Sunday's Events and Monday's Plans

Yesterday was another strange day at my home. I was able to handle it with a minimum of emotional excess on my part, but there was some happening. I was able to relax after taking some steps.

Let me explain.

Yesterday morning, around 1:30am, I was awakened by repetitive, loud stomping on my ceiling. There were angry voices and sounds of crying for about an hour. The upstairs neighbors are unknown to me except that they advertise their podcast on their vehicle, and I was curious, so I have looked them up on the web. I know that they are fundamental Christians who have started a street ministry coalition in the greater Kansas City area. That's all that I know about them.

During the early morning incident, the wife went out to their car, threw a bag into the back, went back inside, and then came back out, took the bag out of the car and went back in. She started yelling things like, "I am so tired of how..." and then cried loudly until silence took over.

I was torn between wanting to call the police, wanting to offer her money to get away, and wanting to scream loudly at them both for disturbing my sleep. I was unable to sleep after that incident. I was up and listening to every creak and work spoken upstairs.

I went to my church service, did my singing, and then came back to do my chores and such. I headed back to my bedroom about 4pm, and all of a sudden, I heard the wife's voice again, chanting over and over. "Go. Go. Go. Go. Take them all with you. In the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus. All of you get out. In the name of Jesus." The volume would increase and decrease, and her voice remained in the same spot for the entire episode.

I called the police for a welfare check.

They came and checked on the noise. An officer called me after the check was finished to tell me that they were doing a "religious deliverance" and that explained the chanting. They would try to keep the volume down. They did. I heard nothing else through the ceiling from that moment on. When I asked the officer what I should do if things escalated again, she stated that I could file a noise complaint and they could get a citation.

I do not believe in demons or being taken over by agents of Satan, but it is increasingly clear to me that my upstairs neighbors do. I know that I cannot really file a noise complaint when things are happening at 4pm - there is no noise ordinance that covers early afternoon as far as I know - but I also know the speech patterns and symptoms of mental health issues, and I wanted to make sure that the wife was okay. I am now concerned that there were repercussions for her through my call to the police, and I worry a bit about that. I also wonder if she will get any help other than the "deliverance" overseen by her husband.

I did not sleep well last night and am exhausted this morning.

I am also ready to look for a place to live that does not share a ceiling or a floor with other people.

I am heading into today in an exhausted state of being, but I think it will be fine. I have two groups to lead today and an intern to supervise, so the day will be pretty busy. I am also starting some individual sessions this week (hooray!), so I need to print out copies of my new schedule to keep with me. I will arrange for some other individual sessions to start later this week as part of my day's list of to-do's.

I have been using a more traditional style of bullet journaling for my work journal. There are limited decorative elements (but I think I will do some prettifying this morning to change that for this week) and more of the traditional formatting choices like task indicators and the Alastair method of tracking chores and habits. It is time to get back into the routine of work.

So, I am going to head into my office and my music therapy suite (yep, it's a suite now!!) and get some of my chores done. I really need to sweep and vacuum the room. I also want to keep organizing my storage closet. I have transferred much of the stuff that has been in four rolling cabinets into the new closet already, but not everything is there. I also want to decrease the stuff in my office to make my office less cluttered. Once I get materials out of the main treatment room, I am hoping to move some of the stuff that I had to bring home years ago back to work. I am waiting to do that until I get the things that I already have at work in a workable system so I can see how much room I have for materials or instruments.

My chores for this week are to vacuum and sweep, move materials into the closet - specifically the sensory materials and less important instruments, change one of the rolling cabinets that lock into a guitar storage cabinet (the current one does not lock, so folks help themselves to breaking strings all the time!), and label things so that my future interns and clients will know where things are located. I will break those down into any other action steps (if needed) and then get started. I also have a long-term goal of setting up some communication corners for my clients who need picture support for asking questions and getting their needs met. I am ready to get back into my work - something that I haven't really felt like doing in the past weeks. It is time.

So, I will be putting together some session strategies - I think we may play rhythm BINGO this afternoon - and some professional strategies for organization of my stuff. I may also get some reading in - something else that I have neglected by not being at work much lately.

It is time to get moving. Happy Monday, all.