Couch 252: Kitties and Hawks

RIP Hotlips (Loretta Swit). She was so funny in that role. I quit watching after McLain Stevenson left - I never could abide Col Potter (and he had played a crazy general earlier in the same show) or the BJ Hunicutt/charles characters.

Yes, she almost outshone the movie Hotlips.

5 more days of work before I’m off for 9 days straight. Ahhhh.

Who else is tired of hearing about the TV couple getting pardoned? Their faces are at every turn. I’m over them. lol

I hate them so much. Nothing means anything anymore.

Exactly.

Apparently, party affiliation does.

Have any of you ever had to sign a treatment plan *before* the first therapy session? A friend was asked to do so and balked at “you agree to the goals outlined by your therapist” before even speaking to the provider.

I certainly wouldn’t sign that, and I’ve never encountered it myself..

Yes, party affiliation and/or having enough money (or your family having enough money) that you can buy off people in power. I forget who, but someone recently got pardoned because their mother paid to attend a million-dollar-a-plate dinner or something like that.

And I wouldn't sign a treatment plan before speaking to the provider, no. I've actually never signed a formal treatment plan with any of my therapists. (I mean, I signed a consent to treatment, but that's different, and a legal thing.)

Is it some really specific sort of therapy like DBT? (Even then, I'd balk at it.) Or just a regular therapist?

I signed an informal treatment agreement when I was in a DBT group. It wasn’t binding or anything. Just that I agreed to the rules and group format but that was on the first night of the group-not before hand. I only stayed in the group a short time. It was a crock of ****. At least for me.

Hi Couch,

I'm feeling pretty restless today after an anniversary day therapy session.
I feel psychologically raw, too...but I found that I couldn't get close enough to the feelings.

Another session next week, and then a break again...

Hard to know what to do with myself right now.

Take care,

Lost

Hugs to you, Lost. Please be gentle with yourself today and this week. Could you try to write down what you're feeling or create art, something else to express it?

Hugs, Lost. Yes, be gentle with yourself like LT said. It’s a hard (understatement) day. Do whatever it is that you need to do to take care of yourself. You’ve been through so much. I can’t even imagine. Just listen to your heart and gut. Try to surround yourself with as many good things that you can: people, places, memories, anything. Take care of yourself.

Thanks LT and Scarlet,

I've kind of been floating through today but may create something tomorrow.
More than the playlist of songs that make me think of Steve, I mean.

I have a check in with my contact at the helpline on Monday, in advance of working on Tuesday - the anniversary of the day I found out.

Thanks for being here,

Lost

Did it ever really? And if it did - then we have another other side "The quality of mercy is not strained..." and so on (Merchant of Venice -shakespeare). Les Miserables and its portrayal of justice and injustice. Not to mention - there is not a universal agreement on what is justice or injustice.
I am sure that ATAT can give a quote from some ancient greek or roman or macedonian that expresses this. It seems to be human nature to think our corruption is different.

In my cynical way (and I am a relativist) - I think humans are just like this - always have been and always will be.

“The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
play Julius Caesar - Wm Shakespeare

In my day, Tammy Faye and her frauding husband STAYED in jail!

Thats mostly what i was meaning. I shoulda been more clear but i didnt want to seem unchristian.

Oh i am going straight to heck i know.

I am an atheist - there is nothing I could say about religion, particularly a couple of specific ones, that would be prudent here.

[QUOTE=unaluna;7493810]In my day, Tammy Faye and her frauding husband STAYED in jail!

/QUOTE]

Ah - but others didn't. Wealth/power keeping people out of prison, war, bad hospitals, things they didn't want, giving them ways to get what they wanted etc has always happened. Certain religions allowing people to buy their way out of hell or purgatory or whatever other form of control they wielded over the poor and uneducated. People lying on the stand, being bought off or frightened off has gone on for forever - read about some of the roman trials. And again -the wrong person has taken the fall countless times as well. Tammy didn't go to jail - just her husband. Which is good because I doubt they had enough eye shadow and makeup for her in the big house.

Human weakness - and there you get religion, original sin, none of us deserves to be here, we must all be forgiven. Stopdog, you just explained religion to me!

Sure, right there in the Iliad, 2700 years old. Probably something in the Epic of Gilgamesh, 1000 years before the Iliad, too.

In other news, I’ve discovered a malapropism squared. You know how people say “peak your interest” when it should be pique? So now people know enough to know peak doesn’t make sense, but they’re assuming it must be a spelling mistake, so they’re saying “perk interest.”

Thats discouraging, esp as i was just now rejoicing that the captioning on my soap opera today used pique. Like it said in the bible, the grammar gods giveth, and the grammar gods taketh away.

oh that is so depressing

Percolate interest. I think thats a thing. But we dont want to kill off pique for perk!

Ugh, the pique/peak/perk thing is annoying...

Though still not at the frustrating level of "I should of known" instead of "I should've known" or "I should have known" (or "could of" instead of "could have"). Wish I could just turn off the copy editor part of my brain when reading Facebook posts and such...

Though part of what got me one of my past copy editing jobs was mentioning that I notice errors in restaurant menus (they actually told me after the interview that it was part of what led them to hire me).

(Note: If there are any grammatical errors in this post, I've been awake less than an hour and am only partway into my coffee!)

What’s everyone up to today? I have a backyard party to attend at 2 but in only staying an hour. The party is for the child I care for during the week. They are having his first birthday party today and invited me. It’s hot where I am and it’s in a backyard and they are calling for rain so I plan to only stay an hour. Not to mention they are going away starting tomorrow so I’m off for a whole week! I love the family but I’m rid of them for a week so I’m only going to show my face. Haha.

I'm sure they'll appreciate you making an appearance. Glad you'll have a week off!

Hot here, too, with some rain predicted off and on. I'm either taking D up to visit my parents for a bit or else we're meeting out for dinner somewhere in my area (D has to make up her mind). There's a chance she'd do an overnight at my parents' so that would be nice.

H is going with his mom to a service for a family friend that passed away a week ago--she's only planning to stay like 30 minutes, and we didn't want to try taking D. It's not a regular funeral/memorial service--more like a "stop by and pay respects at the funeral home. They're having a regular memorial at the end of the month, which I'll try to attend (I met him a few times), if someone can watch D. As D in a funeral home or at a memorial, while she's in a phase of calling people "stupid" and "ugly" then laughing about it does not seem like a good combination...(we're doing our best to work on that, but she doesn't seem to understand that it's hurtful--part of the autism for her).