music, therapy, and me

Walter - just because I love him!! Well, that was a rough week - I had food poisoning last Sunday after eating something I made on both Saturday and Sunday - only got food poisoning on Sunday for some reason. I did not go to work on Monday - it is hard to sing when nauseous - I slept instead. Last week went slowly and culminated with my second-to-last Talent Show. Nothing happened at the show, thank all things good and wholesome, and now we are on the downward slope to next week when all the end of the school year stuff happens. This week has a field trip for one group of students this morning. As far as I know, there is nothing else happening. Next week is a different story. We have graduation and then the end of the school carnival. After that, we will be done for a week before coming back and doing things all over again. Since I work in a psychiatric residential treatment facility school, my students are in school year round. That means that I am working year round. I really don...

Today is the day where I slip back into my internship director mode - for the day. I have an internship applicant coming to spend some time with me and with my clients. We are going to get to know each other a bit. The applicant will lead a 10-minute therapeutic music experience (TME) with the first group of the day (I hope they will be good to the applicant), and then the rest of the day, the applicant will watch me do my sessions. Today is the first day of our extended school year session, and there are three things happening. The first is the intern applicant visit. The second is that we have a new schedule to navigate. The third is that it is time to get ready to go in the last portion of this school year, AKA our extended school year. I have no idea what we will be doing this week. Usually, it is our country of the month introduction, but I am not prepared for that right now. So, we might do some games. I like that idea - we can play WAR, Slapjack, Instrument Memory, Simon Says, C...

I wonder if anyone noticed my recent absence from this blog or if I just write into the void, but I took about a week off from writing anything for several reasons - some personal, some professional, and some completely irrational reasons. That's the way life is - sometimes you know what you want to say, and sometimes you just have nothing to say. The last nine days have been a good break as I thought about things happening and figuring out what I am wanting to have happen in my life as a music therapist. Now, just so you know, things are okay here. While I have had some emotional brain takeovers and some days when I have been just uninterested in thinking in the early morning hours, things are pretty much the way I like them to be in my comfortable days. The weather has changed daily and is now getting more the way I like it - cold and dark. We have not had any snow yet, and that is a good thing for me.  I have been spending lots of time with and in my brain lately. I tend to do t...

Today is the day that I start back to work after a rough, emotional, and challenging Winter Break. My father is in hospice care and had a lucid day yesterday. The day before he was hallucinating that he was the President of the United States and was pretty demanding of how such a personage should be treated. My heart doesn't ache so much about the departure of my Bella-cat, but I still think that I see her walking down the hallway every once in a while. It always ends up being one of my strands of hair getting into my peripheral vision, but I still look for her. Several of my friends have wanted me to go get another kitty, but I am not ready yet. Anyway, back to thinking about work. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be "work days" implying that we will have some uninterrupted time in our classrooms to organize and clean things up. As far as I know, we will have all of our students back in sessions starting on Wednesday. There will be another schedule change because one o...

Working in special education, like I do, and working in a residential treatment facility, like I do, means that I have clients available to me throughout the calendar year. When I was first hired, many years ago, the position was advertised as either a nine or twelve month position. My principal at the time did not give me a choice and signed me up for the full year position, covering our Extended School Year (ESY). I didn't argue. Way back then, we had three weeks between school and ESY. I would get REALLY bored with my own company, and I would head back to work with an enthusiastic attitude after going a bit stir crazy at home by myself. I had enough time during those breaks to go home to visit my family and then to work at home. Those days are gone. Today, I go back to work for our extended school year. Lots of things have changed in the many years that I have been at this particular facility, but one thing remains consistent - our students do much better with the structure of...

It is the first day of 2018, and I am back at my home with my cat, celebrating the New Year by sleeping in, unpacking, and playing with my new stuff. I arrived earlier this morning and was greeted by a loud cat who was expressing her displeasure at being left alone. She yelled and cuddled and then yelled again. Just for good measure, she vomited on the carpet. It was quite the homecoming, but I'll take it. Today is a day for rest. I have only today left of my Winter Break, so it is for things just for me. I've put the luggage away in the closet (it causes Bella-cat some anxiety when it is around), the box of presents is on its way to me, and the rest of the presents are here. I've sorted them into things for the craft room, things for hygiene (yes, we are THAT sort of family), and things for work. I'm not ready to go back to work (I could really use another week to get bored), but I know that it has to happen, so I am resigned to the fact that I will have to spend m...

I'm not sure what to write about this morning. I had started a post about some good news that we received at work yesterday, but it really wasn't moving me towards writing about music therapy, so I abandoned that post idea. Here's an idea... I am getting ready for a work day at my job today. This is a luxury that doesn't happen as much as it used to, and I am very thankful for this day dedicated to preparation for students. My plan is to clean out, clean up, and organize my storage closet and my office. To that end, I'll be arriving early to start pulling things out of my spaces. I want to be able to clean the floors before I reorganize, so I plan on taking everything out of the rooms first. Then, I will swiff the floors with my Swiffers and then reload the rooms. I also want to take things that I do not need back to my home. There's no reason to keep things where they are not needed. I am looking forward to today. I am going to put the iPod into the stereo ...

My vacation ended a day ago, and my back-to-school process is beginning. I have three more days before my Fall schedule starts up again and one of my part-time jobs starts up again. My time will become much more structured and packed as I go into Fall. Vacation ended with a good trip back East. I spent some time with my sister, driving to the airport, and then made it to Salt Lake City without difficulties. At Salt Lake, it was revealed that the flight was oversold, so I jumped at the chance to take a later flight and get a flight voucher! I now have a voucher for travel at Christmas time. I didn't get into my home airport until 3 hours later than usual, but I did get another flight on my frequent flyer miles and got to see the sweet little airport in Minneapolis, so everything worked out well... (The cat wanted me to name this post "kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" which may be oddly appropriate, but I overruled her.) In the next three days, I am ge...

I have hit that point in vacation time when I am starting to look forward to going back into my work routine. I am starting to get ideas that I need to accomplish at home which means that my relaxation process has done what it needs to do and is revving me up for the new school year. My new year always starts in August or September when it is time to go back to school. Forget the New Year's Eve rush for goal-setting and resolution making, this is my time!  I think it has something to do with the plethora of school supplies in every store you enter! I love buying new Bic pens (my favorites), markers, notebooks, and binders! I've severely cut back on my purchases this year because I have so much already, but I am itching to get some new Papermate Flair pens in tropical colors. I don't have those already and I love them for drawing and coloring things. That may be the one school supply purchase that I make this year. There is something really nice about being a school-ba...

  Do you ever look back on a situation and wonder why you waited so long to acknowledge the situation? I am recovering from the first major surgery and hospital stay in my life, and I am glad that it is over! I am also glad that the timeline for "fixing" me played out in the best possible way for us all. I am also grateful to the people in my life who told me that I needed to do something very difficult for me, "take advantage" of them. I went into my bowel resection surgery with lots of trepidation. I had anxiety moments filled with scenes where they could not keep me under the anesthesia (did not happen, though I did apparently try to slide off the operating table once), where I awoke with a total colostomy (also did not happen), and where I didn't wake up at all leaving my mother to coordinate my funeral, junk distribution, and cat care. Thankfully, none of that happened, and I am on the mend! This is a good thing as it allows me to deal with the addi...

Today was the first day of the fall semester at my facility. It was a work day interrupted by waiting to sign up for health benefits and behavior management training. Once my two tasks were finished, I didn't do much more with my day. I reviewed the 105 emails that had accrued in my inbox, made a list of kids who were leaving and another list of kids arriving. I spent some time talking to my friend, the Art Therapist, about schedules, our break, and various and sundry other things, and I took down the summer school entry bulletin board. The rest of the time was spent sitting in my music room wondering what I should be doing. I didn't do much - just enjoyed being in my space, by myself. My intern was not present as she was originally going to the intern of my recent graduate. I had already taken an inventory of all of the materials in the music room (thanks to the help of my interns). The senior intern's desk was clear and ready to use as storage. My desk was relativel...

Anticipation... Today is the first day of the Fall session of school. I think I am ready for most of what will happen today, including some routine things and some brand-new experiences for myself and my students. We will see. One of the new things that I want to do with my first big group today is a shift from the regular turn-taking opening intervention. This group of students does not "group" well. Several of the students do not feel comfortable sitting in the group's traditional circle, so they end up scattered around the room in no particular pattern. This goes against my need for organization, but I would rather be a bit needy and have them feel comfortable in the session than insist that they conform to my needs - after all, who is the therapist and who is client in this situation?? I am going to put the guitar down and use a drum for interaction. I hope that we will have a time of rhythm improvisation during the opening portion of the session, but we will see. ...

Welcome Back and Happy New Year! Happy New Year, everyone! I am a school therapist, so my life is very much dependent upon the ebb and flow of the school year. August always seems much more like a new beginning to me than January. So, every year about this time, I start to think about my goals for the new year. I make resolutions about my professional life and then try to obtain those resolutions. This year is no different. This year, I will strive to do the following: FINISH my schooling Make long-term decisions about my future as a music therapist - here in Kansas or somewhere else completely Become a pre-approved CMTE provider through CBMT Develop new interventions for children and adolescents with developmental and psychiatric concerns - use them in sessions, and then give them to others Avoid toxic people in my environment Find interesting people to interact with outside of work time Act as an appropriate music therapy internship supervisor Maintain appropriat...