It was a good day.

I woke up yesterday and I felt....relaxed. Better. Content - rather than intense and screechy. It was a good feeling.

Had a good WW meeting. Had a good workout at the gym. Went and had a facial. Came home and watched some excellent gardening videos (shut up). Not too shabby.

Today was even better. Even better than gardening videos from 1988? how can that be?

Well:

Slept beautifully without sleeping pills (a rare occurrence these days). Woke up to blue sky and sunshine (an even more rare (rarer?) occurrence). Went out to breakfast with the Psycho-children couple, and they were sans-psychos, so it was a nice and relaxed event. I had smoked salmon eggs benedict served over crumpets (I know!) - may as well, since 100 Doh starts Tuesday.

Afterwards, we took Abby and went for a five mile hike on Leif Erikson Drive through Forest Park. What a day for it! It was alternately sunny, raining, hailing, snowing, and thunder/lightening.

Abby loved it, of course, but she'd pretty much had had *enough* at mile four, by which time she was covered with a half inch of hail/snow and the thunder was scaring her. Which would have been fine had she had THIS but eBoy has said that he will CALL OFF THE WEDDING if I buy her one. humph. i think little booties would be nice for her too.

Then we stopped by Starbucks. i don't mean to advertise for them, but after an hour and a half in that weather, freezing and soaked to the bone, one of their hot chocolates - especially if you accidentally forget to ask them to hold the whipped cream, and especially if you accidentally forget to order it with lowfat milk - is simply the best goddamn concoction this side of a patron margarita with an opium chaser.

After that, someone got a bath and a new collar! (no, not me).

And then we came home and then I got to take a bubble bath with my favorite bath salts ever. I love my bathroom now - I have taken Oh-Marie's advice and replaced all the linens and shower curtain in the bathroom with thick white linens (which you can bleach) - this has really brightened up the room. Plus, eBoy is a freaking genius and installed a spring on the bathroom door, so it shuts automatically, which means that little cats can no longer settle into the bathroom rugs as warm, cozy places to pee (ha ha, fuckyou cats!). So, i got to settle into my all-white, steamy, bubbly, spa-like bath, and I felt like i was literally in HEAVEN.

Best dinner too - angel hair pasta with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes topped with roasted chicken. One of my favorites.

Good way, good day to start wrapping up a pretty good year.

try to stay away from the 10 Most Maudlin Lists....

Here it is around the first of the year, and everyone has top 10 lists pouring out their asses like last night's bad experimentation with Korean food.

So color me trendy.

It's 12:30am. I've had seven alcoholic clients, six cocaine addicts, FIVE POSITIVE UA'S, four DUIs, three relapses, two suicide attempts, and a (sing along here) client whose fiance actually told me that *I* was the reason she gave up on sobriety.

Bullshit, but thanks for making my christnukkah.

On the other hand, I can't sleep, despite the half-benzo, BTW for you budding therapists out there, if you've gotten five minutes of training in counseling skills it becomes REALLY FUCKING APPARENT that your fiance doesn't know the first thing about how to talk to someone in a client-centered way when he asks you, what's wrong, and you tell him and he says, aww, you'll get over it, can I buy a new miter saw?

But shitfuckman, tomorrow is another day. Maybe that actually means something.

a lack of expertise where there can be none it seems...

Mike Daisey once wrote that one of the most necessary delusions we can hold is the belief that we are competent at our job. We need this illusion, desperately and completely.

A client of mine that I'd been working with since July relapsed last week. I found out today from her fiance. She relapsed - hard, went into detox, and then was so despondent over this, that when she left the detox center, she threw herself in front of a truck.

The delusion becomes ever more difficult to hold on to. And the reality of the incompetence and its implications are starting to be felt more heavily. And the horrible voices that tell me another therapist, a better one, one with more experience, better skills, could have saved her from this grow more deafening.

No therapist can be perfect. I realize that. And no, this is not about me. It's about her. And she deserved better.

God dammit David.

Now, you must know that I love all things Sedarae (how is it that I still do not own Amy's book? cough) - in fact, earlier this year, a friend and I saw a reading with David and we were in the SEVENTH ROW and I got to ask him (me! me! me!) if now that he had quit smoking, would he be going to visit the Louvre?

(A question that could ONLY be asked if one has a thorough, stalking-like quality to their relationship with DS and NPR and Ira Glass). And he laughed! He laughed! And then said no.

So.... no holiday season is complete now without a listen to Santaland diaries.

But....see, I used to be a BIG Billie Holiday fanatic - starting in college. To my post-adolescent emo-like self, there was something incredibly cool about listening to Strange Fruit, camel light hanging off my lower lip, while tapping out a paper on the post-feminist response to Kant. Even writing that, I feel like I should go put on a black turtleneck.

But now....CAN'T LISTEN TO HER. i have several BH cd's - and it was, up until about 7 years ago, a favorite way to spend a late summer afternoon - glass of white wine on my balcony while listening to her mournful wails. Now? all I hear is David Sedaris. DS singing Away in a Manger. DS singing My Bologna has a first name. My local jazz station played Violets for your Furs the other night and I had to turn it off - because now, it's just DS. Sigh. Dammit David.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Product review

I am noticing this morning that the WW brand Blueberry Muffins (3 points each) contain a scant number of actual berries. The muffin I had yesterday: 1 berry. Today? 2 sad little freeze-dried berries. That's ridiculous.

I will make muffins this weekend, all gloppy and dripping with blueberries, and let's see if I can keep them down to 3 points.

Jeez.

In other news, I'm headed out to my personal trainer in 10 minutes - today I get weighed and measured again, like so much side of beef. Sigh...and then depression set in.

I'm freaking out!!!

the new phone book's furnace is here! The new phone book's furnace is here! Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book's furnace everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

Or...it will finally reach above 51 degrees in my home. If eBoy actually lets me turn the damn thing on.

I hate TFN quotation of the day:

Still, Mr. Batali said, “They don’t need me. They have decided they are mass market and they are going after the Wal-Mart crowd,” which he said was “a smart business decision. So they don’t need someone who uses polysyllabic words from other languages.”

Tony Bourdain had predicted this a long long time ago.

Happy Birthday Ma-Mer!!!

Hope you are having a fabulous day and celebrating your birthday in every possible way!

I love you!

eBoy won a cruise!

eBoy went to some charity event on thursday night (eBoy rubs shoulders with the mucky-mucks of Portland, while I mostly skulk around its seedy underbelly - ie, I watch the news to see if I know any of the folks getting busted for meth production and also check the updated inmate lists of the county jails to see if any of my clients are listed).

So anyway....eBoy is at some fancy charity event on Thursday night and part of the evening's festivities is a cruise giveaway. And in fact, the woman running the event chose eBoy to be the person picking the name out of the hat to see who won. And ha ha, he picked his own name.

So this means that we will be going to Aruba this year, Florida this year, a cruise with PattonJani for their wedding, and now a cruise to Alaska (eBoy's only choice of location - seriously the boy loves to be cold). How in the world am I going to explain all this to my HR director?

eBoy just came singing into the living room ha ha, we're going to Alaska on a cruise that I won that I chose myself lee lee lee...



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Update on the 100 Days of Health (100 DoH) to begin Jan 1 2008 - eBoy has agreed to join me upon this quest. And I want to point out that 100Doh does NOT include giving up caffeine, although I am considering giving up coffee so my teeth are not the same golden brown as the fake tan I will be sporting.

Weight loss/maintenance is a weird thing.

It's one thing to want it. It's quite another thing to endure what you have to go through to achieve it, maintain it.

That could be said about any goal.

I enjoyed a "molten chocolate explosion cake" (or something like that) tonight. Didn't bother to count the points. enjoyed it thoroughly. Tomorrow morning, I will (hopefully) carry my ass to the gym and wonder why I still don't have visible biceps (hint: soft layer of insulation around them).

I do well with WW, but I can only follow it about 67% of the time. One of the things that I like about it is that I can lose weight/maintain my weight on it by only sticking to it 67% of the time.

But now I'm starting to think about going beyond weight loss. Now I'm looking at health. (Sure WW is really freaking healthy if you want it to be - see Good Health Guidelines - but you can also follow WW and eat burgerville six days a week (god bless america). But it aint HEALTHY.

I need to really think about health. I need to practice what I stand in front of rooms of people preaching. I need to run the PDX marathon next year (knee willing). And I need to fit into a fucking wedding dress that's more body conscious than a nightgown.

But I also need to consider the high risk of breast cancer. Osteoporosis. Other scary things. There's a lot in one's diet that affects mental health too.

Here's one thing I know: I can get through the day. Evenings are tough. I like to cook. I like to pair wine with food. I like to pair cheese with wine. You can see the bind I'm in. I'm considering something drastic.

100 days. 100 days of healthy eating. Could I do it? I can't even do a whole day - what makes me think I could do 100 days?

It's 100 days between new year's and my wedding. Barring any unforeseen bachelorette parties in Vegas (ahem) - could I do 100 days of ...well, "healthy eating" TBD. So far the idea of it consists of (gulp):

- No booze (including any 1996 Ken Wright pinots that may cross my path - fUCK)
- No Burgerville or any other fast food
- No red meat
- No god-bless-france foods like pate or foie gras
- No chips, cookies, cheese (!!!)
- No simple carbs
- No "red light" foods - for me this is almonds, wheat thins, cheese (duh), olives, popcorn. Things that once I start eating, i can't stop unless they're nailed down.

Oh god, I feel nauseated just typing all this. I have a huge fucking jug of Bailey's in the cupboard that I better glug down before the end of the month.

Why on earth would I even attempt this? Why am I more willing to try this than the no-face-washing experiment?

I wanna see what happens. It's basically sticking to WW Core - I mean people do eat like this. If I'm paying a buttload of money for a personal trainer - I wanna see what she can actually do with my body if I give her the chance.

that's a lot of "no's" - whenever you have some many no's, you have to find something to replace it with. I'll be back with more on that.

If I decide to do this, I'll tell you - I'm having one HELL of a new year's eve - and one HELL of a wedding night.

How many points in that tapioca whizbang surprise?

Well, it's official. I'm a WW leader with my very own meeting on Saturday mornings. I led my first official one today and I must say it went VERY well. I was very nervous - there's about 39 members - that's a lot of people! But I was really happy with it, and they laughed a lot, and talked a lot, and seemed to appreciate my weird asides - like one random one about being able to read every book on ice skating but that doesn't make me Tonya Harding (those always go over really well up here in her hometown area - people love love love to make fun of her around here). Plus, WW just came out with a bunch of new material, so that really motivates people.

So I was pretty effing happy with it. And I've lost the five pounds I put on. So, I didn't feel like too much of a fraud.

AND in other exciting news: We will be having a new furnace installed next week. Hurray!!!!!! It finally got too cold, even for eBoy. And that, my friends, is Pretty M-- F-- cold.

I'm the Hanukkah armadillo!

I don't know what kind of world I've entered wherein I've chosen to *skip* the agency holiday party (held in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, ahem) and just stay at work. Forget the secret santa, forget the effing white elephant - I've got paperwork to complete. Seriously, I could give a shit about the holiday punch.

We celebrated Hanukkah this weekend with our friends that have the two psychotic young boys (seriously, the four year old already has back hair he has so much testosterone running through his little body). While the toddlers beat each other and the furniture with plastic swords (the youngest one just likes to wear his bicycle helmet while he runs straightforward into walls), we fried up latkes and I entertained the other guests with stories about how the myth of Christmas/Bethlehem has no factual basis at all and why the bible is about as historically accurate as an Edith Hamilton book. Case in point: "Virgin" is a mistranslation of "Alma" - a word meaning young woman. So Catholicism and the cult of the virgin itself is based on a typo.

Now of course, I realize that I'm just parroting Richard Dawkins and I actually know NOTHING about the bible or history or religion, but has this ever stopped me from blathering on at will about ideas that match up neatly with my preconceived notions? confirmation bias indeed.

So it's kind of embarrassing when you find out that the person you've been flapping your gums at for the previous half hour has actually been working as a youth minister for the last two years and might know A BIT more than you suspect. Then again, he was far more concerned about whether the passages he was referencing were found in Mark or Luke or Romans (or whatever) than what I had to say and so it was apparent that he was a BIT more educated than I and was practicing an overwhelming amount of compassion for me at that moment.

Yikes, pass me a latke and tell me to sit down. Hate it when that happens.

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

Then later that evening, we went to another friend's *very* fancy 40th birthday party downtown and drank FAR too many espresso martinis and Ken Wright Pinots and SOMEHOW ended up at a strip club at 1:30 in the morning where I received my very first (perhaps - my memory is bit fuzzy for the years 1995-1997) lap dance from a very bendy AND naked young woman.

But that story is for another post entirely.

Friday already....

How can it be?

Today's possible spurious correlation: Based upon the idea that acne is a sign of infection, I have tried putting neosporin on a couple of my larger pimples (most of which have miraculously faded away) - and I have to say, it's really worked! Or it has been correlated with the pimples really clearing up within a day or two! Fascinating.

Heading out to my WW meeting to weigh in....haven't been attending for the last several weeks (although I start leading my own next week). I'm back to weighing and tracking because when I went to the doctor for my annual poke, prod, and grope the other day, she informed me that not only had I GAINED FIVE POUNDS (see postings below about gnawing on hunks of butter through Thanksgiving - surely not a spurious correlation), but that I am actually an inch shorter than I've been led to believe for the last 15 years. This is such a mindfuck for me. I actually told the nurse that she must be using the measuring device incorrectly and I'm surprised that she didn't slap me with it. But seriously, an INCH SHORTER? I had no idea how much of my ego was wrapped up in the idea that I'm 5'7". 5'6" is for pussies! Dammit!

(it also immediately occurred to me that losing an inch is like gaining five pounds - so in truth, I've gained like ten pounds. I know some of you will get what I mean by this.)

OMFG - Jesus edition

If you are on my xmas list this year - expect something from this fine collection. Jesus cross-checks!!

Happy Hanukah Everyone!

Of course, we're not lighting a menorah or anything. Hell, I don't think I'm even going to put up xmas stuff this year (including a tree or little white lights outside). What what what??? Where's drM with her over-abiding love for all things encased in little white lights, buoyed up by her mistaken though sincere belief that little white lights are a sure sign of quality?

yeah yeah yeah, pass me the sugar free red bull. I'm a little busy. And it feels like I just TOOK DOWN the decorations from last year (note: I did not actually take down the decorations. Poor eBoy had to because by December 26th, I had lost interest and moved onto the next shiny thing).

Check this out - a friend of mine is being featured predominately in an article in the next issue of Portland Bride & Groom. Doesn't he look perty? I love that he's just bitching about brides through the entire article. heh.

Update on work: I am now counseling three different types of therapeutic groups. First I have two outpatient DUI groups - mostly focused on DUI and Drug & Alcohol education. These folks all have a chip on their shoulder about the "excessive" fines and court costs they have to pay for their DUI (please note that alcohol related sickness, accidents, and injuries cost the United States over $190 BILLION each year - so spare me your whining about the $60 dollar group fee). The next group is a 3-time per week intensive outpatient group with people that have more severe drug and alcohol problems, whether it's meth, pot, alcohol, crack, etc. This is a more interesting, though ultimately rewarding/heartbreaking group of people. One client desperately asked the group last night: I know that I will lose my daughter, I know that I will be kicked out of my home, I know that I will lose everything that I have going for me, including this group. So WHY do I still want to get high?


And the shitty part is - knowing the answer to that won't make it any easier. I have folks in this group who have been through rehab upwards of 10 times. They could lead the group better than I can. This is an area where knowing everything about it doesn't make it any easier to do it. Still, I can go read a hundred books on pitching and sit through a thousand baseball games and it ain't going to make me Josh Beckett. Never will. Knowing ain't doing.

And my last group is my men's domestic violence treatment group. This is pretty awesome for me - just took it over as lead counselor from another person, plus I have a co-facilitator (male) - which FINALLY brings my agency in line with Oregon State Law. Hello. Anyway, it's a group of men who like to hit their wives and girlfriends (and tell them over and over that they're shitty and stupid and crazy and bad mothers, etc) and have a thousand different reasons for why that's okay (she pushed my buttons, the Bible tells me so, I was drunk, she's stupid, etc.). This is going to be my most difficult group - because you're really trying to enforce a change in core beliefs without telling someone that their core beliefs are totally effed up. Please handle the batterer gently and with kid gloves AT ALL TIMES because god forbid you offend his delicate little ego. It's a balancing act - and with a lot people that aren't exactly going to win Mr. Great Personality of the Year. And I'll tell you, I've read every book on abusive personalities and batterer treatment that there is - doesn't mean a THING when I walk in that room. Because if they don't respect women, and they don't respect me, then it's just a bunch of nothin' from nothin'.

Okay, off to the gym. There's armpit cleavage to be whittled away for this stupid dress I bought. DAMMIT, why didn't I get a muumuu?

How much do I love this?

By far the finest paragraph ever to appear on the GD WWW in relation to Rachael Ray's complete and utter culinary flatulence:

Rachael - Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

Thank you. Thank you Tony Bourdain, just for being you.

(You know, I get MORE random hits on this blog by people who have googled the phrase "I hate Rachael Ray.")


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By the way, Nigella is roasting semolina-crusted potatoes in GOOSE FAT right at this moment and I've decided that I have to marry her or at least move to London and begin stalking her immediately. Oh. NOW she's making Rum Butter. Those two words should always go together.

HOW is it December already???

Update on the automatic kitty litter thing posted below... One of the great things about Amazon, is that one can read everyone's reviews of the sparkly cool thing you've found - and thus one can learn that the sparkle fades and it's not nearly as cool as it looks. Amazon has saved me from a thousand impulse buys (on the other hand, it also makes for a dangerous situation with that one-click buying setup - I purposefully don't keep my credit card information on file with them. Not to protect myself from identity theft, but just to keep that added layer of inconvenience, hopefully slowing down the impulse shopping process.) And God Bless the Internet - I can order books from my library online - I love my library!

I have a sh*tload of work to do today, but hmmm, Bobby Flay is starting to convince me that I *actually* need to spend the day baking gingerbread. hmmm.....

Also update on my skin: it's been REMARKABLY clear for the last few days. I am not doing the no-washing thing (gack), but I am trying to be awfully gentle with it, not touch it, and ...uh, not make any decisions about what has caused this mysterious clearing. Correlation is not causation, and just because I've started using baby wipes (recommended by Paula) to clean it, does not mean that it's behind the mysterious clearing. It's probably hormonal, sigh.

We got snow yesterday! Very exciting. (I know ceejay is going to read this and roll her eyes since she's got 9 feet of it outside her door and we got a light dusting that didn't stick anyway). But still!