How did we celebrate Valentine's Day?

Of course you're wondering, since Michael and I are such romantic fools. Well, it all started like this.

On Monday, at his Spanish club, Michael made me a card that said, "Te amo mi vida! Que' tetas!"

Oh, I love that boy.

And today (Valentine's Day), I went out walking. When I came back, Michael said, "Was your walk eventful?"

And I said, "No."

"Oh," he said. Then added, "That's good."

"Well," I amended, "There was the teddy bear slaughter."

His eyes grew wide. "Uh, that sounds eventful."

I shrugged. "I missed the actual slaughter event. I only got to see the carnage left behind."

And I told him how, out on the corner of our street, this teddy bear was laid out as though it had just been slain. And so, of course, we went back out there to see it. Together, because it's Valentine's Day. And also, I brought a beer along. And also, Michael brought a camera.

Note that we did not move the teddy bear at all. This was how we found it:



And so, yeah. That was fun. But, later, when we went out to go grocery shopping (as you do on Valentine's Day), we saw that the bear had followed us. Just outside our apartment is an empty lot, and the bear had come along to wallow in its Valentine's Day misery by our place. Again, we did not move the bear. This is how we found it:





When we came back from shopping, it was still there. And, dude, we just couldn't resist. This is how we found him:






(In this one, you can see our apartment--it's the one with the lights on just below the No Parking sign)


Oht noes! The cops have found Vagrant Bear!


Eh, just let him sleep it off...

So that was our fun tonight. Then Michael made his famous chili and we watched Battlestar Galactica. Who says romance is dead?

You better recognize (the voice)

Hello. I’ve been mostly MIA for the past few weeks which has been a result of 1) not having very much to say, and 2) being disinclined to type very much because of my wrist injury. Which I may add, I lied about earlier. It actually did result from heroics and impressive death-defying feats of stunning caliber and near perfect quality. They would have been dead on perfect if only I hadn’t stopped to wash those damned dishes. Aw well, at least they were heroic dishes.

The exciting thing, though, is that today I have activated my windows voice synthesis software which allows me to speak into my headset and words appear on the screen. No typing is necessary. Which is totally awesome because typing sucks right now. Which totally sucks because typing is just about all I have to do anymore, between class and thesis and work and… Oh yeah! My favorite mode of relaxation! Writing stories.

So I’m going to give this software thing a go. So far today I have used it for work, and now I’m using it for a blog entry. And more or less, so far so good. There was the whole “pulled in tree" — "blog entry” fiasco of two sentences ago, but I managed to fix that just nicely. Heroically, even.

So what exactly is up with my wrist anyway? Well, one month ago I heroically punctured my wrist while washing dishes. That healed within a week, no problem. Except for the problem of a huge, painful, itchy, frustrating red welt appeared in its place. The campus clinic Dr. Could not tell me what was wrong with it and so eventually sent me to a German tall adjust who could. (I like Dr. Could, I’m sure you can figure that one out. I also like the German tall adjust, which was supposed to be dermatologist in case you were wondering). The German dermatologist, who I don’t think was German, told me I have a keloid scar and he gave me a steroid injection.

This was on Tuesday. I’ve been wondering ever since then why the hell anyone would ever abuse steroids. There are far less painful drugs out there. Find one of them. In fact, I will go ahead and suggest pot because anyone suffering from ‘roid rage could really use a few hours in front of the TV with a bag of cheetos.

That’s really all the rest of the story. It hurts again. And it’s itchy. And it’s driving me crazy. But nothing terribly interesting. Oh, except that my once-again-reduced-gripping-ability cause me to spill coffee all over my lap yesterday at work. Which very nearly made me cry, because not only did I look like I had pissed myself, at work, but that coffee was supposed to have gone in my belly.

We also have a new leak in our ceiling which is dripping directly into the bathroom light fixture. Unfortunately for the sake of the story, it did not explode or cause mayhem or even act heroically. It just started happening, and now we’re waiting for the roofers to come patch up the roof.

Happily, though, class and thesis and work are all going very well. I am well into the interview portion of my thesis, and it is so awesome. I love talking with people about their knowledge and experiences. This has got to be the absolute best part of being a research psychologist. I absolutely love this.

Except for the not being able to type very well part, which I’m in the process of rectifying, I am really enjoying the semester. And I’m still holding out some hope that I will manage to graduate in May—though rational expectations are still pushing the toward graduating in December. But ah hell, rationality be damned!

I’ll update again either when I can type again or when I have a better hang of the software. But right now my throat is starting to get sore. My voice is tired. And so until we meet again, just imagine exciting heroics and death defying feats of spectacular proportions, or at least dream of a kinder world in which there are no dishes to wash.

Heroics at Burning Orphanages Not Included

Hey y'all.

So, some of you may be wondering why I haven't posted in awhile. Others of you know already. Yet others find they don't care too much either way. And still others are too unobservant to have bothered noticing that I hadn't updated for the last some amount of time.

Well, one of my excuses is that I injured my wrist during a freak dishwashing accident. Yes, dishwashing. I was not injured for a good reason, I was injured for a non-reason. Here's the whole story. The scoop, if you will.

I was washing dishes. The handle of the mug I was holding shattered, and somehow the force of the break caused me to smash the intact mug (including the little nub of the handle) into my left wrist, causing a puncture that bled a lot and scared the hell out of me. I ran around like a crazy woman for awhile, cleaning out my new wrist hole in the bathroom sink while still holding part of the mug handle. But eventually, I settled upon wrapping it tightly (my wrist, not the mug handle) in cotton and runners tape and hightailing it to the campus clinic to let someone professional decide if I needed stitches.

I didn't.

But they did pull the skin back together with those sticky plastic thingies, and give me a nice huge bandage running longways up my wrist. So, rather than walking into my psychology department like that, I decided to wear Michael's carpal tunnel wrist brace over my bandages. Call me vain or paranoid (and Gina did), but I had a feeling that carpal tunnel wouldn't peak the interest of psychologists the way that a blood-tinged wrist bandage might.

Eventually (after about five days), the wrist brace took a functional turn. The puncture had healed nicely, but I had bruised my tendons badly enough that when I would unthinkingly grasp something, it would hurt like a mofo. Wearing the wrist brace around reminded me to be careful, and it held my wrist still and allowed me to heal. Another two weeks has passed. I have nearly full wrist mobility back. It no longer hurts to type provided I have a pillow or cloth underneath my wrist, and I can even pick up fairly heavy things without pain. Usually.

But alas, the wrist saga continues because now it appears I have an infection or something under the surface. It's driving me crazy. It itches like madness and when something touches it, all of my wrist senses flare up... well, okay I only have the one sense in my wrist. But still. Flares up. Back to the doctor tomorrow for antibiotics or something.

Less exciting, but more interesting news is that I've started data gathering for my thesis. I've interviewed several people already and I'm in contact with five more. Interview on Wednesday. Going back to Kauai again soon. Now that I can type again, I'm about halfway through transcribing the interviews I've already given. This is absolutely fascinating stuff. I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait to write it all up and become a Psychology Master. Which may or may not happen in May.

I've turned in my application to graduate (with Masters... I'll still have a PhD to go after this) in May. But, I don't know yet if I'll actually be able to finish my thesis before the deadlines for Spring commencement. So I may still have to defer and get my Masters in December. Either way, it will be a whopper of a surprise to me if I don't have a Masters this calendar year. Huge HUGE major things would have to happen to keep me from finishing this, this year. I'm not trying to tempt fate, I'm just saying. It's all coming together now.

Oh, and also I learned that since the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans are the fastest moving minority into the middle class. As my professor (Ashley Maynard, awesome woman) says, it's not fair to count what happened before Civil Rights. But since my people stopped openly blatantly purposefully oppressing them, African Americans are in fact making great strides. This doesn't mean, of course, that we can now stop working for social justice, just that people who wonder (sometimes with snide intent) why things never change can stop wondering. Things are changing.

And oh man, I wish I had known this when I still lived in Tennessee. I kinda wanna look up every bigoted arse I ever got into it with and give them a good whatfor. Not that I didn't back when we were into it. Just, now I have a little more ammunition.

Like you, guy I argued with in Waffle House that day because you were such good friends with the KKK. Suck it.

Everyone else, have a great day!

Synopsis

So what can I say? 2008 is done. 2009 is here. I had a good year in 2008, actually. Ups and downs, sure, but I would say at the very least all of it was interesting and eventful.

I walked with a cane for six months.

I had a miraculous physical therapy recovery from cane-walking.

I testified before the state legislature several times.

I started a worm composting bin.

My worms were raptured.

I spent six weeks on the Big Island helping kids find their way into college.

I went to North Carolina to present at my first conference.

I met my nephew in Memphis.

I went to Thailand to help smart people figure out air pollution problems.

I proposed my Masters thesis.

My brother proposed to his girlfriend.

She said yes.

My brother glows now.

My family came up to visit (except Mary who has my little nephew at home--but next time).

I got a new job, which I love.

I made some movies with my writing group.

I flaked out on my writing group entirely during my semester-from-hell.

I took ukulele lessons.

There's more. I'm sure there's more. This was an eventful, busy, crazy, stressful, awesome, interesting, exciting, wonderful, frustrating year. I don't know that I went into 2008 with such high hopes. I think that very probably, 2008 blew out all of my expectations. I'm totally down with that. 2008 was great. That is totally a year that I don't feel I wasted or failed to live or suffered through or that somehow passed me by. And I was tired, so very very tired by the end of it. But looking back, it was totally worth it. If I had it to do over, I would have done everything the same, except that I would have coughed up the money to bring Michael over the Big Island to play with me a couple times during the summer. I missed him so much. Though, true, the absence made us closer later on.

As for 2009, I have a couple of resolutions. Two, actually, that I can think of. One is to join up as an active member of Sierra Club now that I can walk again. I love walking. I love hiking. I wanna do that. So I'm gonna do that. The second is to have more fun. I intend to go out with friends and relax and have a drink and go places with music and to be sociable. I don't want to get lost in my semester again like I did this fall. Of course, this fall *was* special circumstances with all the stuff I crammed into it. But I don't intend to cram that much into spring semester, and that means that I can go chill with my peeps from time to time. So I'm gonna.

Other than that, I intend only to live life. To take it as it comes. And who knows, maybe I'll get another badass year this year. But whatever, I'll take it as it comes.

peace, y'all.

Off day...

As in "day off". Whew! I just love the sound of that.

I woke up early with a migraine. I think that all the excess emotion last night surrounding having finally finished my semester set off some sort of weird chemical reaction in my brain that churned around and eventually came out pain.

As a side topic, Michael said to me about a month ago, "I'm glad I'm not the type to get headaches."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I'm glad I don't get headaches," he clarified.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I mean I'm glad I don't get headaches."

I've been with this boy nearly a decade. At that moment, I realized that I could not remember a single instance of him complaining of, or even mentioning in an off-handed sort of way, ever having a headache. In all honesty, the concept of 'never getting headaches' is so foreign to me that it had never occurred to me that people existed who didn't get headaches. And so, I stared at him, blinking, and allowed seconds to pass while I contemplated this new idea.

"You don't get headaches?" I said.

Here, even still, I was thinking the phrase "not that often" would be included in his response. I thought I was stating the extreme and that he would laugh and concede a more reasonable line.

"Well," he said, "I think I might have had one or two, like while I was sick or something."

He thinks he might have had a headache sometime while he was sick. Or something. He thinks. What?! How is this possible? We clarified this many times. Michael doesn't get headaches. In reality, he doesn't get headaches. Lucky bastard.

Anyway, I got up early today, took some naproxin, went back to bed. Got up a little bit later, took some more naproxin, and grumbled about my headache. But you know, even with a budding migraine, I still couldn't help but be giddy with the idea that this was the first of many days to come in which I am not in the Fall 2008 semester. So happy.

Michael made me grits. It turned out that this is a miracle cure. That, plus naproxin.

Now, deadening migraine pain (for those of you that don't get them) opens you up to some peculiar sensations. Because while the pain itself dulls, all the migrainey things that go along with the pain remain. Light sensitivity. Sound sensitivity. Well, heightened sensitivity in general. Intermittent nausea. Lightning flashes inside my eyelids. The feeling that someone put a little extra stuff inside certain parts of my head and there's just not enough room to accommodate. Fun stuff like that. It's actually kind of interesting to experience all that but without all the pain. It's certainly way better than when there is pain involved.

Today, being my first day of freedom from the hectic craziness that was the Fall 2008 semester, was going to be a good day. And it was. I took two very long walks. During the first, I went to the public library and checked out three novels that guarantee fun without all that tedious "thinking" business. It was morning still and acting out some pre-storm weather in which a pleasantly cool wind flows about your highly sensitized skin, and rainclouds have gathered but it's still too bright for your light sensitive eyes for you to take off your sunglasses. Really, it felt awesome. I felt... free.

Later in the afternoon, I took a long, slightly less well-timed walk to a guitar shop about a mile and half? two miles? from my place. In the rain. Storm hit about halfway there. I watched it coming up the street, heading right for me. I got soaked through, even with my umbrella, and even catching a bit of shelter beside a tree when the rains really came down. I also got my guitar strings.

Walking in rain is fun stuff. It is not, however, as fun as it was when I was three. Earlier, while I was home, a downpour erupted and so Michael and I went to watch from the front door. The kids in the neighboring building shrieked and ran off the street to some shelter. But they quickly grew bored of the shelter and ran back into the street to splash around in the huge puddles that were forming, dancing around and shrieking and jumping up and down and kicking water.

"Man," I said, "Puddles were so much fun!"

"Yeah, I know," said Michael. "They were awesome."

Those kids knew how to have a day off. But so did I. I've got a newly strung guitar. I've got a book halfway finished. I've got two long walks under my belt--the first and second long walk I've taken in I don't know how long. Maybe tomorrow, if the weather's not entirely crappy I'll go down to the beach and reacquaint myself with the ocean. Maybe tomorrow, even if the weather's crappy, I'll go down to the beach anyway. Ooh. And maybe I can find someone to have a beer with me.

Yeah, I definitely like this part.

I have never...

I have never before cried with relief when I finished a semester. Just now, not ten minutes ago, I finished my Statistics final. Earlier today I finished my Qualitative paper. Earlier this week, I successfully proposed my thesis. Ten minutes ago, I flipped off my stats book and exam, declaring with great joy various anatomically impossible (seeing as how they have no anatomy) things they could go do with themselves and each other. And then I laughed. And then I cried.

I made it. I FUCKING MADE IT!!!

This semester has actually been a really great semester in a whole lot of ways. I loved my Qualitative Methods class. I learned so much. I got to practice things I've been dying to learn how to do. And despite how much I now hate statistics, I did learn a lot in that class as well. I learned to hate statistics in that class. I used to enjoy it. But I learned other, more useful things too.

I proposed, was accepted, and presented at my very first professional conference. I got partially funded to go to the mainland to do this. I got to visit my family, meet my nephew, speak at a high school, and then present at a conference. I started a new job that I love. It's a busy job a lot of times but I get to do cool stuff, and this job, over the next two and a half years, will train me in every step of culturally responsive school intervention. That may not mean anything to you, but I'm still thrilled about it. I had an opportunity to go to Thailand fall into my lap. I got to attend a workshop of smart people sitting around trying to figure out how to solve the roadside air pollution problem. I got a bonus trek into Japan. I made new friends. I wrote 4/5ths of a nano novel. I got my thesis proposal together. I got my thesis committee together. I got my thesis committee to approve my thesis proposal. I did oogabs of IRB paperwork stuffs, and got my IRB proposal in as well (coming soon: how that went). This has been a great semester.

But that's a whole hell of a lot of stuff to cram into four months. I feel triumphant. I feel relieved. I feel beat. Absolutely beat. But damn it, I made it. Four days early, I made it. Oh man. I think I'm going to cry again.

The Halfway Point

I am halfway through a two-week-long period of massive insanity. Two weeks. That's nothin'. I've been telling myself this several times a day for the last week. And as I x my way through my To Do List From Hell, I've been feeling more and more confident of my ability to do even this, for only two weeks. I will stand triumphant over these weeks. They will be spent, strewn across a half-month of my past. I will conquer.

This next week was looking pretty good yesterday, because I was focused on a to-do list that included a paper and a thesis proposal. Huge friggin' things, but heck, they're only two things. I can do two things in a week. I was, of course, ignoring my stats exam. Because I wanted to ignore my stats exam. I'm not going to start on it until Wednesday, so I figured I need not worry about it until then. Best to focus on the paper and the proposal.

The paper is near done. First draft, check. Now comes the nail-biting period of review by my interviewee. God, I hope I got it right.

So that leaves thesis proposal. And oh yeah, the stats exam I'll be getting tomorrow. Gah! The fear comes. Sure, those are only two things, but they're two huge friggin' things!

Nonetheless, I shall conquer. I shall make proclamations that make me sound like a violent emperor even though I'm a pacifist socialist. I shall... whatever, take the rest of the night off. I'm beat.

So, seen any good movies lately?