A Moment to Breathe

Finally I have two seconds to rub together! It's been a long couple of weeks and this past one was particularly trying because I had two enormous presentations, a big stats assignment due and an annual review to write up for my practicum, not to mention enough reading to leave me blind. Ugh.

The presentations went really well. The second one I would have liked to do in much more depth, but considering the time allotted it was ok. Both topics generated a ton of discussion, which is always satisfying. Spent an extra hour talking to the teacher in my biological psychology class because she thought I should pursue my presentation topic (mirror neurons) further as a dissertation. Hmm... I dunno, I 'd have to do it qualitatively to accomplish anything in the time allotted and without access to the imaging technology needed to do most of these sorts of studies. It made for fascinating conversation though!

Yesterday was really charged up for me because I got such good feedback on the presentations, then co-led a department wide meeting with a good friend and classmate, then met with the teacher I mentioned above. After all that my friend and I then took two first years out to lunch to get to know them better and we talked shop the whole time. It's so good to be able to spend time with people who have not only similar interests, but a similar vocabulary, you know?

My dad had an episode with his heart on Wed and put himself in the ER without telling my mom where he was going. Her ability to care for herself is iffy, so it was a bad situation. They have no friends at all in the area and my sister and I are 5 and 7 hours away, respectively. My sister called a neighbor who went over and checked on Mom and took her some dinner since she can't cook. Dad's ok and didn't end up spending the night, but it was just one more indication that things are going from bad to worse. Mom still isn't clear on what happened and Dad is trying to downplay the whole thing. I got a 'brain fitness' program from PositScience for my mom and will give it to her over the holiday. She has some dementia going on, but thanks to her lack of exercise and socialization, I'm not sure that cognitive work is going to be very helpful. It's something I can do though, so I 'm doing it. Not much to offer to my Dad... except maybe a baseball bat upside the head! It's such a joy to have a narcissistic parent with borderline traits. Mom would be living in the same town as one of her kids and still have a decent quality of life if it weren't for him. Sigh. She made her choice back when her mind was still serving her decently though, so this is the consequence. Very hard to watch though.

My niece had an interesting experience yesterday that we're all still laughing about. She went to a football game between her two schools, the one she went to last year and the one she transferred to this year. She opted to root for her old school, but she sat with her friends on the new school side of the stadium. It was all great fun, and because her colors were so different, she stood out like a sore thumb on ESPN's televised game. LOL! All was going well until she went down to use the restroom and people started throwing popcorn at her and booing as she made her way back to her seat. She said it was all in fun and nobody was being nasty, but security got spooked and wouldn't let her sit with her friends, saying it was too risky. When she offered to take off her hat and outer sweater so she wouldn't stand out they said no, because it was too late and everyone already knew she was for the other team. So she ended up seated for the rest of the game where she couldn't see and was quite torqued about it. At least a friend came and sat with her. So it goes...

Oh, and on the work side I am all kinds of excited because my supervisor is going to do a Rorschach on someone! This is very interesting because he has spent an inordinate amount of time telling me how worthless he thinks projective testing in general and the Rorschach in particular is. Gave me this inch thick article on on the iffy psychometrics of all these tests, including the Exner scoring on the Rorschach. It's a measure of how stuck he is on this case we've been doing. We have what may be a Folie á Deux, but then it may not. Fascinating and very tricky one. It is just so amazing to me the variety of conditions that walk in the doors of our little community center, you know? Wow. Anyway, I think he may have done it while I was at school, so I won't get to hear about it until after the break since I'm taking this next week off. Shoot! I haven't had the class yet, so I'm not sure how much I can get out of his results, but I'm still looking forward to it.

Think I'll stop here... I'm not feeling good at all. Was sick last night and am only a little better today. Time to power down and focus on sleep, fluids and more sleep.

Here's to a good holiday break for everyone!