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Work
Rarely do i blog about work. Pretty much everything i’ve done has had confidentiality implications. Currently i supervise a small program doing integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment. For the last 4 months or so part of my job is to do a 2 hour group on Co-Occurring Disorders at our inpatient substance abuse treatment center. It makes for a unique set of challenges. A fair percentage doesn’t have any interest in issues around mental illness, in fact a fair percentage doesn’t have much interest in doing anything they are just mandated to be there. But some are. The figures say 60% of folks with a substance abuse disorder have a co-occurring mental illness. Sometimes that seems true in group, a lot of time its higher. The group was dumped on to my already too full work load so i have no time to prep. Twice i’ve organized lessons and tried to present a coherent presentation and each time i bored people shitless. So what i routinely do now is sort of a question and answer format. It makes it intellectually interesting to me because its sort of a stump the expert kind of thing. I like putting myself out there and 99% of the questions i have some type of valid answer for. The problem for the format is its hard to generate member to member interactions. Everything is flowing through me and often only a handful of folks are interested in any given question. Early on there was a lot of talk about how boring my group was. It seemed to take on a life of its own. My response was to take it head on. Put it out there. Mention that we will be discussing a lot of complex ideas and some times it can get dry and boring being 2 hours and right after lunch. Mostly i just try to be high energy. Two weeks ago i noticed if i was standing up it was more interesting so i just stood through the whole group. Mostly i just try to reach the ones that are interested and leave the rest to their own devices. In my first group i cracked on someone for sleeping in group. It turned out to be the guy with narcolepsy. It hadn’t been 15 minutes since i had talked about being understanding of people with disability. That has been my excuse to let ’em sleep. The treatment center operates under the philosophy of therapeutic community. There are a lot of rules that are bizarre to me like no hats and no swearing. I don’t like to enforce stuff i don’t much agree with so i’ve gotten around it by mentioning that i have a lot of complex information i am wrestling with and i expect the group to enforce its own discipline. Someday i am going to get cracked on for letting people swear and sleep and what have you. I am supposed to “pull them up”. i haven’t yet pulled anyone up. i guess theres some evidence behind this methodology but i am not buying into it yet. Lately i’ve been on a roll. A lot of crazy people in treatment, hungry for straight answers and validation. Its funny when i get one whose all defensive and talks about getting diagnosed but he feels its just the drugs and he’s going to go to AA and fuck the psychiatrist he’s not taking any meds and i say “right on brother”. You can do that.
deer ate my broccoli
It has been great to get out and work in the yard. After endless rain, being sick, and working late it has been awhile since i got out and got my hands dirty. I started the day at the market getting yellow carrots, some of the last field tomatoes, and some odds and ends. Ran into Sarah and shopped with her there and at gerbees. Made plans to collect wreath stuff in the national forest tomorrow.
After the market i surveyed the demesne and found all of the broccoli neatly cropped off. It was looking like it was gonna make a crop too, sadness. That made a total loss for the fall seedling project. $3.75 for a snack for deer, although at that point i was suspecting Thumper and not Bambi.
My most pressing project was to get rid of the leaf pile by the compost bin before it killed the grass. It was going on like three weeks since they got piled up there after the bins got filled up. First i needed a place to put them so i pulled out the tomatoes out of the strawberry beds. I found three nice tomatoes with only some soft spots and Harry put them in the three bean salad for a side with our local farm trout.
The strawberries really came out good and i weeded the now expanded beds. Dad and i debated strawberry policy and I am ready to cede up as much square footage as they want. i’ll just move the path around them out to the lilacs at least. I did reposition those that got pulled out in the cleaning of the beds.
I then just raked the pile down the hill and covered them up in a 4″ pile. In the spring i’ll rake them off and compost them when i’ll need brown stuff. I debated knocking off for the day but had some energy left so i transplanted the daffodils growing in the southeast corner that i use as grill supply storage. I spread the clump out over a space about four times as big using up the last of my homemade compost. I’m a ways away from the next batch. Hopefully march.
I then raked the leaves on the top of the hill in the front yard onto the spring bulb beds. While checking out the tulip/crocus bed on the eastern side i saw two holes. I first thought it was squirrels harvesting out more tulips (they ate half of them last fall when i planted them) as i had seen sign they were pulling out tulips in the back yard. The holes weren’t ragged though and i saw an obvious hoof print. I think it was one going over the fence from the depth which made me think that’s who got the brocolli.
Gonna have to get Oni out earlier in the morning. She was chasing a squirrel while i was raking, a bulky one missing most of his tail. There was a littler one out front with me hanging out in the bushes. I told the furry tailed rat to stay out of my bulbs and made sure i got the leaves on.
Trouts on. i’ll let you know how the maters were.
floating the big muddy
I got the canoe out on the missouri yesterday for a little taste of fall. I floated with Sarah from Catfish Katie’s down to Coopers Landing. Its only 4.7 river miles so it makes a pretty good fall afternoon float. Get a little taste of the big river but its not an all day commitment. It was beautiful, much changed since i floated the same piece with eric a month ago. Then the fall color was just getting started, a yellow tinge to most things some stuff going all the way. now it was all on the ground. two fall floats and missed the color, hard to do that if you tried. i guess it gives me something to look forward to.
The hills and bottoms were still pretty amazing. Once you lose the leaf cover you can actually see more of the shape of the land. The wind was kicking up pretty good which gave us close to an extra hour on the river. At one point we passed some kind of bottle. An hour later with steady paddling I noticed the bottle had passed us by, so we weren’t setting any speed records. We fished it out of the river and it turned out to be a gas cylinder. I am not sure what to do with it now. It seems better in my garage than floating down the missouri.
There was music and a fire at Coopers when we arrived. Dad dropped us and picked us up and he had a good time so i should have river drop off and pick up into perpetuity. There’s a lot of river and i hope to see more of it. Hoping to get out this winter when theres ice.
all saints day
Samhain has passed and its a pagan new year, a new pagan year. something like that for sure. i definitely felt a thinning between the years waking from a dream of my mother on halloween morn’. I dreamed she’d been in the bath and the water was running, had overrun the sides of the tub. She hid herself when i arrived but i could see where she’d started to towel up the water. and that was that. i found her presence, or at least the feeling of her shortly gone, comforting. something of some meaning to ruminate on to get back to the true spirit of the season, pardon the pun. i carved a pumkin, the last of the 3 volunteers that came up in my strawberry bed out of the compost of presumably last years jack o’ lantern. i made a square eyed square mouthed fellah with bolts on the side with a definite frankenstein look. my best pumpkin in a decade i think is safe to say. got 10 trick or treaters, up from 7. Only one without a costume, a little guy who said he was a christian when the popster asked what he was supposed to be. played some D & D, ate the bulk of the candy after Harry’s Halloweeny beanie weanie for dinner. Finished off the evening with an HP Lovecraft movie. Party Bonus for the end of daylights saving time. Today i give my nod to all the saints, the lives they led, and they’re continued comforting presence.
curriculum vita (a prose poem found in my paint by # calendar Dec. 06)
What is my story, what is the essence of my being? From where does come this hunger to know, to be known? Why mar the blank page? in what hubris it must lay, lie, die.
Oh to be of one and now, but what cost history, even to gain eternity, oh blessed now, the razor’s edge of existence that i can only pretend exists as by the time the light has hit my eyes its history, pure history. And oh, memory, the purest form of imagination. When the brain is eaten through with plaquey-tentacles and the mind from which is sprung is thin and patchy, the mind holds onto childhood. the earliest stories, the purest, the best, the core. oh history i sing your praise and yearn to never forget, even at the cost of the now.
My life a taut quivering string of ambivilance. the cost of a vivid imagination. There’s good reason to believe in everything. any damn thing.
At what cost freedom? At what cost power, even unsought, unutilized, unspent this currency weighs heavy in my pocket. Makes me want to walk all cockeyed, or spend it. or just fucking lay down, rest, forget, dream perhaps, not without struggle but how’s it going to drag you down, when your laying on the bottom?
Odious
I met Oni in my living room when she began barking when I got home from work. She’s a little white dog, short haired and beagle like with bulbous eyes. I introduced myself as the owner of the house she was defending and my dad preceded to tell me about Gene stopping by with a cock & bull story that involved the dog staying the weekend. Gene had introduced himself last summer when he stopped by to borrow a needle and thread as he had ripped his pants walking to work. He broke my needle & dad gave him a pair of old workpants and apparently they became buddies because apparently he dropped off Oni to stay the weekend because he didn’t have anywhere for the dog to go when he was at work.
I decided to give Oni a chance because Myrtle had been having a fit just a couple of days ago, with her breathing really labored for a day and a half. Scary. Thought we might have to put her down. She has a leaky heart valve, 5 thousand dollars just to diagnose the problem. We’ve decided to just enjoy her company while it lasts. But I thought another dog would be good for Dad just in case.
Harry asked me what’s up with the dog’s name “I thought it was Mya?” By then I’d been calling her Oni all evening and didn’t take much to Mia so we left it Alzheimer’s induced. Oni is a Japanese ogre and she’s a little thing so I liked the irony.
She has the bark of a big dog and she likes to go at it. Joggers, pedestrians, but she’s at least pretty much stopped barking at me. She has the haunted eyes of a survivor of immense cruelty. She’s got a beaten dog’s slouch and wariness. She’ll hole up in the doggy bed in the corner behind gramma’s rocking chair for up to like 12 hours.
I tried to be gentle around her. She’s a lap dog and little enough that I like it. She likes to be in the chair you want to be in and her little tail starts wagging when she sees you looking at her in your spot. Like she’s getting one over on you.
On maybe her third morning with us she was sitting on the Lazyboy when I got up and I wanted to sit there watch some cnn while the coffee brews. I gently tried to scoot her over to the side of the big chair to sit next to her. Her leg must of gotten caught in my robe or something because all of asudden she’s screeching like I was killing her. She cringed back from me when I tried to approach so I couldn’t really see what was wrong.
I felt terrible. She couldn’t walk before I left for work. I got home late, she’d laid around all day, could barely walk when she was made to go outside and pee. Too late to call the vet. The next day she’s fine. I was so relieved. I thought I broke her leg. It seemed like maybe her hip popped out.
But worst of all she’s way wary of me.
Weeks later, I am letting Myrtle out after first getting up. I step in something squishy, ahhh dog shit. I put out Myrtle and clean up my foot and throw the rug outside. I go to Oni and try to get her to go outside. She kind of cowers a little. I decide she is going outside, I’m suspecting Myrtle, a long time occasional shit-hound of no small renown, but the new dog was suspect and needed to go out. I go to shoo or maybe even scoop her up and out a little and the dog pisses herself, hugely. I literally scared the piss out of her, and on my brand new futon.
“Fuck”, I’m yelling a bit now and waking people up. I shoo out Oni explain my lunacy to Harry and the Popster while I wrestle off the mattress cover. Harry’s offer to wash the cover is the only thing that brings me out of this low grade murderous rage. All within minutes of waking.
So John and his two dogs an Australian Shepard and an Australian Cattle dog named Shadow and Smokey. Great dogs, glad to see them. Oni not so much. She’s a snapper so I made sure she had her shots before John’s dogs came. It turns out Oni is the one ends up with the bleeding ear. Had to pull her off the Australian Shepard. She just took a hate to that dog and it was go go go more than once. Oni lets the frail little dog with a heart condition get over on her but she throws down with the 75 pounder.
John’s big on nicknames for dogs. Shadow he calls Fat Dog and Smokey he calls Doo Doo. Myrtle he started calling Turtle Dog enough to where my dad’ll call her that sometimes and he hates that nickname. We also call her Princess Mildred. Well Oni he started with Odie like Garfield’s pal. That evolved to Odious (she does need a bath) and ultimately to Odious P. Dog. Harry points out she really might know how to come when you call her but we keep calling her something else every few days.
She’s a pistol. And an occasional furniture pisser. She let loose once more on the chair. My dad pointed out when she did that one I was walking toward her. I try to be gentle around the dog I really do. She’s curled up next to me right now. Sometimes like I said her little tail wags when we make eye contact. She’s a pretty good winker, sleeps in my bed most nights. I still have to be vigilant not to terrify the little thing.
The last incident I was sleeping in another room when she pissed in Harry’s bed. He got up to use the bathroom and came back and she had pissed the bed. I told Dad she had to go. We debated the possibility of a UTI and I offered to pay for a vet visit but Dad said no, we can’t be puttin’ up with that. He took her to the Humane Society but it was a Saturday and they only take dogs on Thursdays and Fridays so she got her reprieve from the governor.
I told dad to make a vet appt. and if it was a UTI maybe she would be alright. Now I’m thinking its behavioral. She just gets scared to go out holes up on a piece of furniture til she can’t hold it anymore and then bam. I thought that right off but didn’t think there was much I could do about it. Then I remembered how food focused she is. She’s a beggar dog for sure. So the night before last I got her to go out for a little piece of ham. She was glad to do it. So now I think Oni just might make it.
fall gardening
I was raised gardening. We always had a huge garden when i was growing up. enough to feed our large family, give to friends, and preserve for the winter. My mom always put away 100 pints of corn and 100 quarts of tomatoes. she started with juice and then realized whole tomatoes were easier and just as useful. She also did pickles and freezer jams and green beans and often other things as well but we always had a lot of corn and tomatoes.
My dad drove truck so it varied on when the garden got put in. We always put it in in a couple of days and everyone pitched in. I remember putting in the corn, because those seeds were big for the grasping of little hands. I remember being told not to touch my face and wash my hands and for gods sake don’t eat the little corn, the pink stuff on them is poison. Then dad would leave for the road and all the maintenance fell on us kids. Usually we would ignore it until word came that he was coming back and then we would desultorily do some weeding but we would never get through the endless rows of corn and tomatoes and would get hollered at for being the lazy goodfornothings we were. i swore when i had my own garden i would never grow corn and tomatoes.
the big thing i got out of it was the rhythm of the conventional garden. Till in the spring, anytime after May 15 and plant it all in a couple of days at most. weed all summer, harvest in the fall. Maybe if loads permit put in another batch of corn 2 weeks after the first.
Now its different. i plant pretty much year around. i love the idea of fall crops. the little lettuces and arugula are coming along nicely. I hope to get in some spinach yet. two of the three garlic i planted have already come up and i plan on putting in another head or two yet. I still hope to turn over a full 120 square foot bed and build a little stone wall (out of all the rocks and stones i’ve turned up) around it. saturday i hope to pick up a 1/4 scoop of sand (about 800 #s). I want to add about 300 in the horseshoe pits and the other 5 in the rest of the garden bed.
After the leaves fall on the bush honey locust i am going to cut that down and haul it to the mulch pile. i am going to pull some of the ivies and other crap plants and put in some native wildflower mixes, showy goldenrod and a native clover. I am also going to add a row of paw paw trees across the back of my little wildflower bed. I may lay out a path through the new beds with the trunks of the honey locust. While i’m cutting i’m going to cut back on the mimosa branches from the neighbor’s tree that hang over and hopefully bring a little more light.
And of course spring bulbs, perhaps another mum, and maybe some other fall plants will go in. Fall is as jam packed with planting as spring and they are coming together in my mind, even as i put my carrot bed to sleep. i harvested them last week, piss poor i must say, but i’ll let you know how they taste. i covered that bed with leaves, raked just for that purpose, and will cover that with coffee grounds as soon as my grounds container gets filled up. theres a pot of a delicious triple certified blend from kaldis getting ready to go in the mix right now. closing loops and completing the circle. things are still pretty messed up but some things at least are heading back again in the right direction.
the fall bed is in
John has been visiting and so i took a four day weekend and we have been doing just a lot of hanging out. Since i’m not smoking i haven’t just wanted to sit around so i’ve gotten a fair amount of gardening done. I turned over about 10 square feet in the start of a third bed north of my other two. Dad thinks the light will be better than the other two beds this time of year or i would have pieced in the stuff i wanted to plant in the other two beds.
I double dug them and only shoveled in about an inch of hummus and an inch and a half of compost. Smokey, John’s Aussie Cattle Dog, was pretty into rooting into and eating of the compost so i guess its not quite finished but looked pretty good to me (earthy smell and except for 1/2 a cob and some egg shell fragments can’t tell what it is). I put all the stuff in the bottom foot and would’ve put in another inch or two of compost in the top as well but with the dog taking an interest i didn’t want to give it any more reason to dig in the bed.
I planted my broccoli and cabbage starts. They’re pretty little but its getting late in the year. I also planted 3 garlics from my second best head and 4 one foot rows of lettuce, arugula, and mescalin. this morning i looked out the back bedroom window and the little broccolis were looking very brave standing in their two little rows backed by giant squash blossoms and a marigold explosion. this late summer has been incredible.
I’m glad i’ve gotten everything in. Time and weather permitting i would like to get in some day lilies or another mum or any discounted perennial i come across. I’m also planning on trimming out the fence row since a big branch came down in the front yard and i need to make a trip to the mulch site anyways.
Summer seems to be winding down and it never even really got going. We got a nice soaking rain which we needed but I also need to turn over a new bed and get some fall stuff in. I’m most eager to get in some garlic before I eat it all. I didn’t get a whole lot out of what I planted and ate the nicest head but the second nicest I still have and want to plant that. I got more than I thought I was going to from the way almost all the surviving plants struggled, but still not that much. I’m going to add a lot more to the soil this time, maybe 3 inches of hummus and 6 inches of compost. See what that does. I also have 6 surviving cabbage plants to put in but I decided to give them another week at least to get bigger and hardier even though it’s getting late. I saw day lilies at the market and wanted one, but I didn’t drive and they wouldn’t fit in the trunk. My dollar mum from last year being huge and beautiful is keeping me from paying $7 for one that don’t even have hardy in the name. I want to put in a red one though for the song. I’ll have to check through the poetry and see if its there.
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