A couple people on the forum noticed that I was up at 3:30 a.m. last night/this morning; the reason is I spent a rather sleepless night agonizing over what I am going to publish here.
As I have already mentioned in a couple of places on the forum, we had a recent session and it was one of the most disturbing sessions with the Cs we've ever had. It was conducted last Monday night and was transcribed by Mr. Scott the next day. At first I thought "well, that should never see the light of day" even though the Cs said, yeah, it needed to be published as a lesson to others. But now, with a number of discussions about relationships going on, I think I had better follow the Cs advice though this one is going to require background information that I am going to try to make as brief as possible.
The main topic of this session is the recent visit for EE Teacher Training of a certain couple and their 15 month old child. Their names have been changed for privacy though.
Now, you may well ask how anybody got me to bend the rules about no small children in this house? Over the years it has been said repeatedly that the Chateau is not a place for young children, there are too many important things happening, everyone is busy, too much breakable equipment and decoration, and baby proofing is virtually impossible. In fact, it was just recently mentioned again to another family when they were hoping to come for the EE training that they needed to leave their young child at home or make arrangements to stay in a B&B and bring a baby-sitter.
The rules were bent by me because the baby is young enough that my daughters could (and wanted to) watch and play with him while the parents were busy. It didn’t turn out that way and it is really too bad that the parents did not let us know in advance just how things were. I was, of course, expecting a toddler; I was not expecting a child that presents as this one did. The rules were bent because I was trying to be externally considerate of the man who, I realized, wanted very much to help his wife to feel a part of the group and she was very suspicious and critical from the start.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The man is a long time member of the forum here, a member of QFS and a SOTT editor/writer. After he had become a member of the forum/groups, he apparently, without networking about it, decided to try an online dating service: E-Harmony, I believe. It was through this service that he met the woman he is now married to. I guess it is understandable that he was looking for a partner with some desperation since he was 43 and not getting younger, and he really wanted a family. Sue already had two nearly grown children (she is the same age as Bob.)
We (me, QFS, etc) did not even know about “Sue” until we were planning a meeting in October of 2007. At that point, “Bob” wanted to attend but told me that his girlfriend would “kill him” if he went to France and did not take her. So, an exception was made that early in the game and, frankly, it was not a good experience for most of us. This woman managed to insult or offend half of the 50 people present in the few days she was here, including three of my children.
During this meeting, it seems, “Bob” proposed to “Sue” and she announced it and received plenty of congratulations. I, of course, had a lot of doubts, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for Bob’s sake.
So, Bob and Sue got married and somewhere in there went through InVitro Fertilization. Apparently, Bob really wanted a baby of his and Sue wasn’t getting pregnant the normal way. They had a number of failures with the procedure and then, on what was supposed to be the last try, it took. They thereafter referred to the child as their “miracle baby” for this reason. You'll soon see why this is so tragically ironic.
This, of course, was going on in the background without Bob discussing it with anyone. He had the idea that it was a good idea and relied on his own thinking entirely. The results will soon become apparent.
It’s one thing to come to The Work with relationships already in place: then you have to work where you are planted. What struck me as so bizarre is that this is a guy who, above all other people, knew the score about what is in our future and STILL went to this extreme to have a baby. I mean, if it just happens and you are faced with being pregnant, obviously, unless extraordinary conditions prevail, the right thing to do is have the baby and “work with what life has given you.” But to know what Bob knows, for Sue to be unable to get pregnant normally, (being the age she was and possibly other factors), and to spend all that time, money and effort to have a baby just passes my understanding.
But that’s what they did. And, as you will see, it looks like Nature knew better. They are now faced with a reality that is quite different from the one they thought they were creating wearing their rose-colored glasses.
So, that’s the background.
Bob and Sue were scheduled to come here for their EE presentation and feedback. This was the last in a long series of QFS members who are training to teach EE coming here to fulfill the legal requirement for ordination: they have to attend a “seminary” type training. We made it clear that they – the QFS members – would be creating the teaching program, that we would film and critique it, and these videos would be made available to other QFS members to learn from and critique. The object being to CREATE the training program by trial and error.
So, we have had a continuing flow of guests/EE training/videoing going on here since October with about a week between in some cases, but usually only a few days. During Christmas, we had several FOTCM board members here and spent a week in meetings, working out details, documentation, trying to figure out how to do things in a venue that is new to us. By the time that group went home in early January, my brain was fried from all the thinking!
Then, the next group arrived in mid January, and we were off again! In most cases, these visits were a pleasure because our guests, being long-time members of the group, and having visited before, felt at home, pitched in and helped out in every way they could, and in spite of the work-load and the intense discussions in our planning sessions, we had a good time.
The mid-January group was followed very shortly by the UK group at the end of January. This was followed, just a few days later by Kerry Cassidy and her cameraman/friend. We were looking forward to some down time except that one of the UK crew had come down with a head cold his first day here and now, on the 4th/5th of February, about half the house came down with it also. I was actually feeling really rough in the throat the day we videoed the PC interview and the next day, I actually was sick. It was a short, mild, cold for me, but not so for everyone in the house! It also didn't help that several of us were doing Mercury detox so that may have exacerbated the symptoms.
So, our down time was occupied by getting over a cold and Bob and Sue were to arrive on Sunday, the 14th. Since everybody had been sick and struggling to keep up with the business end of things anyway, we were exhausted before they arrived and planned to get their room ready the next day, hoping that someone would feel well enough to do it.
At about 9 or 10 p.m. on the night before their arrival, (about the time they were leaving the U.S.) our electricity went out. This happens a lot and we don't usually sweat it because it's just a question of flipping a switch out on the pole in the yard, and turning off whatever overloaded the circuit. This time, that didn't work. Ark and Mr. Scott, Perceval, Burma Jones and Belibaste, spent about 45 minutes figuring out that this was NOT the normal power outage. It was below freezing outside, late on a Saturday night, guests arriving in the early afternoon of the next day and we weren't even ready. Plus, the guys (except Ark) were still in recovery from the head cold. So, it wasn't a pleasant event.
Somehow, Belibaste managed to get the electric company to send a man out in the middle of the freezing night (he told him that the house was full of old people who would die from the cold! I was ready to get out a cane and hobble around for effect if needed.) and this guy replaced the big breaker switch which was completely burned up. On top of that, one of the computers in the house got fried during the efforts to get the lights back on. (It belonged to my youngest daughter who is starting to learn video editing, so this was a real bummer.)
But, as ya'll know, we generally take such events under observation and wait for more clues before deciding if it is meaningful or not. At this point, it didn't seem to be terribly meaningful.
Next morning, I received an email from Bob, sent from the Paris airport, telling me that - surprise, surprise! - their plane was actually early and they had changed their flight from Paris to Toulouse and would be arriving two hours earlier!
Well, that was good news for them, but for us, those extra couple hours of down-time, rest, being allowed to get things ready at a slower pace, meant a lot! We rushed around, got the baby bed out of storage, put the new mattress on it, covered it with a plastic mattress cover, made it up for baby, made sure there were nice sheets on the bed, plenty of covers, dusted, vacuumed, aired out the room, turned on the heat, and everything was ready.
They arrived. We took their luggage up to their room. We warned them that it would be best to try to stay up for awhile and go to bed at a reasonably normal time so as to re-set their body clocks. It was hard, but we watched videos and chatted and had dinner and so on, until it was about 7:30 or 8, at which point they went up to bed. Somewhere along this time, we learned that our efforts to get a bed ready for the baby was wasted since they “co-sleep.” Well, actually, at home, Sue sleeps with the baby who nurses on and off all night, and Bob sleeps in another room.
On Monday, Sue was up pretty early and down in the kitchen. Bob wasn't feeling too well so he stayed in bed most of the day with the baby. Apparently the baby had come down sick at about the same time and was vomiting upstairs. I was in the kitchen and only got the news when Sue announced that she wanted to go to the market with me. She said that the baby was sick but she wanted to get out and bring him. I said that since he had been vomiting, maybe she should leave him with Bob. She said that Bob was too sick to watch the baby, he would come with us. I really didn’t think that taking a baby that MIGHT be getting seriously sick was a good idea. And based on the evidence that Bob was sick in a similar way, it looked iffy. But Sue insisted, and off we went.
The first thing the baby did in the supermarket was projectile vomit in front of the meat counter. We had another stop to make and Sue sat in the car with the baby who continued to vomit into a plastic bag Sue had acquired at the store.
Bob stayed in bed all day Monday, and baby was with him most of the time. Sue went up occasionally to feed baby and look in on Bob, but mostly she was downstairs. Baby continued to vomit off and on.
On Tuesday, baby and Bob continue to be sick, but by this time, Sue is sending Bob down with baby so she can sleep. So, sick Bob and sick baby spend a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen or the salon or at the computer with baby vomiting a bit now and then.
Tuesday night, I had a very intense dream that woke me up, about a plane crash. Bob was in the dream, but I didn't see Sue in there. It put me in an emotional state for the whole of Wednesday.
On Wednesday, in addition to the after-effects of the bad dream, I got up to find that Perceval had come down sick during the night with the stomach bug and had been vomiting. Then, Athena and Bubbles began to feel ill during the morning. Bubbles announced that she had had a dream about a demon that was connected to babies. This is referred to in the session.
Sue was scheduled to do her presentation and we got the cameras and lights set up to do it (which is an ordeal since we don’t have a big enough studio and have to set everything up and take it down when we film these presentations) and about the time we were ready, in the afternoon, Atriedes started getting really sick.
About Sue' presentation: It really was bad. Not her manner or her enthusiasm or any of that, but she simply did not know the material. At all. When it got to the part about belly breathing, it was clear that she didn't even know what that meant. With a little questioning, we figured out that she had not watched the training videos or even the introductory video where Burma Jones had placed the working model of the diaphragm and the vagus nerve. She obviously had not used the video with the routine even once. (Or if she had, she sure hadn't learned anything from it.)
So, as we do with everyone, we just stopped right there and worked with her to get the right information in her head, to demonstrate how it was done, practice a bit, and then carry on with the presentation, looking for other trouble spots. All on film for the benefit of others. It's not a bad way to teach something, IMO. You learn what the student knows, where they lack information, and so on, and these experiences become valuable teachings for others who may have similar gaps in their knowledge. Sue was seriously lacking the correct information but that's no big deal. You just impart the information, make the corrections, and do it right.
Bob wanted to cook his fish recipe on Wednesday night, and he did, but I heard that he wasn't well enough to eat it. I had already gone up to bed, being exhausted after working with Sue on her presentation.
Anyway, on Thursday morning, the day Bob was supposed to do his presentation, Sue announced to me that she wanted to do her’s over and she didn't want anybody to see the first one. I told her that it was actually a great teaching video because teaching someone on video is what they are all about. How would anybody learn anything, how would others feel, if every video done by everybody was so darn perfect? Everybody's training video has good points and gaps. That's why we are making them and using them for training. That's why it is good to make mistakes and have them corrected. As a result of this conversation, I realized that I really did need to encourage everyone of the teachers in training on QFS to be watching the videos. So, as a consequence of this, I wrote to the group and suggested that everyone should be watching those training videos and the intro video so as to have all the facts committed to memory. The lines don't have to be memorized, but you do have to know your stuff. I kinda figured that this would reinforce for Sue the value of her video as a teaching tool. Here is exactly what I wrote:
Since, as I mentioned above, her presentation itself wasn't bad, it was just the lack of correct info, I didn't say anything about Sue' presentation in that email except to mention that her presentation prompted me to encourage everyone to really learn the process. I was also writing in a rush because keeping an eye on the dogs vis a vis the baby and strangers, AND my house and my stuff with a baby here, was kind of a full time job (not to mention making sure there was plenty of food available and looking out for the few people who were left on their feet at this point to take care of the house). Sue and Bob weren't bad about it, but I could see that they had no idea what was valuable and what was not and they tended to allow the baby to be a little bit destructive. Our kitchen table is not so valuable, thank goodness, because it now has a whole new bunch of dents in it from their screw-on high chair and baby banging everything as hard as he could.
So, shortly after I had this conversation with Sue and left it at “I’ll think about it…” I made Ark's breakfast and was taking it upstairs when, for some strange reason, I just fell. In trying to save the plate, I managed to do something to my left leg and right hand. I have two big bruises on the leg and what appears to be a broken little finger on the right hand with a really damaged ligament or chipped bone or something. The knuckle is black under the skin, swollen and very painful. In fact, the whole hand hurts.
Sue came to me again, after lunch and went on about her video again... so I told her that if we had time after Bob did his, and Burma Jones hadn't dropped in his tracks by then (he was already catching the bug), we'd see. I don't think she even thought about the fact of how exhausting it was for us to have to set up the cameras, be present and attentive, go through the whole thing again just so she could present a perfect face. But, if it was really making her so unhappy, I was willing to consider doing it. (I know that everyone else did NOT want to do this because by this time, about everyone in the house was sick except me, Ailén, Burma Jones, Ark and Sue. Bob was, of course, still just recovering.)
So, Bob did his presentation. It wasn't bad either. Very nice manner, but not really lively. He warmed up with a little encouragement.
Later on, I was in the kitchen and talked to Sue a bit more about belly breathing (and Bob was there.) Then, the topic of everyone getting sick with the baby's sickness came up and I understood from her that she was sure that the baby got sick from being in our house and only now was realizing that it was the other way around: they brought the sickness with them and all of us were being infected one by one. I pointed out that most sicknesses take 3 days to a week to incubate, so it would have been impossible for them to come down with whatever it was the very first day they were here IF they contracted it here. (I was surprised that she was ignorant of those facts, but kept that to myself.) She immediately wanted to start wiping things down and grabbed a sponge and a bottle of spray cleaner and starting violently wiping stuff in the kitchen. When she got to the kitchen faucet (which the baby had never touched), she didn't realize that it was an extending faucet with a hose that slips back into the neck, and wiped it so hard it bent over sideways and cracked the hose inside the metal links.) I just said "stick it back in, it's okay." (Perceval had to replace the entire faucet unit the day after they left.) She went off somewhere and then, a little bit later, I sent Belibaste to the butcher and heard Sue asking him if she could go and "get out of the house." I didn't think anything about it. I think that it must have been at this point that she logged on and read what I had written to QFS about watching the videos.
I made a big pot of lamb tagine for their last dinner, green beans, Ailén made muffins, etc. Somewhere along around dinner time, I discovered that Sue was very angry at me and was not going to leave her room and come down to eat.
I had, apparently, been horrible to her, humiliating her in front of the group by writing that everyone needed to watch the videos, and further, I had humiliated her because she had entered the room while Bob's presentation was being filmed and heard me say something about people not knowing how to belly breathe, so that was obviously a dig directed at her. (I didn't know she had entered the room!)
In short, I was the meanest, most wicked woman on the face of the planet and she couldn't bear the sight of me and was going to stay in her room until they could leave early the next morning.
I was pretty shocked, to say the least. I was shocked that she thought that what I had written was a deliberate, unkind, attempt to humiliate her. I was shocked that she thought I had targeted her in a plain, matter-of-fact remark about belly breathing to Bob (especially when I didn't even know she was in the room.) Most of all, I was shocked that she refused to even come down and talk about it. This behavior being manifested by an adult woman, a woman with grown children, a woman who is a school teacher, fer gawd's sake, in someone else's house, was just beyond my capacity to understand.
It's funny how I still let things like this get to me. I spent that whole night lying in bed with my heart hurting, feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest. And that feeling is only slowly going away.
We talked to Bob about the situation a bit, but I'm going to let the others here in the house recount those conversations since I have used up all my energy just outlining the chronology up to this point. Additional details if you think of anything to ask.
ADDED: An email from Bob with corrections:
And now, for the session.
As I have already mentioned in a couple of places on the forum, we had a recent session and it was one of the most disturbing sessions with the Cs we've ever had. It was conducted last Monday night and was transcribed by Mr. Scott the next day. At first I thought "well, that should never see the light of day" even though the Cs said, yeah, it needed to be published as a lesson to others. But now, with a number of discussions about relationships going on, I think I had better follow the Cs advice though this one is going to require background information that I am going to try to make as brief as possible.
The main topic of this session is the recent visit for EE Teacher Training of a certain couple and their 15 month old child. Their names have been changed for privacy though.
Now, you may well ask how anybody got me to bend the rules about no small children in this house? Over the years it has been said repeatedly that the Chateau is not a place for young children, there are too many important things happening, everyone is busy, too much breakable equipment and decoration, and baby proofing is virtually impossible. In fact, it was just recently mentioned again to another family when they were hoping to come for the EE training that they needed to leave their young child at home or make arrangements to stay in a B&B and bring a baby-sitter.
The rules were bent by me because the baby is young enough that my daughters could (and wanted to) watch and play with him while the parents were busy. It didn’t turn out that way and it is really too bad that the parents did not let us know in advance just how things were. I was, of course, expecting a toddler; I was not expecting a child that presents as this one did. The rules were bent because I was trying to be externally considerate of the man who, I realized, wanted very much to help his wife to feel a part of the group and she was very suspicious and critical from the start.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The man is a long time member of the forum here, a member of QFS and a SOTT editor/writer. After he had become a member of the forum/groups, he apparently, without networking about it, decided to try an online dating service: E-Harmony, I believe. It was through this service that he met the woman he is now married to. I guess it is understandable that he was looking for a partner with some desperation since he was 43 and not getting younger, and he really wanted a family. Sue already had two nearly grown children (she is the same age as Bob.)
We (me, QFS, etc) did not even know about “Sue” until we were planning a meeting in October of 2007. At that point, “Bob” wanted to attend but told me that his girlfriend would “kill him” if he went to France and did not take her. So, an exception was made that early in the game and, frankly, it was not a good experience for most of us. This woman managed to insult or offend half of the 50 people present in the few days she was here, including three of my children.
During this meeting, it seems, “Bob” proposed to “Sue” and she announced it and received plenty of congratulations. I, of course, had a lot of doubts, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for Bob’s sake.
So, Bob and Sue got married and somewhere in there went through InVitro Fertilization. Apparently, Bob really wanted a baby of his and Sue wasn’t getting pregnant the normal way. They had a number of failures with the procedure and then, on what was supposed to be the last try, it took. They thereafter referred to the child as their “miracle baby” for this reason. You'll soon see why this is so tragically ironic.
This, of course, was going on in the background without Bob discussing it with anyone. He had the idea that it was a good idea and relied on his own thinking entirely. The results will soon become apparent.
It’s one thing to come to The Work with relationships already in place: then you have to work where you are planted. What struck me as so bizarre is that this is a guy who, above all other people, knew the score about what is in our future and STILL went to this extreme to have a baby. I mean, if it just happens and you are faced with being pregnant, obviously, unless extraordinary conditions prevail, the right thing to do is have the baby and “work with what life has given you.” But to know what Bob knows, for Sue to be unable to get pregnant normally, (being the age she was and possibly other factors), and to spend all that time, money and effort to have a baby just passes my understanding.
But that’s what they did. And, as you will see, it looks like Nature knew better. They are now faced with a reality that is quite different from the one they thought they were creating wearing their rose-colored glasses.
So, that’s the background.
Bob and Sue were scheduled to come here for their EE presentation and feedback. This was the last in a long series of QFS members who are training to teach EE coming here to fulfill the legal requirement for ordination: they have to attend a “seminary” type training. We made it clear that they – the QFS members – would be creating the teaching program, that we would film and critique it, and these videos would be made available to other QFS members to learn from and critique. The object being to CREATE the training program by trial and error.
So, we have had a continuing flow of guests/EE training/videoing going on here since October with about a week between in some cases, but usually only a few days. During Christmas, we had several FOTCM board members here and spent a week in meetings, working out details, documentation, trying to figure out how to do things in a venue that is new to us. By the time that group went home in early January, my brain was fried from all the thinking!
Then, the next group arrived in mid January, and we were off again! In most cases, these visits were a pleasure because our guests, being long-time members of the group, and having visited before, felt at home, pitched in and helped out in every way they could, and in spite of the work-load and the intense discussions in our planning sessions, we had a good time.
The mid-January group was followed very shortly by the UK group at the end of January. This was followed, just a few days later by Kerry Cassidy and her cameraman/friend. We were looking forward to some down time except that one of the UK crew had come down with a head cold his first day here and now, on the 4th/5th of February, about half the house came down with it also. I was actually feeling really rough in the throat the day we videoed the PC interview and the next day, I actually was sick. It was a short, mild, cold for me, but not so for everyone in the house! It also didn't help that several of us were doing Mercury detox so that may have exacerbated the symptoms.
So, our down time was occupied by getting over a cold and Bob and Sue were to arrive on Sunday, the 14th. Since everybody had been sick and struggling to keep up with the business end of things anyway, we were exhausted before they arrived and planned to get their room ready the next day, hoping that someone would feel well enough to do it.
At about 9 or 10 p.m. on the night before their arrival, (about the time they were leaving the U.S.) our electricity went out. This happens a lot and we don't usually sweat it because it's just a question of flipping a switch out on the pole in the yard, and turning off whatever overloaded the circuit. This time, that didn't work. Ark and Mr. Scott, Perceval, Burma Jones and Belibaste, spent about 45 minutes figuring out that this was NOT the normal power outage. It was below freezing outside, late on a Saturday night, guests arriving in the early afternoon of the next day and we weren't even ready. Plus, the guys (except Ark) were still in recovery from the head cold. So, it wasn't a pleasant event.
Somehow, Belibaste managed to get the electric company to send a man out in the middle of the freezing night (he told him that the house was full of old people who would die from the cold! I was ready to get out a cane and hobble around for effect if needed.) and this guy replaced the big breaker switch which was completely burned up. On top of that, one of the computers in the house got fried during the efforts to get the lights back on. (It belonged to my youngest daughter who is starting to learn video editing, so this was a real bummer.)
But, as ya'll know, we generally take such events under observation and wait for more clues before deciding if it is meaningful or not. At this point, it didn't seem to be terribly meaningful.
Next morning, I received an email from Bob, sent from the Paris airport, telling me that - surprise, surprise! - their plane was actually early and they had changed their flight from Paris to Toulouse and would be arriving two hours earlier!
Well, that was good news for them, but for us, those extra couple hours of down-time, rest, being allowed to get things ready at a slower pace, meant a lot! We rushed around, got the baby bed out of storage, put the new mattress on it, covered it with a plastic mattress cover, made it up for baby, made sure there were nice sheets on the bed, plenty of covers, dusted, vacuumed, aired out the room, turned on the heat, and everything was ready.
They arrived. We took their luggage up to their room. We warned them that it would be best to try to stay up for awhile and go to bed at a reasonably normal time so as to re-set their body clocks. It was hard, but we watched videos and chatted and had dinner and so on, until it was about 7:30 or 8, at which point they went up to bed. Somewhere along this time, we learned that our efforts to get a bed ready for the baby was wasted since they “co-sleep.” Well, actually, at home, Sue sleeps with the baby who nurses on and off all night, and Bob sleeps in another room.
On Monday, Sue was up pretty early and down in the kitchen. Bob wasn't feeling too well so he stayed in bed most of the day with the baby. Apparently the baby had come down sick at about the same time and was vomiting upstairs. I was in the kitchen and only got the news when Sue announced that she wanted to go to the market with me. She said that the baby was sick but she wanted to get out and bring him. I said that since he had been vomiting, maybe she should leave him with Bob. She said that Bob was too sick to watch the baby, he would come with us. I really didn’t think that taking a baby that MIGHT be getting seriously sick was a good idea. And based on the evidence that Bob was sick in a similar way, it looked iffy. But Sue insisted, and off we went.
The first thing the baby did in the supermarket was projectile vomit in front of the meat counter. We had another stop to make and Sue sat in the car with the baby who continued to vomit into a plastic bag Sue had acquired at the store.
Bob stayed in bed all day Monday, and baby was with him most of the time. Sue went up occasionally to feed baby and look in on Bob, but mostly she was downstairs. Baby continued to vomit off and on.
On Tuesday, baby and Bob continue to be sick, but by this time, Sue is sending Bob down with baby so she can sleep. So, sick Bob and sick baby spend a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen or the salon or at the computer with baby vomiting a bit now and then.
Tuesday night, I had a very intense dream that woke me up, about a plane crash. Bob was in the dream, but I didn't see Sue in there. It put me in an emotional state for the whole of Wednesday.
On Wednesday, in addition to the after-effects of the bad dream, I got up to find that Perceval had come down sick during the night with the stomach bug and had been vomiting. Then, Athena and Bubbles began to feel ill during the morning. Bubbles announced that she had had a dream about a demon that was connected to babies. This is referred to in the session.
Ailén said:
Sue was scheduled to do her presentation and we got the cameras and lights set up to do it (which is an ordeal since we don’t have a big enough studio and have to set everything up and take it down when we film these presentations) and about the time we were ready, in the afternoon, Atriedes started getting really sick.
About Sue' presentation: It really was bad. Not her manner or her enthusiasm or any of that, but she simply did not know the material. At all. When it got to the part about belly breathing, it was clear that she didn't even know what that meant. With a little questioning, we figured out that she had not watched the training videos or even the introductory video where Burma Jones had placed the working model of the diaphragm and the vagus nerve. She obviously had not used the video with the routine even once. (Or if she had, she sure hadn't learned anything from it.)
Ailén said:
So, as we do with everyone, we just stopped right there and worked with her to get the right information in her head, to demonstrate how it was done, practice a bit, and then carry on with the presentation, looking for other trouble spots. All on film for the benefit of others. It's not a bad way to teach something, IMO. You learn what the student knows, where they lack information, and so on, and these experiences become valuable teachings for others who may have similar gaps in their knowledge. Sue was seriously lacking the correct information but that's no big deal. You just impart the information, make the corrections, and do it right.
Bob wanted to cook his fish recipe on Wednesday night, and he did, but I heard that he wasn't well enough to eat it. I had already gone up to bed, being exhausted after working with Sue on her presentation.
Anyway, on Thursday morning, the day Bob was supposed to do his presentation, Sue announced to me that she wanted to do her’s over and she didn't want anybody to see the first one. I told her that it was actually a great teaching video because teaching someone on video is what they are all about. How would anybody learn anything, how would others feel, if every video done by everybody was so darn perfect? Everybody's training video has good points and gaps. That's why we are making them and using them for training. That's why it is good to make mistakes and have them corrected. As a result of this conversation, I realized that I really did need to encourage everyone of the teachers in training on QFS to be watching the videos. So, as a consequence of this, I wrote to the group and suggested that everyone should be watching those training videos and the intro video so as to have all the facts committed to memory. The lines don't have to be memorized, but you do have to know your stuff. I kinda figured that this would reinforce for Sue the value of her video as a teaching tool. Here is exactly what I wrote:
Laura to QFS said:
Since, as I mentioned above, her presentation itself wasn't bad, it was just the lack of correct info, I didn't say anything about Sue' presentation in that email except to mention that her presentation prompted me to encourage everyone to really learn the process. I was also writing in a rush because keeping an eye on the dogs vis a vis the baby and strangers, AND my house and my stuff with a baby here, was kind of a full time job (not to mention making sure there was plenty of food available and looking out for the few people who were left on their feet at this point to take care of the house). Sue and Bob weren't bad about it, but I could see that they had no idea what was valuable and what was not and they tended to allow the baby to be a little bit destructive. Our kitchen table is not so valuable, thank goodness, because it now has a whole new bunch of dents in it from their screw-on high chair and baby banging everything as hard as he could.
So, shortly after I had this conversation with Sue and left it at “I’ll think about it…” I made Ark's breakfast and was taking it upstairs when, for some strange reason, I just fell. In trying to save the plate, I managed to do something to my left leg and right hand. I have two big bruises on the leg and what appears to be a broken little finger on the right hand with a really damaged ligament or chipped bone or something. The knuckle is black under the skin, swollen and very painful. In fact, the whole hand hurts.
Sue came to me again, after lunch and went on about her video again... so I told her that if we had time after Bob did his, and Burma Jones hadn't dropped in his tracks by then (he was already catching the bug), we'd see. I don't think she even thought about the fact of how exhausting it was for us to have to set up the cameras, be present and attentive, go through the whole thing again just so she could present a perfect face. But, if it was really making her so unhappy, I was willing to consider doing it. (I know that everyone else did NOT want to do this because by this time, about everyone in the house was sick except me, Ailén, Burma Jones, Ark and Sue. Bob was, of course, still just recovering.)
Ailén said:
So, Bob did his presentation. It wasn't bad either. Very nice manner, but not really lively. He warmed up with a little encouragement.
Later on, I was in the kitchen and talked to Sue a bit more about belly breathing (and Bob was there.) Then, the topic of everyone getting sick with the baby's sickness came up and I understood from her that she was sure that the baby got sick from being in our house and only now was realizing that it was the other way around: they brought the sickness with them and all of us were being infected one by one. I pointed out that most sicknesses take 3 days to a week to incubate, so it would have been impossible for them to come down with whatever it was the very first day they were here IF they contracted it here. (I was surprised that she was ignorant of those facts, but kept that to myself.) She immediately wanted to start wiping things down and grabbed a sponge and a bottle of spray cleaner and starting violently wiping stuff in the kitchen. When she got to the kitchen faucet (which the baby had never touched), she didn't realize that it was an extending faucet with a hose that slips back into the neck, and wiped it so hard it bent over sideways and cracked the hose inside the metal links.) I just said "stick it back in, it's okay." (Perceval had to replace the entire faucet unit the day after they left.) She went off somewhere and then, a little bit later, I sent Belibaste to the butcher and heard Sue asking him if she could go and "get out of the house." I didn't think anything about it. I think that it must have been at this point that she logged on and read what I had written to QFS about watching the videos.
I made a big pot of lamb tagine for their last dinner, green beans, Ailén made muffins, etc. Somewhere along around dinner time, I discovered that Sue was very angry at me and was not going to leave her room and come down to eat.
I had, apparently, been horrible to her, humiliating her in front of the group by writing that everyone needed to watch the videos, and further, I had humiliated her because she had entered the room while Bob's presentation was being filmed and heard me say something about people not knowing how to belly breathe, so that was obviously a dig directed at her. (I didn't know she had entered the room!)
Ailén said:
In short, I was the meanest, most wicked woman on the face of the planet and she couldn't bear the sight of me and was going to stay in her room until they could leave early the next morning.
I was pretty shocked, to say the least. I was shocked that she thought that what I had written was a deliberate, unkind, attempt to humiliate her. I was shocked that she thought I had targeted her in a plain, matter-of-fact remark about belly breathing to Bob (especially when I didn't even know she was in the room.) Most of all, I was shocked that she refused to even come down and talk about it. This behavior being manifested by an adult woman, a woman with grown children, a woman who is a school teacher, fer gawd's sake, in someone else's house, was just beyond my capacity to understand.
It's funny how I still let things like this get to me. I spent that whole night lying in bed with my heart hurting, feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest. And that feeling is only slowly going away.
We talked to Bob about the situation a bit, but I'm going to let the others here in the house recount those conversations since I have used up all my energy just outlining the chronology up to this point. Additional details if you think of anything to ask.
Ailén said:
Belibaste said:
Andromeda said:
Perceval said:
Psyche said:
Mr. Scott said:
Andromeda said:
Burma Jones said:
ADDED: An email from Bob with corrections:
And now, for the session.
