but i'll give it anyway and end with something entirely random.
i'm only taking one academic class. it's my year long counseling class and i've been sitting next to the same cohorts for seven months. some i know more than others. some i feel pretty connected to. some i'm going to miss terribly. (others i just haven't gotten to know at all and barely remember their names. as long as we're being honest.) we laugh a lot in this class. we're fairly brilliant and hilarious and our professor often quips as she reframes and models accurate empathy. what she has done is bring complex theories of being with people and change processes down to a genuine, human level. and i am so very appreciative of that.
i've been told by the class next door we're fairly loud.
that's ok by me.
this term we're setting the stage for our theoretical foundations paper and revisiting social work and counseling values, theories, ways of intervening. it's fine. it's a lot of reading, but it's fine.
and.
i'm also taking cardio kickboxing. B. and I have a bet as to when i'm going to fall down during class (because i'm that clumsy and it's that possible). her bet was the 3rd class and it was a good bet. but i stayed on my feet. i did almost fall down today, though. almost. something about the combination of a front kick / front jab / left hook / side kick was very confusing to my vertigo.
my vertigo is often easily confused.
it's a small class, which i love. and it's very active, which i love. and it's extremely challenging, which i LOVE. serious exercise love. i've met a lovely woman from Palestine, who tells me about her plans to stay in this country and to live a life of adventure and passion. i've met a young double anthropology/photography major who dreams of making a life of photojournalism overseas. i love this part, too - the part where you unexpectedly meet new, interesting, passionate and inspired people and your own life becomes expanded by them.
and i'm taking a relaxation yoga class, which simply exists of restorative poses and meditation. i find myself thanking God a lot during this class and am so pleased to meet with Him during those quiet times. i took this class my very first term at school (fall of 2009) and it set the stage for a deep 3 year journey into what turned out to be, for me, a marriage of prayer and mindfulness. and that, in turn, has helped much of my work with clients.
so that's school. work at the lab at OHSU never fails to keep me busy. i am so lucky to have met the people there, as well. brilliant young people obtaining doctorates in clinical psychology and masters degrees and working on getting into PhD programs in research psychology. i love our conversations about zombies and what to do in a zombie apocalypse. i love our dinner breaks to the cafeteria. i love the fact that on any given evening, if struggling with a particular DSM symptom, i can call out to whoever is listening, "if a kid only does (this behavior) at (this time), even if it seems involuntary, that's not a tic, right?" i love the support we lend each other when we have to cruddy things like call CPS or complete a suicide risk assessment.
let me tell you. assessing an 8 year old for suicide risk is an experience like no other.
time at internship is drawing to a close, and for that i am grateful. that deserves it's own post. working for community outpatient mental health is 10,000 times harder than i thought it would be. for myself, personally, it has been harder than working in crisis domestic and sexual violence, working with child welfare or working in juvenile detention.
classes, work, internship, what's left?
the wedding. and this week i'm having a, "let's talk about something else" week.
so let's talk about my random end for this epically long post.
before i went to bed on tuesday night, i was watching a show on the national geographic channel about the flds church. and then, because i am so inexplicably sensitive to suggestion, i had a dream that shoes and i were in a plural marriage. thankfully, i was the first wife.
i understand that's the place to have.
but it was still terrible, because there were a bunch of younger, maybe not so smart other wives and i felt like i was babysitting. they didn't do laundry, didn't watch after the kids, didn't cook and got the schedules of whose house shoes was staying at all wrong. in my dream, i put them in a literal time out.
so while i'm not generally in the habit of passing judgment on other people's decisions, i will say that plural marriage is probably not for me. shoes will have to make do with one wife.
but that's ok. because i can be a handful of a human being.
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That is one crazy, hilarious thank-goodness-it-was-only-a-dream dream... you've got to wonder how those women really feel in a situation like that (the real women, not the ones in your time-out - because I'm sure *they* were re-thinking their laziness - lol)
I wonder that a lot, too, Andrea. It's something so outside of my understanding of family!