Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Another One Bites the Dust

Lily's nurse quit.  She gave her...10 minute notice yesterday  I'm supposed to hear back from the agency sometime today, but haven't yet.  Not sure what they're waiting for, but my dad is getting Lily off the bus today, so at least we're covered.

So the saga of getting/keeping an aide continues. 

At issue is Lily's aggression.  Here's where being me (someone who attempts to see both sides of the situation all the time) sucks.  Because I get why she quit.  She doesn't want to get hit or kicked or bitten anymore.  All that is a slam dunk.  I didn't want that either.  I am NOT a huge fan of coming home to what amount to "I quit as of this moment", but it's definitely hard to deal with aggression.  So because I understand the "why" of it, it makes it hard for me to call her the "bad guy" in this situation.  And yeah...probably I'm putting too many things in quotations in this paragraph.

The devil's advocate side of me, however, is wondering why this nurse struggled so much with Lily.  Even when Lily IS aggressive with me...she only ever actually hurts me when I'm stupid enough to play chicken with her, holding my hand or arm or fingers too close to her mouth when she's really really pissed off (bite!).  But the slapping thing?  Scratching?  Kicking?  She's 12, low muscle tone, significantly uncoordinated (I mean, I still help her down the steps), how hard is it to dodge a slap?  Or to catch a foot and hold it when she tries to kick?  That's a trick question...I already know the answer is...not very fucking hard.  Because I do it regularly.

Whatever this nurse's approach was...it antagonized the shit out of Lily, because nobody has EVER struggled with her like that.  Each day I'd come home and listen to the nurse...basically tattle on Lily.  It was stressful as fuck.  I couldn't wait until she was out the door every day and my family could just chill out again and relax.  Because honestly the minute I walked through the door, everything was fine and normal.  Manageable. 

Sigh.  Back to square one.  We'll see what the agency offers. 

SUBJECT CHANGE!!

I remember when I first moved to Pittsburgh and asked people directions to things.  Apart from the fact that Pittsburgh's winding roads are gridless and confusing, people would tell me how many minutes it was from point A to point B.  I can't remember who I asked, maybe it was Leslie, but I remember asking, yeah, okay, 15 minutes, but how many miles is it?

And she (or whoever it was) had no idea.  I couldn't believe it.  Nobody knew how far anything was from anything else.  It was X minutes.  It was hard for me to get my brain around.  In Montana everything is X miles.  YOU decide the minutes based on how fast you drive.  It's 40 miles from Big Timber to Columbus.  40 minutes for some.  30 for others...

I literally just realized this a couple nights ago, but nobody knows how many miles it is, because there aren't what would have to be hundreds of thousands of signs with miles posted on them.  Sure it's like that on the highway, but in the metropolitan sprawl of Pittsburgh and it's surrounding communities...you just can't post as many signs as it would take. 

How did I not put that together?  Back then I just thought if someone was going from Shaler to Dormont, for example, there'd be a sign that said Dormont 10 miles.  But...there isn't because there's no Shaler to Dormont expressway.  It's just a bunch of different neighborhood roads and a few miles of parkway.  (They should really fix that)

Anyway...I realized it on my way home, looking at the GPS, which tells me both how many miles and how many minutes.  And I remember thinking...who the fuck cares how many miles it is?  I need to know how long it'll take.  And right then I thought...oh my god...country mouse was visiting the city...it's just a very different frame of reference.  10 miles might take 30 minutes.  Or 45 with traffic. 

In Montana it's just a simple equation.  Distance/velocity = time.  That equation doesn't work in the city.