Link of the Day

Interview with Ruth Reichl.


Plus a listing of her favorite foodie books. What a great way to spend the day!

Days of Wine and Roses.

So I had my first bad day yesterday. Not so much bad, as just sort of crappy and exhausting.

The person I took over from apparently had short-timer's syndrome for the six months prior to his quitting. Dude, I get it, totally been there, DONE THAT. But seriously, it is some nasty shit to step in when you try to take over from a person like that. And the clients are all pretty fucking annoyed too - and guess who they have to yell at? That's right, and damn it all, if they haven't taken their measure of me over the past week and decided that they Smell Blood.

Fuckers.

So, it's a bit of a shit storm around my office these days (I have my own office! For the first time in my career!), and it's not like I'm dealing with really, super easy, stable, truth-telling, non-bullying, non-assholes as an overall client base. And here's another tidbit: if you want to be respected and treated with deference based upon your education, stature, hard-work, or general trying-to-helpedness? DON'T go into addictions work. Oh gee, whatta surprise, the crystal-shooting, alcoholic drug dealer isn't all that fucking impressed by my master's degree. Go figure.

And guess who else REALLY hates me? All the poor freaking 24 year old MBA yuppies who got a DUI on their way home from work happy hour and now hate my shit because they have to sit through my class for the next two goddamn years, seething with the resentment while they calculate how much more money per second their interests account make than my yearly salary.

Still, the days fly by, I'm learning a LOT, i have an office, and I feel like i have a purpose.


And, oh yeah, the receptionist gig at WW *still* manages to be about 10 times more effing complicated and difficult than this other job. However, I do get all WW products half price. Momma's got herself some new cookbooks, WOOT!

And it's not that baby with the one eyebrow....

The following conversation just took place:


How was the gym?

My nemesis was there.

Noble was at the gym?

Different nemesis.


Does anyone know what the plural of nemesis is? Nemeses? I have many.

So far....so excellent.

It turns out that maybe all I needed, all these years, was for my day of employment to commence after 10:30 am. This working from 11-9, 4 days per week? Rocks the freaking facking casbah. I get up in the morning (or not, or not), go work out, futz around, do some weeding in the garden, enjoy my coffee, enjoy my friends' blogs, catch up a little bit with what's going on in the world (GWB: still sucking *hard* after all these years), and THEN get in the shower. I am so goddamn productive.

You see, after work, ALL I am willing to do is sit on the couch. If I am motivated, I may open some wine. If I am extremely motivated, perhaps some food will be served with the wine. But that's it. And it doesn't matter if I get home from work at 3:oo in the afternoon or 9:00 at night. AND, if i get home at 9:00 pm, and I really don't stay up past 10? (geez, whatta geriatric) - really helps out the old liver, if you know what I'm saying.

Outstanding.

Oh, and it turns out that I really love the work itself. I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm willing to bet that my entire caseload relapses this weekend, but it's still interesting and challenging - and in some cases, fun.

of course, I also get phone calls like Uh, my ex-husband showed up outside our house drunk at 3am last night and caused a ruckus (could you describe the ruckus?) - Can you make him stop doing that?

To which I have to respond: Please call 911 and use that restraining order that you jumped through 16 billion hoops to get. There's NOTHING i can do about your husband except make him pee in a cup and then, tsk tsk, waggle my finger at him.

Oh, and I started getting trained as a receptionist at Weight Watchers! (You have to be a receptionist before you can become a WW leader). OMG - the WW job is so much HARDER tha my other counseling job. I always thought that all the receptionists did was line the fatties up and weigh 'em. Oh good christ, there is so much going on behind that desk! It was pandemonium the moment I sat down. Tallys! Spreadsheets! Credit card machines! Inventory!

(And it's also really really uncomfortable knowing what people's weights are - it feels like such a tabboo. More on this later).

Swimming through a pile of cheese.......*

Started my first official full time job yesterday - I am now a Drug and Alcohol Counselor for a local firm. Please stop snickering, it's unbecoming.

So I thought I'd be sitting in on the groups for a week and then they would be transferred over to me. Nope, all mine. Started last night - here you go, do you have something planned?

Crap, uh no. And it turns out that the guy that I'm inheriting the group from? not that structured. Just sort of did whatever. Couldn't say where in the curriculum they were or what i should be focusing on. Just play it by ear, they said. Uh, sure, that works for the first half hour, but I have FOUR hours of group counseling to cover tonight, so THANKS.

It didn't go too badly, and I'm sure they were thrilled when I let them out 45 minutes early. It's a weird mix of people. Some of them have some serious drug & alcohol issues, and other's are just yuppies who like their designer vodka a little too much and got nailed with a DUI. So I have the homeless junkie sitting next to the 26 year old MBA. Makes for an interesting dynamic. So far what I can tell you is that everything I learned in school? Just the beginning - this is a whole new world.

But, I go back again today, hopefully a little more prepared.


******************************

I also returned to my 5:30am Spin class this morning. I was still sore and tired from my 5:30am weight-lifting class the day before, so this really kicked my ass. It's the same instructor both days. I am convinced she is a robot. A tiny, extremely tan, 2% bodyfat fembot. She is all jutting cheekbones and clavicle. I feel very...jowly and loose-skinned next to her. The other people in the class aren't nearly as intimidating, so that's good - although I will say that I'm glad I'm going to a gym in the suburbs and not the one downtown. Yech, those people make my spinning instructor look like Fat Bastard. GIT IN ME BELLY!!!

* I was listening to my Berlin cd on the way to work yesterday. Still the best goddamn cd ever.

SQUEEEEEEEEE

I'm done! I'm done! I'm done!

No more classrooms! No more books! No more teachers' dirty looks!

I am on the cusp...

as they would say, of actually being done with this whole thing. I had my last career counseling class last night. Jeez, that was painful. I had some of the oddest classmates in the group - they were the greatest bunch of insufferably pretentious and consciously precocious (two things I HATE in myself, so I find completely loathsome in others) folks I have had the displeasure of sitting around twice weekly for six weeks.

Though, to be sure, they're probably all very nice people. I've just developed a terrible attitude that seems to be in indirect proportion to the amount of time I have left in school. I've got one class left and I'm just a f*cking asshole to be around.

But that career counseling class was a brutal waste of time. She really did start getting into chakras and whatnot. And she kept blathering on about quantum theory. To the point, where I actually thought she meant "quantum theory" - and I kept hoping that she was going to say something useful and interesting about it and how it related to the field of career counseling and it would be something I could take to my scientific father and say oh father, you see that I am worthy and I now understand something that you've been talking about all these years but instead she kept going on and on about particles and people's life paths and journeys interwoven between time and space, but making ZERO sense and finally I was left with the realization you keep saying that word QUANTUM. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Annoying as fuck.

So now I've finished that, and I'll finish Treatment of Addictions on Monday (thus creating the presumption that I know something about treating addictions, which would be incredibly incorrect), and once I finish my pointless busywork documentation for internship class (four case studies left to type up!) this weekend, I will be DONE. DONE. DONE.

Except for my thesis. Which I can then BEGIN.

And now I shall have time for my garden, time for triathlon training, time for flambeing my way through the Les Halles cookbook, time to bake cakes and pastries, and time to read actual books that do not included reference or citation sections in the back. Time to go hiking. Time to go on garden tours. Time for yoga and pilates.

Of course I'm insane. I could be unemployed and living in Greenland and I wouldn't have time for all that. Sigh. I don't know how people do it.

Totally baked....

If you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world, tell her I love her.....

Sigh. Isn't she beeyoootiful? She's been sleeping on the pillow next to me at night. She understands me. She listens to me. She knows about life...and love.

She was a bribe gift from my parents and my Aunt for graduation. I should have gone to grad-school YEARS ago. I'm so in love with her. I'm going to weigh 700 pounds by year's end because of all the baked goods she'll bring. Or ...at least eBoy'll weigh that much. *I'm* training for a triathlon, so I'd rather drop a few more pounds, thank you very much.

So ....tonight...for her first time, our first time together...well, we made something very special. That's right. The Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe for Whole Wheat Bread. The beautifully kneaded dough is rising in the oven even as we speak. She's so effing awesome I could cry. But instead, I'll have some fresh baked bread with a little bit of butter and honey. Because that, my friends, is true love.

ahh, shit. Am I supposed to know what I'm doing?

So I graduated last weekend. But technically, no. I still have to finish two classes and hand in all my internship documentation and pointless busywork. So I have quite a bit of work that I should be doing. But, man, I've really been phoning it in. Motivation is at an all time low.

But now, however, I've been given a full time job, starting next week, in which I'll be leading my own, my very own, Intensive Outpatient drug/alcohol treatment groups, and my own Level 1 drug/alcohol education groups (which is what your garden variety first-offense DUI gets you).

So at 1:30am today, I *popped* awake with the sudden realization that I'm completely unqualified for this, and I have a week to learn it. So that kept me up until 5. Needless to say, I skipped my 5:30 spinning class.

How not to meet men....

Lazy Saturday....It's past 2:30 and I'm still in my jammies.

Went out last night with that friend of mine who's got a pending divorce. She wants to fight for her marriage, at the same time, she feels like she could stand a little positive attention from a boy or two, so she hooked me - every divorcee's trusty wingman - along to go out bar hopping.

So that's a problem - because she's essentially trying to re-enter the dating market at the same point where she left it 9 years ago. So there we are mixing amongst late 20 somethings and I'm saying what's wrong with this picture? And, since it's Oregon (or as she kept saying, it's f*cking Oregon), the 20 somethings are somewhat scruffy, unbathed, and lean towards the goddamn, dirty hippy side of the equation. Sigh. This was NOT what god intended. I reminded her of that episode of sex in the city when SJP sleeps with a 25 year old and wakes up in his shared apartment surrounded by pizza boxes, no toilet paper, and no coffee. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! I cried to her.

Explaining that I was far more experienced at booting new divorcees back into the dating pool than she was, I forcibly ejected us from the hipster petri dish of North Portland, and dragged her downtown to something a little more suitable, a little more upscale. Sheesh. We found it at Blue Hour, good enough, good enough - although this whole project would have been much easier if we'd still been in San Francisco. As it was, there are far more single 30 something women on the hunt in San Fran, so here in PDX we were actually able to score a seat at the bar, order drinks and some carpaccio (carpaccio! How I've missed carpaccio!). Now surrounded by a somewhat posher crowd, I released my friend to let her work her magic.

My pregnancy totally fucking ruined my boobs! she hollered - loudly - at one prospect, a handsome post-doc from a local university. Even the bartender looked up at us at that point. I could only squirm myself into the chair so far as the post-docs friend slithered over to me to presumably inquire about the state of my boobs...

I mean, yes, he was fine, he didn't really slither, he's probably really nice, he made the mistake of informing me that he's a retired air-force officer from Ohio, which is code speak for Conservative Religious Nut from the Midwest. Not my type. I flashed my engagement ring at him and started talking about my love for Dennis Kucinich and Richard Dawkins.

A seat over, my friend was asking the Post-doc about his racial preferences in dating. DO YOU LIKE CHINESE GIRLS OR WHITE GIRLS? My friend, by the way, is Chinese. For the love of God, what does she think he's going to say? Then she started talking about her children and her mini van and how she just got a bikini wax for the first time in three years and how she'd really let herself go down there.

Sigh. This is going to take some work. This is really going to take some practice, tutoring, and patience. I will schedule a trip to Vegas for intensive immersion learning, and we'll try it again in a few months. Woman, get thee to the Center Bar at the HRH and practice talking to boys. Get me to the spa at Mandalay Bay.

Or as we used to say, you know what I need? A Mandalay.

If there's a problem, yo, I'll solve it....

I've had Ice Ice Baby running through my head all day. I know it by heart, you know.

Guess who got "promoted" to a full time (with benies!) drug & alcohol counseling position today? I say "promoted" because it was a promotion in the same sense as when Darth Vader kills off Admiral Piett for losing the Millenium Falcon and then promotes the guy who'd been *standing* next to Piett into the Admiral position.

YaY Me!

Check out the hook, while my DJ revolves it.....word to your mother.

In Which I Kick Ass....

Shazam!

I got up at 5am, chugged a red-bull, and scooted myself off to my very first Spin class ever! Wee, so much fun! I feel so athletic.

In the meantime, I have two more weeks of school while I try to manage my schedule of three different jobs - thus the ass-crack of dawn workout. You know, a couple of years ago at this time, I was trying to survive each day at my job until I could quit and start school. Each day was sort of this quiet moan of youcandothis youcandothis justgetthroughthis justgetthroughthis. Lots of distress tolerance.

And now I feel the same way about school. I'm sitting in stupid career counseling last night just sort of muttering the same little mantras it'salmostover it'salmostover....

Funny how things change.

In Which I Get the Last Word In.

Commencement Speech by drM
Graduate School of Education and Counseling
June 3, 2007

Thank you. Dr. Nagel mentioned that the ceremony is running long today and so I let her know that I would cut my speech in half. So I’ll actually just be reading every other word….and if you understand this, think how long winded I must actually be…

I would like to welcome everyone today. Gee, you all look fantastic. I am honored to speak on your behalf. As I was contemplating what I might share with you, I struggled to come up with something that hasn’t been said before in a thousand commencement speeches -- something that might, in fact, be meaningful and somewhat useful, rather than “go out and do all good things,” “brush & floss,” and “cite your sources.” If you haven’t been doing those before now…well…(eegh). Instead, I can simply share some of my experiences and what I’ve learned.

Huh. It’s actually pretty surreal to be standing up here. You see, when I graduated from my small New England college, some 15 years ago, I nearly slept right through commencement because I’d stayed out so late the night before celebrating the improbable occasion of my graduation. I awoke to the first strains of pomp and circumstance, panicked, threw on my gown still wrinkled from the packing, grabbed my flip-flops, and dashed out my front door towards the library steps. You know, those flip flops might not have been the most appropriate choice of footwear for such an auspicious occasion but they were certainly not well planned for a 50 degree spring day in Maine. In fact, as I climbed the stage to snatch away my diploma, the commencement speaker, Bill Cosby, began pointing at and making fun of my feet, which had by this time turned purple in the cold. But I didn’t care, I pushed him out of the way, grabbed my diploma and was set to make a clean getaway before the administration realized that my check to the library for late fines would bounce. Now, my diploma was remarkable only in the sense that it existed at all. My lackluster attention span during undergrad had resulted in a cumulative GPA of 2.1, exceeding the cutoff for graduation by a mere tenth of a point. I think my motto at the time was – whoever does the least amount of work and still passes the class, wins.

Why tell you my tale of such an inauspicious beginnings? Well, after several years I began to realize what a wasted opportunity my undergraduate education had been and, while having that BA was a great thing, I would still have to work pretty hard to actively overcome my earlier determination to barely exceed expectations. But because of this, what I have learned from that moment 15 years ago, knocking Bill Cosby out of my way, to this moment of standing before you is that it is never too late for some to achieve a better life for themselves.

Through our work, we create the possibility of a better future for others and ourselves. In this sense, I have been very lucky, because once I found the true motivation to create a more fulfilling life for myself, I had the foundation of my education, however shaky, to fall back on. I would say to all of you that together we work to build that foundation, to nurture the soil in the hopes that one day the seeds of stability and achievement may spring forth. So, I would ask you to remember the weakest of your students and clients – the seemingly laziest, least motivated, or ill-prepared, those whose home lives are so wretched that the very idea of working on literacy or symptom reduction may seem like chipping ice cubes away from a glacier. Remember that they may be capable of anything if they have that foundation of education, stability, and support.

I hesitate to congratulate you; you notice there’s no banner saying “Mission Accomplished.” Because I feel that what we are celebrating today is actually only the completion of an important first step for what must be a larger dream for our place in the world and community. When I first considered my future career, I looked at teaching. But I read books like those by Jonathan Kozol and simply became overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem of inequity in education. I couldn’t even envision what a solution might be in an ideal world. But my father used to tell me that failure to act is still, in and of itself, an action. I can’t tell you how much I admire those of you that see this great mountain in front of you and are still determined to climb it. So, to the teachers in our midst, to you I say good luck – I foresee a future for you of opening young minds – and of answering their age old question, “why do we need to learn this stuff?” The answer is, of course, to give them the possibility to use that “stuff.” Every one of us graduating today is in the business of creating possibility. Of widening the experience and mindsets of others so that they have the opportunity to widen their options. But …though we may endow the possibility – it is not necessarily probability. This will be our challenge for years to come – to not only create the possibility of a better future for our clients and students, but to make it probable. And this is something that we will all struggle with as we find ourselves having to settle for potential, when what we truly long for is certainty and indisputable success. But, I would say, that failure to act is still an action.

As this is the final moment for all of us to be together, I would like to reflect on the last two years, because although we are moving forward into the future, we are also leaving behind something quite special here at Lewis & Clark. My first semester here was, in a word, magical. Being together with this class, full of talented people devoting themselves to higher learning and to their individual callings, I found, maybe for the first time, a true sense of belonging. Maybe it was that Friday afternoon Lifespan Development class with Peter Mortola, in which we became so engaged with one another that our very lives and our histories seemed intertwined. That was a great class, and not just because it was followed up by Friday afternoon margaritas at Chez Jose.

In fact, I believe that all of us were searching for that sense of belonging, and we found it here in an environment devoted to creating social justice and educational equality, in a community focused on improving itself so that we might better serve others. And now we’re leaving, and perhaps you feel like, as I do, a bit of an imposter, hoping to get away clean with your diploma before they raise parking fees again and, if it weren’t for those, you might gladly indulge in another semester or two, hoping to finally take that class that makes it all come together, that makes you feel like more of competent leader. But there’s always going to be more to learn, because no matter how many years into this journey you get, there’s always going to be some situation that makes you feel like you’re still learning the ropes.

But isn’t that part of the thrill, isn’t that part of the challenge, isn’t that a huge part of a lifelong education – the pleasure in finding things out? Admittedly, we are imperfect messengers. We have only just begun our education. I don’t think a single one of us feels finished today. We’re simply at the next step, the next stage. But as William Stafford once asked, what can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around.

Looking back on it all, is there a greater moment than right now? We stand upon the shoulders of giants and walk in the footsteps of leaders. In this moment, we balance upon the precipice of our future, following the scores of counselors and educators who came before us, and we add to their number, increasing and building the momentum of a community of people who wake up each morning with the purpose of helping at least one other person make a better day for themselves; helping at least one other person lighten their load, or make a better choice, or create a better future. We are people with a purpose.

The greatest thing that you have brought to your education and that you will bring to your future is your self: Your own unique experience and perspective of the world, your capacity for giving. I believe our graduate programs have changed us: not just through greater accumulated knowledge, but by our interactions within the world, our greater understanding of the challenges that face our community, and strengths we can bring to bear.

But what is our role within the community? We are steeped in the tragic imperfections and inequalities of the American educational and mental health systems. But this is not to say that we throw up our hands, shrug our shoulders, and resign ourselves to their imperfections. Surely there is a choice between resignation and frustration. Surely there is a choice between de facto endorsement and never attempting to resolve it all because the system itself seems so intractable.

The privilege of our position demands that we work to continually improve our systems. You are the leaders of tomorrow, and not in some abstract, “behold-the-limitless-sky” sort of way – you actually are it. All of our degrees are aimed at very specific professions, and we hope that if we perform to the best of our abilities, all that is wrong with the world will be made right. But the challenges we face include poverty, apathy, ignorance, and good intentions, while our greatest tools are hope, faith, knowledge, and determination. You might not get rich, you probably won’t get famous, and you might never be appreciated in the way you actually deserve – but to one person, one child, one set of eyes, one lifetime, you will make a difference; you will create that space for growth, nurture resilience, and create the possibility of a better community.

So now, I ask you to go out into the world and meet these challenges you have set for yourself head on. But… I also urge you to Stop. Gather ye rosebuds. Walk amongst the lavender. Travel, whether it is to the Gorge or to the Ganges. Consider those who came before you and what you might learn from them. Watch less TV, finish more books. Plant a tree. Read Shel Silverstein. This is your life – take time for it. Be kind to yourself. Remember how great we had it here at Lewis & Clark. Remember how we challenged, supported, and inspired one another. Take that inspiration into the world with you.

My father used to end our phone conversations by telling me: go out into the world and do all great things. I can’t think of anything I’d rather tell you – because I’ve never met a group a people that I was more positive could do just that. Celebrate this achievement, my friends. It has been an honor to have been one of you. Now…. go off into the world and do all great things.

okay okay okay....

Jeeez - i know I haven't posted in ages!

Okay, this morning is graduation. I make my speech at 10:45 am. Very exciting. The Dean asked me on FRIDAY if I wouldn't mind cutting it in half for time's sake. So I'll just be reading every other word.

We've had a lovely weekend with my parents. Sat out on the deck on Friday night enjoying mussels (from the Black Dog Cafe cookbook, yum), and grilled spicy salmon - both enjoyed with a lovely savignon blanc and a dry rose. How nice to just sit out on a warm evening and laugh with my family.

Yesterday we spent visiting some of the parks here in PDX, and then went off for a short whirlwind tour of wine country. This is my new favorite place. So beautiful. And their Mercotti's Milieu pinot is to die for. I should have gotten a bottle!

Alright, I need to shower and get dressed. It's (jazz hands) SHOWTIME!