Looking Glass

  I came home after another busy day at work. I ate a bit of dinner, read some emails, took some calls and as I look at the paper clutter on my desk, here at home, and think of a lengthy to do list, I postpone it. I wanted to relax differently, and read some of my friend's postings and maybe scribble out a post of my own. Like our friend Bill, who types out his thoughts and allows us to read them. I didn't get too far with his site. He removed the last post and I could not seem to get his "older posts." Hmmm...He always leaves us thinking, right?  The job is going fine. Crazy and busy as this in home care industry is. Providing on call support two weeks per month, which has no calls at times, and too many calls at others. I deal with it.  I had to act as a SARP (Sexual Assault Response Provider) advocate tonight for the first time. I met the victim at the local hospital and was there through the three hour ordeal. Just got home a bit ago and am having a cup of cocoa...

 I just spent about an hour reading my pals' blog posts. Again, time has flown by without checking in here, despite my thinking of you all often.  I am glad not to be a Toastmaster club officer this year. It is nice; if I don't feel like going to a meeting, I don't, and my brain isn't forcing me to attend since I have no official duties. That is a relief. Then, low and behold, my friend Derek has name dropped me to a few district officers who are forming their committees and teams right now. I have gotten phone calls from three district leaders to participate on their team. One to assist with District 32's social media sites, one to be an assistant VP of PR and most recently, to be an educational Ambassador to relay and share new and upcoming programs to the area clubs. I did pretty good sideswiping the invites until recently. I did apply to be an educational Ambassador and I am thinking about helping the district VP of PR with social media. He has to outline some ...

 Well I have been at my new job for close to a month. For the most part, I like it. Despite the sameness and the insanity of the long term care industry, I like the three other staff members and have faith my learning curve is close to an end. I started on call tonight for the first time-another reason to run from the industry. I will be on call for a week. At least here, I will get $60, but not sure how it will always pan out splitting this duty with Bobby, the Admin Assist who has been helping with this piece. I got 7 pages tonight from caregivers within two and a half hours. I'll get 'em trained to utilize the after hours system for urgent situations-not just to complain about a client in general. I got calls from a potential client and a lady who needed someone to come and hook up her TV. She didn't realize you had to be a current client to get services. I told her to call tomorrow if her neighbors were still away and I may be able to connect her with a volunteer progra...

 Well, after a year of futile attempts to break out of the long term care industry and into something new-I had to reopen myself up to that old industry. I received an email from a Tacoma home care agency and a phone call from an Olympia agency wanting interviews-within 24 hours of each other. I accepted the job in Tacoma with a private company-they are so excited to have me. I had to quit smoking to get it too-should make grumpy happy-they only hire non smoking staff and caregivers. Interesting. At least I am employed and this is different enough from my old agency, I am excited. I started on June 4th. More details to come-thought I would check in.

 About a month ago as I was catching up on the reading of my favorite blogs, I ran across bill's blog post titled, "Two Stories". I read the post time after time and was seized by the story and the style of writing in which he used to retell it. The surprise ending made me catch my breath. I eventually copied and pasted it to a Word document then printed it in order to read it, yet, some more.  I recently completed ten more manual speeches in front of my Toastmaster group and was rewarded with the Advanced Communicator Bronze certificate and acknowledgment. This allowed me the opportunity to order and receive two more advanced manuals with project objectives to complete. One of the manuals is entitled; Interpretive Reading. The first speech objective was to read a story authored by someone else and to do it in such a way, it evokes emotion from the audience and brings them into the story. "Two Stories" seemed the perfect one to present. I secured permission fro...

http://www.422.toastmastersclubs.org I hope the link takes you to our club website. You may get an idea why it means so much to so many. PS. There's a link to our newsletters near the top of the page. Feel free to read or check us out.

 The mental typewriter is at it again. I discovered some documents saved in a PC file that I created on 12/19/2012. The document was a twelve page employment, certification & training course for Human Resource Management. I have been looking into this career choice for some time. I have FAFSA and local college material discussing the topic. (Our friend kden is familiar with this. ha!) I know some of my favorite duties were office management, customer relations and working with the caregivers; assigning them work, handling their emergencies, being a sounding board, training staff, completing performance evals, etc...but don't think for a minute it was always fun. I've had to reprimand caregivers, be part of the firing process and fire employees, handle their emergencies (yes, it is twofold because despite helping, it creates more work for me, initially.) maintain redundant paperwork and work within too many processes.  Without clamoring to brag of myself,  I am a lead...