Question marks and periods

I found this snippet of conversation randomly when looking for a file the other day.  I don't remember this conversation occurring, but I know it was with a 3rd grader with autism that I worked with several years ago.  It still makes me smile. 
       
           "Alissa, do you know what a question mark looks like?”

            “Yep-uh.”

            “Can you draw one for me?”  I handed her a pencil and she made one correctly.

            “Awesome, Alissa.  You use question marks at the end of a question.  A question is when you are asking something, like "what's your name?' or 'is this your hat?'  Do you know what a question is?”

            “Yep-uh,” she said, after a pause.

            “So if I said, 'Alissa, do you like apples?' is that a question?”

            No response.

            “Listen: 'do you like apples?'"

            “Do you like apples?” Alissa said softly.

            “'Do you like apples?' is a question because I’m asking you, and I need you to answer me.  If it needs an answer, it's a question.  Your homework today is to put a question mark at the end of the questions, and a period at the end of the sentences.  Okay?”

            “Okay,” Alissa said, taking the pencil I offered her.  We did a few more examples, and then I asked her to complete the questions on the homework sheet. 

            About fifteen minutes later, she was finished and only about half of them were correct.  It was obvious she didn’t understand, so I explained it again, and asked her a few questions.

            “Alissa, what does this say?”

            “Does the man have the hat?” Alissa read.

            “Does that need a question mark or a period?”

            “A period,” Alissa said.

            “Think again.  Is it asking something?”

“Yep-uh.”

“Yes it is, it’s asking if the man has the hat.  So if it’s asking, it’s a question.  What do you put at the end of questions?”

“A period.”

“No Alissa.  What goes at the end of a question?”

“A question mark,” Alissa said, happily.

“Hooray, awesome Alissa, that’s right!  What about number four?  Read number 4.”

            “The cat is in the chair.”

            “Is that a question?”

            “Yes.”

            “Look again.”

            “I mean no.”

            “No, it’s not, so what do you put at the end?”

            “A period.”    

            “That’s right Alissa, great!  Now read number 6.”

            “Do you have a cat?” she read.

            “Is that a que…”

            “Question mark,” she said, putting a question mark at the end of the sentence.

            “Alissa, that’s right!  Awesome!  That’s so great!  Do you understand?”

            “Yep-uh.”

            “Why did you put a question mark at the end of that sentence?”

            “Because I like question marks,” she said, smiling.

We'll just call this "Day 3 and 3/4"

I told you I would fail!  Day 3 of NaBloPoMo = total fail.  However!  I am going to do several things to make up for this failure because I am obsessive about never failing anything I ever set out to do I have a perfectly legitimate reason why a post just didn't happen last night.  And I'm also writing two posts tonight so it will LOOK like this is a post from day three, even if I'm writing all about how it's not.  I'm not a cheater, and I'm honest to a fault...but if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it, dammit!  And you better not try to stop me along the way. 

So if you will remember, on day 2 of NaBloPoMo, I wrote about my Y-Axis Crises.  I got a good chunk of the presentation done on Wednesday at work, and then a little more done at home.  Unfortunately, I had to do most of it at work because I needed my client's chart to write the presentation, and access to the network at work access his graphs and data.  On Thursdays, I typically have a meeting from 8:30 - 9, a client from 9:30-11:30, a client from 12- 2, and the remainder of the day free.  "This will be fine," thought I in my ridiculous naïveté, "I'll just spend 2-5 finishing up the presentation."

So in to work I go Thursday morning, look at the schedule, and realize a colleague was sick and I was put in the 2:30-4:30 slot to cover for her client.  Brilliant.  I went to morning meeting, came down to my desk and had a phone call.  I called the person back and spent 9-9:25 on the phone, at which point I cut them off and ran to the second floor to prep for my 9:30.  I was in session until 11:30, at which point I realized I was starving as I had not eaten breakfast.  I let that client go, and was stopped in the hallway on my way down to my desk by a supervisor and then 2 colleagues who needed my help.  I stopped, helped, ran down to my desk, dropped off my stuff and ran to the bathroom.  I then looked at the clock, realized it was 11:55, and ran upstairs, lunchless, to  my 12:00.  12:00 appointment was a mess and a half, complete with a disrobing child and a 45 minute tantrum.  At 2, I headed down to my office and put my lunch in the microwave.  As I sat down, waiting the 2 minutes for my lunch to heat up, the phone rang.  It was the special educator I have been attempting to contact for 2 weeks.  And, it turned out, she really liked to talk.  I sat at my desk, attempting to sound cool calm and collected while gathering all the necessary data and listening to my lonely lunch beep in the microwave.  At 2:18, I started getting frantic text messages on my phone, my pager went off, and I got an email all at the same time.  My next client was taking his pants off and screaming in the lobby.  I then heard my name over the intercom broadcast across the hospital (first and hopefully last time THAT happens), telling me to report to the lobby immediately.  I hurriedly but politely get the teacher off of the phone and dash out of the office to the lobby where I find a half-naked adolescent boy lying on the floor screaming.  My colleague pops out of the elevator at the same time and we transport him up the elevator to the session room.  By then it's 2:30 and time to start session, so in I go, dreaming about my lonely lunch in the cold microwave.  By 3:30 I was desperate and asked a friend to take data for me while I ran and grabbed a granola bar from my desk.  I sat in my chair for 2 minutes before hopping back up and going back into session.  I finished up at 4:30 by transporting a- this time- fully clothed child to his car.  I retrieved my lonely lunch from the microwave and promptly spaced out at my desk for a good 15 minutes while I ate and attempted to recover.

So I guess you could say that put me back a tad time-wise.  Never fear!  In times like these, I have a Super Power Focusing Machine I can use to focus with unusual intensity.  And I did.  For about an hour, I focused hard-core and whipped those graphs into shape.  I left no data label unentered, no Y-axis mislabeled.  I was an Excel Goddess.

...and then, as inevitably happens, the engine on my Super Power Focusing Machine fizzled out and died like my dad's riding lawn mower did every time he mowed the lawn.  It started out fine, then made a couple weird noises, coughed a couple times, and slowly sounded like it was being drawn and quartered until it stopped and fizzled out completely, followed by a loud POP you learned to wait for.  By 7:15, I had popped.  I emailed the presentation to myself to finish at home, packed it all up, caught the shuttle, sat in traffic due to an accident in the city, and finally made it home by 8:35. 

But wait!  My day doesn't end there.  Nope.  I could have come home and written a complaining, whining blog post, much like this one, if it ended there.  But instead, I came home, took the dog for a walk, ate dinner, let the dog out again, and pulled out the presentation to rearrange it, add two slides, check it over, and finish it up before writing.  An hour and a half later, I was done.  I was happy.  And I wasn't even tired!  I hit Control+S one more time for good measure and closed out powerpoint to email it to myself again and save it to my flash drive.

As soon as I hit that damn little X, I realized what I had done and scared the crap out of the dog by yelling, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!"

I had opened the powerpoint from my email, but never actually saved it anywhere.  All the times I hit Control+S, I wasn't actually saving it some place permanent.  I was saving it in the no-mans land in which opened but unsaved documents exist.  And when I closed it out, the hour and a half of work it was gone forever. 

In spite of the fact that I knew it was gone, I spent 30 minutes searching for it, hoping it would turn up in some obscure corner of my computer.  Useless.  So I re-opened my email, opened that original attachment--SAVED IT!--and spent another hour re-doing what I had just done.

One would think 3 years of college + almost 5 years of grad school would have taught me to save my work in multiple places.  One could also reasonably assume that this education taught me how to not hate Excel, and how to quickly and efficiently deal with Y-Axis crises. 

But no.  I went into psychology to work with people.  People have wrong buttons I can push, but I can tell when I'm pushing them and we can work through the wrong button mishap.  Computers?  One wrong button and it's all over.  People don't retain all the information I give them, but they also aren't hardwired to do so.  Computers are.  Any button I push it's supposed to remember, and I KNOW the information is in there.  It has to be.  It just won't let me know where. People are human--they can't read my mind, so they don't always do what I want them to do, but we work through it.  Computers on the other hand are supposed to fix themselves and do exactly what I want when I want, regardless of whether or not I push the right buttons.  Because...well because that's just how it's supposed to be.  And even a doctoral degree is never going to convince me otherwise.

So, by the time I took the dog out, took a shower, packed my lunch, and brushed my teeth, it was 1:30 AM, I was not on speaking terms with my laptop, and NaBloPoMo was the LAST thing on my mind. 

(PS - The presentation was today at 12, the powerpoint was finished, and I'm pretty sure I rocked it!  I hit all the major criteria: speak and have fully formed English words others can hear come from your mouth; display pretty graphs and pretend you know what they mean; use big words; remain standing and keep breathing throughout.  Yep yep...I call that a success). 

Y-Axis Crises

It's day two of NaBloPoMo...and I have a presentation to write for Friday.  It should have been an easy throw together sort of deal, except for the fact that that's not how things work out for me.  Instead, I've spent a really long time fixing what should have been done by someone else months ago and remembering how much I hate Excel.

So because I need to write this presentation, I had to waste 2.5 hours on data labels, phase lines, formulas, over-extended X-axes, behavior rates per minute versus percent of opportunity on the y-axis, and graphs with and without baseline data.  Looking for a fun way to spend your Wednesday night?  This, my friends, is it.

In the middle of the percent of opportunity vs. rates per minute crisis, I decided to take a break.  "You need to write something tonight," I told myself.  "You can't fail NaBloPoMo on day 2.  That's just totally lame."  So I opened up my documents folder to find something I had written that could pass for tonight.  It's totally legit to recycle old writing when you're having a crisis on at least 4 different Y axes, right?

Upon opening my documents, however, I pretty much gave up hope.  It's all organized into folders and nice and neat, just like I like it.  I had a choice of such fun options as: "Dissertation" and "Research" and "Psychopharmacology" and "Work."  Sometimes I write fun little notes about something that happened at work and they end up in my work folder, so I opened that up, realizing I was getting desperate.  In this folder are hand-outs on three-step guided compliance, time-out protocols, and a particularly fun document labeled "Private Parts Touching Rules" followed by "Private Time Story" and "Private Areas Social Story."  It's much more fun to write social stories about masturbation than it is to spend 2 hours on data labels, believe me. 

"I have nothing exciting to write about," I thought, closing the "Work" folder.  "The only things I write now are progress notes, initial evaluations and discharge summaries.  And masturbation social stories.  That's not exciting at all.  I have nothing exciting to write about.  Nothing ever happens.  My life is consumed by Y-axis crises."

That was when I remembered several important things:

1.       I work in a job where I say things such as, "No, the rose stays with Jesus.  Put rose on Jesus.  Buddy, we can't take things that don't belong to us, give the rose back to Jesus.  Put the rose on Jesus' feet like this.  Thanks for giving the rose back to Jesus, bud."  And things like: "my friend, we both know Tom Cruise isn't out in the hallway.  No, Tom Cruise does NOT want to talk to me. No bud, the Easter Bunny isn't here and he didn't give you that money. Now hand me the money that is in your sock."  And, "Listen kiddo, I'll give you a high five or tickles, but popping out your veins is not available."  And, "Time to work.  First work, then look like Cousin It."  This fact alone makes my life interesting.

2.       The past 3 days have been one continuous Sneaky Hate Spiral.  It makes writing difficult and data label crises nearly unbearable.

3.       I can't remember the third important thing I thought of and I need to get back to data label phase line y-axis hell.

One of these days, I'll write something interesting.  Once I get out of the sneaky hate spiral, and once the presentation is written and the graphs look semi-presentable.  Because right now, it looks like somebody vomited data points, data labels, and phase lines alllllllll over my graph with the incorrect Y-axis and the over-extended X-axis.  And the mislabeled/incorrectly idenified Y-axis with the wrong scale.  And the missing baseline data.

Frankly, "vomit" isn't a good look for a graph.

That was easy...

So apparently I was in a fantastic, ambitious, conquer-the-world sort of mood this weekend.  I was on top of things.  I had it all together.  Sunday, I was chilling out, basking in my momentary "having-it-all-togetherness," when I suddenly decided that I was going to act on my promise to "write more."

You know, when I work with my clients and they tell me about something they want to accomplish, I have them set very specific and concrete goals.  "You want to socialize more?  How about going out with a friend once this week."  "You want to exercise more?  This week, go to the gym twice instead of once."  We take it slow.  We make concrete plans and we stick to them.  Sometimes.  If we're lucky.

But when I decide I want to do something, "concrete" and "specific" disappears.  Hence the promise to "write more."  What "more" means I'm never sure and I am careful to never define.  I know better than to box myself in like that.  Because I don't define "more," I have left myself able to go through a several month period of not writing, then writing something once and saying "THAT WAS MORE!" because once is more than never.  Once I've written something, I can tell myself that I AM writing more for...oh...a good 3 weeks, because writing one time during THIS 3 week period was more than I wrote in the LAST 3 week period, and because I'm lazy avoidant good at fooling myself like that.   

The thing is, though,  I feel better when I am writing, and I know that.  Even if I write nothing but inane drivel that would bore an earthworm, I just feel better when I write.  Writing for me is like having a kid that looks just like me that follows me everywhere.  You know the kid that people look between kid and parent and say "there's no denying he/she's yours"?  That's how Writing and I are.  There's no denying we need to be together.  Right now, though, Writing is much less like a cute little kid that wants to be just like mom, and much more like the angsty teenager that stays in her bedroom blaring loud, angsty music, wearing black clothes and eyeliner and piercing her lip and her eyebrow and lord only knows what else while refusing to be seen in public with me because...well just because.  And honestly, that's fine, because if she's going to act like that, I don't much want to be seen in public with her either, even if she's mine and we belong together. 

So back to this weekend.  I was bopping along with my happy self on Sunday when I decided that I was going to "write more" for real, and that I was going to hold myself accountable.  Yep yep.   I took my unusually motivated self over to the BlogHer website and signed up for May's NaBloPoMo, which means, for those unfamiliar, that I am going to write a blog post every day for the month of May.  So there is my "concrete and specific" plan (so much for taking it slow).  I will write 31 blog posts in 31 days.  My inner behavioral psychologist is happy with this plan.  My Writer just turns up the music in her iPod and practices her best blank "I don't give a crap" stare.  The rest of me thinks I must just be one taco short of the combination plate.

I'll be honest: I don't expect to be successful with this plan.  There is going to be a day or two (or nine or ten) when I don't post.  It's going to happen.  But I'm going to try anyway, because as it was, I wasn't moving anywhere, was feeling generally stuck, and this is motivation.  And I need to practice failing anyway.  It'll be good for me.  (It's okay, sometimes I laugh at the things I tell myself, too).

So if I fail...don't laugh.  If I write boring posts of no substance and have nothing to say...tell me I had a really winning title.  If I write posts that make no sense in which I'm clearly falling asleep, or posts in which I become Grumpy McGrumperson, or posts in which I do nothing but complain...know that someday I will have something interesting and insightful and funny and deep to say and check back after a couple months.  Or shoot me a prompt in the comments as an attempt to save your bleeding eyes.

You know, I've never done this before, but it would seem I'm on a roll.   After all, I wrote this today, which would indicate that I'm writing more.  And isn't that the goal? 

Mission accomplished...for at least another 24 hours.

The one with all the begging.

It isn't too often that I say things like this, but I'm pro-honesty here, and I'm desperate.  So I am going to write 4 words right here that are harder for me to write than you can imagine.  Are you ready?  Okay.

I. Need. Your. Help.

Yes.  You read that correctly.

I need your help.

I have a problem that I can't seem to find an antidote for, and I am looking for suggestions.  I've written about this problem before, but it's getting progressively worse, and it's irritating the hell out of me.

The problem is this: I can't write.  Like seriously, I can't write.  It's not just a little bit.  It's not that I just can't write for the blog.  It's that I can't write at all.  Writing this is like pulling teeth.  From a snake.  A poisonous snake.  With its jaw wired shut.

I've tried everything I can think of.  I've read books on writing.  I've read books not about writing.  I've tried writing prompts.  I've tried starting from something I wrote before.  I've tried handwriting with a pen, a pencil, and a magic marker.  I've tried just writing whatever words or thoughts come into my head with my eyes open and with my eyes closed.  If I thought standing on my head in the shower under cold water and writing with my toes would help, I swear to god I would try it, but I am giving up hope.  My internal writing mechanism is broken, I can't find or afford a repair shop, and it would take too long to get the replacement part anyway.  I'm about ready to just give up.

That would be fine.  Really.  If my writing days were done and I could say, "huh, don't want to write anymore, can't write anymore...guess I'm not a writer now," then I would move on and become somebody who makes sculptures out of dryer lint, or plays the kazoo really well.  If that was the case, I could just abandon the writer part of me as something that was good while it lasted.  But the thing is, I can't say that.  I can't say I don't want to write anymore because I do.  Desperately.  So.Very.Heartbreakingly.Desperately.  It's impossible to explain.  (Or rather, I could probably explain it if I could write, but I can't).

The typical ways of getting through writers block...all those great ideas tossed out there by well meaning published authors...are just pissing me off.  "Just write," they all say.  "Just put the pen on the paper and write.  It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be perfect, don't write for an audience, don't worry about spelling or grammar or punctuation.  Just get the words on the page."  That's great.  Seriously.  I'm really glad they made some money off of that advice.  But seriously?  If I could write, I'd be fucking doing it.  If I could get words...any words...on the paper, they would be on the paper.  When I say I can't write, I mean that I can't.  I just can't.  Not without panic levels of anxiety, or feeling nauseous, or physically shaking.  I'm not even trying to write about something serious...hell, I would write about Winnie-The-Pooh if I could keep the pen on the paper.  But I can't.  The only thing I have found that works to get rid of the panic, and the nausea, and the shaking, is to stop trying to write.  Typically, I make myself write one sentence (so I don't completely reinforce my avoidance), and then I go do something that doesn't attempt to drown me in a substance I can't even identify.

So I need help.  Please.  Am I the only one who has ever felt this way?  Or was there a time when you couldn't write?  Or play music?  Or sing or dance or move or make sculptures out of dryer lint, even though you wanted to?  What did you do?  What helped?  What didn't help?  Is it worth the struggle through hell to get back to that place of creating again? 

Was there a magic book or website or writing prompt or star you wished on that changed things for you?  Did you set up an altar to some Norwegian Writing Goddess that I haven't heard of or prayed to sufficiently?  Any words of wisdom out there?  Any words of understanding?  HELP ME!

Don't tell me to just write.  If you do, I swear to everything that is holy, I WILL lose my mind.  And it won't be pretty.

Touch Me

Touch me
to prove that I'm not broken.
The fault lines across my thighs
shiver as the cracks in my soul give way
and crackle like an ancient statue life has forgotten.
It's clear that History has been unkind:
she left me only empty eyes, a gazeless stare
a bust without arms to touch the world.
Chipped paint, used,
and broken--almost.
This remnant is intriguing or perhaps
has the air of something that was beautiful (once)
or has that potential somewhere in its core
if only the light is right and
the kindling beneath your faith is lit.

As for Time, well, she does nothing to speed the healing.
Everything you heard of her
is lies: even she
was not meant to be trusted.
Two years or two thousand
History has a way of breaking into my flesh via nighttime,
the smell of a damp new springtime
when everything but me
is born anew.

Undaunted, though ignored as she has been,
Time marches steadily forward
leaving my Now ever in the past
like an earthquake, on this night,
she shakes me from the ground up
leaves me breathless, again,
and broken,
but not destroyed.
She is fickle, after all, even in devastation, so
she leaves the pieces and I
survey the wreckage around me
search for new ways of picking up the pieces.
I reach for them with limbless arms and soulful,
empty eyes that beg you to
touch me
and prove that I'm not broken.

Why I don't want to give my dog a haircut...

"Are you scared of dogs, or do you want to say hello?" I asked the little boy on the sidewalk.  He was frozen, turning his head to see me and Marshall out of his right eye.  He didn't answer, but continued to struggle in an attempt to see me and the dog.  He looked up at my face, which was clearly not in focus for him, and then down at the dog, his head turning back and forth, making the distance between us look much greater than it was.  I looked to his mother sitting on the porch, still unable to read Little Guy's body language.  "Is he scared of dogs?" I asked.

"Oh no," she said, "he's great with dogs.  We just taught him to stand still and never run around new dogs."

I turned back to Little Guy, still frozen in his tracks and knelt down to his level.  "You did just what mom taught you to do, didn't you?"  He nodded and his thick glasses slid down his nose.  "Good for you, you must be a really good learner."  He nodded again and his glasses slid down further.  He reached up awkwardly and smashed them to his face with a flat hand, leaving dirty streak marks across the already smudged lenses.  I looked from his Thomas the Train shoes, to his Thomas and Friends shirt, to the blue eye patch with train tracks covering his left eye.  "Hey, I love Thomas," I said.  "It looks like you like Thomas, too."

"Mmmhmmm," he said.  "And Percy." 

"Oh definitely Percy.  What about Gordon?"

"Yeah!" he said, excitedly.  "And James!"

"How could we forget about James!" I asked.  Marshall tugged at his leash, desperately wanting to kiss Little Guy all over his smudged glasses.  "Hey, do you want to say hi to Marshall?" I asked.  "He's very friendly."  Little Guy nodded and walked closer.  I made Marshall sit and put my hand on his back so he would remember not to jump up on Little Guy.  Little Guy turned his head and looked at Marshall before extending a flat palm for him to sniff, just as his mother had taught him.  Marshall licked his grimy fingers and Little Guy closed his eye and giggled.  "He gives lots of kisses," I said.

Little Guy took another step closer and patted Marshall's head.  Marshall attempted to lick his knees and Little Guy stepped to the side of him.  He closed his eye again and buried his fingers in Marshall's fur.  "He has long hair, doesn't he?" I asked.  Little Guy nodded and then dropped to his knees, rubbing his hands and arms up and down Marshall's sides and back.  "He REALLY needs a hair cut!"  I stated.

"Why?" asked Little Guy. 

"He is going to be too hot in this warm weather!" I said.  "Plus, his hair is getting too long and tangly."

Little Guy closed his eye again and wrapped his arms around Marshall, putting his cheek against his back.  "Don't cut it," he murmured.  "It makes him soft.  And cuddly.  It feels good and cuddly."  I was quiet for a moment and let Little Guy sit and hug my good and cuddly dog.  I know what the good and cuddly warmth can do, and Little Guy clearly didn't need my words or attention.

I hope Little Guy had a dog inside his house, and, I hope, his dog is soft and in need of a haircut.