Hi all – the last 3 days have been crazy for me – not fun. I have missed reading everybody’s posts and really enjoyed it this evening when I finally got to it.
@oldmtwoman: My computer itself didn’t crash (although it could at any time…), it was the software I have to use for processing documents. In the industry I work in (translation), we use something called a CAT (computer-aided translation) tool. You load up your document, whether it’s a Word doc, a PDF, Excel file, InDesign, whatever, and the program puts it in a form you can easily work in, i.e. see everything clearly instead of having to glance back and forth between the computer screen and your desk. It is supposed to save everything automatically so you don’t lose your work. And then it spits it back out at the end as the same kind of document. For instance, I don’t have to have InDesign or PageMaker on my computer – I can simply load the file sent to me and translate it. What happened is the software failed me. It failed to save my document, for some reason, and when I walked away for a bit and the computer restarted without warning, I lost everything.
So for the last 3 days, I have been playing catch up. Every waking hour has been at the computer unless I absolutely had to fix a meal or go to the bathroom. It’s been a nightmare because the client had a deadline to meet.
And by the way, a CAT tool is not machine translation, that pie-in-the-sky miracle that politicians bring up every once in a while, promising the end of language barriers. Clinton talked about it – and there was some other president a few years back that touted it as well – had to go between laughing myself silly and shaking my head in disbelief at the ignorance.
@corsaire: Yes, that’s a challenge. I have a brother with autism and a father with Alzheimer’s. My brother has a difficult time handling money. For instance, he would get his SSI at the beginning of the month, and even though, logically, he had everything he needed in order to get through the month with money left over, he was always broke half way through the month and would come to us for more money, which was not a good thing. I told him he needed to learn to make it last, that he had enough, and we were only going to give him food if he ran out of money again. Of course that didn’t work. Then he started going to the church telling everyone that I couldn’t help him any more, and could they help him please. I was horrified.
So we came up with a “psychological” plan where he gave me at least $200 at the beginning of each month. Then he had to also put 30 or 40 dollars in his underwear drawer for emergency taxi rides (he spends a lot of time in the emergency room in the middle of the night – social worker and psychiatrist are working with him on that, too…). Then if he ran out of money, it was there. And it worked. He learned that he could make it last and didn’t have to ask others for more money all the time. Last month, we decided to do a trial run of him keeping the $200 in a secret place in his apartment, and then he calls me and talks to me about it if he needs to spend some of it. So far, so good. I told him if he ran out again because he went out to eat too much, I would have to start keeping the money for him again.
I think that with someone with a mental illness or cognitive deficiency, it’s a matter of repeat, repeat, repeat. And there probably has to be some sort of teaching aid that really motivates (like me keeping his money back until he really, really needed it). My husband and I have been trying to work with a couple down the street from us who both seem to have cognitive deficiencies as well – they are actually sweet people (with horrible families) who are really trying to do better. But it’s repeat, repeat, repeat, and it can get really discouraging.
So I really enjoyed Daisy’s article on “Doomsday Hoarders”! It reminded me of myself, and I am definitely going to use her method.