Infamous, famous, criminally insane, sex toys

As the headline suggests, this is a bit of blogging potpourri (and perhaps a bit more), but that increases the odds you'll find something that tickles you in the right spot or is otherwise interesting herein.

First, I've been sick. It started last week with a nagging but otherwise harmless post-nasal congestion that persisted through the weekend. Then, it went away. For a day, I felt like a million bucks. Then, came a new stage of ailment. Prior to recording a fever of any sort, I suffered two nights of *terrible* chills when trying to go to sleep. I'd wrap myself up in a mountain of blankets and shiver uncontrollably. It was more than an hour each night of trying to get to sleep under these conditions, only to wake at 4 or 5 in the morning sweating profusely. You know what thought: It's a fine time to quit heroin.

Then, I woke up Thursday with a fever. It sucked. I needed more than two hours to shower and get dressed for school. And I *had* to go to school. I suffered. But I tried not to get anyone else sick in the process. I was rather bummed that I had to skip the happy hour celebration of YogaGirl's 31st birthday. Maybe next year....

Moving on.... Yesterday, as the students were gathering for my Practical Skills class, the teacher -- whom I have *never* met -- looked at me and said, "It's the infamous UCM!"

Infamous? I inquired in my feverish state, then added, Oh no....

"Yes, infamous," she replied. "But don't worry. That's a good thing."

Weird.

Her partner is my academic adviser and taught a class I attended last term, so I assumed that was origin of her comment. I still think odds are good that it is. But this teacher gave the class a pretty substantial talk about the lengths she and her partner go through to not engage in "cross talk" about students. So, hmmm....

That covers the "infamous" part of the headline. Now for the "famous" portion. Famous requires quotation marks in this case, because some people are not so famous.

This morning I had breakfast at a joint across the street from where I live. I walked in with a book -- Susan Johnson's text on Emotion Focused Couples Therapy -- and had my nose it for the most part. But early on, I happened to look up and into the face of the woman sitting a the table next to me. I automatically recognized her someone on television.

I thought she was Linda Hamilton from the "Terminator" movies, but, that being highly unlikely and out of context, I realized it was Caprial Pence, a chef (and recipient of a James Beard Award) who owns a well-regarded bistro here in Portland. She is recognizable to me because I have been watching her cooking shows for more than 10 years on PBS. Sitting opposite from her at the table was her husband, John, who got some notoriety of his own when "Caprial's Cafe," her original show, expanded to include him and became "Caprial and John's Kitchen."

They split a burger.

Surprisingly, Caprial does look a little like Linda Hamilton in person.

Moving on.... Wednesday, I did my first stint as a Mrs. Garrett-like character (if you recall the house mom from "Facts of Life," with Tootie and all) in a Home for the Criminally Insane. The five residents -- in this case, all men -- have been found guilty of crimes except for reason of insanity. The program that employs me is designed to help them transition from the state mental hospital back into the community, even as they remain under the guardianship of what's essentially the state parole board for mentally ill criminals.

As part of the work I'm doing with them, I have access to a GIGANTIC binder kept on each person. It includes information about the crime they comitted, as well as their various diagnoses. It also contains extensive reports about their stay in the state mental hospital and, most disturbingly, synopses of their individual therapy sessions.

What's disturbing to me about the last item is that these guys have no privacy within the system. They are still protected from, for example, having me reveal identifying information about them on this blog. But anyone who works in that home reads the binders to get an understanding of the dynamics that may unfold in the home and are aware of potential problems.

Nevertheless, that does not explain why I or anyone else should know -- as popped right out of one page at a glance -- that one of the residents has had a single sexual encounter and regarded it as a drudgery. As a future practitioner, I question both the need to record such content on someone who committed a crime that was *not* sexual in nature and to make it accessible to people who have no need to know this.

The criminal justice system dehumanizes people in so many ways. Stripping them of their privacy is one of them.

I'll be looking at the binders in each of the places I work because I want to know certain things about the people who whom I'm dealing. But I'll be invoking some self-defined limitations and not reading more than necessary. Even though it's interesting as all get-out, it doesn't seem right to me.

On the upside, this job seems like it will be pretty mellow, for the most part. The residents in these homes are fairly motivated not to return to the state mental hospital. They do most of the chores around the home. I'll be involved in distributing their medications, ensuring they do their assigned chores, helping those who are less-than-capable to complete their chores, checking in and out kitchen knives, keeping track of their comings and goings and in engaging in positive relationships with them.

I have another shift tomorrow, at a different house (this one right in the heart of a trendy neighborhood). I'll be interested to find out if my first impressions of the job hold true in a different location. The woman who trained me on Wednesday warned me to stay away from one particular location, which is a home where the residents are both criminally insane *and* medically fragile. Currently, I'm not scheduled to train at that home, but I'll keep her warning in mind as I get the lay of the land.

Speaking of the lay of the land, I am still plodding along toward that unenviable anniversary of a Year Without Sex. However, I did manage, on my one healthy day this week, to finally replace the sex toys I lost in the divorce. That took me a while. But perhaps it is also a testament to what's *not* missing in my own company.