Let me begin this post with the only truly important information it contains: Sunday, Nov. 5th, is National Cheese Pizza Day.

There, I have done my duty by you.  On to more piddling matters-

My first Coordinating Seminar met last night, and it’s going to be every bit as difficult as anticipated.   We have all signed up for one of three group projects, answering a comprehensive question that demonstrates our knowledge of psychology.  My group has already bumped up against it’s first problem: how to get 7 women together in the same place at the same time in order to get any work done!  Our question deals with how to handle the following situation:

I’m a school psychologist who met briefly with a 13 yr. old girl 3 years ago to help with some adjustment problems.  Now she is 16 and has come to me because she had a major fight with her father.  The fight was over the (real life) excommunication of a nun.  The nun was an administrator of a Catholic hospital who allowed an abortion to be performed on a woman who would, along with the fetus, die if it wasn’t performed; the fetus was 11 wks. old.  The woman was a single mother, the sole provider for her 4 other children.  She was so sick she couldn’t be moved to another hospital in order to have the procedure.  Given the extreme circumstances, the nun allowed the abortion, and was excommunicated by her bishop as a result.

In this scenario, the daughter and father fought bitterly over the issue.  The daughter feels that her relationship with her father is irreparably damaged as a result.  What should I, as a therapist, do?  Knowledge of physical, mental, and moral development should be displayed.  Neurobiology, family dynamics, religious beliefs, canonical and federal laws, etc. should be factored in.

I have to write a paper on this as well as take part in a class-long presentation.  Our group is the first one up, so we have to get this done by Oct. 4 I think.  I already have to drive in to school on Sunday to meet up with the other women.  Coupled with the extra day of classes I’m taking, I predict way too much driving this semester!  In addition to the group project, there’s a 7 page paper to write, present to the class, and for which I need to create a poster board session.  Chapter readings must be completed and newspaper clippings pertinent to the chapters must be brought in every week.  I’m tired already.  On the plus side, I know almost everyone in the class, including the prof, and class time should be fun.

I also had my Psychology of Women class this morning.  There will be lots of reading, and some films to watch.  We’re required to bring bulleted points from the chapters and films to demonstrate that we’ve done the readings.  We also have to give a 5 min. presentation on a subject, in my case, women in film.  This would be easy enough but, wouldn’t you know it, this is also meant to be a group project!  At least there are only 3 of us, so it should be easier to coordinate.  A lot of the material is stuff that I’m already familiar with, and I wouldn’t be taking this course if it wasn’t required.  I don’t know most of the other women in class- they seem to be largely underclassmen who are getting the course out of the way.  I think I know one other person.  I’m sure this will change as the semester continues.  At any rate I get along with the prof, who I’ve had in the past.

My Forensic Psychology class meets for the first time in about an hour.  I’m really looking forward to this one.  I’ve never had a class with the prof, but I got to know her a little last semester for other reasons, and she seems nice enough.  I’ll have more to say about this, and my other course, tomorrow or the day after.

Until then, I’ll leave you in peace.

School starts up again tomorrow, making today my last day of freedom.  What I predict will be my hardest class (Coordinating Seminar) is tomorrow night.  It will recap everything I’ve (supposedly) learned and prepare me for the real world.  Lots of speeches and presentations.  UGH.  I’m going through a period of great self-doubt, questioning everything I’ve done or am doing.  What am I doing?  It’s my final semester; I’ll receive my B.A. this December.  I guess my nervous state is natural given the circumstances.  I have pre-semester, pre-graduation anxiety.

At least the structure of going to school should help me re-emerge from isolation.  I really am a lot better than I was, I just haven’t been ready yet to be social on or off line.

On tap this semester in addition to CS:

~ Psychology of Women

~ Forensic Psychology

~ Criminal Justice and Mental Health

I dreamed I was in a soap commercial.  I was in the garage with my sister (fake) when our mother came in and  told my sister why she should use the soap; our mother ignored me. I finally got mad and  interrupted the commercial, lecturing her on the damage she was doing to the family dynamic by favoring one sister while ignoring the other.  Also, I had just as much need for soap as my sister.

I’ve obviously been studying too hard.  And I must have needed a shower.

First and foremost, a giant shout out to Jandy!!  She was able to provide me with my missing blog posts.  The comments are gone, but that’s ok.  I know what you said, that you were loving or obnoxious as the circumstances and your personalities permitted.   Jandy, you’re awesome!

As for me, my semester is officially over.  All that’s left to do is await my grades.  I am in no way in danger of failing.   Highlights of the semester:

• Take Back the Night event: Organized by my Victimology class, this was the first ever at my college, which is odd because it’s a women’s college.  It was highly successful.  I took the stage and shared my story, which seemed to open the flood gates.  Spent most of the rest of the evening talking to young women about their own experiences.  It was powerful and exhausting, and totally worthwhile.
• I was inducted into Psi Chi, the International Honor Society of Psychology.
• I had surgery mid-semester, which threw me off.  I got over it.
• In the last couple of weeks I had to turn in 4 papers, give 2 presentations, and take finals.  I’m very ready for school to be over for the summer. The papers were: The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Quality of Life, The Differences in Sleep and Dream Patterns between Conservatives and Liberals, a 9-page discussion of Alice Sebold’s book, Lucky (had to address certain key issues), and Life and Society in Mecca during Muhammad’s Life.  I had to present my research on the Animal-Assisted Therapy and Meccan Society to those respective classes.
• Apply for graduation in December, collect the degree audit required for this, register for Fall classes, get advisor to sign off on it all.

My summer break has begun, as I said, and thanks to Randy I have a cold.  I live on the couch with Puffs Plus kleenex always within reach.  I’d love to sleep but the coughing has begun.  I’m getting about an hour at a time here and there.  At least I no longer have to get up at 5 AM!  Instead I am indulging myself with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, and some recreational reading.  Beyond that, I don’t know what I’m doing this summer.  I’m sure you’ll know when I do.  And if I don’t do anything, you’ll know that too. Either way, you’re stuck with my thoughts.

Good luck with that.

I feel like a little kid again, hoping against hope for a snow day.

I don’t need or even particularly deserve one, but since when did that matter to anyone?  I would love to just hunker down in my house tomorrow.  Doesn’t that sound wonderful?  In your own homes, of course, not mine.  To each his own, and I’m not much of a hostess.

I probably won’t hear until late morning, early afternoon; my Wednesday classes start in the evening.  It’s a residential school so it takes more for them to cancel.  I’ll be good.  I’ll do my homework.  But there’s a rebellious 5-yr. old kid in me yelling “I don’t wanna!”

Well, that’s nothing new.

I’m off to read about the anatomy of human genitalia.  Tah!

I lied.

Dr. K didn’t ask for our research topics today – argh! – so I’m not doing the research concerning celebrity worship.  I came across a study yesterday involving the difference in sleep and dreams between liberals and conservatives.  I didn’t think I’d be allowed to research this further because we’re supposed to have read at least 10 related articles, and there aren’t any others on this specific topic.  When I mentioned it to her today, however, she became very excited and suggested I make this my project.  She says I can pull other dream and sleep studies as overall comparisons or contributions to Dr. Bulkeley’s findings; I’m going to see if I can either replicate her results or tackle it from a different perspective or by using different methods.  I have until the end of the month to work out these details.

It kind of sucks that I spent all day yesterday trying to come up with a topic; I can think of things I would rather have been doing!  And I was up late trying to formulate a hypothesis and write it up to be turned in today.  I got much less sleep than I should have.  Still, I’m finally excited about this stupid research project!

As for getting up early, that was not without issues.  Having stayed up late to write that paragraph, I then tried to print it.  I have a wireless connection to my printer and, as it turns out, that got screwed up the other day along with my lost internet connection.  I was almost late to class because I couldn’t get my printer to work!  I gave up and stored the topic paper on a flash drive to print at school, hoping that she would accept it after class when I had a chance to get to the library to print it out.  Hurrah for not having to do that!

The upshot was that it was later than normal when I left for school.  I have to drive east, into the rising sun.  Did anybody else unfortunate enough to have to be up at the butt crack of dawn see how huge it was this morning?  It was so monumental that it looked like one of those shots of the sun rising over the horizon in Africa!  I would still rather have been in bed than up to see it but, since I had to be up, it was a pretty spectacular reward.

I have just spent my entire day trying to connect to the internet from my laptop, to no avail.  Randy’s laptop is connecting without trouble, but I keep getting various errors and excuses from mine.  I’ve done a full scan, rebooted, restored. 

Nothing is working.

I think I’m about to wipe my hard drive and try starting over.  I have all of my files and photos saved.  The only snag is my Microsoft Office; I’ve run out of activation licenses.  I can try to call and get a new code but, if push comes to shove, I’ll use OpenOffice instead.  I think I’ll download it here onto Randy’s computer so at least I’ll have it for school while I try to get everything figured out.  I’m now way behind on my homework because today has been a complete wash.

Just another day in the life of…

We spent a little time last night discussing homosexuality, drag queens, transvestites, transsexuals, and society’s reaction to them.  “Dr. R” says that society’s hatred of these people is rooted in the primal imperative to be able to tell men from women.  When deceived, our sexual competence has been compromised in the eyes of society.  Think about it: in the movies and on t.v., how do friends react when some guy puts the moves on a woman only to find out that the woman is a man?  They laugh.  They harass him. His manhood (sexual competence as defined by society) is called into question.  What’s his reaction?  Anger.  A desire to lash out.  Sometimes he does.

That’s how it happens in real life, too.  It’s part of what drives the fear behind homophobia.

According to Dr. R, drag queens are the safest when it comes to hate crimes of this type because “they aren’t trying to fool anyone.”  Transvestites (who, btw, are usually heterosexual, not homosexual, not that it matters beyond breaking a stereotype) are more likely to be beaten up than killed; that’s an “honor” that falls to transsexuals.  It’s about degrees of perceived deception.  The greater the “lie,” the harsher the repercussion.  I’m not entirely convinced of this; I hear more about violence against transvestites.  Perhaps it’s due to larger visibility of transvestites?  I don’t know.

It’s frightening – not surprising, just frightening – to me that people are capable of such viciousness because they’re ashamed over being “tricked.”    Is that what it comes down to?  What is worse for the violent homophobe?  Feeling deceived (whether it was intentional or not) by the transvestite or transsexual?  Or the sense of being betrayed by one’s own body by feeling physically attracted to someone of the same sex?  It’s probably the latter, leading to the defensive anger of the  former, combining to form some of the ugliest human behavior.

Yes, my Human Sexuality class is going to prove very thought-provoking.

(This may be a difficult topic for some of my readers.  If you disagree with me, that’s absolutely fine.  I ask only that any comments you make are made respectfully not only to me, but to each other)

This semester I have 4 major papers to write (as well as several shorter ones), two 10-minute presentations to give, and have to help organize and run a Take Back the Night Event.  I don’t even know what I’m going to write about in a couple of classes, but I’m supposed to choose on Thursday.

Right now I’d rather be training for the Olympics.

Speaking of, are you looking forward to them?  What are your favorite sports?  Which athletes will you be cheering on?

I don’t see me competing unless they have a snow-cone eating contest.  How about you?

I took an anonymous “Sexual History and Orientation Survey” for my Human Sexuality class.  It got very personal and, in my case, is probably not very anonymous.  I’m twice as old as my classmates and as far as I know, the only married woman in the class; my experiences will set me apart.

Believe me.

But I went ahead and answered the questions honestly anyway.  Only the professor will see my responses, and the overall results are for the benefit of the class and our discussions.  My professor was taught by Wardell Pomeroy, a colleague of Kinsey’s who helped with the (in)famous study; he knows his stuff.

This is going to be a fascinating, intriguing, and I suspect frequently amusing course.

School makes up the majority of my life during a semester, but I realize that can be boring.  I’ll try to blog about a variety of things, or not to dedicate an entire post to school all the time.  Still, there are things that might be of real interest in one of my classes.  You’ll probably hear about that.

For example, that holiday I couldn’t remember while composing my Important Dates to Remember post?  National Pistachio Day.

Now you know.

I lay there on the couch, an exhausted ball of pain after my last- and longest – day of school this week.  Randy came home, settled in, took a look at me and grinned.

“So, how do you like getting up before me in the morning?”

How to truly express my state of being?  How to make him understand?

“It’s like this: It’s a disturbance in The Force.  It’s as though Darth Vader won.”

Wow.  Whoever used this computer last must have been a leprechaun; this chair is low.  And the mouse pad is elevated above the keyboard.  Interesting.

You know what’s really interesting?  I never told you about the little calendar of events the school posts in each bathroom stall.  It’s called The Tinkle Time News and, according to TTTN, today is Happy Hugging Day.  I don’t know if it is wishing me a joyful day of hugging, or if it is a day specifically set aside for Happy vs. Unhappy hugging.  What is unhappy hugging anyway?  Is it like a forced display affection to a malodorous relative?  And when is it celebrated?  Points to ponder.

In case you are reading this late (and why is that I ask you? Don’t you hang on my every word?) and miss out on Happy Hugging Day, you can certainly join us on January 30th when we celebrate National Bubble Wrap Day.  I’m afraid this excludes my international friends and I think I’m a bit offended by this.  I hereby declare January 30th to be International Bubble Wrap Day, because that’s the kind of woman I am.

Be on the lookout next month for Happy Umbrella Day (which begs the question “When is Unhappy Umbrella Day?” See Happy Hugging Day reference above) and something else I can’t recall right now.  I’ll have to let you know what that is the next time I have to pee.

Because, despite what you might think, I am not blogging from a toilet.

My car is fixed and fully operational.  Hurrah!  I do miss the heated seats of the loaner – it felt so good on my back! – but would much rather drive my car than an unfamiliar one.

I leave to begin Day 2 of school in about an hour and won’t get home until around 10:30 tonight.  On tap for this evening: Human Sexuality followed by Victomology.  I think the combination of the two courses back-to-back could get interesting at times.  At any rate both classes hold lots of promise.

Thanks to yesterday’s debacle I didn’t get as much of the readings for tomorrow’s classes done as I otherwise would have so I need to turn my attention to that now.  The more I read before this evening, the less I’ll have to read when I get home tonight.

As we all know, 5 AM comes awfully early if you haven’t stayed up all night to greet it.  And right now, I’d rather not stay up to greet it.

Ignoring the fact that I had to get up at an ungodly hour to go to school, let’s skip ahead to the drive:

My brakes haven’t been great for awhile but I don’t have the money to fix them.  It started a month or two ago with a squealing sound when I tapped on them gently.  They worked fine other than the noise, though, so I ignored it.  They were getting worse however so Randy had a local mechanic check them out; he said they looked fine other than a little rust on some rotary thingy (or whatever it was).    Within a couple of days, though, they began to make a grinding sound.  As bad as that seems it was very faint.  It’s been steadily getting worse, as one might expect, and I knew it was just a matter of time.

My car is a VW Jetta and it has “Tiptronic” transmission which means that it’s automatic but I can slide it over into manual.  This is a good thing.  Driving into school today I wound up having to switch to manual in order to get the car to slow down with minimum brake usage.  Of course it was rainy and there was a lot of traffic; the drive in was nerve-wracking to say the least.  Realizing that I now have no choice I called the garage when I arrived at school.  The garage is on the way home and I wanted to know if I could bring it in and perhaps get a loaner if my car wasn’t going to be ready today.  To that end I pulled out my cell and promptly dropped it in the school parking lot; the back broke off.

Hurray.

Luckily it still worked and I was able to get an appointment.  My car made it in.  Turns out the rear brakes were down to metal on metal and some “boot” or other is torn and also needs to be replaced lest it rip completely and cost me several hundred dollars more.  Total as of this writing is $630.

Ugh.

In addition to all of this I haven’t been able to access my school email today, at least not here at school (odd!) or through my cell.  It worked fine this morning from home. 

And one of my textbooks still hasn’t come in.

I can’t tell you how irritating this day has been so far.

But hey!  My hair still looks good.

…of my 30′s.

Hello 39.  I think we’ll get along just fine.

Randy had the day off so we went to SJC together to buy my textbooks.  He had never been on campus before so I gave him a quick tour; it was fun sharing that part of my life with him if only in this limited way.

I decided to set up my GPS unit and use it on the trip to see how well it works.  In some instances I knew better roads to take than those initially recommended and the oppositional personality in me took particular glee out of saying “No” to Her, making Her say “Recalculating.”  Much of the time we were in agreement, though, so no feathers were permanently ruffled.  I had Randy drive on the way home, however, and that’s when things got interesting.  He chose an alternative route and She recalculated, then made another suggestion which he subsequently ignored.  Repeat the process.  Now, I know that it’s all a recording, that there is no real inflection.  But I swear to you that a note of irritation crept into Her voice.  It did.  The third time She said “Turn right on High Street now Turn right on High Street now” back to back, just like that.  There was no pause.  She was insistent.

We got the distinct impression that if we failed to follow Her orders this time, There Would Be Consequences.

Happily for all involved Randy had, in fact, been planning to Turn right on High Street now.  Equilibrium had been restored and the rest of the drive went almost without incident.

After relaxing at home for a little while we went to my mother’s house for my birthday dinner.  See rumor has it that my mother was there on the day I was born.  Just on the off chance that it’s true I thought I should include her in commemorating it.

Now I’m kicking back, relaxing, and enjoying the last few minutes of the day.

How was yours?