This is a major downside of working in Chilliwack three days a week: I have to leave Husband behind in Vancouver.  Where he insists on doing things like using the shower, sleeping in the bed, and drinking the milk.  So I go away, and the house is clean (or cleanish), and I come home, and it’s less clean, and less well stocked.  It’s still my job to clean it and shop for it, but now I don’t even have the fun of making part of the mess!

I am perhaps irrationally hostile about this.  I want to be the sole mess maker.  I don’t want to come home to someone else’s scunge and debris.   And he’s even pretty tidy - I’m the messy one.  Still. I feel like the apartment should be put on a shelf when I’m not here, stored as-is for my return.

Husband has been threatening to go to Vegas for a holiday for a couple of months now, and I wish he’d hurry up and go already so I can get my revenge by using the shower when he’s not here.  Esan, I’m looking at you!

Chilliwack relaxed her death grip today and in a sudden warmup, melted all the snow and let me go home in Sprite Car.  Always keeps me on my toes, that place.

Work was good this week.  These days in the valley are very productive for me.  I’m observing and co-therapying during the day, and then have a break while making dinner with my dad, and then I read about therapy all evening until bed time.  My reading has suddenly become awfully, intensely relevant to my day to day functioning and, as a result, I’m doing it nearly incessantly.  Isn’t anxiety management fun?

The good things about these early practicum days: I think I know more than I thought I did.  Stuff comes up at work and suddenly my brain disgorges some kind of knowledge that applies - cool!  I get two or three pieces of data, and the brain grabs them, rearranges them, makes an inference or two, and suddenly I have a working hypothesis.  I’m sure I’m missing a lot (in fact I know I am, since my supervisor is always pointing out something that I hadn’t thought of but is so clearly relevant), but it’s reassuring to see that I’ve got at least a base of material to work with.

The bad things: Every time I have an interaction with someone I walk away thinking, shit, shouldn’t have said/done/expressed that!  This is the down side of having a bit database in the brain but not much experience to hang it on - I make mistakes, and I can get overwhelmed with trying to keep track of the process.  It’s not automatic yet and I can get caught up with trying to think out what to do too much.

And sometimes I catch myself wondering if all the complexity is real.  You should hear the way we talk about people, conceptualize their personalities and functioning and their problems, and then the methods for helping them fix the problems or overcome the trauma or whatever… truly Byzantine.  The vocabulary alone is stunning.  Frankly it’s another language.  And then I meet with a client, and we talk about car pooling, and I think, how does this conversation relate to all those ten-dollar words?

Take play therapy.  On one hand you can say you’re watching a corrective experience of graded exposure, catharsis, and cognitive integration, plus the improvement of the child’s efficacy, theory of mind, internal working models, interpersonal schemas, and internal state vocabulary… or, you could say Billy’s driving trucks through sand.

Just kidding of course.  It’s obvious that nothing so mundane as merely driving trucks through sand is going on. It’s all part of the kid’s larger plot to lull us into a false sense of security before the squid overlords arrive.

Well. I have good news: in my week in Chilliwack, I haven’t seen a single masturbator. Nor have I been flashed (as happened last month while picking up books at the post office). But Chilliwack has her own wily ways. There is, at last measure, a shitload of snow out here. And more is scheduled to come.

My car, for those who have not seen it, is a tiny little thing with two seats and summer tires. It weighs approximately four ounces and has the sort of free spirited attitude that means it wants nothing more than to slide around on the road like a happy sprite. Tragically, this causes me to void in my pants so I’m not driving. My dad, which whom I am staying at the moment, has been good enough to drive me to work and pick me up after announcing that my car is “the worst car for driving in the snow, ever, period.” Coming from a man who grew up back east and has a sort of macho-thing about driving in the snow, this is saying a lot. Even he won’t drive my car (note to Husband: not that he was driving it. That would never happen.).

So yeah. I’m stranded. I’m going to have to take the Greyhound home tomorrow so I’ll be back in the city in time for two things: one, shopping for a video camera so I can start taping therapy sessions because I GOT MY FIRST CLIENT, HOLY SHIT. And two, the Superbowl is Sunday and it’s pathetic to drink alone. Did I tell you about the last time I took the bus? If I didn’t, I should have, but in case I did, I’ll just give you the highlights: it involved me sitting on the liquid chemical toilet while the bus made a sudden and rather vigorous lane change. The bus had, of course, no sink or soap or even hand sanitizer. Just that terrible, thin, scratchy toilet paper that you always suspect is just spreading it around, not actually removing it. I leave the definition of “it” as an exercise to the reader.

So it is not without some trepidation that I anticipate the bus ride. Besides the unsanitary conditions, there are always unsavoury types on the bus. You know. People who smell, or talk too loud. Frankly, the bus is for suckers. Including suckers with tiny, free spirited cars.

So.  I live in a nice apartment building that lies cheek and jowl with the downtown east side.  It’s sort of strange - my building is one of a small nest of nicer buildings, primarily owner residents, that overlook False Creek and a nice park on the west side.  The view on the east side?  Some homeless people and a bunch of needle covers.  And also a higher than normal volume of body fluids on the sidewalk.  Why is there so much phlegm on the sidewalks in the poor part of town?  What is up with that?

Anyway, living here is occasionally really weird.  Weirder even than the dried lizards on a stick you can buy at the local Chinese markets.  Recently I discovered that McDonald’s pancakes are actually pretty good, and at two bucks, the price is awesome.  So sometimes I walk to the local McDonald’s for breakfast if I’m feeling lazy and we’re out of milk.  A couple days ago I did just that, leaving my building by walking through the nice foyer, nearly getting run over by a resident leaving the parking lot in their fancy SUV, and then, two blocks later, enjoying the sight of an indigent person masturbating into the bushes.  While standing on the sidewalk right in front of me.

All I can say is, thank god he wasn’t actually looking at me - that would have just been too, too gross to survive.

Tom Brady has been photographed with a cast!  On his ankle!  The ankle he uses when he leans back to throw!

Mwa ha ha ha!

Imagine the scene: it’s 2am, very dark.  I’m creeping out of the bedroom to go for a late night pee, being quiet so I don’t wake my sleeping husband.  Somewhere near the closet, I step on something crinkly, perhaps a little piece of paper.  Here is the noise it makes: crinkle!

Here is the noise Husband made, immediately following: “GOTCHA!”

When I am king, the following will be enacted with extreme prejudice:

1. There will be no chewing noises allowed on television.  Why must all actors chew like a congested heifer?
2. All bathrooms will have attendants present, whose job it will be to hold the door, ensure that all toilets get flushed, there is no piss on the seats, and the used hand towels make it into the garbage.  And automatically flushing toilets will be illegal.  Sink water will be activated by foot pedal, and will be a nice cozy warm temperature at all times.

3. All early morning radio deejays will be rounded up and shot.  Only somber news reports or music will be allowed before eleven a.m.

4. Commercials on TV will not be permissable during the airing of movies, and during the commercials the volume will go down.

Despite the best efforts of Tynes, the Giants beat Green Bay last night and are going to the Superbowl!  I’m so pleased I could pop!  It’s not entirely sorted out how it happened, but in this first year of my NFL fandom, the Giants somehow became “my” team.  I have been rooting for Little Manning (or Sulky Manning, as we also call him) all season.  Now I can watch him get ground into powder by New England at the Superbowl - I couldn’t be happier!

So I’m still reading that book about the rise of the AIDS epidemic, and it hasn’t stopped outraging me.  I struggle to understand how things could be allowed to get so bad, and how basically no one could give a shit, just because AIDS was initially thought to only infect homosexuals.  (Which is a pretty stupid idea anyway - viruses don’t care who you sleep with.  Risk may be higher in certain groups based on activity more conducive to spread of a virus, but it’s not like the bug interviews you before making its self at home.  Gay?  Okay, I’m moving in!)  John Powell said: “The slick thing about whiteness is that whites are getting the spoils of a racist system even if they are not personally racist.”  I guess this line of thinking applies to straights too, though in the case of AIDS it backfired big time and the epidemic - which of course can infect straights - spread hugely.
Anyway, this is the bit I read last night before bed and it probably had a lot to do with why I took forever to fall asleep:

A year and a half into the epidemic, at a time when about 600 Americans have AIDS and just under 300 have died, and the numbers of people being diagnosed is going up and up faster and faster, AIDS research garners about 1.5 million dollars for research.  This money is tied up in committees that call for applications to use the money (the standard research grant process), which means that it’ll be another half year or more until funds get released.  Researchers have all kinds of plans for epidemiological and virology research that is gathering dust because no one has any money or staff to carry out the work.  Research is stalled.  There has been one major news source that ran a story on AIDS, and only after straight people (IV drug users and their infants) started getting it.

Same time: some dude in Chicago poisons some Tylenol bottles.  Seven people die - nice, normal, white, straight people.  Government reaction?  Massive gobs of cash - millions and millions - are thrown at the problem.  Tylenol recalled at the cost to Johnson and Johnson of about 100 million, CDC folks swarm the city and travel all across America searching for more poisoned bottles following every tiny lead, policy is changed and laws are passed (tamper resistant bottles are now mandatory), the New York Times runs stories on it on their front page for a month.

AIDS?  Who gives a shit.  But poisoned Tylenol, now that’s worth reacting to!

Fuck!

So… I guess I’m not totally ready to throw in the towel yet, because I just have to tell you all about the horrible meeting I went to today.  I know, I know… everyone who is actually a contributing member of society already knows meetings suck, and for the record, I have in fact been employed in the past and went to my share of meetings, so I too already knew they suck.  Here is something I wasn’t prepared for: a three year break from the ass-ness of work meetings has not increased my tolerance for them at all.

You don’t need a description to know what it was like.  All the usual suspects were present… slow talking administrator, aggressive lady who disagrees with everything, Little Miss Compromise (in sunny coloured clothes), halogen lights, TimBits (Americans: these are doughnut holes.  Sorry, donut holes.).  Plus me, stuffing down my urge to run screaming from the room, leaving a Blogosaurus-shaped hole in the wall.  I think I kept it down to just fidgeting a lot and refusing to laugh at the stupid jokes.  Oh my god, I forgot about the stupid office meeting jokes.  How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb, one, but the light bulb has to want to change har har har.  *vomits*

Also, I have decided to hire a maid.  Shock!  It’s true.  I am officially giving up all pretense at being a good household manager.  I have no time.  Work, commuting and staying in another city, full course load, studying, and all that Law and Order that just won’t watch itself.  Last night Husband and I were talking and I said, “Moof” (this is what I call him, isn’t it great?  Don’t you wish you had someone to call you Moof?) “Moof, I need some help around the house.  There’s no way I can get everything done and not turn into a seething maniac who poisons dinner.  I think you should take back some of the paperwork I do for your work, and pick up some cleaning duties.”  His brain immediately got to spinning because if there’s one thing Husband hates, it’s doing his own billing or, for that matter, housework (and, unlike me and meetings, over the last few years he has not forgotten how bad it would be for him to again endure cleaning toilets).  He paused, and said: “We’re hiring a maid.”  Voila!

The only trouble is some white middle class guilt - you know, slavery and all that.  Hiring people who are getting paid crap and no benefits from some evil agency to do the lowest status work around while I lounge by the pool being fed peeled grapes and imperiously refusing to grant stays of execution.  All because I prefer to keep my quality of living at a certain level.  Which costs someone else’s quality of living (I know of what I speak: I was a maid for many years back way back).

What I really need is a recommendation from someone to a maid who is self employed and I can pay directly - and pay a reasonable wage.  Here is the scandal of maid services: you pay about 125 bucks an hour for three women to come in and earn minimum wage or close to it to clean badly.  Nearly all the cash goes to the company as profit (some excepted for the cleaning supplies they bring, but this is spurious convenience.  Most companies have these waterless systems that do not clean, in my opinion.  They make your place look clean but it’s not actually clean.)  Better option?  Hire an independent operator for $40 bucks an hour, provide the supplies you want used, get far better work, know the money goes right to the person who earned it.  Same cost, same amount of man-hours, better product, less guilt.  Okay, who knows someone like this who wants to work for me?