a degree in Human Development from St. Mary’s University of
MN. We completed the first three years which included a term in Norway at
the University of Oslo. We then got married and had our three boys.
And then, when we were at the body age of about 40, we went back to the
University in MN and completed our BA in Psychology. At about 50 we went back
twice to an online University to get our Masters in Adult Educational
Psychology specializing in e-learning, technology and design. We weren’t
able to complete the Masters due to challenges we were having handling time,
responsibility and stress. We have a body age now of 54.
~What
type of work do you do or have done? For the
first 15 years of raising the kids we did volunteer work through their school
district, managed real estate that we owned, and we did office management for
our husband’s Victorian house painting business. When we had to work
through our divorce agreement, we had to be rehabilitated to work in the work
force. We eventually became the production coordinator for a disabled
workshop of about 100 individuals as well as taking care of payroll for about
300 people. After we left that position and had finished the degree in
psychology, we worked for twelve years as a “Qualified Human Service
Professional” (QHSP) for an Adult Day Training Program that served those with
intellectual disabilities. We did counseling and social work for about 24
adults with intellectual disabilities, trained staff, helped to manage the
program, and specialized in the program’s accreditation. We then became
overwhelmed with the work; people and stress involved in the “outside” world. We had a series of physical and mental
breakdowns, but also insight. For the last two years we’ve been on
disability. We now work on balancing our life through our interpersonal
relationship with Rich and family, taking care of our home as a “Domestic
Goddess,” blogging about our life, learning about Multiplicity and figuring out
how to best support the community, as well as relaxing through quilting and
piano.
~How did
you get your name? It depends though most of the
naming was done between us – no externals. Sarah, for example, was named
after our best girlfriend from 8-10 years old who had died. I (Corey) was
named from a Harry Chapin song that was sad and lonely. (like me after the
original Sarah’s death) It was called, “Corey’s Coming.” Many of us have
taken different aspects of our given Christian name such as variations of Mimi,
Annemarie, Anna, Marie, Anniemi, Ann, Ayn and believe it or not “Henry.”
When people used to yell for us as teenagers that we had a phone call (prior to
cell phones) it sounded to callers as "Henry" (Ann Marie, became
Amry, which finally became Henry). Henry is the only male in a female
system. Other names are “Crystal, Gracie, Lissa, Kelsie, Jamie, Kate and
Jessie.” Most of these latter names were names that were in our thoughts
frequently enough to be claimed by one of us – so it was possible that
different individuals created their own names. Oh two last people,
we can’t forget – the twins (have aged to about 10 years old). The one is
Casie, and the second is KC. Collectively, they are known as the
“Casies.”
~What
kind of system do you have? I think we have a
traditional “trauma-based” system. Our Grandfather was sexually abusive
from near our birth to seven years old. Our Mother and father were
physically and emotionally abusive, and in particular my parents were very
neglectful and centered on their own issues. She is a narcissist and he had
problems “under his alcoholism” like depression. Both our father and Grandfather were
alcoholics and were very dominating. There are twenty of us in our system
- though one, Annemarie, is considered our “core/soul” and we carry the belief
of having lost one of our very first of us at birth. Her name was
Embry. She was the only part to “leave.” All our people were
created from birth to 18 years of body age. At that time we left the
family house and stopped the unconscious process of creating parts. We
had survived childhood! We believed that our mother was also sexually
abused by her father. She left us with
her father to shop with my Grandmother while my Grandfather recuperated from a
fall – he ran a business that cleaned the glass from skyscrapers. There was a bitter/sweet relationship between
Grandfather, Mother and daughter. Our
mother was very hateful and competitive. It’s complicated. Each of
us within the system has been created to meet certain “personal” needs or survival
goals. And, now in general, we believe that the more time each has out in
“real-time” – the better an opportunity to age through regular processes of
growth or development – maturation – AND Trust!
~How do
people work out the sharing of one body? I think
the priority of being out is in part centered on meeting expectations of
ourselves, or the expectations of others around us. We have trouble
balancing time, and then for example with someone else like Rich - there might
be an argument between (the expectant) Rich and a younger part – in that he
might strongly suggest they can’t be out to confuse our five grandchildren aged
8-14. Most of the Grandchildren intellectually know we consider ourselves
“multiple,” but none of the grandchildren really understand it yet because we
are normal to them. We will await their questions as they mature. There
is always someone “sneaking-out,” but not at the conscious level of the
external person, but yes sometimes there is a “jar…” Our three sons are
better at picking-up cues as to “body sharing.” They’ve known anything
they’ve asked questions about and more. At one point, we realized they
were teasing the Casies who were younger at the time. The Casies would become upset or cry because
one of the boys (others egging him on) would do things like put our favorite
stuffed animal on top of a door where we couldn’t reach. Most often there
is an adult or middle aged person fronting when younger people are out.
We’ve learned from very serious past mistakes, that outsiders or externals shouldn’t
be trusted out alone with a younger more vulnerable person without someone
responsible for “systemic” decisions.
Safety
trumps everything, but for the general things we do, we are not always able to
control things like getting equal time for the piano players, the writers,
those who want to impress Rich as Domestic Goddess, or more. It can be
frustrating and forces us to leave projects for periods of time before “we” are
“back in control” of our own particular interests. One doctor told us it’s like someone is always
at the wheel, but not always able to control the ship. Sometimes satisfaction
or the feeling of having accomplished something will allow people to share
turns with our body … if you’ve done well in your time out and feel somewhat
accomplished, you are more apt to – turn over the ship. Confusion, crankiness or feeling down will
sometimes affect decision-making too.
Bottom line is that have to work with feelings, thoughts and behaviors
with only one system equilibrium that needs to balance our sense of freedom as
individuals and as a group.
~How do
we communicate with one another? Most times it is a matter
of an ongoing internal communication of talking to each other, making
statements, and asking questions. Such as “What would I like to do
next?” Anyone listening to the question can answer and pursue their
wishes – and sometimes there is NOone that wants to answer the question.”
For example, “Who wants to clean the litter box?” NOONE!!!?? Sometimes
there is a caveat like – anybody can do what they want (one thing at a time),
BUT you have to get the litter box emptied first. Time out can be sort of
a hot potato. We have been blogging (sending messages both internally and
externally) pretty steadily for about eleven years - so we have a running
account of the kinds of things the group have thought, felt or done. If
people internally are being quiet, then writing doesn’t get done. I
(Corey) do most of our blog writing and “question/answering” like through this
interview, but if no one is providing me answers and being TOO individualistic,
I get a little grouchy, and then it’s like “skip-it!”
Marie
(her age is timeless) and the elders Ann, Kate, Ayn and Jessie each help take
leadership responsibility for the system. Ann is the actual ex-wife and
mother to three adult sons and now sews with Anniemi. Kate leads over
things like the Business of “Us,” Ayn is best at the psychology and “sense-making”
of both us and external others, and Jessie is the ultimate boss and final
decision maker in a tie – though she may not be out during common thought
processes – she likes to surf the Internet and otherwise dream. Jamie,
Sarah and Henry take most responsibility for the internal kids, and the
Kelsie/Lissa team does some of our best collective online/research work. Kate
and Jamie do most of the editing work, and recently, Sarah, Lissa and the
Casies are working on learning piano playing. It is like different people
have different responsibilities, strengths and challenges. Everyone knows
each other, but sometimes you hear things from the Casies, such as saying “that
it is the fault of the “big people.” It
happens when they are not getting or doing something they want. Usually,
things get decided by group consensus and Kate generally holds the line with
internal votes (sensed not counted). She does more of the practical part
of leadership where Jessie holds the more wistful, lofty goal-making skills and
is more into the transitive processes of our selves through making choices
available, and encouraging decision-making (with consequences), alongside
training ourselves to be more self-regulating – something that was not
constructive during childhood.
~How is
it decided which one is fronting? I wish we knew the answer
to this. We have one person in the system we have considered the
“old-fashioned” self-helper, Marie. We think she is critical to our
switching patterns, consciousness and reflective history. Around, the
more formal external world, we just try to maintain an adult (more
observational/interactive) facade. We try to maintain a “presence” that
is easier for others around us to understand which often takes pressure off
ourselves as being known by them which is individually “riskier.” We are very adaptable to others, but when one
is in “public” others are hiding under a cloak of invisibility as one of our
previously-learned survival mechanisms. There is another circle of
external people at a secondary level that we’re close to – and at that level,
people know about Multiplicity and might have some connection to our younger,
middle, or older people. At a secondary level, these externals might have
some kind of understanding about our thought processes, curiousness,
detail-mindedness, or our general behaviors/idiosyncrasies. The variety of our people fronting is greater
to the secondary group and they are given a wider berth in meeting more of
ourselves. There are always tests
of “trust” and “safe barriers.” And,
then there is a final level that is known only to Rich, our partner or our
psychiatrist Dr. Marvin. We’ve spent most of the last 30 years with a
psychiatrist or psychologist, particularly two psychiatrists. They have
had access to all parts other than Marie and have been extremely supportive and
trustworthy. Rich and us have been together for the last twenty years,
and although not married – Very much best friends and partners. With these particular two people we are able
to work with needs of talking about our internal selves knowing others, but
also have help with individual needs of anyone who might need or desire time
out front.
No one
responds to being “called-out to the front.” Sometimes one person might
be out, and at other times two or more. We’ve never had all parts out at
one time – and by out I mean engaged in the outgoing conversation or
projects. We consider the process as being on a stage with external
people being in the audience. Our front part – would be sitting on a tall
stool talking, but she/he might have one or more others standing around her on
the stage who can also be listening or interacting in the outgoing dialogue, or
may remain silent. Each on stage is picking-up direct information and
responding to it mentally at their level of understanding the world. It’s
very normal in our system to listen and ask reflective questions. So,
knowing 3D-others happens more than them knowing us, unless we’re blogging
about “our world," and then it is mostly all about us. We can be
very much an open book if others are inquisitive. Actually, we
turned one year of blogging into a published book. We still do a lot of fast
skipping between parts – where people don’t “see the Multiplicity,” or
understand what is happening to us internally, or how they are affecting us as
“many” individuals. The people closest to us usually call all of us Ann.
It's ok ... mostly.
~And,
lastly - What is a typical day in your system? It
is hard to say. We don’t go out to work and we enjoy most being inside
our home. Most days – seven days a week, we’d like to start about 5 am by
checking in on our computer especially through email or Facebook – “checking-in”
is also done periodically through the day. We’d would like to practice
the piano for about an hour or maybe a little more. Then we would like to
work through our blogging and being a Domestic Goddess. It works really
well for example to be blog writing and in-between use the washer and dryer,
washing machine, or do vacuuming and such. We can only stand/walk for
about 8-9 minutes at a time, so there is a lot of resting/writing between
tasks. Those two projects would ideally last until about 12-1 pm. And,
then we’d like to use the afternoon to be working on things we do with
Multiplicity online. Most important right now is to continue Dissociative
Identity work utilizing an interactive Mindmap on dissociation through a
program called, “The Brain.” There is more information on that through
our blog at AnnsMultipleWorldofPersonality.com - no spaces. About 4:30 pm
we like to take our shower and practice piano again for about 30-45 minutes
before our Sweetie gets to making dinner. He works from home, but is in
and out – and we have to give him time without distractions so he can focus on
his own business. But, when it is time for dinner-making, we have a
chance to actually be with him. Then we’d eat, continue talking, or watch
TV with him until 7-7:30 pm. After that we’d be having a really great day
if we could go into the sewing room and work on our quilting for a couple of
hours. About 9-9:30 pm we’d join our
sweetie again and settle down – we specialize in giving 1 – 1 ½ hour back rubs
:) And, then last, he usually tucks us in because we usually fall asleep
before he does – about 10:30 pm. This is the general schedule –
wish we could do it better and more consistently all the time - again
self-regulation. In addition, Tuesday afternoon and Thursday mornings, we
make a 120 mile round trip into the city of Chicago to meet with our
psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin, and Wednesday afternoons we receive piano
lessons. We’re closer to Three Blind Mice than Fur Elise!
~End of Interview
Ok, this is us again. I know it gets a little busy, but again …
that would be us. AND, we’re not likely
to be changing most of it. We gave a
good amount of time to the project earlier in the week – maybe Sunday, so we
figured we need to put it down and be moving on. I don’t think anyone really saw it in the
group, but we asked Jazz in an email, and then she said she was going to go
back and look for it. Not sure if it’s
acceptable and what stages it will go through next. I think that Jazz is still doing the
interviews, so it might be a matter of sketching out the intro and conclusion,
and then setting-up a time to go over it on video through Skype. Let’s hope it is that easy. We’re really leery about being interviewed,
but mostly due to the differences in speaking while recording and reading
script trying to sound spontaneous. I
think it’s a common problem to anyone who has done it or thinks of doing
it. Even Dr. Marvin was challenged by
it. And, he is USED to talking in front
of people.
Hmm, it seems that we’re never
going to get going straight ahead. Rich
has been back and forth … to be fair he’s packing up a job he’s taking to a
workshop so that has been a fair amount of movement and then there was the
regular business of being Ann and getting the music stabilized and such. I know big deal *sigh* Just trying to relax. I’d like to be in our own little world for a
while. Yes, it’s been a long time since
writing. There has to be a bit of a
groove found … like how did we used to do things? Focus?
Concentrate? We’ll see.
Maybe we are just getting
clearance. As soon as we know Rich is
gone … it will be ICE CREAM! Ok, yes
we’re the one that just posted the picture of summer fruit, but one can catch
the moment … and at this time of the year sweets best picked from the freezer!
Maybe we should move along here. Usually … or at least lately we’ve been
trying to do the clean-ups with the writing, but I’d like to establish
ourselves as writing first before we get into something else because this feels
like such a fragile connection so far.
Our mind is a little jumpy.
Looking ahead at the day we have the piano lesson coming up later in the
afternoon. We’re on our fifth lesson so
far. We’ll have to talk to Rich about
signing up for the next six week period.
We don’t want to get behind and we’ve got a few costs coming up with
Music books too. Just don’t know if it
is this week. Maybe we should check our
bank accounts again. Hmm. $4,080.40.
That includes the savings of about $1,600, and then $2,270 in the
checking and $210 in the petty cash account.
That’s it … my whole financial future.
That reminds me we were doing some other stuff yesterday that we might
have to get back into again today.
YEEKS! Are we going there?
Basically, we’ve gotten Medicare
through our disability that is going to be starting March 1, 2014. So, we’ve been going through everything
possible to figure those accounts. It’s
somewhere between we may or may not have Medicaid, and we may or may not need a
Supplement insurance and Part D for Drugs.
The best notice of the last couple of weeks was that Dr. Marvin said
that the account is so confused at UIC, that they had – or chose to wipe out
our account and start from scratch. We
don’t know how that goes though with some of the money UIC sent to credit
agencies because they’d gotten the account messed up. For example, we gave them a check and though
someone at UIC cashed it, it has NEVER gotten written up as paid on any of
their accounts for us. Dr. Marvin wrote
out a cash receipt and we have that, but its about all. I would like to tell them to give that back
or fix our credit! I know it doesn’t
sound grateful. He said the woman said
that it would take them more in man hours than the value they would get collected
from us *sigh*
One way or another, we still have
to know what’s happening to our Medicaid account. Right now Juliana the woman who was just
hired and cleared our account says that in our “e-care” account – something to
do with Medicaid, and or Medicare, it shows that we have both services. BUT, Medicaid said we were canceled at the
end of May, and Medicare says we don’t start until March 1. SOMEONE is reading things wrong or they have
computer banks with disagreeing information.
He said that she said we wouldn’t have to worry about money that it
would get charged to Medicare, and then what they didn’t pay – 20% would go to
Medicaid. Even if they didn’t pay, she
said it would get written off our records.
Just something or some way they do business? I don’t really trust the system yet and have
to worry about how other UIC billing gets handled for regular medical care and
how I would pay at other medical facilities … I’m thinking I’m going to lose
the period to enroll and then not have the right kind of insurance covering my
needs. Part of the confusion is that we
qualify for Medicaid, but have a high spenddown of like $450. We know that if we got Supplementary
Insurance and Part D, we would be covered for less money. But, we don’t know if they will take us
because we qualify for needing help. And
then some of the other “need help” accounts through Medicare say we can use
their services if we Qualify for Medicaid, but I don’t know if you have to be
on it, or just have the low numbers. And
some people are counting our disability income as income and some are not,
which confused the kind of help we are supposed to be getting.
We read most of the Medicare
handbook yesterday, but we still have stuff to go. Just have to find the real life person who
can magically answer all our questions.
It seems like each of the people we talk to only have certain pieces of
the pie.
Rich just left – for real this
time … maybe I can find our concentration then.
Every time he came to the door it was do this … do that … because he
didn’t want to come in with shoes, but it meant a lot of up and down while we
were just trying to think through with the writing. OK< OK< … you called an thinking wasn’t
it going to be ice cream time soon? He
has a couple of business stops to do delivering or picking-up work, and then he
has a poker game scheduled tonight. It’s
about 12:15 pm now. So, we won’t see him
for about 12 hours. Pswhoo… We needed
that kind of break. WooHOO … let our
hair loose! Oh yeah, we’ve got piano
lessons soon. Wow! Lucky I didn’t get the ice cream … he’s back
again.
This time before we sat down we
got the ice cream and it doesn’t matter if he DOES come back in again! He got into the car and the realized he
forgot his computer bag. It’s like his
desk and usually goes wherever he’s going especially for being out of the house
so long. We got up and got that for him,
but REALLY REALLY looking forward to some quiet time. We took of the music of Adele and put on
Georg Winston who plays piano – like to the song of the Velveteen Rabbit. Yes … Just simple piano music. Lets see how long this goes before we need a
change.
Slowing down … slowing down.
Ok, girls … what’s next? Maybe we should figure out what we left off
on so we know what kinds of things we’ve been doing in that defined space. It looks like last note went out on Friday
January 17. That was then like almost 3
weeks ago. *sigh* I know better than this don’t I? I know I know just sometimes we get crabby …
yes I heard me saying that too L
I don’t know what’s happened in
three weeks of Dr. Marvin visits. We
might have missed like one o them due to snow.
There’s been a lot of snow in our area – west of Chicago. Between last night and today, we were
supposed to get another 5-8” of it, and there’s going to be another snow day
this week. Think we’re breaking records
of snow. As long as I don’t have to deal
with it … we just go on as to it being pretty.
You know?!
We’ve been trying to focus lately
with Dr. Marvin of being able to hold things in balance, so that we don’t feel
like too much is getting away. Maybe it
is a nervous habit, but we’re thinking a lot that were missing things, so as
soon as we slow down and follow one project, it seems that others are slipping
away and sometimes these patterns happen weeks and weeks at a time. Case in point for the last three weeks we
haven’t blogged or done anything with Multiplicity including Plural
Activism. We have been able to work on
some sewing and we’ve been working on the piano. On another side and we have to look at this
seriously, some stuff including reading has been bumped by Facebook and keeping
up with emails. Obviously, there is
something here that is catching someone or we wouldn’t keep repeating it.
The other day when we were
writing the Interview, we’d thought maybe it is Jesse that is spending so much
time on line pulling in information, but on nothing in particular than about
how the world, our world, is turning. It
seems to follow suite. People seem to be
of interest although they are the “group of people” held at arm’s length,
meaning this time a “keyboard away.”
We’ve been interested in keeping up within a day or two of at least
something that has our interest, or in going down a long feed of peoples’
messages, we’ll find little things we’d like to pass on. If I looked at this now … Hmm, had to shut
down and open up the Chrome thingie …
Our last “general topics” were that we’d seen a summer fruit idea that
made a watermelon into a BBQ grill, we posted a movie that Facebook had just
put out and was all the rage, we’d posted a picture of a mama cat cuddling her
kitten who was dreaming, we’d posted another video showing a cat pushing out
the mail the mailman was trying to push in the door slot, and we had another
picture of a GREAT BIG shaggy dog standing on the shoulders of it’s owner suggesting
that he wanted to dance?
I’m thinking that a lot of our
pictures have some animal thing or two on them.
We also posted the note, we’d written above on the interview, and we
posted a picture of our dining area working on cutting fabrics in front of the
fire place. Nothing very formal about
our site, but we do like to keep it going with things that catch our eye AND
contribute some idea as to the general “taint” of the day. The time before it was a picture of the new
curtain between the upper cabinet and top of the washer/dryer and before that
there were picture of the new curtains we made for the three windows, shower
curtains, and seat cushion. It all
turned out fine, but two of the windows aren’t formally up yet. Rich has a few other critical projects, but
that would be one of them. We wouldn’t
be able to do the physical task of standing long enough to mark and screw them
in – especially lifting arms in the air.
I think he can do all that, it’s just that he doesn’t enjoy doing things
like that. So we wait and try to be
patient. So far we’ve been waiting a
week and a half, but as to the curtains in our Brookfield Bedroom – it was a
couple of years and we moved before they ever got up. Push come to shove we might ask Maury to do
it when he comes over with the girls. I
don’t want to insult Rich, just he leaves his anchor in the down position. Most often he’s just trying to relax,
especially between his job and mother.
Rich’s job is going pretty well,
but it has a lot of scrinkles keeping everything together and on track. This morning the workshop guy for his biggest
job called to say something about changing prices or talking to the
customer. I could her Rich yelling in
the other room. He needs to have the
controlling hand on the wheel and the guy had mucked it up which threatened
Rich’s livelihood. AND, the same guy is
giving Rich a lot of trouble as to putting a machine Rich needs to run in his
shop. We’re hoping that Rich puts it in
a different place, because this guy gives him so much grief. It is a BIG contract, and it is Rich who
would need to take out the loan to purchase the $10,000 machine. I wish like everything it would go through
finally, before Rich gets turned the other way.
His mother is going on as
expected. There are more medical
problems with her husband Bud. He’s gone
through a couple small strokes, has fallen, has had surgery for both eyes, has
had problems moving with his arthritis, Coumadin, and has had a couple
surgeries for skin cancer on the top of his head which isn’t healing. The problem?
Rich’s mom things although she can’t take care of her own eating or
medicine, that Bud should come home and she’d take care of him. She still has aides coming in to help her
dress, clean-up and eat, but she’s giving everyone trouble. She’s called Bud’s doctor and told him that
Bud’s daughter was keeping him away from her (kidnapping) and she’s called the
police to do pretty much the same. This
is the same woman who left the house a couple weeks ago against ANY direction,
stating that although she’s blind and deaf was going to drive herself to the
liquor for alcohol. She’s angry within
15 seconds of talking to her and she argues and yells trying to convince people
of the reality she’s cooked up, and she thinks now people are against her
instead of acknowledging that her behaviors are angering people. She’s making a lot of phone calls to threaten
or upset people and then hanging up angrily on them. Rich got called this week once at 11 pm and
another time at 1 am. She’s yelling
crazy stuff like she’s throwing Bud’s stuff out on the lawn. Then the next moment she’s screaming that she
wants to be taken to him.
To be fair, I think she’s going
through an adjustment due to his physical problems. She wouldn’t say it, but she’s scared I think
she’s going to lose Bud. She might, but
is doing nothing to help him or the situation between them. As far as she’s concerned people like Bud’s
daughter and Rich – they people helping the most are actually the most to blame
for all her problems. Something like her
killing the messenger. I give Rich a lot
of credit. This week because of all the
calls she was making to her step daughter, and then the step-daughter called
and complained and complained to Rich. Rich’s step-brother is also dealing with
the problems between families, especially Rich’s Mom and step-dad. When she called the police the call was given
over to him, because he’s the chief of police in the town they all live. He can keep pretty calm about things, but
there’s nothing being done here that’s fair. The other night she was trying to
drive the van – police were called and they had an ambulance come in. She threatened to kill herself, so they
wanted to take her in. And, then there
was a problem over jurisdiction about which agency had to deal with her. Rich calmed down the situation and has been
trying to talk with doctors and such about the need for a long evaluation and
about the things that his mother is doing incorrectly, like after she drank,
fell and broke her neck, she waited so long, refused the 1 ½ hour trip back to
the doctors and just took off the brace herself. There’s nobody that wants to take
responsibility over that and Rich’s got the short straw. God Bless him.
So that’s what’s up in general
about that.
We’ve been handling the change to
our medicine with an extra half a dose of the Ritalin at 5 pm. We aren’t remembering to take it every night,
but we’re trying and hoping that it has something to do with the grouchiness we
are feeling in the evening. Dr. Marvin
said it was a side effect of not having and effective dose. We are working on it. We feel in general disappointed or depressed
that we can’t get everything in on a normal day. We depend on being able to be productive for
a couple hours into the night, and when that doesn’t happen we feel very
slovenly. Hmm, just thinking now maybe
that is a left over feeling from childhood.
I remember thinking we needed to do our homework, but people didn’t help
us with that sort of thing, so we’d just watched TV with the family, until it
was too late, and then we’d be yelled at or made fun of in front of the class
at school. Sometimes we did other things
wrong to deflect the problems we were having at being too overwhelmed to do the
classwork. Hmm, should probably be
telling this to Dr. Marvin.
We knew in general for a very
long time my mother had stuck us in the playpen around 5 pm when our father was
supposed to be getting in. She said that
we wrecked up her clean house so no matter how it made us feel, that’s where we
were left. I know that’s a very long
time ago, but we can relate to the feelings of being trapped. Basically, we didn’t have opportunities to
express ourselves, or even ask for help.
That kind of thing wasn’t being done, and the affect that leaves on a
person is a life-long scar.
Yesterday … we talked to Rich
about it I guess in the car coming home from Dr. Marvin’s … I don’t remember
what was said, but about 7 pm, the time we should be getting up to take our
evening medicine, Rich said, “Would you like to play the piano now?” KC was out and scrunched her eyes, but nodded
her head yes. Then Rich said, if you
want you can do that right now. Casey
asked how he knew what they wanted to do and he told them someone had talked to
him about it. It was like an amazing
moment, but they did take the medicine without having to be told, and they did
practice the piano well. I guess the
long end of the story is that sometimes we just need a little encouragement
especially in doing things that we want to do, but might be held up from others
inside us. It’s a big deal for someone
to hear that we have a lot of unmet needs with the piano practicing and that it
can be done well and supportively. I
think it is a big deal for the younger parts to practice when Rich is around,
because they want him to know they are trying hard and appreciate a good old
fashioned “Job well done!” Again –
nothing that was heard through childhood.
I don’t think it’s about blaming
parents, it is more like recognizing the needs that weren’t met and that can be
corrected by making proper choices as an adult.
It’s not the proper choice just to point out how bad a parenting job
someone did, but to recognize that you have the skills to re-parent yourself
the way you would have liked to see things done. It’s up to us to see our own negative
boundaries and fix them. Not saying that
it’s always fun … but it does help to have a doctor on your side. Sometimes I don’t know if I really had it
that rough to justify a longstanding Dr. Marvin in our corner, and its hard for
me to imagine other lives that were done so well, they didn’t need that kind of
person in their life. I guess though
because we are feeling his attention, we’ll just be happy with how its turned
out for us.
Especially though, because of all
the good attention we are back to thinking that we have to be doing something
with our lives to make good use of our fortunes.
Ahh, we did just take a moment
though to recognize we were on a schedule.
It’s 1:45 pm now, we have taken our afternoon medicine, and we just got
dressed. We are supposed to meet Linda
online about 2 pm, and we told her we were leaving about 2:40 pm.
Hmm, we just took a few more
minutes. It’s now about 2 pm. We played over the sheet music that we were
given. I’m not sure if its all the right
songs, but it’s the 4-5 we consider the hardest. One in particular we think she’s going to ask
us to play. I know that we have to play
ALL of the music, but we’re really trying hard.
This last time was the first time she pointed out which music she’d ask
us to play. We’re terrible about playing
for her. We ALWAYS make mistakes, so we
figure that we have nowhere to go, but up.
She’s doing really nice about not getting upset or anything. She’s says we’re just where we’re supposed to
be … she probably says that to all her students, but it WOULD be equally as
truthful.
Hmm, Linda is not signed on yet,
so we went in and got the music to slip in the traveling envelope and came
across the CD that came with the harder piano book. We’re just trying the first song “Follow
Me.” It’s very hard for us … we can
almost do both hands on their own, but we’re not getting the music together on
one two hands at the same time. We’re
using My Rhapsody to play the songs, but there are 22. It sounds like they are playing them randomly
and it sounds like an electronic keyboard.
Because there are other things on the recording other than piano – like
drums and violins … no vocals though.
Maybe it is the background music and they are waiting for us to play the
piano part? Wouldn’t be surprised. Or, maybe they have a copy with AND without
piano … thought there was more music than I’d read. Now it’s playing guitar and harp. Yup yup e-keyboard. Well, we’ll hear it all through … well half
of it at least … looks like 52 minutes of music. Most of the songs are in the two minute area
… just one under four minutes. It sounds
nice and slow on the recording of the song.
Not sure how to get both sounds close to one another. I think the new piano has a USB to do music,
but not this one. It’s too low
level. I’m not ready to play with
orchestra anyway *sigh.
We’ve got about another 20
minutes. We’ll use the washroom before
we go, but otherwise, I don’t think there is anything left to do. I wonder if we should bring the
checkbook. We could pay at the park
office and pay for the books – hmm, there was like $200 in the account, hmm? Maybe that’s what we’ll do … we’ll bring the
$20 cash on the counter – maybe for books, and then pay the next 6 weeks with a
check. I’d rather leave it up to Rich,
but right now the biggest thing is having it done so I don’t have to worry
about it.
This last song has the piano
part, but the bass is buzzing, don’t like that.
The piano is tinny too. L I
think she’s got another music book for us today. Can’t tell you why this kind of thing is so
exciting to us, but it really is. This
is the kind of flutter you here so close to a lesson. In a half hour we’ll be there and within
another half hour – we’ll be done, but there will be more to be excited
with. I think we’re going to leave the
first two piano books with her thought.
They are the first Christmas ones we got and the basic one. WoohOO moving up! Let’s see if she agrees. I think she was ready to collect them last
week, but this week we’re feeling very comfortable to be moving on. I wonder what’s going to happen?!!
Ok, girls you have to calm
down.
What else can we say in 15
minutes? Maybe we should think of what
to do when we get back? Maybe a good
idea – to do some late housework? Rich
won’t be home until midnight anyway.
Hmm, just heard the song I’ve been practicing … It was pretty slow …
didn’t like the way they played it … kind of droopy, but might be why we’re not
mixing it real good between the hands.
Our teacher, Michelle, doesn’t like Hal Leonard. We’ll get a better feeling for that maybe
today. It’s different though hearing all
the background sounds added to the music.
Pretty sure its fancier machinery than we have … like they are now play
bass strings with violin … know that is a separation between the
keyboards.
Hmm, caught Linda up … tie then I
guess to get moving. Think we’re doing
pretty good leaving now at 2:40 pm getting the car warmed by 2:45 … to the
lesson five minutes to the hour … Yup yup excited!!!
Thursday, February 06, 2014 @
6:02 am
Good morning! This is the day after our piano lesson. At least it feels like that now. We have been up for about an hour and made
coffee, then did the normal up stuff.
Rich just woke up to his alarm and asked us to wake him up in another
half hour. He’s really tired after being
out with the guys. My little lamb
Hehehe. He also said when asked that
we’d be leaving here at 9 am, so it sounds like we’ll be doing a run straight
through to Dr. Marvin’s this morning.
Whoops his alarm just went off again hopefully this time he won’t leave
it on snooze. He’s still got 25 more
EXTRA minutes!
We took a few moments to write to
Linda. She seems to have had a good day
yesterday and looking forward to some family time this weekend. Hmm, know for SURE Rich isn’t going to be
able to do tomorrow … Hmm, well we made an appointment with Joe for lunch at
noon. I forgot Rich is going to be
south, and then going to a “show” somewhere where he’s helping to set up for
his fishing club. Just once or twice a
year they have to do volunteer work and this is Rich’s time. He might have volunteer work for the next day
too – on Saturday – don’t remember. Hmm,
it’s going to be like that then, hmm?
We’re not going to remember anything?
Please don’t tell us this is so!
Ok, girl calm down … they’ll help, right? RIGHT!??
Hmm, Rich’s snooze alarm is going
off again. He’s not getting through
it. His extra sleep … grrr. Hmm, just took the alarm from his table
… he needs those extra moments to
sleep.
Damn now the cat is in there
meowing at him. Things are all out of
sorts this morning BLAH!
Shhh. Just slow down … you don’t have to go here …
it was a perfectly fine morning a few moments ago, right? I know I know. Just feel grouchy all of a sudden. Nope still 45 minutes from taking
medicine. It can’t be that! Just need to get our bearings that’s all.
Where were we?
I’m not sure if we officially
said, but it was Joe’s birthday yesterday.
Did we mention that? Maybe so
because I think I said something about the drive in. Rereading…
Hmm maybe not. Maybe we just mentioned it to Linda. WELL … ANYWAY … yup yup it was “the kids”
birthday. He turned the magic 30 so now
officially ALL my kids are out of their 20’s and the are all safe and sound and
doing well … and just well Lord thank you for all this and more.
Ok, not getting mushy here, but
it is a mile marker not only for Joe, but for me. We will so much enjoy talking to him tomorrow,
because the conversations are always good.
Love those kids to pieces! It’s been a while since we’ve caught up – at
least back to just before Christmas.
Thinking then almost been two months?
Yup yup … missing some mom-time!
What else happened yesterday? Hmm, we DID have the piano lesson – and THAT
was great stuff! I felt bad because I
was pretty sure that we were going over time in the lesson, but Michele never
broke off the lesson. The clock is in
back of me so we trust that she’s seeing what’s happening and there wasn’t a
student outside the door. Maybe that
young girl that comes in only comes in every other week, or was sick or
something. I REALLY got to take advantage
there, but felt guilty because we’re so attuned to not overdoing our time with
Dr. Marvin. I really appreciate that
Michele is doing piano teaching for income so we don’t want to take
advantage. After we left and saw the
time were like a gasp! We’d gone over 50
minutes. Oh man oh man …
But, on the better part – Michele
was doing most the talking and most of it was about the piano. She was working through with me issues like
loosening up to have fun with the practicing.
Most the time we do, but we really also think we should be learning
something each time we sit down. Our way
of learning and hers seems to match-up pretty well. And, I would definitely say that a good part
of the practice is erasing boundaries that we’re putting up … like negative
messages. I don’t think she went into
that exactly, just one of the messages that we were reading about our own
practice time as she was speaking. We
need to keep clear of our own self-imposed barriers. Michele talks a lot about doing piano the
natural way which is like exploring all that’s there in front of you. I love the way she talks about music, and she
was able to answer questions we were having as we told for example we’re having
trouble going from the bass “G” to “B” at the same time as the treble “E” to
“G”. Then the left goes to “C” where the
right goes to “A”. It’s just an awkward
movement for our hands and she helped us through it.
One of the main lessons she had
for us was watching how the keys went and not being so particular about reading
all the little notes in between. She
said we have to make it easy, because later down the line it is really going to
be a lot more notes. She’s teaching us
to read more of the page so that we catch things that are similar or different
– like patterns. The biggest patterns
are the notes going “up” or “Down” or “Close-together” or “Farther apart.” It is a different way to look at music than
we’ve had before. Basically, what she
seems to be doing is that she’ll note the bottom letter and at that maybe not
the letter per say, but whether it’s on a line or space. Then she’ll notice whether it is a third,
fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh. She
also has to know of course the timing – what the notes are doing and other
stuff, but she’s basically, then clearing most of her head from details and
she’s at a level definitely, like we are with the keyboard where our fingers go
where our mind tells them to do and we never have to think where is such and
such key, nor do we need to look down to see where things are at. We’re always reading the screen like we would
read the music book.
Yesterday, she showed us this
really cool piece of music … well showed meaning that she played it and it was
fantasmic! She said she learned the
piece when she was 14 and ever sense she just plays it without thinking. It’s REALLY cool! Maybe someday. I don’t know what will happen with whatever
ability we do have because we didn’t start young, but I am grateful now for
working on the clarinet for about 7-8 years.
At least I have a sense of music and some of that is coming back to me –
not a lot granted, but enough to make me feel comfortable in the music
world. Of course most of the musicians a
person sees are on the TV or in movies or such so you think that everyone is
just sailing a long – never having to look at music, but we’ve got to take that
out of our mind as something that most people playing can do. We need to remember those are stars and it’s
ok that we’re different, in that we’re just at the beginning. I don’t have the aspiration to be a star of
concert pianist … I just want to have fun and it seems making music is very
pleasant to our ears and disposition.
That be like a GREAT thing!
Hmm … took a break and know Missy
is on top our space. She’s frustrated
because we’ve left so many lose papers on the back of the couch. I think that’s mostly from the work we were
doing on Monday in getting the spreadsheet done … More about that in a
bit. BUT, we were up … and we got Rich
woke up, took him his computer, his coffee and his glasses, then made ourselves
a shake and got some extra coffee as well as using the bathroom. Yup yup it was a full service effort! It’s now about 6:45 am YAY!!!
Yesterday, we handed in the two books that
we’ve already outgrown – it is the first books on teaching about “Middle C” and
such. It was a tough thing to commit
too, but I knew she was going in that direction and that I’d have to move on –
using my practice time for things that were more challenging. She does say that the sheet music that she’s
giving us is the in-between stuff from low level lesson books to being able to
read the kind of music in the really “FUN – HARDER” music. I love that she’s teaching us how to break it
down and help us through our intimidation of it.
Yesterday also, she gave me one
more book. Well not GAVE me the
books. Basically, she gave us last time
two NEW books, and this time a book and we paid $27 for all three. She’s only charging us the cost that’s
printed on the book, so it’s a good deal.
The new book is as exciting as the first “song” book she gave us. The third one is on learning the thirds,
fourths, etc. At some point we asked her
and she responded to our question that we’d learn how to do what we were asking
for by going through and PLAYING the notes that we were working on with that
book. I think she puts a lot into learning
through the … I’m not sure … Is it chords?
AHA! We just cheated and looked …
what she’s giving us in “notespellers” is “intervals.” We will have to remember that.
I remember from the old days that
both Becky and Mr. Melting and Mr. Campbell the band teacher had us practicing
in interval work. We knew it was
important, but never understood to the degree that any of them knew, but it was
still marked as something we could be practicing too. I loved to the part about her showing us the
reading of the music by the range of fingering – I suppose then by showing us
which scale we were using. Still not
sure of the terminology, but something like …
Here for the right hand, I would
look at it as being an “E-third” with
first and third fingers, and then with second and fourth fingers playing the
“G-third. I think she would say the
first bar goes up and that the first and second bar might be a “G” position
because that’s what both bars start with though an octave apart. I think in the second part she might see a 6th,
5th, 3rd, and 6th all quarter notes, and then
third octave she might see 4 – B flat 5ths, and then quick E-flat third, and
then back to the B flat 5th.
Except she’d see those things in an instant of reading the music … she
sees things like the 2nd bar being up and down and the third bar as
being pretty much the same. I know she
was talking about seeing a LOT of things in the music but then really trying to
simplify it. Again … looking for
patterns in the Bass … like the 9 note sets in the first two bars are one
octave apart and then come together in B
flat – 5th which is played the same for 4 notes.
Lordy who would this be looked at
later after even another month of playing?
It’s going to be such a wonderful drive!
Note, not RIDE – DRIVE! By the
way? The three measures is from the
“Bugler’s Dream” which is the Olympic’s Fanfare AND by the way … the Winter
Olympics in Sochi today!!! Let the games
begin!
Ok, maybe we are late for our medicine. Time right?
Might as well get in a quick shower too!
We can do it … BRB, k?
BACK!!! It’s about 7:37 am now … we DID take our
shower and got dressed so am feeling pretty good about that. Still have almost 1 ½ hours before we have to
go so we’re thinking before Rich gets on the phone too much we should look at
the piano … we’ll let you know how that goes J
Good good … we just practiced a
half hour. I asked Linda if we could
talk later, because we wanted to try and get this note closer along. I’d like to say finish, but I always hesitate
to end too soon when there is so much not written about. You go through almost three weeks and you
just know you have to give it more time to clear your mind in remembering other
things that were happening. Like we had
several doctor appointments, we went to see the quilt group in WI and had some
very successful birthdays between CS, Linda and Emily. All in all it was a very good time. We worked on CS quilt kit called, “Wedding
March.” It has a lot of duplicate
patterns, but there is a LOT of it, and the pieces are very small. I will be cutting on it for a while to
come. I was noticing that we’re behind
again on the housework.
I think we got caught up this
time because the clean dishes in the dishwasher didn’t get all cleaned so it
wasn’t a simple matter of zipping through it.
We knew we’d have to inspect it closely.
There might be some stuff on the bottom and then maybe we could start it
all over again? Hmm, let me look at
that.
There did a couple of good
Ann’s. We started the dishwasher again
after scraping away some of the stuff that had collected at the bottom. Not really a lot, but enough to think
GROSS!!! I don’t think it’s handling the
grinding process very well. It’s not a
very good dishwasher. BooHIISSS… But,
while we were in that neighborhood, we cleaned up the kitty area and got the
garbage out. There is only a half hour
before we go so there won’t be too much more done, but it felt good to get a
start … right? Sigh now the part about Rich is out of the shower and he’s
talking in-between my thoughts. Like “There’s
enough in the account, right?” He is to
be fair referring to my paying for books and lessons yesterday. I had looked before spending and knew with a
couple hundred that there would be enough, but I then had to look again. Which I suppose is fine in that he’s doing me
the favor by making sure my account has enough
Now he’s out in the car and we’re
down to our last twelve minutes.
Bathroom is done, stuff in backpack EXCEPT the popping pop corn. Hmm think we’re down a couple water bottles
too … we’ll do that in a sec. We brushed
our hair AND brought in the coat to warm up.
Think we’re moving as to schedule.
Rich was going to warm up the car, BUT he said he’s coming back in again
because there was time. I think we need
to do gas though too. Ok, everything is
in the bag. I don’t like the sense of
panic I feel leaving the house. I did
have to backtrack though when we got up for the shower we’d forgotten the
medicine so might be some of our funkier feelings of being grouchy and
confused. Hmm, Rich is back his cheeks
look FROSTY! Brrrr…
Hmm, think a couple of videos
will help? Hehehe Ok, the odd video of some animal or another
and a mother son dance … go figure she taught dance! Some reason for that then. The video of the animal this time was a Husky
who was talking with the baby and reminded us of Maury and Tuffy … she was very
protective of him too. Fun stuff to
watch. Taking down stress J
Might as well post … and see how
things go from there J
(48,228/9,856)
