Smiling Maniacally.

La-la-la-la!!!!!

2011-12-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

Thoughts about this and that...

2011-12-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

When you are required to do a group project/presentation for Program Evaluation, be sure to choose at least two people that are a) over-achievers and b) in the Industrial-Organizational track. They live and breathe for this shit.

The red chili-pepper spread from Costco shall henceforth be spread on all the food in the land, and we shall grow fat and prosper. It is also quite delicious on a bit of goat-cheese on a cracker.

Therapy is worth its weight in gold. Today I was especially gratified that my therapist showed up to our 9am meeting with wet hair. Talk about normalizing your experience.

It better snow. That's all I'm sayin'.

Left to my own devices, I will apparently stay up until 2:00am reading terrible books. Slightly related: the real advantage of a Kindle is that no one can tell you're reading Stieg Larsson.

That is all.

No News....

2011-12-07T16:58:00.001-08:00

They say that no news is good news when it comes to internship replies. Well then I guess I'm bustin' out all over with the good news, 'cause I ain't heard nuttin. Meh, no news is just no news. A lot of my classmates are starting to brim over with interviews and rejections. The ax, she doth swing mightily.

Meanwhile, I'll just practice tolerating ambiguity. Not exactly what I would choose for my talent competition.

At the end of each semester I find myself muttering, well that was a ridiculous semester. This has probably been the least worthwhile in terms of actual accomplishment. I have a "professional roles" class which should be subtitled "Pointless busywork to distract you from Intern Applications" and the Program Evaluation class, which had been somewhat disorganized and painful and then, wham! Professor drops out due to a rumored brain tumor. Let's just say that I'm not going to be talking up my program evaluation skills on the old CV.

The real challenge truly remains my practicum work. I get the uncomfortable feelings at times that my patients truly expect me to help them. I have one patient, ONE, who actually followed my treatment plan and has eliminated his headaches and depression. I'm just as floored as you are. But seriously, I'm in the penultimate year of my training and I'm not feeling any more skilled or adept at this than when I began. But I put on a good show.

In other news, it is evident I have zero skills at outdoor holiday decorations. I have one sad little string of lights in the lilac trees, two inadvertent Stars of David blinking in my window like the all-night Manachewitz store in Haifa, and four tacky little snowflakes blinking crazily admidst the dead calla lilies. I tell this to eboy and he sighs. Heavily. Fine, I'll do it on Saturday. Let the Jew decorate the house for Christmas.

Since he's feeling unappreciated, maybe he can build himself a cross on the front lawn and climb up and nail himself to it. But I'll wait until all my christmas lights are hung before I make that smart remark. I want Clark Griswold's house. Is it too much to ask? Dammit, I demand whimsy, peace on earth, chestnuts roasting, and reindeer pausing.

Okay, time to go finish the most embarrassing, lame, incomplete, incoherent, and disjointed presentation ever. Can't wait to present it at school!

Oh yes....

2011-12-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

Explaining the name.....

You know how I say...

2011-12-06T12:42:00.001-08:00

You know how I always say I'm going to start blogging again? And yet I get busy or paranoid, and it falls by the wayside. However - I have determined that blogging actually serves a very useful premise: distraction.

Never again have to complete a task on time or spend time learning a new skill!

Share potentially offensive thoughts and beliefs out there for everyone to find!

Let family members know what you actually think of them!

All for the low low price of not having to work on your opiate prescription policy program evaluation presentation.

Seriously, I realize that this is stuff that only the few stalkers I currently possess actually give a rat's crap about. I suffer from no illusions of Deep Thoughts or Important Viewpoints. But I will engage as a highly evolved method of procrastination for the digital age, especially if that digital age is 2005 (blogging is so last decade).

Fuck it. It's on.

This endless quest....

2011-03-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Found myself feeling bad about myself again today. Not because I was skinning baby ducks alive or anything, but simply because in a little home video taken on my phone this morning, I looked so stunningly bad I opted NOT TO SEND THE VIDEO of my daughter who has been sick, to her father. Because I looked bad. Double chin.

How lame is that?

But how lame is having a double chin?

See how I go back n'forth?

I just don't get it. I used to *like* exercise. I used to love going to the gym. I used to have energy. And I know that energy begets energy. The more active you are, the more enjoyable, the easier, and the funner it all gets.

I know this intellectually.

Still, try to get my fat ass off the couch when it's cold outside. Mama HATES being cold.

At any rate, despite all the negativity and total lack of self-efficacy, I decided to suck it up and go for a walk. After all, it was sunny outside for the first time in months. I had some spare time since Dear Husband was home to watch Dear Sick Puking Daughter. And I was feeling so lazy, it wasn't like I was getting any work done on my dissertation anyway.

So, I jog/walked to the gym. Lifted weights for 30 or so minutes. Jog/walked home.

FUCK. It felt fucking awesome. Why can't I remember that? And now I'm at the library working on my dissertation. Like a normal person does.

So that makes a total of TWICE this week I have made a half-hearted Mr-Burns-Type throw at getting a little bit fitter.

New find: Downloaded the couch-to-5K podcast from Itunes. Some guy playing nondescript easy-to-run-to techno music, and he tells you when to walk and when to jog. It's actually kind of awesome and makes it go really fast and I don't have to keep looking at my watch. If I stick with it, I'll post how it's going.

Best song for weight-lifting: Here to Stay by Korn. I feel like such a badass.

All right. I want to be the kind of mother that doesn't hesitate to show videos of her daughter, even though she looks bad. But first, I want to get rid of this extra chin.

And here we are...

2011-02-27T10:07:00.001-08:00

It's Sunday again, and I am back to this: statistical multiple regression. As in:

1. Using Model 4 state the regression equation including the constant (to three decimal places), the unstandardized regression coefficients (to three decimal places), and the predictors.\

And my brain is back to not working. Now eventually, either through desperation or panic, I was able to get my brain to complete last week's homework. So, I'm hoping that this will happen again. I even managed to get a good portion of this week's homework done last week directly after class - when all this stuff still made sense in my head. I need to do that every week, because coming back to it seven days later is no good at all.

My friend Lynae is in Bora Bora or someplace blue-skied, warm, and tropical looking and she is rudely posting photos of it on Facebook. This makes me want to defriend her, but instead I'm supposed to be happy for her because she a) is a very good friend, b) is always very supportive of me, and c) totally deserves a warm, tropical vacation. Sigh. Still, my finger itches over the defriend button because I'm a) immature, b) pouty and grumpy, and c) cold.

The baby is screaming about the nap policy, toys are littered around the home, my kitchen floor is covered in cheerio dust, and I haven't showered in three days. That's it. Time to clean up, shower, do a yoga dvd, and finish my homework. Enough wallowing! This is what I need:

Serious stats hell.

2011-02-20T15:28:00.001-08:00

I am currently taking advanced multivariate statistics in school. It sounds fancier than it really is. But, man, do I get bogged down in it fast - god forbid I get momentarily distracted in class, because then the professor is OFF, and I'll never catch up with him. Last semester, taking graduate-level stats (for the third time in 6 years), I felt like I was really starting to understand it in a way that if you came back to me three months (or years) later, I might still be able to rattle off the steps to a simple linear regression equation. By hand, bitches.

Now we have moved on to multivariate. Moving on from ANOVA to MANOVA ain't that big a deal, seriously. And MANCOVAs bothered me not at all. However: multiple regression. Stepwise, hierarchical, forward, mahalanobis distance....gah, I'm stuck back in the mud again. I read the text, I read the lecture slides. I just don't have the concept yet. It *sounds* fine at first....multiple predictors for multiple criterion variables. Amount of variance accounted for by one predictor versus another, but then....if one variable accounts for 46% and then the next is 15% - does that mean that together they account for 61%, or does that 15% include overlap with the first predictor?

And so, here's the real problem. My brain is full. This just isn't getting in. There's no more room. And it's not like I'm so full of wisdom; it's full of quotations from Welcome Back Kotter, and perhaps my 40th sinus infection this year is also taking up a little room. So, even if I try to concentrate and figure my stats out, it's like the gears are jammed up with something sticky - probably placed there by little fingers who've been clutching Gerber toddler teething bars.

And so, for five days, I have dumbly stared at the first question on my stats homework:

a) Based on the chi-square distribution table what is the critical value that should be used to determine if outliers exist using an alpha level of .001? What is the maximum Mahalanobis Distance value for the participants in the sample?

Seriously, this should be so EASY. But my brain won't get past trying to figure out the degrees of freedom and does the dependent variable get included in this? Why can't I get my brain to budge?

Oh, and in case you're interested:

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Detecting_Outliers_-_Multivariate

Her Weeness.

2011-02-14T13:57:00.001-08:00

I got Two hours of sleep last night. I am told it is because she is learning to walk. This does not seem reasonable. I am learning advanced statistics. I don't bother her about it.

You know, for a one year old, the kid is extraordinarily inconsiderate. When I'm nice enough to change her poopy diaper? She won't hold still. When I'm trying to hurry up and get her dressed? She won't shoot her arm through the sleeve. When I'm trying to sleep? She could care not a whit. She's pretty effin' cute on top of it all. It's annoying. She used to be cute and easygoing. Now she's cute and opinionated.

I also did something I didn't want to do, but I got desperate. I brought her into my bed to sleep with me. She LOVED this. She even made a happy little, ooo-oooh noise. This is like complaining about your base rate hotel room and getting moved to the Presidential suite (well, to a baby it is). So now? Yeah, she's going to want to sleep with mom. Sigh. We're *not* co-sleeping. I was just desperate. I mean, I didn't sleep at all anyway because I was afraid of rolling over on her or her falling off the bed, but at least she STFU.

WW isn't going that well because a sippy cup with pinot grigio and goldfish crackers have begun to serve as dinner. Goldfish crackers and diet coke: breakfast of champions.

I realize I am not the first to notice this or write about it. Okay. I am conflating blogginess with bitchiness.

Resolution

2011-02-12T19:06:00.001-08:00

I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch today for my daughter's birthday party. SO NOT WORTH IT. My ego's writing checks my cooking/baking skills can't cash.

Next time: Costco.

Seriously.

Blogginess

2011-02-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

My nephew (husband's nephew, to be specific) blogs. He blogs fancily, with big words and big thoughts that seem designed to provoke further thought on the part of his reader (though perhaps Foucault would disagree that a writer's intent makes any difference to a readers interpretation, but I digress, and am probably mistaken anyway, since I skipped most of lit-crit in college).

At any rate, I find his blog enjoyable. Erudite and shit.

I began blogging in...2004? At the time, EVERY THOUGHT BECAME VERY IMPORTANT. I am annoyed by someone on the subway, I must blog that! America needs to know who's bothering me now.

But now we have Twitter and Facebook to transport this critical sort of information. So what's the point of blogging? Truth be told, I can't really go back and read my old stuff. It seems like a lot of mental flotsam and jetsam, cognitive masturbation if you will. And not in a good way.

So you (or I) might wonder why I'm trying to return. Is it to capture my life so that the exactly two people who care (my parents) may follow what I'm up to in a way that I certainly never let them as a teenager. Or is it an attempt to clarify my own thinking. Perhaps it's simply a way to distract myself from other tasks at hand. For instance, at this moment, I'm supposed to be composing a cover letter to the V.A.

So what's the point of it all. Maybe that's the tricky aspect. Finding one's voice. Finding the reason behind it all. Just like with any writing. So perhaps my goal now is to find a topic, an area I wish to focus and explore. So this whole thing can just stop being a forum for my personality makeover to-do list.

Why do you blog and/or read blogs?

Delightful way to spend the day....

2011-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

Can I let you in on a secret? Didn't go to my useless Business of Psych class. Instead, I'm relaxing in a portland coffeehouse, listening to Coltrane's Afro Blues, working on my stats MANOVA homework, blogging, enjoying a frothy mocha. It's even freaking sunny outside. I needed a day like today.

Grief is a funny thing.

2011-02-09T12:46:00.001-08:00

Very few people know how to handle it or how to talk to others about it. I certainly have no skills in this regard, clinical psychology training aside. I find that someone may ask about it, and when I start to answer, really answer how I'm doing, what I'm experiencing, the subject gets changed very quickly. And I just need to let people have their boundaries. I'm okay with that. We're not really given training in this, what with our culture's lack of exposure to our older generations (hide 'em away), the reliance on hospice, our general overwhelming good health, and the fact that our families are so remote and distended.

What I need is a good Irish wake to drink and wail and carry on. Instead, I will dutifully go to my therapist, eat a bit more dark chocolate and red wine, and carry on. Oh, and I will probably go to her grave site to yell at her about a few things, and then decorate it in a way she would have liked.

Some friends and family were awesome during the last few weeks. Cards, flowers, a prayer circle (right?). And two friends that immediately called me after I texted them to say, uh my sister is dying and I don't know how to handle this.

How strange our culture has become when a phone call is seen as going above and beyond the call of duty. I think I shall make a Valentine's Day resolution to begin calling my friends regularly rather than relying on text or FB. I need to have a closer relationship with my social support network, not my wireless network. Types she as she blogs.

So here's the weird thing. I didn't realize that I would see my sister everywhere. Every stupidly big SUV. Every too-blond woman of certain age. Every well-toned gal wearing too much jewelry and carrying a Swarovski crystal-encrusted iphone through nordstroms. And I just STARE. Stare at these women, almost willing them to turn around and be my sister and then I can go back to being annoyed by her again.

My therapist says this is normal. Let's say it's common. Nothing feels normal. It's just so bizarre, so fucking bizarre that she is gone. The finality of death is such a mindfuck. In this world where nothing is certain - even taxes have loopholes now - it's just the one thing that will be true for all of us.

And though, lo these many years, I have insisted (with the certainty that only reading many books by Richard Dawkins can bring) that death is final, there's no such thing as god, heaven, valhalla, or what have you, and that it is ashes to ashes, funk to funky at the end, when I stared down at her, moments after she had passed - I believed, I had to believe that she was in a better place. A place where she'd found peace after a lifetime of fear and pain and paranoia, that she was running again, that she had new knees, new cartilage, that she was finally in a place where the world wouldn't be such a scary awful place. It's sort of the vision of heaven that is created in The Lovely Bones.

And is all this just to make me feel better? To believe that she hadn't led a wasted life that, at times, cruelly scarred the people around her? That she could be mean and awful and racist and truly, truly abusive towards those that loved her most. I wanted so much to believe that she could actually be happy that perhaps in death, she had finally found this. It's very painful to consider the alternative, and yet at some point I will probably return to this point of view. So hug your kids, be nice to your family, put something valuable and meaningful into the world, because this is all we have, and when it's done, it's done. And all you have left are the memories that people have of you.

Ugh. I'll just take my own advice. I am not so wise yet as to be giving life lessons to others. But perhaps I have learned a few things.

So that happened.

2011-02-04T13:21:00.001-08:00

As Dooce would say, it sucked and then I cried.

So, my sister had cancer. Died a couple of weeks ago. It was terrible to see what it did to her in the end. I wish that my friends that smoke would stop, but I'm not going to harangue them about it. I should just worry about myself first and the 12 years that I smoked. Sigh. Oh and my sister? Didn't smoke. Not a day in her life. Just lucky I guess.

My friend Tel is blogging again. She was doing a 30 day blogging challenge. I need to do that.

I was starting to blog again last fall. All of once or twice. Then I hurt my back. Then I got sick. Then my sister was getting sick. And then there was all the care and feeding of the kid. And then that whole school thing - in which I was managing to get my statistics homework done every week. But that was it. Nothing else. Nada. No exercise. No research. No mommy's group. No dissertation work. No reading outside of stats. But I *was* fully caught up with the television.

It's all been a bit floundering. I'm trying to do better. I really am. I've given up TV (mostly). I've been trying to get up in the morning (4 or 5 am) to study, and this works really well except on the days - which have strangely increased as of late - in which the baby decides to get up at 2am and howl at the moon.

Today I shall blog. And since I think I shall be giving my nieces my blog address, I should probably review this to see what complaints I've listed about their mother over the past several years.

So this is all to say. Hello I am back and trying to try again. Let's see how it goes this time around. A new year. The new blogginess.

Owwie ow ow.

2010-09-29T13:32:00.001-07:00

I have been quite busy as of late. A little overwhelming, a little stressed. But through it, I really kept believing that I could get everything done, if only I could get organized.

And I began to, I really did. I stopped watching so much tv. I started getting my papers and folders and whatnot filed. I started getting through my emails and either acting on them or deleting them. And exercise. I was finally exercising. We had begun the couch to 5k program. Sure we were only a week and a half into it, but we were doing it.

And now...this.

I believe I was lifting, bending, and twisting. Moving a case of baby wipes that SOMEONE had left out (see how this whole thing is his fault?). Anyway, I actually felt the *pop* in my lower back and then everything just froze. After about 15 long seconds, I was able to slooooowly standup - about halfway. And like I that, I hobbled into the living room where an annoyed husband saw me and somehow instantly knew that this would cut into his sittin' around time.

Needless to say, I have not been jogging. What I needed to do was give it a few days rest. Instead I went to work (at the pain clinic, where everyone made fun of me), and then this morning managed to make it about 50% worse while taking an infant car seat out of the car. I would say that we've gone from a level 5 pain to a level 7.5. Dude, I didn't think childbirth was above a 9. (well, but I had fentanyl and an epidural, so what do I know. Right now I have an ice pack, a heating pad, some icyhot, and a bit of leftover vicodin).

I'm feeling like kind of an asshole because I knew, I *knew* I shouldn't have been moving that car seat in and out. And I know that I'm supposed to lift with my knees. And I know I need to be stretching. And I know that NONE of this would have happened if I had just been doing my pilates and yoga for the last ________ months.

I hate this disconnect - when your mind says do one thing and your body says fuck off. You know that feeling? Bother. Now how am I going to get everything done? Grrr.

Going to project manage the hell out of my life

2010-09-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

They say there are three things to think about in project: time, money, quality. You get two out of three. Go ahead and choose.

For instance, right now I am attempting to lower our grocery bill to $50.00 per week (ahem, NOT including baby stuff). My father expressed alarm that I might be living on Top Ramen (again). I assured him that in this scenario, instead of sacrificing quality in addition to money, I had sacrificed time. As in my time. My non existent time. But it goes something like this: after spending a while scouring cookbooks for ideas, and having spent four hours doing a test run comparison shop at our local grocery stores to determine which is the lowest (in what categories, etc),

Breakfasts: Toast

Lunches: Turkey sandwiches and homemade vegetable soup

Sunday: Roast chicken with roasted root vegetables

Monday: Roasted root vegetable lasagna

Tuesday: Leftovers

Wednesday: Roast chicken enchiladas

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: Frozen pizza (shut up, I like pizza)

Saturday: Spaghetti with garlic and olive oil.

So, for three weeks now, I've kept us at about 50 bucks per week, with the occasional trip to Costco to get things like papertowels and TP.

It's exhausting to plan everything and cook every night after a long day of work and baby, and plus I'm making vegetable soup on Sunday afternoons, and plus you'll notice this budget doesn't include alcohol (ahem, it's amazing how fast one of the cubes of wine from Target actually goes). But, so far, I think I'm doing a pretty good job. Putting a little breathing room in the budget (and MOST of our budget seems to go towards groceries. God DAMN we like to eat), has relieved a lot of stress. But I'm balancing my budget on the back of my time management skills. We'll see how long it lasts. But there didn't seem anywhere else to pull from.

Oh, and I try to make my own baby food, but the little monkey eats it up faster than I can make it and freeze it. She ate SIX SERVINGS of carrots in one afternoon. She's like her father.

Oh, and the Couch to 5K program is in its second day. I fussed and whined the whole time, but we made it through the second run. The monkey, natch, was just fine.

Again with the promises.

2010-09-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

So, someone got me a $400 jogging stroller. That's just dirty manipulation, that's what that is. This same person signed me up for a 5k on Thanksgiving. Aren't I supposed to be drinking and making gravy that morning? That same person also negotiated FREE RACES for me for all of 2011.

So I guess I'm going to be really begin jogging again. Let's not actually call it running. Running implies speed. Grace. Ability.

Jogging does not. Jogging implies a gray sweats.

I shall be the one out there, plodding along, in gray sweats, pushing a stroller worth more than my car. Wave.

Doing what I keep saying i'm going to do....

2010-09-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is called, in the psych biz, being stuck in a contemplative stage of change. Occasionally I dip a toe into planning and even into action, but I retreat, skittering and shivering, back into contemplation. Could be worse, I suppose. I could retreat back into precontemplation, the what? Everything's fine the way it is stage and nothing ever gets accomplished there. Although, it is a much more psychologically easygoing place to stake out. Gives your defense mechanisms a workout though.

What have I been meaning to do? Been planning on, giving lip to, yammering on about, and generally just making noise about?

- Getting back in shape. Exercise. Jogging. Pushups. Yoga. Occasionally getting my heart rate above, oh I don't know, 100bpm? Lifting up something heavier than my kid? (although, she's getting pretty solid, I must say).

- Working in my yard on a regular basis. Maybe pruning the roses? Pulling a weed or two? Raking up some of the fallen and fermenting pears and apples so the dog doesn't remain in constant state of inebriation?

- Sticking to my healthy eating plan. The only thing that truly stands between me and this goal is the bag of chocolate chips I've taken to scarfing on a weekly basis. Chips, because cookies themselves are just a vehicle for the chocolate. I like to be efficient.

I'm sure there are other things. Oh yes:

- BLOGGING. Would it kill me to write down a thing or two once in a while? I keep meaning to start this up again. In fact, I keep promising you I will. I don't know why you even believe me anymore. This relationship is so one-sided. Surely you languish in wait for my prose.

I'll let you in on a secret. No one reads blogs anymore. Except for you right now, and if you must know, you're totally so 2003. But that's okay. I won't tell. Your need to have my words reflected back at you in the dim glow of 2010 serves that narcissistic sense of entitlement that hasn't been nearly satisfied enough since I stopped being pregnant and stopped being the object of everyone's attention. It's a bitch.

So perhaps I shall blog, and satisfy my one true fan: you. Because I'll tell you, my 220 "friends" on Facebook are so over me.

You may be wondering - how is the spawn. She is great. Thanks for asking.

Baby's here!

2010-02-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

Totally beautiful. Totally wonderful. Hop on over to our family blog if you'd like to take a look or read up on our adventures.

Oh, in a comment I left below, I used the word effect as a verb - duh. I meant affect. I had just gotten to typing a little fast. Annoying.

What I hate about pregnancy?

2010-01-25T22:58:00.000-08:00

All the old wives' tales. All the beliefs and superstitions that are spread around like gospel.

Things you can and cannot eat are a perfect example - caffeine, sushi, alcohol, soft cheese, smoked salmon, and hollandaise sauce. Guess which one (1) I actually gave up throughout the entire pregnancy because only *one* of these actually posed a danger to the baby. You know, based on actual studies versus theoretical inferences.

And childbirth - there is so much mis-information out there about childbirth, labor, delivery, etc. and a lot of it is based, again, on theoretical inferences made back in the 1950s and 60s (like whether or not you should be able to eat/drink while you're in labor. Story in the NY Times about that today, in fact). We were interviewing post-partum doulas last week and I mentioned that I was hoping to avoid a c-section, and the doula replied, well, make sure you don't have an epidural then.

So that pretty much ended that interview. Correlation is not causation people.

I thought that I'd be a pretty low maintenance patient, but when I started printing out some particular research studies and policy statements by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (just so I could have them to refer to at the hospital), I realized that perhaps I'll be a little annoying.

Argh, so be it.

Oh, and it was smoked salmon.

Too soon to investigate pre-schools?

2010-01-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

I found a performing arts preschool here in town. How come I didn't get to go to something like that?

We had a bit of an exciting week, in that my doctor announced that she didn't think I was going to be pregnant by next week. Of course, that would be mighty inconvenient considering that I really haven't scheduled the actual event in my calendar until the end of the month. drM's got shit going on next week. Anyway, after that little announcement, I proceeded to experience STABBING pains in my girl parts about every five minutes for the next two days. I headed back to the doctors but they couldn't find anything wrong and stated that I definitely wasn't having contractions (which is what I told them in the first place). After a VERY painful physical exam, the doctor summed it up as: "I think you're having muscle spasms."

Well, no shit Sherlock. Did you go to med school for that? Really going out on a limb there, Copernicus. Don't announce my SYMPTOM as though it were the diagnosis. That's as helpful as saying, "sounds like you have a headache" or "you have a cough," or any of the myriad "sounds like that shit is broke" (actual response from a helpdesk employee I used to work with) type of diagnoses.

Tell me if it's a problem, tell me if I should be worried, tell me if you think vicodin might help. (It didn't, by the way). Oh, yeah, then the doctor got weirded out that I have vicodin on hand at home. WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT? Sometimes I forget that not everyone lives better and self-medicates through chemistry. Considering the extensive on-hand pharmacies that some of my friends keep, it doesn't seem like a stray bottle of narcotics or anxiolytics is really that big a deal. Sheesh.

Anyway, the pains have gone away and it doesn't look like we're any closer to celebrating someone's birthday than we were before.

Okay, back to advanced multivariate statistics. I have to decide whether or not to buy a license for SPSS for my laptop (so I don't have to drive to school to use the program on their computers) or whether to buy diapers. Considering the amount of data I'm going to have to enter (and my supreme laziness when it comes to leaving the house), I'm thinking of getting the software and just duct-taping the baby above a litter box for a week or so. Whaddya think?

I should download the White Album

2010-01-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.

I'm so tired I don't know what to do
I'm so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid get.

- The Beatles

Drinks and cigarettes still sound pretty good. Aside from nothing, my very weird sister - who's never done drugs in her life to my knowledge - picked up a toy baby bottle at my baby shower and announced, to no one in particular, "We should put cocaine in this." Totally bizarre. A real WTF moment. No one acknowledged it, and we moved on....but still.

The facebook world tells me that it's too soon for me to be complaining about lack of sleep. Wouldn't you know it, it's the one thing I'm ahead of schedule on.

I had really started FB'ing more over the last year than I have been blogging. But the problem with FB? You can't really complain about anyone, not even obliquely. How the hell am I supposed to function if I can't bitch about the people in my life? Case in point, my mother in law (the queen of advice that lets you know she thinks you're a complete idiot) made a specific point to advise me to buy sheets for the crib. Uh, really? And then proceeded to gently explain to me that we couldn't just put the baby to sleep directly on the mattress.

Thanks for that.

Or my sister in law suggesting that we should buy some diapers, specifying size small. As though we've done zero preparation for the new roommate. I mean, I knew to buy puppy pads when I got a puppy. I knew, somehow just *knew* to buy kitty litter when I got a cat. You'd suspect that the diapers would have occurred to us without her help, if only because we've seen Raising Arizona 75 times.

Also (boy, I'm really getting going now), back in August, I made the mistake of telling my sister and my sister-in-law that I was thinking of doing the baby's room in yellow and purple. This was only after much haranguing from both of them that I simply couldn't move into second trimester without having picked out the colors for the nursery. So, fine, yellow and purple. Well guess what. I CHANGED MY MIND. By December, when we finally got around to painting the baby's room, it had changed. And you know what else, I failed to specifically notify either of them of this change. That I can honestly say never even occurred to me. So now they are BOTH freaking out. Because, what, one of them bought a purple stuffed animal and the other bought a purple blanket? And now they won't match. Guess what ladies, I don't give a shit, and NEITHER will the baby. Please remember that this is the same baby that I will be dressing in black onesies that say Bad Ass Mutha Sucka.

I have a fantasy about sending my sister and my sister-in-law into a cage match together - two enter, one leaves. (By the way, my sister would TOTALLY kick my sister in law's ass. a) she's freakishly strong and b) she's a special kind of crazy - the kind of crazy you buy books about.)

I can't tell you how much more energy I have after bitching and moaning about family members for a few minutes. Thanks blogger!

Whoa. It has been a LONG time since I've posted.

2010-01-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

So...you're probably wondering what I've been up to.

Gestating.

I can grow people, BITCH.

That's right, I done got myself knocked up (again) last Spring, and this time it took. So now we're due to have a baby girl in...well, anytime between tonight and five weeks from now. It's not supposed to be tonight, but these things have a way of being unpredictable, so I'm trying to be zen about it.

I should have been blogging this whole time, but basically I just reserved all my bitching and moaning for Facebook. Because, if you were in sixth grade with me, wouldn't you WANT to hear about my itchy belly?

So maybe I'll start blogging again here. I'll link from here to our official family blog, but I need to figure out a way to not make that a two-way street. Because the last thing I need are my in-laws finding this this little website. Since I tend to complain about them on here. But we also have an official family blog, but I think you need a special in-the-know password to get on there. So I'll have to check that out. I'm all out of sorts blogging wise.

As for the rest of it. Yes, I'm still in school. Since I last posted, I started a job as a drug and alcohol counselor, worked my ass off, and then quit that job. It was just too much to do school, work, clinic duty, and baby. So....I cut out the income.

4.0 Bitches!

2009-04-28T21:48:00.001-07:00

I got an A in everything, including *neuroscience.*

Holy crap on a cracker.

This semester: Objective Assessment, Professional Communication, Ethics & Legal Issues, and Health Psychology. Wish me luck.

.

How you know it's spring.

2009-04-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

My father would play this for me on eve of the vernal equinox each year - thus making explicit the line between winter and spring. 'cause you know them's palm trees wasn't exactly springing forth with the bounty of the new year.

And I'm still drivin around town singin' it. But all you rodents 'der now look alike. So watch it or I may flip ya.

........

(when did I turn from a slumming Etonite into brer Rabbit in my colloquialisms? will i be graded down for impertinence bordering on racism, or can I blame it on a semester of Faulkner? By the way, the APA Style Manual Hates Faulkner. There should be a chapter entitled that exactly.)

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that this man embodies my childhood much like Barney and the Muggles (?? WTF) have probably infected your offspring. Or infected your offspring 8 years ago and I'm unwilling to keep up.

At any rate, unless it's clear, I posted this for you, Dad. Enjoy. Am I old enough yet to listen to The Masochism Tango?

Moving slower....

2009-04-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

So one recommendation (from my trainer) is to just move slower. When I feel myself getting antsy and stressed and YELLY, to just start moving slower and take deep breaths. Seriously, I should know this stuff.

So, by 7:30 this morning I was already getting frustrated and cranky and so I s l o w e d waaaaay down. It worked! I immediately started to destress, and my orbital frontal lobe kicked in again and I was able to think a little more clearly.

What am i doing with a week off from school, you may ask? Well, I spent some time puttering in the garden (the weeds are CRAZY this year. We turned over a lot of soil last year when we created the perennial beds and this caused all the dormant weed seeds to germinate. GAH). Why can't we just call them wildflowers and be done with it?

I've worked a little at cleaning off my desk in preparation for the next semester, because once that gets going, all bets are off. My ethics class appears to have about 200 pages of reading per week. So before all that gets started, I was hoping to read some vegan cookbooks, because so far on that we've been winging it. And it's been sad. I've been eating a lot of hummus. And lentils. I'm so bloated and farty that I actually caused a disturbance at the video store the other night. You know, i never drove anyone out of the new releases section when I was enjoying veal cutlets.

But now I have to go get ready so I can go to my trainer (i hadn't worked out at all for the last three weeks of school so she's beating me to a pulp every day this week), and then off to work. I see my first client today! He's all mine to mess up in every way possible. Hurray!

Quick check in

2009-04-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

My father (yo, pops) observed that my blogging volume appears to be in indirect proportion to the amount of school work I've got going. And so, I've got to update this damn thing, but it's already after 10 and I've got shit to get done tonight - mainly, hot dreams about James Franco. Oh, and an 8 am yoga class that I swear I'm going to make one of these days.

Got a shout out from a reader/woman I've known since (mumble) (but really long ago) today and she's inspired me to get back to writing this damn thing. I'm reading this book on how to be a yoga-chick (don't ask), but it says you have to journal everything. Fine. But basically all i want to do is be able to be in shape and totally zen about everything, rather than busting the buttons on my cargo pants while I run around with my hair on fire.

I mean seriously: I've gone vegan. Well, "fegan." I've read yoga books. I've watched yoga dvds. I wear yoga clothing. I've considered buying yoga jewelry - i do basically everything I can except actually engage in stress reduction behavior and regular exercise. And then on top of it all, my trainer says today, oh you could never be one of those zen yoga chicks, you're too....

I swear to god, I think she said peppy, but I've kind of blocked it out. Don't ever tell me I can't do something! peppy?!

I can be fucking zen! I'll have to get a refill on the klonopin, but I'm pretty sure I can do it.

Maybe being surrounded by hippies is starting to get to me....

okay, it is now 10:15. Far too late for the zen, calm, totally fucking serene of us to still be awake.

More later. I'm inspired by having an actual READER of this damn blog.

btw, I finished that book on the history of Key West. I know a shitload about pirates now.

In which I try to simplify my life.

2009-03-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

I figure that I am able to do five things reasonably well. This is an arbitrary figure, based on nothing more than it being an nice round number. But I figure it's a good starting point.

I also, however, figure that I have a limited attention span and am easily excited by novelty. I'm always looking for that next project, that next thing to learn; I easily forget the last thing I was interested in and I rarely get far enough into anything to develop any sort of expertise (the arbitrary number assigned to that by those in the know is ten years, btw). I am, as my friend Mike Daisey would say, a dilettante. I would say that I've got a mad case of ADHD and a library card.

So I am attempting to simplify my life. Because at this point, I have a few things in the works that I *have* to be focusing on, namely school. However, at this point, I am engaged in or trying to engage in the following:

- School (this has eleventy different subsections, including each class I'm taking, working on a poster presentation, working on a lit review for my dissertation, and trying to be "more involved" at school)
- Knitting
- Gardening
- Fitness (including an upcoming triathlon, half marathon, and regular yoga)
- Reading about the history of Key West
- Reading about how to stay within budget and eliminate debt (sigh)
- Current events
- My relationship
- Daily life (groceries, bills, cooking, cleaning the house, showering, sleeping)
- Trying to go vegan(ish)
- Trying to be more social / outgoing
- Television (shut up. I "only" watch Biggest Loser, Life, 30 Rock, How I met your mother, and Big Bang theory. yes, this translates into television 4 nights per week, and a total of 4.5 hours per week).
- Blogging

Okay. So let's pick 5. I sort of have to pick My Relationship, School, and Daily life. That leaves....let's say gardening, and reading. But I still need to incorporate fitness.

Sigh. I've tried weeding things out of daily life, and most often it's basic hygiene that suffers. Which doesn't help my relationship. So, we're going to have to drop the social/outgoing stuff (good), drop television, drop keeping up with current events (this means you Internet). Sigh. I still want to blog more regularly, and yes I am trying to go vegan(ish). Ugh, it's all just too much. Calgon take me away (but there's simply no time for that).

Oh yeah, I forgot. I also going to be starting work part time for a treatment agency, and I've been working for Evan's business on the side.

Screw it.

Hurray again!

2009-03-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

I got into the health psychology specialization track! Woot!

This means that I'll focus my dissertation and clinical work (and hopefully internship) on work in a medical setting and psychology as it relates to health conditions (and how your physical health conditions affect your mental health). I'll also get to focus on stress disorders, psychoimmunology, somatoform disorders, and particular health conditions. As I've said before, I'm hoping to work specifically with behavior change as it relates to and impacts health (obesity, addiction, etc.) I'm getting more and more into pediatric obesity. Fascinating literature.

So I found out that I won't be doing my initial practicum working with homeless LGBT youth. Instead, I'll be primarily working with vets at a local health clinic that's attached to my school. I'm just as happy about this - I love working with vets. I volunteered at the VA a few years ago, and though it was primarily research, I got some good exposure to the population.

I'm out in Sun River this weekend with "the girls." Totally couldn't afford it, don't have time for it, but eBoy made me go because he thinks I need to make friends and get out of the house more. So what am I doing? Sitting upstairs studying while they all chillax in the hot tub. Oh well. At least I'm out of the house. And central oregon is beautiful, so life could be a lot worse.

in which I take the high road...

2009-03-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Dr. ________________,

I have decided to withdraw from the Disability Seminar. I would like to thank you for raising my awareness of this important area of diversity and I plan to continue my studies in this area independently.

Unfortunately, due to recent personal experiences, I am unable to engage in a discussion implicitly comparing selective abortion to eugenics in a professional, objective, and unemotional manner. I would urge the class to consider that selective abortion is a very difficult personal decision that individuals and families struggle with and it is not one made lightly nor lived with easily. I believe it is simplistic, self-righteous, and irresponsible to liken a systematic, state-driven extermination or sterilization of a group of people to a difficult choice made by families that must judge what is best for them based on their health, finances, relationships, and ability to care for a special needs child. It seems that the class may need to consider that it is not our place to stand in judgment, but instead to consider how such an impossible decision can be made and what they might do should they ever be faced with it (or how they will interact with clients that are facing or have faced such a decision). I believe that, as professionals, it is our place to learn and model empathy, rather than make blanket value judgments.

Again, I would like to emphasize that my decision to withdraw from the class is not due to my disagreement with the viewpoints presented, but rather my inability at this time to engage objectively and professionally in this particular discussion.

Thank you,

drM, M.A.

p.s. Kiss my ass

Sigh, Again......just fucking sigh.

2009-03-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking a seminar on Disability in America, I dunno. I thought it would be good for a health psychologist to have some fucking familiarity with it all. And the first couple of nights I was getting a weird vibe from the professor, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

The readings for this week were on eugenics and nazis and that sort of thing. And the conversation wound its way around this and that, and finally, after listening to a bunch of 20-somethings make a bunch of self-righteous statements about prenatal genetic testing, I said, wait a minute. Back up. Are you saying that someone that terminates a pregnancy due to massive congenital birth defects or genetic problems is practicing eugenics?

To which they all nodded their heads in unison.

You're comparing them to Nazis?

More agreement.

You're comparing a mother who has to terminate her pregnancy due to these genetic defects to the political policy that exterminated jews, gays, the disabled, and pretty much most of Poland.

At which point the professor, smugly I might add, said well there's a big difference between having an abortion because you're just not ready for a child at that point in your life and having one just because you don't want that kind of kid.

At which point I decided to drop the class.

I'm sorry, but do people not even GET what sort of terrible and awful and painful decision that is? Do they really think it's like deciding that you don't want Jamocha Almond Fudge because you just don't want that kind of ice cream? Do they really fucking think that it's a decision made out of convenience, with an eye towards what's going to be easier? Oh gee, I think I'll have an abortion this morning and later on, we can stop by Ikea and return the crib - maybe pick up a new duvet cover while we're there!

Everbody's got their little agenda, don't they? I fucking hate people. I really fucking hate people sometimes.

My workout today.

2009-03-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

I've had 3 days of health. A little off last night because we had some indian food from Trader Joe's (high in fat and sodium) since I'm also trying to give up sleeping pills, I had 2.5 hours sleep the night before, so then I didn't really feel like cooking. It all just ties in together. I didn't drink enough water yesterday either, so I felt really hungry. Which reminds me, I need to down a few ounces before bed.

So, I thought I'd blog my workout because you're just so interested. One of the things I started doing in November was journaling what I did at the gym. I guess it sort of helps me keep track of how I'm improving, but mostly it saves me from having to think about what I'm doing while I'm in the middle of it all. I just follow what I set down for myself before hand. I do a circuit workout. So it's divided into four circuits, with 3 exercises in each circuit. I repeat each circuit 3 times before I move on to the next one. I do my best not to rest at all during this. The advantage is that it keeps my heart rate up and gives me good variety. Focusing today on the front of my body (pecs and quads). Also trying to do triathlon training. Just 10 minutes of each right now. I'm in a six week build up phase before the real training begins. So...

10 min warmup walk on treadmill @ ~3.5, 5% incline. Waving my arms around like a nut.

1. Squats w 5 lb dumbbells. x 15
Cable chest press @ 15 lbs x 15
Jump rope 1 minute

2. 45 degree leg press. No weights. x 12 (my ass is beginning to hurt)
Military shoulder press @ 8 lbs x 15 (a little easy - 10 pounds next time)
Jump rope 1 minute

3. Side lifts with ankle weights (this is a torturous pilates exercise my trainer has me do. It sucks) 2 lbs x 15, front and back. It's fucking hard.
Anterior shoulder raise @ 5lbs, 8 lbs, 5 lbs x 15. (8 lbs was a leetle too heavy!)
Hammer curls @ 5bls, 8 lbs, 8lbs x 15

4. Bridge on an exercise ball, with dumbbell raise, followed by hip lifts, with bicep curls. 10 pound dumbbells, 10 x 2. Fucking hard also. Someone's not walking tomorrow I fear.

Cardio:
10 minute run walk (1 lap walking, 2 laps running. 13 laps total)
10 minute spin bike (1 min easy, 1 min med, 1 min hard). CARDI2THEFUCKIN'O.
10 lap swim. (I think it's a 25 yard pool, so it's a 500. Which, considering that I haven't swum competitively in 20 years, is pretty good!)

So that was an ass kicking workout. I need to add in more core. But it's only for a day when I have a lot of time to spend at the gym. Tomorrow I will just do some walking and take a yoga class.

10:15 on a Saturday night

2009-02-28T20:02:00.000-08:00

5 great things.

5. Had the Pappum over for dinner last night. Lovely evening, although no one can be as funny and as mean I as I can at the same time. I'll let it go at that, but suffice it to say, you shouldn't proudly display your fake-leopard fur trimmed leather jacket and ask what year I think you bought it. It was a nice evening, they brought some really good wine, and unfortunately, my dinner was not up to snuff. This will be the last time I follow eBoy's suggestion that I make a WW CROCK POT recipe for a dinner engagement.

4. We almost adopted a Great Dane puppy, but Abby was NOT amused by the idea. I don't even want to venture what Molly would have had to say. The puppy search continues.

3. We went for a wonderful hike with Abby through Tryon Creek State Park. Nice find (nice find that I've known about for the last 3.5 years).

2. Went out for breakfast this morning. It's nice to go out exploring. Bagels and lox. Latkes too.

1. 150 Days of Health starts tomorrow. What's that you say? Stay tuned.

Best things that happened today...

2009-02-26T21:17:00.000-08:00

1. emailing and FB'ing with friends. I became FB friends with a boy I secretly loved from 1975 through 1981, and we enjoyed a nice back n'forth how you been for the last 25 years over FB email. This is why I love FB. You have no idea how I loved him when I was 5. it's nice to see how some folks turn out. He doesn't look as much like Steve Austin as he did when we were 6, but still.

2. I only got two wrong on my Assessment midterm. That's cool.

3. I laughed out loud in my car to Stephen Colbert's audiobook I Am America, And So Can You.

4. I found out that my school's library checks out videos/dvds. Not just any old videos/dvds, but ones about DISEASE and MENTAL ILLNESS. So fucking cool. I checked out three.

5. eBoy came home safe and sound and we had steaks with carmelized onions and a whisky cream sauce. Totally WW.

I shall never change...

2009-02-26T06:25:00.000-08:00

I wonder if I shall also get up at 6am and start/finish my dissertation on the morning that it's due. I know all of you are thinking, um it's a bit more involved than that, but I've seriously made an art of getting things started and finished in the wee hours of the morning.

hmmm....maybe I should set aside this time for studying every day.

Things that i am thankful for

2009-02-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it just makes sense to focus on the positive instead of all the craptastic shit that swirls around. Because that, my friends, will always be there. Right?'

Although, I must say, I had a really good Thursday last week. All the right songs were playing on the radio (including Vacation by the Go Go's, which must be one of the greatest songs to screech along with in the car), I had a good workout at the gym and felt very proud of myself for that (although I was hobbled for two days afterward), and I seemed to say all the right things in class (which is statistically probable if you never shut up) - and, to boot, class was really interesting and mind blowing, and who doesn't love that?

But then things seem to go right back in the crapper, and your sense of time becomes foreshortened, and all you can see is the chunks of muck that make up the shitstorm. Time to refocus.

Of course, this is aided by a vicodin or two. Better that than I start smoking pot again or take up cigarettes. Although I'm hoping to do a complete detox after this is all over. Not the lemon juice and maple syrup nonsense, but getting off of sleep aids, pain pills, that sort of thing. Another stab at 100 days of health. AND I'm thinking of getting acupuncture, but I'll totally lose my scientist street cred, so I have to think about it some more. I'll write more on it later.

So, in the interest of trying to improve my daily mental health (and it's one hell of a slog through my cranium on a good day, let alone as of late), I've tried to get in the habit at the end of each day of making a list of the best 5 things that happened that day, including what was THE best thing that happened. Sometimes it's something like, well.... dinner was good tonight. Fair enough. Sometimes it's things like, I got to text with my best friend. And that makes a pretty good day for me. So if you're having trouble seeing the silver linings, start actively listing them, they tend to be easier to see after a while. Just my $.02.

So...even though it's not the end of the day, the top 5 things in the last 24 hours (in no particular order).

- Got to text with my friend that I miss

- Got offered a job doing part time A/D work

- Found out there's nothing *seriously* wrong with me from my doctor (the physical one, not the mental one. Let's not go there)

- Found an old pal on FB that i was just TICKLED to friend

- Got lots of affection from the husband, the dog, and the cat. Seriously, I get *affection* from the cat, and if you can't appreciate that, then you've never had a cat.

So things could be a lot worse. That's such a good list and I didn't even have to include the Biggest Loser being on two nights this week or the fact that Obama can speak in full sentences and communicate complex thoughts. Nor did I include that I've discovered Scrabble on facebook. My cup runneth over.

Maybe it's the blog of TMI

2009-02-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

Because you can't really post personal information on facebook, because then everyone might actually read it!

I need to start writing my blog again, I know this is getting repetitive. But seriously, if i don't blog, I might go crazy because I don't actually ever talk to any of my friends.

Sigh.

So, here's the only thing going on, and I'm just going to say it.

Well, there are many things going on. I'm trying to keep up with my classes in a very impossible semester in which I can't seem to get get up my gumption enough to actually care about keeping up with my classes. This terrifies me. Strikes me as a blast from the past.

I need to listen to more Dolly Parton, it occurs to me. Just randomly.

So, also, I'm in the middle of another miscarriage. Oh yeah! So, three weeks ago I was 5 weeks pregnant, and then I started to miscarry, and GUESS WHAT, I'm still having that miscarriage that began three fucking weeks ago and has been 3 weeks of yucky crampy awfulness. I thought reproducing was supposed to be fun. And the last word is that my pregnancy hormones are actually going up. Who knows what that means? i don't? And guess what, heh, NEITHER does my fucking doctor, but it doesn't mean anything good or not weird, so I have to go in again tomorrow and have my lady parts poked at, and not in a good way.

I'm sorry, TMI? Sympathy. I can't believe you're still reading this anyway. Clearly I'm lonely and sad and taking it out on you. You're the strangers who don't know my phone number, and my friends who(m) I never call. It's not your fault. I'd talk about still trying to lose weight but I've received feedback that no one cares. Blah blah blah.

Okay, going to bed. Have to get up early and head to the doctor for the pokingness. I'm officially a circus freak.

Well...I guess you folks have known that for a while.

ps. I got a 99 on my neuroscience midterm. I guess that's not too sucky.

pss. I'm hoping to get a part time job either at Safeway or as a A/D counselor. Maybe if I have a part time job, I'll stop tooling around wasting my time on facebook.

psss. I also got into a research group, which is essential for getting more experience there. I'm focusing so far on getting into the health psychology track. I'm waiting to hear the results on my application, but one of my professors pulled me aside and said he's "in my court." From which, of course, I only inferred that perhaps someone is *not* in my court.

pssss. My first idea for research is looking at decision making with regards to bariatric surgery. My research advisor recently did a paper on why people decide to get B-surgery, I'd like to look at the reasons people decide NOT to. There's an obesity clinic in town that I'd love to do clincial field work with.

Okay. That's enough for now. I need to go to bed so I can get up early and go give more of my blood to Kaiser and then maybe go to the gym. Maybe.

Basic fucking arithmetic done on a scratch pad

2009-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

Bitching about citigroup's 50 million dollar jet in light of the 45 billion dollar loan to them is like bitching at me because you lent me $4500 and then I went and spent $5 for lunch.

Or you lent me $45,000 (seriously, would you please?) and I went and bought a $50 pair of jeans.

And I'm not just making this point because citigroup holds most of my student loans - although they should probably be yelled at for those too.

Sorry for the potty mouth.

(p.s., yes I know it's about appearances and not finances, but the way the news media has their panties in a twist is a little insulting - i mean, how much did we spend on the Iraq war this week?)

WAIS-ted

2009-01-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

Can I just *tell* you how boring intelligence testing (and, by degroovy my intelligence assessment class) is?

WAIS - Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Only when you read the manual and begin scoring practice tests do you realize just how *not* intelligent you actually are. And I'm supposed to be the one giving the damn test. And I'm pretty sure that some of the answers that I would have given would have been empirically correlated with the emotionally disturbed.

My favorite write up - by Wechsler himself - regarding the Arithmetic subtest:

Clerks, engineers and businessmen usually do well on arithmetic tests, while housewives, day laborers, and illiterates are often penalized by them.

Hear that, housewives?? Leave all the brain-twisting arithmetic to your businessman husband. Put the kids to bed and pour yourself a drink instead.

wanna get away?

2009-01-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

you know one of those days when you're into the second week of the semester and the text book for your behavioral neurobiology class (that you ordered on Decem... DECEMBER FUCKING (wait for it.....) FIFTH, arrives the evening before your 9am class the next morning. And so you have time to read the first chapter, but not the second. And so your professor is talking about action potential in neurons and the flow of potassium ions and sodium ions and the placement of the nodes of ranvier and you ask a simple question, but then somehow your professor's answer draws you into a deeper question, and then it gets weirder still and so at some point you don't even know WHAT you're asking or talking about, but still everyone's looking at you because YOU'RE the asshole that's going to make everyone have to stay five minutes after class to hear the end of the answer, and the professor is clearly growing frustrated and then, on the verge of giving up on you, another student turns to you and says, you know, this whole thing was covered in the chapter you were supposed to read for today. Look there - there's an entire section on it. And you realize 24 other people are glaring at you and nodding in unison?

it's been one of those days.

What's your opinion of Empirically Supported Treatments

2009-01-14T09:40:00.001-08:00

A quick rant in response to my professor's question....

As the daughter of a physicist, I have a great respect for the powers of science, and I believe asking my opinion about it is like asking my opinion about the moon. Science is merely a way of knowing. But perhaps it is not science or the evidence produced by the use of the scientific method, but rather its application that takes on values and is thus appropriate for opinion making. We see this in current bio-ethical controversies, certainly. And it is evident the field of psychology suffers from the misapplication and misunderstanding of the results of empirically supported treatments (EST’s) (Sanderson, 2003; Kaslow & Thompson, 1998). I have seen this in my counseling experience, where agency directors believe that a manual eliminates the need for training, that research means a treatment can be uncritically implemented across a range of conditions and populations for which it was not designed. Alternately, I have seen this in the political motivation that drives some ineffective treatments to be used rather than those that show research support.

Being trained in a “local-clinical-scientist-practitioner-scholar” model, aren’t we as students supposed to be moving away from opinion-based knowledge and towards evidence based knowledge? I guess I’m neutral with regards to evidence based practice – based on its positive aspects and motivation counterbalanced by its ham-fisted implementation, and codification into law before it has been fully developed or realized. I have read several articles now (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001; Follette & Beitz, 2003; Kaslow & Thompson, 1998; Persons, 2005; Sanderson, 2003; Shirk, 2004) and been exposed to several different perspectives. Many of these appear to be an all or nothing perspective, rather than a reasoned, measured approach that states, yes this is an imperfect system, but it is still evolving, it is still in its infancy. The developers of the programs seem to resist the idea that there could be anything wrong with it because its “scientifically based” while untested theories are lumped together with ineffective theories as “unscientific.” Everyone seems to have a viewpoint, an axe to grind, but isn’t the point of science to get away from all this? Isn’t the point of science to move away from opinions and biases that color the conclusions reached?

We simply don’t know everything yet. We are still learning. The history of medicine does not show a line of perfect treatments from Hippocrates forward. But this is how it evolves. We expect psychology to show the same reliability and validity as medical treatments, but in truth we cannot control for variables in the same way, and the field simply doesn’t have the centuries of research and knowledge that medicine has so far produced. Moreover, psychology appears to be seeking to take a model built around sciences with constant properties such as chemistry and physics (or so we thought before investigations into the properties of subatomic particles or the behavior of compounds in zero-gravity) so that variables can be isolated and reliable predictions can be made. It appears that human behavior is influenced by too many variables to be reliably predicted, but does that mean we should therefore not attempt to try? Add “free will” into the mix and human behavior is essentially a constant state of chaos upon which we try to impose order and rules.

Again, I am fairly neutral because I am waiting to read more studies, gain more experience, see how the field develops and evolves. Having read a mere six or seven articles over the past week hardly qualifies me to have an educated and informed opinion about EST’s. With regard to the application of EST’s to children and adolescents, what I have read indicates that evidence has been difficult to obtain, studies are tricky to conduct, and that while some treatments have been to shown to be effective, there are not nearly enough EST’s to treat the 200 or so disorders listed in the DSM. But again, though the system is imperfect and application is difficult, this does not mean that we must discard it, only that we must continue to help it evolve into a more perfect system.

If I could teach my niece anything....

2009-01-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

After A While
By Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while
you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't always promises
and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and and your eyes ahead with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers

And you learn that you really can endure, that you really are strong and you really do have worth and you learn and you learn

with every good-bye you learn.

It's simply possible that I've run out of things to say.

2009-01-10T19:40:00.001-08:00

I'm taking a break from blogging. This might actually be the end of it all. Can't decide. I've got too many things to read, I'm training for another half marathon in May, trying to drop 20 pounds (update, as of today, I've lost five). These things seem to take up a lot of time. For instance, right now, I'm going to head back to my bedroom to read some articles for my developmental psychopathology class. This class is quickly in the running for my favorite class this semester. Behavioral neuroscience is right behind it. I ended up dropping 2 of my 6 classes this semester because I ran into a 3rd year student who let me know that the intelligence testing, cognitive psych, and bx neuroscience classes are three of the toughest classes offered by my school, and I, like a crazy person, am taking them all at the same time.

Nice that my advisor didn't advise me of any of this shit.

Anyway, I dropped the Anxiety Disorders seminar and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. I can take them next year, so it's no great shakes. But it IS a pain in the ass considering that I'd spent 250 dollars on text books for these two classes - ordered from Amazon, so it's not like I can just drop by the book store to return them. Isn't it *fun* that I've spent $700 on textbooks this semester, and that's not even counting the money I'll spend printing out the dozens of online articles we're assigned (because I'm freaking 40 and I just can't read things on line).

Sigh. Okay, so maybe I have a few more things to say. I'm looking for a part time job. I've gotten to the point where I'm even applying for word processing and admin positions, because no one's hiring counselors. There just ain't shit out there. Not for part timers, anyway. And I've got about enough money to make it to March. This shit's about to get heavy.

All right, I'm off to study. Hope your holidays and new year were fabulous. 2008 had its moments, but I'm hoping that 2009 is going to be a fuckload better.

Not going anywhere...

2008-12-21T15:51:00.000-08:00

Definition of psychopathology

2008-12-17T22:24:00.001-08:00

For my psychopathology class this semester, I had to do two little blurbs on my definition of normal/abnormal, or what I consider psychopathology. (The class itself was pretty much a rote memorization of the DSM-IV.) If you recall, I got a little hung up on the word "normal" in my first essay. The second essay focused more on how my understanding of psychopathology developed over the semester. So, here it is. I'm still sort of meh about these type of essays.

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

My definition of psychopathology has not changed a great deal over the past semester. In reviewing my earlier paper on the definition of abnormality, I see I was fixated on the designation of normal versus abnormal. I believe these are value-laden terms that do not truly encompass the phenomenology of psychopathology. My understanding of psychopathology has deepened due to my increased knowledge of the criteria and various presentations of disorders, and I continue to believe that some are better conceptualized in a categorical fashion while others appear to be more dimensional. My appreciation of biopsychosocial conceptualization of psychopathology has expanded and it continues to be my main source of understanding the various disorders.

My greatest insight over the past semester has stemmed from my personal experience of intense psychological distress through pregnancy and miscarriage. As noted in class, it is difficult to diagnose a pregnant woman with a wide range of mental disorders since many are considered common elements of the condition. Because of this designation of normality, my significant feelings of depression and anxiety felt invalidated. The fact that these feelings are common did not lessen my distress. As my physical health problems progressed, I was shocked at how quickly and completely my mental health deteriorated.

My definition of psychopathology has not changed so much as it has been deepened by my experience with it. I now have a greater appreciation of the interrelatedness between the various elements of physical and mental health and one’s environment. Moreover, I feel a tremendous sense of empathy for the fear and isolation that can accompany a traumatic event or deteriorating emotional state. I see that it can be just as frustrating to be told that a condition is normal rather than abnormal. Despite this, I strive to remember that that the human condition can be a painful one and that a therapist’s job is often not so much to eliminate a client’s pain, but to help them work through it and find the meaning within it.

Spring semester schedule

2008-12-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited and a little crazed about next semester. I'll be taking six classes (but only 16 credits because one of them is a 1 credit seminar). But I'll be in class 5 days a week. Jiminy.

So, in no particular order:

Cognition - Cognitive determinants of human behavior. Theories and research in information processing, consciousness, memory and reasoning.

Fundamentals of Behavioral Neuroscience - Biological aspects of human behavior, including affect and motivation, from the perspectives of historical development, current theory and research, and applications.

Intervention II - Part II of a three course sequence examining the major schools of therapy, with consideration of life span development, human diversity, and a variety of special populations. Examines contemporary interventions with adults, children, families and groups. Short term, long term, and intermittent approaches are considered in the context of accountability.

Assessment I: Intelligence - Preparatory course in clinical assessment with emphasis on theory, administration, scoring and interpretation. Demonstration, practice, and test report writing using the Wechsler Scales.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy - Survey of theory and practice. Behavioral assessment and treatment of a variety of common clinical problems. Emphasis on more recent cognitive behavior therapy approaches.

Treatment of Anxiety Seminar - Behavioral interventions in the treatment of anxiety disorders with a focus on exposure therapy.

Hee. I can't wait.

somehow I missed all of these

2008-12-15T11:44:00.001-08:00

I never seem to be in on the latest thing. I suspect that some readers of this blog (ahem) might also be as out of touch as I am. Not *you* of course, but some of you. Anyway, here's the best of 2008.

Facebook "friends"

2008-12-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

I have something like 80 facebook friends. This phenomenon is maddening. I don't have 80 friends. I don't have 80 people that I could invite over for dinner. I don't even like 80 people in this world. And 80 isn't even a lot. eBoy has over 100. My niece has something like 300. People collect facebook friends the way I collect dustbunnies and books I'll probably never read - just for bragging rights.

My favorite facebook friends have got to be the couple of gals that I went to middle and highschool with, who - for six years - never engaged in an actual conversation with me, would never have given me the time of day, would never have spoken to me if I ran into them at a party, and who basically treated me as something stuck to the bottom of a leper's shoe from 7th grade on. I'm not bitter (any more),I'm just saying these girls were NOT my friends, had no desire to be my friends, but here they are, 20 years later (ulp), popping up on FB, friending me.

I don't think i need to really point out that these tended to be the "popular" gals in my class, but I will anyway. So maybe asking me to be their friend now is their version of noblesse oblige, or maybe it's just their way of upping their friend numbers. Or maybe they *would* have been friends with me in HS if I hadn't been so socially awkward, painfully shy, and a bit standoff-ish. Who can say. But they progressed from being downright mean in 7th grade to just ignoring me by 12th - which in a class of just 40 people is a bit of an accomplishment. Anyway, just think how close we'll all be by the time we're in wheelchairs and walkers. (And actually, there are plenty of these women from my class that continue to ignore me and that's fine - at least they seem reality based.)

Anyway, I was ruminating over this whole thing last night because one of them posted a picture of the whole lot of them from those days on her FB page (actually, the woman that posted the picture was very nice in highschool, but it's not like she and I ever had a single solitary conversation with one another - which is my point).

Anyway, naturally, I'm not in the photo. My presence at our school made about as much sense as a dog in a wig factory, so no one was pushing me into photos or hanging out with me in the Senior Room. But even at this late point in life, just seeing that photo brought back so many of those old insecurities. How is that still even possible?

Okay, more on this later I suspect.

Next season...on the Biggest Loser

2008-12-14T19:25:00.001-08:00

I'm so excited about next season. There's so much wrong with this show, but there's so much that's right with it, if only it helps inspire or motivate one person (even if it's just me) to get healthy. This whole preview made me a little teary; I hope it's going to be a much better season than this last one. It certainly inspires me to go out and be a better WW leader and better (someday) psychologist. Permanent weight loss is one of the most difficult things a person can do. We need all the help we can get (but... showing someone losing 21 pounds in a week isn't really helpful. That's a loss of water and muscle - the most *fat* the body can lose in a week is about 2 pounds). Well, I could go on - and at some point I will. But in the meantime, I'm really excited about the next season. Watch the preview!

(And as hot as Jillian is, an angry Bob is a H-O-T Bob. Humunuh. Man, he makes me want to get more tattoos.)

Reasons #22 and #23 I'm Inconsolate...

2008-12-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

- I went from a sunny 80 degrees in Key West to a Northwest blizzard in the space of three days (although the snow is rather pretty)

- I got two B's and two A's this semester. I got the B's because I missed two weeks of classes in October. I got the A's because... I don't know, I'm guessing just because I didn't miss as many of those classes. The other professors let me know that I had done "A" work, that I should be very proud of myself, that they were impressed with my ability to bounce back from adversity, that I was a joy to have in class, blah blah fuckin blah fishcakes. It's still a fuckin' B and I cried like a baby when I read it. Boo.

Fuckit. Semester's over. We all survived. It's 14 degrees outside and I'm going to go have some hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps.

all I'm saying is....

2008-12-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Key west f*n rocks. And not in a WOO HOO MORE TEQUILA sort of way - although I'm sure it's possible. It rocks in the ....sigh, it's December and 79 degrees and 76% humidity ( iLOVEhumidity because I grew up in the freaking desert and humidity=exotic) and the sky is blue and the palm trees sway in the breeze and I'm still in the lower 48 and I didn't have to pay $1200 to get here and no one keeps saying aloha or mahalo to me (not that there's anything inherently wrong with that), and there are chickens and roosters and cats and it's just flippin' lovely. Oh look, the sun is setting and everyone's losing their mind about it.

It also provided a nice little break in the middle of our trip to the inlaws. I think I should schedule mini-vacations in the middle of all my vacations. Don't get me wrong, my in laws are lovely people, but they tend to YELL A LOT just about everyday shit and I can only take so much klonopin to keep my autonomic nervous system in check. Thus, Key West.

Oh yeah, and we went to an alligator farm. Not planned or anything, but when you see a sign that says ALLIGATOR FARM -----> you follow it. It was crazy: multitudes of alligators. Count me out about ever going camping anywhere in the southeast. Those things are everywhere. And we went on an airboat ride around the everglades. Whee!

I am up.

2008-12-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

I have gained 10 pounds. 10 FUCKING POUNDS since october. And I started working out again in November. Don't tell me that muscle weighs more than fat. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. And I put on one of my skirts today and realized ULP, ohmigod, this is way too tight!

Very disheartening. I know it gets tiresome to read about someone's daily weight jibber-jabberings, but ...well, suck it, it's my blog. I couldn't believe it today when I weighed in and it was *** (c'mon, give me a break).

So I've gained over 20 pounds since the wedding, since April. 20 fucking goddamn pounds. I'm fucking Oprah, I'm fucking Rachel Ray. up, down, up down.

I'm going to go pour myself another glass of wine and nibble on a wedge of cheese and ponder how this happened.

Yes, I flip it on its sides. It's a Cooks Illustrated technique

2008-12-03T18:29:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving photos

2008-12-03T15:19:00.001-08:00

Update

2008-12-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

I took the velvet rope down. It was too much of a pain in the ass trying to sign into my own goddamn blog all the time. And I hated being faced with the reality that only about five or so people read this blog.

(oh and a big shout out and hug to those of you that sent REQUESTS for VIP passes. You made my blogger heart squee)

So I'll continue to refrain from putting my picture, social security number, and address on the blog, just to maintain some sense of privacy. I haven't decided whether or not to list it on Facebook, but that seems like a good way to eventually have my blog make its way into the wrong hands, e.g., eBoy's family members, about whom I regularly complain. Or some of my own family members, most of whom I have diagnosed, and with nothing good.

Finals update

2008-12-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's quite possible that I rocked my psychopathology final. My browser freezing up while I was on the last question, NOTWITHSTANDING, the whole thing went remarkably smoothly.

Psychometrics was okay. I think I pulled a B. Considering that I went in there expecting to fail, I'm okay with that. This is not to say that I am a psychometrics phenom - this is to say that my professor could have written a MUCH tougher exam (like he said he was going to) and I would not have gotten away with such a paltry, superficial understanding of utility theory and multitheory-multimethod matrices. Yeah it sounds fancy until you realize that I'm just repeating it all phonetically. I can repeat words spoken to me in Chinese too, doesn't mean I have a clue. Knee How!!!

Study for finals: Psychometrics

2008-11-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

My notes read:

When you use the test as a predictor, your calculation for a true positive will change, the rest will remain the same. This is the only cell that will change, the rest will be calculated exactly the same.

Holy shit, um, what?

By adding assessment information, you are going to calculate the Probability of True positive = Base Rate multiplied by the selection rate + the ratio of your test score to the outcome measure multiplied by the square root of the Base rate time 1 minus the base rate times the selection rate times 1 minus the selection rate.

P(TP) = BR x SR + (rXY) square root of [BR(1 – BR) SR (1-SR)]

And this is why I will never work in I/O psychology, I don’t care HOW much money they make.

So the only time you’re going to have a larger shift to a true positive is when you have a really large correlation between your test and the eventual outcome measure.

Kill me.

Thanksgiving update

2008-11-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

I didn't kill anyone!!!!

The Menu Is Set

2008-11-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

Wine and Cheese

Spinach Salad with candied pecans and blue cheese

Cider Brined and Glazed Turkey

Stuffing with Bacon, Apples, Sage, and Caramelized Onions

Cranberry Sauce with Port and Cinnamon

Bourbon Pecan Sweet Potato Mash

Brussels sprout hash with caramelized shallots

Roasted fennel with olives and garlic

Fresh fruit and rum trifle

You should come over.

Still not helpful

2008-11-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

My mother in law, bless her heart, gave me some advice about hostessing my first thanksgiving this week. When I mentioned that I was nervous about cooking the turkey (and seriously, this is not my first time roasting a bird, I'm just trying to decide whether or not to butterfly the damn thing or not), she murmured her commiseration and then parted these words of wisdom:

"Look up a recipe."

So that ranks right up there with the time she wisely advised me to look in the fridge to see what I need before I head to the grocery store.

It's like being married to the son of Buddha.

Not sure what I think...

2008-11-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

a lot of my classmates from my master's programs are now working in private practice, doing counseling around life transition issues, poor self esteem, career counseling, etc.

That's awesome. I'm happy for them. They're actually earning a living in the thing we went to school for. I just can't imagine doing it myself. I mean, I'm sure they're getting supervision towards licensure (right)? But I had to return to school because I felt like there was still so much to learn - and either I'm right or I'm wrong and I'm sufficiently resolving the cognitive dissonance. But I would just not feel qualified to be sitting across from someone being their therapist (despite the fact that I just did that for the last year).

But being a therapist isn't the same as being a psychologist. This psyD program isn't just more of the same from my master's program. I'm working towards something very different now. I have a good foundational knowledge in psychology and counseling, and it got me out of a couple of basic classes (but fewer than you'd expect), but there is a lot of stuff in this doctoral program that is COMPLETELY flying over my head and which I should be working on right now rather than blogging.

I'm focused on trying to understand multi-trait, multi-method matrices right now. I know, I have no idea either. And classical reliability theory, and item response theory? I mean, do I really need to know this shit, or is it like statistics, that I'm just going to turn it over to some stats geek at the office if I'm actually faced with it.

But here's the thing with being a psychologist: we actually do very little talky-talky psychotherapy. Psychologists specialize more in assessment, program evaluation, supervision, and consultation. (research too). And if you're specializing in assessment? you need to know psychometrics.

Which means I need to get off the couch and go back to my desk and bury myself in convergent validity determination. Gah.

Now there's a velvet rope

2008-11-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

I've decided, just to be prudent, and to make my father sleep better at night, to make this blog open to invited readers only. Of course, you're ALL invited. But I'd feel better knowing that I can bitch in peace about my classmates and professors without them stumbling upon it and then becoming an outcast that has to eat her lunch out behind the bleachers, knowing no one is going to invite her to the prom.

Actually, does anyone remember what happened to Harriet the Spy when her friends found her notebook? it's like that.

anyway, as soon as I figure out how to do it....I'm going to be Kaiser Soze. And in an instant she was gone.

Look at that, three metaphors at 9:30 in the morning. This is good coffee.

ps - I'm sending out "invites" (oh this is so snobby) to a few people that I know read this blog on a regular basis. If you don't get one, it's just that I forgot, or I didn't realize you were reading. If you care enough, and I know you do, just send me an email to add you to the list. I'm going to keep the blog open for another day or so, and then the ropes are going up!

Feel better dad?

One more bit of claptrap...

2008-11-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

I was exploring various blogger templates (Sassy and Tel link to the site) because one of these days I *am* going to update this site all the way to 2004 and find a template that i like and that reflects my ultramodern sensibilities, and.... anyway, I had the different templates sorted by Most Popular.

And sigh of sighs, two of the top ones were "Wolf in the Night" (which would be really cool with the mural painted on the side of my van), and something like "I Want a Boyfriend."

Oh it just made me sad.

And then I had to wonder, who the hell ARE these people?

Upon further review (uh, just to note: "Black Templates" - not what you think), I also have found that I can download a Bob Saget theme for my blog. Well!, I don't think we need to spend much more time looking for a clear winner, do we.

Woot!!!!

2008-11-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

All done with classes!

I have next week off to study for finals (and celebrate the opening salvo in the genocide of the American Indian) and then finals the week after that, and then that's the end of the semester!

Where does the time go?

I have, remarkably, managed to pull this semester out of my ass and it's not such a disaster after all - well, pending finals in two weeks. And from the sounds of it? Finals are going to be a BITCH. Even my professors sounded a little surprised when they mentioned how tough their exams were going to be.

I have one final, for advanced clinical skills, that is supposed to be a mock version of the Clinical Competency Exams we take next year. It's based on a clinical vignette that we're supposed to assess, diagnose, treat, measure outcomes and examine all possible aspects and considerations of a person's life including developmental, social, cultural, ethical, research evidence for our interventions, the etiology of the disorder (theorized or otherwise), the manifestations of the behavior and what sustains it in terms of our personal theoretical orientation. And then a bunch of other shit that i won't go into because honestly I can't remember.

Sigh.

And I'm supposed to be able to do this in two weeks. That just sounds crazy to me. And I have four hours to do it. I don't want to do something THAT FEELS GOOD for four hours. But at least I get to use my notes, readings, and DSM for this final. Next year, when this shit's fer realz? I'm supposed to know it cold.

Yikes.

Other than that, I have Intervention (take home/open book - fine), but then I have my psychopathology exam, which is giving me involuntary twitches, and my psychometrics exam, of which I'm in complete denial.

Re: psychometrics. Most of the time, I have no idea what this class is trying to tell me. For instance, please for to translate into English good for me you see, no:

Independence of methods is a common denominator among the major types of validity (excepting content validity) insofar as they are to be distinguished from reliability.

Insofar?? Insofar? Who the hell says that? Independence of methods is a common denominator? Wha-what? These are the things that I try to pare down into manageable chunks, and then eventually have to admit, you know what, I can't make sense of this. I don't know what this word means when you put it next to that word. GAH.

Oh hey, guess who got food poisoning in Seattle? it's what you call - don't eat the mysterious meat and macaroni salad at a picnic held at a deserted airport hangar on an old military base.

But you probably already knew that rule. Smarty pants.

Just as interesting as what I eat every day.....

2008-11-17T15:53:00.000-08:00

has got to be my television viewing habits. I mean, that's why you're tuning into this blog, right?

See if you can guess why I like the Big Bang Theory (BBT) besides the fact that it takes place in Pasadena and the main characters are physicists at Caltech.

As you know, I had determined that I've been watching far too much television, approximately 8.25 hours per week (if you subtract the time it takes to fast forward through the repetitive bits of The Biggest Loser). Resolved to get focused on my studies, I decided to eliminate all "unnecessary" tv viewing from my schedule. However, I elected to eliminate certain shows in a very ad-hoc, arbitrary fashion - including BBT. It was all based on a sort of theoretical, what-can-I-not-live-without evaluation. Very unscientific. A bit slapdash, as we say.

Realizing I needed to be far more empirical, I decided to measure instead the number of times I laughed during each show (Laughs Per Show, or LPS) that I watched. I then determined a weighting for each different type of laugh, ranging from merely a smile (MAS) to a hollering laugh-out-loud moment (HLOL). I also had to include a special rating for the number of SQUEE moments that a show (Squee per Show or SqPS) can bring me - e.g., JAM kissing for the first time (The Office, in case it's not your cup of tea-vee).

And I found something surprising.

BBT totally outranked every other show I watched, including 30 Rock! BBT garnered a whopping 37 HLOL's during last week's 30 minute episode. That's almost 1.95 HLOL's per minute if you subtract the average number of commercial minutes that a 30 minute sitcom contains (which I didn't measure directly this time). I only HLOL'd twice (2x!!) during The Office, although there were 7 MASs and 1 SqpS. And I only HLOL'd 14 times during 30 Rock, but my overabiding love for Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan has to weighed in there somehow, but I've not yet determined how.

Of course, I can't take a single week sample and base my tv viewing habits upon it. I've resolved to measure each week's laughs over a course of several weeks, controlling for sweeps, special guest appearances, repeats, and Most Shocking Weigh-in's Ever. After that, I will be able to take the averages and perform an MANOVA statistical analysis between the different shows.

However, one also needs to consider the validity and reliability of my measuring instrument (LPS) - this is where psychometrics comes in. Is LPS an accurate and thorough measure of my tv viewing enjoyment? Do its items "hang together" enough? Would its results show predictive validity? And what is it I'm trying to capture = is it enough to look for humor in a show? It would not capture, say, my enjoyment for The Biggest Loser or Life, neither of which are laughter based. Also, does the measure show temporal stability and interrater reliability? - i.e., do I, as the sole measurer, vary so much from week to week, day to day, that what makes me laugh one day, might not make me laugh the next day? And how would I test for this, as I could not be expected to HLOL at something when I see it during repeat, so a test/retest evaluation would not be sufficient?

You can see the bind I'm in.

But it looks like BBTs topping the list right now. And not just because I get to squeal "you do! you do have to drive over speed bumps if you take Euclid to Caltech! it would take too long!!"

I love geeks. So much I like to pretend to be one.

Why I should be allowed to bring a tranquilizers to class...

2008-11-14T14:22:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when everyone's making their big fancy power point presentations. And...you know, my classmates are just as cute as bunny rabbits, but a couple of them could stand to improve their presentation skills.

I could use the tranquilizer dart on myself. In extreme cases, I might train it on the presenters, but what if I just graze them and they just speak softer and get more boring and slow? UGH.

It's not even just your usual, I'm-going-to-just-read-my-slides-to-you-in-monotone nonsense, even though there's plenty of that. There is, for instance, the student that learned to make transitions and use animation so EVERYTHING! IS! ANIMATED!
Or there's the student that likes kittens so, and I shit you not, every slide in the presentation on chronic pain assessment had multiple pictures of ....kittens! Kittens! Adorable! I don't know a damn thing about the validity and reliability behind chronic pain measurement, but I sure know that I want a new kitten! And don't even get me started on the one student who, while a very brilliant member of class, speaks english as a second language and so not only read us the slides, but had to slowwwwwly sound out every other word. 45 minutes into that, my professor finally cut the presentation off.

And when you have to sit through SEVEN of them like this in a row?

You know, I didn't think anything could ever be worse than the Shakespeare professor I had in college that had a bad stutter, and would make us shout out the word that he was stuck on. (I would always shout out the wrong word). But I would be wr-wr-wrong.

Back up on the horse

2008-11-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

I've returned to WW as a member, not as a leader. Although all the receptionists and the territory manager keep asking when I'm going to come work for them. WHEN I TAKE OFF THIS 15 POUNDS. So back to the meetings, back to tracking, back to just trying to stick to it 70% of the time.

I've been going to the gym pretty steadily since AS ~~shamed~~ inspired me to start working out again. I'm following the Winning By Losing (Jillian Michaels natch) workout program to the letter - and while it's not nearly as difficult as her 30 day shred (which i was doing last spring), it's kicking my flabby fanny.

I know I need to get rid of the negative self talk, but I just don't look like *me* when I look in the mirror. It feels like such a set back - yes, I know I had a reason, I know it's only been a month, I know that I need to be kind to myself and just start where I am with no recriminations - but it's not easy. I sure am learning a lot about what my WW clients go through. This time around's been difficult for me, and i need to learn from it.

Speak of learning, I need to get off the TWOP Biggest Loser message boards and finish my presentation on the Biopsychosocial Integrative Model for my Intervention class tonight. I'm in the last three weeks for school (holy shit) and I've got a HELL of a lot of work to do, and here I am blogging about it instead of actually doing it.

By the way, I'm taking Intro to Behavioral Neuroscience next semester - it's supposed to be one of their toughest classes and I am just FREAKING OUT i'm so excited.

Question: What TV shows can you not live without? I have decided to eliminate all unnecessary tv viewing (yes, I know, it's ALL unnecessary). But it appears that the ones to make the cut for me are: Biggest Loser, 30 Rock, Rachel Maddow, and the Daily Show. 4 hours per week (although if you watch Biggest Loser by Tivo and ff through all the irrelevant bullshit they pack into it, you can watch it in an hour). So, three hours of TV per week. Oh, no, wait.Duh. Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart are on 4-5 days per weeks, sigh, so that's......8.5 hours of tv per week.

Yikes. That's a lot.

But that's also me eliminating: How I met your mother, Big Bang Theory, Life, Countdown with K.O., The office, My Name is Earl, and the occasional cooking or gardening show. No wonder my house is a mess and I haven't read a book in a century, and I'm behind on my school reading. Evil, bad tv!!

As I live and breathe....

2008-11-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, someone looks appropriate in this shot, and someone looks RIFREAKINGDICULOUS. And not who I would have expected.

I can kick! And stretch! and kick!

All rachel all the time

2008-11-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

Mocking, vindictive, hate-fueled ridicule.

2008-11-07T08:55:00.001-08:00

See, there are the kind of folks like Auntie Sassy - who see the big picture, see the mess we're in and want to reach out a hand and work with others to make this country a better place. I call this the Obama crowd.

Then there are folk like me. Most of you know us as the Bill O'Reilly's of the world - just screechy and maladjusted and angry. There's not as many of us on the left as there are on the right, since we tend to be, you know, more empathetic, more reality based. But we're here. They just won't give us any tv shows.

But dammit, I want payback for the last eight years. I'm pissy and mad and stamping my little foot. Fuck those fuckers and bring Bush and Cheney up on charges of war crimes.

Can you fucking believe that there are already impeach Obama sites out there? I can. Because this right wing hate machine doesn't stop. It'll never stop. It will work each day to tear him down, to find his weakness, to make it impossible for him to govern. It will lie, cheat, steal and the cry to high holy heaven about the liberal media bias.

And there's nothing like it on the left. Not yet anyway. We come to the White House and we say, oh I want to be post partisan, I want to govern from the Center (and when I say I, I mean Obama because no one's elected me to do anything as far as I know). But not the right, instead they immediately start whining about Rahm Emanuel being Chief of Staff.

BTW, I fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE Rahm Emanuel. I've loved him since the clinton years. Bare knuckles, sharp elbows, whatever. He gets shit done - even if only incrementally at times - and he takes no prisoners. obama can talk about the Center and reaching across the aisle all he wants, the repubs are right - having RA as CoS is a very strong way to step out of the gate, and it's a very large sign on the front whitehouse lawn that says don't fuck with me.

I wish I were more like Sassy. But the last 8 years have filled me with so much bile (also a good indication that my liver began to shut down somewhere around '04), that I'm just not interested in being mature and kind. Think Obama and the gays and the blacks and the jews and the atheists are ruining your precious little white bread walmart inbred thicknecked country? Good. Move to fucking Texas. There's enough room for you all there and you can make it your own country again and leave us the hell alone.

Sigh I need so much therapy.

2008-11-03T12:48:00.000-08:00

Great article on Rachel Maddow

2008-10-29T11:29:00.001-07:00

OMFG - autumn edition

2008-10-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, it was the most gorgeous fall weekend here. Warm, sunny, breezy - all the leaves blowing around, all the trees red and gold. Beautiful, gorgeous, wish you were here.

And with the exception of a three hour dog walk on Sunday, I huddled indoors and scoured the internet for news about the election. Well, and I studied a bit. But mostly combed the politicosphere for some indication that I'm not going to be making a trip to the gin aisle at Costco on November 5th.

Oh, and I went to the gym today for the first time in months. And it was entirely this woman's fault. She looks freaking awesome. Some people are just born to kick ass.

I have a new emotion every five seconds...

2008-10-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

Gah! That line is from the movie Singles, which i can't believe i couldn't place it considering that it's just about my favorite movie in the world.

Here, I even found THE SCRIPT online. Now I can just sit and read it and revel in the wonderfulness of pre-Vanilla Sky Cameron Crowe, and my grunge wannabe days of the early 90's.

So I wanted to update that I'm doing much better, again, both physically and mentally. Some days are harder than others. Today I feel like everything's ALL better, but I also felt that way on Saturday, and then sandwiched in between was yesterday. And yesterday sucked a little, but not as much as previous suck-days had. I can still find myself in the canned-vegetable aisle, trying not to cry, while Wake Me Up When September Ends plays over the loud system and for some reason THAT song has become oh so emotion-inducing.

Sigh.

So it can sneak up on me. Have you ever felt like that? Betcha have. You know, I'd believed for so long that I'd really gotten my life under control, that I was relatively emotionally stable. It continues to be a little disturbing how fast it all went spinning out of control - and how far it spun.

However, I have also become very good at being my own shrink. This whole becoming-a-psychologist crap is really for the mental masturbation, I've decided. But it helps. I won't go into the intricacies of Being Dr.M. these days, since you're probably driving while you're reading this and I'd hate to have you fall asleep at the wheel - suffice it to say, I was kind of surprised at the direction some of the emotional fallout of the last several weeks, and it took me a good few days to work through. But I did have that A-Huh moment (slightly more bewildering than an A-Ha moment) and it helped put things in perspective.

Now, having gotten my head around a number of issues, I find that as long as I don't consume more than 2 glasses of wine and don't listen to sad sappy wahhn wahhn music, I'm carrying through just fine. It's been a definite learning experience. But, as my father recently said, maybe I could stand to go without some character-building for a little while.

Every day is a new day

2008-10-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

I feel a new emotion every five minutes (god, my brain doesn't even work well enough now for me to remember what movie that's from). But some days I wake up, and I start crying immediately and not just because eBoy's shaved his head over the bathroom sink without cleaning it up again. Yesterday, I woke up and I didn't cry. I didn't really feel much of anything, not good, not bad, not even really numb. Just blank. You know, like the weather when it's that sort of exact temperature that it feels like there's no temperature? It's not the slightest bit chilly, not the slightest bit warm, it's just the same temperature as me.

I'm not sure what today is like. I've cried a little bit hearing from some old friends. But still none of the overwhelming despair from earlier in the week. It's quite possible that the emotional circuits in my brain have shorted out. That's some pretty hinky wiring in there anyway.

Life goes on. The Dodgers lose. The Red Sox lose. If Obama loses, well then I will have just HAD it. The weeds have taken over my garden, the dust bunnies run loose through my home. If I don't get stuff moving again soon, I feel like the jungle will reclaim me like some ancient Mayan ruin. Time to get some coffee and go for a walk.

Update: Holy Shit, the redsox won last night!!! I turned the game off when it was 5-0. see people, this is why there are NINE innings and you don't give up in the 7th. There's probably a metaphor in there that i should be learning from.

Thank you to you

2008-10-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

You are wonderful. Thank you for your support - for working to try to make me feel better, rather than try to make yourself feel better.

I will admit, while this is too personal and too emotional, that I have been suicidal at three points in my life. One was 7th grade, which was painful and awful, but maybe unremarkable. The 2nd time was during my parents' divorce. I'm not saying it was their fault, i'm saying that I was so numb and so incapable of dealing with my life at that point that I drank myself to the point where I could feel emotion and had very little impulse control.

I do, however, have little tolerance for pain and an extremely poor understanding of how to OD. In 1993, I was hoping that I could OD on Actifed, but I was scared that I would just oversleep and be late for work, and so i never tried it.

I've had moments, significant moments of suicide ideation over the last week. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a plan (I'm still just as ignorant of methods) and I don't want anything painful, and most of all, I don't want to hurt my father, ma-Mer, and my husband. They are hurting enough, and I don't have the capacity to help them right now, so if I'm alone, then they are really fucking alone. And you can't OD on Tylenol PM, apparently.

But I really really fucking get it. The appeal of suicide. The idea that this is the best and only choice at that moment And I could really lose my career, my job, my education, by attempting suicide.I sat in the library today taking two midterms and sobbed audibly for 4 hours straight. I have no focus, no concentration. I don't know how to make it through this without falling behind in schoolwork or missing class. A professor has already let me know that my only option is to take a leave of absence.

I was pregnant for four and a half months, but I worked night and day for six years to get into a doctoral program. I don't know what to do, but it seems on top of everything else, I have to give up school because I can't regulate my emotions for long enough to be the student that I know I'm capable of being. Rules are rules. I've missed more than two classes, so I can't pass. I can't even take a week off.

Thanks you for the cards and flowers. I really really needed those. I needed to know that my friends support me and see this as real. i know I couldn't talk to you. I still haven't been able to talk to my father - because I can't have a 20 minute conversation in which I just cry. I can't hurt you like that. So thank you for reading, and thank you for understanding.

And for those of you that reached out with unconditional understanding - there is a special place in my heart for you. It means a lot.

ps - oh, in case you're wondering if there's actually a god, I discovered today that there is a preschool/infant care directly across the street from my school, AND, my remaining 16 year old cat has one tooth left, so she is now eating baby food exclusively. so i get to spend a good 5 minutes in the baby aisle every other day, because if I send eBoy, the cat ends up getting strained peas.

I'll try to be short and sweet about this.

2008-10-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

As of Monday, I was 18 weeks pregnant. I was thrilled, excited, it was very much a wanted pregnancy. Right around the time that we were getting to the point where we could announce to world, we started to find out that there were seriously things wrong with the baby. Now, as I have already been told that my communications are too personal and too emotional, I'll try to spare you some discomfort. Suffice it to say that there were enough things wrong with the baby, that I miscarried on Thursday and Friday. This has been scary, devastating, extremely painful both physically and emotionally, and completely isolating.

I share this with friends and strangers because this has been the single, solitary thing that I has been going on for me since the beginning of July. Migraines, nausea, exhaustion, a complete loss of control over my own body and mind, and absolutely nothing to show for it at the end except a medicine cabinet full of little yellow bottles full of hopes and dreams.

I am going to do my best to start eating and acting healthy, and hopefully my brain and emotions will follow. Right now, i'm at bottom, and I have to get out of bed sometime - especially since school is threatening to fail me for missing class last week

Sorry if this is too personal or conflicts with your values in any way. Truth be told, at this point, I could give a shit.

Interesting article about parenting choices

2008-10-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a thought provoking piece from the NY Times today. Aside from your opinion on Sarah Palin's qualifications, how do you feel about the choice she's making to to run for VP while she has so much going on in her family? What do you think your reaction says about you and the choices you've made?

I need to think more about this - not sure what my opinion is yet. But my initial reaction to her choices has been this: she might make different choices than I would, but I would not fight to take away her right to choose. And that is a very significant way that she and I differ.

Oh how I WORSHIP her

2008-10-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Jillian Michaels has an AWESOME podcast every week on KFI. She's so kickass! If you're trying to lose weight and/or get in/stay in shape, here's a great resource.

OMG my first husband

2008-10-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

This nearly killed me. In a good way.

The occasional post

2008-10-03T14:01:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin apparently was annoyed by Katie Couric for asking those hard-hitting questions like What Magazines Do You Read (answer: All of em!) instead of just letting her rant about how Barack Obama is going to raise taxes (on folks making over $250K).

She's really taking it to a level we haven't seen in a few years:

Grooming makes a comeback.

2008-09-26T11:30:00.001-07:00

I showed up in class the other night, and a couple of other students expressed surprise at my appearance.

You see, I had showered. I had blown dry my hair. I had put on makeup. I wasn't wearing yoga clothes.

In other words, I received credit for doing something that normal people do every day.

Now, I am not doing this because all of a sudden I am less stressed or feeling better. I'm doing this as an adherent of reality therapy, which posits that it's a lot easier to change your behavior than it is to change your thoughts or beliefs; BUT, by changing your behavior, you can eventually change your attitude and beliefs (there's a lot of support for this in social psych too).

We choose our behavior - every single moment, every single day. Some of our choices are more mindful than others, some of us have fewer choices than others, but it is still our behavior that we have principle control over. As a friend once said, you return the phone calls you want to return. I choose whether or not to go to the gym. I choose whether or not to eat that cheeseburger. I choose who I am friends with, I choose who I stay in a relationship with. (stop correcting my grammar in your head)

So, if I am depressed (situational, chemical - yes these are all influences), then it is sustained by my acting depressed. If I feel like crap walking around in the real world, it does not help if I also look like crap - and I was starting to get really depressed that I look like crap all the time.

Anyway, my classmates noticed an instant difference, and I noticed that I talked to a lot more people that night (I can be highly socially avoidant as you probably know), and I was a lot more active in class discussion. So, there's some correlation there.

I'll let you know how it goes. My next steps are to re-introduce exercise and an early bedtime into my life. I mean, these are the things that I would tell a client to do - so I may as well walk the walk.

ps. I'm laughing more too. The other night on the Daily Show, Jon Oliver (my favorite) compared the Bush administration's groping around for another disaster as "trying to find a vein on a failure junkie." I had to pause Tivo and laugh for a good ten minutes at that.

I, for one, do not want to have sex with Sarah Palin

2008-09-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is a charming little post on HuffPo, and I agree with most of its sentiments EXCEPT the part about wanting to see Sarah Palin naked. I do lurve the idea of Barak Obama sheets and shall look into purchasing immediately. (Sidenote: Pottery Barn Kids is currently selling the exact same Star Wars sheets that I grew up on - and I'm damn well sure my mother probably got them at KMart for pennies compared to what PBK is charging for them.)

Anyway - I'm pretty sure my liver can't take another 4 years of republicans. In fact, the only reason I'm not currently cirrhotic is the blessed state of denial that I entered after John Kerry's oh-so-quick concession speech in ought-four. (I also distracted myself with graduate school). But my liver surely can't take THESE republicans. I haven't even been able to discuss SP with anyone because it's been so impossible to take seriously. It's laughable, but of course it MUST be taken seriously. These assholes aren't joking. Refuckingmarkable. They would put a pig in the white house - yeah, I said it, and it's an insult to pigs.

Can I just say this - God Bless Tina Fey - for sooooo many reasons.

My only sharable/printable thoughts on the Charlie Gibson interview - SP's mispronounciation of nuCLE-AR isn't what worries me. We've had a despotic Rain Main in the white house for the last eight years - more evil in the hands of idiots will be par for the course. But when SP was completely unfamiliar with the Bush Doctrine - well, it would have been laughable if the implications weren't so terrifying. But even worse - The Spin. How can the media honestly say, well, most people don't know what the Bush Doctrine is so it doesn't really matter . The first part of that is probably true. If you had asked me last week, I probably would have needed some prompting in order to share my thoughts on the BD - and yes, I actually have an opinion on it - it's called See Minority Report. I think our "intelligence" capabilities and our government's ability to peer into tea leaves and see what they want to see is a pretty strong argument against the BD. Actually our invasion of Iraq - direct result of BD - is the strongest reponse against the BD. But, even after Charlie Gibson DEFINED the Bush Doctrine for her, she still didn't know what she thought about it - jesusfuckingchrist. Sigh. I'm ranting.

But my point is - Okay, so Jane Minivan doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. Fair enough. She doesn't need to. I'm not electing her Vice-Van-Fucking-President! I want the person I'm hiring to do a specific job to know the basic elements OF THAT FUCKING JOB. If I hire a psychologist, I would like her to have a passing familiarity with Freud, even if she doesn't agree with the tenets of psychoanalysis. If I have cancer, I would like my doctor to know a few things about oncology. I want my fucking gardener to at least know how to turn on the goddamn lawn mower.

But the media? They don't even blink. They just keep selling this shit about wanting to have a beer with the president. Trust me, I would LOVE to have a beer with Obama - or even some wine and argula. But if SP makes it into the white house? There ain't enough irish whiskey in the world to carry me through that.

re-joining the living

2008-09-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

I have had a migraine since *wednesday*. Lots of (tmi) vomiting and huddling in dark corners, wanting to put my head in a vise so it would feel better. I haven't had one of these in about 17 years or so, and I haven't missed them at all. ugh. anybody else get these? what do you take for them? My vicodin was about as effective as a blaster against the death star.

Abnormal does not equal psychopathological

2008-09-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Annoying also: a professor asked for a one page piece on our definition of "abnormality." Then when I went to post it, she had changed it to our definition of "psychopathology." That's totally different!!!! I realize I'm being way too literal, but I always figure that people choose their words carefully and purposefully. Clearly I'm in the minority.

BTW, this is not my best work. My first draft was about 7 pages and was more of an editorial on the history of clinical psychology. I need to rein myself in with the opinion spouting. Well, except for here.

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

“Abnormality,” by strict definition, is that which statistically falls more than two standard deviations outside of the norm. These deviations are gauged in part by measures of intensity, duration, and frequency. In the strictest sense, presumably, one could ideally place a measure of behavior somewhere along the statistical continuum and determine its normality. However, abnormality as a concept is dependent upon the definition and scope of “normal,” within whatever dimension is being considered. Normality itself is dependent on the population used as reference point, and is quite often completely subjective. What is “normal” in my experience is simply that: my world, my experiences, my exposure, my culture/subculture. Therefore, the definition of abnormality may be subject to a similar ambiguity as the definition of pornography found by the Meese Commission in 1984 – we might not know the definition, but we know it when we see it. There seems to be no strict dividing line between abnormal and normal, but rather an element of subjectivity that colors in the “shades of gray.” Clinically, however, one must also consider integral elements such as the violation of social norms (as fluid and variable as these are), intra- or inter-personal distress, and perhaps most importantly, impaired functioning. Considering a behavior (or cognition or emotion) along all these dimensions gives a fuller view of whether it can be considered “abnormal” or not. That being said, it is important to emphasize that “abnormality” does not in and of itself constitute psychopathology, a diagnosable disorder, or something treatable. Likewise, designating a behavior as “normal,” does not necessarily imply that it is healthy or ideal. Lastly, while personal distress can be an important indicator of “abnormality,” we must acknowledge that contemporary Western society – abetted by pharmaceutical companies marketing directly to consumers – has increasingly narrowed its tolerance of the various emotions and states of the human condition, and increasingly pathologized any element of distress that may be found within.

Sigh......

2008-09-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

I've just about HAD it with Obama. Sure, we lost the election, but we sure are nice! We sure stayed polite!

He has waaaay too much faith in the American people. He already has the intellectual vote locked up. Time to go for everyone else. It's really beyond disheartening. John Kerry and Al Gore all over again.

*****************
I'm loving Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC. I just love her to bits; rabid fan of her radio show and her appearances on Countdown.

Best line: "And now we have an assertion that god's will is being expressed through Sarah Palin's chosen political policies. I'm worried."

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

Attended a lovely wedding in LA this weekend. Congratulations to Jani & Patc!

I know this sounds batshit crazy but....

2008-09-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

4 years doesn't seem long enough for a doctoral program in clinical psychology - this is assuming I churn out my dissertation in a year. I could easily do it in seven years, but I promised eBoy I would only take 4. There just seems like so much to learn - although my psychometrics professor pointed out that he learned so much more AFTER his grad program than during. I have to remember that.

I'm currently reading an article about Religious Issues in Diagnosis, written by a professor at Regent University - you know, the christian university founded by Pat Robertson. Needless to say, I find the entire article incredibly biased and poorly referenced. I'm supposed to write an abstract on it, but I'm struggling with wanting to write a vitriolic response. That's probably not the best thing to do 2 weeks into school. But it's got my little gears grinding away, to say the least. I can probably come back to it at some point during the next couple of years when I write about the psychological and moral health conferred by atheism, but my goal for now is to not spout off in class about it next week.

So, what we're focused on in this initial week of psychopathology class is whether mental illness is something categorically different from mental health, or a difference of degree of normal behavior (i.e., normal sadness vs. a mood disorder - where's the line? usually we examine these elements in terms of duration, intensity, or frequency). I need to write up a short blurb on how I define abnormality (this after the professor went through her entire lecture on how to distinguish abnormality - what exactly am I supposed to write that isn't a restatement of her lecture?). What I *want* to write about is how we deal with someone that doesn't fall within any diagnostic category, but is definitely "odd" or "weird" or just plain "difficult." Diagnosis gives us a sense of control - I can put you in this box and it will explain you to me - which makes your weird behavior all about you and not about my response to you. This, of course, leads to over pathologizing all the variables in human behavior. The title of the essay I'd like to write is "'Asshole' is not a Diagnosis."

But it's probably a little soon to start down that road with my professors, don't you think?

How you know I'm back in school

2008-09-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

Deciphering the following:

Taxometric procedures have received support from a small but growing body of simulation research, which shows that they are capable of discriminating between latent categories and dimensions with high accuracy given adequate sample size and indicator validity. This research also demonstrates that taxometric inference is quite robust under a variety of adverse psychometric conditions and that taxometric procedures discriminate latent structure as well as or better than mixture and cluster analyses....The existence of a taxon in this (anxiety) domain is rendered more plausible by taxometric evidence, replicated with mixture modeling, that inhibited temperment in childhood reflects a latent category.

My head has become just a giant, buzzing chamber......

A moratorium on productivity

2008-08-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

The last eleven weeks or so have seen a complete moratorium on my productivity - working out, gardening, keeping the house clean, laundry, food shopping, eating healthy. Everything came to a grinding halt right after the 4th of July and the "West Coast Reception" we had that weekend (let's be honest here, I hadn't worked out regularly since I got back from Aruba - a difference that is made *quite* apparent in comparing the photographs of Buff Me from Aruba versus the Pudgy Squishy Me of 4th of July weekend. Things have only gone downhill from there. I got very busy with work towards the end of July and pretty much nothing else was happening.

I did get some good reading in and I did take up knitting again, so there are a couple pluses.

But so now I've come back to my yard. I literally hadn't weeded since the end of June. And we've had nice warm temperatures and lots of rain. Bammo - recipe for disaster. Now the back beds that we planted in June look okay (I think eBoy was sneaking out occasionally and pulling a few peepers), but the front rose bed, the side rose bed, the front lily bed, under the camellia, in front of the gardenias, and around the back lilacs? ooof. What a mess.

So, yesterday, hoe in hand (heh), I began to attack the front yard. Now we have 3 lupine plants we inherited in the front perennial bed. I hate them. Sure they look nice in bloom, but then they get overgrown and develop powdery mold, and they trash the place. This was the problem I had with dahlias: they fall over a lot and when they die back, they're horrendous looking. And here's the thing, I am not one to spend a half hour each morning just poking around the yard doing upkeep. I'd like to be that person, but it hasn't quite happened yet. So, yesterday I did to the lupines what I did to the dahlias last year: dug them out by the roots and tossed 'em in the garbage. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to replace them with, but this seems to be the direction that I'm headed with the entire front yard: evergreens. Evergreen shrubs. With maybe some spring bulbs just for color. I just can't stay ahead of the maintenance

By the way, since I will start posting my questions - does anyone know a good website/book on how to maintain/cut back/deal with dying back plants once they've finished blooming? I have 37 books on gardening (including books entitled "Garden Maintenance") and from what I can tell, it seems like I'm just supposed to have a bunch of dead, withered plants in my yard until fall cleanup. That can't be right. Or I'm supposed to plant other perennials that will bloom after the others die and detract from their horrid appearance. This continues to vex me, and i just cut everything back to the roots, but my books all tsk tsk tsk me for this since it means, apparently, that they won't bloom as well next year.

I think this is why my father focused his gardening entirely on desert succulents.

Anyway, I have to go mow the lawn now (another thing I want to get rid of). Here's a photo of a home I passed on one of my recent Portland hill walks. See how tidy the front yard is? Now, I'm sure they have an army of landscapers that come once a week, but I must say this appeals to me far more than the whole overgrown-messy cottage garden look (that my next door neighbor is currently sporting in her front yard).

I also really like the paint job on the house. White trim, black shutters. Lots of symmetry and clean lines. I also like the lamp. I just love the whole thing. I've told eBoy to make our house look like this and he just nodded and said he'd get right on it.

Okay, gotta go weed and mow, weed and mow. "Let's buy a house with a big yard! That'll be a lot of fun!" Grumble.

Hmmm...Biden

2008-08-23T10:36:00.001-07:00

I am not obsessing on this - that is *not* why I was up until 2am last night switching betwen CNN and a rebroadcast of the Mariners game that I had already watched earlier in the evening. Sigh. Insomnia sucks.

Um, Biden. I mean, Obama could do a lot worse. Doesn't exactly scream Change to me; but, as the chattering class will point out, it shores up Obama's "lack" of foreign policy experience (thus essentially validating the argument that Obama has a lack of foreign policy experience rather than strengthening the rebuttal that it's judgment, not length of time, that matters).

It'll be interesting to see how Biden's 2002 Aye vote in the Iraq war resolution plays out, considering that that's been Obama's main attack on a lot of his opponents thus far. I mean, sure Biden tried to repeal the authorized use of force and put forward a more narrowed version after it became clear that Bush had lied/was insane/didn't care/had lied. But that is pretty much screaming "Do over!" - and it didn't work anyway, but thanks for trying to close the barn door long after that horse has been murdered in the desert. Thanks!

My first thought last night was, um, if Biden is 65 now and, yahweh willing, Obama serves two terms, I don't think he's exactly going to be running for Prez in 8 years right? I mean, aren't we all making the argument now that McCain is a doddering, old crank at the age of 604? But i'll try to remind myself, let's get through this election first, we'll see what happens in 2016 in 2016.

But, he could do a lot worse than Biden. And maybe it will help with the Hardworking (read: uneducated and racist) Americans (but probably not). And Biden *is* entertaining. You never know what that man is going to say or how long he's going to say it for.

Anyway, at least we can move on to the convention now. I have to say that it just doesn't seem fair that the convention is on during the first week of school. I'm supposed to be focused on Diversity Concerns in Psychotherapy (eyeroll - the diversity focus in these classes is always SO stereotyped and simplistic, i.e., "Black People Like Church - so talk to them about religion"). (ooh, sidenote, I was reading a 2002 study that indicated a lack of concrete support in the medical/psych literature for the notion that religious activity provides health benefits, and it occurs to me that if I'm going to focus on health psychology, maybe my dissertation research can integrate that and my fascination with the psychology of religion too. THAT would be awesome, and hopefully I could produce something really controversial that would be banned in Kansas. Hee.)

By the way, can you believe the Olympics are *still* going on? We stopped watching those immediately after the opening ceremony. Huh.

I've stopped smiling for a while

2008-08-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

I don't really have the time to read up on how to make a snazzy looking blog. I've asked a few friends for help, but not a single one has ever responded to my plea (ahem). So, on the verge of deleting this thing all together since I'd grown bored with it, as you probably have - except for my dear parents, but let's face it, they would eat a cake I'd accidentally made with baking soda instead of baking power, so they're not exactly a discerning audience when it comes to my ramblings - instead of chucking the whole thing, despite the comments from friends that essentially say "who wants to read about what you have to say?", (okay, seriously, where does the comma go there or does it really matter since this entire thing is one long run on sentence) I've decided to eliminate the extra blogs, get rid of the gadgets, and just try to focus on at least one grumpy entry per day. It should be easy enough now since I'm clearly the oldest, grumpiest, least-showered person in my new graduate program, which by the way, I'm very excited about.

We had orientation yesterday and for the most part, it went well. But as you may know, I'm not very social. I mean, I wasn't rude or overly-weird, but I'm not one for get-to-know-you chit chat. I know enough people in this world and I only really like three of them.

We oriented about how to be a good student, how to be a good psychologist, the different specialization tracks, how to set up our wireless and printers. I skipped the chit chat at lunch (shutup) and went and played in the library. And I'm sure glad i wore a turtleneck sweater since it was 50 and raining out but 75 degrees inside.

It's pretty fucking obvious that I'm so much older (read: uh, sophisticated and worldly) than just about every other student - people mostly seemed to be in their 20s. There's about 30 in the cohort, and I think there are exactly 3 of us over 35 years old. Or at least 3 of us who aren't exactly aging spectacularly. And there only seemed to be 4 of us who are "advanced standing," (already have master's degrees) everyone else is right out of undergrad.

They're ADORABLE.

These kids were all the straight A students in their undergrad - very fresh faced and earnest. Exactly NOT like me in undergrad or anytime since. And, you know, YOUNG. Like it seems that a number of them currently have dogs that they've named after the brand of their first beer. Because they can still *remember* and want to celebrate their first beer. Like I said, just adorable.

I'm going to try place out of a lot of foundation sequence courses, but... it seems like a lot of my first year classes are going to be review anyway, which, HEY will be just fine since I'll be a bit distracted and tired and grumpy and old. Go for the easy A and plenty of time to watch Matlock.

Enough already....

2008-08-10T12:11:00.001-07:00

Since there is a direct correlation between the amount of network/television news one watches and levels of depression, I'm officially deleting Countdown with K.O., the nightly news, the local news, and Meet the Press from my Tivo. I'm also going to go on a Daily Show sabbatical. The rest of my tv viewing allotment shall hereby be spent on Gardening by the Yard on the Home and Garden Network, and the rest of this MLB season. (Now, I'm sure my parents are wondering when I shall find all this TV viewing time with school starting again, to which I say: Feh. Baseball is a terrific thing to have on in the background when studying. BTW, my antipathy for the NYY led me to put a few dollars on the Dodgers winning the series this year. Now I'm starting to looking like a freaking genius. Woot!)

I'm deleting HuffPo from my links and I'll only read the New yorker for the cartoons.

Now, since I'll be taking public transportation back n'forth to school, I don't need to worry about overdosing on Air America or NPR. I'm just going to go in a nice little cocoon of know-nothingness and everything will be all right again. Very soothing.

Dear John Edwards:

2008-08-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Stop calling what you did a "mistake." A "mistake" is balancing your checkbook and thinking you have $1200 when you actually have $200. What you did was a choice. A fully conscious choice. A choice made by so many before you and, I'm sure, will be made by countless others after you. You aren't special, you're a cliche. A stupid cliche. Please don't try to avoid accountability by saying you never loved her. It would be far better if you had - why ruin your political career, dash the hopes and ideals of those that supported you, dash your still-your-wife's political career, your children's belief in you, and - most important - your relationship with Elizabeth over some woman that you don't love? I hope your orgasm was worth it.

And I wish you hadn't made Elizabeth complicit in this debacle. I wish she hadn't stood up and campaigned for you, telling us that you "understood women" more than the other candidates. I believed her when she said that; I believed in your integrity because I believed in hers. Now I can just up the hopelessness and cynicism factor a few more notches.

Thank god you didn't clinch the nomination. Now just shut up and go away.

2008-08-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

Because I don't actually have time to blog, and because the essence of what I have to say is basically "Yeah: What he said," I will just cut n'paste Mark Morford's column onto my blog today and force you to read it. Please feel free to visit SFGate and buy things from their advertisers so I don't get yelled at for what is essentially...copyright infringement? Maybe? Is it if I give full credit and mention how Mark Morford still makes me drool physically and intellectually after all these years? Sigh.

By the way, I'd like to dedicate today's column to Steve Wiley and my sister Suzanne, the only two people brave enough to admit to my face that they voted for Bush both times.

Vote for Bush? Pay up
Did you help put America's worst prez into power? Time to make amends

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Sure, you could start with an open-palmed apology, a profoundly contrite on-your-knees sort of thing, maybe an open letter in your local paper or a heartfelt speech at your next dinner party whereby you stumble though some sort of "I don't know what the hell I was thinking" or "I must've been blind" or "Wow, that mescaline sure was potent" type of defense for your unfortunate and reprehensible choices.

But the fact is, that's not really gonna cut it.

Of course, you could do the obvious thing and cast your vote in November for Barack Obama, but even I know that's probably asking too much — and besides, all signs indicate a potential landslide for Obama anyway, given the unprecedented worldwide rush of positive energy, the tremendous cosmic craving for intelligent and new and ingenuous, coupled with a deep undercurrent of karmic revulsion toward the wonky, bloodthirsty agenda of grandpa McCain.

So then, what can you do, all you increasingly humiliated, disillusioned, deeply mistaken Bush voters? How can you, having hopefully realized by now the violent error of your ways, take steps both small and large to try and make amends for shoving Dubya down the throat of the world, for your tiny but oh so poisonous contribution to the worst and most demeaning eight years in modern American politics?

First, let's be clear: As tempting as it is, I do not suggest some grand humiliating gesture, some sweetly demeaning spectacle whereby you must dye your hair blue and run naked through the streets of rural Alabama waving a rainbow flag and carrying a bottle of fresh stem cells as you suddenly claim to care deeply about blue fin tuna and Brazilian rain forests and honest sex ed for teens. Unless you really want to.

Nor do I suggest, say, an immediate "Bush tax," whereby everything you ever purchase from now until you die will cost 10 percent more than it does for liberals, and every cent of it will go to the arts, and schools, and women's rights, and alternative fuels, and GLAAD, et al and so on. Don't get me wrong, it's a damn fine idea, just a bit unrealistic.

Let's keep it simple. The next time, say, gay marriage comes up in conversation, perhaps you say, well, you know, I don't really get the gay thing at all and certainly my anxiety about it is rooted somewhere too deep and sad to explore right now, but I've been doing a bit of actual homework (!), and it turns out that homosexuality is simply all over the animal kingdom, across all sorts of species, and animals seem to enjoy it for both survival and pleasure. Who knew?

In other words, nature seems to approve. And isn't nature merely God in a nice grass suit?

As your baffled pals pick their jaws up off the floor, you can add: Hell, science is pretty much proving homosexuality is biological anyway, not a "lifestyle" choice at all. And gays in the military? Hell, if the badass Israeli army can handle it, the United States sure as hell can, am I right? Now, pass me a stogie and let's go blast some canned pheasant with a shotgun.

See? It doesn't have to all be liberal tofu gobbledygook. I know that waking up to the contemptible wrongheadedness that was your support of the BushCo neocon agenda must be painful. Baby steps, honey. Baby steps.

Speaking of the military, maybe it's time you openly acknowledge that you actually can support our troops, enjoy your righteous sense of patriotism, think America is the world's greatest kick-ass whateveryoulike, and yet not think it's OK that a secretive and bloodthirsty cadre of inept leaders has wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of young American lives in a failed grab for power and petroleum and megalomania. You think?

Which brings up another point: It's also perfectly OK to make whatever you do sound like something you thought up, all by yourself. Yes, progressives have been urging you to raise your awareness of things humane and open-minded for eons. No matter. You can take all the credit. We're generous that way.

Let's say you do something as simple as trade in your massive American gas hog for a Mini Cooper. And now you find you really love your little German-engineered wonder, its handling and efficiency and joyous kick. Perfectly fine to hide your newfound refinement and tell your macho friends that you did it because you hate giving all that oil dough to those greedy Saudi sheiks — and what's more, now you can take corners at 50 mph without rolling over and bursting into flame. Cool, no?

While you're at it, mention to your buds that the steaks they're eating are actually locally raised and grass-fed, not because you give a good goddamn about humane animal treatment or toxic industrial feedlots (though you really should), but because the meat tastes better and costs less and you wanna save some dough to, you know, buy more guns and porn. Hey, whatever works.

But don't stop there. Might as well tell your homies to throw their food scraps in your new compost bin, too, not because you care about garbage, but because you learned how to cultivate some great topsoil in which to grow your heirloom tomatoes for your famous spaghetti sauce for NASCAR night. Look at you! Actually caring about the health and the environment, but pretending not to! Hey, it's a start.

How about secretly beginning to note the overarching brilliance of, say, Dan Savage as well as the nauseating rancidity of Ann Coulter? Or stick a Cabela's catalog cover over an issue of Mother Jones or the Nation, and read it with an open mind and a bottle of premium chilled sake? Or realize, with increasing sense of shame, that across just about every social and environmental issue, the hippies were pretty much right about everything, no matter what you thought of the clothes and the music and the hair? Now you're getting it.

Don't forget the money. Feel free to make a series of large, anonymous donations to the Sierra Club, or a local battered women's shelter, or even Planned Parenthood. Trust me when I say, the odds are shockingly good your own daughter/son/wife will be incredibly grateful for their wise and informed counsel someday soon, if she or he hasn't been already.

You get the idea? Really, compared with the disgusting levels of damage wrought by your support of the dark armies of Bush, these suggestions are nothing. You actually owe quite a bit more. OK, a lot more. Incalculable, really.

But for now, let's be reasonable. After all, the sooner you realize that the world is, in fact, not America's bitch, that it's actually a living, humming organism, interconnected and interdependent in ways and on levels no organized religion or fear-based neocon political agenda can possibly comprehend, much less bomb into submission, well, the sooner we can get our collective s— together and move the human experiment forward once again.

And after what you've put us all through, it's the very least you could do.

when did I ever have the time to sit around

2008-08-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

tip tap tapping on a laptop for hours on end?

No news to report from here just yet. My last day at work is on Thursday (squee!) and then I have two weeks off before school. Maybe I'll stop by the gym and clear out some of the cobwebs.

A Lovely Portland Hill Walk

2008-07-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

We recently purchased Portland Hill Walks and decided to mount our first exploration this morning.

It was an appropriately gray and cloudy day, lest we become confused.

The first walk takes you up into Willamette Heights, full of extraordinary front gardens, parking strips overladen with roses and wisteria (seriously, wisteria in a parking strip), and gigantic, seemingly-empty mansions, each of which sort of dumbfounded us a little bit more. By the end, Eboy looked at me and just sighed, wow, our house sucks. These houses were a little over the top. I kept thinking, um, how many people live in there? Squeaky Fromme, is that you?

I love this entryway, spilling over with climbing roses:

And as you go along, you find yourself suddenly in Forest Park, crossing a early 20th century bridge that serves only one home - which has served as a home for unwed mothers for the last 50 or so years. (they still have those?) And then we turn up into the park, passing this huge watertank (that hopefully no one will go swimming in) - those tiny little things in front of it are of course eBoy and Abby.

Finally we made our way upto Leif Erikson Drive (formally known as Hillside Drive for obvious reasons but then changed after a petition by the Fraternal Order of Sons of Norway (or something like that). From there, we meandered over to Aspen Drive, where each home got a little crazier than the next.

At this point, I stopped taking pictures because a) I was a little overwhelmed and b) these seemed to be the sort of folks that would release the hounds should they catch you taking pictures of their home.

Besides, this whole taking pictures thing is still new to me, so I kept forgetting.

But I thought this was fun: one home had made a little Jurassic Scene in the grassy area of their parking strip. Very clever, these Portlanders.

And then we had to cut our walk short out of Forest Park because eBoy got hungry. Sigh. Stay tuned for more walks!

The current state of the back yard

2008-07-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

This gardening business is a daily exploration of trial and error. While I have exactly 38 books on gardening, it seems to not make a lick of difference when I'm just staring at a wilted petunia wondering where the hell I've gone wrong. You know why most gardeners seems to be in their 60s? Because it takes 30 years of this shit before you'll admit it to the public.

But the vegetable garden (created and maintained by eBoy of course - he's of the "stick-it-in-the-ground-and-see-what-happens" persuasion) seems to be going gangbusters. Sigh.

Although I still think he desecrated our lawn and still owes an apology to the pear tree.

So, as you can see, the pumpkin is steadily making its way towards the house, where it will eventually curl around our necks as we sleep while forming pods that encase zombie-like humanoids that looks just like us.

Also, the zucchini appears to be....um, healthy.

I'm hoping to spend all weekend working on the new back perennial bed - but i still need to get a better idea of what i'm trying to do. At this point in the summer, I don't know if it would just be a better idea to put some fall flowering annuals down and just keep working on a plan. It's all so much harder than it looks.

I have sunk firmly into suburban middle age.

2008-07-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

Well, things have been a little crazy around here lately - for the last 16 months or so, so forgive the lack of blogging. Not that anyone tunes in here anymore anyway. And why should you? It's like ctrl freak's blog, which hasn't been updated since February and sometimes you just have to let go and realize that an era is coming to an end.

Not this chick though. I've got plenty of schmaltz and chutzpah and other yiddish nouns with the wrong connotation still left in me.

Last weekend, we had our official "wedding reception" - a nice little backyard affair with my family, E's family, and some friends. Very casual, very lovely. Before that we spent a great day touring wine country, visiting the aviation museum, and staying in a KILLER b&b with e's parents and mine. It was simply heavenly. Of course, you can never really tell if e's parents are enjoying themselves, but I talked to my sister in law (she reminds me of Talia shire in the 3rd godfather, only of the yenta persuasion) and she said they haven't stopped gushing about it since returning home. So this is good news.

School starts next month. I'm currently working three jobs. The garden is coming along well. I have another perennial bed to work on this weekend. I went down to the Oregon Garden this weekend - and I so excited to make an entire day of it, but then after I got there, I realized that I had forgotten to take a claritin that morning and I had such a terrible attack of allergies. I ended up scratching my eye with my own contact lens while rubbing it, so that it became VERY painful, and I ended up having to leave after only being there an hour. And then I had to drive home with one eye, at about 25 miles per hour, which was very scary. I was so goddamn sad about the whole thing. And then I got home and took a nap with eboy and all the family pets, because this seems to be what we're mostly capable of when the mercury rises about 75.

So this is to say, I was hoping to get some ideas for the garden when I was down in Silverton this weekend, but alas and alack, this was not to be. I'm hoping to go down there again this weekend. It really is a beautiful place. Seriously, click on the link. Anyway this time, I'll take my glasses, my visine, and a big freaking mainline of antihistamine before I go.

Oh, it's my birthday day after tomorrow. We're headed out to a local place that my parents gave us a gift certificate for. We'll probably be home in bed (asleep) by 9pm.

More than eight years later, aren't you offended enough yet?

2008-07-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

You know, I used to think I was pessimistic, but now I can't even keep up. I have almost no faith in the dem's ability to fight fire with fire. But it's interesting watching nonetheless. I don't know how much a petition is actually going to do. Don't you get it people? They DON'T CARE what you think. They'll just keep lying and attacking and destroying the country. No petition, no protest, no getting-it-on-the-record is going to make them stop.

But seriously? the cognitive dissonance in Michelle Malkin's head must be deafening.

Here's your problem: someone set this garden on Evil.

2008-07-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I have looked into the eye of the Beast and it is Oxalis Cornaculata, a particularly nasty weed in my yard. Ugh. I spend one weekend, ONE WEEKEND focused on the back yard, and my front rose and lily beds erupt all over again in these little suckers - and yes, I have been digging out the roots. it is my nemesis!!

My next job is to throw down about four inches of mulch to see if that helps. And I have to spray my roses this weekend because they're grappling with a particularly heavy case of black spot this year.

By the way, if you ever buy a house and you're thinking, oh wouldn't it be lovely to get a yard....FORGET IT. Get yourself a nice condo or townhouse. Just keeping up with the maintenance in this yard is a full time job, let alone try to improve it or do something worthwhile with it. Sigh.

In addition to all that, I have taken two claritin, 4 squirts of nasonex, and about a gallon of visine this morning - and I'm still a mucusey, itchy, sneezy wreck. I've just informed eHubby that I will be moving next week to Arizona or New Mexico. Two words: Rock Garden.