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The
Soap Box Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Did You See Paula Tonight? Paula Abdul, on American Idol, was a total nut tonight. It's clear she's either drunk or on drugs. She could not stay in her seat and told one of the better singers that they were off key. She was jumping up, kneeling down, leaving the panel and hanging out in the unlit parts of the stage. Then, on day two of the auditions, she did not appear at all because of a "family engagement." Family engagement my ass! If they had known she wasn't going to be there, they would have gotten a guest judge. How hard would it be for them to get some washed up singer who is desperate for ANY sort of screen time to sit in? Uh, not very hard. That girl is off her rocker and needs to 'fess up. Need more proof? Look here. Monday, January 29, 2007 Strange Quote of the Day "He always said he wanted children, but there were no regulations in the law that deals with using sperm from dead people." From this story. Say Goodbye to Al Political humorist and talk show host Al Franken announced today that he will be leaving Air America as of February 14th. He also announced that Air America is being bought out and this should help with the Chapter 11 problems. He would not say if he is going to run for congress but that he is still thinking about it. Unfortunately for me, the Al Franken Show on Air America radio is where I got most of my news from. The other Air America hosts are a bit too uh...liberally enthusiastic for me but Al's show was always tempered. He had excellent guests, many journalists from around the country, who were reporting what they actual knew, not what they had heard third hand at a bar somewhere. I felt I could trust the information I got from this show without worrying about how biased it was. I will greatly miss listening to Al while driving to school. I'm not sure I will have a reason to listen to Air America without him. Sunday, January 28, 2007 Best Quote From The Weekend "I love eel! It's the Bacon of the Sea!" Friday, January 26, 2007 Hello from Seattle! I am currently at this conference. I will be home soon and back to regular blogging this weekend. Just FYI. Wednesday, January 24, 2007 Yesterday in Narrative Form "I'm beginning to think I should have named that damn kitten Hoo Flung Dung," she thought as she pondered how to remove the cat shit off of the bathroom wall behind the litter box.She had been ignoring it but now her mom was going to spend the night and the guest bathroom had to be cleaned. Her typical all-purpose cleaner and a paper towel were not doing the job. "What's in this stuff? Glue?" She squirted the stained wall again with the cleaner and got a scrubby sponge. "Oh, look at that! The paint is coming off but not the scat. Do I scrub softer or harder?" She wondered. "Fuck it. I need the wall clean more than I need a perfect paint job." She scrubbed harder. The blue sponge turned off-white from the paint. "Charming." She turned on the light to compensate for the setting sun. She kept the phone nearby so that when her husband called, she'd be able to pick it up before it switched to voicemail. He'd be calling any minute to let her know that both he and the car he had been driving had arrived at the mechanic's a few miles away via tow truck. It would seem that the 14 year old Mazda's cooling system had "shit the bed." "Ha! More references to shit today." she thought. "Perhaps I should just go take a shower and go to bed and start all over again tomorrow." It was tempting. She had gotten the wall as clean as she was going to and had finished cleaning the guest bath. She stripped and jumped into a hot shower, remembering to first bring the phone into the bathroom in case it rang. For the first time that day, she felt relaxed. She no longer stressed about her client or about the friend who she had brought to the hospital earlier that day for a biopsy to check for cancer. She stepped out of the shower. The house was clean. She was clean. She felt revitalized. And then the phone rang. "I'll be right there." she told her husband. She quickly threw on some clothes that were laying on the bedroom floor and reached for her keys. Her moment of peace was shattered and she was back to her usual "on-the-go" self. "And so it goes..." Tuesday, January 23, 2007 And The Oscar Goes To... As I mentioned once before, I'm kind of behind on movie watching. However, now that the race is on, I feel I need to see the following movies before the Oscars are announced:
So I have about 5 weeks to see 7 movies. It's do-able but I gotta get moving on it. Even so, I'm still planning to see Tenacious D this week. It's finally made it to the dollar theater here. Saturday, January 20, 2007 The Teenage Kitten Sez...
Why yes, I DO think I am King of the Universe*. Now stop buggin' me. *The Universe being the house. He still is not allowed outside. Thursday, January 18, 2007 A Little Help I need a book. Not just any book. I need a funny book that is easy to read and unpretentious. I don't care if it's fiction or non-fiction. I just need something to distract me from school when I'm not there. Got any suggestions? Wednesday, January 17, 2007 The Impossible Dream Would it be possible, just once, to have a graduate psychology class without students who are nutjobs? Is that REALLY too much to ask for? Monday, January 15, 2007 Phew! I Passed!
You
paid attention during 86% of high school!
85-100%
You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get
scores that high! Good show, old chap! Sunday, January 14, 2007 Small Print Seen on the bottom of the screen for a Cialis ad:
Multiple "attempts"? Not multiple acts? Bwaaaahahahahahaaaaaa Oops, sorry. Not funny. ;) Saturday, January 13, 2007 What's the Dillio? Today was my luxurious "stay in bed" day, at which I was quite successful. However, at one point in the afternoon when I was all snuggly in bed watching Closer, I smelled something...unusual. I happen to be one of those super sensitive olfactory people so I didn't know if at first I was just smelling something harmless but my mind was making more of it than it was. I was in a bowling alley last night and my hair did smell like cigarette smoke still (UGH!). Was that it? No, I was smelling more of a car exhaust odor. Ok, this can't be good. If I lie here any longer, am I going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning? Is the house going to blow up? I went into the garage, where the furnace lives, and it REALLY smelled in there! Shit! Do I call the gas company? OK...let's think of this rationally. Does it really smell like exhaust or something else. No, it's something else...something familiar. Perhaps charcoal and lighter fluid? OK, let's check outside and see if it smells out there. I went into my backyard. Aha! It does smell out here too! Now, where is it coming from? I looked over to my kindly, retired neighbor's yard and there was no grilling going on there. I looked over to the other neighbor who moved in next door last year. I see a gas grill, not in use. Then across his yard, I see HUGE flames and the back of my neighbor. Holy shit! He went to the Homer Simpson's School of Grilling! Seriously! How much lighter fluid did he use to soak MY house in the fumes? Also, after it snowed, they left their trash bin in the street...for a week...while they piled their garbage in the back of their beat up pickup truck. (The bins are supposed to be removed from the street ASAP and are not allowed to be permanently parked on the street. In fact, the law actually says they cannot be placed on the street any earlier than 5pm the day before trash day.) I think one of the neighbors put the bin in the driveway last Monday, which is trash day. Tuesday morning, the bin was back on the street, filled with so much trash it won't close. And today, there as some rusted out American sedan parked in front of our house as they had friends over. Usually the friends just park diagonally across the back of their minivan and pickup with the car ass sticking out onto the street. So let's see...unused gas grill, yet fucking bonfire flames coming out of the charcoal grill while the neighborhood is swimming in lighter fluid fumes, using the pickup as a trash receptacle while the actual bin sits out on the street, and friends who don't seem to know how to park their rusted out POS cars...yep, I'm afraid we are living next door to white trash. Skunk/Cat Bodhi is now in the cat equivalent of the awkward, gangly teenager stage. He is very long and skinny still with huge paws. He also has the most awful gas! Whenever I pick him up, I nearly die. He smells just like a skunk. No exaggeration. As he seems to have grown out of his projectile vomiting stage, I'm hoping he will grow out of the skunk-cat stage. Until then I think I'll just call him Stanky McGee. Wednesday, January 10, 2007 Checking In I got less than a week left of vacation so I thought I'd revisit that list of things I wanted to do. Done:
In Process:
Hasn't Happened Yet:
Things I Also Did:
It looks like I haven't done shit but I feel like I've gotten some stuff done. Now to maximize my time for the next week so that I start the semester out ahead while enjoying some time off. Monday, January 8, 2007 This Is How Sharp I Am I read the following:
and thought, "Dammit! I have to wait at least a whole year for season 2? Oh...wait...it IS 2007." DUH! Friday, January 5, 2007 Thoughts on Being a Therapist I have now been a therapist for oh, 6 weeks? I've got a ton of thoughts about my new role but I don't know how well I can articulate them. I an happy with my first client. He's a really nice guy who really just wants to do the right thing by his family but did not exactly have the best role models in his life to teach him how to be a responsible adult or a good parent. From what I can tell, however, he's a very caring parent even though it's unclear how he learned even that. He's in pain thought and I almost cried at our first meeting. It wasn't anything he said, but it was just the sadness that oozed from him. I knew when I started this path that I was going to have to toughen up or I'd just be in tears with my clients constantly. When he left that first meeting, I was spent. I just sat by myself and had to let his sadness that I had absorbed to dissipate at its own pace. I knew that if I tried to push it away, it would only linger longer. First meetings aren't hard. There is so much paperwork and basic questioning that before you know it, you've gone over the hour long appointment. But then, I worry about how will I use up a whole hour of time AND be an effective therapist at the next meeting. What can I give him? How can I help him? How should I phrase things so that he will listen instead of shut down? One big problem I still have, even after all my training and faux interviews is asking questions you wouldn't ask someone outside of a therapy setting like, "How often was your dad drunk?" or "Why are you so scared of sex? What happened to you that intimacy frightens you?" I mean, I have decades of experience telling me that these questions are rude and inappropriate but yet now I need to know the answers so I can help my clients. I'm sure my client has no idea how much I stress over how to make our 50 minutes together productive and useful so that he can feel a little better and that he will want to come back. He cancelled his appointment for today and I could hear in his voice that he was down. While there is some immediate relief on my end that I don't have to "perform" my newly created and still a little uncomfortable therapist act, I mostly feel sad that there is not more I can do for him right now. I've once again sucked up his sadness and it sits with me today for much longer than I expected. Thursday, January 4, 2007 Time To Get Off My Ass I've been on vacation since December 16th and man, have I fallen into the couch potato mode. I have a little over a week left of break and it's time to get some shit done. So, I'm posting this list to help me get a little motivation and here it goes (in no particular order):
Wow! I have to do all that in a week? Do I hafta? An Historic Cut For the first time since we got married over eleven years ago, my hair is longer than my husband's. This is due to the fact that he had 1 and a half feet of hair cut off yesterday. Yes, that is 18 inches of hair! It is still plenty long for him to wear it in a pony tail. It comes down to almost the middle of his back now. Is that crazy or what? He was going to donate his cut hair to Locks of Love. I told the hairdresser it had to be in a pony tail before she cut it so we could donate it but apparently she didn't understand what I said. I went to browse the mall while it was being cut and when I got back, it was too late. The hair had been swept up and thrown away. Ah, well. Perhaps in another 2 years. Wednesday, January 3, 2007 Seriously, WTF? What's wrong with this picture? The obvious answer is that Albuquerque is the COLDEST place in the ENTIRE COUNTRY! Colder than Idaho, Montana, Maine, Vermont, you name it, we're colder than it. I seriously did not sign up for this when I moved here. Tuesday, January 2, 2007 I Thought I Lived In The Desert We are now 3 days past the big storm but you wouldn't know it if you looked around. Here is my street as of this morning:
I got stuck on the ice trying to get off my street! This is ridiculous! Apparently, the city's might fleet of 20 plows are now ready to start plowing the neighborhoods. I'm thinking perhaps they should start with the schools as Albuquerque Public Schools have cancelled classes for tomorrow because they can't ensure the safety of the students due to the snow and ice around the schools. (Read: some kid could slip on the ice and sue our ass.) So, because I'm on vacation, my most important question on my mind is whether I should buy an actual snow shovel or not. Somehow I have this feeling that as soon as I buy one, it will never snow in Albuquerque in my life time but if I don't buy one, I'll be snowed in again several times this winter. So, I'm leaving it up to you. Should I buy a snow shovel or not?
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Blog Name: The Soap Box
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2007
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