Lost One ... Gained One ... Need to Keep Working on It Though

Friday, August 23, 2013 @ 7:46 am
Good morning ... it's just me.  We're coming from a totally frustrated place right now.  We had just pressed control A to copy and paste yesterday afternoon's blog entry in our blog and something got wrong and it erased the whole entry ... about four hours worth of work.  We had not written since Saturday so it is like now five days just disappeared from our life.  Usually it is like having a brain dump.  I know there are other advantages because if we think now over the same time span, it should be more progressed.  We won't get the nuts and bolts, but we should be able to get some of it down and then move on.
It is frustrating.
Going all the way back to Saturday ... where we were at then was we had talked to Dr. Marvin about Kelsie and Lissa's contribution to the mind map processing.   We had started our routine of trying to get up and dressed.  We had talked to Dr. Marvin about billing and routines that week.  As an update ... we've done pretty well with it, but have started to slow down this last couple of days.  The hard part has been now that we're off routine because the washer was down.  Rich replaced some hoses or clamps or something.  Yesterday after he fixed it it was another problem and then when he was gone ... we had heard the water in the laundry room when we went in the kitchen, so we figured out "on our own" how to work Rich's mop (we had been using the Swiffer), and then we swooshed most the water out the back door.  We never use this door and the vines had grown over it, but we were able to push them back.  There was about an inch of water on spots.  The floor isn't perfectly level.  Then we laid towels down to absorb the last part of it.  We had already taken out the fan.  the cord and base of the fan were sitting in water and we thought no, that was definitely not a good idea.  Rich had placed the fan there earlier trying to dry out the wall/floor that had gotten wet.  We also figured out that we needed to shut off the water.  It was very good figuring because we were thinking in a state of panic, but got through it in good shape.
Rich said he did something to it when he got home again and that he should just be able to move back the machines and it will be ok.  We're a little more skeptical, but willing to go with the flow NOT literally.  We'll see.
We had also written about our work with the new Shark - again it's the duo floor cleaner for hard floors and carpet floors.  We had given it a good chance on the carpet, and then on Wednesday (two days ago), we gave it a GREAT chance in the kitchen.  I can't say with all the water problems in the laundry room that the floor hasn't since then taken a beating, but the fact was that we were able to progress or ground our minds by using the cleaner on the hard floor.  It was a process that took about five hours.  We cleaned the kitchen, dining room, and living room areas moving most the furniture and such.  Just light furniture though so like the kitchen and bar stools got moved, but not the table.  The first thing we did was to vacuum.  Then after that we took the wand hose from the vacuum and went along the entire baseboard in all three rooms.  And then, we used the Shark to clean all that, and then when that was over we used the Shark to Buffer/polish all the floors.  It was really nice.  We posted picture to facebook and got about 16-18 likes and about the same in comments.
We had talked in the comments primarily to Mary and Melissa.  Mary had also had a shark product - the steamer for hard floors, and Melissa was interested in what we'd used.  But that was pretty much of that.  We had really hoped to get some positive strokes from Rich ... and I think in some ways we got it, but in other ways, it really wasn't as much "grandness" to him as it had been to us.  Maybe that is natural.
The nice part was that without knowing that I had done that on Wednesday along with the bathrooms, laundry, kitchen and dining room surfaces etc, well without knowing all that he'd called and asked if he could take us out to dinner.  It was a very nice treat.  We went to Sante Fe the Mexican restaurant we've been going to in town and had a vegetable burrito (Rich had steak burrito) and we had the cinnamon crisp treats.  Really good stuff!
We're just getting back to writing now ... it's about 10:30 am.  We were writing, but then Linda signed on to talk.  I don't think her agenda was set yet with Tony, but after about 15-20 minutes Rich asked us to have breakfast with him and we had to bump Linda.  I felt bad about doing that, but really appreciated Rich's effort to have some quality time together.  We had gone through some stuff the night before ... he had given us a hard time when we went to talk to him after dinner last night (in front of TV).  We had told him we wanted to catch him before he got into his NIGHT of watching TV and that he'd been busy all morning and afternoon with other things.
We went into some other stuff that I might go into later, but in general it was nice.  He started with fishy talk on crawfish, and then we went through some more of his business decisions, and then we talked for a while about what was happening with his mother.  He had a meeting with her and the nursing home, and it is being said that as long as she has the doctor's permission she'll be coming home on Saturday.  Rich said that he will spend about four hours with her, and then do some shopping for her and our family, and then he's going to hope she can handle the rest of the night on her own.  That's what she's been saying at least.
I don't trust that she won't have someone bringing in alcohol again, but can't blame her for wanting to live in her own home ... She's got to appreciate that she usually gets hurt or broken after drinking binges and she has to be responsible for that or at some point the option of returning home won't be a possibility for her.
No one has really either talked directly to Bud's family.  He's been staying for 2-3 weeks at his son Freddies.  I think the original intent was to keep him there for about 2 months and then he would go home too, but there hasn't been any direct communication between them in 3 months.  That's been stopped by Bud.  Sometime or another they are going to need figuring out the living arrangements and what to do with house and nursing home, but Rich's mom is really playing cards by being the first one to take back ownership by pure squatting rights.  We'll see what happens next as things unfold.
Pretty much from our way of looking at it is that Rich's mother needs a caretaker and she has to deal with that.  We personally don't think Rich is putting boundaries in place, but I believe he is trying.  If he's taking care of her for 2-4 hours a day because she states she can't afford others to do it, then that is on Rich for not making his case and standing for his time limits.  As long as he says yes he'll be over then she has an expectation that its going to continue.  His business not mine.
My point is that we're back to ... she doesn't really want to get to know me, I would be someone that would come over to take care of her.  I'm not going to go for that.  I've drawn my boundaries as to we'll have her over or go over there once every week or two for a social event, but not to do things like push her laundry or cut her potatoes.  I know it seems trite, but she's playing a sympathy card in expecting others to give their time and energy for nothing back.  Again, we are up to six years now being in contact with her and she still doesn't know my boys names, and certainly doesn't know my DIL or even how many grandchildren I have.  I can't afford to be back in that kind of narcissistic relationship.
Similarly, I disconnected for a bit with my sister - at least from the point of view of Facebook.  She had continued to cross my boundaries, with no resolution, this particular time because she kept taking pictures and stuff from me and my families without contributing back to life or thinking through her own priorities.  In our way we then become an extension of her instead of our own person.  I said it nicely I had thought, but then I'd accidentally included a paragraph from my correspondence to Linda.  It said pretty much the same thing, but I showed more signs of stress.  She went several times to Linda.  I've talked to Linda since this started and I thought if I'm going to disconnect from FB with CS, that I would also disconnect from talking about her to Linda.  Linda has stated several times she doesn't want to be in the middle and I respect that greatly.  I wouldn't want it either.  The next thing that happened was that CS had written an out loud note saying how desperately miserable her life was and basically that "some"one had victimized her by saying she copied too much pictures and didn't think on her own.  Then she called up some God talk and thanked him for her strong relationship to him.  This was all news to us ... and we thought definitely ... we're not going to be into all that ... that's when we decided to stop the connection.  I'm still available by phone or email if she wants to talk, but I'm not looking toward solving her problems and obviously she doesn't believe she's got them.
That's the sort of thing that happens when one person is in therapy dealing with the psychological parts and the other isn't ... the one that isn't suggests through her behavior it must be that other person is crazy - she IS seeing someone. Bah humbug!  It's a familiar family staple.  That's how people get to being the black sheep.  Again Blah!
So we're going to move on from that.  There is so much more going on in life.  That's where we want to be.  It's not been easy all around.  This week we had a general disconnect.  It's not gone without notice from Dr. Marvin, Rich, and Linda.  I think we're still ok, but there are definite questions coming up.  Rich likes to keep us grounded in the housework parts, and Linda's common denominator is the quilting.  Dr. Marvin is the only one encouraging the work on the mind map and things that we can do to learn/teach about multiplicity.  We want to say its our real life work, and there is from others ... not as much positivity.
We especially have been going through it with Rich.  We've asked him for 10-15 minutes sitting in front of the computer with us so I can show him what we are working on particularly through pulling things together with the mind map.  He refuses to look though.  He thinks things like spending time writing and reading and analyzing are more like a hobby over a vocation.  His preference is that by 7-8 pm we are giving him massages and things that go different like me being at the computer is obsessive.  I find a lot of problems with that message.
The most important thing I'm doing in my life - well I think it deserves that he can spend that small amount of attention to me with it.  His argument is that we don't go fishing with him, so why does he have to go "thinking/organizing" with us.  Point is he doesn't, so then it is up to me to put ourselves in a perspective to deal with that kind of separation in life.  We tried to say that he needs to have an interest in me and my chosen life, but he doesn't see it that way.  BLAH!
I think because of this in general, we've had a backed-up and out week.  I know there are many other variables including work we've done with Annemarie this week, but basically, if people don't make an effort of sharing with me the most important parts of my life, then I'll just back-up a bit.  Just because they aren't interested doesn't equate to me having no interest either.  I want to live in a life that's passionate.  We talked to Rich this morning over breakfast and we went over again that he doesn't seem to be doing anything in life (other than fishing) that makes him happy.  I asked can you at least see some happy part of taking care of your mother?  He said NONE.  Which leads us to thinking maybe he's not enjoying the life we are doing together either.  Most the time is separate with me working on my projects and him on the TV.  He does do business from home, and I do sometime with him with the TV particularly during dinner and when he's getting a massage now in the bedroom.  We did some canceling.  We canceled the second day of church quilting, driving to Dr. Marvin's, driving to Maury's and now the quilting with Carol.  I pulled back from going to the city to get medicine.
For the most part we have enough medicine to make it to Thursday, but we're out of the Risperadal.  The first night we missed it we went a little crazy in that it was thunderstorming and we couldn't get a grip on it.  We were being triggered and it kept Rich up and we felt badly for it afterward, but while it was happening we couldn't stop the jumpiness.  Dr. Marvin says we're going through withdrawal.  We did talk to him on the phone yesterday and he said it was better to go back to the Haldor ... we told him we still had it, rather than not have anything.  We knew the problem with Haldor before as a replacement for Risperadal was that it is a major tranquilizer.  Before we had gotten up to sleeping 16 hours a day.  We'll get back to the other stuff before that, but it's not a pleasant trip ... we've already had falling back to sleep problems this morning ... just get drowsy.  For now we just turned on the music and that seems to help.  We're listening to Adele.  :)
Last night we were talking to Linda a bit, but we got ancy/tired and wanted to lay down.  We ended up laying down on the floor by the window in the guest room which had been a very pleasant experience fed through our system.  But, when Rich figured it out ... then that became a problem.  *sigh*  There are no perfect solutions.
I'll go as far as saying the medicine has an affect on our interests and abilities, but it was after we started having problems.  It seemed if there were boundary issues the best thing then would be to draw a boundary and this includes Rich.  If he's not interested in hearing our insights and discoveries, then he isn't.  I'm not going to try to convince him anymore ... a line in the sand has been drawn.
I realize I am feeling a little defensive about it ... well ok a lot of defensive.
It's been a while again.  It's now 11:37 am.  We had our popcorn break and think we're going to make sure the air is on having trouble cooling off.
Thought so ... Rich had it on at 75 which is too warm for me.  It makes sense that the day starts warming up midday.  Rich is having his lunch now and is watching news.  There is a little noise conflict between TV and radio.  This is where it would be a good idea to be wearing the ear phones.  *sigh*  But, then he is having trouble hearing the TV, because we just turned on the air.  No perfect solutions?
So ... maybe we try to figure out a little there ... the part about our defensiveness.  It is not a word we've defined yet through the mind map.  As to my feelings ... I feel like I need to guard myself because I'm the only one with my back covered.  I wonder then if this isn't a sense of being paranoid - when you think others are thinking negative of you.  Maybe ... wouldn't write it out yet.  There's a little bit of feeling like "I don't give a **** anymore.  Not sure ... thinking that's not a real positive thin either.  I really do care ... just feeling uncared for by others.
We did talk to Dr. Marvin yesterday on the phone and we somehow used up an entire hour.  It was pouring rain here which was just one reason of not going in.  We talked to Rich about talking to Dr. Marvin at the computer and if he couldn't do his work out in the sunroom, but he decided that he was fine in the sitting room.  After we talked to Dr. Marvin, we saw the open loop and asked him about what he had thought - Rich.  Rich didn't appear to like all the conversation around the computer program ... that's the part though that he is avoiding so Dr. Marvin gets even more of it.  He also picked up on a point where we caught our breath and teased him (Dr. Marvin) that we would give him a chance to talk now.  Rich's way of looking at that was that we were not having good manners with Dr. Marvin.  Kelsie was holding the com and she was excited especially because Dr. Marvin was following as she went from screen to screen.  Dr. Marvin obviously doesn't mind ... it's just ONE way we've interacted with him in the past.  He's very good at paying attention to whichever alter/core is out.
But, it left us again feeling defensive because the only thing Rich said about our conversation was a couple negative comments on manners.  I really don't think he's grasping much of us.  It's a hard thing when people don't listen to you, or that it is so complicated for them to meet you in your space.
I think it goes back to finding my own sense of space in the world.  I like the feeling of creating those spaces like we are doing now in thinking from one thing to another.  It might not be fancy or even "correct," but the thoughts we are typing are exactly where our mind is that the instant that the fingers connect with the keyboard.  That is very exciting to me.  Always has been.
We talked to our mother again yesterday ... there was a part I guess where CS must have pushed the FB and of course we had while we were up north, My mother came up with a strong dislike statement which means she's been trying to think it through.  The bottom line on her conversation was that it was a loss of privacy people didn't need to make.  We didn't contest her points, because in our world they are not valid.  But, just as a anthropological study ... it's important for me to listen to the differences in communication between one generation and the other.  Out loud we just told her we will agree to disagree and I understood she held a point different from me, but that it wasn't my same conclusion.  I had an inkling she was trying to cross lines and say that for me ... shouldn't I be considering putting less out there, but she didn't step fully over that ... she certainly knows we've written a book and have many more ideas toward that.  Sorry can't help you there!
It doesn't matter who it is trying to suggest different things to me ... please don't bother.  My mother stepped out of line once more.  She had stated a few calls ago ... she hadn't been able to get her vision checked and it is now past her birthday so she also is driving on an expired license.  We had confessed that we were in the same boat, but then she decided to push our boat ... about how important it was and how that we could do it for Dr. Marvin because he would be pleased.  I am thinking that she is trying to transfer over the thoughts that Dr. Marvin was an extension of herself and that healthy people could possibly do something not for its own merit, but to please an authority figure.  We were like noooooo, if we were to get it done it would be to satisfy myself and the state requirements.  Then I thanked her, but courteously switch subjects.  We're having problems with it now, but we handled through adult parts, that my mother thought she could come up and suggest what we should do.  NOOOO that's not going to happen ... you can say anything you want, but when you add that - "You REALLY SHOuld ~~" Then you get into that guilt crap that was laid out as a kid.  Don't have to do that now ... though I'm aware that parts of us are already struggling with the ground she tried to lay out.  I think it is part of control.  I know for a long time she thinks of Dr. Marvin as an extension of herself as if her and Dr. Marvin are going to take care.
UMMM NO!  Don't think so.  She has a hard time conceiving that Dr. Marvin could have a purpose in my life other than within her narrow limitations of thought.
I think that's the hard part about Rich lately.  He's still not handling his medical condition.  He did get the shot, but it doesn't seem to be helping.  We say then you have to go back to the doctor to get a different relief.  His way is more close-minded.  He says he was there ... he already had to put out a couple hundred dollars and he doesn't want to pay out anymore.  But, our way of thinking is that you have to do whatever it takes to feel better, which MAY mean putting out a couple hundred more dollars.
Ok, not to say money discussions aren't rampant in our house or others', just saying that the thoughts of his pains are predominant at all times.  It was one thing to hear from him it been causing him problems with the fishing, but quite another to hear that it had affected him physically with us in bed.  I know I'm the younger woman, but I'm not ready to give up on all that.  It's an 8 year difference between us, but I got a hell of a lot more living to do.
Maybe that is part and parcel of his hesitancy ... again another closed door because we are stating that we are trying to define the purpose or meaning of our life.  For Rich his meaning seems to be that he works a terrible job that isn't bringing in money and that he has to go fishing or to watch tV to get away from it all.  I think for him, he is having a hard time bridging that his life may or may not have meaning.  Otherwise why would he fight so hard not to be in that kind of a conversation.
To me ... if you aren't doing anything important than why are you doing it - at least for what purpose?  This is where free choice and free will comes in.
Just thinking one example here ... after I got off the phone yesterday with my mother, rich had asked who it was.  I really do not talk much over the phone.  I said of course my mother.  The next thought was ... I had been trying to call her every 2-3 weeks without an expectation that I had to call.  And, then we got a little scoldy ... I said this is as much relating as we cared to do ... so other than that, my mother is on her own to lead her own life.  I do appreciate that in our relationship and hold it sometimes even grudgingly with Rich in his relating to his mother.  There are such obvious differences.  My mother might have broken a few small protocols, but for the most part things are in order.
My sister did come up in conversation but again those conversations are more about boundaries again.  It seems I can't get past this set of issues and problems.
I did tell my mother that i had cut off the communication through facebook.  Until I said that I hadn't remembered that I was complaining about CS over doing things before while we were up.  Her response was good, and that's when she went into her conversation on FB - and she didn't know the term - but, other social media outlets.  I think she's going through her own boundary issues with CS ... my part of it is just to say it is good to have some conscious realization what it means to have boundaries without all the but, but, but...
So moving on.  I think we still may in our defensive conversation.  This will have to be gone more over with Dr. Marvin, but the basic part is that I feel very few people I can talk to ... and just thinking now I'm looking toward having conversations with people out in the field that are looking at the same kinds of things.  I'm looking for or looking to create some sense of kinship out there where people I know are interested in talking about the things that are important to us.  I have no idea how many or few people that will involve in my life.  Maybe just a few ... maybe more, maybe no more than me and Dr. Marvin, but I am hoping that at least he will always understand.
I'm pretty much feeling like we're jumping off into some different point of time in our space.  I can't take much baggage with me.  And, by that I especially meaning thought and thought patterns that produce little in the scheme of my life.  I still want to have a couple of friends, and a sense of family, but even our boys and their families are separate from our day to day functioning.  I realize that there will be days I look forward to seeing my grandchildren, but in-between I know it is Maury, Nikki, Laura and Mike that are in charge of those things.  I watch some of the stuff going on with some of my facebook friends and their grandchildren.  I just don't see that it is a value to over-identify with that.  I have no intend of going everyday or so needing to be in touch with them.  I would like to hear from them once every month or two though.  Eh ... they are all different.  Still love them!
Not sure where we are up to now ... We should date stamp this as being 12:24 pm and Rich just left about 10 minutes ago.  He's going to meet Bob for a fishing event at their club.  I think it's just the two of them which seems like a good deal.  Something that happened this week is that Bob got married.  WoooHAA!!  Ok, yes you could imagine that Rich took some grief on that from us.  He and Bob are going to need time to figure out how that may or may not affect their relationship.  We already know that Linda is more restrictive of Bob - so time will tell how being married added to the other will affect things.  I don't mind Linda ... just we'll never be overly close ... especially with physical distance between us now.  She still hasn't been out to the house, nor has most the others.  They were coming that once, but it is just when Rich's leg went bad and he wasn't able to handle all that needed to get done to have people over.  I was overwhelmed with having to do both interior and exterior.  So it like so many things went to pause.
ok, definitely were just free-floating along here now.  I think that associations are actually pretty good, but sometimes it makes us feel better to flow down particular tracks.
Maybe we could go over some of the things that we were talking to Dr. Marvin about.  We asked him to turn on our mind map at his place and then we went pretty much down the line in trying to figure out all the new stuff that got added this week.  As to the generic project ...
We did a lot more with David Allen material this week.  We read the first section of his book giving out the general blurb he puts out.  Basically, he uses a diagram of a plane taking off and gaining altitude.  At the beginning of his model, he includes an "in-basket."  He suggests to have as few of these as possible to simplify.  In-baskets can be phones, a computer program, a note pad, a voice recorder, stack for papers, etc.  His thought is that anything you can get out of your brain you should put out (through the in-basket).  Then that gets sorted "by altitude" and you manage things from your trusted source.  This is supposed to clean-up your real brain to take on more because you are dealing with actual next tasks and directing yourself forward without the suitcase load of other thoughts and issues we normally keep juggling.  Even this form of Blogging is and in-basket.  Later down the line we might be able to tell you how it sorts back into our mind-mapping process, but for sure it does.  In our in-basket we've also docked our trash can ... so as we do things that should be thrown away we deposit it into the trash which holds until we do a definite dump.  This helped more parts in the system have chances to let go.
The first level Allen considers is the runway level.  This is where he leaves his next actions.  We read through again to be picking up some things and some were left over since the last time we'd worked on these kinds of issues with our old mind map. In the runway level, we have items such as our handy dandy models (3) for processing our actions, a general calendar, and incubation tray for items we don't want to lose or invest much present time to, and we also have a tray for things to go where we are waiting for others.  Like we are now waiting for Dr. Marvin to talk to the financial people for us.  We'd talked to him about 15 minutes and that is the next stage.
Finally the most importan item in this next action tray - is the next actions.  Here we think of it as mostly location based.  Some of this thinking comes directly from David Allen and some of its a left over from Paper Tiger.  Items under this list include:  Agendas, calls, cars, church, computer/phone, daily thinking/considering, Dr. Marvins, errands, home, learning, office, relaxation and sewing room.  Maybe down the line some of these will also be combined or eliminated.  As Dr. Marvin states part of the beauty of this system is that is always readapting.
The agenda link includes the areas of meetings, one-on-ones, and vacations.  We've parked a few things here like we would like to have Ellie and Mary ann out to lunch on separate occasions.  We listed these as one-on-ones, and for vacation we just left a note for Rich and us to update our goals if any.
Calls are pretty explanatory and it was this particular note that reminded me to give my mother a call yesterday YAYY ... doing something.  I do have to add that we should be putting drivers license on the list as well.  Have to wait until getting back to the big computer for that. Car is divided between transportation or like things like when we should load the car for Carol's or fill up the gas tank, or stop by the church next time out to pick some quilts up.  The church is low on ideas, but it includes our volunteer work.
The next area within next actions cover the computer (desktop and chrome) and phone.  Within these areas are the blogs, email, facebook, multiples blogs, other internet sites, and research toward better understanding of Allen or the mind maps.  The blogs of course include Ann's Multiple and the NEWS DID/MPD.  There were some neat things happening there this week in that we figured it only too a couple really brief copy/pastes and we could have a link to each of our blog entries that went back to so far the beginning of this year.  We put them in their own separate thoughts, and labeled them by year and month.  In not too long, we will go back over ALL the blogs back to 2003.  It's a major task, but the benefits are just glorious.  We found out in the process that both the blogs and the mind map do excellent work with pulling out keywords from anywhere ... so especially on the mind map we can enter the word, "Corey," and eventually any blog entry, or news entry containing that name will come up which allows a study of her situation within our thoughts.  It's really cool.
Email and FB don't have as much stuff right now - primarily reminders like its about time to write the group.  The multiples blogs are the 140 or so blogs that we've listed on the NEWS site, and the other Internet stuff is for things we pick-up but don't have time to read at the moment whether it be a web page, blog or other.  AND, that's primarily what's in that thought link.
The next link is Things we think about or consider daily.  We are still considering how to best use the search feature, we want to do review work (prior to Dr. Marvin) with several things such as developing new routines to talk to Rich, difficulties that came up this week, and also getting in and around this new feature of having a dashboard for the mind map.
In the section of things to consider we left a couple specific defined words that seemed to affect us this week that we figured we should spend some time with such as anxiety, balance, focus, maintain, overwhelm, think, and then work.  As well there is a link to a summary written on the 21rst about processing something that was happening with Annemarie ... there was a pulling of cue hints as to how she was feeling or how the situation was handled, but basically it had started form having a panic attack 15 minutes prior to leaving for the second day of church sewing.  We believe that incident was caused by Annemarie and then in another section we consider things that had not only pulled us back, but afterward help us to pull back into the situation of being ok.  We had to literally calm ourselves - which is something probably happening all the time, but this time it was very conscious.  We had to have something to eat, we were able to open the mind map and find ourselves a place to be there, we switched from coffee to sprite, and then called the church to excuse ourselves officially, though without explanation.
The next section is the one for Dr. Marvin ... here we included the next appointment which was yesterday, but then there is the section on things to be discussed with him including the above with Ann Marie.  There had been notes on how parts - especially Marie and Corey helped progress that situation and then it outlined that it took us 1 1/2 hours to be able to process, and we grounded ourselves by cleaning the floor.  Every time we got up to work, it was about 7-8 minutes, and then we rested for about a half hour.  This was more time than we needed, but it gave us time to "want to" go back to the project rather than being forced, so everything together took about 5 hours - there were three rooms.  I think we explained this before, but we vacuumed, did crevices, cleaned, and then polished.  YAY US!!!
The next thing to mention to Dr. Marvin was that we had finally finished the paperwork for Christian Brothers.  We were pretty sure we'd sent them the paperwork in January, but it took till now to find the original copies, then we had to verify our disability, etc.  BOTTOM line is that is FINALLy done and had been a concern since May.  Dr. Marvin was pleased obviously as were we to report it checked off our list.  It means the difference of having a pension at retirement of about $600 to one of $1-1200.
We obviously spent time talking about CS, but hopefully that will lessen more now that she won't be on our daily view. We will still need to work through issues of sewing with the group, but that will come up in its own time.
We reserved time in the future to go over with Dr. Marvin our goals and aspirations not only for the first 1-2 years, or 3-5 years, but as well life long vision for ourselves.  That's about where the studying of the multiples stuff comes back to mind.
Then ... there was a very big area to talk to Dr. Marvin about with the mind maps.  I think in the overload he stayed caught up to us, but we didn't allow much time for his response.  We were hitting everything that we had been able to trace during the last week.
The first area was that through many processess and a lot of linking and unlinking, we were able to appreciate through putting all the parts into the mind map - a better tracing how they were connecting.  This time in particular we learned more about Corey, Annemarie, and Marie.  Basically, we've known for a long time that if Corey gets stuck, she can ask Marie and then Marie sends her information - at least a lead.  We also realized that with a couple of our fast acting parts - between Kelsie and Lissa that it took Corey to slow things down enough for Annemarie to comprehend, especially through the blog.  Leaving notes on the map - that's just a whole new thing to be explored.  One way or another we're looking forward to the excitement due to come to us soon.
We've already discussed adding our blog entries to the map, so we won't do that again, but it did come up with Dr. Marvin.  We also went through some of David Allen's work on "Getting Things Done," which helped us to plan out the altitude model we were now using.  We had listened to several videos either from the mind map place "TheBrain," but also to videos from David Allen who as an aside was already endorsing the product.  We explained the logic of taking notes on Allen's book GTD, but we confirmed with Dr. Marvin, that we'd hidden those notes from common view because we didn't want to infringe on publishing rights.
We told Dr. Marvin how we'd been advancing the dictionary definitions especally along the lines of a couple quotes we took from Allen, especially on "control."  And, we talked to him about the Search feature on the bottom box, and that on our master computer where the program really resides, that we could pull up a search term and have 75 or more contexts it was attached too.  That's a LOT of potential.
The last thing we talked to Dr. Marvin about was the part about being one of the four brains being highlighted this week on "TheBrain" website for "most addictive" brains.  I think that means it had the most clicks.  I know we're some of those clicks but there were more and being read was super cool.  Yesterday they had listed 290 sources.  I don't think much more would have been added today if we were still on the chart, but ... hmm lets see ... ahhh some!  Today we are up to 335 sources :) YAY!!!
AHA!  It looks like we're still on the most addictive list for this two weeks.  One other guy was there before and now two new ones are ... and the others have been around alot more.
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