you are what you read??

/Note: Is anyone else having trouble adjusting to this new blogger format? /end rant. So i saw this study on Facebook: http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/13/11665205-you-are-what-you-read-study-suggests?lite If that's true then lately i'm fast food Christian romance (with a smattering of grant guidelines for good measure). Which leads to thoughts on my romantic life (or lack there of) partially in relation to (clean) romance books: 1.) Still super grateful that i don't seem to pine. Much of the time i'm perfectly okay with being single. 2.) If i were to find someone, it would have to be a God thing pretty much (it should be anyway of course). It occurred to me the other day, when thinking about my dating life- i'm a caregiver who works three jobs and attends a church where the median age might be closer to 65 than anything else. My social life, while satisfying is sparse and mostly comprised of hanging out with girlfriends and at times their boyfriends/fiancees. i live in a rural area. Of course i'm single. Where do you expect me to meet someone? 3.) Has anyone else noticed that the older you get, the less often you care about dressing up and trying to look nice? Factor in the healthy dose of bright white hair i allegedly now have scattered throughout, and yeah, where i in one of my books, can you say confirmed spinster? 4.) Wow, i forgot point four (in like the last minute). It was interesting though. (Must add coffee soon- did i ever mention my addiction to coffee? Ever since the cardiologist gave me a clean bill of heart health (well i could have a non-serious issue, or he actually thought my symptoms could be linked to migraines, but neither option would be serious enough to actually go through the bother and expense of finding it out or to change my life in any way, so i'm taking that as a clean bill of health), i decided that it's okay to pretty much forget the other doctor's advice about watching the caffeine. I'm still fairly conservative- like one or two forms of caffeine a day, but not obsessive or paranoid as i was before. By the way, did i ever mention that i went to a cardiologist?) 5.) Oh, there it is back. Has anyone else noticed that when you were in your twenties, the books about women in their 30's or 40's were about people too old for you, but now the books about the college kids and people in their 20's, almost seem unrealistic and too young while the books about the older people seem real? (You may not really find that interesting.) 6.) Spinsterhood is really not bad. Why was it ever such a social stigma? Think about the crazy fun heroines who are spinsters. They are the ones with the real freedom to do as they like. 7.) The half baked half joke college scheme of finding a priest of something to hang around with (having the "plus one" and the companionship without the necessary necessity for romance) still seems like a good idea. For now my brother suffices as token "ackk there's a dead mouse in the bucket get rid of it" male is a blessing. However, if he moves i may be in the market for a new one. 8.) Okay mom is officially up and pacing around asking me questions persistently, so my quiet morning of blogging and so on is officially over. Time to go try to get her to shower, and officially get onto my day. By the way a cop stopped last night as i was trying to urge her to go back in the house at night. It was fairly embarrassing to be asked "Is everything all right here?" by a cop because it may have looked like i was accosting this poor woman. He was very pleasant and cool about accepting my explanation, even to the point of telling mom it was a beautiful night and he wouldn't want to go in either. Still, embarrassing. At least he was a nice (and cute) one. Okay, having my brother's keys held in front of my face. Off to the day.

On ambiguity and simple joys

First of all i want to apologize for the lack of spaces in my posts. i may have to change templates- when i write them there can be spaces galore, but once published they all disappear..... So momma-bear (the name which bubs began calling her not that long ago and which has become for us a term of endearment) does not necessarily like ambiguity. Which is to say that sometimes, you need to make a decision- even if you feel that doing so really doesn't matter. For instance, prior to sitting on her cushion in the car (or whatever qualifies for a cushion at that time, we use many substitutes)she may ask me which side is better. Now there may be no real difference, but telling her so will only prompt continued questioning. Eventually, you may realize that the best way to deal with the situation is to pick a side at random. A decision is warranted, and leads to peace. It's also a blessing to consider simple joys. Take right now for instance. A large-ish, fuzzy-ish, cuddly-ish brown dog is curled up against my thigh. The house is warm. It is spring time. Tonight we had a delicious dinner of asparagus and pierogies. The dog forgives grandma, who is doing her semi-nightly "must fuss about things and touch stuff" routine that precedes bed and bubs is watching tv. Speaking of the nightly routine- it may end more quickly if i go and help her get ready for bed. Thanks God for all!!

Things that make you go hmmmmm.....

Today, Kristen from Rage Against the Minivan posted this: (Okay it may not have been posted today, but i stumbled across it today.) http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2012/05/where-is-mommy-war-for-motherless-child.html It may have been a while since any blog post has so resonated with me. It has kind of rekindled that drive for justice, of which i sometimes contemplate the regression with small levels of anxiety. Regardless, this post resonated with me somewhat strongly and i wanted to share why. Did i ever tell you about my "ahaa" moment regarding the field of social work? It was by a lake in Macedonia. Our orphanage had just lost a child. No, let me be more clear. A child had just died who was, up until that time, residing in the orphanage we were serving at, in Albania. A sickness had hit the homes, a few children had been hospitalized, and one died. Now with two homes holding upwards of fifty children under the age of six, it was a blessing actually that so few children succumbed to a potentially fatal illness. Hearing of this involved some minor agonizing over whether or not i should go on the vacation to Macedonia we had been planning, but i was told that there wasn't much i could do if i didn't. So i did go. i had fun too. Still, that death really bothered me. Here's the odd thing- i didn't even know the child, not really. She wasn't one of my favorite children. She was a "shume i vogel", a very little one. Which is to say that i didn't spend a lot of time with her. She didn't participate in my crafts. i didn't cuddle her in the play room. i'm not sure i could have picked her out of a lineup. She impacted my life. Or rather, God used the tragedy of her death to do so. One day i stood by Lake Ohrid, and thought and prayed (if memory serves me correct). It struck me that the tragedy of the situation was not her death. This isn't to say that this wasn't tragic. No, of course it was. In my mind though, how she died was almost an even larger tragedy. Not that she died of an illness, though that too was sad. What seemed especially tragic was that she died while living in a group home. Even more, it was sad that at her age, in the country at that time, there was almost no other possibility. At that time there was a six month "mother may change her mind" period before an abandoned child could be adopted. Not, mind you after the child was born- after the child was abandoned. After that there was an additional six month long "this child can only be adopted by an Albanian family, even if his or her health condition or disability make this seem highly unlikely" period. Which is to say that a child often would be a year old before he or she would be adopted. Not because there weren't families interested in him. Not because she wasn't lovable. A child would be that old simply because somebody in power decided that he or she had the power to establish regulations which he or she may have honestly thought were in the best interest of the child, but which might not be in practicality. Now this little girl, whose name i do not even remember may have had a family. my ruminations may have been unjustified. She may have been one of the children who lived there because their family can't (or won't but don't get me started there) care for them. They may have been planning to take her home in the near future. That didn't change however the fact that this might not have been the case. By that lake that day, it struck me how important it was to advocate against injustice. People have the potential to affect legislation. They need to act however. People will not act unless they care. People will not care unless they know. At least that is often the case. Thank you Kristen for reminding me of this incident, and of the drive to advocate and inform the public toward social action. Thank You God for this reminder of that day. Thank You that You care about the orphans, and want us to as well. Now lets all get out there and advocate. It is important to speak for institutionalized children. they may not be able to speak for themselves.

A note on mental health.....

Mental Health scares me. There, i've admitted it aloud. Were i psychoanalyzing myself, i might note that in this instance the "tell me about your mother" joke would aptly apply. The root of my aversion to mental health really does stem from my mother, or rather from her psychiatrist. See, when i was a child my mom had two psychiatrists- we'll call them Dr. A and Dr. B. Dr. A i liked, daddy liked him you know. Dr. B. i did not like. It was Dr. B who daddy called a "quack", and it was Dr. B whose name was used in phrases like "Dr. B says you don't love me". Now i have always been a people pleaser at my core, for as long as i can remember. So the implication that my statements of love were invalidated by someone else stung. In hindsight, Dr. B may not have been that bad. Mom took bubs to him once, and bubs said he seemed alright. There was probably a lot going on in those situations which i did not, in my childish awareness, understand, which i still do not understand. Still, he became for me the poster child for mental health quacks who messed with people's brains. Therapists were the people who told parents that their children, who most certainly loved them, did not, in fact, love them. Even as i aged and acknowledged that there were instances in which therapists were helpful, and that there were good ones in the field, they were not for me. It is a testimony to my mother's love and self-sacrificial nature that Dr. B in time went away. i wrote, in all pre-adolescent angst, about my hatred of Dr. B., in my first diary. Mom cleaned my room one day, and i feared that she may have found and read it. At some point it came out that in fact she did. Dr. B's disappearance from our lives, i suspect, had much to do with that diary, and with her ending the therapeutic relationship out of love for me. Why am i purging all of this on the written page (well screen) now? Because there is a chance now that therapy is for me. Not in the way you might be thinking, however. See i came home from Albania and began a degree in social work. Somehow i managed not to realize at first that this meant i was getting a degree in counseling. Through three years of graduate school i vehemently protested that i did not want to be a clinical practitioner. i was not interested in clinical social work. i was not interested in mental health. Fast forward to recently. See, there was this advertisement for mobile therapists. Master's level clinicians wanted. Now i've been feeling of late that i should learn how to help people in that way. i had the epiphany one day that even in case management, you end up playing therapist to clients- if they didn't have problems they probably wouldn't be seeking your help. Mental health is following me. Perhaps even more motivational was the fact that the job offers a $25 an hour salary- in the face of my recent reduction in hours (more on that later) and subsequent return to substitute work (and the knowledge that the sub work won't take me through the summer while the hours reduction probably will) this amount of money is significant. So i bit the bullet. i applied to the job. i had a few telephone interview type discussions with the company. i was offered an in-person interview. i did quite poorly in the interview (as a former instructor of interview skills, i feel qualified to say that i actually stunk). i was offered the position. The pre-employment forms are sitting across the room from me, mostly completed. So long as they are turned in on Monday, i can get into this month's new-hire training and theoretically start in the very near future. This scares me more than most people probably realize. It means fighting against years of predisposition against mental health. Most of my life thus far has involved resentment, distrust, begrudging respect, aversion, and anxiety about the field. Of late it has been mostly fear that i would not be good at it. That i might mess someone up. That i don't have the experience. i even flat out told the interviewer that i was concerned i did not have the clinical experience to do the job. She offered it to me anyway. Not sure if they are desperate, or my credentials are that good. i'm guessing the former. So i'm praying and guessing about taking this job. It would involve me writing treatment plans. It would involve me providing intensive in-home or community therapy to children. It would involve me being the clinical supervisor of the therapeutic staff support worker assigned to that child. me. The kid who used to call mental health practitioners quacks who messed with people's minds. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?