Life Lessons

It seems that my main Christmas gift this year has been to learn a whole bunch of life lessons in a very short time span...

1.) Don't speed. This seems like a no brainer..but it is very tempting to drive 70 when you are on country roads when no one is in front of you. Note to self: Don't. Or you'll get another ticket and then you'll lose your license.

2.) Circular highway exits can be treacherous. They may lead you right into the cars of African-American obama-shirt-wearing women who are not too nice about it.

3.) Don't let your cat encounter your mom's cat(s). This will result in blood and an emergency vet visit, and a week's worth of tracking her down so you can put antibiotic ointment on her eye.

4.) I am not the only kid with divorced parents who hates Christmas (or for that matter,all holidays). I think we should mutiny and pick one spot where we can stay the whole day.

5.) Good movies with moral lessons DO exist...in the form of The Tale of Desperaux, a great movie with a good plot, animation, and voice-overs. I recommend it, especially for kids growing up in our ridiculous environment (just today in the newspaper there were letters to Santa, most featuring ridiculous lists of toys and video games. Alas, consumerism).

6.) Really young kids are now getting engaged/married...case in point, my stepbrother, who is 19 and just proposed to his 18-year-old girlfriend. Also the masses of people I know who are younger than me I see in the wedding announcements every time I open the paper. Perhaps I am just a 23-year-old fogie, but this scares me.

Now, having learned all these lessons, I must go forth and work tomorrow. Merry Christmas to me.

What a Week(end)

This week started out easy--I finished up my Christmas shopping, and the rest of the time sat around in my pajamas working on my online class (which is getting ridiculous..more on that in a bit). Then somehow it exploded, and I ended up working about 30 hours in three days, plus some today, and some tomorrow. I'm so exhausted I can barely see straight, and I've been having dreams about making breakthroughs with my clients in therapy, and waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking that I've forgotten something crucial for one of the many things I had to do this weekend.

Here's a run down of my week:

Monday: shopping, online class

Tuesday: online class

Wednesday: 10 hour workday, including a potluck/meeting with the JFS advisory board at which I had to present what the special needs committee is doing.

Thursday:9 hour workday, including 4 clients (one of whom I had to convince to get out of bed and help dress)

Friday: 10 more hours, including a clinical lecture on ABC therapy and the first Special Needs Shabbat (this one for Hanukkah).

Saturday: Attempting to go to the gym (I nearly fell asleep halfway through) and a family Christmas party in Burlington.

Sunday: Hanukkah party for the seniors, online class, mass.

No wonder i'm tired.

The special needs dinner went well--and now they want me to start a group for young adults. This is a good idea...but I'm already feeling overworked, and I didn't even have class this week. Plus I felt like the whole thing was a giant test--I was co-facilitating the young adults with someone who worked at TEACCH for a really long time (and has offered me an internship there next year) and I felt like all my actions were being judged. I think I did well (maybe too well, since he wants me to start up the group and reallly wants me at TEACCH next year). But there's a reason I quit my job on the weekends..I don't want to add more work for which I don't even get paid.

The Hanukkah party today was packed, and Brian was a hit, since I drug him with me. Also, i'm now addicted to seltzer (it's everywhere at Jewish functions!) and latkes are quite tasty. I can also sing most of the blessings in Hebrew now without having to look at anything. 

Now, for the online class: This is ludicrous. It's SO much information that it's worth a semester class. I've probably spent 30 hours on it so far at LEAST and i'm only halfway through the fifth section (out of six).  Today alone I spent THREE HOURS watching videos on gay rights. And we have an exam after every section that has ridiculously specific questions on it.  Honestly, working myself to death was not what I had intended to spend my first week on break doing. 

Done! Mostly...

I have at last finished all my classes...papers, exams, meetings..over!  I'm glad of it, as it's been a bit of a rough semester (this 9-5 or 6 schedule every day makes me long for the days of undergrad when I had breaks AND time to work for money during the week).  I also finished work with Joe yesterday, although I did tell his parents I would sub sometimes, and I'm really hoping they don't call me all the time. Not that I can't use the money, though...

I still have a week left at my internship before I can take a break from that too (kind of...i'm sure the special needs team will hound me with e-mails). BUT..I have my online class hanging over my head, that I DO NOT want to do. Class over Christmas break?? It's just wrong.  Really.

Twilighting

Having just finished the last of the Twilight books, I thought I would share some thoughts on them. First, a summary for those of you who haven't read them (if you don't want to know, skip this part):

Twilight: Bella moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad. There, she meets Edward, who at first acts like he hates her, but then falls in love with her. She follows suit. It doesn't freak her out that he's a vampire. There's some drama with some vampires who drink human blood (unlike Edward's family, who all drink animal blood), but Edward saves Bella, and then convinces her to go to the prom.

New Moon: Edward decides that he doesn't want Bella going to hell like he's going to do because he has no soul; he leaves. She spends a lot of time comatose. Jacob steps in. Bella and Jacob start doing risky things, like riding motorcycles. Bella breaks a lot of bones. Turns out, Jacob and a bunch of his friends are really werewolves. Edward thinks Bella is trying to kill herself and has succeeded; he tries to kill himself. Bella saves him. They get back together. Jacob is not happy.

Eclipse: Bella tries to convince Edward to change her into a vampire. He says, after graduation and they have to get married first. She eventually agrees. There's some drama with one of the vampires that tries to kill her in Twilight, who has created an army of newborn vampires. Bella realizes it might not be so awesome to be a vampire. Jacob tries to convince her to leave Edward and be with him. Bella says no. Jacob runs away.

Breaking Dawn: Edward and Bella get married. Bella gets pregnant, which no one thought could happen. Turns out, half-vampires grow super fast and in a month she has the baby, which breaks her spine--so Edward now has to turn Bella into a vampire. Miraculously, she has no ill effects, and is in control immediately. Jacob finds out Bella's daughter, Renesmee, is his soul mate. No more Edward-Jacob awkwardness. The Volturi, the vampire police, use Renesemee as an excuse to destroy the Cullens & friends, but they convince them not to. Happily ever after.

That done, I'll say that I think Stephanie Meyer's writing style is very amateurish-her plot lines are never fully developed and her settings are barely there. And she takes up a ton of space recounting really mundane occurrences, making all her books 700ish pages long. It bothers me that these are the books that have of the US is addicted to--they're so unsophisticated, what does this say about us? However, despite my criticism, I do think she has a strong literary voice in Bella, and her books are very readable, if barebones and generally just kind of silly.

If you like vampire books but didn't like Twilight, I suggest Sunshine by Robin McKinley--the settings are much more established and the characters are stronger (plus, less silly romance). 

Tryptofantastic

After my usual glut of holiday food (only two Thanksgiving dinners this year, thank goodness) and family, i'm feeling worn out and exhausted. Not to mention the fact that I came down with a cold practically as soon as I got here and have felt progressively worse every day. Thankfully, today was a bit better since i've stopped sneezing every 3 seconds.

As much as I enjoy being home, I am once again REALLY ready to go back to Chapel Hill, despite my conflictual relationship with it currently. I just feel stifled here in the mess of my mom's house...I need some autonomy. And cleanliness. And a bed frame, which I currently don't have here because it is still leaning up against a wall in the dining room waiting to be carried upstairs and put back together. Ack.

To further the weekend awkwardness that begun with my mom asking my stepmom if she wanted to join us for a movie and continued at my dad's on Friday, as we ate dinner and then all started at each other for what seemed like 2 years but was probably about 2-3 hours, a client tried to friend me on facebook. Clearly, this is not appropriate, and now I feel like I have to bring up boundaries because I don't want him to get a friending complex. I am really not cut out for direct practice. Really.

I DID go see Australia, which was as good as Twilight was ridiculously awful. Great setting, costumes (my favorite, of course) and music. I was feeling iffy, since Baz Lurhmann movies can either be good (Moulin Rouge) or kitschy (Romeo + Juliet)..thankfully this one was good, but on a MUCH larger scale than Moulin Rouge, not to mention longer (3 hours!!). When I went the theater was packed with elderly people, and I have to say the best part of the movie was when Hugh Jackman emerged in a white smoking jacket and a collective "mmm" went up from the elderly ladies.

Crikey.

After a bit of a break, it's back to the grindstone tomorrow, since I have 2 exams coming up this week. Blech. At least i'm done after that....

Let the holidays begin!

The Christian holiday, that is...I'm not sure the Jewish ones ever end, to be honest. Thanksgiving is kind of areligious.

I had another busy but good weekend...Friday I went to dinner and then to the CHiPs improv show with some SW girls...on leaving dinner we saw a huge crowd of people marching down Franklin (blocking an entire lane of traffic, which, I imagine, was not making the bus full of people stuck behind them very happy). They were wearing skull masks, weird clothes, and wheeling a coffin that said "capitalism" on the side. This only contributes to my notion that it is really time to get out of Chapel Hill. At least CHiPs was hilarious as always, and my fellow JFS intern was there, so we had some good laughs about things that happened this week (for example, when Debbie, one of the social workers, said about her couch, "This thing sure gets a lot of action!". hahaha).

Saturday I did some Christmas shopping, which mostly consisted of going to Barnes & Nobles to look for children's books for my niece (SO MUCH FUN!! I got "Goodnight Moon", "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", "Guess How Much I Love You", and a Sandra Boynton book called "Horns to toes") and Southern Season, which is always a good outing, even if I go just to browse the teas.

Then I went to see Twilight, which, i' m sad to say, was even more ridiculous than the books (which I honestly wasn't sure was possible). It was PACKED with tweens, and the movie mostly consisted of close-ups of Edward and Bella's faces, breathing hard and looking anxious. It was essentially two hours of middle school style awkward. Here's some choice lines:

"Hang on, you little spider monkey"

"Bella, you're my own personal form of heroin"

Good grief.

Today was also my next-to-last day with Joe, which went fine except for when I burned my finger baking cookies since his well-loved favorite pot-holder was a little TOO well-loved, and had a hole in it. And when he washed his hands, and then dried them. On the dog. I can't make this stuff up.

School-wise: 2 weeks left of class! I've turned in one paper, finished another, and am about halfway through the last 2 (one of them is a group paper, and i'm just waiting for one group member to give me his part..I understand why he hasn't yet, but it still kind of ticks me off. The control freak is always there, it's just dormant sometimes.) Then I have my online class (blahhhh) and a bunch of work for my internship. Followed by work for the Arc. And more work for my internship. So yeah, I'm getting a break...*sigh*. At least there's no class...

A Weekend of Eating

It was Brian's birthday weekend...and essentially all I did was eat and cook.

Friday night I went to dinner with some SW girls, then to the James Bond movie (Brian ended up going with some Doggett people), and then to Yogurt Pump. It was nice to feel part of a group, since I haven't really had that in a long time, and we ended up staying out past 11 just talking. James Bond was only so-so, I thought, but at least QUANTUM was a lot more believable than SPECTRE, and Mr. Green was a lot more chilling and realistic than Goldfinger ever was. Plus this was the first movie I've seen since August, so it was kind of nice.

Saturday Brian and I went to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit (and I didn't get lost! Mainly b/c he knew where he was going and directed me. Apparently the directions I had printed off google maps were completely screwy).  It was good, but realllly crowded (there were even 2 other people from New Bern there!), and most of the exhibit was just background info, and then you got let into this climate-controlled, dark room a few people at a time to see these tiny fragments the size of my hand. But, he enjoyed it, which was the point. Then we had lunch at 518 West (I had artichoke dip and calamari, yum). Then we came back here, and both of us ended up crashing for almost 2 hours; after that, I got up and made quiche lorraine and Tollhouse pie for dinner.  This morning I made pancakes, and then we went to an early dinner at Olive Garden with his family, after mass. And now I'm making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Whew.

I DID call and cancel with Joe today, which I feel awful about, since that's the 2nd time I've done that this semester (the first time, though, was because I was having a nervous breakdown). But I wanted to see his family, and I felt like, in this situation, his birthday was more important. But it just contributed to my "I feel like the scum of the earth" complex. Blah.

School-wise, things are really winding down. We have 3 weeks left! I finish a class totally this week, and I've mostly finished one paper and started on the other 2.  Studying hasn't really started tho, but my class has at least started assembling a study guide for direct practice. Despite all my whinging, it has gone by pretty fast...