We have 7 girls on a unit that holds 20. Usually we have between 12 and 16 girls. Right now we have 7. My case load right now is 1... I'm so bored it's silly. I feel like I should be doing things, but I have nothing to do. My groups are planned, all of my paperwork is up to date, we don't have any intakes coming in so far... I'm bored. In some ways it's good: few girls means that few girls are acting up enough to get arrested or timed-out of their other placements, but few girls also means that *all* of the admin and clinical staff are bored out of our skulls. I suppose I'll just take it as a blessing, and remember it for when I've got a caseload of 10 and I don't have time to breathe between sessions.

I made an appointment to get my hair cut and red-striped. It's Friday. I'm going to be very happy for having that.

I'm also borrowing fly_molo's car for the next day or so. Technically it's our dad's, but Si drives it all the time. It took me 40 minutes to get to work today, instead of the usual 90. I need a car. I'm debating getting a Subaru Outback. It's a hippie-wagon, but it holds stuff, and gets good gas mileage and lasts forever. October...

Is it just me or does Justin Masterson look like he's 12? He's 24, born in 1985, but geez. He looks so friggin' young! Pedroia, Ellsbury and Kottaras are all 26, and Jon Lester is 25. I feel old though...

Then again all of the high level gymnasts and figure skaters are 10 years younger than I am. It freaks me out.

Holy crap it's been a long week. After my fantabulous weekend I had to do the first 40 hours of my 80 hour training for DYS. Urgh. Had to drag my ass to Grafton, which is just this side of Worcester every morning. It's an hour if I drive straight from my house, it's an hour and forty if I have to go into Boston to meet with my coworkers when my roommate needs her car.

After seeing who some of the other DYS staff are, I fear for the kids in the system. There were a couple law-enforcement types who kept asking how/when you got to touch/hold etc a kid. One was asking about cavity searches. Urgh. We don't do them ever, and he seemed to think that strip searches were OK to do whenever. He fails to understand trauma and the history that most of our kids are coming from. I was one of 5 clinicians in the training. And oy... I debate whether or not half of them should be working with kids. What ever happened to "they're kids, not criminals". The good part is that I now know the DYS restraint, so I can move kids between areas and not get yelled at for not having training. I'm at work this week, then I go back next week for another 40 hours. Eugh.

fly_molo came down last night and we went to the They Might Be Giants concert at the Berkeley Performance Center. The opening act blew goats, he was highly pretentious and had the most boring, formulaic song writing ever. If he hadn't been an overweight, balding, 40something guy, I would have said that everything was written by a 12 year old girl. Just... ick. However, TMBG rocked. In honor of the 20th anniversary of their Flood album, they played Flood, in it's entirety, in order. It was glorious. They were awesome. And we had 3rd row mezzanine seating. It ruled.

As an aside : HAPPY BIRTHDAY fly_molo!!! You're 21, don't be an idiot about it.

I've been in a food rut recently. I often get home from work starving, but not knowing what I want to eat. It sucks. I made falafel tonight because I had a ton of chickpeas that needed eating. I need a food processor. The one that I've had is busted. And making things like hummus and falafel would be so much easier with a food processor. I broke my potato masher today trying to smush the chickpeas.

I had a friend IM me out of the blue on Friday night. I haven't heard from this guy since 2000-ish I think. He went into the Navy and then promptly fell of the face of the planet. Apparently he's married, with a 3 year old. YahooMail has been automatically starting YahooMessenger when you log in. And I've had that email since high school, so he decided to IM me. So strange! Incidentally, stoner_cowboy also found me on YM. The internet is a strange and small place.

And I'm crushing hugely right now. Like to the point where I'm distracted at work. It's bad.

I'm supposed to be picking up a rental car right now to drive to Niskayuna to see Travis and co. for Americade. But I'm not. Why? Because Bank of America doesn't post payments until Midnight, meaning that the payments that I set up for today won't post until midnight tonight, meaning that I have $0 credit available meaning that I can't have a $300 hold put on my card to rent a car. FUCK!!! And of course I find this out now. If I'd known about it last night, I would have made a payment last night, but since I assumed that things worked on a business day model, not so much. FUCK!

So instead I'm leaving in 20 minutes to get a bus from South Station to Schenectady which instead of taking 3 hours will take me 5. And I've let down my friends. I am displeased.

Work has been fucked recently too. I keep staying late, because intakes come in around 4, and I foolishly think that I can finish them in an hour. And the last few intakes I've done have been trauma-licious and that means the write-up is really fucking long. The good thing is that my supervisor says that I'm pretty good at them, I just need to pay more attention to detail. Which is a relief, because I was really concerned that I wasn't doing them right at all.

I dislike my office mate. Distinctly. I'm able to be professional with her, but I really don't like her. She is one of the most judgmental people I've ever met. How do you become a therapist and be so fucking judgmental? I don't get it. She went to Smith for social work, and then did a year's fellowship at MGH in psychoanalysis. And she's not used to working within a team. I've done team approach my entire career so far, and I love it. And she has the gall to tell me what to do with my clients, and how to work with them. I've been working in the field longer than she has, albeit by a year or so, and I know how to work within a team, and with angry teens. With short term therapy such as ours we don't go to root problems, we problem solve. I don't want to hear about your family unless it has a direct bearing on what's happening now and how you're operating in the world.
She's smug, and superior, and thinks she's so wonderful for being vegetarian. We were having a conversation about it, and she said "I can give you some pointers on switching to vegetarianism if you're interested." And when I said "I'm not, thank you", she got pretty annoyed. I grew up veggie. I started eating meat for a reason, and I don't like the "veggie meat", because it's so fucking processed. She's full of contradictions, where she's all good for the earth veggie etc. and then she'll go drink 3 Diet Cokes in a day and eat stuff from the vending machine. And because I've been there 4 weeks longer than she has she expects me to tell her what to do/how to do things. I'm fucking busy! She hasn't managed to learn how to fill her time yet, and she'll just sit and stare and be bored.

Oh, and she's got severe anemia which means that she's always fucking freezing. I'm an athlete, I tend to run warm. I like my rooms cool. It's a constant battle, and one that I can't be super-forceful about because it is a medical thing. I work Sun-Thurs, she works Tues-Sat, so when she finally starts her normal schedule I'll only have to deal with her for 3 days a week, and one of those days will be short because one of us will have a Wednesday late night.

She also miraculously doesn't seem worried about waiting for the bus on Blue Hill Ave on her late night. Bitch is crazy. Seriously. Anyone who lives in Dorchester can tell you that it's a bad idea to hang out there at night if you want to stay safe.

My 80 hour training starts next week, It's a week of 40hours of training, a week at work, and then another 40 hours. This is the mandatory DYS statewide training, procedures, restraints, etc. I'll probably know 1/3 of it by the time I get in there just from working for a month.

So basically: job=awesome, stressful, office mate= bitch, staff=awesome, boss=awesome. I think it works out fairly well.

And now off to Americade. I will drink heavily tonight. I will also buy a motorcycle jacket this weekend. Wish me luck!

Stolen from redstapler


visited 23 states (46%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Like this? try: Mapped Web

Between growing up in New England, track meets and mr_mindless's penchant for road trips, I've hit more states than I thought.

Also: I have a new favorite song.

I got a lot done today. So far today I have:
-cleaned the bathroom
-done 4 loads of laundry, including sheets, my winter jackets, and my hand-wash stuff
-picked up my room... mostly...
-swept the bedroom floor, and the hallway/stairs
-shook out the area rug in my room
-went grocery shopping. I got home and realized that I already had rolled oats, and pasta. Oh well. Call it stocking up.
-offered the soon-to-be empty room in my apartment for madmazula but he declined due to lack of funds/job upon moving to Boston.
-polished 3 pairs of shoes (I mink-oiled my clogs 2 days ago)

Still to do:
-sort and file 2 month's worth of papers
- make bread
-sweep/wash the kitchen floor

I have a friend coming over later to make me dinner, which will be awesome. No hanging out with my Little today because her mom's working and she's got to take care of her brother. Grr.

Hey New Yorkers! I'm coming down! I'll be there Saturday afternoon until Tuesday. We should do stuff! I'm planning on hitting either MOMA or the Guggenheim. (I doubt I can do both)

Let me know if you want to/can meet up!

I got the DYS job I was interviewing for! I found out on the 9th, but haven't gotten around to posting for a while. Short-term girl's pre-trial unit. So yay! Full time, good benefits, great pay, and I'd only be working one job!!! I start May 4 part-time, and then once I close out my clients at the high school I go full time on May 14. Meeeeep. I'm kind of nervous; it's going to be an intense job, and there's a lot to learn, but I think I can manage. They're going to send me to western Mass for a week to get restraint trained among other things, which will be exciting and terrifying at the same time. I also get some intensive DBT training, which will be cool.

I got the go-ahead to revamp my lifting program and not do PT anymore! I'll go back in 2 weeks for a check-up, but at this point I'm pretty much healed. I've got some restrictions, and I need to start really light, but I'm cleared! I'll hopefully be throwing in June! Yay!

I just reminded myself of the wisdom of skimming the spam folder before dumping it permanently. I checked on whim, before emptying it, and found a message from DYS asking if I was still interested in a full time position. Uh... yeah!!! So I just emailed the woman back letting her know that I'm still interested. I could have missed out on that opportunity had I not checked my email. And the email just came in today, so I'm not too far behind. Huzzah.

I'm frustrated with men... again/still. National Guard boy was supposed to contact me this weekend, and didn't. And Boy Wonder (D's coworker) didn't show up to the party we had for Alex and I'm wondering wtf is up with him. Dating is frustrating. I'm tired of chasing, but chasing is the only way things get done in my life.

My shoulder hurts. A lot. And I don't know why. Also, my back is locked. I need a massage badly.

Paid $350 for my third of fixing my mom's car. We had to replace the hub assembly and front brakes. It still needs an oil change. I was really hoping to use that money for student loans and/or my motorcycle license. Not so much anymore.

I'm sleepy-zombie recently. So low energy it's insane. I need to go to bed now. And I may skip PT if my shoulder keeps hurting this much. Ice is doing nothing for it anymore.

Girls blame Rhianna

There is so much still wrong with our society. It is NEVER the victim's fault for getting abused.