I haven’t blogged in a while. Since then everything/nothing has been going on, like it always does. I am at the midterm of the first semester my second and last year in grad school for social work. I am moving in on graduation (but I’m still not sold that graduation is not actually a mirage on the horizon like my favorite part from the epic movie Fifel Goes West.) Also, Jessica Boyd, roommate of the mostest, moved into Old North to encroach upon the hipsters to learn their ways. So far I’ve only learned that the neighbors kids start playing really early, really loudly, really close to my window, and I find myself kind of wanting to break their toys. School is do-able but my internship is hard. I have more work than I ever thought I could do … and I end up doing hugely irresponsible things things like sitting in coffee shops writing blogs for my faithful readership of two (hey mom and dad!). I basically do various social worky things, very few of which I am qualified for by any definition of the word qualified. No ones appears to have this figured out yet which is great for me.
In the meantime I’m testing my limits of sleep deprivation and playing a game of chicken with my stress level. I have perfected the art of turning coffee into pee and acting out on my ADD by eavesdropping on conversations in those coffee shops when I should be studying. (Very often I’ve wanted to be like, Whew, honey, listen, he is even boring TO ME and I’m not even in the conversation. I’m going to insert my headphones, and I suggest you do the same). I digress (ADD). Most importantly, I have brought back a skill I made up when I was a kid in which, whenever I feel like I might start hysterically crying in inappropriate places, I take a deep breath and hold it in for as long as I can. Then I let it out slowly and resume a normal rate of breathe, sans meltdown. I’ve tried to practice this often while I also practice being more adult on the outside than I feel on the inside. But it’s hard to make your outsides and insides match and extremely difficult when your breath is taking up all your inside space.
So I exercise my life pleasures on delicacies like sleep and food. Back to the basics. And as the weather gets colder my bed gets hotter (not in that way, very unfortunately). I am referring to my intricate system of bed heat that involves both a heated mattress pad that SantaDonna brought me last year AND a heated blanket that my granddad gave that probably dates to circa 1989. (Smokey the bear would have a cow (pun always intended), this thing is running rampant with all kinds of fire hazard possibility.) As my sister very accurately describes, “this heated mattress pad, it's like sleeping on a little baby angel … with a fever.” (Smith, 2011). You might think that both the mattress pad and the blanket would get really hot, and it probably would be way hot to a normal person. But lucky for me, my thermometer is broken and I never get hot. I only get toasted in my panini bed and wake up all golden and bubbly. and the mornings, LORD, THE MORNINGS. I tell you what- in the morning time, my inner child is a PILL. Every night I tell her, "listen, we’re gonna have to wake up AGAIN tomorrow morning while it’s still dark, just like we did this morning. and we are going to peel ourselves out of the panini and go to grown up things, like practice our skills of empathy and crossing things off sticky note to do lists and holding our breath and watching people who suspect dont have to hold their breath and acting like they act." Despite my patient nightly explanations, my inner child takes over in the morning, (she is freakishly strong) and pushes snooze up to six times (!). I finally (wo)man up and (wo)manhandle in her in “tough love” kind of way and rush around to do my morning things like brush my teeth in the dark so I don't’ have to look at my wake up face in the mirror.
Here is picture of her in the mornings
So I exercise my life pleasures on delicacies like sleep and food. Back to the basics. And as the weather gets colder my bed gets hotter (not in that way, very unfortunately). I am referring to my intricate system of bed heat that involves both a heated mattress pad that SantaDonna brought me last year AND a heated blanket that my granddad gave that probably dates to circa 1989. (Smokey the bear would have a cow (pun always intended), this thing is running rampant with all kinds of fire hazard possibility.) As my sister very accurately describes, “this heated mattress pad, it's like sleeping on a little baby angel … with a fever.” (Smith, 2011). You might think that both the mattress pad and the blanket would get really hot, and it probably would be way hot to a normal person. But lucky for me, my thermometer is broken and I never get hot. I only get toasted in my panini bed and wake up all golden and bubbly. and the mornings, LORD, THE MORNINGS. I tell you what- in the morning time, my inner child is a PILL. Every night I tell her, "listen, we’re gonna have to wake up AGAIN tomorrow morning while it’s still dark, just like we did this morning. and we are going to peel ourselves out of the panini and go to grown up things, like practice our skills of empathy and crossing things off sticky note to do lists and holding our breath and watching people who suspect dont have to hold their breath and acting like they act." Despite my patient nightly explanations, my inner child takes over in the morning, (she is freakishly strong) and pushes snooze up to six times (!). I finally (wo)man up and (wo)manhandle in her in “tough love” kind of way and rush around to do my morning things like brush my teeth in the dark so I don't’ have to look at my wake up face in the mirror.
Here is picture of her in the mornings
I felt torn between representing my inner child as a crying baby or a crying monkey so I decided to go with a crying baby in a monkey costume. This is actually a remarkably accurate representation.
I have also resorted to buying meals in the forms of delicious pumpkin muffins at various coffee shops I patronize where switch between between typing furiously to aimlessly staring out the window. I also have developed a spidey sense to find vending machines that sell me delicious cheese crackers and animal crackers, always the animal crackers. That’s the way the vending machine cookie crumbles: no change, no lunch. It has recently come to my attention that at grocery stores, you can go get food to keep *in your house*. They sell the kind of food that you can in fact mix together with other foods and sometimes there is some stirring or a recipe to read and, if you’re real fancy, measuring and mixing. Then you just stick all the stuff on the oven (that’s what’s underneath the stove. (I know about the stove. (the stove is thing I once learned that made water hot and real bubbly for eggs or tea or ramen noodles (but not that the same time (that’s gross)))). AND I MEAN VIOLA, a bonafied cooked meal. (Apparently there are people out there who get so down with this cooking bidness and have enough copious amounts of free time to sit around for hours for fun and watch Paula Deen talk to sticks of butter in her southern accent. I love butter and accents as much as the next girl, but for crying out loud, people don’t you know you are not ever going get to eat this food. Take your inner child to chickfila and get her a happy meal). I digress (again). People have time for this shopping, home food storage, and have figured out how to work an oven- man, it can be delicious. It’s hard to believing that i was the kind of person that was at one time organized enough to go to the grocery store, buy things that are not in single servings that you take out of a box that says “lean cuisine” and heat up on some “magic grilling tray” (please come on, this not magic, I know because there is no stirring or mixing or ‘viola’ oven work). Those same people that do the oven magic, some of them also run loud machines over the carpet and take care to smooth out there bed things each morning. Such things remain a distant memory to me and perhaps when I’m a grown up I can bring these things back. I can make up my panini before I go out for the day. (Maybe not, I’m not really into details.)
I was thinking all DSM-y and wondering how to code my experience in grad school and the symptoms of my chronic persistent mental maladies. I was thinking that the DSM IV would probably code this 666.0- High levels of school induced stress and anxiety; characterized by 3 or more of the following:
excessive caffeine intake, procrastination escalating to the form of an art, lethargy, forgetfulness, grossly neglected personal hygiene and nutrition, listlessness, hopelessness, depression, death. I have also resorted to buying meals in the forms of delicious pumpkin muffins at various coffee shops I patronize where switch between between typing furiously to aimlessly staring out the window. I also have developed a spidey sense to find vending machines that sell me delicious cheese crackers and animal crackers, always the animal crackers. That’s the way the vending machine cookie crumbles: no change, no lunch. It has recently come to my attention that at grocery stores, you can go get food to keep *in your house*. They sell the kind of food that you can in fact mix together with other foods and sometimes there is some stirring or a recipe to read and, if you’re real fancy, measuring and mixing. Then you just stick all the stuff on the oven (that’s what’s underneath the stove. (I know about the stove. (the stove is thing I once learned that made water hot and real bubbly for eggs or tea or ramen noodles (but not that the same time (that’s gross)))). AND I MEAN VIOLA, a bonafied cooked meal. (Apparently there are people out there who get so down with this cooking bidness and have enough copious amounts of free time to sit around for hours for fun and watch Paula Deen talk to sticks of butter in her southern accent. I love butter and accents as much as the next girl, but for crying out loud, people don’t you know you are not ever going get to eat this food. Take your inner child to chickfila and get her a happy meal). I digress (again). People have time for this shopping, home food storage, and have figured out how to work an oven- man, it can be delicious. It’s hard to believing that i was the kind of person that was at one time organized enough to go to the grocery store, buy things that are not in single servings that you take out of a box that says “lean cuisine” and heat up on some “magic grilling tray” (please come on, this not magic, I know because there is no stirring or mixing or ‘viola’ oven work). Those same people that do the oven magic, some of them also run loud machines over the carpet and take care to smooth out there bed things each morning. Such things remain a distant memory to me and perhaps when I’m a grown up I can bring these things back. I can make up my panini before I go out for the day. (Maybe not, I’m not really into details.)
I was thinking all DSM-y and wondering how to code my experience in grad school and the symptoms of my chronic persistent mental maladies. I was thinking that the DSM IV would probably code this 666.0- High levels of school induced stress and anxiety; characterized by 3 or more of the following:
Recommended treatment:
developing thicker skin
tolerance for excessive amounts of caffeine
high tolerance for ambiguity in field/life/school
great breath holding skills
good friends afflicted with similar illnesses
Lots of change for vending machines
I would be a great case study.
developing thicker skin
tolerance for excessive amounts of caffeine
high tolerance for ambiguity in field/life/school
great breath holding skills
good friends afflicted with similar illnesses
Lots of change for vending machines
I would be a great case study.
Welp, my monkey/baby is getting real whiny. I need to put her to bed in my panini. Morning times comes early for babies in monkey costumes.
peace.
