The site where I get my cat pictures from is a regular stop for me. They add 2 or more pictures every day so of course I go over there. The imagination and sense of humor displayed by the people who do the captions for the pictures always amuses me. Sometimes the picture will actually spark a post, and sometimes they just fit the post I'm planning. Once in awhile I'll find pictures that are just too cute not to post but I have no place where they will fit in.

Yesterdays post about Gracie and the trouble she causes was a hard post for me to do. It's mildly depressing for many reasons, and it was hard to find words that didn't make it sound as if we have no other clients that are difficult. Bullies come in all shapes, sizes and colors. We've even had one case of an aide bullying a client. Needless to say she didn't last very long.

In the interest of cheering myself up, I went over to my favorite kitty site to see what they had and found these pictures that are too cute not to share. They may not fit a post I'm planning, but they do provide a commentary of sorts on life in general and humor in particular.

One of our clients caused me major amounts of grief yesterday. Every so often we get a client who is demanding and inflexible. I suppose when you're older and not in the best of health, fear causes changes in ones behavior that are unwelcome to others. The bulk of our clients, especially those with the most need are independent and regretfully accept the help we provide. I say regretfully because they really wish they could do it themselves. It's a drawback of getting older. They are limited in capacity and in order for them to live in their homes they require the assistance we provide.

Not every client will like every aide and vice versa. When that happens we supply them with another and we'll do that 2 or 3 times. It's a matter of finding compatible personalities, and learning the personality of the client. We've only had 2 clients that we can't please and the client from yesterday is one of them. Part of the problem, I think, is that the women are black and possibly thinking they were being judged on some level by the white woman who comes to clean the house. I wish I could say their fears were unfounded but in a couple of cases they may have been right. We have discovered to our dismay that a few of our employees, in the past, have been guilty of being prejudiced. I say, in the past, because we've weeded out that kind of attitude whenever we've found it. The problem is, we can't weed it out of the clients when they have it and it makes everyones life very difficult.

Gracie's aide overslept yesterday. It took a couple of hours for her to wake up and return my call. She apologised, and told me she'd get dressed and go right away. She walks and the walk plus the showering and getting ready would take an hour and 15 minutes or so. I called Gracie to tell her what time to expect the tardy aide and we had a good laugh over her forgetting to set her alarm clock. I thought we were all set, and continued on my business. Gracie wants 9am care and when Gracie is asked to be flexible she blows a gasket. Big time. I should have realized that Gracie was way too quiet about the whole thing and that meant something was up.

I got a call from a very quiet Gracie that her aide didn't show up again. I didn't catch on to the quiet until after the aide called shortly thereafter. The aide says she showed up, Gracie started yelling and calling her names. She got mad and left. Gracie waited for awhile, then called me to say she never showed up. At that point, given what Gracie said we had a client abandonment issue that would require the firing of the aide. As soon as the aide told me some of the things Gracie said to her, I knew she wasn't lying, they are exactly the same things that Gracie and her daughters have said to me. Including "You thinks you can do these things to me cause you thinks I's a N*****." Along with that she demanded to know why the aide didn't bring her sweets or a pack of cigarettes to make it up to her for being late. I expected the aide to tell me that she wouldn't go there this morning. I'm sitting there with this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when she said she'd go there today, but if Gracie yelled at her again, she was leaving. No other aide who works weekends is willing to go there because of the way Gracie behaves.

This gave me the opportunity to remind the aide of the Policy and Procedure set forth by our office. In a case like this, the aide must call us from the clients home. In the case where the client refuses to allow them to use the phone, and Gracie has refused the aide that priviledge in the past, they are to call from the first available pay phone. We are long past the hour when Gracie should have called if the aide didn't show. I'm sure that the aide showed at the appointed time today. I'm going to have to report this to the office on Monday, and we may have to ask the county to find another agency for Gracie. Partly because of the lie that Gracie told me, but mostly because of something else that the aide told me.

For safety reasons, Gracie is allowed a shower while sitting in a shower chair. This is mandated by the county nurse who is her case manager. Gracie is demanding and getting a full tub bath and she has had a stroke which means the aide is lifting her in and out of the tub. I asked the aide why she was doing this and her response was that it "helps make Gracie comfortable". When Gracie's comfortable she's not accusing the aide of refusing to do things because the aide thinks she's a N*****. Gracie is playing the race card in a manner that endangers both her own welfare, and that of the aide. We are never going to make her understand that it's not about being a N****, it's about being safe. The aide will get written up for this violation, Gracie may have to go without weekend care until they find a different agency. All because one aide wants to help people and one black woman wants to believe she's a victim of her skin color.

Making the decision on what to place on my playlist this week was harder than I thought it would be. As I was surfing through my satellite audio channels for a gleam of an idea, I remembered the Sirius channel that is called the Sirius Shuffle. That channel plays everything. Pop, classic rock, disco, country, easy listening, and metal. It is something I listen to on the various occasions that I can't decide what I want to hear. Another AHA moment, and no I don't mean the group. Then I got to picking the music and realized I was going for the same old same old tunes again. At my age, the memory's shorter than I wish it was. I decided that the Toby Keith song "As Good As I Once Was", was the perfect place to start. It's all downhill from there. Except for the music.



The Playlist:

1....Air...All I Need, Another Day and Sexy Boy.
2....Beck...Loser, Think I'm In Love and Where It's At
3....Big and Rich...Big Time, Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy) and Wild West Show.
4....Boney James...All Night Long, I Get Lonely and Grazin' In The Grass (feat. Rick Braun)
5....Christina Aguilera...Beautiful, Candyman and What A Girl Wants
6....Donna Summer...Hot Stuff, Love To Love You Baby and She Works Hard For The Money
7....Kid Rock...Feel Like Makin' Love, Lonely Road of Faith and Midnight Train To Memphis
8....Najee...Can't Hide Love, Najee's Nasty Groove and Najee's Theme
9....Pet Shop Boys...Domino Dancing, It's A Sin and West End Girls
10..Pink...Stupid Girls, Trouble and Who Knew
11..Redbone...Come and Get Your Love, Niki Hokey and Witch Queen of New Orleans
12..The Pussycat Dolls...Buttons, Don'tcha ans Stickwitu
13..Thin Lizzy...Bad Reputaion, The Boys Are Back In Town and Whiskey In The Jar
14..Toby Keith...As Good As I Once Was, How Do You Like Me Now and I Love This Bar
15..Village People...In The Navy, Macho Man and YMCA

A few days before Thanksgiving we had a brief snowstorm in parts of New York. It missed my area, depositing only a light dusting of snow. In the counties of Onondaga and Madison they reported 100 fender bender accidents in a short period of time. It happens almost every time we get a snow storm or ice storm because people simply will not organise their time enough to slow down. If the speed limit is 55 they're driving 60 or 65, and that's too fast for road conditions during snow storms. It seems not to occur to folks that they're going to be a lot later than they planned on when they factor in the delay waiting for a tow truck to pull them out of the ditch they slid into.

It's human nature to think that all those TV segments on safe driving and slowing your speed due to weather conditions applies to the other guy. Can't be me, I'm a safe driver. I can remember a couple of years ago coming back from Rochester with a girlfriend. We hit a bad snow storm just before Syracuse on the thruway. She slowed down because of slick roads and poor visibility. Cars were whizzing by us and I'm cracking jokes about getting out to push the car all the way home. Sure enough, down the road a mile or so we find all those idiots have slid into the median or off the road on the right side. I've always wondered what part of slushy roads and hydroplaning they don't get.

Last night we acquired a whole inch of snow. So this morning when I started out on my round of errands I was taking it easy because the roads looked wet. In this area, wet looking roads on a cold morning might have black ice on them. Black ice is particularly treacherous because it's slicker than other types of ice. It's a thin film of ice that doesn't have air bubbles in it to make it rough and is a bit like skating on a mirror. You have no control over the car if you hit a big enough patch of it.

I'm driving about 10 miles less than the speed limit and in my rear view mirror I am observing a pick up truck approaching from behind. Pretty soon the front of the truck is looming in my rear view and we're in a no passing zone. He gave new meaning to the term tailgating, believe me. I was almost beginning to think he was going to drive up and push me when we arrived at a straight section of the road and he flew on by me. He was gone in 60 seconds or so I thought.

I continued on down to the city and as I came around the curve that takes me through the underpass, I catch a glimpse of the same pickup truck in the parking lot of the bowling alley. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for the flashing red lights of the police car parked right behind him. I wonder how late for work that made him?

When it comes to computers, I'm not always the brightest bulb in the lamp. All security programs that I have on it have been existing since the purchase of this computer. During the three week shut down of my computer, because of the move, I lost the ability to receive updates. Neither McAfee nor Windows were overjoyed and presented me with a number of alert balloons telling me that my computer was at risk. I grant that had I been the possessor of an internet connection I would have agreed with them. However, with no connection I couldn't update, and since I couldn't update I wasn't concerned with the risk. It was annoying to have all those balloons popping up at inopportune times because they would prevent my typing until I cancelled the balloon only to have it come back again. I like birthday balloons, parade balloons and other colorful celebratory balloons, but that type of balloon I can live without.

My brief connection with dialup occurred because of those balloons. I just got sick of them, signed up to use dialup until my DSL was available. Once I had an internet connection both Windows and McAfee knocked themselves out downloading their updates into the computer and I had balloon free computer use again. That is, until this morning. This morning during the download of one of McAfee's daily updates I suddenly received a balloon telling me I wasn't authorized to receive this update. I had to confirm I was who I said I was at the McAffee site and then the updates continued. During this time the Windows balloon telling me my firewall was off kept appearing. It occurred to me that the firewall usually is off when McAfee downloads stuff into their program. I have no idea what the problem with the McAfee program was except I now seem to have features I didn't have before.

I didn't have McAfee site advisor before this. This handy little gadget is supposed to tell me what sites I'm on that I shouldn't be on. I suppose this is kind of nice to have, except as far as I understand it, McAfee is supposed to protect my computer if I do get onto a site that has something on it it shouldn't have. I pay $75 a year for protection, so why do I need all this other stuff? I haven't noticed any real slowing down of my computer with all this junk downloaded into it, but I'm wondering why this is all necessary. I grant that hackers and spyware designers are pretty smart, but doesn't the program do what it claims to do, and if not why am I paying them to do whatever they're supposed to do? Another thought. If I needed it, why wasn't it installed when I started paying McAfee in July of 2006?

Those computers at work that are internet connected had Norton on them. Please note I said had. Apparently the Norton Antivirus program slowed down the computers so badly that they got rid of it. The co-ordinator said she had the same problem at home on her computer so she did the same thing. Both my workplace and the co-ordinator use Road Runner. Norton slowed down Road Runner? The work computers are new, they run Vista as an operating program. On the co-ordinators desktop it takes forever to open the client files. Vista is a big program, it's slow, very slow to respond to even simple commands. That computer has no internet connection, it's not allowed because it contains the client files. Maybe Norton isn't what slowed it down?

So, this morning, my few minutes of computer use has stretched out into something I didn't intend and at this point I've been on the computer longer than I planned. I'm going to be on even longer because now I have a balloon from Windows telling me they have an update they can't install for some reason. I guess this means I'm not authorised and need to go to the Microsoft website for some reason. I've told it to install, it says it can't. I think before I do that, I'm going to run my McAfee program to see if I picked up something I shouldn't have yesterday. Computers are designed to drive us crazy, a state of mind that wasn't on my agenda for today.