On Becoming a Person

Wednesday was my last day seeing clients (here-for-to-after referred to as “folks”) at our clinic in the psych department.  In the fall, I will start my practicum placement at The Counseling Center on campus—for UA students only.  So naturally, this past week I said goodbye to the folks I have been working with in the clinic; some of which I had been working with for quite some time.

This is my first time leaving a clinical placement, given that I have only ever seen folks there.  I feel like this day should have had more meaning for me than I allowed it to, but I woke up on Wednesday feeling so sick… I had a pounding headache and I was exhausted and dizzy and nauseous and I just wanted to crawl right back into bed.  This wasn’t an option, so I ended up driving to school at 7:30am and talking to Sarah on the phone and saying “What if I puke in my car, what if I puke in my car?” over and over. (Thankfully, I didn’t.)

So unfortunately, in many of my “meetings,” I ended up just checking the clock over and over to see how much time was left before I could go get a drink of water.  I was fanticizing glasses filled with water and ice.  For many of the other students working in the clinic, I think terminations and endings were filled with a lot of different emotions—sadness, awkward feelings, nervousness, etc… but I can honestly say that I pretty much felt nothing.

I think part of this has to do with feeling sick, but a bigger part of it has to do with the fact that I am really, really used to saying goodbyes. That seems like it is always a big part of my life in one way or another, so I think I have just gotten good at it.  Whatever being good at saying goodbye means.  Maybe this makes me a bad therapist or a bad colleague or a bad person in general, but to quote one of my favorites, "it is what it is," I guess. 

But let me not make myself sound too uppidy or anything-- on the same token, lately I have been having nightmares about important relationships in my life ending.  Last night I dreamed that John left me to go play a minor role in a movie and also to play professional soccer (HAHA!); in the same dream my parents decided to get a divorce and go their separate ways and left me in the care of my younger siblings.  I woke up making crying noises but without any tears.  So maybe all of the feelings I didn't feel in real life came out subconsciously.  Who knows. 

But if anyone gets an offer to be a movie star or a professional athlete, please let me know before you leave!!

So I lost the battery charger for my Nikon D60.  The last time I remember seeing it is when I took it out of my camera case when John and I went on our anniversary weekend.  I thought I took it out before the trip, but perhaps my memory is wrong.

Anyway, I noticed it missing the other day when I went to use my camera and I noticed that the battery was totally dead.  So I went to get the charger out of the bag and it isn’t there.  I have a spare battery, but of course, given my luck, that is dead too.

John and I have turned the house upside down but it is nowhere to be found.

Now my Nikon is pretty much dead to me (literally) until I find the charger or a replacement, and we aren’t really willing to shell out the necessary cash right now for the actual Nikon one.

I suck.

Special thanks goes out to my girl Lauren for providing me with, among many other shots, these amazingly flattering pictures from our wedding!  Special thanks also goes out to her for mailing them to me in the BIOHAZARD specimen bag that the nurses at the hospital put her left-behind phone charger in when I came to pick it up. 

Welcome to the winner’s circle!!!

Now I can’t help but hum “Will you be There?”, the Free Willy song by Michael Jackson…

vs.  

This past weekend John and I went to both—Rockin’ on the River in Cuyahoga Falls on Friday and Lock 3 in downtown Akron on Saturday.

I have sort of strong opinions about both of these festivals…Let the throwdown begin!

Parking: I have to throw this in there… at Lock 3 John and I went to just park in one of the UA campus decks downtown, since I have a parking pass and everything.  There was a guy at both entrances to the deck charging people $5 to park there.  John pointed to the parking pass hanging on my mirror and he was like, “I have a campus parking pass here that I already paid 100 bucks for.  I don’t really want to pay another 5, you know?” but the guy wouldn’t let us in without paying, so John pointed to another empty campus lot across the street that was not monitored and said, “Well, I’m going to go park over there where it’s free.”  Lock 3, you lose this one.

Food: The mainfare at Lock 3 was ribs… I have never seen so many rib shanties proudly displaying the trophies they had won in rib burnoff contests.  I had no idea this was so important and so pointless at the same time—every single rib place had like the exact same amount of trophies to display, so it made no difference.  But there was a huge variety of food; not just ribs, and the prices were at least $1 less than everything at Rockin’ on the River.  In the falls, I got a moderately sized waffle cone with sprinkles for $5.50 (no joke!).  At Akron, I got a gigantic (probably like 32-oz) Reese's Pieces blizzard-thing for $5.  Way, way better.

Beverages: The mainfare at both places was, obviously, beer.  According to John, the River had a better selection than the Lock—Bud Light vs. Miller Light… both equally disgusting, in my opinion.  At the River, it seemed like the entire point of being there was for the beer—you could buy a stack of tokens and exchange them for little plastic cups full of Bud.  That seemed to be pretty much the entire point of being there for most people.

Entertainment: The River had a Jimmy Buffett cover band, and let me tell you, it was amazing to look around and watch middle aged but going-on-twenty people in all varieties of Hawaiian shirts waving their arms in the air and gyrating awkwardly with a drink in their hand.  The Lock had a soul band from Louisiana that was pretty good.  This time I got to watch children bopping around and rolling down the hill, black and white women dancing together, and a couple of men so into themselves and their moves that they wouldn’t have noticed me staring at them anyway.  The Lock also had a bunch of children's rides and fireworks—probably the best fireworks I have ever seen!!  Way to go Akron!

Crowd: In the words of one of my former clients, “Let me put it to you like this.”  The River was like Kid Rock, and the Lock was like Beyonce mixed with Kelly Clarkson.  At the Lock, Haley and I were counting the underage girls who were dressed, um, inappropriately.  I think we ran out of fingers.  The same could be said about the River though.  Way too many people, of all ages, without enough clothes on.

Best Moment: At the River, the best moment was probably when Dan Leipold couldn’t remember half of the people from his high school that were saying hello to him, and his conversations were like, “Heeeeey you!  … It’s been like 9 years! [Since he graduated, generic].  Remember that one time at the place?  Yeah, I was totally there. It was awesome, wasn’t it?”  At the Lock, the best moment was when John dropped an entire rib in his lap and splattered sauce everywhere, including on the person next to him, and then asked me to get napkins and wipe him off.  I even had to take off his glasses and wipe those.  I am a good wife.  But it was moderately hilarious.

Comfort: At the River, I had to stand shoulder to shoulder with our group while people thirsty for more beer kept pushing past us.  At one point, Dan turned to John and whispered, “That old lady just grabbed my @$$ with both hands!”  We think she was trying to push him out of the way, but then again… you never know.  At the Lock, we got to sit in the grass while our backsides became “moist” (catch word of the evening) on top of a hill, relatively undisturbed.  Half of the time John let me be in his lap, so that was lovely.  Even though it was covered in dried rib sauce.  I didn’t really care.

THE VERDICT: Lock 3 definitely steals the show, hands down.  If I ever want to surround myself with a bunch of beer-drinking, cigar smoking, undulating 50-year-olds or a pack of screaming scantily clad teeny-boppers again, I can probably go to a Garth Brooks concert.

47 degrees.  That’s about how cold it feels in the College of Arts and Sciences building (and hence, the psychology department) where I spend my days on campus.  They are doing some kind of maintenance to the heating system that I do not fully understand, but all I know is that whatever they are doing is causing the system to blow out frigid air.  We all got emails warning us about this—saying that it might be “extra chilly” in the building and to bring a sweater—and letting us know that it will continue to be this way until mid-August.

Hooray.

Monday was the first day I had been in the department since the switch, and I was ill-prepared, so I spent the entire day in denial and wrapped in my fleece blanket and chattering, “It’s cold,” like every five seconds.  By today though, I have learned.  The winter clothes are back out, even though it is July.  I wore pants and socks and my winter set of high heels, as well as two undershirts, a collared shirt, and a humungous sweatshirt that says “ARMY” on it.  I brought this sweatshirt into my counseling sessions, even.  It was that cold.  I did not really care.  I offered all of my clients my blanket but none of them wanted to accept this, even though they were all shivering too.

Everyone is drinking coffee like it is going out of style.  Today during my 7 hours on campus I went to Starbucks.  Twice.

Sheila, our incredibly beloved member of the 3rd floor cleaning staff, was carrying around a cup of hot chocolate.

It is sort of funny to see all of the faculty in sweatshirt-like jackets.  Nobody seems to care.  The only warm places are the innermost ones- like the black cave where we watch counseling tapes and the therapy rooms that have not been opened since the blizzard decided to strike.  Ironically, normally these rooms are the coldest.

Touching metal—like desk legs, doorknobs, etc… is a bad idea.  Your hand will end up feeling frozen.  I told Amanda and Adrienne not to lick the metal office walls either, or they might end up with their tongue stuck to it like the little kid on Christmas Story.  For fun, I took off my flip-flop on Monday and put my bare foot on the carpet.  It was really, really freakin’ cold.  Amanda did it too and she said she could feel the cold concrete right through the carpet.

So this, in addition to all of the relentless, relentless stress, has led me to develop a cold in July.  Repulsive.  It is the crappy kind too, where all the snot is just running down the back of my throat and irritating it to the point where it is also sore.  

The only upside is that I can eat as many popsicles as I want and feel like I have an excuse.  I have already eaten like half a box of these.  When everything else seems to suck, I can always count on frozen delights!!