Mollynonymous

I came out to blog for this?

2008-05-27T19:17:00.001-07:00

Yes, I did. I was challenged by Captain Awesome, and I felt I had to respond.

Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre- and might I add, it sucked the whole, long, boring way through.
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera- this was unexpectedly boring, given how much I loved One Hundred years
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice- Read this once for school, several times since for me.
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler's Wife- I resent all books that identify the main character by their relationship to a man
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Sound and The Fury- Again, read it for school, then read it for me.
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels
The Three Musketeers- Come on, I read The Man in the Iron Mask!
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter- Hated it!!!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners- read it again as an adult, still love it
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables- I read The Phantom of the Opera, though!
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation -Come on, who knows which translation they read? I read Grendel too.
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The history of Tom Jones
The Road- Does this mean "On the Road"? Because if so, Yes.
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds

PS- This week marks the 1/2 way to baby point. Hooray!

I Quit!

2008-03-31T19:33:00.001-07:00

Since mid-February I've known that this is not the job for me. The people I work with are great, the kids are generally great, but it just isn't a well-designed position and I hate all of the insurance work. The question became, then, how to quit.

At this point I already knew I was pregnant (we found out on Superbowl Sunday, for those who are counting). I've never had a real post-licensure job before, and I've never quit a job in my life. I initially wanted to give only 3 months notice* and to blame my quitting on my pregnancy. Fortunately, I have wise friends, and I am wise enough myself to listen to them.

I waited until my 3 month review earlier this month to break the news. Per my wise friends, I started out by effusively thanking my boss for taking a chance on a newly licensed psychologist with no prior experience with eating disorders. I talked about all the things I love about the job (which are many), then launched into a reasoned critique of the things with the position that I believe are real problems. To my boss's immense credit (she is really awesome) she was very on-board with all of my criticisms and asked my permission to pass the feedback on up the food chain.

All of that took about 50 minutes. Then I told her I was pregnant. It was very hard, and I did tell one lie: I let her think it was an accidental pregnancy. Well, I didn't know we'd get pregnant in 5 minutes, did I? So that part was... unexpected, at the very least. She was very excited for me, and we agreed that this isn't a job that can be broken down to part-time; as that is the case, she was sad but supportive of my decision to leave. I'll be staying through the end of July, which works nicely for me as it gives me 2 months (more than I need) to prepare for the baby, while also allowing me not to be unemployed all summer. So that's the plan!

*3 months may sound like a long time, but to fill a very specific professional position like this it is really a necessary amount of time. Legally I could ditch them in 2 weeks, but I really want a good reference and to leave on a good note, so I would never do that.

Stretch Pants

2008-03-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

The reason for my prolonged silence is this: I got pregnant, and wanted to blog about being pregnant, but wanted to wait, and couldn't think of anything else to talk about. So, fyi, I am 10 weeks pregnant. Hooray!

This means, of course, that I needed new clothes. I'm not a frequent shopper, and mostly I enjoy sales, the internet, and outlet malls. My friend Dr. C and I made a maternity shopping date together in Union Square, thinking that surely in the heart of San Francisco's shopping district there would be choices galore for the expectant-yet-fashionable woman.

I might add, the day before our planned excursion I had a little free time, so I went to the Stanford Shopping Center. Do you know that no women in Palo Alto or the surrounding area of the Peninsula ever get pregnant? True story! Because there is not a single store in that mall, boutique or department store alike, that has any maternity clothing. And, if you are uncouth enough to ask a saleswoman at Macy's if they have maternity clothes, you will be rewarded with a sneer and condescending put down that will make you slink from the store feeling guilty for having had the audacity to get knocked up after four years of lawful marriage.

So: San Francisco. San Francisco Shopping Center. Concierge Desk. Nice man, who kindly told Dr. C and I that, interestingly, it is rare for San Francisco residents to procreate either, as the only stores in all of Union Square that cater to my kind are Old Navy (cheap, basic) and A Pea in the Pod (designer, very expensive), neither of which are in the SF Shopping Center. And no, none of the stores in the shopping center offer maternity clothing. In case you wondered.

We set off. Did you know, my friends, that unless you want to buy $200 designer maternity jeans (which come in actual sizes), maternity jeans only come in Small, Medium, and Large? Did you further know that I am somewhere in between a small and a medium, if I am to allow myself room to grow the extra 4lbs on my ass that the average woman gains during pregnancy? True story!

Also: Do you know that trying on maternity tops is one of the more depressing adventures in shopping a woman can have? Stuff your giant-er boobs into a printed mumu! Fun! - this is if you are at Old Navy. Or: This top is amazing! I could wear this t-shirt now, it is awesome! Oh, it is also $85. - also true-- I tried on this great black shirt at A Pea in the Pod that Dr. C totally wanted for herself, despite being totally un-pregnant. I did not buy it, although I dream about it sometimes, minus the price tag.

The final insult is that, naturally, as I am a wee person, I had to get everything hemmed. This put the final tab up another $100. The tailor's grandson was there in the store when I got the price quote for trimming my bounty to wearable length, and his reaction was priceless.

Settling in

2008-01-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

After getting a job in early December I was pretty thrilled- this is what it has all been about! I'm licensed, I'm employed, people call me Doctor all day long- good stuff!

It is good stuff. It is. But I find myself feeling less satisfied than I thought I would be. Part of it is that this is not my dream job-- I'm working very hard for not much money, even though I do like the work. But a big part too is that feeling of stagnation.

For the past, oh, 25 years I've been working towards a goal. In school, mostly. Now it is up to me to stimulate my brain, to set myself challenges, and to not get stuck in too much of a stiff routine. The transition from grad student to just "employed" has been a surprisingly emotionally laden one.

It is true that much might also be attributed to our serious desire to move out of state and truly settle down. I think that if I knew this was to be a "career" job, I would either not have taken it or would have a different attitude towards it. But as it is, this job is a place holder for the time we remain in California. It just feels hard to be as invested in this present than I used to be in my future.

My license, in dollars and cents

2008-01-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

Hooray! Last Friday was the first payday at my new job, meaning my first payday as a newly minted licensed psychologist. I was really happy about finally getting off the Captain Awesome dole and feeling like a true participating member of our family. We weren't going hungry without my paycheck, but it is something we have both been looking forward to, naturally.

Friday morning CA checked our bank account: no direct deposit. Well, we all know that it takes time sometimes for the direct deposit to kick in. I thought that maybe I'd get a paper check for my first income installment. But by Friday evening, after checking the mailboxes at work and at home, I still hadn't received a check. Hmmm.

Saturday morning I emailed my boss, politely sending the message "WTF???" Saturday afternoon's mail brought hope: a paycheck addressed to me! Dr. M! Very exciting.

I opened my paycheck, and was flummoxed: it was a check made out to me for the princely sum of "Zero Dollars and Zero Cents". The attached printout duly noted that I had worked 80 hours over the past pay period, but maintained that my compensation for this time was "00". This could not be good.

I emailed my boss again, updating her on my growing body of evidence that there was no money coming my way. Monday morning we faxed a copy of my empty paycheck to HR, who to that point swore that I had been paid. "Check your bank account," I was told several times. "Um, dude, you haven't paid me," I replied. "Harrumph," they responded.

By Monday afternoon we were finally all in agreement: I was a pro bono psychologist. My boss ended up writing me a paper check on Wednesday so that I wouldn't have to wait another two weeks to be paid.

I'm keeping the original check, though. It is good to know that six and a half years of blood, sweat, tears, and student loans all added up to Zero Dollars and Zero Cents.

Santa came early this year

2007-12-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

When my mom and sister came to town for Thanksgiving I somehow talked them into posing with Mall Santa. Mall Santa was a good sport and even had my mom sit in his lap. When he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said "a job".

Thank you Santa! For the past two weeks I indeed have had a job. I am working now as a psychologist (hooray!) at a residential treatment program for adolescents with eating disorders. It is not a place I would have expected to be, but I am finding it quite to my liking. The girls (hell yes, it is all girls) have either failed out of lower levels of treatment or just come from psychiatric hospitals and aren't ready to go home. I see them for individual therapy 3x/week, family therapy 1x/week, and group therapy 5x/week. This doesn't include all of the other psychoeducational groups they attend that I'm not involved in, like nutrition, body acceptance, self-esteem, etc.

I'm having fun! I get to do all the things I like- individual, family, and group therapy. I get to be a bit of a boss, as I'm one of only two psychologists. I get to be called "Doctor M___", which is fun. I feel so lucky to have fallen into a job that I really like, when I was simply looking for a job I wouldn't hate!

Of course, Captain Awesome and I are still pursuing our place in the California Brain Drain, but that won't happen for at least another year. Until then, you'll know where to find me!

The 500 calorie breakfast

2007-12-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

Today I bit the bullet and joined Weight Watchers. Yes, I did. In the past 8 months I've gained back 10 of the 30lbs I worked so hard to lose, so I knew it was time for a different approach. I thought maybe some added information and accountability would be a good start.

I am now the proud owner of 20 "points" per day that are mine to play with. As the meeting ended at 1pm, I immediately came home and calculated my breakfast into my daily equation.

REALITY CHECK!!!!!!!!

What I thought was a pretty healthy breakfast- well, I guess it still is in some respects- ended up costing me 12 of my 20 daily points based pretty much on the high number of calories. I usually eat about a cup of Kashi cereal (basically Grapenuts), some slivered almonds, and some blueberries with 1% milk. I'll admit my own negligence- I never looked at the calories on the Kashi. Did you know that shit is 210 calories per half-cup???

The moral of the story is to read labels. And to ask for help when you need it. And world peace.

An Unquiet Mind

2007-11-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

In the Spring I joined my local psychological association with the idea of getting to know my professional colleagues and maybe networking a bit. One group I've been very involved with is our Psychological Book Club. We meet every 2 months after reading a book that is in one way or another associated with psychology. Previous entrants have included Couple Skills, Oh the Glory of it All, and (my choice) Crazy.

For today's meeting we are reading Dan Siegel's The Mindful Brain. I was initially really excited to read this, as Dr. Siegel's work in interpersonal neurobiology is pretty exciting stuff. However... This book blows. I mean, hard. In a major way. In fact, we are meeting at 7pm tonight and I have finished less than half of it. Not because I couldn't, but because I can't, if you understand the distinction. I will at some point this afternoon skim the rest and perhaps force my way through the last chapter, but I am accepting defeat on this one.

The book proposes to explore the psychobiology of how mindful awareness increases personal well being and can be so effective at treating certain disorders, such as pain, ADHD, and anxiety. I am all for this! Don't get me wrong! However... What I am not on board with is Dr. Siegel's sweeping statements, such as how he equates mindfulness with "good" and mindlessness with "evil". Or how he makes that particularly infuriating statement to the effect that "in the past" people were more mindful and thus happier, while now we are all living in a cesspool of mindless shit. This I cannot abide, nor can any student of history. People who make the current society out to be the worst ever, or the wellspring of all evils, have read neither fiction nor historical research about older societies than our own, all of which faced their own evils, and all of which felt that theirs was the dawn of the apocolypse for some foolish reason or other. It is such a myopic argument that it completely spoiled the rest of the book for me, appearing as it did early in the first chapter.

I'm so disappointed in this book, particularly because Seigel's other work is so noteworthy. I keep trying to see if there is something in me that is resisting the message, or otherwise questioning my judgement. Why am I more interested in reading Dorothy Sayers' fictionalized accounts about how admitting women to Oxford was considered by some to be the end of the world? Perhaps because her work captured the Zeitgeist, rather than trying to create it.

Ultimately, the good news is that I passed my last exam, so, mindful or not, the state of California has no excuse but to license me forthwith!

Success Gradient

2007-11-22T22:42:00.001-08:00

Things I have not been successful at recently: Finding a job. Losing Weight. Running more than 5 miles at a stretch. Taking a martial arts class. Volunteering.

Things I have been successful at: Cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Finishing my Christmas shopping. Being a supportive partner in crime to Captain Awesome. Relearning guitar. Donating food. Running 5 miles in under an hour.

Things I have yet to be successful at: Completing my final licensure exam (11/27 9:00am, be thinking of me!).

I once had a friend tell me she was disturbed because we measured success so differently. She was probably right. I don't think my set of criteria are so crazy, though.

Dirty Laundry

2007-10-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Now that Captain Awesome and I are back in the states and have moved to our new fortress of solitude, we have had many friends asking us how we ended up in our new place. I'm not sure if this is meant with scorn or pity, but I've heard it enough to use this medium to answer the querying masses.

Initially we were looking about 15mi south of here in a known commuter-suburban area. Thrilling, no. Filled with rentals, yes. We even had a favorite spot picked out based on websites we reviewed. This location offered primarily 2 bedroom 1.5ba townhouses for rent, which seemed like a well-timed balm to ease the pain we felt about not buying the house in Seattle we thought we would be moving into.

There were three "levels" of townhouses available, the highest of which was out of our rental budget. No problem, we were happy with levels 2 & 3. However, only level 1 had laundry in-unit. Innocently I asked to be shown where the laundry facilities for the rest of the residents of the 300 townhouses were. "Oh, we have two laundry rooms on site," our sales lady gushed, while I blanched. Two??? I asked to see one. Inside was not unlike a nice version of Bing Wong- 10 washers, 10 dryers, and a few chairs and tables.

CA and I were appalled. We were going to pay $XXXX to come home to our nice townhouse, then have to basically go to the laundromat? We moved on.

The second major contender was about 7 miles north near a very ritzy shopping mall. (In between the first and second were a number of "drive by's": CA would drive up to a place and I would nix it before we could even park. In my defense, it did make the day shorter.) Automatically rents skyrocketed to the point where a 1br 1ba "with den" was seriously pushing the limits of our rent budget. However, the location was very convenient to CA's job, and to life in general, and we hadn't seen anything better. I think CA was also very moved by the fact that there was a "community breakfast" every Saturday morning in the clubhouse.

I was now, however, on a mission. Mission Convenient Laundry. I did not require in-unit laundry, but I required a non-laundromat setup. I asked our sales rep the critical question: Where is the laundry for this unit? Her response was to take us from the third floor to the first and open the door to a tiny closet containing two washers and dryers. Which, as I quickly ascertained, were to service 43 apartments in that building. What???

In disbelief we asked, "what do people do about their laundry?" "Oh, most of them use a fluff-and-fold service," was the answer. So let me get this straight. I'm going to pay through the ass for an apartment that doesn't even have two bedrooms, and then on top of that I'm going to have to pay to get my laundry done? No thank you.

Suffice it to say, by the time we came to the place we now call home, and saw in the brochure that every unit has laundry in-unit, we were 9/10 to being sold. Thus it was that our dirty laundry dictated our living space.

Crazy Boobs

2007-09-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I went out with some friends in the city for a farewell party for a former co-worker who is moving to the wilds of Iowa today. Poor lass. In honor of the occasion I wore a new silk shirt that my mom bought me for my birthday.

As I discovered on the ride over, while it is a very nice silk shirt in a lovely burgandy shade, it is not so good with the "staying buttoned" or "covering the boobs adequately" parts of its shirt job. In fact, if I were a shirt employer, this shirt would be fired for incompetence. If this shirt were a student, it would need to be held back a grade.

I flatter myself by thinking I made the toll booth operator's night when I paid my $4 and offered him an unencumbered view of my bosom, thanks to my developmentally disabled shirt. When I arrived, I also greeted my friend Christina with a big hug and a big view of the girls.

Enough! I begged Christina for a needle and thread, whipped off the offending garment, and sewed the critically failing portion shut. I managed to get through the rest of the evening with at least a semblance of decency. I mean, really, if I'm going to be inappropriate and lewd, I'd like to be in control of the time and place!

2007-09-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

This is a very exciting time -- a time of plentiful and unread books!

All who have visited our home over the years have seen an almost cancerous growth of books and bookshelves in our wee world. I am of the ilk who never gives away or discards a loved book, or frequently even a liked book. I have purged our collection twice in the past two years (moving is good for that); nevertheless, the collection grows and will continue to grow at a steady rate.

Despite this, I am often without something new to read. As Captain Awesome can attest to (and a finer attesting attorney you're not likely to easily find) I frequently -- nay, constantly -- re-read my books. I've read most in my possession at least twice, and many multiple times. So it isn't as if I'm simply superficially voracious for the next big thing: I simply read quickly and unquenchably. As one of my psychologist friends aptly observed, reading is my self-regulation system.

This means that, sadly, I rarely have more than one new book in the wings at any given time, and frequently have had none. However! This is a month of miracles, in which I anticipate not re-reading a single book! Why? Because as an unemployment gift to m'self I ordered a ton. I recommend one and all, and hope you will peruse this list and find something for your own collection.

1. Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant- This is a very fun collection of essays written by food writers and writer-writers about cooking for one and dining alone. It is an offbeat topic, but I found it very enjoyable. Probably best if you also like food and cooking.

2. How I Learned to Cook & Other Writings on Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships- This is another collection of essays, a bit darker than the above. I originally read this because it was recommended to me by my therapist (I know, how droll). It is so good that I finally ordered a copy for myself after I returned my therapist's copy. I think any woman would enjoy reading this and find something of herself inside.

3. The Dark Tower Series- I have long been a Stephen King advocate. I think most adults pooh pooh his books out of some misguided notion that this sets them above the class of airplane-and-poolside readers that they are. In fact, he is one of the best modern writers I can think of, particularly in the way he writes his child characters. His more recent books (with the exception of Cell, which I thought was mediocre) are particularly textured and poignant, to my mind. Long story short, I decided that my free time could be worse spent than by reading this seven-part series. I'm in the middle of book 4 (the middle of the series, now that I think about it), and I don't regret this choice for a minute.

4. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking- This was recommended to me a while back by my psychiatrist supervisor. He is a strange-yet-brilliant man, and I am finally getting around to taking his advice. I'll let you know how it goes.

5. Twilightwatch- This is the third in the Watch series, the first two being Nightwatch and Daywatch. I originally picked up Nightwatch from the Borders "2 for 3" table because I wrote my college thesis on Russian writers under the rule of Stalin and thought it might be fun to read a modern Russian novel that had made its way into English. I bought Daywatch because I enjoyed Nightwatch on its own merits. Daywatch didn't quite live up to Nightwatch in my mind, perhaps because the former was so enjoyable that a sophomore slump was inevitable. However, it wasn't a disappointment, and I look forward to this third and final installment in the series. Of note: there is a 2004 Russian film of Nightwatch that Captain Awesome and I rented from Reel. It was changed in important ways from the book, but worth seeing.

6. Songs of the Gorilla Nation- I didn't actually buy this one for myself, though I have seen it and thought about it. This was my "graduation gift", given to me by the staff in the Psychiatry Department at the end of my fellowship last Friday. It is written by a woman with a Ph.D. and Autism. I'm very excited to read it. I'm getting more and more into the memoirs as I get older.

As always, if you have recommendations, send them my way. I do not discriminate by date of publication- 1607 and a treat is better than 2007 and illiterate crap. My brain needs filling, and I have untold hours to fill it over the next weeks and months.

Priorities

2007-07-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

I guess it has been a while. Blogging and reading blogs has fallen lower and lower on my radar in the past few months, although not for any one reason. Things that have been on my radar:

1. The California Board of Psychology. Not only did the board take 7 weeks to process my licensure application (after saying it would take 4-6), they then waited another week before sending my verification to the testing company. This is a big deal to me because until the testing company hears from the board, I absolutely have made no progress towards taking my licensing exam, which I have been studying for since January.

2. The Licensing Exam. Studying for it since January. When people ask me what my hobbies are, it is hard to remember life with hobbies.

3. Job Search. Not that easy to find a job in my field, particularly around the Bay Area. I could go into private practice, but there are two drawbacks. The first is practical: it takes money to start a private practice, and it takes many insurance companies 1-2 years post-licensure to put you on their panels. Second, I don't wanna. I want to be in an agency with lots of peeps. It's more fun that way.

4. Moving? I'm outing us a bit here, because I don't know that Captain Awesome has said anything about this on his blog. But there it is, we're thinking of moving out of the area in pursuit of reasonable home prices and more manageable living expenses. This actually belongs higher on this list, because it is occupying a lot of mental energy at present.

5. As Always, My Job. Still working very hard with very sad, intense, painful cases. Oh, and having to say goodbye to kids who will A) really miss me and are angry and sad that I'm leaving, and B) are not "all better", and in some cases are in worse shape than they were when I initially started treatment. That is a hard, hard prospect.

For those few, few readers out there, this is where I've been and what I've been doing.

"Save" us from disaster

2007-04-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

I came to the realization tonight that I need Armando Benitez.

For those who are keeping track, I haven't blogged in almost 2 months. I have been utterly fucking slammed at work, which means that intolerable quantities of human misery of the child variety have been mine to manage, leaving little time for much else. One of the few things that I have been really looking forward to (given that my job persists until 8/31) has been the baseball season. I planned my weekends around Spring Training game broadcasts, people: that's how bleak it's been.

Given all of this, observe the return to my life of one pathetic excuse for a closer, the aforementioned Armando Benitez. Armando gets paid millions of dollars a year to warm a bench, groom his pencil-thin beard to laser precision, and give up 2 runs each time he has a "save" opportunity. I yell at him. A lot. My neighbors may think I am perpetrating violence against Captain Awesome, such is the rancor of my dissent against his pathetic and narcissistic existence on my team.

So why do I need Armando? I realized tonight how good it feels to hate. Pure hate, with no consequences, guilt, or confrontation. I can displace all of the anger and frustration I feel about the unsolvable problems and misery I face at my job onto the pucker-faced paunchy person of a man who, tonight, could not make it from pitch to pitch without readjusting his genitals. (Seriously, they started cutting away from him between pitches to keep it a family program- it was that bad.)

I need the righteous indignation that Armando so fills me with, indignation at a job done so poorly and paid so well that nothing can explain it but the unfairness in the universe that I deal with daily. At a time when I must regulate myself incessantly in a constant process of self-censorship at work as I mediate between kids, families, and legal systems entrenched in disaster, it feels good to totally let loose at a total stranger playing a simple game (and playing it poorly). Combined with a glass of wine, hollering at Armando is the best stress relief I've had since this horrible season at work began.

Bullshit Medicine

2007-02-12T21:48:00.000-08:00

Today I was in the ER talking with one of the pediatric residents about jobs. We are both in the same boat, in that we are in the final year of our fellowships and are both studying for the licensing exams and looking for jobs (not to mention working well more than full-time). I suggested to Dr. F that she should become a child psychiatrist, as there is a huge need for them and she could easily get a job. A nearby nurse looked up and, not knowing I'm chief resident for Psychiatry, said, "Yeah, if you want to practice Bullshit Medicine!"

The problem is that there is a kernel of truth to that statement that makes me feel squicky inside. The reason I was in the ER in the first place was to transfer a kid from our ER to a psychiatric hospital for an assessment, a task which ordinarily takes 1-2 hours. It took me 4, simply because she was from a different county so that, instead of following the usual routine, I had to wade through mires of bullshit to find out where to send this girl and then get that hospital to accept the transfer. Meanwhile, what I was sending her for- an assessment of suicidality- was something I do weekly in that very ER and am fully competent and qualified to perform. I wasn't performing it in this case solely because the girl was 13 instead of 11-and-under and was from the wrong county. We only get paid by our county, and then only for kids 11-and-under. All others get shipped out.

There is an element of warehousing and bureaucracy inherent to crisis mental health work that is repugnant. The security guard I worked with on this case gave a good example of this. He used to work at the local adult psychiatric hospital, and told me about their "frequent fliers," folks who weren't mentally ill, but used the mental health system and the 5150 laws to secure a bed and a meal simply by calling 911 and reporting suicidal ideation. These individuals take up space designed for psychiatrically impaired adults, and cost us a fortune by doing so that could be better spent in other types of (less expensive) social services. Meanwhile, a large, large portion of the mentally ill adult population is warehoused in prisons, where they receive no treatment at all.

In my own 5150 assessments this sort of dilemma becomes apparent when a child who would, in an ideal environment, be able to go home ends up being sent to a psychiatric hospital because I don't trust their parent or their environment to keep them stabilized. In a lot of these "soft calls" the problem seems to me to be largely an issue of family, community, and environmental dynamics rather than a function of sincere mental illness, namely suicidal/homicidal ideation or being gravely disabled. Yet I send them off because, on the ethical scales, it is better to keep them in a safe warehouse for a few days than send them back to a sickness-inducing environment that cannot contain them.

I frequently wonder what it would be like to be in private practice- something I may be finding out in the not-to-distant future. I think of the multitudes of private practitioners who have never done these types of assessments or confronted these issues, but live in a narrowly confined and defined version of mental health. The idea scares me, because it makes Dr. Phil's out of my colleagues rather than psychologists with a holistic experience of mental health in its varied and extreme forms. While I am under a lot of stress, and find this job overwhelming at times, I am grateful for being forced to confront these types of ethical dilemmas; these problems belong to everyone, not just those in the mental health professions.

Turnips & Parsnips

2007-01-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

The slow-cooker trials continue. This weekend I tried out a recipe that included turnips & parsnips as major ingredients. When I got to Safeway, however, I realized that I had no idea what a parsnip looked like.

The produce bin I was searching had three choices: Turnips, parsnips, & Rutabega. Turnips I picked out readily, but now the question: Which was the parsnip? How to determine the identity of the parsnip?

A memory came to mind- a Homestar Runner cartoon that interestingly also included parsnips a a major ingredient. With this thought in mind, I confidently picked up the parsnips and brought them home with me for some slow-cooking action.

Thank you, interweb!

My aching piles

2007-01-21T21:04:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a mixed bag.

On the one hand:
- I went to the Giants Fan Fest and took some fun pictures with Captain Awesome. We tooled around the stadium, bought a 6 pack of tickets for the coming season, and laughed at the anti-steroids sign up in the locker room.
- I got to spend Saturday with friends in the city and eat disgustingly awesome fried food
- CA and I took a very nice walk around SF
- Ruby slept on my back on Friday night
- I got to try out my new slow-cooker for the first time- Success!
- I stayed up until 1am Sunday morning watching Queen of the Damned on SciFi. (This might seem like it belongs in the other column, but I enjoyed myself!)

On the other:
- I had to stay late at work Friday night because the Friday on-call person was off doing an ERNIE assessment at an offsite clinic and another 5150 page came in.
- I didn't get to run a major errand due to my overtime duties
- I had to de-skin 3 huge chicken breasts to use my new slow-cooker. It was really gross.
- I had to study for my licensing exam, constantly confronting the vast region of space between me and being prepared to take the test.
- I got paged at 4:45pm on Sunday and had to go into the hospital to do a suicide assessment. For 2.5 hours. During the Colts-Patriots game.
- My reward for successfully using my slow-cooker ended up being that I had to then dismember the chicken breasts, spending a good portion of what remained of the evening fishing gobbets of bone and cartilage out of the pot.

Mr. Turkey and Friends

2007-01-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

I remember right around Thanksgiving Captain Awesome and I went to see a movie with another couple, who are respectively a lawyer and an ad exec. At dinner as we talked about our days, it seemed I was the only one wandering through the hallways with a handmade turkey puppet on my hand doing the voice of "Mr. Turkey." Strange.

I thought of that again this morning as I met with my supervisor to show him videos of not one, but two sessions with (different) 7yo girls doing puppet shows. As we discussed the relative merits of my responses to said puppet shows, as well as the similarities in the thematic content between the two clients, not to mention their differing dramatic styles, I had to wonder, "What do people think when I try to explain my job?"

No matter what you may think, however, the Board of Psychology is a fan: you are reading the words of an official Registered Psychologist. Hot damn!

If This Theater is a-Rockin'...

2006-12-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

Captain Awesome and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary yesterday by going to the San Francisco Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. And no, that was not a symbolic choice.

About 10 minutes into Act I the "cheap" (my ass they were cheap!) seats began dancing about, much like the folks on the stage. Murmuring- was this part of the production? Were we about to fall into the pit below? Were we all going to die in a stampede trying to exit the theater?

The dancers didn't appear to miss a beat- I'm guessing half of them were in mid-air when it happened anyway- so the audience settled down and moved on. CA and I, relatively assured of the structural integrity of the War Memorial Opera House, also settled in to watch the show.

I've lived in California my whole life, and this was a small - 3.6 - earthquake, but it was one of the more memorable ones I've been through! And, to give the inevitable terrible punchline to this story, we can definitely say the earth moved on our anniversary.

(I know, it was painful, but it had to be done)

Cookie Spritz

2006-12-07T15:18:00.000-08:00

As some of you have found out, I love my cookie press. It is my friend. Even though it frequently doesn't work. Even though I change the recipe every time I use it. Even though I hate how fucking complicated it is to get the stupid cookie out of the press in decent shape.

I love it.

I recently made 3 batches of dough preparatory to making huge quantities of Christmas cookies that I am freezing. The idea was to avoid doing ten million baking tasks right before Christmas without losing out on oodles of homemade Christmas cookies.

I made lemon, almond, and "candycane" doughs. They were lovely. I made Captain Awesome smell and taste each batch while I proudly patted the dough ball and he rolled his eyes. I have made all but half of the candycane dough into cookies. Delicious, delicious, multitudinous, vaguely shaped cookies.

Why not use a cookie cutter? you might well ask. Because it's a Cookie Press, dude! Don't you get it? It's way cooler than rolling out the dough and cutting. And, in theory, faster. But not really.

Nevertheless, I have not given up on the hope, nay, the dream, that one day I will conquer my cookie press. And then, friends, oh, and then, the river of beautifully shaped, fragrantly scented cookies that will pour from my door!

Saying Nothing At All

2006-11-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

Good things I can say about Thanksgiving at my in-laws:

1. My father-in-law loaned Captain Awesome and I a book of Irish short stories that I quite enjoyed.

2. I got to hang out with CA's step-aunt and her family, which was nice and cozy. 2A: They gave us early Christmas gifts- the first of the season!

3. There was nice wine at dinner.

4. CA and I took a nice late-night walk together.

5. We went to breakfast the next morning with several of CA's friends from high school at a cool local eatery called The Eating Room. It was. It certainly was.

6. We drove down and drove home in safety.

7. It was not too hot to wear the tights I packed.

8. CA didn't get poisoned by a turkey fried in peanut oil and end up in the hospital.

9. There were no Thanksgiving terrorist attacks.

10. The sun didn't explode.

Woolen Waves

2006-11-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

Captain Awesome and I went to visit his cousin, whom I shall call Mikey D, this Sunday in Santa Cruz. Despite a craptastic "blackened" "Mahi Mahi" sandwich at a tourist-feeding dive restaurant, we had a fantastic time and look forward to many more Mikey D weekends.

Walking the cliff paths of Santa Cruz gave us occasion to reminisce to our recent trip to the Timber Cove Inn (google it yourself, I'm at work here!) & Costanoa, our first two of hopefully many isolated Northern California inns. We have discovered a truth universal to our marriage, which is that we are people who prefer to wear sweaters on the beach*. Palm trees are nice, but only at 60 degrees.

*This is not a nudity thing, but the curious cast populating the nude beach we walked by did nothing to dissuage us.

Fat Cat

2006-11-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

Pepe is now officially 17lbs. I don't know what to do about it. He and Ruby eat a very limited amount of the "Light Indoor Cat" food. Our vet says to try wet food. Been there before. My sister, the would-be-vet, suggests a prescription, high-protein dry food. Great.

Meanwhile, Pepe also proved to us on Friday that cats do try to hold it for their litter box. Upon arriving home from the vet, anti-rabified, he commenced to sprinkle poops all over the living room floor as he made a mad dash to the litter box. Poor little guy just couldn't hold it any longer- but he tried! I find that quite endearing.

Doctorfied

2006-11-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

I just answered my first emergency page in which I introduced myself to the caller as "Dr. Mollynonymous."

It felt pretty cool.

It also felt like make-believe.

I wonder when this starts feeling real?

San Diegoriffic

2006-10-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it: I was dreading the family wedding that Captain Awesome and I attended this weekend in San Diego. While there are no actual problems between the in-laws and me, I do have some sincere reservations about certain members of the Awesome tribe, and generally don't cry when we aren't invited over for Christmas.

The wedding was for 4pm, so the Capt. and I showed up around 3. We took a lovely stroll along the waterfront, as the Capt's cousin had the good sense to get married on a lovely afternoon on Mission Bay. By 3:45, the sound guy was the only other person apparently attending this wedding besides us. It was decidedly odd. It's like the entire world had rescheduled via telepathy, without informing us.

Slowly, slowly, Awesomes began to arrive. We meeted and greeted and were seated, and then waited... and waited... Around 5pm I believe the wedding actually did begin; however, the guests were so disgruntled/amused at this point that there was a dull murmer of commentary and snipy banter throughout. The Australian Merchant Marine (or "Captain Aussie") gave his clearly pre-packaged wedding service that generically referred to the love of the bride and groom and their future. Vows, kisses, open bar!

The caterer, apparently also in tune with the psychic loop that the Capt. and I were shut out of, was several hours late, meaning that we were all flying high by the time the hors d'oevres began making their appearance around 7pm. Dinner was at about a timely 7:45, at which point no one was waiting for the head table to be excused, toasts were cut short, and there was a beline for the over-steamed cauliflower and dry rolls.

Lest it sound like I am being too snarky, allow me to say that I had a lovely time meeting some new Awesome relatives, dancing with Granddad Awesome, and that the green appletini buzz I had going made conversing with Stepmom Awesome a tolerable experience. It's fun to be an observer/participant in large family functions like this where I have the out of "well, it's not really my family" when it gets to be too much.

Happy Birthday Captain Awesome!

2006-10-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

M is celebrating his birthday today- join in, friends!

I'd like to wish M a personal birthday greeting, in that I want him to know how much I appreciate his awesomeness, supportiveness, and overall fabulous self. I owe so much of who I am to our close association over the past 4 years and 364 days, and I am very, very grateful for the life we share.

Not that I'm totally into you, or anything.

Check Mate

2006-10-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

5+ years after beginning my degree I will be walking out of my school on Wednesday officially finished and doctorized. The major pieces are already completed-- my dissertation has been signed off, and all that remains is for the administrative machinery at my school to put it on my transcript. While this may not happen instantly, it is apparently kosher for me to be referring to myself as doctor anyway, as I have met all of the requirements for my degree.

The fact of my doctorness is somewhat less intense than one might imagine, given that, of the 8 students in my group, I was the only post-doc who hadn't actually graduated yet, meaning I was, if anything, behind the curve. Also, in a hospital, no matter how skilled you are as a doctor of psychology, in the Emergency Room you'll find someone who'll look down their nose at you because you're "Just a Ph.D." Obnoxious, but also humbling.

All that being said, I'm very happy to be official, and happy to not be Mrs. M. anymore. God, did I hate being called "Mrs." Now I have a real excuse- "Um, it's Doctor, actually."

Countdown

2006-10-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

As I sit here waiting out my on-call day (I'm clear at 6:30, though I have to stay until 7. Hope I'm not jinxing myself!) I have a mental clock in my head ticking down the hours until my dissertation defense. As today has been relatively mild, work-crisis wise (now I have jinxed myself, I'm sure), I have actually had time to think about what it might mean to me to be a doctor.

Well, really, I've had time to think that it might mean something to me; the what is still pending. Thursday is the big day- 3:30pm the hour. Think of me...

Meanwhile, afterwards, we'll be going out so that M can receive his congratulations.

Head Case

2006-10-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

Besides being my login on a number of sites where I wish to remain anonymous, "headcase" most accurately describes my state of being at the moment. I was in a conversation this morning where someone said their goal was to "reduce the crazy" present at work. Profound, given that we work in the Department of Psychiatry, and yet we are being driven out of our minds by bureacratic inefficiency.

In short: I am drowning in administrative bullshit. Do not smell me for the next few weeks- I assure you the stink will be staying with me. I am not very happy.

In addition, I am trying to work my personal life into this job somehow. To whit: I am planning to defend my dissertation next Thursday, which means I will be Dr. Mollynonymous by the end of the month. Revere me accordingly. I am also trying to look forward to the 3 day weekend M and I have planned for next weekend, but it's hard to look beyond the next 24 hours.

I used to love this job. I am really hoping a time will come when I love it again.

Been down so long it looks like up to me

2006-09-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

*Please note that some of this post will be a recap of events in the previous post, due to the fact that Blogger never actually let me know that other post successfully uploaded.

I knew going into this month that it would be challenging. I had no idea how challenging. I have been totally overwhelmed for weeks on end by the volume of needs I've had to meet, on top of 2 on-call days and my client load. It's been very, well, challenging.

I was really looking forward to this week, because starting on Tuesday the new post-docs were beginning their own on-call days. "Only Mondays for me from now on!", I thought. Then, at 9am on Monday, one of the new post-docs quit.

FUCK!!!!

So now, here I am... still with 2 on-call days... interviewing new candidates... bracing to train the new person... still managing the anxiety of the 6 remaining new people, not to mention the staff... and, of course, fielding the various major and serious crises affecting my patients.

October, October, your sweet song sings in my ear, but will you ever arrive????

OMG WTF POLAR BEAR

2006-09-25T21:24:00.002-07:00

Oy. This was supposed to be the week that things got easier for me at work. This week the new post-docs begin covering their own on-call days, meaning I only have 1 12-hour day a week instead of 2. However, at 9am this morning one of them dropped a bomb: she quit.

Now, not only am I working 2 on-call days this week, I am dealing with all of the fallout from her sudden departure. I was trying very hard to be present with everyone else's sadness this afternoon, but my primary emotion was anger. I was (and am) pissed! This is creating so much work for me right now, stress I really wasn't prepared for and don't quite feel capable of handling.

In addition, my body is on strike. Since last Thursday my left hip has been very painful, meaning I'm lurching around, unable to exercise (one of my major stress-relievers), and in chronic pain. I'm also coping with everyone's anxiety about doing their on-call work, and helping them with their initial consults and 5150 evaluations. O yeah, and I'm supposed to be a therapist to kids while all of this is going on.

Throw a little love my way- I need it!

Naughty Cat

2006-09-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Like many women, I have a stash of what M calls my "dainties", i.e. the lacy novelty items that you break out to take a special evening to the next level. My personal stash lives in a drawer in our bedroom. Unfortunately for my dainties, my bedroom has another resident: the Fat Cat.

The Fat Cat's personal mission in life is to open drawers and take what is in them, out. As M says, "Long on how, short on why". This reminds me of when the Wee Cat used to steal drinking straws. She'd stealthily sneak up from under the table, snatch away your straw, and make sure it was safely on the floor. Then she was done. Didn't play with it, no further interest; she just needed to increase the entropy in our home.

The Fat Cat is similar in his drawer spelunking urge. He doesn't want to sit in the drawer, play with the clothes, or anything other than make what was in, out. Recently his obsession has been the dainties drawer. There's nothing sexier than seeing your lingerie in a big, cat created pile. My sex life feels so violated! Unfortunately, there's not really a solution, unless I begin locking up my dainties, as well as other drawer-stored items, in cat-safe storage. This seems unreasonable versus the relatively minimal effort it takes to restore order to my underthings. I will consider this a reminder of why we do not have children yet.

Walking in my sleep

2006-09-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

This was my first official weekend on-call. I tried not to get too worked up about it, as there usually isn't anything major that occurs over the weekend. The one exception is if there is an ERNIE, which is essentially a kid who fits 5150 criteria but isn't medically cleared. For example: a kid who is admitted for overdosing on tylenol in a suicide attempt. Clearly, the child needs to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility, but no psych facility will take them until they are medically stablized and out of danger.

All of this being said, I wasn't anticipating hearing my pager go off. M and I were having a nice Friday evening falling asleep while listening to music. Suddenly there was an electric chirping sound. I was totally disoriented, thinking at first that it was the stereo, and then that it must be the alarm clock. Until M said "your pager" I had no recollection that that was even an option.

It was only 11:15pm, not super late, but it was my first time waking up from a dead sleep and having to jerk into crisis management mode. Luckily this page didn't involve going into the hospital, just talking to fools on the phone who would then go on to ignore my reasoned and educated recommendations. But no matter.

My only other page of the weekend - so far - occured, predictably, as I was getting out of the shower. There is the sense that you should say something about this, like "Oh, I was just getting out of the shower when I got your page", until you hear the anxious and near-panicky pace of the other person when they hear you are psych on-call and realize they could care less about your pleasant weekend activities and instead want you to solve their problem, stat.

Sigh... October can't come soon enough for me...

A Nonny Mouse

2006-09-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new anonymous blog! I created this in response to finding out that one of my adorable clients was searching for me on the interweb. Ooops! Time to anonymize things, would you say?

Speaking of my adorable clients, they are - literally and figuratively - dropping like flies. Some are moving away. Some feel like they are finished with therapy. And my little girl with cancer died over the weekend. This was my first experience losing a patient, and it continues to be hard. It's very strange to have this type of experience at work and then tolerate the things people usually complain about at their jobs. It is also strange to grieve someone that no one else knows, to not be able to say their name to anyone, and to have to process the loss in the workplace alone. Don't get me wrong, M has been 100% awesome (and who would have doubted it?), but the experience remains difficult.

I don't know how frequently I'll be blogging. I am insanely busy this month, what with 2 on-call days per week (12 hours +/day), a full caseload, and a new crop of trainees that it is my job as chief resident to help train and acclimate. Whee! October will be a happy month, let me tell you!