Grossness!

I work with weird people. Now you may think that I mean my clients, but no, I mean the partner agencies that we work with: Social Services, Mental Health, Probation etc. Tonight I did an orientation for a potential new client. This was requested by our partners from the Social Services Department. The family, as all of our families, has a host of problem and a child that is very much out of control, sometimes at home, and other times at school. Mother did great and even acknowledged for the first time to anyone that her use of alcohol may be a factor in some of her difficulties and that she has entered sobriety as of last week. A great orientation you would say. I agree, when I think of the family. Two workers from Social Services were present. One of them, a woman, who has a strong reputation for poor judgement calls and shoddy work, slept through 3/4 of the meeting where I explain to the family what they can expect from our program and the family's responsibility if they choose to participate. In addition, while she drifted off into Morphe's inviting arms, her shirt crept up and exposed her whole stomach, which is quite large (for a long time I thougth she was pregnant, until I realized that it had been much more than nine months). I was so irrate, first that she slept through my presentation, but also at her lack of professionalism. We've all had fashion faux-pas where some article of cloting does not cooperate, but this was far more than I have ever encountered! Anyway, I consulted with my supervisor and will forward a depiction of the meeting to her supervisor. I believe the other person from Social Services will do the same as I saw him at times try to get her attention and wake her, to no avail.

I told you I work with weird folks!

Other things that have been on my mind lately is that there seem to be several distressing events in the lives of my co-workers. My office mate and close friend just had a miscarriage and is now filing for divorce, another woman's husband is having a heart infection which is causing his blood pressure to sky-rocket, another woman's son who has cerebral palsy had a severe bronchitis and the family had to decide whether or not to ressucitate should his heart or lungs fail, and another worker's young son (about 5) is fighting for his life with a brain tumor at Lucile Packard (Stanford) Hospital for children. I wonder what this convergence of unfortunate events means, if anything. It seems like too many bad stories all grouped into one and it is creating stress for all of us. I hope the stars move on and things mellow out.