Another week

I didn't post very much last week, because when I would get home from training, I was usually exhausted. I was in a training course for the Trauma Resiliency Model, which was put on by the Trauma Resource Institute. Actually, our department is the first large organization that has partnered with TRI to train people as trainers for the program, so we had both the TRI people leading it, plus our own DBH people partly running things. That made for a very intensive training experience! They purposefully have very small training groups of only 9 people, so they can keep everyone constantly engaged and active. No playing on my Blackberry or working on testing reports at the same time! It was nice to get to meet some different people in the department and network with them. I'm also such a geek that it kind of energized me to get back to my clinic and use some of these skills. Our department is doing a randomized clinical trial, comparing outcomes of adult clients with a history of trauma who are treated with meds only, cognitive behavioral therapy plus meds, or TRM plus meds (there's no getting away without meds in our department apparently!), and I'm going to be one of the clinicians involved in that study.

Ramy has had trials the last two weeks, so he's been really busy at work. I've helped him on a couple of things for closing arguments. He got handed another murder trial last week also. So it looks like he's going to be busy at work for awhile.

Rebecca had an enjoyable week, it seems. She went on trips to the park and went swimming. She has a lot of fun with Nanny Rebecca. Now that their weekly movies are over, I've been gathering info on other fun things for them to do, which is going to include a weekly trip to a farm, monthly trips to the Chino Youth Museum, more movies, etc. Nanny Rebecca has several cousins and friends with kids about Rebecca's age, so she often organizes playdates. The funniest was a couple of weeks ago. Rebecca has a friend named Julie, who happens to have a 3-year old name Addy. Of course, Julie and Addie are the names of my friend and her daughter who just moved to New York. Rebecca was very excited when Nanny Rebecca told her who they were going to meet for lunch. When she realized it wasn't the Addie and Miss Julie she knew, Rebecca exclaimed, "That not Addie!"

On Friday evening, we went out to dinner in Rancho Cucamonga. Saturday morning was Rebecca's dance class (more on that in a separate post). Then I had a lunch with the Ladies of the Knights of Columbus (wives of Knights). I like to refer to us as the Ladies of the Night. They were trying to convince me that we should go to one of the parish's Marriage Enrichment Weekends, which I wasn't buying into. As they described the weekends to me, I could just picture Ramy's face. Priceless! Spending all weekend talking about feelings in groups of other people would make him break out into hives. We were making plans for the Fall Festival coming up in a few weeks, as well as for the holiday party and a special even coming up in January. I got to take a nap Saturday afternoon, while Ramy watched football. UCLA played Tennessee yesterday. In theory, I suppose we could have been a house divided about that game, but I have absolutely no interest in either team, so it affected me not a bit. He certainly seemed to enjoy an afternoon of football though, and Rebecca would mimic his cheers. She would also announce to me, "He made a touchdown!" Clearly, my 2-year old already knows (and cares!) more about football that I do. We ordered in last night and hung out at home. Yesterday, I tackled laundry and grocery shopping and that kind of thing.