A Day of Firsts

This is the first time I've really voted FOR a candidate, not just against one.

This is the first time I've understood what it means to run a positive campaign, not just a less-negative one.

This is the first time I've felt like a part of something bigger, something momentous, something historic.

This is the first time I feel hopeful, and the first time I understand what that feeling actually is.

This is the first time I've seen a politician actually act *presidential*.

This is the first time I have felt so, so proud to vote.

This is the first time I've felt like I've seen the potential future of this country and cried for joy.

The unseen eye

I had a weird experience today that is becoming more and more common. A girl I had never met before was waiting in the hallway with me to speak to a professor. She looked and me and said, "I think I've observed you in the clinic downstairs." Since undergraduates in the program need to have a certain number of observation hours (25 in all), and since they can watch our sessions in the clinic on the first floor, this is not unheard of.

The weirdest part of it all is realizing how very many people have likely watched me in sessions that may or may not have gone well, and knowing that they now have some impression of me as a clinician, as well as knowing that I might have shaped their view of the field in some way. Frightening, since I'm by now means an expert at what I am doing and and still learning so much every day.

Then again, maybe I'm not nearly as well known in reality as in my head, and perhaps it's only a few people who have observed me. Either way, it's nice to get to meet some of those people who you never even knew were behind that one-way mirror.

On having no time

I just have time for a quick note this morning before I set off on my typical twelve-hour day of meetings, clients and class.

I have been thinking a lot about the passage of time, how short life really is, and the way we spend our time. I think seeing my husband only for an early morning goodbye kiss when he leaves for work and a goodnight kiss when one of us comes home late at night while the other is still in bed might have something to do with it. On good days, we get to eat dinner together at 9 PM before we both retreat to our computers to finish our work for the night. I know this is a necessary time in our lives to get to where we want to be, but I don't love it.

Is my time best spent in endless meetings and three hour classes? What exactly is all this "work" I need to do everyday? What purpose is it all serving? Some of it is useful, either to me or to someone else, but some of it simply is not worth the time spent doing it. Not that I have a choice in the matter right now. And I will probably always have to do pointless work to some degree, but I hope I can do it more mindfully and balance out its utility and importance with the time I spend doing it.

It's a small, scary world.

You may have read about six-year-old Cole Puffinburger. He was kidnapped last week from his home in an awful, drug-related attack in Las Vegas. This all happened literally one street away from my brother-in-law's house and two streets from my mother- and father-in-law's house. As in, Google the street name (I found it on the Review-Journal's story) and their streets are in the same close-up screen. Add to this the fact that my mother-in-law teaches kindergarten and could have been Cole's teacher if he had lived on the other side of a street. And Cole's father was in the same graduating class from high school as Peter. These are, quite literally, the people my husband grew up with.

Thanks be to God, Yaweh, Gaia, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whomever else you'd like to thank, Cole was found perfectly unharmed and is safe now. Sadly, I think he is in the minority for missing children. I seriously cannot believe that he is OK and that they found him so quickly (relatively speaking).

The most frightening part of this for me is that my in-laws want to leave. They already have a house in Michigan waiting for them. But the housing market in Vegas is so awful, they can't leave. They say it seems like everyone on their street is just waiting for their chance to put their house on the market. What if they can't leave in time? What if the neighborhood just keeps deteriorating and there is no option to leave? This scenario has played out in many other cities hundreds of times through history, no doubt, but that never makes it less frightening for those living it.

Do five people read this? Here's hoping!

The Invisible Hand

As someone who really does not understand economics, I can't elucidate the murky dealings that led us to our current state, but with each fresh collapse and merger of another major bank, the same image keeps popping into my head. I see a mansion built on shifting sand whose foundation has been eaten away and is now collapsing dramatically into the ocean. Unstoppable tides tear it down; the only thing that could have saved it was to have built the thing with caution and foresight in the beginning.

I feel as though all of this could have been foreseen. And it is all connected: housing loans, sub-prime mortgages, bank failures and now the collapsing stock market. Each built on the other, and when pieces of the foundation of our economy were washed away by the inevitable tides, the entire house began to disintegrate.

The question is: now what?

Joy and Sadness

Joy: I have found a wealth of incredible new blogs that fill my heart and mind with wonderful inspiration for adorable and practical projects.

Sadness: I do not have the time to complete such adorable projects, no matter how practical (or adorable) they might be.

I will share the love in case you might have the time. In the meantime, I will download some of the patterns, bookmark sites and add feeds to my Google Reader and put them away for a rainy day (or after graduation).

How About Orange with adorable and FREE patterns, ideas, downloads, links, etc. etc. etc.! Already, I am desperate to find some sweet fabric to make my own bag like this:


I mean, how awesome???

Other sweet sites (mostly found through the above blog):
Free easy sewing ideas and patterns (The Sewing Republic)
More Teh Awesome sewing lovelies (handmade kate)
FREE lovely gorgeous print ornaments (Briar Press)
Fun things that I don't know what to do with yet, but I like looking at (and FREE!) (A Print a Day)

And if you do nothing else, look at the tutorials on How About Orange. I can haz some free taime?

Beautiful, true video

Don't be scared of the ASL. It's gorgeous and eloquent (and mostly voiced by another poet). Great message. Incredible poem.

Update on life

Sorry the posts have not been very regular, or very good when they do appear (for those of you still reading). I'm hoping we will soon get over the initial bumps that are inevitable at the beginning of every semester (where am I supposed to be now? What should I be doing?).

I am taking five classes, plus I have four clinic assignments and an off-site clinic assignment (where I do therapy stuff with a non-school organization). AND working my three very part time jobs. Phew! But it's my last semester of classes (yay!) and I think I've had enough experience that I can handle it.

The husband is busy teaching at school, writing lesson plans, grading tests, preparing classes, and doing all that work that never gets counted in the estimation of how many hours teachers work. Granted, the first year of teaching is always the hardest (so I hear) because everything has to be made from scratch and there are no lessons to fall back on. HOWEVER. When people talk about how "overpaid" teachers are, I would like them to see my husband waking up at 5 AM to finish prepping for the day to get to school by 7 AM, where the kids come at 7:30, then teaching 5 sections (I think, maybe four?) back to back, to coach cross country after school (when he doesn't desperately need that time to make copies, set up labs, etc. He gets home about 8 PM, depending on what meetings, prep work and other obligations he has, eats dinner, then goes upstairs to work again until collapsing at 11 PM. Then he wakes up and does it all over again. Yeah, he's totally overpaid.

So that's the skinniest of the skinnies here. School, school, play, school, sleep. Eat, rinse, repeat.

Worth a watch

People I don't understand

Woman who were for Hillary, now are so anti-Obama/pro-female that they are going to vote for McCain-Palin. I guess they have their reasons, I just don't understand them. Voting for a party that has been beyond outspoken about taking away a woman's right to choose? If they agreed with that stance, they wouldn't have been Hillary supporters in the first place. I just don't get it.

I would hope women aren't sexist enough to vote based solely on gender (isn't that what they are afraid some men might do?). And yes, it's still sexism when you will vote for a woman over a man for that reason alone.

Funny, I just realized something. The Palin nomination suddenly made this campaign a thousand times more divisive than it was before. All of a sudden, everyone is up in arms about their various candidates. I'm all about public dialogue and debate, but more division is not what this country needs.

Reasons to be thankful

After this story about the RNC and the St. Paul police's reaction to protesters, I think the protesters at the DNC in Denver need to be very grateful to the Denver police force for acting the way they did. Granted, the demonstrators in St. Paul might have been a lot rowdier than the Denver ones, but for all the complaining people did about their civil liberties being "violated" in various ways in Denver, they should see that it could have been a LOT worse.

Major kudos to all the police officers from all the surrounding areas who came in to help at the DNC. You guys rocked.

Obama-Rama

I was there. I can tell my children and grandchildren this in the years to come, but I was in that packed stadium that was exploding with excitement for this man, our first African-American, first bi-racial candidate on the anniversary of MLK's historic speech. I was there. It was awesome.

We almost didn't make it, and had to stand in line for literally FOUR HOURS, most of which was within a stone's throw of the stadium we were trying to get into, but it was worth it. Sure, we missed almost everything bu the big even itself, but it was worth it.

I'll try to post some more pictures and some video later, especially the one where I'm filming as the fireworks go off one row behind our HEADS and I'm pretty sure the camera goes all crazy as I attempt to hit the decks, PTSD style. Srsly.

OH! And THEN! As we were walking out, we see a bunch of people looking in this one direction, and THEN I see a silver man atop a tall, regal looking man and I'm like, I KNOW that dude! And then I tell my friend Amanda, "I think that's John Kerry," hoping to God I said the right name and did not just make a total jackass out of myself. AND IT WAS! And then his dudes say, "Excuse us, coming through," or something, and the throng parts a bit, and THEN he passes close enough to Amanda that she could touch him if she wanted (she actually could have licked him, she was so close, but opted not to be jumped by "Social Security" folks, as she put it so well). And THEN this guy behind me says, "Senator Kerry!" all journalisty-like, and THEN OH THEN!!! He TURNS! And makes EYE CONTACT WITH ME because he is looking for the caller-outer, and I am standing nearby! (And smiling quite stupidly, I'm sure). And according to Amanda, he says something like, "Hi, how are you?" But I don't remember any of this because magic Massachusetts-Democrat-good-hair-preseidential-nominee dust has frozen this moment in time and I shall always remember the blue-blue of his eyes and the tan-ness of his face and his overall *handsomeness* (that was the first thing Amanda said about him too). And I totally don't remmber him speaking, but I'm sure he did.

EL FIN.

It's my party!

Yesterday (by a few minutes) was my birthday. I'd have to say it was one of the better ones in recent memory, if only because it served to highlight where my life is now and what a good place I really am in. We had a small get-together at our place, gathering friends from my old department, my new department and from the various connections one makes in a community after three years. It was so much fun to see people from so many different aspects of my life playing together in a band, even if it was just a simulation of guitar strumming and drumming.

Beyond those present in body, I also heard from many wonderful friends over the phone, via email and on Facebook (bless Facebook!). I hope to spend a chunk of time tomorrow replying and reconnecting with all of you tomorrow. Thank you so much for remembering me, it means so much.

It's amazing to think back a year and see how much more settled Peter and I are in careers (even if I am just more settled in the direction, without a specific job yet). He's working in the field he has been preparing for for the past two and a half years, and I am on the brink of getting out there on my own as well.

As with all aspects of our lives so far, everything that came before prepared us for what we will be doing, even if we had no clue what was in store for us. We are so lucky to have found careers that will challenge us and reward us (though not always monetarily), and even luckier to have found such incredible friends in our travels together.

Met the tiny new person

I met the new baby today. It was awesome! I hope her parents weren't freaked out by the fact that I held her for an hour (I swear I didn't know it was that long). She is adorable and funny-looking, in that wizened way that all brand-new babies are. She made extremely funny faces. I had no idea that all those little muscles were so mobile so young. Her big sister was awesome too; when the little one started crying (as little ones are wont to do), Sister came over with a very worried expression and when the crying didn't stop, Sister started to cry too. Poor babies. Being an older sister myself, I know she is in for a difficult transition time, but I think she's going to do great. She was already helping mom with the baby's diaper change (when she's still in diapers herself!).

I hope I can continue to go and get my baby/kid-fix from our wonderful new neighbors. I feel so incredibly lucky to have such an awesome family living so close by! I really hope this is the start of something great.

Downside to the Olympics

Since I usually don't watch any TV, I'm usually sheltered from all the inane, infuriating political ads. I've started so many ranting blog posts about some of these ads, wanting to debunk them point by point, but I just get so tired and frustrated that I just can't keep writing.

On a good political note, I somehow managed to get "credentials" to the Obama DNC acceptance speech in Denver, so I'm very excited to be a witness to history. Also scared, but excited. The security restrictions on what is and is not allowed are pretty tight, so I'm hopeful that they know what they are doing. So I'll just have to sit in the stadium for hours on end with nothing to entertain me or distract me, including "outside food," like water bottles. Expect a call from me to be entertained!

Happy Birthday

To the little one born last night:

What a night to enter the world! Michael Phelps setting an incredible, unbelievable new record 8 gold medals in one Olympics. The crowning of a new "World's Fastest Man" who looked like he was out for an afternoon jog while blistering past the world record. Plus, you are a Leo, which as all Leos know, is the very best thing to be.

Congratulations to the proud mommy and daddy, and thank you so much for letting us be a part of this incredible day.

Olympic Moment of the Moment

Togo's whitewater rafter, coming out of nowhere, 27,000 people chanting his tiny country's name, him breaking his oar over his boat as he realizes he's won a bronze medal. No video up yet on nbcolympics.com, but if/when it goes up, worth a look for exactly what the Olympics are all about.

I freaking love the Olympics

Seriously. I was tearing up watching the tiny web version of the parade of nations from the opening ceremonies (since I couldn't see them live). Man. People walking makes me teary in the Olympics.

Noise Pollution

Friends, Romans, countrymen: you may want to cover your ears. We just ordered Rock Band for my birthday present. I am psyched. Who wants to join our new band? I claim singer!

(Must enjoy life before school starts again in T minus 3 weeks)