This is an illustration of a Primary Restraint Technique before the take down.



To help schools and organizations create a therapeutic milieu or classroom that is emotionally safe, physically safe and personally empowering for everyone in it…

I just finished my Cheerios and banana breakfast (I am allowing myself one banana for breakfast each week.  I refuse to give them up entirely.  I have checked the emails and thank goodness there are no voicemails needing attention this morning.

 

I am mentally psyching myself up for another Handle With Care session this morning.  My partner, Clarence, and I were just talking about mixing up the order we teach things to help make it more interesting for us.  We usually start off with an informal round circle discussion about safety and what's new and what's the same.  We invite folks to share their experiences. 

 

Sometimes, this is a lively discussion and sometimes, it is so quiet and deadly dull I want to scream.  We take a break and then move into the physical interventions.  This usually wakes folks up and gets a bit more interesting as they have to have physical contact with each other and that's when we learn who doesn't like to be touched and who gets overly aggressive.

 

Then we have a wind down and debrief the session.  For over 10 years we have done this 8 or 9 months out of the year, one Friday each month.  It's getting old and we need to liven things up.

 

So this morning we decided we're going to do the physical part first and then when we have our discussion part, we can talk about how it feels to be that close to someone else and how uncomfortable the Primary Restraint Technique can be.  None of the group this morning are new employees.  They are all familiar with this as everyone has to take the course each year for certification.  Clarence and I do an all day training to become trainers and then we train everyone in our building.

 

I'll let you know how it goes because of course I am crampy as hell this morning with a headache and lower backache.  hoorah.  This should be fun.

 

4 hours later...

 

The experiment was a success!  Getting folks up and moving around first and interspersing the talking parts within the physical parts made the training go easier and kept people engaged.  I "let" Clarence put me down on the floor today instead of the other way round.  It is just as brutal as I remember.  Now I have some paperwork to do this afternoon.

 

I am sitting here, eating the salad Pk made for me this morning (he says he wants me to eat well so I stay around longer) and feeling the soreness from the morning setting in.  Thank goodness it's Friday and I don't have much to get accomplished and can work at my own pace. 

 

This weekend is Mother's Day here in the US.  I hear people disparage it as a "hallmark holiday" and maybe it is.  But I'll take any excuse to have my family all together for a meal. Pk is going to roast a chicken and make dinner.  I am going to sit back and let them pamper me.  I am going to get a sparkly red pedicure and maybe a lovely, feminine french manicure.  I will knit and or spin or maybe just sit and watch some X Files.  I'd love it if the weather were nice and we could spin in the park but I think today is the nicest day of the weekend. 

 

Otherwise, things are good here.  I know Pk wants to try to put some siding up on the house this weekend (this involves climbing on the roof) if the weather holds.  He and Elanor have been working on the garden beds.  They have pea plants growing up a trellis.  They look gorgeous (and I hate peas) and the few tomatoes and one pepper he planted already (for early fruit) are doing really well.  If we don't have an extreme hot and dry spell this year, we may get some nice tomatoes.  I'd like to do some canning if we have a good enough harvest.

 

Do you change out your closets for the seasons?  I put the off season clothes in rubbermaid tubs in the spare bedroom or leave them hanging in the closet in there.  So far, it's not been warm enough to think about putting away the winter woolies and taking out the summer cottons.  It may not be much farther off but it's been so hard to tell this year. 

 

But today is lovely and I am sitting here in my office with the window open.  The air is warm and the sky is blue and the sound of traffic is almost deafening sometimes.  But I also get to hear the sound of people all around outside.  It makes me want to speed up the next 2 hours so I can get out of here.  I always feel this way after I spend the morning with Handle with Care.  It's like a whole day of work condensed into a few hours.  I got nothin left.  I wish you all a great weekend.