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...