The Long, Flabby Arm of the Law

You know in Law & Order when they're making headway in some case and then, suddenly, one of the officers is served a subpoena? And it's all tense and dramatic? Now I can say I have had that experience. I was sitting peacefully in my supervisor's office when a woman comes in, hands me a bunch of papers, and says "You are being served a subpoena." Or something like that. I didn't have to appear in court, but I did have to give a deposition. Hence, the last two weeks have been stressful for me as I've tried to figure out how it all works, what I need to do, and how much therapist-client information is considered privileged. I have lost some sleep and probably aged a couple years. The most stressful things were 1) knowing that people were really relying on me to do this right/screw up, depending on which side they were on; 2) the fact that my supervisors were giving me totally contradictory information about privilege. But now it's over, I survived, and it went pretty well. I am hoping I don't have to deal with that again, but I probably will.

I was kind of having a professional identity crisis anyway before this happened, and then all this legal stress has made me really question how much I really want to do this therapy thing. I don't want to give it all up, but...there is a lot of junk that you really can't know until you're out there. Someday, I will be fully licensed and will be able to pick and choose who I want to see and when. But that is not the case now. It is somewhat helpful for me to think of it as a sort of residency like medical students experience. It's kind of crappy for a while, and then you get to call the shots, most of the time anyway. Bleh. But sometimes I still wonder what I got myself into.
On to better things.
Dane is cute and big and makes us laugh all the time. I can't believe he's almost a year old now. Has it really been that long? And he has changed so much.

I love that little pose of his. It makes me smile every time I see it.

He has never quite grasped the whole pacifier concept:

And here he is, flashing his pearly whites (all eight of them):

As you can see, he is also flashing his runny nose.

This is how he claps:

He will hold one hand steady and bring the other one to meet it. It is cute.

Finally, a little feminist moment, brought to you by me:
I watched the broadcast of John McCain announcing his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. (Just to set the stage, I was not necessarily waiting for the announcement with bated breath. I was watching Rachael Ray, and the broadcast interrupted it. I was actually a little stressed that I would miss what she was making for dinner, but I got to see both the announcement and the dinner. Whew.) After he introduced her, she gave her speech, including an introduction of her family. She has a son who enlisted in the army last year, three daughters, and another son who is four months old. Four months old! She is a candidate for vice-president with five kids, including a tiny infant. And at the end of her speech, she acknowledged the anniversary of women’s suffrage and thanked those women who paved the way for her to be in this position, including Geraldine Ferraro and, of course, Hillary Clinton. She quoted how some have said Hillary made 18 million cracks in the biggest, hardest glass ceiling in the U.S. The Palin said, “…we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!” When she said that, I got goosebumps and became a little weepy. This surprised me. I have no political aspirations, and yet the possibility of having a female vice-president touched me somehow. I don’t know. I am happy to have a woman in the running. We’ll see how it all turns out.

House Hunting and Such

First of all, we are not buying a house. But for certain reasons that I don’t feel like explaining right now, we are hunting for a house that we will rent. We’re still not sure if it will all work out, but we went out with a Realtor* to check out some homes. Here is just one little experience we wanted to share:

This is a cute little house that was built in the 1930s but has been updated.

Here is the living room.

Here is the kitchen.

Then you go down the stairs to the family room.

Here is one end of the family room.

And here is the downstairs bathroom.

“Hey, that seems pretty nice,” you think. “That bathroom especially is so spacious!”

Yes, the bathroom is spacious. In fact, you’ll probably want to put a TV in there. Because it is the other end of the family room; pictures 5 and 6 are two ends of the same room. You could literally watch TV while you went to the bathroom because there is no door, no wall, not even a curtain. We laughed forever about it. And the previous owners just added that bathroom. Come on! Is no bathroom really worse than a bathroom that is open to your family room?

Also, if you look carefully in picture 4, you can see a box looking thing around the wall behind the stairs. That is a big ledge thing that is part of the wall, and the ceiling slopes down to it. The owners or Realtors or whoever put blankets on it with a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, like they were saying, “Here’s a great place to curl up with a mediocre inspirational book and maybe take a nap.” Sure. Why sleep in a bed when I could sleep on some plaster?

Needless to say, that house did not make the cut.

In other news, we planted a little salsa garden in a pot. It doesn’t have all the ingredients for salsa, and it has a couple extra herbs that you wouldn’t necessarily put in salsa, but it is pretty, and I am excited about it.

If you go in a circle from the top, you will see Serrano peppers, tomatoes (romas and heirloom rutgers), chives, and purple basil. And then scattered throughout are Celosia flowers. I saw on TV that they are a natural bug repellant, and they give the pot bright, fiesta colors. I am really happy with it because we found the pot for free on the side of the road and then put the plants in and soon we’ll have a little portable garden! I know it’s kind of late to plant tomatoes, but they assured us that we could still have a good fall harvest. And I can use the other herbs now! It makes me really happy to have fresh basil at my disposal. And you can see some Serranos already growing. Hooray! Dane and I have fun going to water it every morning.

Speaking of Dane, he chews on everything. I know that most babies put a lot of things in their mouths, but I think Dane might have an extra talent. He has chewed on the corner of the coffee table, cardboard boxes, all of his toys, shoes, and this book:

Those of you who took Econ 110 may recognize this book as New Ideas from Dead Economists. Dane thought it was yummy.

Here he is feeling the immense weight of keeping his superhero alter ego a secret:

And here he is perfecting his circus act of spinning cups:

And here he is trying to eat the camera:

Also, we watched Kenji compete in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Park City last weekend. Check out the action:

Finally, here is Dane enjoying watching his Uncle Kenji play:



*Note: Realtor is a proper noun for a real estate agent who is part of the National Association of Realtors. Yeah. I lost to Joel in a game of Speed Scrabble over that.

Aaaaaahhhhhh

That's supposed to be a relaxed "ah," not a scream.
This morning, I went and got a free massage. Free! I had heard that Massage Envy was doing Massage for the Cure to benefit breast cancer research, and I signed myself up. They told me it was a 15 minute massage, so I scheduled it at the location near Joel's work so I could get my free massage, have breakfast with Joel, and he could watch Dane, all before getting Joel to work on time. Well, things didn't go exactly as planned because it ended up being a full hour massage. For free! Joel was nice enough to take Dane to work with him for the first half hour or so, and I got to relax and ease all the tension I build up in my upper back. It's not like I walked out of there without paying a dime because I still tipped my massage therapist and donated to the cause (100% of donations went to the Susan G. Komen research fund), but it was still a great deal.
I feel bad that I didn't spread the word. But don't be mad. Because I thought it was just a 15 minute massage, I thought that's almost not even worth getting child care set up and what not. I almost canceled my appointment because I didn't think it was worth it. Then it was really good. So I'm sorry.