Today I got hit with the stupid stick. Repeatedly. And hard. Below is just part of the many things that went awry.
First, a little background: Normally, I don't work summers. Or, to be exact, I work one day a month in July and August to protect my benefits. Before you get all, Oh it must be nice!, remember that those "days off" are reflected in my paycheck. This year I am working Tuesdays and Thursdays in July and August. Nancy is sticking with the we-don't-DO-summers plan (oh sure, she says it's because of Ken... ahem... okay, it's because of Ken).
Because it's summer school, the kids are only available for a shortened day. Also, I'm down to about half of my classes. Of those, not everybody is ready yet.
I've got a buttload of jobs waiting to be done. Big jobs. Short turnaround times.
So my sense of urgency was already heightened. Add to that the employer who was giving jobs to two classes today couldn't get their stuff ready until after 10:30.
Once I had the first job and was heading out to Chino, another employer called. She was desperate. I stopped on the way.
After getting the second job from the first employer, another class called. She had paperwork ready. She wanted work. She was desperate for something to do with the kids since her class had been "grounded" by the department head.
I stopped and gave Desperate Teacher the job from Desperate Employer. Then I was on to the "second" class. Their day was almost over. They'd been looking for me for almost two hours.
At that school I had to drive my personal vehicle onto campus. Because of construction, I had to go about a quarter of a mile out of my way to get in and to get out.
This is relevant, why?
Because half a mile is about how far I was from the nearest gas station when my car display started flashing, "Pull over safely now. Pull over safely now." And then it died.
Sure, my car has a gas gauge.
And yeah, it was showing, "60 miles from E" when I left home this morning.
Mm-hmm, it is about 45 miles from my door to Grandma's.
And yeah, that first school in Chino and the one at the end of the day are roughly 28 miles apart if I go straight from one to the other.
So there I sat in my hybrid on the side of the road, calling roadside assistance through my cell phone company.
"Yes ma'am, how can I help you today?"
"I need the stupid service, please"
Clearly nervous about heading in the wrong direction: "Uh. You... you me... you mean you need yoouurrr... keys... your... uh... car... unlocked?"
Pondering the fact that there are a multitude of stupid services and wondering how long before I try them all... again: "No. I need gas. I have a hybrid and I ran out of gas anyway. And it has a display to tell you exactly how many miles until you're on E."
Not sure why I always have to make sure the person on the other end knows the depth of my idiocraty (yep, now I'm making my own stupid words, too), but I do.
Apparently I was contagious, because she contacted a service company that was about 30 miles away.
While waiting, I rolled my windows down only part way because I needed to make a bunch of calls. Some work-related. One to Mom to see if she could get Corey to his counseling appointment at 2:45.
Once the seven minutes of electric power turned off after the car died, I couldn't get the windows down any further. It was 95 degrees outside and I was stuck on a major thoroughfare in a no parking zone.
When the guy finally arrived in all the glory of his seven hairs and three teeth, he asked, "So, the gauge not working on that thing?"
"Nope. It's fine. I just got hit with the stupid stick."
"Huh?"
"Yes, exactly."
When I finally dragged myself back to my office this afternoon, I passed by a conversation in progress between my boss and someone else.
My boss said, "She has doctor's appointments! Three of them!"
I breezed by saying, "And they're all mental health, too. What do you expect? I've got a teen, a toddler, a puppy and a new house. I'm doing the best I can, people!"
Next up was the reason I even went to the office in the first place. Mileage for June had to be submitted today because it's the end of the fiscal year. Last month's mileage was my biggest ever. We can really use that money right now.
But apparently we'll have to wait, because I noticed that I didn't change my entire address on the mileage form. Everything is correct except the street name. Guh!
As I was trying to resolve the mileage problem, my cell phone kept ringing. The second time it was Mom, I answered it.
"I just got a call from Corey. He's already almost done. His appointment wasn't at 2:45, it was at 2:15."
So the good news is this: I got my car washed. I made it through the day. And I am off tomorrow! Yay hooray!
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, December 14, 2008
That's Not Logical, Captain ~ Mr. Spock
I have mentioned that we are following the suggestion of one of Corey's doctors to help moderate his behavior. It's working very well compared to not doing it. We also have some other tricks and tools at our disposal that we use with some success. One of them is to have my mom let Corey stay with her for part of the weekends. This is great because it gives us a break, and because Corey's not being sent away for "being bad." He gets a break, too, and spends time with some of his friends.
The tools and methods we use, however, only take us so far. Some of the biggest problems we are having truly seem to stem from a breakdown in logic. Occasionally this causes smallish problems.
A couple of months ago, Corey had left home in the middle of the night and either got caught up with some gang members, imagined it, made it up... or some combination of those three (no, that's not the smallish part). When he went, panicked, to someone's house to ask for help, they (naturally) called the police and wouldn't let him in. Eventually he left their property, but the police did find him.
In the stress of the moment, Corey couldn't think of our house phone number or his address. He could remember my cell phone number, but didn't give it to the police because he's not supposed to give it out. So Corey told them the name of our apartment complex and they contacted the property manager, who had the pleasure of getting up and knocking on our door to let us know we needed to call to find out where to pick him up.
Yes, in our world, that is a smallish problem.
Last night Corey went to my mom's house. They had a great time, so she wanted to keep him a little longer than just after church today. We agreed that she'd bring him home this afternoon before the sun went down because I have been trying to get a particular shot of all of us for our Christmas card, and once it's dark, Mad's done for.
We put Mad down for her nap just after 1:00 this afternoon, and I went in to get some sleep, too. At some point, Tom joined us (the crib is in our room). A couple of hours later, Madelyn woke up and I brought her to bed to nurse a little bit. We must have fallen back asleep, because it was an hour later when she started playing around.
It was around the time Corey should have been home. I woke Tom up and he went to see. Sure enough, Corey was home. He hadn't been there for long, maybe a few minutes, but I could tell that he was agitated. Tom was too. He went into the kitchen and started doing dishes.
The next thing I know, Tom's asking Corey if he has any knives in his room. This is a recurring problem, but seemed like it was coming out of nowhere to me. Alas, no. When Tom had opened our bedroom door into the living room, there was Corey, pacing; he'd been carrying a knife. Tom wasn't randomly doing dishes, he was trying to account for all of the knives. We were napping with all of the doors in the home open.
We keep our knives locked in our office. Steak knives, butcher knife, paring knife. It's a little odd when we have people over for dinner if meat's being served.
Sometimes Corey will go into the office and get a knife while we're home, if the office is left unattended. He used to frequently "break in" to get them... or various other things we keep in there. I put not one, but two locks on the window, but it only meant he had to work harder to get in. I have placed a dowel in the window, which makes it impossible (so far). He's always one step ahead of us, though, so I have to be vigilant about checking that the dowel is still in place. For example, tonight while getting a knife, he also removed the dowel for later.
You're probably wondering why. Well, so are we. The best we can come up with ("we" being us, Corey and his team of doctors), is that he is arming himself out of a need for protection. The boy is hyper-vigilant about intruders and threats to his or our personal safety. Corey's explanation for tonight is that he was freaked out that our house was open, the cars were there, but there was no sign of us. Our bedroom door was shut, but he feared we might have been killed. Maybe the intruder was still there.
Have we ever had an intruder? No. Break-in? Nope. Well, one time our window was shattered... but that was an accident by a work crew at the apartment Corey and I shared back in the day. We were there when it happened, so there was no mystery. And our next door neighbor here had been burglarized, but it was from some creep who frequented his car stereo shop, not a random crime. That was solved in about six minutes (perhaps I exaggerate, but it was quick).
What caused this? I don't know. It seems to be clearly a mental health issue, but how did it start? As the mom, I figure I have to be to blame somehow. When it comes to this hyper-vigilance, the place my mind keeps going back to is that old apartment from back in the day. We moved there when Corey was about three and a half. When he was a little older (four? four and a half?), we played hide and seek. We only did it twice because he would get frustrated when I found him and so freaked out whenever he couldn't find me. Could that be the root of his problems? Or when he was in the fear-of-monsters-or-bad-guys-hiding age and I would take him from room to room and go through all of the closets and cupboards with him. Did that somehow start this ball rolling? It was something I would have liked for my parents to do for me when I was afraid (not that I'd thought of it then... oh, no... those doors had better stay shut!).
On the other hand, it's exceedingly difficult not to view this weapon obsession (knives aren't the only thing, just the focus of this evening) as some sort of a threat. With his occasionally explosive temper, the fact that he is taller than I and some of the comments he's made, it's hard not to worry. Nobody wants to be "that family" on the news, mainly because of what they have to go through to get there.
The tools and methods we use, however, only take us so far. Some of the biggest problems we are having truly seem to stem from a breakdown in logic. Occasionally this causes smallish problems.
A couple of months ago, Corey had left home in the middle of the night and either got caught up with some gang members, imagined it, made it up... or some combination of those three (no, that's not the smallish part). When he went, panicked, to someone's house to ask for help, they (naturally) called the police and wouldn't let him in. Eventually he left their property, but the police did find him.
In the stress of the moment, Corey couldn't think of our house phone number or his address. He could remember my cell phone number, but didn't give it to the police because he's not supposed to give it out. So Corey told them the name of our apartment complex and they contacted the property manager, who had the pleasure of getting up and knocking on our door to let us know we needed to call to find out where to pick him up.
Yes, in our world, that is a smallish problem.
Last night Corey went to my mom's house. They had a great time, so she wanted to keep him a little longer than just after church today. We agreed that she'd bring him home this afternoon before the sun went down because I have been trying to get a particular shot of all of us for our Christmas card, and once it's dark, Mad's done for.
We put Mad down for her nap just after 1:00 this afternoon, and I went in to get some sleep, too. At some point, Tom joined us (the crib is in our room). A couple of hours later, Madelyn woke up and I brought her to bed to nurse a little bit. We must have fallen back asleep, because it was an hour later when she started playing around.
It was around the time Corey should have been home. I woke Tom up and he went to see. Sure enough, Corey was home. He hadn't been there for long, maybe a few minutes, but I could tell that he was agitated. Tom was too. He went into the kitchen and started doing dishes.
The next thing I know, Tom's asking Corey if he has any knives in his room. This is a recurring problem, but seemed like it was coming out of nowhere to me. Alas, no. When Tom had opened our bedroom door into the living room, there was Corey, pacing; he'd been carrying a knife. Tom wasn't randomly doing dishes, he was trying to account for all of the knives. We were napping with all of the doors in the home open.
We keep our knives locked in our office. Steak knives, butcher knife, paring knife. It's a little odd when we have people over for dinner if meat's being served.
Sometimes Corey will go into the office and get a knife while we're home, if the office is left unattended. He used to frequently "break in" to get them... or various other things we keep in there. I put not one, but two locks on the window, but it only meant he had to work harder to get in. I have placed a dowel in the window, which makes it impossible (so far). He's always one step ahead of us, though, so I have to be vigilant about checking that the dowel is still in place. For example, tonight while getting a knife, he also removed the dowel for later.
You're probably wondering why. Well, so are we. The best we can come up with ("we" being us, Corey and his team of doctors), is that he is arming himself out of a need for protection. The boy is hyper-vigilant about intruders and threats to his or our personal safety. Corey's explanation for tonight is that he was freaked out that our house was open, the cars were there, but there was no sign of us. Our bedroom door was shut, but he feared we might have been killed. Maybe the intruder was still there.
Have we ever had an intruder? No. Break-in? Nope. Well, one time our window was shattered... but that was an accident by a work crew at the apartment Corey and I shared back in the day. We were there when it happened, so there was no mystery. And our next door neighbor here had been burglarized, but it was from some creep who frequented his car stereo shop, not a random crime. That was solved in about six minutes (perhaps I exaggerate, but it was quick).
What caused this? I don't know. It seems to be clearly a mental health issue, but how did it start? As the mom, I figure I have to be to blame somehow. When it comes to this hyper-vigilance, the place my mind keeps going back to is that old apartment from back in the day. We moved there when Corey was about three and a half. When he was a little older (four? four and a half?), we played hide and seek. We only did it twice because he would get frustrated when I found him and so freaked out whenever he couldn't find me. Could that be the root of his problems? Or when he was in the fear-of-monsters-or-bad-guys-hiding age and I would take him from room to room and go through all of the closets and cupboards with him. Did that somehow start this ball rolling? It was something I would have liked for my parents to do for me when I was afraid (not that I'd thought of it then... oh, no... those doors had better stay shut!).
On the other hand, it's exceedingly difficult not to view this weapon obsession (knives aren't the only thing, just the focus of this evening) as some sort of a threat. With his occasionally explosive temper, the fact that he is taller than I and some of the comments he's made, it's hard not to worry. Nobody wants to be "that family" on the news, mainly because of what they have to go through to get there.
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