Ten-Finger Exercises

wasting time, a miscellany

I know there are things I would like to be doing tonight, since I'm unexpectedly alone, but I can't think what. So I've been going thru my email, deleting old things, putting the pictures of kids in a separate folder. I need to do the same thing here, but isn't it tiring! Well, not really tiring, not in the sense that hoeing in the garden would be, and that's one of the things I should have done. There's something defeating about clearing out a page of old email only to come upon another, also with things I haven't read but might want to and those I might even want to re-read.

Things. They have a hold on me. I need to practice letting go. But I've been doing it for two hours now, and I'm tired of it.

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I planted irises and gladiolas last fall, and only one iris came up. It was a lovely one, white with a ruffly purple edge that I didn't take a picture of, more's the pity. The glads have been more productive, but they're the wrong color. I planted red. I'm sure I did. I wanted red flowers to pick and put on my dining room table, and what came up is salmon colored. Not that they aren't pretty, and remind me of my grandmother who loved that color, but not what I wanted.

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I've lost a bunch of time in the past two days that I could have spent better. Yesterday I waited for two hours for Arlene, the social worker, to come back from an intake so she could ride to the hinterlands with me to see our dear Nellie, whose husband just died.

Our office will be paperless by mid-September, and we have a program on the computer for our charting. So I played with that, getting acquainted with its requirements. I guess the time wasn't really wasted, but in the end I went on my trip alone since Arlene had neither appeared or called in.

The spiritual assessment is different from what we've been doing-- and that's certainly not all bad! The plan of care may prove to be a bit more puzzling, but I heard that many things can be modified to our liking, even though this is a program specifically set up for hospice.

One of the assessment categories is to describe the patient's Image of God. I have cautiously tried that question out, verbatim, with two intelligent, professional women with mixed results. I expected them to be able to verbalize better than other people, but now I see that's not true. I'll try it next with an evangelical Christian. the answers may not be as thoughtful, but the question will probably not catch them so unawares. They'll have the vocabulary for it.

I may need to come up with a drop-down menu item in the program, and give the patients some suggestions if they seem confused. My suggestions would be the following: creator, friend, judge, redeemer, spirit, Love, trinity, wisdom, other. ("Other" is actually confusing, because God can be seen as "Other," but I doubt if anyone will notice that. (Can you picture a clerical collar on this smiley face? That would designate it as sort of an 'in' joke.)

My ten o'clock appointment here in my town cancelled, or rather, postponed until one. Not wanting to drive to the next town and back again, and then back again for the 3 pm computer program workshop, I hung out around the house for the extra hours, putting away this and that.

Silvia, the straightener-housekeeper, did not do a superb job of cleaning. I see a blob of something on the kitchen floor she mopped right over. And the microwave got a cursory wipe off, not wipe out though. My old housekeeper always cleaned the inside too, and kept the oven clean as well, and the windows. Too bad she decided she'd rather "drive truck" with her husband.

Does anybody outside the west say "drive truck" instead of "drive a truck?"

Bill just called, and he did not eat while he was out, so I need to get something going here. Missed the 9pm deadline anyway, I see. Oh well. So what's another black number, eh?