Duh DOMA

I passed my boards, who knows how close I came, because all they say is that you passed or failed. It was more difficult than I expected and I'm not allowed to talk about the exam content, but it had questions in areas of focus that I did not expect. Have to leave it at that. It was 175 questions, I took about 3 hours because I went over the entire test again after I completed it, and changed about five answers. I was an utter wet noodle when I finished. I left the little testing room and turned in my stuff, the woman clicked a couple of keys on the computer and then frowned as she stared at the screen. OMFG, did I FAIL? I start babbling, please, tell me I passed. She doesn't answer, still frowning, turns to the printer and then hands me a page that starts with "Congratulations". I should've punched her, but I actually hugged her. Really. Then I gave $20 to the homeless woman on the corner outside. I never have to take it again, as long as I pay my dues and keep up my CEUs. And let me tell you, I'm all over that. So now I'm in the process of getting my license and prescribing numbers. It's exciting.

I've used my dining room as study central since I first started all this grad school mess two years ago - and now I finally have to clean it up. Yes, it's really bad, see?

 

 

It's been a nice time for the last week, a great weight was lifted from me. I've been using this time to clean out the garage and get rid of old clothes, order a new dishwasher, and paint the house. Well, not really. Would like to do all that, but actually the only things I've done is lots of yoga with Dani and lots of Anthro trips. Ha. We had lunch at Hula Hut Monday, lovely sunny day on the lake. Perfect Austin activity.

 

Weird day yesterday. SCOTUS make me proud of my country and our ability to learn, grow, and change. Then the Texas Legislature made me embarrassed as they stupidly wasted our money on a special session to try to chip away (again) on a woman's right to choose. Can we please pick up Austin and whisk it away to sit in another state? I love this place, deeply, but I am so weary of the backward stupidity of the rest of this state. Yes, I'm a little opinionated about this. I've felt strongly about a woman's right to control her own body my whole adult life. I stood as a clinic defender when Operation Rescue tried to create havoc in Baton Rouge (in the early 90's) by targeting and picketing the clinic. And I'm a devoted mother. Anyway, I looooooove this tweet about the great smack-down of DOMA.

 

 

 

I went to a 34-year reunion for the Youth Conservation Corp summer work experience that I did in 1979 in San Angelo. Out of 100 high school kids from back then, only seven of us came back for the reunion. We revisited all the places where we lived and worked. Yes, everything was smaller. So much had changed - the dorm that I lived in had been torn down. Much of it was not familiar. And my boyfriend from that summer didn't go! Yes, my first love, Jeff, had recently moved to New Mexico and just couldn't swing a trip back. It's understandable - I mean, San Angelo doesn't exactly have an international airport - but awwwww, wouldn't that have been awesome? Ken was our photographer for the trip - he was great. It was a nice quick trip away together.

 

 

I meet with my doctor tomorrow to make the job agreement. I have a very important form that I need to fill out with a little blank for the Doctor's name. So I'm going to say, hey dude, does your name go here? ha. I've been told that he's trying to set up some TeleMedicine (as they call it) for me to do. This is when you have an office visit over a teleconference link, like a fancy Skype session. I'll find out more tomorrow, but the office manager said that it could be a way for me to "jump start" my practice. Sounds good to me. I am ready to roll up my sleeves. Update on that in the next blog.

 

ETA: I got the job! Now just hammering out the details. I'll be there every Tuesday in July, learning and absorbing while I get my license and prescribing authorization. I should be able to start seeing patients in about a month, maybe a little more. Exciting.



Center of the Sun

I know, I should be studying. But you know how that goes. I suddenly want to do everything else, even clean my house (and domestic does not equal me). I have two days left. I feel pretty fine about it, but not going to skip any prep these last few days.

I've been able to go to yoga almost daily, often with Dani which is a treat, and the routine that Erica is doing now (my fave teacher) starts off with this incredible song, very quiet with these disturbing lyrics about the awful things that can happen but the chorus says "and I cannot be hurt by anything this wicked world has done". That rings in my head long after yoga is over. Sometimes it's difficult to read what I'm studying. I go from a horrific chapter on intimate-partner violence (the new name for wife-beating) to schizophrenia (usually a death-sentence type of diagnosis) to suicide to post-traumatic stress disorder....I could go on and on. This is my profession, to help those who've seen the worst, been through the worst, and together we find a way out and up. My personal image of this has always been the experience of being in a pit - it's dark, you're at the bottom, the top looks so far up, you can't reach it. Now I'm the one with the rope. Anyway, if you're curious, here's a link to that song. Center of the Sun by Conjure One

Dani did not get into UT. Fine, on to ACC. The nice thing is I think I've convinced her to give nursing a chance, and a perfect route into that is ACC. As soon as my boards are over on Tuesday, we'll get busy researching her class schedule, pre-requ.s, etc. She was stung by a scorpion this week. It was midnight and I heard this scream. She was in the kitchen, barefoot, and got stung. We counted, and this is the 7th scorpion we've seen either in the house or porch/pool area since we got here, in 3 years. So yes, we need to wear shoes. All the time. The neat thing was, she did not have leg cramps and terrible pain after the sting. Either he didn't get her good, or he wasn't very venomous. Either way, great.

The kids both had their first day on-the-job last Wednesday. Nile did excellent, working in a hot warehouse all day. He was positive and enthused afterwards. We made the drive together (because I'm overprotective) and I studied at this little library branch in North Austin while he worked. Here's a pic of him after his first day. Oh, and it was his birthday. Monday he drives alone, in his new car. Here's something cool: my brother ordered a shipment of very special furniture from England (a container full); mid-century items in the Danish-modern style, which because of Mad Men is very popular right now. You should see the quality of these things. It was jaw-dropping. These are from the early 1960's and in beautiful shape - even some of the upholstery is still fine. This is a huge gamble for him, it was not cheap, and he luckily had an empty warehouse to store them in (yes, there is that much of it). Some of the pieces are custom, and Roy even knew the names of the furniture makers that had created them. He showed me one of those, a long credenza, that should go for $3000. Anyway, incredible.

And Dani basically got fired from her brand-new babysitting job by text yesterday. The woman said that for financial reasons, she was going to have a relative take over. Who knows if that's true - it seemed like everything was cool - but this woman had been a bit flaky from the beginning. Note to self: the way people behave and treat you at the beginning of a relationship is how they really are. They explain things away, and we want to believe them, but listen to your inner voice.

It's pool season, and it's fantastic. I'm in love with my pool. Perfect timing because I've had to give up running. God, I hate to say that, but my knee pain was becoming worse. It was even hurting in Spin, and that's just a no-go situation because I'm in Spin 6 mornings a week. And I couldn't do full Hindi Squat pose in yoga any more either. So I stopped running completely about 2 weeks ago and finally, finally yesterday it didn't hurt at all. Dani has taught me how to use the rowing machine instead - which actually is hard to do correctly. It's taken me a couple of weeks to get my form down, but yesterday we did it together and I got the thumbs-up from her. It's a super calorie-burner, and an advantage over running is that it uses your full body - upper as well as legs. And as Dani likes to note, it really works the glutes. Man, it hurt to sit down! Bring it on. Next up is rowing on Townlake.

Between rowing and swimming and all this time for yoga, summer could not be better. Hold that thought until Tuesday. Ha!

Oh, one more thing. On Friday at 11:00, I finally meet with the psychiatrist; we didn't do it last week because he's had to work so hard to catch up from his vacation (a good sign - very full practice). I'm going to flat-out ask for the job. I got a call from a headhunter Friday morning about a job up in North Austin at - get this - $150,000. It's a locums thing, but they need a permanent. The headhunter was asking if I could even do it for just a couple months, and depending on what the Doc says on Friday, I may do that. It's a treatment facility which means I don't have to be on the insurance panels just yet -- I can do everything under the psychiatrist's credentials. Which means I could start right after boards. I'm thinking about it.

I plan on sleeping in

That's another Deathcab lyric (actually it's Postal Service, since I was at that concert this week, but I lump them together). It accurately captures my state of mind but certainly not my actual activities. Ha. People that know me, know that I'm always up early at the gym when there's only a select handful of us regulars and almost all the machines are free. There's no weirdos to come up to you, in your face while you're in the middle of a leg press set, with your earbuds on, and stand there yelling excuse me until you remove one of them to (ick) hold a conversation. Which turns out to be some asinine question about the relative advantages of one leg machine versus another. Look buddy, I'm not your free personal trainer. You'd think I hated people, but look folks, I really don't. Just do not interfere with my gym time. I'm not there to socialize. Not one bit. This is exactly what happened to me when I had to be there during regular-person hours recently (oh, the horror). I had this surreal morning the Tuesday after Memorial Day. First, the doofus at my gym is not on time again. This happens a couple times a month, and I have blogged about it before (so no boring rant); I go to Plan B, which is drive to the Gold's on William Cannon. And even though it's a 24 hour place, it's locked up tight too. A woman and I stand there at 4:30 a.m., scratching our heads. Guess they have a doofus that works there too. She said that had never before happened to her, and she's been an early-bird there for years. Know how I got revenge? Oh, I'm so, so evil. Read all about it (sigh...like they even care). Yelp Review

I've been waiting to write this post until I had job news and I got some today. So, yes, folks, I have so much time on my hands that blogging is now something that I have time to do. Ha. I received "the note" from the Doc's office manager that he'd like me to come in for a meeting. I'm pretty sure that it's to discuss the terms of me working in the practice, and I'm ready to make a deal for that. I've done some more checking around, and I'm convinced that this is the best option for me. One of the checks was someone in the know (won't reveal sources) who said in confidence that their plan is to offer me the job. I'm pleased. I feel lucky to have found a private practice job in Austin as a new grad. I'm not going to reveal where I'm working or with whom so that I can continue to talk in my blog about my work, but only in terms that disguise patients completely.

I just read the most disturbing (in a great way) book. It's Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and it's a psychological murder-mystery thriller. With some huge twists in the middle and end of the book that really threw me for a loop. I spent most of the day Monday reading it. I haven't had a can't-put-it-down day like that since I read Middlesex (another book I'd highly recommend). What an absolute luxury of a day, and in the evening Dani and I went to hot yoga at this little studio that opened just outside our neighborhood.

Anyway, the book paints an excellent picture of a person with borderline personality disorder, I would list it as chronic, severe, with psychotic features (fixed delusions) if I was writing it as a diagnosis. I am not going to reveal which character has this illness, because it won't be apparent for the first 60% of the book (yes, obviously I have a Kindle if I'm quoting percentages). Really sucked me in, I was completely taken in by this borderline. And the book as a whole is a truly excellent explanation for why clinicians dread working with these patients (in fact, the doc I'll be working with says that we should never have more than 2 borderlines as patients). It's almost impossible to sift through the lies and the truth, mostly because they believe their own lies (that's their version of a fixed delusion). Which is quite sad. And the havoc they wreak on the lives around them, in their desperate attempts to fill their wide, bottomless abyss of neediness is painful to watch. I think of the parents I've met of the frequent-flyer young-adult borderlines that I had as patients at the psych hospital. To a one, they looked tired and sad.

I have done basically nothing since I got back from New York, besides read, eat, and go to lots of yoga class. Well, then there's the Anthro trips with Dani. I found a fantastic black top marked down twice that was only $9.95 yesterday! And I'm not talking about some schlubby loose Splendid top, no it's got these nice little ruched shoulders with 3 tiny set-in buttons. What a find. Made up for the full-price items that I proceeded to buy for Dani.

Nile took another step in his black-belting this week, he had testing Saturday and passed to the next level. He'll get his new belt tonight. It's nice that he gets that before summer kicks off. He is going to work for my brother at his used furniture store, Modern Salvage (Store Link), driving his new car. We got him a dark blue Prius, at his request. Isn't my son smart? Dani is still looking for a job and still looking to see if UT accepted her for the fall. One of her NYU friends, a guy from L.A. whose dad is some big-time screenwriter, arrives tonight for a visit. I bet he loves Austin, what do you think? I loved it when I was 19. In fact, that's about the age when I first fell for her, from the Congress bridge bats to the ice cream at Udder Delight, to water skiing on Lake Travis, to concerts at Club Foot, to bowling in the UT Union basement and indie movies at Dobie Mall. OK, I better stop.

I guess I have to start studying for this board exam. It's kind of weird, when I get the Authorization To Test (ATT) from the credentialing organization, it better light a fire under me; there sure isn't a fire yet. Maybe this meeting about the job will do the trick. I seem to be waiting for some magic. So snap your fingers, say a little hocus-pocus for me (thx).

Here's a few pics of the summer fun.

ETA: Thanks for the chant! It worked! I got my ATT in my email this afternoon and scheduled my test for the 18th. Two weeks is enough to study for the most important test of my life, right?

Postal Service concert

Lakeway trails

Black belt time