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.