Banal, ordinary snippets on being lazy and gluttonous.

Dear Diary,

One of the pictures that someone else took of the La Luz trail run
I did this past Sunday.

 13. Himself the Baboo is doing oct training in San Antonio during the MONTH of November. I have never been away from him for that long before.

12. That is, by the way, the reason I am signed up for the R&R San Antonio marathon. Some people check out the coffee shop when they teavel. I check out the marathons.

11. I am considering (just considering, mind you) attempting my first 100 miler at the end of February, here. 
(picture of buckle added for JoJaJogger)



10. My favorite work collegue and lunch partner is gorgeous. She likes to stay fit, and looks much younger than she is. She goes to the gym most days of the week. She is single, and would like to meet someone, she says, but the men her age are not only paunchy, but "seem" old. Meanwhile, the only men who approach her are 25-year-olds.
After I finished rolling my eyes at her "problem" I suggested that she hang out at some of the events I go to. "no paunchy guys there," I told her. She's not convinced. I think she thinks ling distance runners are freaks. I'll work on her.

9. I am now a firm believer in the Sunday marathin cooking and freezing routine. I have two crock pots running, usually, and when tney cool I bag and freeze the results. But I don't label them, because that would involve searching for a Sharpie and remember I. Am lazy. Soooo...Dinner is, um...dinner is whatever is in the quart ziplock bag I just took out of the freezer. I just grab whatever frozen bag is on top, thaw it out, and then decide what to do with it.

8. Moreover, I have discovered you and do pretty much anything with a generic mixture of tomatoes, chicken, chiles, and onions. Pour it over noodles and call it Italian. Layer it with corn tortillas, beans, and some cheese and call it enchiladas. Add curry, and pour it over rice. These are the ways I save time for running.

7. I am going to be so happy when the Final Destination 5 movie comes out! BECAUSE I'M really pretty damned sick of the commercials.


6. As of this morning, of the 3000 face-to-face client hours I am required to have before applying for my independent license, I have 13 left. THIRT. EEN. next up: a crazy hard licensing exam.

LUNCH:
It's what's for breakfast.

5. This has been one of THOSE WEEKS. You know the ones...most days, you've eaten your lunch by 9:30 and you spend the rest of the day prowling the halls at work looking for donuts. No? OK, maybe just me then.

4. No matter jow long I work where I work it's still jarring to hear a 4' tall 6-year-old saying, in his very sweet, high-pitched voice:
I DON'T FUCKING CARE! 
GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! 
or, the ever popular FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKERS!  

Yes, children are the future you know.  Working with them is SOOO rewarding.

3. Sometimes when I run in the morning, I run past elderly men or couples, dottering along, and I wonder what they think.

(Actually, it's a diet Mountain Dew)

2. My lazy lunches this week: can each of reduced fat cream of chicken and celery soups, three chicken breasts cut into pieces, a bag of frozen veggies (I like the normandy mix). Throw it all in the crock pot. Cook on high 3-4 hours or whenever it seems to be done. I stir about halfway though.

Divide about 1/4 cup of brown rice between five containers and ladle this stuff on top.

1.  This week I was looking for a quilt hanger.  Sweet Baboo and I have a quilt that his grandmother made, very pretty, and I want to hang it up.
When you look for stuff on Amazon, Amazon makes suggestions for what other people bought this product also bought....  

Here are my suggestions from Amazon:

Why my 9 mile ride was 16 miles long.

So, Sweet Baboo caught me during a lull in my synapses and convinced me to commute to work today by bicycle. This is quite a feat for him, for several reasons (I am She-ra, Queen--nay, EMPRESS--of excuses.):

1) I only like to ride my bike if the temperature is between 62 and 64 degrees F., and it's not too windy or sunny or cloudy or raining.

2) roads, traffic, sidewalks, cars, other cyclists, people walking (with or without dogs), animals, plants, and buildings make me nervous, so I try to avoid cycling wherever these are present.

However, once I agreed, I was stuck--I am a woman of my word. I did the commute, which was actually quite nice.

I've prepared an illustration of why a 9-mile commute is 16-miles long using a sophisticated, graphical representation. I forgot to add in that on the lower left side exists Kirtland AFB, so we can't commute through there.

Still, although I arrived to work somewhat sweaty, I enjoyed it. I had onhand some "WetOnes for Sensitive Skin," antiperspirant, and cologne for just such a sweaty occasion. I carried my lunch and my work clothes in my backpack. It was pretty nice; I love doing things in the morning.

Of course, this commute TO work was mostly downhill and coasting. The commute home, much less so. And, it got cold. And it rained. whine, weedle, moan.

Once again, I squished the profile to make it ever-so-more dramatic.

By the time I got home, my whole body was screaming, PASTA! NOW!

...

City Life.

I'm living in Albuquerque full time now and there are things about living in the city that are different from what I expected. Why is this a big deal? Because I have always lived in the suburbs. Always. I think I wrote about this once: mini-baboo was doing an acestry project, and asked me where "our people" were from. I told him, the suburbs. As long as there have been suburbs, there have been Our People.

Here are some things I've noticed about living in the city:

1. Freeways. I have always avoided these; mostly because it took forever to get to one. But now I live about a mile from I-40, and work about a mile from I25. Everything is a quick jump on the freeway. On, Off.

2. Just as DP promised, I am 15-20 minutes away from everything I want to do. Work, School, international food stores, organic hippie stores, far

mer's markets, used book stores, upscale hibrow fancy schmancy stores. Not so the suburbs, which are almost completely and insanely crowded big box chains and nothing interesting to see.

Ever.

3. Diversity. There are interesting places where the signs are in some language I don't know, and I'm not just talking about Spanish. There are temples, markets, restaurants that serve food I've never had before. There are people who don't speak English and don't need to, because their whole neighborhood speaks their language.

4. Scary city parts. Parts that, when I drive through them, I lock my doors and sit reeeeeeeal low. Parts where people walk across the street (and NOT at the crosswalk) staring me down, DARING me to hit them. They don't hurry. They saunter. So unlike the suburbs, where everyone is safe and nobody ever walks. It's interesting knowing that it exists. (Not interesting enough to hang out there, mind you.) We're talking about places where it's not all that unusual to maybe see a car on fire, and nobody's really paying attention, other than, "hey, kids, better stay away from that car, it's on fire."

5. Alternative transit. There is a single bus in the suburb where I used to live, for a population of over 60,000 people. Riding your bike was a dangerous proposition. There were few places to walk, and a higher liklihood of being run down by someone driving a HUMMER who had never been in the military and doesn't know how to drive one. Usually the HUMMER drivers are housewives on their way to their manicure. Where I live now, there are buses, sidewalks, bike lanes, and a train.

6. Places to walk and run. As I mentioned, it was hard to bike in the suburb where I lived. Running was similarly frustrating. Everything that was paved was the realm of the car, and never shall the runner dare to touch it. Baboo had cars swerve at him deliberately, just to mess with him. I've seen cars race to beat runners and cyclists to intersections. The cyclists in the Burque, though, are a little more organized, and more militant. Good for them. Meanwhile, there is a system of connected, paved, dedicated paths all throughout the city by which one can run, walk, or cycle pretty much to anywhere in the city, safely.

7. History. Albuquerque is 300 years old. Actually, it's been around longer than that, but the place known as, "Albuquerque" has been here for 300 years. I'm in the process of trying to learn what I can about it. My previous suburban city was incorporated around 1980. Cool.

8. Politics. without going into a lot of detail, while living in the suburbs I was basically that wild and crazy hippie vegetarian chick. Albuquerque, though, is a bastion of liberal thought, much of it far more weird that you can imagine and than I'm willing to entertain, and the end result is that, in Albuquerque, I come off as a boring, concrete soccer mom. But it's delightful, just delightful, the "Whirrled Peas" and, "COEXIST" bumber stickers.

9. My friends. Almost all my friends live here, on this side of the river. They are the best part, and they, like everything else, are all about 15-20 minutes away.

Oops! almost forgot:

10. Kitch. I. love. it. It's Route 66, it's Native American reservations, there's almost no end to the kitch .

...

In Which I Feel Vindicated. Sad, But Vindicated.

So here's the thing. Last may in my position at RRPS, they sent around a proposal for some of their ideas for the coming year. I read through it, which I actually rarely do (I just sort of sail through life and do things impulsively, without giving much thought, except for work.)

Something didn't seem quite right. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but their problems-suggestions-expected outcomes didn't seem quite right. I spoke with the head of the union about it, who agreed with me, and then she mentioned that she was moving to a different school and asked if I wanted to be the union rep.

"No," I replied. "I'm not coming back next year."

Since that time, especially with not receiving much of an income during September and October while my work situation shook out, I'm gnawed at the skin on the side of my thumb as I worried that I had brought us to financial ruin by doing this. Even though Baboo makes a good living, I have years of struggling before I met him that gave me a permanant anxiety about such things.

Then, in October, when I started my new job, I sent emails to some of my old teacher friends giving them my new email address. They responded with congratulations, "howareyou"s and then proceded to tell me how awful things are. How many teachers had already quit, and then there was a hiring freeze, leaving the remaining teachers over their legal limit on classroom size. In addition to that, I already knew that they had reworked the schedule so that I would be teaching nearly twice as many students the same curriculum in half as much time.

Then, today, Baboo heard about this: http://kob.com/article/stories/S691678.shtml?cat=504

This is one of those times that I'm not happy to have been right. But I'm relieved that I apparently saw the writing on the wall and got out in time. This, in my opinion, is at least one of the end-products of NCLB.

...

Non-profit work has its downsides.

I have no office.

This wasn't exactly as I expected it. There are a finite number of spaces that are assigned to counselors who have been there longer, but none of them are there full time. The newer counselors then grab their spaces on a first-come, first-served basis. So here's the problem:

For the past three weeks, I get there about 9:30 in the morning, and discern what space(s) I can use for the day, and then claim it.

So I've had this incident happen twice now: I got there early, put my stuff in an office/cubicle thing and then came back with my client 15 minutes later and another counselor, who I will hereforafter refer to as Weasel, was sitting there with a client.

My books and laptop were still on the desk in front of her, and my jacket was on the back of the chair, and she just looked at me, and said, "there's weren't any other spaces available".

Weasel just so you know, gets there around noon because she homeschools in the morning. Well, I don't care; as far as I'm concerned, tough fu**ing luck if you don't get there early enough. (There are several good reasons I call her weasel behind her back. Unfortunately, I just know I'm going to accidentally call her weasel one of these days. I just know it.)

I didn't want to make a fuss in front of a client, so I took my things and sat with my client out in the group room, where people continuosly interrupted us and asked if they could, "just hang out" in the group room. During my private therapy session. Uh, NO, you can't "hang out".

The next hour, there was a group session, so me and my next client were relegated to the outdoor smoking area. Luckly the client was stoked, because s/he smokes, but it was still pretty unacceptable as people were wondering through on the way to their cars.

I went in during a free moment and basically threw a temper tantrum with the director and said that we should make the whole idea of "first come" clear at the next meeting, but Dr. W doesn't like confrontation, because the very same day the handyman who works at the center started measuring unused space to put in walls to make two new offices. I've claimed the corner office.
Seriously. I raised my hand at the next meeting and said, "I call corner office!"

Actually, it's because it's in the corner, away from two loud swinging doors, and more private. It also has a window and a cabinet I can lock. The locking thing is big because there are some supplies that I'm going to bring from home that I can't reliably use at the center, and there is a weekend intern clinic and I don't want--ew--interns touching my stuff and using my supplies.
Yeah, I know. "Have pity, you were an intern once." Oh, whatever.

Being a champion of the poor means that, I guess, I get to become one of them.

Hopefully, my space will be completed soon. Then maybe I'll do some cheap dorm-room chic. I could go curb-shopping for a door and a couple of cheap filing cabinets to make a desk. I'll steal the extra chair out of Mini-baboo's room that functions as a resting place for Clothes That Have No Home and use that, too.

Maybe I'll grab my favorite local fashionista and we'll do a shopping spree at Target and do a whole dorm-room makeover thing. Except not with zebra stripes. I want to sooth my clients, not throw them into a seizure.

The "walls" will be 8-foot tall plywood, and there's a leak in the ceiling in the corner where my office will be, but I don't care. I still want it.

Oh, and I'll have to run an extension cord over to the next room, but I don't care. I still want it.

Yeah, not-for-profit sucks, all right.

But it's all still worth it, which gives you an idea of how much I hated my old job.

...

Brave New Life

About a month ago I started thinking about the bittersweet feeling that went along with knowing that, on August 8th, a lot of people I respect the hell out of are going to head back to work. I felt then, about a month ago, that I would miss that. Probably. Certainly.
I wondered what life had in store for me. What would I "be" next? Would I ever "be" anything? Whatever I would "be", and would I "be" any good at it? I've always been "just" a classroom teacher. What am I now?

What am I good for?

So last week I walked into the counseling center on what was my first "full" day in my new life. I was now a contracted mental health counselor at the center where I've volunteered for about 3 years. I got there about 15 minutes early, and as I rounded the corner, the clinical director saw me, picked up the phone, pushed a button on the base, and held it out to me:

"Talk to her. She's in jail for DWI. Her best friend just died and her divorce became final. Really upset, doesn't know where her kids are. Wants to talk to someone."
So I spent my first twenty minutes as a counselor trying to make it meaningful to this distraught mother that her only phone call was to talk to me.

Afterwards, the director was shuffling through the papers on his desk and mentioned he was going up to the hospital to check on a homeless patient who swallows razor blades. Usually, she (the patient) would put epoxy on them, he told me, but this time, she didn't, and now she had internal injuries and an infection.
The clinical director said this matter-of-factly, the the way you or I might say, Usually, I take my flat kit with me, but today i didn't, so I couldn't fix my flat.

A small, silent thought formed in my head: please, pleasedon'tassignmetotherazobladewoman pleasedon'tassignmetotherazorbladewoman pleasedon'tassignmetotherazobladewoman...

It wasn't that I didn't know what to do, mind you, or that I doubted own abilities. It's just that I wasn't ready for something quite that intense on my first day as a new professional. This counseling center is very central to a lot of social services catering to homeless and indigent people, and now as a counselor, it was real. This is real. Real lives. Real, painful, lives.

Most of the patients where I work are working people who can't quite afford the full cost of a mental health professional, but about a third that come don't have anywhere else to go for various reasons. Nearly everyone gets some sort of help to pay for the services, and that number is on the rise. Some patients are dropped off by the police when police decide they don't need to be in jail for their erratic behavior; they need a counselor.
Some have families they go home to.
Others don't have any family any more - if they have relatives, those slam the phone down when they call.

And here I am, in the thick of it. In the midst of these lives.
These, painful, disheveled lives.

Another counselor was assigned the razor blade patient, but I was asked, Well, what do you think?

I think we need to find out why she swallows razor blades, I offered. Then we'll know what to focus on. I went on to explain how her answer might differentiate her as having a psychotic disorder, PTSD, and/or a couple others that popped into my head and I thought, astonished, Holy cow, I actually know this shit.

The director nodded, signaling his approval (I hope) and hurried off.

I spent the day talking to more people, some in person, some on the phone, all of them in pain. On the way home, I listened to a song that kind of reminded me of the ruined and pain-filled lives that I often see at this counseling center, and that you might see on the street. Sweet Baboo has often worked with these kinds of lives as well, homeless veterans with severe and persistent mental illnesses.

But more importantly,

MUCH more importantly,

Well, I don't think I'll walk around feeling all sorry for myself, wrapped in my existential angst who am I? what am I? any more.

My new vocation will be a daily exercise in perspective, and, will include feeling the wonder at my outrageous fortune, my health, my ability to run, and all the love and friends I have in my life.

...

Shiny new lives require a lot of paperwork.

The mysterious and supportive MJ sent me a couple of really great quotes, which I intend to print out nice and big in a nice, fancy font because I found them encouraging and also because they are entirely appropriate for a therapeutic environment:

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
— Alan Cohen

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.
— Anatole France

So, I started my shiny new life yesterday the day with a crack-of-dawn spin class at the downtown gym, some swim drills, a shower, and then a 5 block walk to the counseling center. In my previous life I had to report to work by 7:10; the counseling center doesn't don't open until 10, so counselors start showing up at 9:30. Ish.

If I show up earlier, I risk spending quality time with Evil Bill (new reocurring character), who is the Type A boss of everything. He's an ex-counselor whose with abysmal people skills. Even Dr. Ken is afraid of him, but for all his unpleasantness, as office manager, the place runs smoother and more efficiently when he gets his way.

Anyway. There's a 13-page application for licensure that requires signatures, a sealed copy of my college transcript, a notary stamp, and a detailed explanation and court records of a misdemenor incident from my past (1991).

Sigh. Stupid misdemenor. It will haunt me forever. Take it from your Aunt Misty, kids: all your dumbest mistakes will wind up on your Permanant-nant-nant-nant-nant Record-ecord-ecord-ecord-ecord.

After submitting all this paperwork I get permission to take a test called the National Cousenlor's Exam.

Then I joined the American Counseling Association, and purchased professional liability insurance.

Meanwhile, I've begun listening to the 17 hours of NCE audio test prep on my iPod. I have fantasies about phrases like, 'highest posted score evar!' but really, I just want to pass it. (There's a marathon analogy in there somewhere.)

I got a line on a second source of work: an agency closer to my house that works with the county juvenile justice system. I took a DSM class with the woman who that runs it and she remembers me, so I'm waiting to hear back from her about this.

And here's another thing: today I sent my youngest son off for 6 weeks with relatives in Dallas.

Six. Weeks.

For the first time since 1984, I will be an adult living in a home with no children in it. Sweet Baboo is beyond excited because he gets to have me all to himself.
So anyway I started cleaning house, and I'm stunned at the havoc that a teenage boy can wreak. Is EVERTHING a trashcan to teenage boys? I found trash in the umbrella holder, the couch, under the couch, under two rugs, behind various pieces of furniture, tucked into the crevices of the kitchen chairs, and in a cabinet that we use to hold our Costco overflow. Oh, and also, EVERYTHING is apparently a laundry hamper to teenage boys, as well.

Ugh.

Tomorrow: I do my final "checkout" and the exit interview for my old school district, where I answer the question, "why did you quit?"
What ever will I say? Or not say? Hmmm...

...