Second “real” day

So far, I’ve been to my client’s Respite Home 3 times, although the first time was a meet-and-greet hour and a half.

The past 2 days have been more "real" work, hence the title.

Today, I took a different way out there – much the same: out US 26, but farther than 185th or Cornelius Pass Road, and it was more of a straight, directly there route that got me there 20 minutes early. I was supposed to be there by 11:45 – and had been told yesterday, by the House Mom, that Noon was fine too.

I don’t like to be late. I gave myself an hour to get there, and I’d rather be a little early than a little late. Besides, a new route for the last part of the drive was new territory for me: Hundred Year old farms, hazelnuts, hay – open roads fine for setting the speed control.

Yesterday, I worked alone, and took"care" of both girls staying there, but today, I had another LST helping with the kids, and so she took one girl to get a movie and I took the other one to the local library (got myself a card for Washington County libraries), where she played dress up games on the computer for a couple of hours.

I think I looked at all the adult books in that library. I read the paper and took a "Jack Reacher" novel off the shelf. I have a paperback Reacher novel at home, halfway read (lee Child is a good writer), and was hoping to find the same novel and read some more of it, but didn’t find the book I’ve got at home, so I picked up one of the other Lee Child books and read that for awhile, while "my" girl happily played on one of the computers.

Yesterday, the girls had had a bit of a tiff. They are both around the same age – my girl today will be 18 on Friday, but seems like the "younger" of the two, and yesterday she got into it with the other girl, ultimately throwing a remote at her and then running upstairs and locking herself in her bathroom. I cleaned up a bit downstairs, talked to the one girl, making sure she was alright, and then went upstairs to talk that girl down from her anger and frustration. She did take it upon herself to apologize, although I did mention the tone she used; it made her sound less than sincere.

I knew that another LST would be working with me today, and that I could ask her questions about our job and what was expected of us, but, it turned out that I was "the senior LST", and that the other woman was new – completely new – to this work.

Ooo kay, we’ll make it up as we go along.

It was a very peaceful day today, in part, maybe, because each girl had her own LST and we did different things. For some reason, maybe to mix it up a bit, the other woman was assigned to the girl I had been working with, so "my" girl changed, and I dealt with the "younger" of the two today.

A good day of work today.

I won’t be working Friday; "my" girl’s birthday is Friday and she’s going home to her mom’s house for it, and I guess things change after 18 for her – she will officially be "an adult". 21 hours plus this week, counting travel time, as I was told to do. It feels good to have a job and an income again!

The other LST was from Eritrea, in Africa, a pretty. slim young lady. She’s been in the US 7 years, and is or has been a college student; her English was very good – good enough so I didn’t assume right away that she was foreign-born. We had an interesting conversation while the girls watched "Sponge Bob Square Pants" on TV. (I hadn’t ever seen that show, but, well, it was pretty silly but seemed to teach social skills to the kids watching it). We were, facetiously, paid to watch cartoons – much better than driving some old bus.

I was assigned a five hour shift, like yesterday and tomorrow, and travel time is included, so I’m getting about 21 hours this week. I’ll get more comfortable with my work as time goes by, something I never really was, driving 20, 30 year old buses. That bus job turned out to be very stressful, and while I’m glad I did it, I am sort of amazed that I did.

I like this job better, and it only pays a dollar less than the charter bus driving job did. I am a "Direct Service Professional", a Life Skills Trainer, and I much prefer working directly with people over driving a big ol’, unwieldy bus.

See the previous entry: I am, I think, in the right place, doing to right job.

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