Goodnight Mother Mellon and Papa Civic

In case anyone missed it I went to the game last night. It was a day on the lawn with my friends sitting int he rain and the cold cheering for my boys. The upper respiratory infection I’ve been dealing with for the last month didn’t stop me one bit.

The day started out at 4:45am for me getting up to go in to work for a few hours. Thankfully no disasters kept me at work longer than necessary. Then it was a stop at chipotle picking up food for myself and my friends who went up early to greet the guys after morning skate. Alas when I got there and was going to park the boys had already come out.

So it was down to the lawn to set up camp where we spent the afternoon laying on our blanket having to much nervous energy to nap or do anything other than talk about hockey and our team. It was nice to actually hang with my friends though one of whom has been my best friend since pre-school.

By 4:00p we were back up on the wall that over looks the players parking lot to greet and cheer for the guys as they came in. We cheer for everyone including the WBS black aces. Some Habs fans turn up to heckle the guys but they all take it good naturedly. HILARIOUS the guy doing the major heckling got snippy with everyone but Tanger whom he took a picture of walking in. It seems the Sexhair works on everyone. It was especially shiny and clean looking. :)

5:00pm all the guys have arrived and we’re back on the lawn. The clouds overhead are a bit omnious and the fog is rolling into the lower parts of the city but we’re still cool. 5:30pm not so much the rain starts so it time for ponchos and tarps. My friend seemed to thin that putting a tarp under the blanket and then one over the blanket would keep it dry. Obviously this didn’t work and everything got soaked. My lawn chair was soaked giving me a wet ass for the rest of the night but I’ve come to accept this is the natural state of things when it comes to playoffs on the lawn. You’re either getting a wet ass or a sunburn.

Around 6:30p the festivities start going and I get pissy about the number of Habs fans in attendance. Damn them for stealing my tickets. I tried and tried to get tickets but they bought chunks of seats. Anyways, the Pens people were throwing beand and hats into the crowd. By magic I managed to catch a hat. Really the thing nearly hit me in the face but I got it in my hand which to me constitutes a catch. So my new hat managed to keept the rain off my glasses for the first period as it continued to mist.

I don’t want to talk about the first period so I’m not going to. Save to say I called the officials a number of insults that would make Shakespeare and Shaft and the South Park guys proud.

First intermission we read last years Puck Huffers inspirational story that is full of LOLs aloud.

http://www.puckhuffers.com/2009/05/playoffs-have-ended-war-has-begun.html

Then there was feasting on doritos, funions and lorna doones. We’re classy girls with those snacks right?

The second brought with it lots of hope and things were looking up… then people started to exit the lawn and the arena. I got pissy and needed to be brought back to reality with the saving grace of a diet coke.

Then it was the second intermission with this years inspirational story from the PH ladies…

http://www.puckhuffers.com/2010/05/aftermath-mind-of-max-talbot.html

so with that bit of glorious inspiration we went into the third hopeful and with smiles.

I don’t want to talk about the stupid people leaving the arena and the lawn with 10 mins left in the day They are not worthy of air and I hope Mother Mellon cursed them on their way out. I’m pretty sure they aren’t worthy of air.

So it was back up to the wall to cheer for the guys as they came out. They all appreciated and most signed for people, even the obnoxious ones. Everyone but Max had shaved their beards with Brooks sporting a goatee.

I left the wall at 11:30pm giving Mother Mellon formerly known as Papa Civic for most of my life a hug. My hockey memories of the building are by far my best but I can’t deny that my first was Barbie Icecapades.

Here I am today with no voice feeling like the crypt keeper is knocking on my door but it was all worth it. The beauty of it is we may be done for now but in Aug/Sept. when training camp starts back up we’ll be back only the action will be taking place just across the street.

So what does this mean? Well it means I'll have to find other things to do with my life than watch hockey... oh that's right I could prep for going to AFRICA in less than 4 months!

The illness is lurking

Sometimes I feel I'm going a little crazy.

Not like my residents. I'm not hearing or seeing things that are telling me what to do. I do talk when I know there's no one there. I talk in the car everywhere I go. Sometimes I pretend there's someone in the seat next to me sometimes I don't. Sometimes I lie and talk about what I wish my life was. Other times I'm so honest I'm in tears. I can't decide if this is a good coping mechanism or a step on my slow descent into madness.

There are statistics out there on everything but one that I feel may actually be accurate is that 1 in 17 people (6%) will at some point have a serious diagnosable mental illness. While 26% will meet diagnostic criteria for any form of mental illness. The odds are at some point in my life I'll be one of those people.

I don't know if it's scary or a relief but I feel like it's looming, like the clouds are closing in around me and that I'll never ever be happy. I know I have every reason to be happy. I have friends, a family, a place to live food, a job that even though I hate pays well. I have plans for the future and I have ambitions. I have every reason not to feel like this but I do. The worst part is I've felt it before. I feel like things are out of control and swirling around me like I'm at the event horizon of a black hole about to go over the edge where I'll spend the rest of eternity falling into nothingness.

I want to get help and I know how. I spend my who day telling people to ask for help when they need it to just stand up and tell 'it' that you don't want it there and that you can take control of your own life. We all need to take our own advice more often than we like. Tomorrow I'm going to call and make an appointment for myself. I get some counseling sessions with my insurance so I might as well take advantage of them while I still have it.

It's lurking around the corner. Sometimes I want it to get me to suck me in but for now I'm going to fight it. I'm going to ask for help.

Work & Life and things I more than likely shouldn't be talking about.

You know things are bad at work when you come home have dinner and have a nap in total silence. I just couldn't inject anymore stimuli into my life than the thoughts going on though my head. You call someone to talk about it and you find yourself immediately just falling to pieces and then you're unable to pick to pieces up. That's how it feels like now. I called my Mom to talk but just ended up sobbing into the phone making little sense. I'm still crying it's so bad. I don't know how to explain how this all works. How I know it's not healthy for a job to make you feel this bad.

I try not to talk about work to much since it's kind of sensitive. There are big professional boundaries when working in the health and mental health field. I could be here telling stories about for real crazy things that happen to me but I don't because I don't want to take advantage of my residents like that. It's my job to keep my work place and their home safe and comfortable. I feel like it's neither of those things now. We're mandated an unsafe amount of overtime work, we have dangerous residents who need more security and more staffing around, and most of them aren't getting what they need to help them be able to re-enter the community when their commitment is up. All in all the facility that I'm employed at is failing the people it serves and it's killing me. I don't feel safe there, neither do our residents and my manager does not intend to do anything about it.

I'm at the end of my rope. I've started looking for a new job but I don't feel like I can leave this so easy. I feel like I can't leave my residents there like that in that place that's so bad. Some of them just deserve so much better. I wish I could get them all out and in better places.

I feel so powerless.

This is just my brain kind of spilling ick everywhere. Sorry you made it this far without knowing there really wasn't a point to this.

Nov/BEDN & Sad songs.

So back in April I did BEDA. Since it's NaNoWriMo and I have no intention of ever writing a novel I thought I'd bring back the BEDA philosophy and blog everyday of Nov. from here on out. Ambitious considering I can't really say to much about work anymore and the rest of my life is sad and boring.


So for today I guess I'll talk about some music. There are some songs out there that just make me cry. Sometimes I can't put my finger on it other times it's obviously words or melody and other times it's the connection to something else.

Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven If you've seen Mr. Holland's Opus you may remember the scene where he plays it for his class talking about how Beethoven was deaf after just finding out his son was deaf. Seriously breaks my heart.

Goodnight - Liz Calloway This one is words + performance that makes me sob. Here is a tid bit of the lyrics...

A world without the pain
That's stuck with you for far too long
A world that does contain
A love like mine to watch you grow strong

And when my time arrives
Please wait and make a place for me
For when I do arrive
Your face should be the first face I see

Dry away the tears
Lay aside your fears
No more pain for my love
You have now gone to sleep

Roses Theme- Murry Gold Yes, from the Doctor Who soundtrack because I'm lame. I just think of her standing on that beach crushed when this song plays. Ugh... seriously if you ever see the scene it will stay with you when you hear the theme.

I Can Only Imagine - Mercy Me Once again lame but I can't help it! Sometimes I just get in that place where I know I need the perspective of a song like this and it helps humble me and question what I would do in heaven in the presence of God.

Those You've Known - Spring Awakening Cast I won't spoil the show but this is the final song before bows.

Now they’ll walk on my arm through the distant night
And I won’t let them stray from my heart
Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light
I will read all their dreams to the stars



I'm sure there are others out there but that's my short list. I actually like to have a good dry sometimes so if you have any awesome songs that make you cry I want to know!

Change in the air

I don't like keeping secrets. Especially when they tend to be the kind that hurt my heart and I really just want to tell someone. Change is good but it's also hard and I don't know if I can do this again. I may have to keep this secret for awhile but at least it was told honestly and it may hurt but I know it's been done for all the right reasons.

BEDA: Four

When you think of workplace discrimination you don't exactly think of yourself or at least I didn't. I've always been used to people being overly critical of me due to my weight, my quiet nature and my lack of desire to spill my secrets ect via the phone or in person. In short I know I tend to make people uncomfortable.

I honestly didn't think people could react like this. it wasn't till it was pointed out to me that I was being discriminated against and intimidated by my co-workers that I understood it. I shouldn't be intimidated because I'm young, unmarried, don't have children or am over weight and it shouldn't be a way to undermine my authority with our clients which has already been done. None of these are reasons for people to feel I'm a threat in any way but apparently people do and that's sad.

I think my shock to the situation stems from having a drama free life while in school. I picked my friends well and had few incidents of teasing. Sure it happened every now and then and it hurt just like it did for everyone else but you learn to be like a duck and let the water roll off your back having that slightly hardened outer layer that protects you. This is why I give so little of my personal self to people I don't trust. This is pretty unfortunate because I'm a funny, happy, good friend to those I let in and the rest of the world I let go on thinking I'm boring and shy. Sadly they're missing out because I'm awesome.

So now I have this huge case pending with HR at the company I work for that will no doubt be awful to deal with on our crew of five employees. With so few people it's easy to find out who did what and when. I wish I didn't have to do this but the reality is if I don't take a stand my self worth will take a hit as well as letting this person get away with it and letting them think it's ok to do to others. It isn't and I'm taking a stand.

Out of Hope... for now

Today was one of those days that work got to me. I work with adults who have mental illness. It's usually great days where it's fun and interesting. The last two days were intense. Strong delusions, trying to break delusions, people playing into delusions. Breaking a delusion isn't easy they're ingrained so deeply and with one of our residents reinforced by institutionalization since the age of 17. She's 61 years old now that's 44 years of pure failure to help her. She's someone with proper help she could have gotten better, she could have lived on her own and with the help of out patient therapy and medication have had a relatively normal life.

This woman thinks she has a husband, who was a fellow resident at the institution. She believes he's her Doctor and won't have any medical attention from anyone but him. He comes at night to do these medical appointments. She suffers from auditory and visual hallucinations. The auditory is hearing voices from her 'husband', others talking or God. Visual hallucinations range from seeing a dog in the house to the 'molecular foundations of all the world' and 'the writing on the wall' as in how rules appear in institutions. Illness is one thing but delusions created completely from living 'under care' makes me sick.

Today we were going to go to PetSmart and visit the animals (all of our residents love animals) but she physically could not go because the delusional writing she saw said she couldn't and that the world would end if she attempted to. Attempting to break these delusions is the hardest part. It's just sitting there and fighting for hours and days every time she brings up a delusion saying it's not real over and over and over again simply having hope that one day it'll sink in.

I'm out of hope today. I just hope I come up with a little by morning.

The problem with being a good person

The problem with being a good person is you don't get a day off. I work a tonnage of hours at my day job, keep the nursery for a church baby sit for a family with special needs children and do all kinds of favors for my family and friends. Don't get me wrong I like doing these things most of them time. I usually do most of them on the first of my two days off a week. Today is my second day off and all I want to do is relax. Instead of relaxing I'm doing cost analysis of fixing my Parents ceiling for the, having to run my neighbor with staff infection to the Doctors office and then possibly to the Cleveland Clinic if he doesn't have a ride, 'loaning' my sister more money and making some graphics for a friend. None of these things I really want to do.

All I want to do today is pay MY bills, go tot he grocery store, organize all my financial information, take out the trash (more complicated than it seems given the inch thing ice between my door and the dumpster) , make a video for my channel watch some blogtv and Chuck in 3D. The problem is doing all these things instead of the one at the top makes me seem like an extremely selfish person to those who need something from me.

I guess taking a day off is the worst thing to do when you're a good person.

Institutions

Today we went out to Mayview one of the Pennsylvania 'State Hospitals' aka mental hospital. Our visit out there has by far been one of the most depressing things I've seen in my life. Acres of disused buildings that have been left to all down made me think of all the thousands of people who had 'treatment' there. They're closing the hospital and are down to one wing for the 30 or so people who have yet to move out but those 30 people are in such an awful state. They call out for medication (making it obvious who's on meds and when) lunch was like a cattle call. All day they're locked out of their bedrooms left to only be in the social room and one day room off that. It was freezing cold with the old leaky windows barely keeping the bitter wind out. Everyone sat around in a medicated daze with their coats around them to beat the chill. In many cases we couldn't tell the staff from the patients.

I wish we could take them all to our facility. The reality is we're only saving two from another institution similar to this one.



Random: The history channel is talking about cannibalism. The bottom corner has their little logo as well as 'happy holidays'. My mind immediately went to a cannibalistic Christmas dinner. Yes, I'm a freak.

Big Brown the 5-2 favorite has won the Kentucky Derby.

Eight Bells the only Philly (girl) in the race broke both her front ankles and had to be put down on the track, she managed to place second in the race.


I'm sure there's some lesson about life to be had from this but really I'm just sad because I always think there's a better way.


*I'm not an expert or anything so it may have been for the best but I can still be sad.