Spent last night in thrall to horrific nightmares. The good part of the dream was when my former neighbor caught the guy attacking me and chainsawed him apart. Gah.
I called in sick and then spent the entire day on the couch reading Harry Potter. Now I am going to bed, where I will please please not have Voldemort dreams.
In a surprising 180 degree turn from this morning, I had a pleasant, relaxing afternoon. This morning...wow. It's not that anything bad happened, but you know how sometimes you wake up and find yourself completely incapable of making a decision?
So, I had to be at work by 9am, but I didn't actually have clients until 10:30. At 7:40am I prop my eyelids open and muzzily wonder if I can get away with staying home. Convince myself that would be unethical and rude. Lie in bed until just on 8am, at which point I must get out of bed if I intend to get to midtown by 9am. Stand stark naked at the bathroom counter and contemplate my toothbrush. Instead of using the toothbrush, decide to flop on the floor and pet Mr. Sinatra, who's lying on his back waving his feet around and purring. Think about staying home. In an effort to humor myself by breaking routine, decide to go check my email and see if there's any more Altville. There isn't. Journal-surf. Realize that--glory hallelujah!--Punk M. has posted her new SV story. Spend 40 or so stark naked minutes reading. Wonder if I should include the stark naked part in my feedback (hey! I was so engaged that I forgot to get dressed!), or if that would be the kind of comment that sends an author fleeing for nonfiction. Stare at the clock. Sigh. Head back to the bedroom with the intent of showering. Instead, collapse on the bed and try desperately to think of a reason to stay home that would be both A). true, and B). acceptable to the new hard-ass boss. Waffle. Think about how wonderful it would be to stay home and read Harry Potter all day. Get up and put contacts in, hoping for insight. Pick up the phone and dial work, fully intending to invent a stomach virus. Hear the receptionist pick up. Hear my own voice say that I'm running late and will be in shortly. Sigh.
I got a little kick out of Shell'sdue South snippet, a Ray Kowalski SOAP note, because it reminded me that once upon a time I wrote a voice evaluation on Blair Sandburg. My Sentinel phase coincided with my endless last year of grad school, when I took Voice Disorders. We had to write a mock evaluation on a client with some type of vocal pathology, and I, thinking I was the funniest thing on two wheels, used Sandburg. I got to write sentences like, "Maximum phonation time on /a/ was 13 seconds, well below the average range (20-25 seconds) for males in Mr. Sandburg's age range," and, "Dr. Megan Connor, an otolaryngologist with UTSHC, performed indirect laryngoscopy using a flexible endoscope inserted nasally." I thought I was way cool. But, beyond just the chance to toot my own horn, I liked Shell's snippet and would encourage y'all to rush right over there and read it.
Overall...I've been having a nice week. I've been experimenting with the "Don't Eat Crap All the Damn Time" diet and have been liking the results. Have fallen in love with belly dancing, to the point where I come home, strip down to my skivvies, and practice. (Pick yourselves up off the floor, now). Met the new department boss this week, and, while I don't like her very much, she does seem to be quite good at the job. On Friday I went to a counseling session with LG, where I blew her co-dependent little mind by saying that I was done being her therapist and we needed to revamp our relationship. She's confused and upset by this, but I feel great--I've been needing to say that for so long, and I feel like now we can either start developing a real, adult friendship, or I can let her go. I referred a kid for a modified barium swallow study, something I've never done before. Yesterday I fell asleep on a couch at the yacht club in the middle of the afternoon, and woke up sweaty and relaxed. Sat in the yacht club pool and gazed drowsily at the centerboard regatta participants (Hubster included) as they tooled around the lake waiting for the wind to pick up enough to actually race. Hung out with sailors and made myself homemade Radler--lemonade, Sprite, and Coors Light--and thought about Germany. Did not have a breakdown, like I did last weekend when the Hubster and I discussed our dwindling chances of moving. Bought Harry Potter and the Order of Magnitude Longer Than the Last Book. Got invited to see Hulk with my beloved client EM for his seventh birthday, although I declined. Ate tomato pie at a local diner. Ate an avocado just now.
I went to dinner with SMW this evening, and while I was in the restaurant bathroom I overheard the kind of painfully cute conversation between a mother and her very young daughter that makes a person quiver with the urge to reproduce. They were in the stall next to mine, and had heard but not seen me come in, so the little girl was afire with curiousity. "Somebody in there?" she says.
"Yes, sweetie, somebody's in that potty," says mom.
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, sweetie."
"Cinderella?"
Me, cackling, "No, it's not Cinderella."
"Mommy, can I see?"
"No, we don't look under the stall doors."
"Wude?"
"Yes, it's rude."
I was dying. The girl sounded very young, but when I saw them at the sinks she looked around three, possibly a little under. As always, I was struck by how very much she talked; normal development never ceases to amaze me.
Another reason I need to have some kids already: got all slitty-eyed angry at the new part-time physical therapist today because she provoked a screaming, crying, hyperventilating fit in my client IV. Okay, I don't actually know that she provoked him--he's a little fussy with strangers in general--but in over a year I've never seen him freak out that badly, and I got protective. Plus she was kind of talking down to him, which made me want to scream, "He's nonverbal, not stupid!" And BT and I were both upset because, when we hustled in to investigate the horrifying screaming coming from the big gym, the physical therapist said something about how IV had grabbed her hair and then, "I asked him, but he wouldn't let go." Okay, I'm a speech therapist, and even I still know that a kid with spastic quadriplegia probably doesn't have good hand control. Give me a break, lady, he's not letting go because he can't open his hand voluntarily. That's why he needs therapy. Argh.
You know what I'm really surprised about? Maybe I just hang out at the wrong places, but I'm really surprised that I have yet to see an icon from the SV episode "Rush" with Lollipop!Chloe and the caption "cunning linguist." Is that too obvious or something? It was practically the first thought that popped into my mind when that scene aired, and I expected to see icons all over the place the next day. And yet, here it is two or three months later and no one's done it. Am I that far removed from the fannish hive mind?
Aaaiiiieeee!! Finally! Blogger has been screwing with me the past couple of days, and I've been unpleasantly confronted by just how much of an exhibitionistic hobby this is. "Oh, I can just write it down for myself! It's okay if I can't post!" Shhyeah, whatever. I about rented a billboard.
I got curious and took an online version of the Meyer-Briggs the other day, which--well, frankly, that's a pretty boring test. But it turns out I'm an ISFJ, a "protector guardian." Huh. Good times, good times. Am now tempted to go back and take the test as the Evil Overlord CEO, just to see what would happen.
So last night the Hubster and I went, among other places, to the university theater to see The Good Old Naughty Days, a collection of French porn shorts from the 20's and 30's that was incredibly non-erotic, and left one with the deep, burning question: what's with all the nuns? Gag. Me. But it was more or less worth it for the raunchy cartoon at the end.
I'm not all that big on internet quizzes, but I thought I'd post this one because A). it came out almost exactly the same as the first brain usage test I ever took, way back in sixth grade, and B). the description is absolutely spot on. There's none of the usual, "Oh, this part sounds like me, but this part is off," waffling--that's me in a nutshell. (No, this is me in a nutshell: "Help! How'd I get in this nutshell?!" Ah hah hah hah hah haaaaa Austin Powers eat your heart out).
Your Brain Usage Profile
Auditory : 47%
Visual : 52%
Left : 66%
Right : 33%
Sara, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your "centrist" tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.
Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.
Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.
The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimen- sionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you "intake it all" and store it for processing later.
Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.
Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty. You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you. You might need certain ideas explained to you in order to fit them into your scheme of things, but you're at least open to that!
Big news: I took a belly dancing class. Two, actually. They were great.
Rusty had been talking up this belly business for quite some time, and if one were to trace the evolution of my reactions to her, it would look something like, "Over my cold, dead--hey, could I pretend I was that chick from Bring It On?" So after I got over the internal whiplash, we dropped in on a Beginner level class at the Arabic Bazaar, and holy shit I think I've found my true calling.
Well. Not quite. But I'm so phenomenally thrilled to find a complex motor pattern that I don't intuitively suck at that I'm beyond enthusiastic. And the instructor is mouth-watering. And there seems to be a large overlap between girls who take belly dancing and girls who have tattoos, and I always like to look at people's tattoos. Yay!
