Lifestyles of the Young and Renting

I have found the thing that I need to do in my spare time: find things!

This website, http://www.foundmagazine.com/find/720, is completely devoted to the posting of found objects.

It makes me feel very secure in my choice of profession. People are weird, man. People are weird.

 -l

After four more hours this morning of sitting in this chair (after four hours last night, and a couple the night before), I just sent off my second draft of my dissertation.

Some little part of me fantasizes that my adviser will be so impressed with my work that she will call it good. Ok, a large part of me wishes that. But that wish is not located in my frontal lobes, which is the powerhouse of reason, decision making, and logical thought. No, it is located in my primal lower brain, which is all about survival and the avoidance of pain. And keeping my liver working. That’s about the level I am operating at the moment…just keep that liver operating until my next draft comes back…

Lucky for me, it is a rare clear day here, and the sun is shining, and I am going out to Indian food where I will eat with my hands and drown my mental fatigue in masala sauce.

Three weeks to internship notification…

-l 

Things I have just learned while editing my dissertation:

-The American Psychological Association requests that "Although" and "Whereas" be used in place of "While."
- Numbers being compared to other numbers equal to or over 10 are expressed numerically.
-When a citation has six or more authors, reduce to the first author and use et al. even on the first citation of the work. 

Those are the main insights I have gleaned thus far, although (or whereas?) I am only on page 9. Thumbing ahead, I see several comments made by my advisor, such as "Awkward" and "Can you rephrase?"

Le sigh.

Three weeks, four days to internship… 

 -l

Tonight, I did a bad thing.

Walking to our apartment after work, I noticed that the vertical blinds covering our neighbor’s sliding glass window were fluttering back and forth. I walked past and realized that their 10 month old girl was sitting on the floor by the window, flapping the blinds and having a great time.

I back up, and decide to try for one of those "I’m the greatest person in the world because I made you smile" moments with the little girl by crouching on my haunches and peeking at her between the blinds as she flips them back and forth.

Mind you, it is dark outside.

She’s watching the shades flip and flop, when she catches a glimpse of me between the cracks.

I suddenly think this may not be a good idea, but I stick it out a little longer.

Flip, flop.

She sees me again.

And her bottom lip begins to curl,

her forehead wrinkles,

her two little teeth nubs stand out on her gum,

and she begins to wail.

And I quickly walk into my apartment and close the door.

I have never been so thankful for the cover of darkness.

 -l

The past month has been filled with myriad crazy days, including but not limited to: 12 family members, 11 Christmas dinners (or maybe 2, but we needed an ‘11′), 10 days without a spouse, 9 hours flying, 8 days of freezing rain, 7 kinds of soup, 6 missed days of class, 5 interviews, 4 seasons of America’s Next Top Model, 3 family dogs, 2 highschool friends, and onnnnnnne rennnnnntaaaal caaaaaar.

I can’t say much about the interviews, because I don’t yet have a position. I am sure there are interns out there whose job it is to cybersearch applicants, collecting miscellaneous information about them they inadvertently shared with the world via "the internets." Tyler warned me about people losing their jobs over blogs, and I have been sobered considerably. I will say this: some went well, some went mediocre, but the ones I want the most went the best. February 23rd is the teaser, and the 26th is the big reveal. I’ll keep you posted. With a post, likely.

My life does not yet feel settled - missing a week of class has made me feel quite disconnected. I’m not behind in my work, but I certainly have no idea what is going on. Due to interviews, I haven’t been to my chaplain’s office yet, and then this week they found mold in the building, so I can’t even get in if I would like. My client load is considerably smaller than when I left, and I find myself with time to read my books…and yet, I still can’t seem to get around to cleaning the bathroom, even though I wrote a sticky note to myself and placed it on the bathroom mirror. Things are heavy and light, fun and boring. Hmm…sounds like normal life, I guess.

I will, however, tell you about this piece of new thing in our lives: last night, we had finished dinner and I nonchallantly mentioned to Matt that I had found a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard when I thought we were out. He says, "Why aren’t they on the table?"

We started to delicately eat the chips, two at a time, as though we really were going to eat only a tablespoon worth, as the serving size suggested. We had lit candles on the table - good for ambience, yes, but particularly useful as our dining room light is halfway burned out, and our place always has a nondescript stink to it. After a while, Matt put a couple chips on his soup spoon, and held it over the tealight, melting it to chocolately dessert. Hard to say why melted chips are more desserty than solid chips…perhaps it is in the act of cooking, changing its entropic state. Realizing it hurts to lick melted chocolate from a flame-kissed spoon, he picked up another spoon - a retriever spoon, if you will - to remove the still-melty chocolate from the sizzling receptacle spoon. It was like watching an artist.

Which reminds me of something else Matt did last night that mesmerized me: I recently came across this band, cheb i sabbah - an East Indian-esque/techno group that I was listening to on allofmp3.com (*sob*…don’t get me started). I look over, and Matt has begun to drop his hip in time to the music, looking off into space with the expression of a coy bellydancer, oblivious to my attentions.

I laughed. 

And then I ate some more chocolate. Which reminds me….I haven’t gone to the gym in a month now. My excuse since I have been back is that I left my gym shoes in MN, but they should be here any day, and then I will be out of smoke and mirrors.

But I digress…my real point in all of this is that while the preponderance of television is exquisitely average, there are those pieces, those commentaries on world events and the needs of society, that make me so grateful we own rabbit ears. And your name is "American Idol Auditions."

-l 

In getting ready to fly home for Christmas and have a couple interviews, I realized that my wardrobe is not winter-ready. In the biz-cazh climate of California, the closest things I own to a suitcoat are a lime-green one-button blazer, and a corduroy number that has been through the washer almost more than its $30 self can bear.

I didn’t really think that lime-green was appropriate for interviews in Minnesota in the middle of winter, as I would be forced to either buy lime-green pants to match (unlikely), or wear my bright white trousers. Please imagine me in a snowy landscape, my pants disappearing into the white background, my lime green blazer reflecting all the sunlight into the eyes of my interviewers. At that point, I don’t think it would matter how good my resume is. 

So, time for a new suit. I ended up with a thick brown number that Matt says looks "dirty," but that my girlfriends feel is the height of fashion. I then considered my footwear: my brown ‘professional’ shoes are tiny little sling-backs. Please stop again to imagine me in a snowy landscape, with my bare feet covered to my ankles with snow (remember, in California, we don’t wear hosiery either).

Off to find a pair of dress boots…of which there are 400 variations, and none that meet my criteria. Most wanted to give me a three-inch stiletto heel with ‘wicked witch of the west’ pointy ski-toes. Please now imagine me in a snowy landscape, upside down in a snowbank, with my witch toes in the air and my resume in the mud.

After three hours at the mall, I finally settled on the most average pair of shoes I could find. They are taller than my ankle, but not by much. They are pointy, but keep me out of Kansas. The heel is a skinny little stick, but is only an inch high. And they were 50% off. Thus, I now own a pair of brown, pointy, stubby, spats. But I can wear socks with them, and at this point, that is all that really matters. 

 I leave tonight on a red-eye to the homecountry - I just finalized my second interview in MN and had to adjust my flight such that I will be gone for three weeks. Perhaps when I get back, winter will have arrived here, and I will have more opportunities to wear my pointy shoes. Chances are, they will serve more as a memento of an event in time rather than a functional piece of footwear. I wonder, if I filled them with potting soil first, they might hold water.

-l 

I don’t have much direction for this post, I just felt I should say hello to all of our friends and family. I will let Matt post about the race, but let me just say that I am incredibly proud of him and was so glad to have been able to be there. I would also like to say that his father and I deserve small medals of our own: we figured we completed a quarter-marathon with all the walking back and forth that we did. At one point during our trek to meet Matt at the finish line, we had to rest at a park bench. Within minutes, we stopped talking and fell into a 30-minute nap in the heart of Honolulu.

Now I am back, and have one week here before heading to Minnesota. During this week, I will have my last sessions with three of my clients, two of whom I have known for over two years and will miss deeply, and my last full week with my friend Michael, who has become like family to me. When I get on the plane Tuesday morning, I will not only have to have all of my Christmas shopping done, but I will also have to be prepared for my first internship interview on that Thursday. 

This is just an odd time…a slow-motion kaleidoscope where things aren’t moving too fast, but there is a lot of change - and who knows what the next frame is going to look like (anyone?). The only reason I am not anxious is that I am surrounded by amazing friends, deeply supportive family, and my most incredible husband. You can do anything if people go with you.

I send my love to you all.

-l 

We’re off tomorrow (Friday) for Honolulu!!! We return on Monday and will post some pics shortly after.

-m

Yesterday, I was spending time with some of my favorite people under the age of 10 (Morgan and Molly, you are of course, my favorites), and I was reminded why children are a fabulous part of this world: my friend Michael, with his limited vocabulary, spent 20 minutes directing his 6mo old yellow lab to get into her kennel. As he is still somewhat skeptical of this animal, he would follow the dog around the house, staying about 5 feet away. With one little finger pointed at the kennel, he would demand, "This way! THIS WAY!!!!" (only recently have these become two distinct words - it used to be "thissay")

When the dog refused to obey, but skirted away from him, staying close to the wall and the couch, Michael finally went for the tail and tried to get her in backwards, still calling, "This way!"

I had finally convinced him to engage the dog in a little game with a slimy ball, when his mother walked up to whisper something in my ear. She and her older daughter had been in the kitchen, working on homework, when Kate needed to sharpen her pencil. She went to the sharpener, whizzed her pencil to a fine point, and said proudly, "Ah, pencil, I love you. Nice and sharp. Sharp as a wheel."

 So there I am, on the floor with a dog I think may have fleas (or at the very least, leaves mysterious bumps on my skin), wearing a shirt with someone else’s boogers on it, in an absolute moment of joy.

-l 

I’ve lost someone today. Not someone I’ve gotten to know well, but someone who inspired me greatly. Melanie Fastrup was my Honored Teammate through Team in Training. She’s one I was racing for. Today, she lost her battle with Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia (a form on non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) which has no cure. Please pray for her husband, Dan, my teammate, and her daughters.