Kindergarten

Every week I get to spend some time with kindergartners in their classroom. Five and six year olds are full of life and energy and love to tell stories -- that have nothing to do with the current topic. One of the reasons it is so fun to work with them is because progress is readily seen. You can tell a lot about how ready a child is to start writing by how he colors and draws. I'll give you an example of one boy. At the beginning of the year he held a crayon or pencil with his fist and scribbled away. When asked what he had drawn he had an explanation. "That's me and Mom and Dad at the zoo and that's the lion!" He had difficulty tracing a straight line or drawing a circle and without being able to do those basic shapes, it is hard to write letters. So at the beginning we used lots of hand-over-hand as we worked on the letters of his name. Using small bits of chalk or broken crayons got him to hold his pencil correctly. Writing on a chalk board or in boxes gave him some boundaries and extra feedback and in time he was consistently writing his first name.

Two weeks ago I watched him as he drew a picture and knew improvement was being made when the first thing on the paper was a circle and a couple of lines in an attempt to draw a stick figure. By the time he had finished it was covered with scribbles but I had seen signs of progress. This week when he opened his writing folder I didn't have to ask him what he had drawn. It was clearly a snowman: three circles, one on top of the other with a hat on top. There were only a few scribbles on the page. He told me he wanted to draw something about the movie Zootopia and began with a small circle and two lines on top, and a couple of lines going down. It wasn't a recognizable rabbit and his fox was about the same but he was using controlled and small movements. His building had no sharp corners but he was trying to make a rectangle. I am rejoicing to see this boy increase his skills.

The next day I visited a classroom which was rather chaotic at times at the beginning of the year. There is a runner in that classroom so there is a gate at each door and the kids needed multiple reminders to go from one center to another or back to their desk and actually do what they were supposed to be doing. This week when I walked in, everyone was where they were supposed to be and the noise level was appropriate for the activity. When it was time to move from one center to another it was done with minimal reminders. The kids on the computers moved to the library. Those at the library went to the table and began to draw... It was amazing compared to what it was like a month ago. It's great for everyone involved when there are more good days than bad.

Writer's Workshop

Because of my role as a school occupational therapist I am often in classrooms during writing time which is usually called writer's workshop. Kindergarteners draw pictures and label them. First graders write a few sentences about a "small moment." Third graders add describing words and more details to their sentences while drawing a "quick sketch". Today's story is too long to qualify as a "small moment" and I have no sketch. However, I will try and edit before I publish.

Last Monday morning I was sitting with a co-worker doing some computer work and I heard some buzzing that didn't go away. My co-worker suggested it sounded like someone outside with a weed-whacker. That seemed plausible except this went on and on and on. Eventually I realized the noise was coming from my bag. My phone, that had taken a quick dip in some water that morning, was continually vibrating. The only way to stop it was to take out the battery.

After work I went to a phone repair shop where I learned that 1) my phone was not worth the $65 to take it apart and dry it out, and 2) once a phone gets wet it is only a matter of time before it dies. I have been frustrated for some time by the lack of internal memory on my phone so decided this was a good excuse to upgrade. My next stop was Best Buy where two saleswomen helped me find the best option that fit my budget and typical call, text, and data use. I also decided to get a new number rather than waiting for the previous number to be released by my previous provider. That decision is why this story doesn't qualify as a "small moment."

The next morning I notified co-workers that I could be reached at a new number. In the afternoon I sent a text to a friend from church inviting her to come over for supper. A few minutes later she called, "I tried to text you but I get a response from someone who doesn't know who I am. Are you OK?" It seemed strange but when I got home from work I started notified about half of my contacts of my new number. Some texts came back to me but I later learned that for some strange reason most were ending up on someone else's phone. However, all of the calls appeared to be coming only to my phone.

The next morning I engaged in the futile attempt of reaching an actual human being at my provider's customer service. I couldn't seem to push the right number. (I know; push zero for as many times as it takes.)  At work I asked a co-worker if she had responded to my text. She hadn't at the time but did then and got a response from someone else, "Do I know you?" I then used my co-worker's phone to dialogue with the poor person who was getting texts for Alice when she wasn't Alice. Long story short, this person had an old iPhone she only used to facetime with her friends when connected to WiFi. The number I had been given was tied to her apple account so any time she was online, the texts to her old number went to her phone rather than to mine. A very frustrating situation for us both! I thanked her for clearing up the mystery and assured her I would take care of it as soon as I was off work.

Back to Best Buy where a different salesman figured out I could go online and change my number. That looked and sounded far easier than trying to call customer service and that turned out to be the case.  All that was left to do was to send out numerous texts once again:

This is Alice sending you my 2nd new number in as many days. 

Hope this one isn't connected with someone's Apple account. 

All the responses arrived on my phone. At least I think they did.

Catching up on life

Last week a friend posted on Facebook that she would be in Cedar Rapids for a week and would love to get together with anyone in the area. She wasn't expecting a reply from me but we were both glad that it worked out to spend Sunday afternoon together. We first met at a conference for single missionaries while she was living in Spain and I in France. The last time we saw each other, I was moving to Minneapolis. Five years later, she is now in Germany and I'm in Cedar Falls. Between trips to a Chinese buffet we took turns telling the stories of the past five years. In some ways our lives have had similar twists and turns. God led us to different places and opened up doors that we didn't expect or necessarily want. Last November we both ended up in the hospital: I with a planned surgery to remove my thyroid and she with a bizarre infection in the lining of her lung that the doctor's still can't explain. I was also eager to hear some firsthand stories about the huge influx of refugees in Germany. She gave an encouraging report of how the churches in her area are helping to meet needs and encourage integration in the midst of a government system that is somewhat overwhelmed. The news reports don't talk about the open doors for the gospel but they are there and many of these refugees are open.

After a couple of hours of stories we were the only ones left in the restaurant and began wondering if they were waiting for us to leave so they could move on to other things. As we paid the man commented, "You look like friends who haven't seen each other for a long time." That would pretty much sum it up.

Cultural Diversity

At the end of my 2nd interview for my current position, I was asked what I thought about working in a school district where over 30 languages were spoken. I could hardly wait for them to finish asking the question because I was quite excited at the prospect of living in a more culturally diverse setting. I noticed small things as soon as I arrived: the Indian and Thai restaurants, the Bosnian bakery, the varying shades of black, brown and white skin tones at the grocery store. Once I started work I began to interact with students and adults with varying life experiences and I throughly enjoy it.

Last week one of my co-workers received referrals for two children in a French speaking family. It was great fun to go with an early child educator into their home and translate. I was slightly disappointed when it turned out the kids were doing great and just need to get into preschool. That meant I wouldn't get to go back. The whole experience brought back to mind the visits in the homes of my friends in France.

Tuesday evening I met "Fatima" a student from the Middle East who is here studying English at UNI. The program she is in seeks to match up students with local families. On Saturday I went with her, a cousin and two other international students to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo. It it turned out to be like a fair that is heavy on the livestock and light on all other types of displays. As we entered the first barn, I looked around and Fatima was nowhere to be seen. It turns out she is quite afraid of animals. It was easier for her to walk into the barns where the animals were in pens than the ones where the back of the stalls were open. With some encouragement she was happy to look from a distance. The other two students from Malaysia were eager to pet the llamas and rabbits. When we walked by the goats, Fatima told me of a vivid memory of buying a goat with her father and crying with great fear as only a 5 year old can when he put it in the back of the car to take home. It all made me smile, and she was a good sport. As we left I told her she now had something to write home about. She was puzzled but after I explained, she said she had already sent pictures on snapchat. She told me she had a great time, and I'll take her word for it, though I can't help but wonder if she was telling me that just to make me feel good. I would love to hear what she told her brother and cousin who are also here. Next time we'll do something that doesn't involve animals.

Ready or not, here we go

Though I officially started work on Aug 8, this past week was the first time I had a full 5 day work week. Monday and Wednesday I had time to get a handle on the students on my list -- or at least try to. Tuesday was another day of training for working with those in the birth to 3 age range. I won't be starting that right away, but still needed the training. And Thursday school started. I didn't really know what I was doing (and still don't) but I had been to observe and get to know the teachers and the students. It's been a long time since I've spent much time in an elementary school and here's some of the things I observed.

• Kids who were yawning and saying they were hungry at 10. They are still adjusting to the school schedule.
• Teachers who appeared to spend most of the first two days setting the tone for the year and who was in charge in the classroom. It takes a bit, but the students seemed to be slowly catching on from kindergarten to 5th grade.
• A few kids wandering the halls unsure of where the bathroom was or how to get back to their room. (I felt for them because I was in the same boat and had to ask for assistance a few times.)
• A kindergartener who sat with tears in her eyes throughout the whole time I was in her room.
• A few boys doing stellar work to include the one quiet girl in their group project.
• Teachers who knew what their daily schedule was for next week and others who knew what the plan was for today and a general idea of what is to come.
• Secretaries know everything. Really they do. They gave me teachers for everyone on my roster, directions, and opened the locked office for me. To top it off they all appeared calm in the midst of the controlled chaos.
• In a crowded classroom, an experienced teacher put the well-behaved kids in the middle and the ones with the most wiggles around the edge. 
• Teachers who addressed issues quietly and without the rest of the class being aware that there even had been an "issue." 
• By the end of day 2 I had a better idea of what questions to ask so I can nail down a schedule.

I may not know what I'm doing but I've been told that is OK and even to be expected. I'm grateful for my mentor and other fellow OTs that I see back at the office who answer my questions and assure me it will get better, even if it does take a few years.

A New Job!

I have started a new job. After working for 20 months as an OT with the geriatric population in a nursing home setting, I'm now working with AEA267 as an OT in the Waterloo, IA school district. That is a big switch in many ways. Instead of working with those who are 90 I'll be working with 9 year olds. I've gone from a small company to a state agency with around 600 employees. There is much to tell but since I've just had a few days of orientation, I'll stick to the story of how this came to be.

It started last winter with our declining and varying caseload. I was hired to work 40 hours a week but the actual hours worked depended upon the number of people who needed my services. Some days I worked 4 hours and the next I worked 10 with little advance notice. That pushed me to start looking for something else. There are few OT jobs in northwest Iowa and I didn't want to move to work with a similar company as I didn't think I would find a better one to work with. And if I was to move farther away, I wanted to work in schools so I would have vacations and in general be more available to spend time with my parents. I filled out numerous online applications and had an initial phone interview for a position in Arizona. That seemed too far away so I didn't follow through on that one. After several months of waiting, I had two more interviews for positions closer to home.

In the meantime my landlord would not let me have a month-to-month lease and I needed to give my notice before I knew if I would be offered a position. I prayed that I would know where I was going by the time I moved out. I received a call offering me the position on Friday, April 30 about 30 minutes before I left work to complete the final preparations before the moving crew showed up to load the trailer. I was very glad to know that I had a destination. My second thought was, "I'm going to France next summer!"

I continued working until the beginning of July when I moved back to my parents basement. Among other things I took an online refresher course in pediatrics where I learned the importance of tummy time and why crawling is so important for a child's development. I also went on vacation with Mom and my 13 year old niece, Elizabeth. I'll save those stories for another post. We picked Dad up in Indianapolis on July 30 after his two week bike trip from Lincoln, NE and headed home stopping through Cedar Falls to show them my new apartment. I moved in on Aug 3 and thanks to Uncle Steve and Mom and Dad's help, I felt pretty settled by the weekend even though I can't always remember where I put things.

Comfort foods

I recently heard an interview about how we learn to eat. It starts with what our mothers ate before before we were born. We are hard wired to like sweetness and dislike things that are bitter. From there, what we find tasty is largely based on what our parents put on the table when we were young. I grew up on meat, potatoes, and vegetables from the garden seasoned with salt, pepper and onion or whatever was in the Hamburger Helper packets. Thankfully Mom branched out as more foods became available in area grocery stores. There are only two things I don’t remember liking growing up. The texture of watermelon ruined it for me. I was very put off by both the taste and texture of liver. My parents required us to at least eat a little bit of everything on the table but I didn’t have to eat any watermelon. We did have to eat liver – every Saturday. My brothers and I figured that since Mom considered liver to be the best way to boost her low iron, than she and Dad could eat it when we were at school. But Mom’s theory was that if she was low on iron, we all were. So every Saturday noon we drowned our piece of liver in ketchup and thus learned to eat what we don’t like without (much) complaining. I now enjoy watermelon and "liver" is my standard response when people ask me if there is anything I don't like. They laugh and assure me it will never be served in their home. 

I am currently on a low-iodine diet which means no eggs, dairy, or anything from the sea including salt, and no more than 6 oz of meat a day. That’s a hard diet to maintain when going to a Super Bowl party so I decided to make some falafel. I wasn’t sure that anyone else at the party would even know what it was or would like it, but I wanted something I could eat. It’s a mixture of garbanzo beans and cilantro, flavored with cumin and, in my case, non-iodized salt. Add enough flour so it is stiff and fry it up. It tasted so good, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle with a mouthful of flavor that reminded me of warm and generous North African hospitality. One friend had just seen something about it on the cooking channel so she was delighted to taste it and declared it “good”, even though it was no longer warm and crispy. I was reminded of going to a hole-in-the-wall East-African restaurant with 2 friends, one of whom had been to Morocco. One taste of the complimentary soup was all we needed to be transported back to Morocco. My other friend thought it was "really good," but she didn't have the same associations. No wonder I like ethnic restaurants. The flavors remind me of places I have been and dear friends who have welcomed me to their table.

Caucusing

I grew up in Iowa and remember my parents driving to the big town of Harris to participate in the presidential caucus but this was the first year I was in the state when it was worth participating. It is quite different from voting on election day or in a primary as I have done in Minnesota.

The first difference is that everyone has to show up at the same time -- 7 PM. That led to the only traffic jam I’ve encountered in Spirit Lake in the entire time I've lived here. It seems there were a lot of other first time caucus goers since both parties broke participation records.

After parking my car and walking a couple of blocks, I stopped at the first table to find out which precinct I was in and made my way to the number 11 sign where I officially signed in. Every chair was filled along with the standing room so I stood off to the side near a precinct that had a whopping 12 participants.  The first order of business was a 2-minute speech given in support of each candidate in alphabetical order. Not all of the candidates had someone willing to speak for them. Some were better prepared than others. The moderator kept things moving and did cut one person off. The first candidate who didn’t have a spokesman (I think it was Kasich), opened the door for someone to give a 2-minute anyone-but-Trump speech. (This turned out to be ineffective since Trump won the county.) After that the moderator only allowed pro candidate speeches.  I doubt these speeches changed anyone’s mind since it is likely that those who showed up had someone they wanted to vote for.  Each speaker did encourage a large turnout on election day, no matter who the Republican candidate was.

After the speeches were out of the way it came down to precinct business. I was standing behind the people who were speaking so missed the details. It had something to do with choosing people to be part of the county Republican committee and county delegates. Finally a pad of 100 sheets of paper marked with the precinct number were handed to each precinct chair.  Somehow the chair managed to tear off a sheet and hand one to each person. The chairmen from the precinct with the most people immediately called out, “We need more!” I found a pen next door where there were fewer people, wrote the name of my choice, and placed it on the table where the chairwoman of precinct 11 was trying to maintain some semblance of order. I’m thankful I didn’t have to count the ballots and figured I could wait until morning for the results.  It was about 7:40 when I headed out the door.

Mentoring

A new weekly activity since October has been spending at least an hour with my mentee. She's a delightful 1st grader who is full of energy. We spent most of the fall doing outside activities which she loves. We played in parks, went on a nature scavenger hunt and hiking, and we played at the beach. Her mother says she isn't very athletic but the child loves to run. The favorite game at the park is tag and the trails at the park were often taken at a run. It's a good thing I'm somewhat in shape so I can attempt to keep up. She can run faster but I can run longer. Activities have been more difficult since winter arrived. We went swimming at the Y and last night we joined some people from my church at the bowling alley. Even the kid bowling balls were a bit heavy but she managed a decent score thanks to the bumper pads being up. The bumper pads added a few points to my score and I broke 100 which was my goal. My mentee was excited to see a classmate there and she enjoyed interacting with the other kids who cheered her on.

A friend jokingly asked if the program was for at-risk kids or at risk adults. Probably a bit of both. It's hard to tell what impact I'm having on a 1st grader, other than I'm providing a listening ear and one-on-one time in which she has a hard time getting in trouble because there are no other kids around to egg her on. Even when there have been other kids around she's been obedient. For me, it is an opportunity to be around a kid, which means even more to me because I spend my work day primarily with the geriatric population. My creativity is also being challenged as I come up with ideas of things to do and places to go. She has ideas as well which helps.

Try a mentoring program in your area. There is especially a need for men to be a role model for the boys who are waiting for a mentor of their own.

Surgeries

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but it will take some resolve to get back to writing here on a regular basis. There is plenty to write about but after a month (and now months) of silence, there is too much to write about and I don't know where to start. I've decided the best way is to jump back in with the most significant change over the past several months.

In May of 2014 I noticed a nodule on my neck in the thyroid area. I was in St Cloud at the time and didn't know a doctor even if I had the time to go. Besides, I was preparing for a six-week bike trip and didn't want it derailed. A doctor friend told me it wasn't urgent since I wasn't feeling any differently. I let it go longer than I should have, but I did finally get to the doctor in September. That began more trips to doctor's offices than I've had in 20 years.

The results from a fine needle aspiration biopsy was suspicious enough that the right side of my thyroid was removed on November 16. The diagnosis came back as follicular carcinoma which meant the other side needed to come out too. The second surgery was on December 24. I was off work for a week both times but recovered fairly well with little pain. The first time I stayed overnight at the hospital with a drain. The second time my surgeon allowed me to go home that same day and without the drain I had more swelling. But overall it didn't make much difference in my recovery. Both times I ran 3 miles 4-5 days after surgery. I went slow but I had no problem doing them. I did have a lifting restriction for a week and I dealt with some lightheadedness which evidently was due to being dehydrated.

People have asked me if I'm feeling better now. I wasn't feeling bad to begin with. In fact, in some ways it's "worse" now as my body adjusts to the thyroid meds and we figure out the proper dosage. It's only been a couple of weeks but they made a change in the dosage following a blood test on Friday. I haven't quite figured out how it all works, but I was feeling rather amped up especially in the early morning hours when I would have just as soon been sleeping. This will be the biggest challenge in the weeks or maybe months to come. I've joked with nurses that I now have a medical history and yes, I do take some medication. In February I'll be swallowing some radioactive iodine which will destroy any remaining thyroid tissue in my body. No further treatment should be needed. If I have to have cancer, thyroid cancer is a good kind to have.