Monday, July 31, 2017 @
8:11AM Good morning. This is just me. We’re a few moments from jumping into the shower. Shoot. Just had a schedule change. We pulled out the calendar and found that we were supposed to have taken care of our shots/fasting this morning. Man! Didn’t see that coming though we scheduled it on the calendar last week, on Friday, when Amie was here. We planned for her to come in the afternoon because of it. Shoot. We’re going to cancel that, I think, because I don’t want her dressing my foot when Rich’s daughter is here. How did all this chaos happen? We were doing good a minute ago?
Ok, that’s obviously the answer … remain ignorant of time/day … that will do it. Thinking we might as well jump into the shower now. Start off fresh, right?
@ 8:57AM BACK! Sorry, didn’t mean to be so loud. Just seems like a long time away. We did the shower, got dressed, got our foot taken care of, let out the dog, AND remembered we forgot our medicine. It just must be that kind of morning. Oh, one more thing. We called Amie to cancel our appointment this afternoon. That just made sense.
I’m hoping that we still have time to do the blood tests tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have to check on that. We’ll try to take them one way or another, so the worst is that we might have to reschedule with Dr. Dorman, which could be another three-months wait. I just need the results. I don’t think he is going to add much. Just, I know it’s a good idea. We DID see him just a short time ago and we threw in all the other stuff. AHA! July 10th – so three weeks ago. That wasn’t a long time. This appointment is just to go over lab results, though we get about the same thing from “mychart.”
I know, I know … it’s sad, but these are the kinds of things we wake up thinking about. It could be worse. We could be thinking about what should or SHOULD get done before Jillian gets here. Ok, ok … shhh sorry, sorry. Didn’t want to start an uproar!
There we go … Rich just left so the music came on … we had been listening through our ear phones, but it seems much more fun to turn her up through the speakers! Yay! We’re listening to current women in pop from Pandora radio. It’s been a favorite for a bit now.
I think we only have about three hours to go, so we will … ahem ladies … should budget in some time. Maybe we should think of what should get done seriously. We’ll have to check each of the rooms, and we’re PRETTY sure the bed still must be made.
Ok, just scanned the rooms. I’m not sure we’ll get to good dusting … though we should dust Jillian’s room and the living room. There are a few things in the living room/kitchen to put away, but generally it’s good. We still must make our bed and put Jillian’s clean sheets/blanket on. AND, it would be nice if we could clean up around the kitchen door/floor, and SUPER nice if we could vacuum the sun room. That looks like the worst of it, BUT seems like a lot. BUT, we’re in a good mindset in that we could clean before while writing. No, we won’t be writing seriously about anything this morning.
The one thing we did work on this morning was to get the web site updated with our References, Titles page, and Section headings. We’d worked on adding to the lists on Sunday, so we wanted to do at least that much, to keep things neat. We were disappointed that the colored part didn’t come through the copy paste, which had made it easier to read. Basically, we put a nice dark powder blue on the actual title part of the titles page, and then left the section and author’s part black. It wasn’t a lot of color difference, but enough to make the titles pop. Ahh, we’ll leave a picture at the top of the entry.
The other thing, we checked-out was the question of linking the reference page books to Amazon. The result at this point was that it might take more people away from our site, so that we’d not do it for now. We did check out the process and it did work that it would carry from Word over, even if the color hadn’t carried. We might think the references change later, but for now it’s on a back burner.
We also checked our emails, but that was a minor thing. Just looked over and saw that it was empty.
Oh, there was something cool last night hehe. Rich let me massage him about 1 ½ hours while we were telling him about what we’d been working on. SOOO, everything got diagrammed on his back. OK, OK … don’t tell him we wrote that down … BUT, it was one of the best things of the week. I think we’d talked to him about him not listening because he asked us six to seven hours after he got home from the weekend with his son and grandson, about what we’d done and asked how we were. Whereas … we sat there for like two hours hearing all the detail of his weekend. So, he suggested that we go to the bedroom and that he was GOING to really listen. We gave him a couple spot tests.
The main thing was that he had to remember we were talking about THREE things. He had to remember references on the left side of his spine, and titles to the right side of his spine, and to the right bottom side, he had to remember section headings.
Hehe there was a long groan when we tested him on punctuation. We’d say like for the references, “Barkley comma, space, Initial R, period, space, Initial A, period, space, space, left parenthesis, 2016, right parenthesis, period. Title, period, city, comma, state, colon, publisher, period! That was it. There was a lot of drawing on his back at that time. BUT, we found he couldn’t remember all the care we’d put into our references. He asked if we could repeat. Sheesh! What a slow learner!
We might have been a little excited about this kind of quality attention!
It was just a nice comfy night. There were like a million little details of what we’re doing, and most likely maybe just a few people will ever seriously look at what we’re doing, so that when we talk about doing everything, exact punctuation period, it is feeding OUR sense of perfection. It somehow makes us feel good to look at all the uniform sentences. And, this was just the joy coming from working on these three documents. There are quite a few sections on our web site/blog to be working on … like this morning, working here on the blog – as we type word by word, and sentence by sentence. Nobody would do this kind of thing unless it was bringing extreme pleasure. You know?
“You’re like a dream come true!” I think that’s Adelle hehe. Probably bad form to be singing to your “site.” Oh well, missed the mark there!
We did spend some time over the weekend working, or trying to work on our category cloud, but that was only with some small success. Somehow, when we were flipping around, we found a place that allowed us to name how many words could be up on the cloud. We should have said 100, but we went only from about 20 to 50. BUT, then for the life of us, we checked and checked and couldn’t find that spot again. Drove us up the wall. We did find easily a space that allowed our cloud to list how many each of the words was being used. I found that handy, just we wanted some more of the words, because we could write a blog entry and come up with 60 or so words. Obviously then, we wanted more to show on our cloud. *Sigh* One day we’ll find it.
@ 10:57AM Shoot, ok a lot of time – almost 2 hours went by with us trying to find stuff. It was a lot of going from page to page, trying one thing or another, but ultimately, we failed. We were on some hot leads though … Just didn’t work. Thinking … looking at the time, we might want to take our medicine. We did go through the house looking for immediate things like I don’t think floors are getting done. I got everything picked up and fixed except Jillian’s bed. I need some more rest time to get to that. Our head is a little dizzy. I know medicine. BRB.
Ok …. @ 11:25AM I’m DONE! Wow! We were up for an entire half hour! I called Rich first to see when they were coming in – somewhere between 12-12:30PM he says. So, yes, we had enough time to vacuum the sunroom, and while we had the beast out, we vacuumed the kitchen. It would be better if we followed that up with a mop, but that’s just opening a whole can of worms! I don’t think we’re going to do that. @ 11:30AM – WOW! Wow! That was fast. We DID grab the mop … we don’t really know the tool, but she did a good literally five-minute job. It’s not perfect, but it’s not obviously terrible either. YAY! NOW, we can say we’re done and even the bed is made.
We do have a load in the dryer. I had forgotten about the blanket Rich used for his camp-out and there were a few towels and placemats in there too. Feeling pretty good. I can’t say that my desk is perfect. Ok, a lot of things aren’t perfect. Shhh. Let it go. It will be ok. Jillian is coming to see her father, not get into how much, we don’t dust. Shhh, it’s going to be ok. One of the rules we have with guests is that they should come into the house while your calm. We have a half an hour now, and we don’t want any anxiety over cleaning. We did take our medicine, we just should calm down.
Oh, we forgot lunch! Ahh, but Rich said he’s going to make salad. I wonder if we could skip salad and have oatmeal now. With the diabetes, it’s a bad idea to postpone meals. I think that’s what we’re going to do. Then we don’t have to worry about manners at lunch. We’ll just sit at the table with a tall cold water and listen – Jillian ALWAYS has a lot to say. I LOVE IT!
Ahh, oatmeal is done. It’s hot. So, just a bite at a time. I hope that I get it done in time. You know to get rid of the evidence. Hehe. Ok, I admit, oatmeal for lunch is a little odd, but it’s not our worse non-secret. *sigh*
We just read over our entry so far. We’re at five pages (1880 words). So, not very far. I think though when Jillian gets here, we’ll be paying attention to everything she says. She’s one of the most fascinating people we know. Always so much going on! AND, I love it that her job works with teaching teachers and working through curriculum. That’s just one of our favorite subjects. Anything to do with learning is golden!
Ok, we’re getting over-excited again. Hey, what was that word, we couldn’t remember with Rich? Does anyone know? Something like startle … which part of the brain is that … it’s sort of where the infant’s emotions are high and they are having trouble calming them down. Ahh, we put that sentence in Google, and she came up with the Wikipedia on emotional dysregulation – VERY intuitive Google!
WOOHOO! The word is “arousal!” GOOGLE DID IT! It states, “There are links between child emotional dysregulation and later psychopathology.[6] For instance, ADHD symptoms are associated with problems with emotional regulation, motivation, and arousal.[7]” Oh, man – we’re back to swimming. I should now reconnect why that word was so important to us, just that WOW! So, impressed with Google!
Ok, we’re not going to get calm now … shhh, we can’t speak like that. As soon as Rich enters the door, we must avoid screaming the word “AROUSAL” at him! It won’t make sense to him. I might want to read a little from the article? No, that would take too much time. We’ll just link to it – here … look this up later. Emotional Dysregulation in Wikipedia. Good researching … again, this is how we found it. We copy and pasted this partial sentence in our browser, “infant’s emotions are high and they are having trouble calming them down.” How, the hell did Google know that it meant Emotional Dysregulation? This is EXACTLY, what we are studying, but how did Google put that term with the clue just given? It’s a brilliant tool! AND, then secondary, the clue was good enough so that we could locate the missing word, we had had so much difficulty remembering.
“This is the life … this is the life, life, life.” This is the song that’s playing now. Life is so perfect. We were thinking this is the life! We’ve got a little sign hanging outside our front/back door that says that, “this is the life!” It was something we bought while we were with my mother. It sure is a lot of synchronicity in this world.
I know keep eating the oatmeal. Don’t really want Jillian to see we eat oatmeal straight out of a two-cup Pyrex measuring cup. It’s just right though, you know? It measures the oatmeal AND can go in the dishwasher, PLUS, we have two of them – so, it’s handy. Ok, now we MUST settle down. They could be here any moment. Maybe it’s inevitable though, because we’re excited about Jillian coming over. I’m glad she gets time with her Dad, and we KNOW the car ride here and his trip with her to the airport tomorrow morning – it will all be a part of her getting Dad time. It’s Golden!
There, we did it! Oatmeal Pyrex is soaking in the sink. That’s ok. The dishwasher is still cleaning dishes, so couldn’t do much better. NO, we don’t wash much by hand! You want to know another funny thing? We looked-up in the reference to Wikipedia, and we found this …
Barkley R. A. (1997). “Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD”. Psychological Bulletin. 121: 65–94. PMID 9000892. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.121.1.65.
And, then we checked out our reference and found this …
Barkley, R. A. (2016). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and self-regulation: Taking an evolutionary perspective on executive functioning. In Vohs, K. D. Editor & Baumeister, R. F. Editor (Eds.)., Handbook of self-regulation: Research theory, and applications. New York, NY: Guildford Publications, Inc.
Isn’t that something! Google led me to the author of someone that we’re already interested in. He’s our second reference. Not many Authors starting with “A.” Hehe. Ok, this is just proving how cool life is.
Hmm, reminds us … I think we sent Dr. Marvin a negative email sometime since the last appointment. We better take responsibility for that now. Hold on, we have to look it up in our sent file.
Shoot, it’s a long one … and hard to read. We’re going to print that out here next, and fix the size of the font. I think this is going to be a negative one though, so we’re going to have to fix something. I think we owe Dr. Marvin a note checking in to make sure he knows we’re ok. We’ve been doing spectacularly in these last few moments. Why can’t we stay on a high all the time?
Anyway. This is the thing that went to Dr. Marvin.
Dr. Marvin, I wrote this in my introduction weeks ago. [Anns/MW, 07-11-17 @ 8:04AM] Introduction to Self-Regulation and Dissociation (Multiplicity) Why do we have such a strong interest in “Self-regulation and Dissociation (Multiplicity)?” Our strongest thought, so far, is that this topic must be researched/studied by us, because we long for a conscious awareness/understanding on “how to survive life.” We aspire to learn/teach, and believe simply – that we will “go-on.” We don’t think this problem of “going-on” is uncommon with Multiples, or others.
Dr. Marvin I wrote this and last edited this on July 11. Tonight … I just read this … through that chapter we’d been working on.
Porges (1997) describes the involuntary and often prolonged characteristic pattern of vagal outflow from the dorsal vagal nucleus. This long-lasting state of dorsal vagal parasympathetic activation accounts for the extensive duration of “void” states associated with pathological dissociative detachment (Allen, Console, & Lewis, 1999), and for what Bromberg (2006) calls dissociative “gaps” in subjective reality, “spaces” that surround self-states and thereby disrupt coherence among highly affectively charged states. These “gaps” are also discussed in the developmental psychoanalytic literature. Winnicott (1958) notes that a failure of the maternal holding environment causes a discontinuity in the baby’s need for “going-on-being”; and Kestenberg (1985) refers to this as “dead spots” in the infant’s subjective experience, an operational definition of the restriction of consciousness of dissociation. At all points of the life span, dissociation is conceptualized as “a basic part of the psychobiology of the human trauma response: a protective activation of altered states of consciousness in reaction to overwhelming psychological trauma” (Loewenstein, 1996, p. 312).
I don’t know how my “going-on” could be a real term already out there – loaded with meaning to dissociatives through Winnicott. How could I have known that? I’m not able to take on all this chapter states it’s very loaded with meaning. It’s hard. It feels like one of the most important things I’ve ever read. Words are swimming. Us
@ 12:21PM Back. We just read the statement. We aren’t picking-up the big picture of what they are saying. There are things that really interest us here that we have to figure out. First, was it a coincidence that we decided that our big NEW term was going to be “going-on,” or, “go-on.” And then we read this quote from Porges and he quotes from Winnicott, who I believe was Sybil’s therapist, but she also uses the term “going-on,” but then adds “going-on-being.” It’s a little more awkward, but it means a lot … it’s the being of our self(s) that is having trouble going-on. And, just in reading this, we got to that point again of questioning our livability.
And, then the second thing was that the authors are discussing “dead spots.” Well, maybe it was “dead zones.” That is exactly the term we used to use … we would say it in context with – she’s in a dead zone. Which meant, that whatever part – was ceasing to function. I don’t remember all the peculiars, but we think it must be related to our current situation, where we are saying or thinking, “We want to be dead.” I’m wondering now if that isn’t a portal to be shutting down. It goes back to who we thought was Ann Marie wishing herself in a coffin and being buried.
I think this is a lot to think through considering Rich and Jillian will soon be home. I thought it would take a little longer, because Rich had to stop for lettuce. He underestimates the time it takes to shop. Plus, Jillian could have wanted to pick-up a few things. Rich is very generous that way.
While, we are skirting the issue, we’d also like to leave a track here stating that we talked to both my sister and Pastor Peg last night. The short version of that is that Connie Sue was inviting us to her place on Sunday when Pastor Peg was going through, but we WHOOOPS they are here! Ok, they’re both in the washroom – remember to come back to this later, k? 9 pages (3375 words).
@ 6:39PM Back again. It’s now after dinner, and everything is cleaned-up. We sat down at the computer as Rich and Jillian retired to the living room, directly in back of us, so we put on our earphones. I turned on relaxation radio. I have loved to visit with Jillian, but we need some time to slow down and we wanted to give Jillian and her Dad some time together, that isn’t as guided by our conversation. I don’t think we over talk, but we do like to ask questions. So much goes on in Jillian’s life. We’ll stop there, but YES! It’s fun having her at our house. We’re hoping though Rich finds something different than CNN news for her. Rich and I watch it a lot, but Jillian isn’t big on news and I think she’s probably bored with it. She would never complain, but that’s something that they are going to have to figure out.
We are listening to Canon in D. That is one of the nicest songs. You might not know it by name, but it is a beauty. Good thinking on the choice of Pandora radio stations.
Dakota went through a few moments of playful time, but he doesn’t go long. He is impressive in the speed he can pull out before he’s back to resting. I think he LOVES to run fast and just doesn’t know what to do with all that speed. Love that dog to pieces and back!
I think we’re going to just say a few things about the earlier conversation with my sister and Pastor Peg. My sister called first to see if we’d liked to come out, but we already have time scheduled with one of my Grandchildren this weekend. We’re taking Austin to St. Louis. WooHOO!!! So, then we called Pastor Peg ourselves and we talked a bit. At the end, we talked about her maybe coming for a visit when she sees her sister in Iowa toward the fall. That be soooo nice.
We also caught a picture a moment ago with Rich and his daughter. It’s one of those things you treasure for a LONG time.
This is Jillian and Rich. She said she was only going to rest for about 20 minutes.
Hehe – this is also a picture of Rich with a protective glance over his daughter to his girlfriend. It’s ok. He still loves me and after he smiled. BUT, we are sneaky!
I think we’re going to publish now though and then do some work with the References, titles and sections headings. It’s a nice lightweight thing. *sigh* I am loving company!