Just For the Fun of It.

     It has been a while since I have posted one of those "here's mine, what's yours" post. I can't even explain what work has been like since the first of July. I try very hard not to feel guilty when my clients call and want to know what they are supposed to do. I haven't slept well, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon, I took off early, mainly because I had big company at work Monday and I had been nervous about that, and then we had VBS, so Tuesday morning, I felt a little like I had been hit by a Mack truck. Anyway, I took off Tuesday afternoon with the intent of listening to a friend of mine testify before the House of Representatives and then take a nap before Tuesday night's Bible school. Ended up, Jen didn't start her testimony until 2, along with 2 clients from other agencies and Dalitso, our Association's president. They didn't get done until after 3, they did a great job, and I was floored by all the questions--that's a good thing though.

Anyway, I didn't end up taking a nap. Tuesday night, I was finally tired enough though, I slept, and I slept so well that I dreamed. I don't remember dreaming forever. If I have ever even met you, you were more than likely in that dream. I couldn't believe how many people I saw that night, how many people were brought to mind that I hadn't thought of for years.

And there were the weird things, like worlds colliding. I dreamed I was sitting on a bench in the mall in Mattoon. I was sitting there with Sally Furry. Sally and I first met when I worked at the Dairy Queen, in 1986.  She helped me get my job at Walmart in 1989 and though we went a while without seeing each other, thanks to facebook, we at least know we are both alive and well. The mall was busy, very busy---that is an oddity all by itself, and then there was a conga line running through it. This is where all of you come in. It was crazy long, Susan Shull and Debbie Diel were leading it. Some people say you don't dream in color.....I dream in color. Susan and Debbie were wearing the brightest colored outfits that I had ever seen. In typical style for them though, they both looked like they stepped out of a magazine. I DO know why I saw those two, I had been reading about their trip abroad and enjoying getting to see Italy through their eyes. Brenda McDade, my boss until she retired, was in the line too, she came and hugged me and Sally like she hadn't seen us in a million years (I'm not sure if Brenda and Sally even know each other that well in real life, Sally did go to school with Brenda's son Mike). If I was trying to interpret my dream, that probably has some deep meaning about all that is going on and me wondering if I am really capable of everything I need to be doing at work and wondering if it would be better if Brenda was back. But who knows, as I said, there were people I hadn't even thought of for years, it was actually kind of cool, but has gotten me in a nostalgic mood.

I took off work early yesterday too, I was going to work on my basement but Mom had three tubs of tomatoes that needed worked up and I wanted to make spaghetti sauce so I spent the afternoon in my kitchen. Ever since the night of the dream, I have been craving Steve Winwood music. So, I pulled up my Rhapsody account and started playing one Winwood song after another...The Finer Things, Back in the High Life, Arc of a Diver, and on and on.
I am one of those people who tacks a song to a memory or a memory to a song, not sure which. But here is a list of some of my favorite memories/ songs, as of right this moment anyway.

Chicago: Hard Habit to Break--this song reminds me of my Senior speech class. I loved speech and if I would have attacked every class like that one, I would have had straight A's. Anyway, for our final, we had to give a 25 minute speech. We could use any kind of prop or other media for up to 10 minutes. My speech was on our class, the Class of 1985. When I told Mrs. Wiman what I wanted to do, she said it was fine, but if I shed one tear, she would flunk me, especially when I told her what my media was. I played 10 minutes of things that happened our Senior year, from the announcements, to just noise in the hallway, to a blurb, "Newton Marching Eagles, you may take the field for competition", to some of the songs that was popular at the time. This was going to be the song that I knew I had to make it through without crying. What was worse was, it truly did make others in our class cry. I didn't though. I never knew how much public speaking would be a part of my life but to this day, I know better than to cry, I told some pretty personal stuff about myself and my childhood last year at a meeting, but I didn't cry. Oh, and one last memory. David Casey was supposed to be the time keeper, our speech was to be 25 minutes long, with a little leeway on each side, I can't remember how much. My speech was exactly 25 minutes, and I will never forget hearing David say it was.

REO Speedwagon- Can't Fight This Feeling--I was working at the Dairy Queen and it was the summer of 1989. I hadn't worked there very long when a tall husky blond headed guy came in with this much older woman. We started talking immediately about how much he looked like Bruce Hall. So, Dibber, who waited on him, told him, he looked just like Bruce Hall. He laughed, as did the little, older lady that was with him. He said he was Bruce Hall. Turns out his grandma lived in Greenup and he would come down every so often to see her. They came in for lunch about every time he came down. A friend of mine, Tony McMorris,  mowed this grandma's yard and ended up with tickets and back stage passes to their show at Shelbyville. Tony couldn't go so he gave the tickets to his sister, Heather and me. That was probably one of my favorite concerts ever. Bruce came over and treated us like he had known us forever.

Bryan Adams--Everything I Do. The summer before Andrew and I got married, I spent a lot of time with several people from Walmart. I was going through the aftermath of a major breakup with a guy that I had dated for over a year and knew it would never go any farther than it had gone and it was time to cut the cord. I also was going through having a major crush on a member of management that I knew I couldn't date. One of the guys I worked with was going through a lot of things too and all of our friends had significant others so we decided to spend the summer un-dating. We were friends and it was great, no expectations, but someone to go do things with when everyone else was in pairs. One night that summer, we went to see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, this song was the love theme. I absolutely fell in love with the song. The crush didn't let up and things started happening with my job so I ended up in a different store, As soon as I did, that crush, now my husband, asked me out. Everything I Do played at the restaurant on our first date and it became our song. I have totally lost track of my un-dating friend, Ray Fread, but he was in that conga line too, I'm sure people who I haven't seen for a long time would appreciate this dream because they all looked like they did the last time I saw them. I ran into Ray at an auction probably 20 years ago, he still looked the same then, so he looked 25 or so in my dream. Sorry to those of you I see regularly, you just looked like you.

Tears for Fears--Everybody Wants to Rule the World. This too reminds me of my senior year, yearbook and Marc Alblinger. Funny, Marc was one of those friends too, that guy friend you could talk to but didn't think anything further about it. Yet another reason I love facebook. Marc travels-- a lot, and I love seeing all the places he and his wife have been. The one place, out of ALL the places he's been, that I am most envious of is, believe it or not; Broadway to see Wicked. I'm gonna do that one of these days, Part of me says it won't surprise me if I end up in Greece, or Italy, or someplace someday, but I know I will make it to see Wicked on Broadway. Anyway, I heard this song today and it always reminds me of Marc. He introduced me to Tears for Fears before they were popular here because of his overseas connections. He bought me this album for graduation, I'm sure my mom even knows every word to every song because it was played constantly that summer.
 
I have so many more, but it is almost 10 and Andrew has already went to bed, so I best be heading that direction. Nice to take a little walk down memory lane. If I spend any amount of time with you, I probably have a song that I can connect, that's how my brain works. Something really funny is Robert does that too. I know we aren't normal because I mention this to people and they look at me like I have 3 heads, but oh well.

Sorry if this blog bored you (if you made it this far), this was a totally for me, maybe having a middle age crisis, kind of thing.

Happy Saturday.

and Life Goes On.....

There have been periods of time in the last 8 days that have been downright heart wrenching to me. On June 2, Governor Rauner vowed to suspend the LIHEAP program if he did not have a budget he liked in place. On June 30th, I sat, linked to two of my friends who also worked with the program and literally watched as 53,000+ Illinois residence lost their Percentage of Income Payment Plan. my screen was up to one particular client, and my friend, Jen's screen was up to the active report. I was kicked out of the system about 11:45 and her screen went blank at 12:02. It was seriously watching a death. The next day, we had to start telling our clients. Many of my PIPP clients are seniors. We had sent letters out in April telling them we were doing our re-certification process different this year and that we would send a letter closer to time for them to come in. They were calling me just to make sure they hadn't missed their letter. I had to start telling them, "at 12:01, July 1, the PIPP program was dropped throughout the state". Yesterday, I had a lady tell me that it looked like this was the last straw and as much as she hated it, she was going to probably be moving to Joliet and moving in with her kids. I have had so many tears this week, and I want to cry right along with them. I had a lady last week that thanked me for everything I had done, she is 85, she was crying. I hung up and cried, because as many times as we made trips to Springfield to try to educate the Governor and legislators, it didn't work and I have felt like a failure.
     I continued to tell all of my clients to call their legislators, and hand out their phone numbers. I did apparently have one that was tired of the phone calls and told one of my clients to tell me to call him. He has vowed to come down and let us teach him more about PIPP, I hope he holds to that.
     Right now, we are not counting on having any State funds at all, even though, the state funds are not and never have been part of the General Revenue Fund. In 2002, a bill was passed enacting the 48 cent meter charge on the utility companies that have over 100,000 clients. This is part of a customer service charge on the utility bill. In this Act, that money was specifically to be used to help low-income families. Last week, on July 1st, as a matter of fact, just hours after our program was stopped, the Governor borrowed some of that money to pay bills while there is no budget. I do not understand how that is legal, and things like this takes time to sort out.
     I do very well understand that this is just one of many issues going on with the state having no budget. I also know that to take away the PIPP program, where people are being responsible for paying 6% of their income to their energy bill every month, is just nuts. I had people who were finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They were being able to budget, manage their bills, and work on making life better for themselves and their families. It is just truly nothing short of heart wrenching.
     Many of our fellow agencies have shut down at least the Energy Assistance departments. Because we are structured to where all of our fieldstaff work with all the programs, right at the moment, we are still open. We closed the offices last Wednesday because we had no clear direction yet as to if we had the authority to pay staff without a budget. I am praying for a resolution soon but I truly thought it would happen last week. Now the Senate is off until the 14th, I don't know how they do that, knowing so many lives are at stake.  I hope people remember this when election time rolls around.


There have been a couple of bright spots in our personal life at least. Last Saturday, the 4th, the boys both had the day off and I did so we decided to take a daytrip. Our original plans were to go to the Alton/Grafton area, but when I started looking things up, I found out most of it was still closed due to flooding. Plan B....Springfield. It's a little ironic, because of course, that seems to be my home away from home but when I go, it's usually all business and I don't spend much time doing the touristy stuff. We went to the Old State Capitol, and then walked over to the new State Capitol. I was amazed at 1) how EMPTY it was compared to the last few times I have been there and 2) those days that we were there and things were so chaotic, tours were still being given every 30 minutes. The upside of that, is like me, they got to go into the chambers and watch as laws were being made, whereas on Saturday, nobody was there. The funny thing to me was, when we go during the week, after you pass security, you go where you want, when you want. So, since we had walked quite a ways, I had told the guys that we would run to the basement and get a water out of the pop machine as soon as we got there. So we get through security and they tell us to wait in the rotunda for the next tour, and I asked if we could run downstairs and get a drink.....no. Okay, so when the Governor and most of the legislators are in house, you go where you want, when they aren't, you can't even go get a bottle of water......yeah, I'm from Illinois. We also went to Lincoln's Home and then back to Coles County Airport for fireworks. It was a good day, and it was nice to see a different side of the Capitol. The lady that was our tour guide was amazing at knowing all of the art work, some of it I had looked up on the internet but some I had never really noticed until the building wasn't so crowded.

Then, another bright spot of the week, Robert has wanted a diesel pick-up truck for, well, forever as far as he is concerned, Through a series of events between him and one of his best friends, he now owns one. It stands about a mountain's height tall and we had to get a wooden box for me to stand on to get in it, and then Garrett still had to pull me up into the seat. I am very proud of it for him. Typical mechanic, he now owns 6 vehicles, 2 will run someday and be restored, one needs the rest of the parts taken off of it and then scrapped and one he is hoping to get on the market soon. It truly has been a bright spot though, seeing him so thrilled.

Hope I have better news on the workfront soon.

Until then,