The Fridge and the Photos

We had our usual weekly mandatory meeting and it was fairly straightforward. I was starting to feel that maybe things are turning around. Then the supervisor says “I don’t want to open up a can of worms but…” Right away your imagination goes wild. Not to be cynical but sometimes management comes out with an idea and you wonder if they are in the same reality as you are. What the supervisor was referring to were the photos we had on the group home fridge. The pressing issue that has apparently have captured the imagination of this group of supervisors is the presentation of group home fridge art. Our fridge has a large collection of magnets, photos, and several months at a glance sheets filled with activities, milk bag cutters and the week’s current menu. Sure it’s cluttered, but it seems to sum us up pretty well. It’s the center of activity. Life seems to revolve around our fridge. The supervisor questioned why there were pictures of staff’s family pinned up and not many pictures of the people who live there. In fact there were two pictures of children and two pictures of pets, the rest were a mixture of group home pictures. It was a reminder of home. When you work the afternoon shift you miss a great deal of your family’s life. It’s nice to have a little bit of home in the midst of working in our other home. In the office there was a selection our favourite pictures of the Residents that has since been relocated to the fridge. Even on the office door there is a group picture of all of us wearing Toronto Maple Leaf jerseys in a group portrait. The kind of thing you would hope to find in a group home where there is a sense of true sharing.
I don’t know why this has irked me so much. I do have a couple of theories some of which include being turned into automatons. Was the point of this to have a certain picture ratio? Does it go deeper than that or is it all about appearances? Is it just micromanagment gone wild?
We have since removed our pictures.

New Puppies

For all those Border Collie lovers, please check out my brother’s website (click on the Title and it will bring you to the site). He has 3 puppies for sale – 2 females and 1 male. All cute as a button and as you can see my nephew is in the process of acclimatizing the puppies to children. I have a Border Collie (same sire, different dam) from one of the litters and I wouldn't trade him for all the gold in Fort Knox (although I had second thoughts when he got skunked - he does listen to me when I yell for him to run from the stinky kitty). Lincoln's newest trick is to wait until the Leafs score during the hockey game so he can run back and forth trying to catch the laser light. He's real smart and very playful but like me enjoys long naps in front of the TV. I have no doubt that these puppies will bring lots of love and joy to any family lucky enough to get one.

Working Weekends

I’m not going to get into the politics of the decision of management to change our work schedule in the group home. There is so much of it that I wouldn’t know where to begin.
We haven’t had to work weekends in the last 11 years and it seemed like the one perk that made everything worthwhile. You could have a real break from the gang and come back refreshed and ready to tackle anything. I have to point out that those who choose to work in a group home setting sacrifice certain things that most people don’t think twice of, so having the weekends off was a way of keeping things in balance. And now it’s gone. I have been using my vacation on the weekends so I would be spared working the weekends. It has come to the point were I can no longer do that. So here is my first impression of what it is like to work weekends again.
The alarm went off Saturday morning. Not being a morning person my body said ‘Stop you are going insane, this is not right, it’s too early to be awake’. My mind on the other hand said basically the same thing. I tried not to be grumpy but as I was getting ready I heard the snippiness that spewed out of my mouth. It was near impossible to stop. I decided not to talk for a while because of the venom that was frothing behind my teeth. After a hearty breakfast of a half a sandwich I went to work. Our Part time person, Sarah had worked the same schedule as me and was displaying the same lack of energy so we decided to have a quiet day. Luckily some of the gang were already up and dressed, thanks to the Overnight person helping out before she left for the day. The rest of the people were assisted in their routines along the way. I can’t tell you the order of what happened because it seems very jumbled up now. I’m not a coffee drinker at all but there was one point when I noticed that my eyes were fixed on the page writing I was doing. I had zoned out. My face had that slack jawed look and at the same time Sarah walked by and announced that coffee was needed. We did a brunch and sometime around that time Sarah went out for a Timmy’s coffee, taking some of the guys out for the ride. I noticed that both Sarah and myself finished the coffee in record time. With a caffeine boost I managed to finish off the shift. I wish I could have been more upbeat, less tired and more energetic for the gang but it’s not going to happen on my weekends. I’m not sure how I will continue with this schedule. It’s not that you can slowly get used to it. So many things happen during the week that can add that extra layer work so when it comes to the weekend the work doesn’t disappear. Management wants consistency over the weekends, what they are getting instead is staff that are burning out quicker.

Halloween Ontario

What a night. I had finally decided to do a vampire theme for Halloween. In the last two weeks I have dragged family and friends out to the usual Halloween stores looking for bits and pieces of ghoulish items. The Value Village is always a good place to find cheap clothing and they do carry a cheap line of Halloween costumes. We found a cheesy batman cape that we used for one of our vampires but missed out on picking up black-feathered wings. We worked from morning till dusk and still weren’t quite finished when the first trick and treaters were tapping on our door. It was an unusually mild night and we had only between 150 to 160 kids come by. Tomorrow is the real horror as the task of putting all the props away begins.