It is Saturday. I had a late lunch at “the Bean” after resting for the morning and spending a few hours on Tybee Island. No pelicans today, except for four I saw from the causeway, driving into the island from Thunderbolt. They were flying in formation much as fighter plane pilots do at air shows. This is how I knew they were pelicans and not sea gulls.
It has been an exceptionally warm day. Mike and I both wore shorts. Tybee was packed with beach folks. This likely is the reason for no pelicans. I walked around most of the southern end of the island but did not feel much like staying. I just don’t like people in crowds that much.
We – Lara, Mike and I – finally met up with Tom Kohler at the Bean. At first Tom was a little cool – arms crossed and that sort of thing. As the conversation unfolded it seems that he is defensive/worried that I will confront him about the Citizen Advocacy approach to imaging the “protégé” – the official term used in CA to denote the person who has been labelled disabled, and with whom CA programs “match” a typical citizen. Tom and I have disagreed in the past about the importance of providing “trainings” to both the citizen advocate and his/her protégé, and not just the advocate alone, as tomorrow and Tuesday are arranged. It wasn’t on my mind to confront him this time with that, but clearly he was getting up for an argument.
For me the biggest thing to sort out was what I am going to talk about tomorrow and on Tuesday. Tom wants something about presence and possibility. With Mike there we ended up talking a lot about the inclusive video game. In the end Tom said he wants me to talk about Marsha and me, then about how Mike and I met and got into the several projects we share – along the theme of listen, imagine, network.
I will sleep on this, and I am sure will catch the flavour, but as a different theme has been becoming more important to me, this doesn’t seem too natural.
It has been fabulous working with Lara. But as any given day progresses, without good structures for me to participate, and to eat and sleep without Lara’s or Mike’s full time presence, all of us get tired, defocused and edgy.
In particular I feel the need to create some distance between Mike and I and we made some progress with that today. Even though Mike is not working as a personal assistant today he has hung around me except when he slept in and when he lay on the beach for awhile. I believe that Tom caught the wave because he took Mike for a beer without me, and he also entered into a brainstorm about where, when and with whom Mike can go for a meal – again without me.
I am alone now and it is good. I was not prepared for how dirty Imlay House is. I was going to get Lara to wash the kitchen floor which is so filthy that my chair leaves track marks in the dirt. There is no mop. Lara offered to wash it with rags, but she is getting tired, the edginess has started, and it isn’t worth the time/cost to exhaust her that much. So we will continue to live with the grime.
My own edginess is abating as I get Mike’s alignment with how much money we have to spend on food, as well as getting the painting well underway. I think we are about 30% done. We will also need to set up some slides for Friday. I think it is going to get easier as we get the strangeness and the vacation –ness out of the way, hopefully pretty soon now. Then both of us will get more comfortable just getting the work done. There is a lot of work.
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