Yes, Virginia: Maple Exspresso Bacon Donuts exist. A Thursday 13

Dear Diary,

13.  About once a day a kid where I work has a meltdown.  You can hear them screaming and hitting walls; sometimes they run down the hall closely pursued by milieu counselors shouting into radios.

The units closest to my office are kids with Pervasive Developmental Disorders, like autism; the other unit is little kids with psychotic and mood disorders.  Some of them have been pretty badly abused, and if they had a low threshold to develop a psychiatric disorder, well, the abuse helped make it happen.

 They come unglued pretty fast, bolting away from their escorts, and run, sometimes they unroll the fire hoses and set off the fire alarm, trying various doorknobs as they go, pull pictures off the wall, (most are bolted on or painted directly onto the wall) and sweep things off counters.  It's a temper tantrum, cubed.
I'm used to it, I guess.  But there's always that awkward moment when I have a new family in my office and the screaming starts.

I'm all, pay no attention to that.

But I can tell, by the way their eyes dart between me and the direction of the screams, that they are having trouble not paying attention to that.
I suppose everyone has some idiosyncrasies about where they work.  This is mine.  Oh, and the printer breaks down a lot, too.

12.  Suddenly Chloe from the Humane society decides to be finicky.  She hates her new expensive, high quality dog fodo; she isn't having it.  So, FINE.  I'll switch her back to the cheap stuff.  Whatever.  Dogs are truly the rednecks of the animal world.  I suppose cheap dog food is her equivalent of a maple espresso bacon donut.*

11.  This past Sunday I gut-checked the swim at a local lake, as part of an Olympic distanceteam  relay.  The lake was a bit choppy on Sunday, so the fact that I completed the swim is a minor miracle.  32:59.  It's a PR for me at this distance.

<< Team Badassery

So I finished, tagged off with Tiger Lily, who rode the 40k very hilly course, and then she tagged off with Cyan, who ran the very challenging 10k in a hair over an hour. 

Even with those stats we did not win.  We had a bunch of mountain people from Santa Fe and Las Alamos down to compete with, and they are wicked fast

I'm the red cap in the middle.>>

10.  I ate too much last week.  Gained a pound. Party's over.

9.  I am now more than halfway through with my MSW.  Now, I'M NOT SAYING THAT AN EDUCATION ISN'T VALUABLE.
I'm not.  But I will be happy to be done with this latest round of busy work and classes that I must attend even though I've recently passed their subject on a licensing exam.

8.  With regard to Chloe's pickiness, you may ask why I would allow myself to be manipulated by a dog who holds her breath until she gets to eat what she wants.
Well.
Here's why:

Last week, Chloe was outside while we were inside, and she was barking like hell at the ground.  We had just come back from a hike with our 3 and 5 years old niece and nephew.  When I looked out, I saw a 3' rattlesnake coiled up, just outside the window.

Eventually, it uncoiled and started slithering away.  I watched it carefully - from inside - slither alongside the house while Sweet Baboo called to find out that a local wrangler charged $160, for the trip. Then it turns out, we have a next door neighbor who has lived here for thirty years, and he used a pipe and a rope and dispatched it quickly.  He took it out into the desert and let it go.  I have mixed feelings about that.  But it's not in my yard any more.  We bought him a pie.  The neighbor, not the snake.

As you can imagine, Chloe got a reward too:

7.  Since then, Chloe has saved us from a resident small desert tortoise, twice:

I didn't get her another bone, but I did give her a pat on the head, told her she was a good girl, and took the tortoise (Larry) to a safer part of the yard.  That's what I'm calling him. 

6.  *these exist. And that's their spelling, not mine. I confess to being curious; were I a pork eater. But having seen too many episodes of House, I do not eat three food groups: pork, unpasteurized cheese, and uncooked fish.  I stalk danger in other ways, like driving on the freeway.

5.  I learned a neologism today for certain alternative "treatments" that have no empirical support:

Woo-ology. 

I'm not doing to say to which alternative treatments I apply this to, because no matter what I say, somebody somewhere is going to say, Oh, no Misty...that actually does work.  I know a guy who knows a woman whose brother in law used it, and...

AND I'm not interested in hearing about the 2 or 3 people that it worked for.  I'm interested in hearing about the majority of people in the controlled scientific study that it worked for.  Failing that, I don't think medicaid or insurance should be paying for it. 

Why am I telling you this.  Well, it's because I've been invited to a professional workshop in how to employ a type of Woo-ology.  It's all day, and it's a paid day off work, and it's free.  I'm dying to go.  I will no doublt spend the day texting mocking comments to others. 

4.  I actually did a long run on Saturday.  It wasn't all that long, and it took forever, but it's done.  This weekend, I'm doing some Devil Mountain half marathon thing.   IM training has begun in ernest. 

Bye-bye, lazy Saturday and Sunday mornings.  It was nice knowing you.  By the way, I'm HUNGRY.

3.  My foot pain appears to be gone.  It hurt right up until Sunday, and then stopped.  Maybe the kicking in the swim did something?  I don't care; it's gone now.  As uninspired as I was about IM Utah, I'm getting pretty excited about the Oklahoma Redman. 

2.  I have provided this link before, but here it is again: This is the basis of my training plans.  I move the Saturday runs to Sunday, and on Saturday I bike.

1.  #1 On hold for the Thursdsay morning workout.... the plan is to run to the pool, swim, and run back.  I have to get a total of 6 miles of running, and 1500 meters of swimming.  I'll change this when it's done and report on how it went. 
LATER: It didn't.  I overslept.  Oh, well.  I'll swim tomorrow, run later today.  Cheers!

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