February 2006

Not the unofficial war in Iraq (Congress didn’t declare war, and you can’t declare war on some group of people that isn’t a country). The one for my parking space.

Two and a half years ago, we were assigned a covered stall, at the far end of our building. I remember being curious about the placement of the stall - the one furthest from us - but since ‘furthest’ involved a difference of all of six feet, who cares? Last month a group of college kids moved in and brought with them four or five cars, plus those of transient friends, and they’ve been using all three covered stalls as much as they are here.

It wouldn’t be a big deal if there weren’t a few move-ins. All the uncovered spots are usually full by the time I get home after yoga/Tuesday night class. There’s a guy in the next building over competing for a nice large parallel parking area in front of my window - his huge black Escalade vs. my neighbor’s F150. Roommate and I have decided that the first one home grabs any open spot, and leaves the covered stall for the other, which only works if the spot is actually free.

To make matters worse, a series of notes has established that the kids think our spot of long standing is theirs and WE should check with the management. Which, okay, we will. But I have the feeling either the management made a mistake and double-booked a single spot, and/or the kid is hanging tough, cause they’re using ALL the spots and have no cause to get lippy. One spot per apartment, kids. Tell your friends.

So the next edict they get will come from management, and the next random Nissan will get towed, because I don’t want to fight about it.

I have the feeling I’m more stressed about this than I would normally be because of all the anxiety of last Friday. But I’m gonna settle what I can settle.

ETA: and wala! in fact, the management of 2 years ago gave us the wrong space. Still not caring. Just want A space. They’re supposed to issue a letter to the occupants of the three apartments delineating which is whose, and that should be the final word in “stay out of my parking spot.” Don’t make me come over there!

1. studied with a friend for the certification test for … six hours or so. We took breaks for yoga and dinner and margaritas. I think next time I will make the margaritas — I was pretty lightheaded for a while and started reading the material aloud in cartoon voices. One margarita shouldn’t do that.

2. spent two hours with a client who ended up being committed. It’s my first time dealing with that, and I was the only therapist in the office on a Friday afternoon. I think in future that client will be showing up on Tuesdays when we have a full house from now on. It was wrenching to watch EMTs trying to hold down someone I’m fond of. Kept me up late and slept in late, so only showed up in time for an hour of yoga Saturday morning instead of the two hours I’d hoped for. Still recovering; at least I’m not endlessly mulling over and planning out the next conversation with Client as I was Friday night.

3. the crisis interrupted a discussion with a therapist who is arranging office space, so that on Thursdays I can see children. It’s going to be an hour each way commute. I still have details to iron out and paperwork to complete so the hours count. I’m a little worried about what the therapist/supervisor thought of me disappearing like that, but at the time I was afraid to leave Client alone.

4. my roommate departed for LA to attend a training on Friday morning. Empty apartments are not good for anxious people. I will use this experience to inform my treatment of anxiety ridden clients, no doubt.

5. Going to get storage media today. Debating between another external drive and lots of DVDRWs. Don’t forget to back up soon.

Okay, so I heard back from the supervisor o’ the other clinic. She’s sorting out when she wants me, i.e. when an office is available. I’m not sure if it will be available. Also not sure how it’s going to work with the current schedule.

I have 100 of 300 hours necessary to graduate, six weeks into a 17 week semester. That’s 200 hours in 11 weeks I need to do. If I get 20 hours a week, I’m done. I did 17 this week. Oooooo, gonna be close.

crosses fingers

Recipe for madness.

Ingredients: one cat. one internet connected computer. one office chair.

1. sit in chair and face computer.
2. surf, download, check email.
3. watch cat saunter into room and coil furry self around ankles.
4. repeat 2.
5. cat, realizing that the Power of Cute failed, leaps into lap and stands with tail vertical and head turned at optimal eye contact angle, turning on the Cat Mind Control Device(tm)
6. telepathic waves of feedmefeedmefeedme bounce off skull toughened by the warm rays of the internet
7. notice cat isn’t moving, and place hand firmly on cat butt - SHOVE.
8. repeat 2
9. repeat 5, 6, 7, 8, until skull melts, brain turns to mush, and cat finally gains control over body, forcing you into the kitchen to open a can of stinking meat product.
10. return to the internet to recover from evil influence of cat telepathy.
11. notice cat has returned and curled up on your wrists, utilizing now full, fat and sassy catness to inflict carpal tunnel on your flimsy girlie arms and telepathically ordering your body to eminate warmth and comfort.
12. repeat 7.
13. repeat 2.
14. repeat 7, 2, 7… until it’s bedtime.
15. curl up in bed. Notice cat has curled up three inches from you, purring, now beaming instructions to eminate warmth for cat’s benefit and not move an inch now that it’s comfortable.

I could go on and on. I’ll just be off… for some reason I have the urge to open a can of stinking meat product.

Today, I spent four hours of my life in training. I saw a familiar face up in the front row - turns out I was an undergrad with this guy like 20 years ago, and he did the “hey, aren’t you….” and I said “yeah, I am.”

I never would have imagined this guy would turn up as a social worker. He was on a totally different career path back then. But, like me, life had its way with him. I remembered him as having a lot more energy and a happier smile - and I wonder, do I look like that? Have I lost energy? Then I remembered that no, I was pretty much a doorstop while I was an undergrad. No extracurricular anything. Long naps. Trips to the cafeteria for Cap’n Krunch. Books. Books. and more Books.

Yeah, I’m gonna be 40 this year, but it’ll be an energetic 40.

Yoga!

.. but not without twisting its arm. For some reason my Powerbook, after months of reconnecting and disconnecting and reconnecting with the wireless router, went crackers and wouldn’t do it even after the router reconnected to the internet. I turned Airport off and on a bunch of times, restarted, rebooted, re-rebooted, made faces, begged, offered it chocolate, did a loose interpretation of Dance of Pleading to the Internet Gods, re-re-rebooted, used dialup, and googled for answers.

Finally I wandered off into the nonsensical. I went into network settings and changed the password to the wrong thing. Then tried again. Then changed it back to correct. Still nothing. I ran the “network diagnostic” button from safari — then it finally said, hey, duuuuh, there’s the internet! Which still gives the Mac a leg up on Windows — resorting to the help button in Windows generally gives you all kinds of information you didn’t really need, while apparently Macs make the help function… helpful.

What a concept.

My DSL inexplicably died last night. (Dropping me out of AIM and everything else I had going - sorry, Jemima.)

This morning it was still blinking orange on the router - the DSL signal is there but I’m not able to login to the network, So I’m on dialup trying to pay some bills and unable to open the bank page.

They’re testing the service this morning - hopefully they fix it soon. Gah. Arg.

I got home from yoga (two hours!) needing a shower, and of course, the water’s turned off. This not notifying residents of such things is really really really really getting old. I’ve been sitting here for three hours waiting around in my bathrobe, and not having coffee or a shower or anything I normally have, cause there’s no water to even cook anything — we ate cheesesticks for brunch because they bake and don’t require much cleaning up after.

So I’m hating the complex managers. I could have picked up bottled water on the way home instead of getting all the way there, taking off my clothes, realizing there is no way to un-sweaty myself and make myself presentable, and go mad by degrees as the dudes putter around and “go for parts.”

I may have mentioned that at the clinic, I have a clinical supervisor who reviews my case notes and general therapeutic behavior, and an admin supervisor who looms about the halls telling people to attend training seminars and meetings and generally keeping his finger on everyone’s pulse.

Today I asked him about hours with kids - know any placements where I can do child/family therapy? Behold! The opportunity awaits! I have to drive a 45 mile round trip once a week, but in California terms, that’s nothing - I used to do a 30 mile round trip for high school. All he’s waiting for is a green light from the clinical supervisor for that region.

And of course, the groups-for-children-of-divorce program I’m trying to get on board with is on the same day as the commute-to-clinic, but I may be able to change that around. And if I do, that means Wednesdays off, four days of clinic time, and Wednesday night playing with kids. Hmmm.

I don’t know why I didn’t ask the admin supe sooner. The guy has his finger on the pulse of every clinic within a hundred mile radius.

In random news, it’s freezing cold, it’s raining, and I’m gonna light me a fire and curl up with a book and hot cocoa, go me. Friday! Three day weekend! Wooo!

The school bought one copy of the study guide for the test on April 22. Now they are too honest and law-abiding to make copies for the test takers. This is a licensing exam in most other states, and a professional credential in California, and I had to pay 250 interest-bearing dollars to register for it. So, a little concerned about that. Thank you, Amazon, for second hand study guides.

And, on top of the absence of study stuff and the lateness of informing us there would be no study stuff, the school schedules the meeting to orient test takers and provide tips and tricks on passing it during my Tuesday class. Strike Two!

Job interview results: eh. Going through the motions, I called to check and they are still interviewing. 15 mins. per interview times two weeks? That’s a lot of applicants to review. At this rate they may make a decision… oh, about 2008. And I thought County Mental Health moved at glacial speeds.

I am millimeters from telling the job I’m quitting. Now, I really would do better to hang in there and make the rent (even though it doesn’t pay much other than that) because the rent, she is nothing to sneeze at. With the unexpected forty dollar increase, I had to cut back on the grocery trips. I am now eating those cup-a-soup thingies that I refer to as “styrafoam noodles” because, well, yeah. I went to the store tonight and got one artichoke, one package of sausage, and one medicated chapstick. Oh, and two half gallons of ice cream because I am a total sucker for two-for-one sales, and ice cream is the fifth food group stop-looking-at-me-like-that.

But the job is driving me nuts. I’m thinking, counseling is where I need to be full time, because I can sit there all the livelong day listening to people who have no motivation, no ability to self regulate, no discipline, no capacity for taking another single minute of the torment of their depression, and I can talk to them and listen and ask questions like “if you leave here today are you going to be all right? do you think you can make it, or should I call the crisis center and take you over and have you admitted? because we don’t want to let you go if you intend to commit suicide.” Yet going to the job and listening to the bickering that results from certain individuals not wanting to listen to each other and acknowledge points made? AARRRRR. Business is easy, people! Get with the program!

Which isn’t to say there aren’t clients I’d rather not see — how do you do anything therapeutic with someone who’s high? I’m still figuring that one out, because he keeps showing up that way. But you know, when you prefer sitting in a room with a guy who’s flying higher than the clouds rambling about his youthful transgressions and all the ones that came after that to sitting in a room listening to sales people argue about who’s really paying salaries here, and you don’t know what you’re doing, and come ON just do your job! Well, there’s a message here.

The only solution I see is drop-kicking the job. Being available five days a week for group therapy and training and client sessions will get me to graduation faster, and saner. Though poorer.

Mick was right, you can’t always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need. wooo! wooo!

My Job o’ Small Paychecks changed over their web page to a new server and hired a company to re-do th esite complete with online shopping basket and all. So the two email addresses I was using for various purposes weren’t available for a few weeks.

Today, I was told ‘call this person and ask to get the email addresses set up again.’ So I did.

Lady: All right, just email me what addresses you want and –

Me: How?

Lady: — because I don’t want to spell them wrong. My email address is –

Me: … I don’t have an email account yet. That’s why I called.

Lady: Well. All right. huff

Right-o. I’ll email you with my mind.

And she acted like I was the one who didn’t understand?

I figured out today who my Tuesday professor reminds me of. It’s not how he looks, it’s how he sounds.

To whit — just like David Schwimmer. I’m being taught correlation coefficients and statistical validity by Ross from Friends. He even has some of the goofy verbal tics. “uhhh…”

I almost laughed out loud in class today when I realized it.

I like Metaquotes. Where else can you find riffs on everyday life that include Chai and Star Trek and Vin Diesel all in the same post? (Vin Diesel would have to guest star as the representative of his own species. Something big and violent, perhaps resembling a triceratops.)

Anyway, I visit a couple times a week, and often one of the regulars posts using the icon with Snape weaving back and forth against a flashing background of color. It’s hypnotic. I got to the bottom of the page and realized that I had started to weave and bob just like the Snape in the icon. And at the bottom of the page, there was another Snape icon in which he whirls around — again, mesmerized. At this point I realized that perhaps I should go to bed, because I don’t feel very well and obviously the bacteria have reached my cerebellum and reduced me to a head-bobbing vegetable.

Either that, or Alan Rickman has Teh Awwsome Power of Hypnosis!

1. laundry

2. groceries

3. Dr. Who

4. Writing

5. burning DVDs, cleaning out hard drive

6. Writing

7. Carrying VHO (very heavy objects) - roommate went to Home Depot and lo, there be gardening here!

8. Futile trip to library - Helmuth still evasive. Interlibrary request initiated.

9. Cheap shiraz.

10. Dr. Who

… I am inscrutable.

And now, I am rather speechless about that.

I take books to read when I go to the clinic, just for days like today when three out of the four people scheduled call to cancel. (Which is a notch above the infamous “just doesn’t show up” — at least I’ve made that much of an impact on some of these folks. I tend to cut most of the clients a lot of slack, because I imagine that if I were hearing voices shouting in my ear that the cops were coming for me and the power strip I’m using to plug in the fan is bugged by THEM, I wouldn’t pay much attention to clocks either. Who knows what kind of voice comes from clocks?)

Usually the books are recent-published “keep up with the latest theory” kinds of tomes — not so thick, not so very steeped in psychodynamic (the latest iteration of Freud’s pet theories) theory. I checked a book out of the library that’s easily three inches thick, by a psychiatrist named Yalom. I’m familiar with him from a textbook for a class - the guy writes these long, lazy, anecdote-laden books about his approach to group therapy or just general therapy, and you could seriously hurt someone with them. Yalom has also written novels, logically involving a therapist in some way or another, and a few smaller books containing case studies or essays. Right now I’m in the middle of “Existential Therapy” which is his synthesis of a lot of the older theorists’ approaches, including Freud, Bandura, and a host of others you might not recognize. Including Helmuth Kaiser. I am now interested in finding Kaiser’s work; he wrote very little, a book and a play, and I am most interested in the play. But. He doesn’t exist at Amazon, or any of the usual places online. He doesn’t exist at the library, college or public. I found only one website with his name, the rest were all referencing Kaiser Wilhelm.

I have a professor who recently found two first edition copies of C.S. Lewis books in his storage unit. He has two sheds and a 10×10 storage full of books — I guess he’s been keeping them since the early 50’s. I asked him about this Kaiser fellow and he knew who it was, just not whether he had anything he wrote.

I’m thinking I’ll email Yalom. He has a website, after all. Maybe he has a copy he can scan? I’m guessing it’s so old that the texts are public domain…. Hmmm.

ETA: Well, that was fast. He emailed me within a couple hours of sending one to him and gave me a head’s-up to the editor of Kaiser’s work. It turns out that I was spelling Helmuth with a single L and amazon has two L’s, otherwise I would have found it without bugging people. Oh well!

I have such mixed feelings right now. Just blew into the apartment for lunch after the fated interview. It’s for a therapist position on a school campus - not a school counseling position, but a therapist on campus to do crisis intervention and therapy with kids and families.

I totally muffed the interview. But, I have my reservations about working on a campus anyway. And, they would lay off every summer with no benefits for three months. So I wouldn’t want the position, but I muffed the interview! Arrr!

Maybe I’m being hard on myself. Maybe now that my first interview as an intern is over, the rest will be easier. But there was just something about being told “fifteen minute interview” combined with “here’s some scenarios” and the umpteen times I had to sign waiver this and hold harmless that — I don’t know. I think I briefly had an out of body experience.

I totally had my head on straight going in there, I thought. Man. I get it all together, and leave it in the car.

I was talking to someone the other day who has this “Great Idea” for a novel. Several things struck me at once.

1. This Someone is really, really afraid of dying. Really afraid. The plot of the novel was such that it practically shouted “live forever, yeah!”

2. From the sounds of it, if completed this thing would be longer than Stephen King’s The Stand. Stand weighs in over a thousand pages. He hasn’t even started writing. Classic wannabe writerism.

3. No one would want to read the thing. The most accurate title would be “A Humongous Work of Staggering Hubris: Marty Stu’s Adventures Across the Space Time Continuum”

I’ve heard it said that everyone’s got a book in them. Sometimes I think a laxative will fix that better than anything else could.

1. When you have a job interview in a couple of days, do not attempt to fill ink cartridges.

2. “I’m turning into a Smurf” is not going to be received well when explaining your blue finger to someone who’s never heard of Smurfs.

3. Eight episodes of Northern Exposure in a row is too much exposure. You will hate the banter and the obliviousness of the locals by about episode six. In other words, don’t OD on the quirkiness — space out the DVDs on your netflix queue.

In this Boing Boing post we are shown how to make scrambled eggs suspended on boiling water to avoid a stuck-on mess while using nonstick pans, because people are shifting away from using Teflon due to recent reports of toxicity.

We parrot owning people who bother to research the intricacies of owning birds know already that Teflon is bad stuff — we’re warned repeatedly in parrot forums and bird books that if you leave a Teflon pan on the stove and it overheats, any birdies in the house will be dooooooomed, because they can’t take toxicity the way we humans can. Well, I’ve always been of the opinion that we should learn from the old canary in a coal mine trick — if it’s bad for the bird, it’s bad for me. Teflon flakes off into the food as the pan ages, too. And who’s to say the pan isn’t giving off the toxic gas in smaller amounts even when it’s not overheated? I use stainless steel.

I also don’t tend to use a lot of cleaning sprays around the house. On hard surfaces I use Bon Ami, the non abrasive powder cleaner, and in the bathroom I usually use plain ol’ bleach in the toilet and ventilate very well. Around the stove I use some of the usual suspects, like 409 and oven cleaner, but the pets are removed from the area during the worst of it, as am I, and I open all the windows. And the oven cleaning has been unnecessary in this apartment, because we put an aluminum pan in the bottom to catch “stuff.”

The Lovely Bones (2007)

Only bad things can happen when Jackson makes a movie from a marginally-treacly novel about a dead girl talking about her murder and the aftermath. The supernatural elements of the novel were what nearly killed it for me — I could have suspended disbelief if Sebold had simply let the girl narrate the story without the framing device, but she felt she had to explain how the girl was managing to tell a story after she’s dead. I really could have done without the love-in by proxy (which only makes sense if/when you do get to that point in the text, and therefore I consider a non spoilery spoiler). I do not want to see that scene, nor any of the other heavenly realm scenes, rendered by Peter Jackson. No doubt Andy Serkis in a special suit will star in some CGI role as an angel, or possibly as the heaven-dwelling little girl?

No. No, no, no.

Tangentially, if you have not read “Lucky” by Alice Sebold, it’s a better read. Autobiographical and tough to get through because of it, but to me, it had more emotional integrity.

Man Held in Bar Attack Dies After Shootout

This story of a kid who shot up a gay bar and rabbited from police, got in a shootout, and now is dead. It’s been all over the news. People all over blogdom/LJ comment on it — I’ve been cruising through friendslists and noting the reactions.

I can understand a certain amount of anger, horror, etc. because the kid was all up into the Nazi-ness and so forth, and any 18 year old going out of control and shooting people is just Not Good. What I’m seeing in addition to the anger is harsh judgement of the parents — I wonder, at what point do kids become separate entities? Because I seem to recall being not-much-into-hanging-with-the-’rents somewhere around preteen age, 12-14, and doing my own thing and reading what I wanted to read from the library, and thinking my own thoughts, which were very different from the things my parents seemed to be thinking. Excoriating parents up one side and down the other for a teen’s misbehavior isn’t my natural reaction — I feel bad for the parents, who probably stressed and tore their hair out over this kid. If your kid got a tattoo of a swastika wouldn’t you worry? Without real proof of parental indifference, I won’t go to the Bad Place of Parental Damnation.

How much control do you think you’d have over a teenager? If your kid hung up a Nazi propaganda poster, and you said ‘take it down’ and the kid threatened to run away from home and live in the street — what do you value more? The kid’s physical well being, for which you are legally and morally responsible until he’s 18, or not having that poster on your wall?

There are elements of the story that do puzzle me — the kid had a relationship with a 33 year old woman? Most articles say nothing about his family. This was all I came up with (I admit I’m not spending lots of time googling about this) — I quote:

Mr. Robida lived in New Bedford in a three-story white house on County Street with lace curtains in the second-story window. His father left when he was young, Ms. Silva said. His mother was ill throughout his childhood with heart problems and diabetes. Roughly a year ago, doctors amputated her leg, friends said.

Mr. Robida’s only sibling is a 13-year-old sister, Morgan.

Mr. Robida attended New Bedford High School and Dartmouth High School but never finished, according to school records. He dropped out of Dartmouth High in December 2003, eventually attending night school without earning a degree, according to school records.

After leaving school, friends recalled he briefly sorted clothes at the Salvation Army in New Bedford and then worked construction with his father.

In his spare time, he and fellow Insane Clown Posse [band with violent lyrics] fans met at one another’s houses. They played video games, watched television and “chilled.” The friends said Mr. Robida didn’t have a girlfriend and that he smoked marijuana, but nothing stronger.

When police searched Mr. Robida’s house on County Street following the shooting, they found Nazi regalia and anti-Semitic writing on his bedroom walls, according to a police affidavit. Friends said he also wore a fake swastika tattoo on his thumb, but quickly said they’d never heard him express disdain or hatred for anyone.

“He did have Nazi flags in his room, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person,” Ms. Silva said.

Other friends called it a phase, paraphernalia Mr. Robida was drawn to without any real thought or malice.

So what’s the real story? We don’t know. It doesn’t sound like he had a lot to do with his parents. They make it sound like he’s got his own house, or is renting a room apart from his parents. His mom’s disabled. He has some contact with his dad but who knows how much or the quality of it. Another kid from a broken home, learning to fend for himself.

If you want to blame someone, Blogdom, I think you need to consider that the kid thought for himself and did for himself, and there’s really no one to blame but him, ultimately. The parents probably feel enough self recrimination without your help. What do you expect a single mom with heart problems to do? They’re human. They’re probably like a lot of parents whose kids don’t go on shooting rampages. Bottom line, NONE OF US knows enough about the situation to judge, so what’s with the finger-pointing?

The clinic is now more relaxing than work. I got to the Job Place after spending most of the day waiting for clients who didn’t show ( I read when that happens, usually something therapy or school related so it counts toward hours spent preparing for therapy) and felt like I ought to do some crisis intervention. Boss is a completely square peg, and Marketing Guy is… a marketing guy. All about the concept, man. The atmosphere was tense when I got there. I stuck my earphones in and listened to crosby stills & nash while trying to get the accounting software to cough up numbers. (Rumors that I was caught singing Cecelia off key are totally false. Really. I was SO on key.)

And now it’s Friday, and the interview is Wednesday, and I’m nervous. Like, this isn’t just trainee freebie stuff any more. This is where all those lectures on self talk get applied to the Self.

Self, you have a lot to offer, and you have as much chance at the job as any nearly-graduated therapist.

Two hours of yoga in the morning! Whee! Ought to help for a while, anyway.

I just wish the apartment management had chosen a better time to rip all the paneling off the outside of the apartment. I got home to a total mess, nails all over the walk, boards here and there, and six guys with hammers and power tools ripping nails out, hammering nails in, and toting plywood back and forth. My poor pets. The bird was thrashing around and the cats were clingy. “Eek! strange people! Big noise!” Then, “Feed us!” At least some things were normal….

… and I know where it landed.

I have been seeking a secondary placement. At first, I was afraid the clinic would go belly up. Now it appears it won’t. I say ‘appears,’ because no one’s said anything definite, but the atmosphere there is less fraught with peril than before. Now that I’ve talked to a few people about various placements, I’m starting to get excited about adding some variety to my schedule and leaving Dull Office Job With Side Order of Rabid Conservative.

I’ve spoken to two different people, one supervising a substance abuse facility where they also employ therapists — not all substance abuse programs are alike, and a substance abuse counselor is not the same thing at a therapist; I did not realize this myself until I was confronted by one who had a really shaky idea of counseling ethics — and one who supervises a clinic specializing in getting folks off the medications. Let’s just say that working at either place while simultaneously working at the clinic I’m presently at would be like traveling from the north pole to the equator every day. Like, completely different methodology, completely opposite notion of ethical and appropriate. Still, both have opportunities for play therapy with kids, or other sorts of experiences anyway.

Enter the voice mail. My phone periodically does not ring when I get a call, and not because I silenced it — and so it did just that today. I had sent a resume to a center affiliated with the county that does family therapy, child therapy and parenting classes, and supposed that I would not hear anything because it was a response to an ad in the paper for a paid position, and though I am in my final semester there are plenty of graduates floating about who no doubt applied. The voice mail was to inform me that if I was still interested I needed to call back and set up an interview on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Excuse me while I roll around squeeing for a bit.

There. Back now.

Yes, it’s not “I got the job” — but at this point an “I MIGHT GET THE JOB” is cause for joy. I could send back some of the student loan money. I could stop subsisting on boiled eggs until I make it to next month’s grocery budget. I could be a real live paid adult type person and not a starving student! Sometimes I start to feel like a second class worker drone. I don’t have my own office, don’t have a salary, don’t go to meetings…. Well, I could live without the meetings. But signs of being Taken Seriously would be cool.

I’ll be chanting that forever. I made the mistake of responding to “did you watch the State of the Union Address” with “No, I only listen to delusional people when I’m getting paid to do it.” I thought I could get away with a joke. I was so wrong.

OOOOOOh, eighteen rounds, and ten rounds more. “You d*** liberal!” “Uh, no.” “Well what are you then?” “I’m apolitical — I think they’re all lying bastards.” Well, it was simpler than the long explanation. I’m probably on the liberal side of centrist, actually. But I knew Boss was conservative Republican, I knew better than to expect anything but a round of “let’s convert you!” and at least I’m a short-termer at this job.

I don’t know what it is — every conservative I’ve ever met feels it’s their duty to debate me into the ground, and every dem I’ve met is always the first to shrug and drop the subject in group discussion. From now on, my reaction to anyone of any belief system, religious or otherwise, who comes at me with both barrels blazing: blank stare, head shake, and a sigh. Exit, stage right. Because I would rather discuss things than have what I say bounce off someone’s head. Because true conversation is give and take, not ignore and attack. I don’t care if you think Bush is the bee’s knees, or Kerry’s swell, or Clinton is the anti-christ — I care more about you respecting me enough to let me make up my own mind, one way or the other.

My last words were “I don’t do extremes, because they result in hostility between otherwise sensible people. So stop asking me whose side I’m on. I’m on everyone’s side, if you really want an answer.” Because I am. I can agree to disagree, and still like the other person at the end of it.

Yeah, venting. Also, waiting for a quiche to come out of the oven. A yoga session and a hot quiche go a long way toward restoring harmony, not to mention a full stomach.