Was Your Day Better Than This?

Last night Limelet was awake from 3:30 to 4:30, which all things considered is really not the worst night ever, but still I had a really hard time getting myself up in the morning for work and an even harder time getting out of the house.  He's really cranky and clingy when he's tired (got it from me, most likely.)

I had a client right at 8, and made it to the Center just at 8 myself, minus makeup as usual.  So there I was in my somewhat dark office, trying eat some string cheese (breakfast) and add a dash of makeup before the client arrived.

 

"Your client has arrived.  Your client has arrived," announced my desktop computer, as I hastily applied lipstick and darkened my eyebrows.  As I stood up to go to the lobby to get her, I checked my application in my powder mirror by the light of my coffee table lamp. 

 

It was then that I realized that instead of my usual subtle brown eyebrow pencil, I had grabbed a blue eyeliner pencil.  My eyebrows were a lovely bright blue.

 

Just as I assumed a horror-stricken expression, a colleague knocked on my door asking questions about some project we're working on.  I shielded my eyebrows with my hands while impressing on her that I was in a hurry.  This probably looked really odd, which you can tell if you try doing it yourself.

 

I think I managed to get most of it off before seeing the client, but who knows.  Maybe she just thought it was a new therapy trend, or (more likely) that it was a weird "old people" trend for the over-40 set.

Happy St. Pat's

Happy St. Pat's
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo

You know it wasn't really snakes that were driven out of Ireland, but indigenous religions, right?

Slate pretty much explains it all here.

Just FYI: I'm not a big fan of human sacrifice, whatever the denomination.

Savings, Schmavings

I'm a little late for my yearly rant about Stupid Daylight Savings. It's much worse now having a kid. So, anyway, consider it ranted upon.

Now, for my alternative (I finally have one): we set the clocks back one hour 24 times each year, giving us all an extra hour to sleep in every few weeks or so, and coming 'round to the original time once per year. I realize it means that we'll be getting up when it's getting dark (or is dark) out for part of the year. But I think that the gain in restedness we'll all have will make up for it.

No more of this getting up an hour earlier during the springtime. This year it was just when we were all feeling vastly relieved because it was finally getting light when we got up. Then, BLAM! Now we have to get up in the dark again while still feeling tired.

Which more or less blows my alternative suggestion out of the water, but I don't care.

In A Circuitous Way

Pi Pie
Originally uploaded by megpi

Happy Pi Day.

glazed pi
Originally uploaded by VROG in Bristol

There are a lot of these. Why don't we have one?!

Public Figure (?)

I'm realizing that people see me and recognize me in public, so I better make sure I walk my talk.

 

A young woman came into my office today with a big hunk of fabric today asking me how to wrap her baby in it.  She'd previously been to one of my babywearing talks, but I guess the thing that led her to try it out for herself was seeing me at the grocery store wearing a contented Limelet in one of my wraps.  (Her baby had been teething and doesn't want to be put down, which in my experience makes it hard to even go to the bathroom.)

 

And TheLimey told me that a woman from the library playgroup recognized--well, not me, but Limelet, and assumed (correctly) who I was.  Again at the grocery store.

 

So if those two people saw me, then I'm sure others have as well: I just heard about those two. 

 

Gosh, does this mean that I have to try to look good, or at least less bad, before going to the grocery store?  'Cause it's not likely to happen.

My Theme Song

The original song is pretty catchy already, but these lyrics speak to me.
I think my favorite part is the Seth Green segment.

Retired English Psychologist Apparently Quite Clever

48-year-old London psychologist developing movie-recommending algorithm for Netflix contest on his elderly home Dell computer has been edging out tech teams at high-caliber schools and so forth.
I'm rooting for him to win the million dollars!

Austen

I don't know. She seems to0 charming and sweet to be me.

Take the Quiz here!

Fantasy Cheese Tea

TheLimey and I actually had a conversation the other night...was it last week?  No, maybe the week before.  I mean a normal, honest-to-goodness conversation that included laughter and...content and...stuff.  We even had a glass of wine while conversing!  Limelet went to sleep relatively early and even stayed asleep with no intervention long enough (half an hour) for this to take place.

 

One thing we talked about was how fantasy changes as one gets older.  We used to fantasize (and I won't say whose was which) about winning the lottery, being able to fly, being incredibly attractive, having a really cool car, or dating celebrities (--no, wait a minute...I don't think that either of us has ever been terribly into celebrities.  Scratch that.  Unless you count my primary-school crush on James T. Kirk...anyway--).

 

TheLimey revealed his innermost fantasy life, and yes--it was something nearly impossible to achieve.  He fantasizes about having the chance to sit on the sofa and have a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.

 

Me? Well, I've discovered that I am almost always too exhausted to even fantasize about cheese anymore.  Kind of like when you're too sick to watch TV, if you've ever experienced that.  I guess I fantasize about getting to sleep in until 7:00 or even 7:30. 

 

Or getting to bed earlier, so here goes.

Where's My Overthruster?

Wow, it's the IRL Buckaroo Banzai!

Okay, so he's not a surgeon....yet.

Also from the really cool TED conference: Zimbardo talks about Abu Ghraib. (Events that--I'm sorry to say--I predicted, as most psychologists could have. Or at least most feminist psychologists or social psychologists.)

I Got the Winter Tail-End Blues

I'm not really that blue right now (though ask me last thing at night and I might tell you a different story). I am feeling tired a lot this week, which could be a lotta stuff.

Anyway, today would have been my mother's 60th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mama: I wish you could have met your first grandson. He's a pip.


* * * * * * * * *


I've been sending out job applications, initially to my chagrin. I wanted some time off after that whole dissertation thing. Like, maybe a month to get my land legs again. However, the internship year is just not set up that way. At least the job apps are not--generally speaking--as much of a PITA as internship apps. Until I get interview offers and have to start flying to another state; then that will definitely be somewhat of a PITA. I'm actually beginning to feel some excitement about some of them, which is better than the pure mental exhaustion I have been feeling.

I got one great reference letter that stated that I was NOT the best person he'd ever worked with*.

Next week is spring break here at the U. I'm so busy that I barely have the time to notice that something is happening the following week, but I couldn't help notice that while all my regular client spaces are filled, there are no new intakes at all (usually they are totally full.) So perhaps I can start to catch up on some things that have gone fallow since, say, November due to the Great Dissertation Crunch.

Hopefully this means that the actual "spring" itself is around the corner--in a few weeks, it'll be rainy and mushy and melty. This year I think we are all desperate for winter to be over --last year it was just me. It's funny to think that for Limelet it will sort of be like the whole world is new again, since he was just barely beginning to walk when it became too cold to hang out outside.

I heard a cardinal singing his spring song yesterday morning, despite the newly fallen four inches of snow. It was such an optimistic sound.

Likely this means that the phototherapy program I instituted here will soon go belly-up until next winter, when I will have been several months gone. But now that they have the lights and the lights are mounted on the wall and a protocol is nearly written (thank you, colleague), at least next year they will be available for SAD clients.

I constantly think of things I'd like to blog, but when I have computer time it's always at work. Most of us are...shall we say, a bit overextended, so I don't do much leisure writing. Right now I should be doing about five something elses, but I just want to do one blog entry! Just one, darnit!

In the brief few minutes when Limelet is falling asleep but is not asleep enough for me to leave the room yet, I do all my leisure reading. So a few pages a night. I just finished re-reading George MacDonald's books Lilith and Phantastes. I read them as a child, I think more than once. It was strange, because I couldn't remember the content until I started reading them, and then it was as familiar as your old street at your childhood home. (Not mine, because there are too many of them.)

Now I am reading something completely on the other end of the scale--a book that someone left on the "free stuff" shelf at our laundry facility: A suspense-thriller set in Montana called Dark Paradise (Hoag). The former owner left it there for a reason: I hate to say this because I like everything--and I mean, everything--but it is actually bad!

I'm still reading it, because sometimes I just want some fluff, you know? But I think I know how it will end already, and I'm only 50 pages in. (I think the ending was actually given away in the intro.)

So far, my favorite signs of book badness have been a sentence that discussed how a character had "forgotten how delicate women's underwear could be", and a recently introduced stock-Englishman character. I have to say, he's not the usual "evil-Englishman" character that you might think. No, he's the just slightly less-frequent "gay Englishman" character, and says things like "I say, you look positively knackered, Luv."

So, Cheerio! I'm off to get some work sorted before I'm positively knackered, Guv'ner.



*No, it really was a great letter. The referrer said I was the second best intern in the 30 years he's been here. Which actually sounds a lot more believable than saying someone is the best, doesn't it?

Match Day

Having gone through Match Day three times myself (one year before our new PhD program was accredited, one year in which I turned up "in a family way" and had to withdraw, and then the final year in which everything worked out) I heartily sympathize with the subjects of this article.

 

You'd think that "in the wake of" (which always means the word "shooting" is about to occur) various incidents, we as a country would be more interested in funding mental health care (as described in article). 

 

But--what am I thinking?  We don't appear to place much of a value on other health care, so of course mental health care would be viewed as even more fluffy and incidental.

Electoral Compass

electoral compass
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo

It's a sad commentary on my life that doing this quiz was my break for the day.

Inspired by geistweg.

eclipse 928pm

eclipse 928pm
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo

As detailed below.

Limelet is distracted with an unused phone I found in a box, so I was able to take this (terrible) picture.

Eclipse

Between bouts of trying to get Limelet to sleep (he's sick again as well as teething like crazy, which means a lot less sleep for all three of us, and a lot more crankiness for all three of us) I have had a great view of the lunar eclipse tonight. The moon is about half covered right now. I always prefer having east-facing bedroom windows because I can see the moon rising. (Oh yeah, and the sun, I guess!)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!
Originally uploaded by ButterflySha

I love weird, old-fashioned candy, including conversation hearts (and Necco wafers).

Limelet got a floaty silver balloon from me, and TheLimey got a box of chocolates. (That's an upside of being the stay-at-home parent, right?) Review on the balloon: "Best. Toy. Ever." No word yet on the chocolates.

Wow!

It is superblizzardy out there today.  And the heavy snow is predicted to begin at 6pm.  I do love precipitation when I don't have to drive in it, and today I took the bus.

 

Stay home if you can, unless you're somewhere there isn't a blizzard or other insane weather occurring at you.

 

I better put some peanuts out for sure.

Keep Birdfeedin'

Turns out it's good for 'em.  I mean really, who knew?!

More-athon

Limelet sick for several days; now Dad's sick too.  Hope I can stay un-sick, at least until the weekend.  I already missed one day to stay home and tend the listless nursling.

 

Had a discussion with my fellow intern mother about how strange it is that we really do seem to be able to avoid illnesses since becoming mothers.  Our perception, of course, is that we do it because we have to. 

 

Somebody ought to do a study...

I Never Thought About Chaff This Way Before

...but doesn't "Separating the shaft from the wheat" make this review way more Freudian than it needs to be?

It turns out that a lot more people than I would have imagined make this error. It's all over the internets.

Chaff, people. Chaff.