Happy Holidays!!!

And today, Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it! Having a lovely time today with all our loot. Our respective families are both in snow country this year, but we weren't able to join either family, so we're enjoying hearing about the snow while we sit in the sun. ;)

The birds were just BAD this morning, running around chasing the cats and each other, jumping on our feet and trying to eat off limits goodies. LOL! They are now suffering in 'jail' out on the porch, where there are cranberry/popcorn strings in their aviaries and pine cones stuffed with nuts (glued in with peanut butter). The cockatiels have smaller versions of everything. Life is hard...

We're off to a nummy lupper this afternoon. I just can't see cooking big holiday meals for only two, so we've taken to eating out on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It felt all wrong the first few times we did it, but now I look forward to it, and fill the house with baking smells from cookies and breads instead of turkey.

Here's hoping everyone is enjoying family and happiness this holiday, and good food with fun loot, too. :)

Ok.... ALL the way through!

So I officially announced my resignation from my internship today. I have another one already lined up, though it is unpaid. At this point I'm fine with that and am delighted at the prospect of going back to the land of the sane. It's the same site I was at for 18 months in my testing practicum and is heavily neuropsych, so I'm excited.

My Training Director at the site was very supportive (someone dust the boot print off my backside, please) and as long as the consortium has no bones to pick, I'll be let out of my APPIC contract. She counseled me on the best way to approach the next internship to minimize the damage from this, but I refrained from singing "I already have one. Nyeah Nyeah!" and thanked her for her advice. Now I just have to get through Wed-Fri wrapping up loose ends, terminating with clients etc. Hopefully that will be all there is to do, though it's possible the consortium might have some other requirements for me. Hoping not. The sooner I can put this behind me the better. I will have many years of therapy in my future examining what the hell happened between my primary supervisor and me. I never dreamed anyone could screw with my mind that easily! But that's all grist for the mill too. Knowing about those particular buttons will make me a better psychologist.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter! Just not so thrilled about the last few pages of this one...

New Leaves

No, it's not spring in my neck of the woods, but it IS the beginning of a new rotation in my internship. At long last I am free of the insanely intensive workload that's been suffocating me for months! Of course I can't really be sure of that, seeing as I haven't begun my next rotation, but just having one week of observations instead of being on the hot seat is a delightful prospect. This will be a mini-rotation, lasting only 8 weeks, so in the end it will probably end up being rushed and busy (my assessments and individual caseload is ongoing), but I'm clinging firmly to a positive mental attitude and looking forward to working with a different rotation supervisor. The problematic primary is still that, though a bit better at the mo. I don't pretend that our issues are in the past, now that I've had a taste of that roller coaster, but at least I'll endure a whole lot less of him from here forward! It was interesting to hear that the other intern will NOT be having him when she gets to that rotation. And my understanding is that he is usually the only one who does it. I hope that means that the department is taking my difficulties seriously. I'm just very relieved for my fellow intern that she won't have to go through what I did.

And in case changing things up isn't enough to lift my spirits, it's not long until Christmas break and then New Year's break as well. I'm getting really REALLY good at using my off time to recoup now. It seems as if over the years, as the pressures and stress level of grad school escalated, I slowly but surely let my self-care rituals fall by the wayside. I was great at advising others on the topic, but lousy at following my own advice. And ya know, even after 22 years of ushood with my other half, I'm still learning new and wonderful things about him! Ok, well it's more likely we're both changing, but either way, I'm just ridiculously thankful for his bottomless support.

And oh my silly pets! Today was cold and overcast so the birds were in most of the day. My Senegal Parrot, Gus, was just a goofball all day long. He purred, gurgled, (beak)farted, and giggled for us, and kept puffing up like a stuffed toy. He KNOWS he's cute and he milks it for all he's worth. Good thing I wasn't intent on accomplishing anything useful. :) My other Sennie, Teranga, kept tossing cranberries on the floor for the cat to chase. Who knew cranberries made such great cat toys? Nice, too, because they don't turn to mush like the grapes she usually throws. And my cockatiel, Chewie, sat on my shoulder and nibbled my ear for hours. Bliss...

So tomorrow is a long walk and baking cookies with friends, and maybe getting a Christmas tree.Not sure if there will be time for the latter. It's kind of cold and cloudy here, but I'm making myself go outside a little every day and connect with the planet in one way or another.

1/3 of the way through this odyssey!

Happy to be Home

Having a really nice break from the world here. We opted not to go anywhere for the holidays this year. For one, I'm in need of major down time and for two we're broke. For three, Entree needs his meds twice a day and he tends to hide from people I leave to care for him, so now that he's on the "way past miraculous he's still breathing" end of his illness we don't dare leave him. All that's not so bad seeing as we live in a destination spot so going down the street to dinner means ocean side views. Life is so hard... ;p

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner by the sea, and then today we had a lovely brunch for our 22nd anniversary. It's cold and stormy out today, but I don't mind. We SOOOO need rain, I'm keeping everything crossed for it.

My sister set my dad up on Facebook this week. It's a love hate thing having him there. He's got no boundaries and will post bizarre things on my wall (already has), but on the other hand he'll be much more connected to us this way. Anything that helps out with his isolation as my mother continues to decline, mentally, is a plus.

And my birds are so fun. They make it hard to get anything done, but since they've been in (nasty cold wind) today, I've been playing "getchoo getchoo" and "gimme that thing!" with my two parrots all day. They're such little clowns...

Long Time No Post

It's been a crazy month since I posted last! My situation at the internship got better, then got resoundingly worse and is now on the upswing again. Be still my churning tummy! The relationship with my supervisor, which I thought was getting better, was not, and I actually got called on the carpet and told my performance was too inconsistent. My school was informed and I was given a list of things to do "error free" last week. Many of the things he wanted were very subjective and not generalizable, so last week was like shooting at a set of moving targets. His sensitivity to errors for that week was at the level of picking nits off the backs of other nits... BUT, I got through. It was particularly painful because the other intern is not being held to anything like this kind of standard. I wonder how that will go when she has this same supervisor in the summer?

The support from my school was resounding and they were unanimously baffled that the person my supervisor was describing seemed to bear no resemblance to me. It turns out my dissertation chair knows my supervisor well and said that once he heard the name he knew what the problem was immediately. But for all that I am still grinding away and my clinical work is improving. The whole psychodynamic thang is still not at all my style, but at least I have some concept what the heck they want from me now. Even the psychological testing is done through this lens, so I'm having to put in huge amounts of time even in my strongest areas. For those of you who are neurophsych oriented, imagine using an ego functions model to interpret your data...

My other half is doing fabulously in his work though, so it's nice to come home to him each night bubbling over with excitement about his day. I'm so delighted for him... this project he just finished is his life's dream; something he's dreamt of doing since he was 12 years old. It looks like it is going to pay really well, too, so that means I can be choosier about my post doc.

Just one lousy day left in the work week and I am off on vacation until next Monday. I have to work on a report and on my dissertation, but I'll get in at least a couple of R&R days. Here's hoping everyone is doing well. I haven't read anywhere for ages and ages....

Bittersweet

Well tomorrow my cockatiels are coming back to me. It's been 18 months since we traded with another bird loving couple and took their female Senegal Parrot while they took our two male tiels. I adore my boys but they were very VERY loud and shrill all day and with me away most of the time and AR working 100% from home it was a bad situation for everyone. They were much happier at the other place, and Teranga, their little girl Sennie, is much happier here. She was being harassed by an Amazon Parrot who love her and whom she did NOT love back. The man, B, was diagnosed with bone cancer about a month after the trade, and I was happy that my little Tiel, Chewie, loved to sit on his shoulder and rub his head on B's chin. B had never had a bird who really bonded to him, so it was a really nice comfort for him in a difficult time.

Last night B went to the hospital and nearly died. The cancer has spread throughout his body and the end is clearly near. They are an older couple and his wife, S, just can't cope with 6 birds, so my boys are coming back to me and her two rescued Amazons are going to a sanctuary. I'm not sure how this will go. I want to keep my boys for the rest of their lives, but Teranga is very aggressive toward other animals (she terrorizes our cats and keeps Gus, our male Sennie, on his toes) and the tiels are still LOUD! Male tiels just are, and for some reason my boys seem to be extra loud, though they seem happy enough. Russ still works exclusively from home and I'm gone even more now that I have a regular job. For now I'm just delighted to have my boys back. I've missed them. Tomorrow will bring whatever it will bring.

Happy for Small Blessings

I get along well with my fellow intern. That may seem a small thing, but when you have to share an office in as hectic a place as we work, getting along well is critical! So that's a nice thing in general, but we had it brought home to us in spades this past week when we learned that all four of the interns at a neighboring site are being cited for ethical violations toward each other. Just got too lax and verbal horseplay turned ugly. Someone finked on someone else and next thing you know EVERYONE was in the soup! What a horrible mess to find yourself in when you're trying to shine your brightest... as we all are at the internship stage. Being professional is REALLY IMPORTANT, people!!! I wonder how big a deal this will turn out to be for them as they go forward?

Climbing out of the Hole

Lord, I am SO tired! It's good to be on my couch in my jammies with a cup of hot tea just BEING for a change. Of course, I might not be doing it right. My supervisors seem to think that being is hard for me and I am always doing way too much (See! Sentence before last I said what I was doing was being, as if being is something you do, so obviously I'm confused about the whole concept). I keep missing the point that it's not if my therapy is right, it's whether it's relevant. So then I ask, was I being relevant this time and hear that I was supposed to just resonate, not attend to the topic at hand. Sigh. Dynamic therapy is not at all my style. Sitting there letting my patients just ramble on and then reflecting on how they feel about me or how it was to tell me that last thing doesn't feel very productive. Having no plan and no map and no landmarks is very hard for me, and flies in the face of much of what I've been taught about standard of care. I know connection is important, but I just do it in a different way! I had live supervision on Thursday and got slammed pretty hard. After years of good reviews, or at least partially good reviews (in the case of couples therapy) I'm not accustomed to flat out bombing. It's not a fun place to be, that's for sure. On the flip side they assured me that I am just where most interns are, developmentally, and that there is no reason to think I won't improve with time. Hmm... I'm still trying to decide if improvement in their books is what is best for this population. I felt partially vindicated by a fellow intern in our consortium who commented yesterday in our didactic that he was struggling at his site because he was dynamically oriented and that he was having to do more behaviorally oriented work, but he understood this was important because that is the sort of work that is empirically supported for forensics. THANK YOU!!! There is not just evidence that insight oriented therapy is not best in this population, if the person is in the psychopathic range then it is actually harmful. Seeing as we don't really screen for that (sorry, without using the PCLR I'm not convinced you're really screening effectively) I don't know how they can be so assured that they are providing the best standard of care.

Anyway, but for that day the week was pretty good, and on Tuesday my primary supervisor observed me working with 4 case management patients and said that for two of them my work was "beautiful," and 'absolutely perfect.' Of course this is 180 degrees from just a few days ago so I'm still kind creeped out by that whole thing. Trust is damned hard to rebuild, ya know? I'm just keeping my eye on December, when I'll get to change rotations and my schedule might lighten up at least a little bit. Not to mention January when I will have a new primary supervisor. She's someone I knew in a 'past life' and didn't care for, but I've actually really enjoyed her at this site, so I'm hoping it will go well.

The inlaws have left now. I enjoyed visiting with them, but felt guilty that both AR and I were so busy we couldn't do anything with them. Oh well, it was their planning that put them here M-F and not on a weekend, and they didn't seem unhappy about it. AR got sick and made his mom sick too though, and that really sucked. For some reason my little cat got all freaked out about them being here and hid most of the time. They brought her brother and her here from Wyoming when they were tiny kittens, but apparently she doesn't remember that... or maybe it was a traumatic trip for her and she's afraid they'll take her away? I dunno, but Entree was in 7th heaven having people to attend to him all day long. He was smack in the middle of everything all the time. LOL!

So my house is pretty clean and now I can just sit back and try to head off this damned virus before it really gets a hold on me. There are things I probably should be doing from work but I opted to leave everything at the institution because I'm feeling like I really need to separate myself from it when I'm home. I could work on my dissertation... maybe tomorrow. Today I just want to catch my breath and get my head back on straight.

Steady as She Goes

Well better this week. Weird, but better. P gave me rave reviews on Monday and Tuesday and then in supervision proceeded to ask me what my problem had been. See? All better! Then he went off on vacation for the rest of the week leaving me with my mouth hanging open and feeling very much as if there is another steel toed boot up there somewhere waiting to drop.

But then I had supervision with a different supervisor and she flipping ROCKS!!! Stuff I have been going around in a fog about with P suddenly snapped into focus with B and I felt like I made a quantum leap in my therapy in just a single day! I made a couple of transcripts for her, we went through them with her explaining exactly how the therapy model I'm supposed to be learning (dynamic, which is insane for a forensic setting, but that's a tale for another day) could be applied in a blow by blow fashion. Then I had another patient immediately after that, tried out the new concepts, and came back for another hour with her. The next day we had live supervision with my unfortunate fellow intern as the victim, and it all got clearer still. Funny how learning can go along at an even pace and then LEAP ahead in a single jolt like this! Now I'm sure I'll move along more sedately, practicing practicing practicing what I learned this week.

My DCT also spent some time with me, working on scheduling. After I explained some of the expectations that P had for me, it was quite clear she had no idea what he'd been asking of me. She was at a loss for words and just said "I don't know why that should be" every time I explained that what she was telling me about my rotation duties was NOT what P was telling me. It turns out that we will change primary supervisors at the halfway mark for sure, and that this is something new this year. They emphasized that they're "all about fit here" so obviously someone did NOT fit with someone else in the past, and I am quite clearly not fitting with P in the present, so they are going ahead with their plan. The rough thing was that she also informed me that rather than getting better after this, my rotation is going to get even heavier, workload wise. Akk!!! So as she moved 2 hours of weekly intakes off my calender she move 5 hours of groups and additional supervision onto it. And that's not counting my assessments, which are finally underway and take up a boatload of time. Akk!!! But then one group is with B, so I'm stoked about that, and the other group is DBT, which I'm fairly versed in. Now if I can just maintain in my other stuff with P...

AR's inlaws are on their way now from the upper reaches of the planet, so we've been cleaning house like mad. I'm thinking a backhoe might really be what we need. Sigh... It will be a nice change of pace to have them though, even if the timing is terrible. LOL!

Taking a deep breath

Seems like the weekend has been a series of feeling sick to my stomach moments and feeling really good moments. The former happen every time I think about my internship, which is not good. Last week I took half an Atavan two days in a row to take the edge off my anxiousness. That's a big deal for me because I've never used psych meds and for anxiety in particular I work really hard to meditate, breathe, exercise, be mindful and all that good stuff. I have these from back in December when I had a panic attack, but I never did use them. I have found I can take one at night and I will not only sleep well, I won't dream about the negative stuff that's gone on all day and wake up already freaked out about the coming day. Then half a pill keeps me a little more relaxed at work. I don't want to do this regularly though, and I'm hoping that if I can just get a good week or two under my belt, where I do well enough that P stays off my back, I'll regain my confidence and be able to move past this.

My other half has almost finished his itouch/iphone game and it's due for release in 2 weeks. He's had some setbacks, but is definitely now in the home stretch. The publisher is supposed to deposit money in our account tomorrow. Woo Hoo!! I alpha tested the game yesterday and was muy impresionado. Wow!!! I think it's going to take the app store by storm. =)

My sister's maladies have finally been identified. They are very scary, but amazingly have not had the more dire side effects the doctors say should have been inevitable. It's a huge relief for her to know the cause of her distressing symptoms, and now she can focus on taking care of the causal problems. So that's my three horrors resolved. Mom is not much better, but no worse. Entree is a veritable energizer rabbit; though a slower, skinnier one now. And my sis is going to be ok. Whew!! Oh, and another thing came along... my sister's dog tested positive for heartworm, but she's finishing up her first week of treatment and doing well.

Anyway, I am BOUND AND DETERMINED to be UP UP UP and not let this stuff trigger a depressive episode. It takes alot of conscious distraction, but heck, if I ask my patients to do this then I should be committed to practicing what I preach, right? LOL! My inlaws are coming some time next week... they're quite ambiguous about exactly when since they're driving down from the Great White North. I have lots of house prep to get ready for them, so that's a good thing to keep my mind occupied. No idea if I'll get to spend any time with them since it looks like they'll probably be here late on Sunday. It's a really bad time for both AR and me to have company, but we'll make the best of it because it happens so rarely!

Hope all my fellow bloggers are having a good weekend and good student experiences. This group has helped each other through so much... I want my regulars to know how very much I appreciate their support! And the irregulars, too. You all count. =)

Powering Through

Crimeny what a flipping WEEK! The thing with P got worse by far. Every Monday and Tuesday suck, then Wed is marginal and Thursday it's all better. I feel like I'm trapped in a cycle of violence! Honeymoon phase tonight... Gah. Things got bad enough the training director has stepped in and is 'adjusting' my supervision such that I don't go down in flames before the halfway mark on my first assessment. I've come to learn that I'm not the first intern to get sideways with P. Right at the beginning of the internship the training director said they were thinking about switching supervisors half way through the year, though they had never done that before. I'm beginning to understand why.

The actual clinical work is fantastic and I love it, but the paperwork and prison protocol is a nightmare and P is a micromanaging OCPD sorta person. "You told the patient he was to fill out this form when you should have said 'sign' the form" or "No, it's not team treatment it's treatment team" or even "You said case worker and it should have been case manager." These sorts of things are absolutely equal priority with whether or not my diagnosis is right and not having them absolutely perfect brings warnings of not being forensic material. JEEZE!!! I'm flipping new and P was gone for three weeks out of the first month of my rotation, so I lost all that coaching, assuming that it would have happened had P been here. Not sure it would. P's idea of supervision is to throw you in the deep end and then criticize you on a personal level when you flounder.

Tomorrow I'm off to didactics, which involves going to a juvenile court for the morning in another city. Should be fun, but after the 2 hour drive home I'm going to work for a few more hours to get caught up. Hopefully that will help break the ghastly Mon-Tue hell cycle from happening next week.

SOOOO glad for Week's End

Holy moly, what a week! I got completely buried this week, and on top of that, got sideways with my primary supervisor - I'll call him P - and had a couple of truly miserable days as a result. I have come to the conclusion that an uneasy truce with P is about as good as it's going to get. We have very different viewpoints on many things, and it is very important to P that I follow his instructions to the letter. Having my own style is NOT allowed! Sigh... I spent 18 months in a practicum with a passive aggressive supervisor last year and now it appears I'm going to spend a year with a different version of same.

I love the clinical work, though... just LOVE my clients! Ok, well some of them aren't really that lovable, actually, but I love the challenges they pose and the fascinating views of the world I glimpse through them. Some are amusing, some shocking and some just downright surreal, but there is never a dull moment. If I didn't have to schedule, document in triplicate and jump through ten thousand bureaucratic hoops each day I'd be in heaven! Oh yes, and fend off obliteration of self-as-I-know-her by P. That's kind of a drag.

Fellow intern and I - let's call her A - are slowly working out how to have our own space and our own schedules while sharing a tiny office. This wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't have to see patients in there to the tune of 30+ hours per week (that's in 4 days since we have trainings on Fridays) such that one or the other of us is always displaced. Mondays are no big deal because lots of people work four, ten hour days so take Mon or Fri off, but the rest of the week there are packs of predatory psychologists roaming the halls waiting to pounce on the first empty desk they see. It behooves one not to spend too long in the loo or one's desk may acquire a squatter! Yeah... you could say the prison is a bit short on space for staff.

AR's game is going gangbusters. He and his partner signed on with a publisher this week and they are fronting him money, so we can stop raiding our savings for half the month's expenses for awhile! They were set to release the game this week, but ran into a persnickety bug, so now Sept 30th is the goal date. We are trying not to get too worked up about it, but this may go very VERY big! Of course it may not; thus the reservations. Sure would be nice not to be freaked out about money and lack thereof all the time.

Not a Bad Week

Let's see... first off I think this past week went faster than any other on record. Yeah, it was short, thanks to Labor Day, but it was PACKED, and that made all the difference. I added more patients to my caseload and had one serious shocker during a case management session. I'm pretty unflappable, but with this population sooner or later there is bound to be something that will catch anyone off guard. This one sent me looking in the DSM for 'batshit crazy' but I couldn't find it. I'm sure this guy had all the criteria though. Yowsa! I am currently taking comfort in the fact that it is very rare for lifers to serve anything less than life. A very good thing in this case. Somewhere between now and our next session I'll relocate my empathy - I always do. This person is very sick, but what he did to get a life term in prison... damn! Despite the shock the case is fascinating, as were pretty much all of them. I had a fun dance with a narcissist and am feeling pretty good about the outcome of the session. I 'got' someone in a way he hadn't been gotten before, so that was nice. And I managed an insane schedule with all the institutional regulations entailed without any major train wrecks. A good clinical week!!

Friday was didactic and it was an all day Rorschach training. Our Training Director happened to be the instructor and she absolutely rocks! I'm so excited to be working under her tutelage! And always there are the wonderful examples that people who do these for a living have to offer. "It's Panama because Panama sounds like sandpaper being dragged across the grass" Um.. right. One of the interns from another site got seriously hassled for wearing the wrong clothes to didactic. It is on the outside of the fence, but still on prison grounds where level I inmates work, so the same rules apply. He had to go to town and actually buy new clothes, the poor guy!

Then Friday I got an e-mail from a person I've been trying to contact for months! He is the author of the instrument I want to use as a measure for my dissertation and I was lamenting ever getting hold of him. His note was brief but cordial and he said that I may use his instrument and to please let him know if I find anything interesting. W00T! This has been a major irritant so I am over the moon to be cleared for takeoff, so to speak.

And oh yes, I learned that a very dear friend who has been struggling to get a post doc was placed this week and will be much closer to me for the next year. Yippee!

The cat is doing ok, and seems to be eating a little better, so that's a relief. Now the only flies in my ointment are that I feel ikky this weekend and that wild pigs rooted up our entire yard; front back and sides! Yep, I'm serious. We have javelinas crossed with big domestic pigs that run wild here and breed prolifically. They do enormous damage to the environment, not to mention to our septic system and our water pipes! We're having a stake out in the morning at O:Way Too Early since we heard them squealing and grunting around 5:30 this morning. A few years back this happened and shooting a single pig was enough to make the rest of them stay away from our property for many years. We have some neighbors who want the meat and who have permits, so will try for a repeat performance of last time. I hate to do this, but I'm not up for having my leach line ripped apart and having to put in new pipes.

I Love my Job

This past week I met 7 of my casework patients and saw all my individual patients. It was fantastic! All the anxiety about what and how and to whom faded away as soon as I sat down with the people face to face and began talking. So far I'm not frightened of any of my patients, which is good because after reading some of their files I was worried how it would be to sit with them. As with the juvenile offenders, I found no connection between their crimes and my ability to establish rapport or be empathetic. A couple are making power plays, but that's to be expected in this population and especially because I am a woman. A couple are just delightful, which means I'll have to be extra cautious about my work with them.

Casework is really social work, which is not my specialty, but I'm learning the ropes in terms of services and resources as fast as I can. Thankfully some will prefer to use this time as mini-therapy sessions. I'll be setting up for my first psych eval next week too. Just getting consent to begin with, since it's a 3 day week and I don't have time to do anything more.

We had another Friday didactic and I got to know my fellow interns a bit better. They're a great group and I love the intellectual stimulation. I also learned that once can do an automatic 3 year loan deferment without cause, which changed my whole future perspective! Our institution has a loan repayment program and is increasing the number of spots next year. I can't apply until I'm licensed, so I think I might try for an informal postdoc at the local forensic mental hospital to get the more forensic training offered there (more testing and some court work) and then transfer back to the prison after I license to pay off my loans (the hosp doesn't have the repayment program). It's all just daydreams at the moment, but they're different daydreams thanks to this new info.

Nearly everything in my life is up up up, but there always has to be at least one cloud in the sky. My oldest sister is married to a terribly manipulative and abusive man. She has been cut off from the family for about 15 years, but 5 years ago she began sending holiday cards and has been gradually more in communication with us. Now suddenly her husband has gotten involved and sent a really nasty couple of letters to me, full of mixed messages and veiled threats. I had forgotten how sick and twisted their relationship really was and over the years began to doubt whether maybe I'd misinterpreted the whole situation somehow. Nope, thanks to my training I can now see it even more clearly, and it ain't pretty. As a matter of fact, the suspicion that I had all those years ago has been confirmed beyond a doubt. My BIL is not just abusive, he qualifies as a psychopath. Delightful. I can add him to the family roll of people with this nice set of mental traits. At least now though I know how to avoid being played.

Always some damned thing, isn't there? But that's ok, this really isn't new, it's just coming back around, so I'll simply set clear boundaries with him, let her know I love her and I'm here, and walk away. Life is too promising and too full of good things to dive back into this mudhole.

There's no Telling Where the Money Went

I do believe that my state deserves an award for inefficiency in their businesses. Not that this is a big surprise, seeing as California is beyond bankrupt It's painful though, to see it in action. This week is all In Service Training for me. I think I might have mentioned a bunch of paperwork before starting at this state prison, and then a bunch more after starting... well now we have ANOTHER load at the beginning of each day, and it's the same flipping information over and over and over. But then yesterday two of the speakers didn't show and they had to rearrange the schedule to bump later ones up. There was a lot of wasted time and fiddling with AV equipment etc as a result. Then today there were only two presenters scheduled and neither showed, so we waited an hour to begin, had a speaker who didn't know his topic and just read powerpoints to us. The second speaker supposedly did know his topic but did the same thing. We had a two hour lunch and then were let go two hours early. So here I am, still on the time clock, blogging. Nice. Can't wait to see how tomorrow goes.

Finding the Rhythm

Well my sister's tests were done and nothing looked overtly wrong to have caused her symptoms. No masses, which is the biggest thing. They did find a hiatal hernia, but she hasn't been having symptoms from that, so it must be quite mild. Once the results of her labs and biopsies come in we'll hopefully have an answer. So it's halfway good news and halfway hurry up and wait.

Mom and Entree are doing well. Both are not bouncing back dramatically, but neither is losing ground, so that's good.

Got home from the airport very late Wed and was at work first thing in the morning. Yesterday was all day didactic in a city 2 1/2 hours away so we had to leave the prison at 6am in our state car to get there. YAAAAWN! I am NOT a morning person. The presenter was excellent; a blessing considering the topic was law and ethics. Great discussions with sharp minds. LOVED it!

I'm so totally discombobulated after all this upset I can't seem to get my head on straight. Need to get my dissertation back on track and dug out of this damned pig stye of a house! Wish we could afford a housekeeper. AR's game is close to release now and since they posted it on TouchArcade it's been getting amazing levels of interest. They need to strike while the iron is hot, so he's working around the clock to that end. Needless to say, vacuuming and decluttering isn't anywhere on his agenda. Sigh.

Exiting times though. It's way cool to meet with other inters from around the state and who come from around the country, and hear about their experiences. There are three mandatory meetings like this where everyone under the umbrella consortium (33 sites I think) comes together. This was the first one.

Week from Hell

Well I found a way to take all three of my furlough days for the month in one fell swoop. My mother just had brain surgery today for the second time, so I am in her city through Wednesday. She has old age hydrocephaly and has had fluid drained from her vesicles before. A few weeks back she had a massive seizure which was likely caused by fluid pressure on her brain. This time they put in a shunt which will hopefully preclude further surgeries. She came through the surgery well and doesn't appear to have lost any ground, but we will have to wait awhile to see if she gains any. Did I mention she's 86 years old? Yeah... no small thing to do this kind of procedure at her age.

Then last week my cat, who is at least two years past his expiration date, stopped being asymptomatic and nearly died of pulmonary edema (lungs filled with fluid) thanks to his outrageously enlarged heart. He threw a clot that blocked the artery to both his back legs at the same time and was partially paralyzed for about 6 hours. He's home again from the brink of death thanks to lots of diuretics and an oxygen tent. Amazingly he is once again climbing his way back to normalcy despite the fact that all the vets who see him say he has been dead cat walking ever since his cardiomypoathy was diagnosed just before Christmas in 2007!

So I'm wiped out and emotionally wrung, but glad to report good news on both fronts. Now if only my sister's tests come out ok over the next few weeks. She's been having some scary symptoms but has to wait for tests that are strung out over a long period. Seriously anxiety provoking stuff all that waiting.

So that's three. The first two are coming out well, so I think that bodes well for my sis!

Stone Cold Sober

Today was REALITY in spades for me. First there was the specter of the Chino prison riots and the impact that had on some of my classmates who are working at prisons in the southern part of the state. Thankfully no prison staff were injured and northern and central prisons were not on lockdown, nor did they suffer any negative effects (that I've heard of) from this. Except of course that some will be recipients of some of the ~1100 prisoners being shipped out of Chino now. Our institution was quiet. We are a bit anomalous among prisons anyway, but a senior correctional officer (CO) told me it was unusually quiet today.

I spent most of the day perusing the charts of some of my inmate-patients to be. Damn. Just damn. Even though some of my Juvie clients committed similar crimes, it really did make a difference knowing an adult had done these things. I can't really say why it had so much more impact on me, though I do have a few theories. I'm still eager and excited to get started, but my emotional tone is definitely down a notch or three. I'm glad I'll have some time between reading the charts and seeing the people because I definitely need time to find the empathetic perspective I'll need to do the work.

On the lighter side, I managed to knock my water bottle over onto my phone and put it completely out of commission. By the end of the day the fan I pointed at it had dried enough contacts that all the buttons were working again. Sheesh! I also discovered that I've been bringing contraband onto the premesis every day since I began work! During a discussion about being issued a flash drive I realized that my personal one that lives on my keychain, was right where it belonged... on the chain next to my car keys. Wonk! Wonk! Wonk! No unauthorized electronic devices allowed! Thank heavens I realized it myself before it was pointed out to me. Off it goes to the less used set of keys that stays in the car all day. So easy to make mistakes with all those rules...

One Week Imprisoned

Prison is intense, overwhelming, and sometimes boring. Had some amazing clinical experiences even though I was only observing. Heavy duty AXIS I stuff as well as heavy duty AXIS II stuff. Often in combination.

I am SOOOO going to regret saying to my supervisor that psychopathy was one of my particular interests. Now I will have at least one individual on my long term therapy caseload who has this diagnosis. I am looking forward to possibly working with a transgendered inmate-patient though. I hope the timing is right for that since I opted for the DBT group instead of the TG group. Much as I think the DBT experience is more pertinent to my short term goals, the TG process group looks so damned rich!!!

Today was 7 hours of suicide assessment/prevention training videos. All in all I think there was maybe 15 minutes of actual new material (are there drugs to treat suicide?) and the rest was tedious beyond belief. I ate a whole cup of chocolate covered espresso beans and still dozed of. I sure as hell hope the entire week of In Service Training at the end of the month is more engaging.

I've been shopping every night after work for various things to attach all the required hardware to myself. ID, personal alarm (PAD), beeper, keys, whistle and chits. All have to be on my person at all times and the PAD has to be swapped out for different versions depending on where I go in the facility so I'm constantly whipping out ID and trading for chits. Left the damned thing in the bathroom the other day and got reprimanded. Sigh. If only they weren't actually ancient garage door openers converted into alarms by some enterprising inmate years ago. NO electronic device is that big in this day and age, and that includes garage door openers!!! We aren't allowed to even set down our keys on our desks or guards are all over us. They look through the windows and bang if they see keys, PADs or beepers anywhere but attached to us. It's important but annoying as all hell!

Other Intern and I are getting along ok. I seriously wonder if she has an eating disorder though. The girl eats almost nothing at all. Lunch = one cup of yogurt or one apple, or one piece of string cheese. No breakfast and possibly half a snack bar outside of lunch. Either she eats normal suppers or she must binge because she isn't skeletal and I flat don't believe anyone could subsist on that few calories. I eat a sandwich and a tangerine and feel like I'm gorging next to her. Sheesh!

Nervous...

Tomorrow is the big day... I'm off to prison! Will they confiscate my plastic fork? Stay tuned for the next episode of "Life Inside the Big House" No wait, I think that title is taken. Shoot!

Orientation was boring as all get out and consisted mostly of being read all the crap in the packets we were given. They honored all the outgoing interns, so next year when I'm one of them it will be more fun. It was interesting to see some of the people I interviewed with at other sites who had also gotten spots with the consortium. There is one big umbrella organization consisting of four member consortia in various parts of the state. I think there are 33 forensic sites represented altogether. Our consortium consists of two prisons,a mental hospital and a behavioral health center for children, so we'll be moving around to each others' sites on Fridays for didactics. I'm looking forward to that since it will broaden the intern group and offer a bit more camaraderie that way. My fellow intern seems very nice, but we're quite different people, so it will be interesting to see how we get along.

I know who my primary supervisor is, but wasn't told which rotation I'd begin with, so I'm not sure what I'll be doing yet. This week will be mostly orientation and training though. Should be quite the experience going from 100-140 kids at Juvie to 7000 inmates at this prison!!!

Blech

Day three of feeling seriously unwell. We ran out of bottled water and because we live way out in the country we decided not to go into town and buy 5 gallons to tide us over. When we first moved here, almost 14 years ago, the neighbors who share our well had the water tested and found e-coli levels unacceptably high. Well water changes with the weather as the level goes up and down, so the test was just a snapshot, but we prefer bottled water anyway. Then again, we brush our teeth and wash our veggies with the tap water and have never gotten sick, and other neighbors drink theirs with no problem (nearby but different wells), so we though we'd be fine. NOT! Drank water on Sunday, got sick Sunday afternoon. Got fresh water on Monday. AR was sick yesterday but is fine today, I am STILL sick. Well shit! Pardon the pun. I suppose it could be coincidence and not related to the water at all.

So I have just three days left, including today, before internship begins! I thought I drove the last piece of paperwork up yesterday, but then they gave me yet another form to fill out which had been left out of the packet. The attitude seemed to be that this was my fault somehow. Now how can I know what forms they forget to include in my packet? Sheesh. The other intern didn't have it either, so at least we're unified. Thankfully these aren't the people we'll work with, rather the personnel admin people. I hear they are short staffed and grumpy. No kidding! I'll just be immensely relieved when all the administrative stuff is done. Besides being overwhelming, it's really repetitive too. So inefficient...

Today is a beautiful day so I'm going to try to drink lots of BOTTLED water and go to the beach later if I feel even halfway up to it. I can sit there just as well as I can sit here, and it will be a nice change. I used to go running on the beach all the time. I sure miss that!

New Culture, New Faux Pas?

I read on Didi's post her comment about blocking her ex from her FaceBook account and how big a step that was. I'm having some of the same feelings about FB, though I don't have anyone really harassing me or anything. I just have a hell of a time saying no to people who make friend requests when I know I'm going to continue seeing them on everyone else's walls. There's been this huge rush of friends from grade school through high school on there and of course the wave spreads fast. I now have a woman whom I barely knew in High School asking me to accept her 'best friend' application and yammering endlessly at me, pressing me for info about myself and other friends who are not on FB. I am now remembering that she was a little on the gluey side all those years ago, but glommed onto a friend of mine, not me.

Then there is the Close Relative with whom I have a strained relationship, but he's part of my family and THEY are all on there, so what would happen if I blocked this person?

And then there is the ex-boss who I may still hit up for recommendations but do not work for her and felt weird right from the start accepting her as a friend... but what do you do in that case?

I've learned to block applications and that makes life sane over there, but I'm really wanting to prune down my friends list too. Is there an etiquette book somewhere about this. Maybe an 'ask so and so" column?

Up Up and Away!

What a delightful weekend I've had! Went out to see my friends and had just a fantastic visit. The friend I was visiting, B, got married in SF last year. He and his partner, J, just celebrated their first anniversary as a married couple. The First Lady of the state called them at their reception to congratulate them for being the FIRST married couple in Wyoming! As far as they know they are the only one, to boot. Wyoming shortly thereafter made an effort to ban the recognition of gay marriages from other states but the measure fell flat. When B's mom wrote to the governor of the state to protest the bill the Governor let them know where he would be weighing in and said, "Say hi to B & J for me!" It was so cool.

B has been very ill and a couple of months ago was airlifted to SLC for emergency medical services. J was terrified that in Utah their marriage wouldn't be recognized and that he wouldn't be allowed to stay with B. B was given about a 15% chance to live and his family was all out of state and unable to get there immediately at the time. As it turned out J was treated with the utmost respect. The moment he arrived the primary doctor said, "I understand you're B's husband" and J was encouraged to stay with B throughout the crisis. His being a nurse was helpful too, but he said the warm welcome and level of respect he got in the heart of the Mormon empire was breathtaking! He also said that many of the people there expressed upset and anger at their church for it's heavy handed influence in the California decision to keep the restrictive definition of marriage in the constitutional language.

In the little town where they live in Wyoming they were also pleasantly surprised to be welcomed heartily by the old timers of the town and congratulated. I'm relieved to know that Wyoming is still very much the Equality State.

Just before I left for the trip I attended a luncheon at my new internship. It was primarily to send off the two exiting interns, but also to welcome the two new ones. I'm now very excited about starting! Everyone was really nice, and we had great discussions about our various dissertation topics. It looks like I'll be getting the 9 month DBT group assignment, which is more work intensive than the other option (long established transgender process group) but more practical for my particular focus. The other intern is not specifically forensic. It's not clear yet who will start in which rotation, but I did meet my future supervisor for the assessment rotation and she's stoked that I'm heavily into testing. I'm still bummed that the Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) rotation is no longer on the table. The supervisor got some sort of a federal grant and had to devote all her time to that instead of supervising interns. Still I think this is going to be a great site!

On the 31st we two interns will ride up to the city where the university that runs the consortium resides. We're going to carpool with one of the exiting interns, so we'll get 5 hours during the round trip there and back to pick his brain. We interns have now officially been taking off the layoff list and our training director said she is reasonably assured that we WILL be paid. JOY! We're up to three days of furlough now though, and may get one more still. That will be a 20% pay cut, but still is a far cry better than no pay. My fellow intern and I agreed we'd just figure this was built in dissertation time...

A Trip to Somewhere!

Well really it's nowhere in the most dramatic way, but one of my best friends in the world still lives in the Wyoming town where I mostly grew up so I'm off to visit him Thursday afternoon. Another really good friend who hung out with us is also coming... all the way from the Deep South, so we'll meet in the Big City in UT, and drive on to BFE to visit our friend in WY. He is going on a wait list for a liver the end of the month, but seems to be doing well for now and is even working again after a few near death experiences. So many wake up calls of late with him and then my mom... I'm trying to update all my relationships with my little extra summer time and be sure that if anything happens to anyone I won't have any unfinished business floating around. It's a better way to be, I think, if it can be managed.

Mom has a followup with her doc tomorrow, so shall likely hear if there is going to be another surgery. I'm reasonably sure there will be and the idea is both scary and frustrating. Of course the scary part is the 'right' emotion to have, since it's about Mom. The other is about the endless line of life altering events that seems to be bent on preventing me from having any serious blocks of time to do my diss, or as my other half refers to it; my fecis. LOL! There ARE some days it feels like an enormous pile of shit. Oh well, Mom and my friend come first and let the chips fall where they may!

Have been conversing with my Training Director at the internship about preferred groups and types of experiences I am interested in as they customize the plan to each intern's needs. It's kinda scary and kind of exciting... it's REAL, wow! I have a gazillion appointments to get drug tested, TB tested, have a physical, have background checks done and so forth. It is such an enormous effort to get into this line of work! But in all of this there has been no mention of loss of funding, so I'm feeling pretty good about that (pauses to pound on wooden table). I don't regret all the hours at Juvenile Hall though, because our future is so uncertain it really helps keep the anxiety level down to have some money in the bank.

Had a horrific experience at my work this week. One of the kids we'd been seeing for a couple of years was released on probation a while ago and in short order committed a couple of violent crimes. I am vastly relieved nobody was killed but upset that it happened at all. Sadly it wasn't surprising; I think this person's window for therapeutic success closed long before we ever met, but there is still a sickening sense of responsibility here. Did we make any difference at all in those two years? How can we know? It's so very surreal though, to see the person on the online version of the local newspaper and read the comments after the article...comments along the lines that this person shouldn't be allowed to live and so forth. Those sorts of things are always disturbing, but to actually know the person they are discussing is just downright freaky!

Setbacks

Well I've made some really good progress on my dissertation. Long way to go but it feels SOOOO good to be racking up the hours and adding pages. I have plans to see a critically ill friend in another state next week right after a luncheon at the prison for the other intern and me. Our orientation for the consortium is on the 31st, but this is just for our local site. So I was going along happily, preparing to meet some friends for breakfast yesterday when I got The Call. Or at least we thought it might be The Call, but in the end it seems we got a reprieve.

My dad called my sister to tell her that he awoke to the bed shaking and discovered my mom having what looked like a grand mal seizure, but her skin was ashen and her lips were blue, one side of her face was sagging and her breathing was hoarse and erratic. He called 911 and then my sis, L. He thought she was having a massive stroke and was sure this was the End.

L called me and then we waited for close to an hour to find out if Mom was still with us and if so in what condition. When he finally called she was sitting up, talking and had good grip with both hands. So far she's had a CT scan and echo cardiogram and today she's scheduled for an MRI. The only thing that's show up so far is that her vesicles are enlarged, which is a result of her old age hydrocephaly that she had surgery for 6 years ago. They didn't put in a drain and my dad has been resistant to the surgery due to the risks of general anesthesia at her age. It's likely the pressure from the fluid buildup caused a seizure. Anyway this morning she was chipper and seemed her normal self. Last night she got up with all sorts of things attached to her and hauled them along behind her to the bathroom rather than waiting for a bedpan and this morning she tore out her IV. Sigh... this is good though, as it's her normal, uncooperative self. She's had memory problems for ages and they seem about the same, not worse, so hopefully she didn't lose any ground...

I certainly lost ground though. Yesterday was a complete wash and today hasn't been much better. Going to try to get back on track this afternoon with a few hours work. All the calls have been made to friends and relatives now but I'm still not very focused. I'm still recovering from being told this is IT, this is The Call we've been dreading, spending an hour thinking my mother might be dead, and then having it all go away again. Whew! Little hard on the system, that.

Oh, and then there was the cutoff brother in law who e-mailed me to say how much he has enjoyed exchanging e-mails this past year, but how he will never be in the same room with my parents or speak to them again and probably that was going to apply to L and me too, but do keep e-mailing by all means. Oh but don't worry I won't keep your sister, K, from interacting with you. Wow... nice timing!

The Real Deal

FINALLY I am on my summer break. I did two full time weeks at Juvenile Hall and one day a week of practicum for the first three weeks of my break. So now that's done. I just have random days at the hall here and there and one last session at my practicum Monday. So this is IT! It's only a month, but I'll take it!

Absolutely gorgeous weather today so the holiday weekend will be lovely. Sadly it's hot as hell inland so we'll have fog tomorrow night for fireworks. We usually do though, and while I love the light show I hate big crowds so we'll just celebrate with our neighbors and a nice BBQ.

A Beautiful Summer Morning!

Ah, it's so nice to be sitting at home on a lovely morning trying to decide what to do with the day. Mind you there is lots, and much of it urgent, but not urgent in the way coursework and applications can be, you know? I have to make reservations to meet a pair of very old friends in Wyoming in a couple of weeks. I have to finalize my grades for my class. I have to go get my nails done and go to the bank. And then there is the disaster of a house to put in order. Dissertation begins tomorrow because I want all these tempting distractions sewn up before I tuck in.

It's been two weeks since I finished my classes and this has been my first moment to breathe. FINALLY this coming week I won't be driving down to the old stomping grounds. This past week it was graduation for my classmates, which was HUGE since it's our first class to graduate from the program. Wonderful times, and I'm so proud of them all! Then the week before was my last class to teach and that went well too. Grades were supposed to be in last night but I am doing them today because I've been working 10 hour days at Juvenile Hall and no time to even breathe! I have one more week of that and then it slows to a day here and a day there for the rest of the summer, so it won't be so intense. I do love the work, I just hate the lost hours. Wish I could just get paid without having to actually DO anything! LOL!

I have one last practicum client to see two more times and then that is done. But despite all the mayhem these past two weeks I've managed to get together with old friends two or three times and catch up at a last. I wondered if I'd even have any friends left by now, so I've been pleased to find everyone is still welcoming and interested in hearing about my life. I have a luncheon at my new internship site in mid July and then an orientation the last day of the month. They screwed up and didn't get us the paperwork last week so I hope we'll get through the process in time to start August first as planned! There is no end of background checks, medical exams and so forth involved in this sort of work. I think this will be my fifth LiveScan. You just never know when someone might have gone and done something heinous in the 6 months since the last scan...

I hear the university where I did my masters is hiring for a prof or two in the masters program. It's very tempting to check it out, especially since the program director told me he'd love to see me come back and teach some day. Classes are from 5-10 at night, so I might be able to swing it, but I think I won't do that to myself. Instead I'll do alternating weekends at Juvenile Hall if my internship is unpaid. I'm just keeping everything crossed that we won't have to go there and this money I'm making now will just replace what we've been gradually drawing out of savings.

AR writes applications for Itouch now, exclusively. All his other work has gradually petered out; by design, but at the moment he has no contract apps and is slaving at what we hope will be a great money maker of our own. Thankfully these apps don't take long to create, so he'll have space for more contract work in a few weeks, but for now he has almost ZERO income, down from making double what we needed to pay our bills. Kind of an abrupt descent, so we're pretty nervous. I have some royalties from gas wells my grandmother left me, but they too have abruptly stopped paying. Shaky times for everyone, so I'm just very thankful I have the Hall to fall back on, even if it is hit and miss. I'm also really REALLY glad I opted to teach and still have a check coming for that. The second time around the class went swimmingly well and my evals are stellar. I'm SO pleased!

As alway, I see fascinating cases. Recently a case of Munchhausen's and a prodromal schizophrenia case have kept me intrigued. One of my forensics profs wants to publish in a psychology teaching journal about the projects we did in her class, so I will be a coauthor by narrating the background of why I chose that particular topic and what I want to do with it. Then I may actually present my project (we each had to create a workshop or presentation to educate some population about the importance of psychology to a forensic topic) to the group home where I used to work. Once I have a few of those low key sorts of presentations down then I may ramp it up and go for a group of judges and lawyers. Dunno, that sounds rather scary, so I'll start with baby steps. Group home, mental health staff at the Hall (which includes a psychiatrist and a couple of senior psychologists so that will be a challenge), Probation officers and Juvenile Institution Officers, then I'll see if I feel up to some serious social activism. The presentation is an educational piece about adolescent neuro-development as it bears on trying children as adults for their crimes. Or then again I might run away and hide behind my dissertation instead...

School's out for Summer!

School's out forEVER!!!

WOO HOO, it's over at last! Friday was my last day of classes, but it still hasn't really sunk in that I'm done. I have to drive down this coming week to teach my class one more time and then I'm driving down the following week to see a group of classmates ahead of me graduate. As of last Friday our program has it's first graduate! The others will follow suit this week and next as they defend their dissertations, but this is the first person in this brand new program to post her degree. HUGE deal for us all!

I wanted to focus entirely on my dissertation this summer and only work one day a week, but since my internship training director called a couple of weeks ago with the news that she can no longer guarantee that my internship will be paid, I'm going to fill in for people on vacation and try to bank some cash just in case. For now the funding is still solid, but she said the State is looking hard at it and these next two months before we begin are the most likely time it will be cut, if it is. In that case there is a grant that I may qualify for that is worth about half what the position was to pay, and I will take all the student aid I can get. I hope it doesn't come to that, but seeing what a mess California is in, I certainly have to do what I can to provide for myself.

Still and all I'm really upbeat. I look like death warmed over and feel like I've been beaten with bats, but I'm not tense and pressured anymore and that is a WONDERFUL feeling! Next on the to do list is to get healthy again. This program has damned near killed me off, so I'm going to focus on losing 20 pounds, getting back in shape and just generally taking care of myself the way I should have all along.

I have an appt with a neurologist on Wed to clear up what the mild 'intrusion' is into my spine between C5 and C6. My doc and the radiologist think it is too small to cause the numbness I've had in my hand, but it's certainly in the right spot for that. I'd rather like an explanation than not, and if I can just do physical therapy to correct it that would be delightful. Keep hearing horror stories about 'nerve tests' and am not in the least interested in verifying them.

The lump is unchanged and no idea if it will grow or s shrink or ever go away at all! But seeing as it's nothing dire it can do whatever it wants and shouldn't be a problem.

Trying to stay calm

So this last week isn't going well. I am beyond overloaded and still having problems concentrating. Yesterday I called a classmate for clarification on an assignment and she was so spun I almost hung up on her. I wasn't exactly in a happy place myself so when I realized I was shaking, my ears were ringing and I was about to either cry or get violent with my pets and husband for the crime of breathing in my vicinity I finally broke down and took an Atavan. I've had them since the panic attack last December but never taken one. Seemed to work well just knowing I could if I had to.

I suppose the fact that I didn't blow a gasket means it was a good thing to have taken the nearly microscopic pill, but within an hour I was utterly drugged and good for nothing. Anti anxiety my ass, for me it was pure sedative so I was groggy, slurring my speech and no way in hell could I string to words together into even a phrase, let alone a sentence!

I slept all the way through thenight, which was supposed to be an all-nighter to pull me out of this hole. I'm still feeling drugged this morning even at the tail end of the pill's potency. At least the next two days are light, practicum wise, but I still can't see getting all this done. Three of my four assignments involve presenting, so there's no way to be late on them. The one that doesn't involves a prof who is as flexible as cement and isn't going to take into account that his instructions and materials were woefully inadequate.

I can feel the panic swirling somewhere just behind my head and neck, but I can't take another Ativan, that's for damned sure. Just going to have to breathe and go for a triple latte when I get to town.

Why do all my pets get intensely demanding exactly when I can't spend even a nanosecond with them? The birds scream, the cats wail... even the fish start spitting rocks at the side of the tank. My husband feeds and plays with all of them, so why do they need ME so much?

Someone send me a time warp...

I can see the finish line

It's Wednesday, which means I head to school this afternoon. After this I have just ONE MORE WEEK and I'm done forever. Oh Lord it cannot come fast enough! Except I need time to slow down to get all my work done, of course. I did manage to make a really cool poster for a workshop I'm giving for a forensics class, and I think the accompanying paper is good. It took me three days to create a 20 minute presentation though.

Monday I got a call from the Training Director at my internship. She said that while everything is a go now, she was calling just to let us know that she cannot promise our internships (there are two of us) will be funded. Across the state sites are cowering in terror while the State sniffs around at internships with an eye toward cutting costs. Keeping everything crossed that we are too small a piece of the collective pie to be messed with. In the mean time I'm filling out my FAFSA after all and will apply for everything I can get. Also changing my tune about accepting more hours at Juvenile Hall.

Sucks.

My MRIs came back mostly normal. The lump didn't show at all, which suggests it is a fatty limpoma, since the images were 'fat supressed.' I'm not sure how they do that but I let them know that if they offer just general, day to day fat suppression I'll be the first in line! The cervical scan showed a slight 'intrusion' into the spinal foramen between C5 & C6. That would be the right place to be causing radial numbmess but my doc and the radiologist think it's too small to be interfering with anything. She referred me to a neurologist though, so we'll see what he says about it next Wednesday.

Blah. What a dry and boring post. Felt like I should say something, but really haven't much of interest to say. Sorry readers!

Oh, here I do have a fun tidbit to end with. A client told me he was late for his appointment because he'd worked all weekend doing hard physical labor and rigor mortis had set in over night. Thus he was too stiff to get dressed in time. LOL!

Library Databases and Me

I have this theory about how Library Databases have become so complex and interconnected they have evolved into a single creature. They are one big body and they see me as a disease organism.

It's like this. At first I do a search for something and I find it, no sweat, but pretty soon that avenue stops working for me and I can't get any full text data anymore. So I fumble around for awhile and then BINGO, I mutate by finding a new direction for my search and for a day or two it's sweet; I get full text every time and life is good. But then the library system figures out what I'm doing and it creates antibodies to me and all at once I'm no longer seeing the full text PDF link, instead I get the onerous "Find it" button and there are no holdings in my university's libraries or anything on EJC.... time passes and I mutate again, and The Library quickly builds antibodies to me and around we go. If I get past the immune system too often The Library goes to the doctor and gets a shot of antibiotics and my passwords stop working. I swear to you, I can document the whole process...

Thank God for WeDeliver.

Always with the surveys...

So I got yet another grad student research survey sent to me today. I do as many as I can because you never know when you'll need the favor returned, you know? But today's just SUCKED! I mean, what committee let those questions get by, anyway? I'm really hoping this was a pilot and not the real McCoy here. There was a 'is there anything else about this topic you'd like tell us' text box at the end so I used that to describe how many ways the survey sucked. Diplomatically I thought, but unequivocally.

Soooo tired tonight. How can one busy therapy day be so overwhelming anyway? Had a good talk with my supervisor about where I am in this process and came to the conclusion that I need to S T O P and regroup in a major way. That's going to involve not fussing over dissertation for a week or two as well, but I think I need it. I cannot go on spending hours and hours staring unproductively at my computer screen with nary a coherent thought in sight. I do great work in my head just before I get out of bed each morning, but that's as far as it goes.

On the up side though, I am feeling pretty good about my current clients. Everyone is winding up therapy because I'm due to leave soon, so I haven't taken new cases for awhile (but for intakes). I told my supervisor a few weeks ago that I think I'm going backward. I don't even feel I'm doing as good a job as I did when I was a masters trainee! He said something about thesis, antithesis and synthesis and me being at the anti point. I think it may also just be that I'm slowly but surely calming down and slowing down. Nevermind the slowing is a little premature, it seems to be allowing me to think more clearly in my therapy anyway. Thank heavens for small blessings, eh?

The Waiting Game

Tap tap tap tap tap goes my foot. I had all three MRIs on Friday morning. Skipped school that day to get it done since so much time had passed while I tried to price shop. Note to self and anyone else as naive as I: DO NOT try to price shop for insured health services. You'll die of your ailment or possibly old age before you figure out who the hell is going to charge what.

In the end my insurance still refused to pay for two of the three tests, but at least all of the cost went on my deductable. How that works is beyond me. Frankly there are some things so loathsome to study I'd rather not know. Blech!

So now I hurry up and wait for Tuesday or so, when hopefully my doc will call me with the news that has been passed along to her. In the mean time I have plenty to do: another 15-20 page paper on mediation, a workshop presentation for an applied forensics class, a custody evaluation to write and my desperately far behind dissertation! Still and all, it's a long weekend and I have only one client on Monday, so I am taking a little personal time. It wouldn't really make a difference if I closeted myself and worked solidly all three days because I simply cannot focus these days. I dunno if it's "senioritis" or burnout or what, but my mind and my schoolwork are like two positive ends of a magnet being pressed together. ZIP! they shoot away from each other. Sigh.

Tomorrow AR and I are going to see Star Trek. AR has some heavy duty social anxiety and theaters are pretty much off his list of things he does, but I've talked him into giving it the team try, even waving my bottle of untouched Atavan at him and promising a nice lunch beforehand. (doing a matinee since it's been out long enough most kids have seen it) He too wants to see it on the big screen. I'll report back if it actually happens!

In the mean time I am going to take my fat, elevated cholesterol bod over to the Dance Dance Revolution pad and stomp off a few calories before in-home movie time... but Gods the music is so bad!!!

UP!!!

Great results on my mid-quarter evaluations from my students this time. NOT ONE nastygram. Hooray! As a matter of fact, not even any negative feedback at all, so I look like the messiah on these evals. Hmm... I'd love to say it's all about me having improved so much, but I think some of it is simply a cohort effect. The last cohort hated testing and this one loves it. In the last one only 1 student in 9 wanted to go on to a doctoral (and that in depth psych) and in this one 7 of 11 want to go on in clinical or educational psych.

The down side to all this is that their homework is way higher quality and requires far more thought and time on my part. They write more and in much more depth. Loving the group though, and who doesn't like a nice pat (or 11) on the back from time to time?

Blood tests were all negative so that's good on the health front. Still haven't had the MRIs. Tried to price shop and found that was wasting alot of time because places don't want to give you a price unless you schedule an appt, so I had to go out far enough to cancel without a fee. They're not calling back with prices and they're not open on weekends so tomorrow I'm simply going to bite the bullet and set an appt with the first one on the list. I'll move client appts around if need be.

Lots of deep thoughts this week and great discussions at school with teachers and students. I thrive on that kind of stuff so I'm very happy. I have lots of work to do, but ideas on what to do for each assignment so that makes it easier to dig in. Still no ideas for an external expert for my dissertation though, which is the number one thing I wanted to accomplish this quarter. Ah well, still 4 weeks left to find one.

Oh... my masters class is pushed out another week so I have to go down to teach but my own program didn't go that route. Sucks to drive down for just 3 hours. Damn. And my grading has taken a whole day today so my income per hour is going down down down. Oh well...

Ups Downs; Ins Outs

Wow.. the past two days have been quite the roller coaster ride. Monday brought lab results saying everything is normal but for my cholesterol is a tad elevated. Whew! Then off to see the Nurse Practitioner for the new doc since he isn't available for a couple of months. Did all my paperwork and left with lots of time to spare only to discover that the place was unfindable and I'd forgotten my cell phone. SHIT! Finally found it inside the hospital, but nowhere on their business cards does it say they are in there, nor is the street number posted anywhere, NOR is the name of the medical group anywhere on the building. I was NOT impressed and not on time. They were NOT impressed and rescheduled me for later that day. The place was a zoo and the staff was all wooden. They didn't provide me with a copy of my HIPPA rights but asked me to sign for one. When I asked for a copy they gave me one of the paper I signed instead. Gah!!! Should have gotten a clue right then.

Later that day I got caught in a really nasty/scary domestic violence intake and couldn't get free for my appointment. It was a near thing with calling 911 and resulted in a gathering of the clinical committee to discuss what the hell to do about the increasing risk level of our clientele. I called the medical place right when I should have been there and let them know I was stuck in a crisis beyond my control. They rescheduled me for this morning and said that since I'd done my paperwork there was no need to come early.

Got there on the dot and found the only receptionist on the phone. She motioned me to sit down. A few minutes later she got off the phone and gestured for me to come back up to the desk, asking who I was there to see. She then shouted into the back for someone to come check patients in please (there were two others waiting with me, both with the same appointment times as mine) The woman who came out scowled at me and said "you're late again, I don't know if she'll take you" and walked away. Another few minutes went by and she returned to inform me that because I had been late three times in a row they wouldn't see me at all, now or ever. No, there was nobody else in the group who could and no, she would not give me a referral. She insisted that I walked in right as she walked out and was NOT on time and sitting there all along. She also insisted that I had been told to be there 10 minutes early. It was infuriating, embarrassing and humiliating all at once.

The moment I was in my car I called my GYN's office and they said no problem, she has no openings today but if you come by this afternoon she'll squeeze you in somehow. She did, and was absolutely wonderful. Signed everything, gave me generic scripts for MRI testing so I can shop around (discovered the place originally ordered is quite pricey compared to others) and told me to call her immediately if anyone gave me any trouble at all. All that and she didn't charge me a dime. She did chastise me gently for not calling her in the first place. She said, "I AM your primary care physician!" rather huffily. LOL!

So a huge thank you to Battle Weary for the heads up. A huge smack upside my own head for not realizing I could do that. A foul gesture at the clinic that made my life so fucking hard and all feed lot style 'move em through' clinics in the world. Despite all the misery, I'm actually quite glad I dodged that bullet. I suspect I'd have been very unhappy with that style of care. Later, as I was thinking about the differences between mental health ethics and medical ethics it occurred to me that if I had their perspective, that my client was confused, disoriented and unable to follow simple directions, I might consider whether that was part of the presenting problem! Yet when I pleaded with the woman at the desk that I had a lump on the back of my neck and numbness in my hand and foot it had no impact on her whatsoever. I can't decide if it was because maybe she was supposed to be at the desk and now three people were going to be late coming in because of her, or if it was that she truly thought I was a deadbeat.

Now if only I could get my head back into school. Everything has been pushed out a week because the campus was closed due to the fire so that's a drag, but it also means they won't try to load us down with extra work in a shorter time frame. I made good progress on my dissertation over the weekend... relatively speaking... but am beginning to panic about how far I have to go.

I feel like I'm pulling back into the fast lane of a crowded highway again after having had a massive wreck. I suppose there may be more bumps to come as the testing is scheduled and so forth, but at least I feel really good about my doctor.

Weeks like this I don't need...

Yowsa, WHAT a week!

First, I have had tingling in my left hand and some in the foot for about 6 weeks now. Thought it might be a pinched nerve or back problem. You know... school, lack of money and all that jazz... thought I'd go get it checked at the end of the quarter. So then two nights ago I run my hand up the back of my neck and there is a gigantic LUMP there! Instant adrenal surge. "OMG, I have a malignant tumor on my spine and I'm going to DIE" said my amygdala. Shit!

Got it checked out yesterday and the best guess is that it's a sebaceous cyst. It's not in the lymphatic area, rather directly over bone, so it's unlikely it's a tumor. I had blood drawn this morning and I'm in the works to have MRIs of brain/spine/neck shortly to cover all the bases. Hopefully the numbness and lump are unrelated and both will be easily treatable issues. In the mean time I swing from carefree to sheer terror every few hours. Nights are worst so I stay up late and keep busy. Not a huge effort for a student.

Then tonight I logged onto my puter only to find my school was closed due to a nearby fire. Hard to say now if the same will be true tomorrow night for my class. I think my landlady has evacuated, too. While I have no desire for the fire to keep burning, I confess that having my class canceled wouldn't break my heart.

All that and it's only Tuesday!

******************* UPDATE **************************
Wed night now and my school is in the mandatory evacuation zone (so much for being secretive about where I am) and is closed through Sunday. No teaching tonight, but I'll have to figure out how to make up the time with my students.

My insurance company is refusing to pay for my MRI studies because I don't have a primary care physician. Sigh. I go to an urgent care place for GP kinda stuff because I already have too many doctors to see annually and rarely need anything that I wouldn't have to go to an urgent care place for anyway, even if I did have a PCP. My GYN pretty much covers the primary care role for me, so I've never seen a need to add another doc to the mix. I contacted an internist who is affiliated with the urgent care place and is a family care practitioner. Hopefully he can order the same tests and my insurance will pay. I'm waiting for my records to be transferred to his office so that they can schedule me. Anyway, I'm steamed that they would play games like this over something so serious. I honestly believe that insurance companies and our medical system in this nation cause at least as many illnesses as they help to heal! So you might have a malignant tumor on your spine? Ok, just go see this doctor and keep seeing him consistently for a couple of years and we'll think about helping you pay for some tests... gimme a fucking BREAK!!!

I can pay for all three MRIs if I have to, and will if they jerk me around much longer. It will be a major financial blow though. It just sucks to feel so utterly unsupported. Yeah, I can pay for these tests, but if the results indicate heavy duty medical interventions then it looks like I might be SOL in the short term simply because they object to my choice of a medical team, which is NOT anywhere in my policy that I can find!!! This is a PPO, not an HMO. Oh pooh, I'll just try to think positively and assume there's nothing much to find anyway...

Why Today?

This has been a terrible allergy week and the thing I struggle with most in the peak of hayfever season (which I fear we haven't even reached yet) is that my eyes itch and burn and swell shut. When it's bad enough I'll have swelling well down into my tear ducts so that my face looks like a lumpy puffer fish and has blotches all over. For whatever reason I always suffer more in my university town than at home. So this morning was a puffer fish morning and wouldn't you know it, our Clinical Director asked me to give a 15 minute impromptu talk, ON VIDEO, to show to the 3rd years in preparation for the APPIC process. The poor buggers. As if it isn't bad enough they have to go through this at all, they get to kick it off watching a video of a wheezing puffer fish. Gah.

I decided to call in sick and just came home. Couldn't sleep though, because my head was too full and the back of my throat itched too much, so I've been at the neighbors' listening to the rain pound on their awning. I love rain and we need more, AND it washes the damned pollen out of the air, so if all goes well maybe tomorrow I'll be able to breathe again.

On more intellectual topics than snot in my brain, I seem to be clashing more and more with my teachers and supervisors. I wonder what that's about? I have always said what I thought and been quick to comment in classes, but somehow lately my comments seem to be perpetually at odds with one mentorish figure or other. Is this a rite of passage, developmental milestone, or just a nasty case of narcissism? Today at least I wasn't alone. Came to loggerheads with my only male classmate over perspectives on a divorce/custody mediation video. He absolutely hated the woman and completely exonerated the man. The prof had a similar, if less intense, response. After a few moments of impassioned discussion I realized this was a gender/cultural misunderstanding. At least one of my classmates argued as vehemently as I, and two others agreed with us in the hallway. It was a bummer though, because the (male) mediator had the same view as the two men in our class and as far as I was concerned it undermined his entire performance. The prof thought the mediator's interventions were 'masterful' while I thought they were insensitive and biased. So I didn't get much out of the class and the whole episode undermined my respect for the prof's ability to teach me this new subject in any usable way.

I hope I can get this argumentativeness out of my system before Intership begins. Humble humble humble. I get just 7 weeks to feel superior for finishing my coursework and then I get to go back to the bottom of the pile.

Lawless in LaLa Land

Working my way through Law and Mental Health: A Case Based Approach and feeling more alarmed by the minute. This always happens to me when I read psychology law.

Case #1, Tarasoff v. The Regents of California, how the psychologist did everything right, was sued and lost the case.

Case #2, Almonte v. New York Medical College, how the psychiatrist did everything right, was sued and lost the case.

Case #3, Garner v. Stone, how the psychologist carefully read Tarasoff and Almonte, did everything right, was sued and STILL lost the case.

AKK! The book actually states, and I quote (obviously):

Perhaps there is a moral for mental health practitioners in these latter cases: Sometimes even professionals who go to extreme lengths to protect the rights of society and their clients do not win, which is why they should be well insured

Wondering why we don't have a course dedicated to choosing the best kind of insurance...

Why so sad little girl?

Been down and irritable lately and no clue why. I had a baddish couple of days at practicum. A really rough domestic violence case that didn't belong in the agency. The Executive Director, who occasionally takes calls, for some reason let herself be fast talked out of saying no to a clear cut case of DV. She told them she'd let the intake person make the call, despite the fact that the client said, "I'll just lie in the intake." Guess who did the intake! No dice, no couples therapy, very angry client with history of violence. Grand.

Then I disagreed with my supervisor about a premarital case. Just a difference of perspective about the nature of therapy. Not a big deal but one of a bunch of little disillusionments about someone I have placed on a pedestal. My bad, not his, but then I question if I'm being arrogant and that spirals into a bunch of negative self talk... blah.

I find I'm just out of umph lately and have short termer's syndrome really badly. I do enjoy my forensic's classes though, so that's good. The silly school bookseller is seriously lame this quarter and I have only half my books though, so that's not helping matters any. Should have gone with my usual sources. Live and learn!

No doubt I'll rally and come back here and delete this gloomy rant. I really just want to soak up some sun with a tasty toddy and a junk novel right now. Maybe a hot shower will take away all this negativity, ya think?

Amused to no end...

I have received CONGRATULATIONS on passing my State Exam. I did not take any exam, mind you, I simply filled out a State application for employment. Somehow though, I not only passed my exam, I was assigned a 90%. I can't decide whether to be happy I got an A or unhappy that I didn't get all the possible points. It's hard to learn from this, seeing as I can't recall the test or the study materials...

Methinks there is a massive SNAFU involving programming in our state employment system that we likely have never had the money to correct.

Blah

Soooo tired I just can't get moving today. I think I'll take a nap on the porch because later it will be windy and I'll regret missing my sun time if I crawl back in bed.

Week one is done and that means 9 to go! Yep, I have that irritating countdown bug people get when something is getting close that really nobody else cares about that much. Sorry... I have only spurts of short termer's syndrome. I know it will hit hard when the first big project/paper is due though.

My classes are all interesting and mediation is completely new to me! It's been a long time since anything has been fresh like that, seeing as I'm in the piled higher and deeper category, I already have a good foundation to pile onto. I'm LOVING learning all new concepts and terminology. It's rather disturbing to learn that mediation, as it is most commonly taught, is about as anti-therapeutic as can be. Wow... I mean I know it's not therapy, but c'mon people, there are human beings here! Thankfully my instructor is quite aware of that and we are learning how to do this in ways that will meet our ethical standards. So far though, we are learning about how those not in the mental health field do this, and it's pretty painful.

I'm over it now, but was seriously ticked off about the class where I had that big paper to do over the break. The MF gave me an INCOMPLETE!!! After staying up all night, literally, to get it done by his abruptly altered deadline, I apparently sent it to an e-mail addy he neglected to check. Never mind it was the one on the syllabus. Gah! It will be fine, I will have my grade on Monday and nobody will be the wiser that this happened, but I still think it sucks.

So off now to alternately nap and read in the sun. My expert witness class requires that we read the entirety of two weighty tomes, "at our leisure" with no guidance about what, in particular, we are supposed to pay attention to. We'll find that out on the final, which is open book/open notes. Had this guy for Ethics and Law in my first year and already know about his 'easy' finals. The last one was so traumatic I was a zombie afterward and got in a car accident on my way home. Lalalalala... whatever, it will be my last final EVER in this program. So there!

I'm Being Followed

So the other day I was at the bank and I noticed a dark brown elastic hair band on the ground. It was in perfect condition and I thought of how I had lost both mine like that, but ikk.. it was on the ground, you know?

Then yesterday I was at my practicum and saw the same hairband on the sidewalk by the parking meter. Ok, weird.

Just this afternoon at the grocery store, another dark brown elastic hairband in perfect condition was on the ground in the parking lot next to my car. TOOO WEIRD.

What does it want? Is it one of the ones I lost? Does it know I want one like it? Is it 3 or is it only the one again and again? Should I stop going out? =0

Fire and Brimstone

Little use though I have for organized religion, I have to say that one of the elements I find the most loathsome; "behave or ELSE" is coming to my aid in spades these days. An astounding number of my current clients are contemplating suicide. Our little low cost clinic is being inundated with people who have lost their jobs their homes and their families. None of them have ever seen anything as scary as this floor vanishing in the economy, and they have no faith that things will improve in a time frame they can accept. Invoking their compassion about abandoning a loved one isn't helpful because they think their loved ones would be better off without them. Their faith in a wise and benevolent God who has some mysterious and worthwhile purpose in torturing them is a wash. Needless to say the whole compassionate God thing isn't holding up so well at the moment. But even those who consider themselves utterly nonreligious can't quite seem to shake the visions of eternal damnation instilled in childhood when grandma took them to church every Sunday. THAT is enough to keep them alive.

So now I understand the wisdom of an angry, vengeful God. Somebody, somewhere knew what he was doing.

FREE at last!!!

Finished this ghastly horrid paper I had hanging over my head. The prof screwed up and didn't get the assignment to us until two weeks before the term ended, then he changed the requirements again the week before. When we all complained that there was no way we could pull that off in the time allotted he opted not to reduce the workload, rather he declared that we could do it over break and it would be due the week before classes begin again. That would be next week so I aimed to have it complete by Sunday. Seems yesterday he discovered that grades are due tomorrow, so at 7pm last night he told us it was due the next day. 20-25 pages. Right. At the last moment, when 2/3 of the class appeared to be headed for incompletes, he did reduce it to 15-20 pages, which helped, but was still silly based on the vignette we were asked to cover. Pulled the first true all nighter I think I've done in this program... not until 2 or 3am, but until 6am this morning! Didn't know I still had that in me. Wow! Actually what I had in me was espresso, I wasn't really awake, I just had my eyes open. I had 7 pages going in, so I did the last 13 in little spurts of a few lines at a time... on and on and on. It's a forensics class, too, so I'm not as adept at navigating the search engines as I am in my own field.

There's what I get for taking actual breaks and doing this in dribs and drabs. HA! Lesson learned. 5 of us were not done so I'm feeling pleased he'll likely be up all night tonight grading just as we were writing.

If there's anything anyone would like to know about doing a child custody evaluation on an Egyptian couple involving domestic violence, child abuse, and alcoholism just let me know!

Now back to my dissertation lit review, which is something I actually enjoy. Is it just the way life is that nobody gets to work uninterrupted on their personal research, like EVER? I sure haven't run into anything like that yet...

A Toothy Memorial

I am mourning the loss of a childhood friend of the family. The man was my dentist, my father (an OBGYN) delivered his daughter, and his parents taught me to ski and installed me in the Junior Ski Patrol!

Dr. S was in a plane crash in which he lost an eye. Over time he declined precipitously, quitting dentistry, becoming an alcoholic, suffering terrible mood swings and depressions (he attempted suicide) and clearly experiencing dramatic cognitive loss. At the time everyone just shook their heads and was disgusted about how he 'fell apart' and couldn't pull himself back together. His wife divorced him and he lost nearly all of his friends. His parents took him in for awhile, and he eventually went to work for the forest service, getting a job and a small cabin at the Grand Canyon. He died there in his cabin last week of unknown causes.

Knowing what I do now it's crystal clear that he suffered the aftermath of acute traumatic brain injury. It pains me that he was so ridiculed, not the least by himself, about the changes he underwent. Only now, more than 30 years later are we beginning to have a glimmer of understanding about what goes on in the brain after TBI. It seems we had to have the ability to SEE damage to believe it was there. Until then it was just a character flaw and we declared there was no medical reason for 'bad behavior'. We have a whole new set of TBI sufferers experiencing injuries unlike anything we've seen before thanks to their excellent armor and the IEDs in this newest of wars. It struck me when I looked back over my dentist's life, that his symptoms mirror what my classmate describes when she talks about TBI in Iraqi soldiers, her specialty. After 'recovering' from the initial trauma, they look ok and that lasts about 6 months or so. Then they start to struggle. Depression sets in, mood swings, suicidality and everything I described above in the dentist. But because at the 6 month mark they look pretty intact, the military declares that whatever their problem is, it must not be related to their war trauma, so tough luck, you're on your own buddy! Worst of all, we often send them back into battle!!!

It kills me that now we know more, we may still condemn people to struggle the way Dr. S. did. I hope we can turn that around soon...

So Frustrated

No, really it's angry. ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY!!! I have been talking to the program director of the masters program about having a printed reader made this term as a result of the disaster my electronic reader turned into last term. I had three or four conversations with the PD about this and thought I made it CRYSTAL CLEAR what I wanted.

The readings were the same, but I was told I had to resend them, so I did, with the header "Reader materials for..." I never heard if they got to the librarian, despite sending two follow up e-mails to her, and neglected to physically visit her to check. Today she sent me a note saying all my readings were 'up' and she thought they were perfect, please go check. AKK! Sent back that I requested a printed reader, not an electronic one and shortly got a note from the program director that she had no idea I wanted anything printed and the deadline is past and I have to fill out this and that form with all the percentages of each book I'm printing yada yada.

Breathe! I already did all this and well before the deadline. I can't find the note where I figured the percentages and I don't have one of the books here at home. I got angry, stomped around, called both people and found them both unavailable, then sat down and cried. I was so careful and I wanted this class to go so much better than last. Last time most of the problems that made me look bad were out of my control and now here we go again. Beginning to understand why some profs seem not to stay with the times and go on requiring big expensive text books when they only want their students to read 1/3 of what's in them. I really REALLY am not a good team player because so often teams make a mess of things, you know? I could have done this myself weeks ago if I'd known it was going to be such a fucking circus.

I'd rather not do reasearch

I am perpetually learning things I don't want to know.

Doing research on domestic violence in Egyptian culture (hateful overdue paper for forensics class). Found this delightful tidbit:

Walker (2004 ) quotes Muhammad Omar, a columnist for the leading Arabic language daily Al Ahkbar, reacting to stories from abused women by saying,

"I didn't pity any of them, he wrote. I give every man the right to do what these men have done. Only "ugly" women are abused and that domestic violence would end if there were plastic surgery at the expense of the state."