Scam; STAMMA

Monday began with the scam. It was incredibly upsetting. It had my friend. Rod’s, return address and was imperceptible as a scam. Somehow, some asshole thief was intercepting Rod’s emails. Thankfully, my morning walk with Stacy got my mind off it.

When I got home from the walk, there was a ton of work requests from the clinic team. The work also helped keep my mind from obsessing about the scam. Of course, what they wanted was due yesterday, so I was hard at it from 10:00 am until 3:30. Once done, I rushed into the village to buy something to take for dessert because I just didn’t have the energy to bake something.

I went to Stacy’s for dinner with Nancy H. and had a wonderful time. My speech has been good for a few weeks now and I’m really enjoying being almost fluent with friends. When I think back to 2016, I’ve come a long, long way back to normal since then.

As I write, it’s 9:30 am. I’ve been up since 3:00, but I didn’t sleep all night for fear of missing my 4:00 am Zoom call with the UK medics. That call finished at around 5:30, after which I had a bit of a lie down, but again, I didn’t sleep because I had another Zoom call at 8:00. Both calls were about STAMMA related volunteer work I’m doing.

Now, I’m officially the administrator and host of the STAMMA Adults New to Stammering (ANTS) support group. Every member but me lives in the UK, but I am the coordinator. Weird, eh?! But I’m very proud to be in this role. Thanks to this group, I function well without needing the help of Dr. Shoha. My next task with them is working with them to make a short film on adult-onset stuttering. I know far, far more about it than anyone at STAMMA because since it’s inception, STAMMA has worked with developmental stutterers. Adult-onset stutterers are classified as acquired stuttering, and this is new to STAMMA—hence, a lot of my work for STAMMA.

On a different topic, I’m going to submit a monologue to the first Islands Monologue Festival that is happening in Victoria in March of next year. I’m going to submit the monologue I wrote and performed for The Flame in Vancouver in 2017. If accepted, I’ll get an honorarium that will help me finance a trip to Victoria to perform it. I have a feeling I might get accepted because of the unique nature of my piece—it’s about stuttering and by a person who stutters.

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We had a downpour last night and it’s going to be a wet day today. I welcome the change. I am looking forward to a day without clinic work to do that I can spend with Bruno and be by the fire. I also plan to have a nap this afternoon.