Vacation, part III

OK, really, I'm home for good. Now I'm back in Pasadena again, where it's so hot in my apartment that my computer keeps shutting down because the fan can't keep up. Here's a little visual update for the far-flung Berkeley folk out there.


Is that he-man (with the sword... although Andrew could pass for he-man too, of course)? The shirt was a gift from a friend who picked it up in Iraq, I think.










Hannah the rock star.








Emily, Andrew, and the always-smiley Mr. Bill.







Only on the UC Berkeley campus do people graffiti in latin (Nietzsche, no less).

Addiction

I'm posting not so much because I have something to say, but because my Addiction and Family Treatment class just ended and it was really powerful and a bit gut-wrenching and frustrating and scary and hopeful and sweet and sad and way too close to home sometimes and I want to write something down before I move on and lose the feelings associated with having been there.

This was definitely not a book-learning class. We took field trips to residential treatment centers, and had guest speakers, and went to 12-step meetings, and heard so many personal stories over the course of the week, as well as just getting a totally different perspective on the physical (disease-model) roots of addiction... people in the class shared insanely personal stories and the professor cried at least three times. For the first few days I was a bit at arm's length from it, even though it was really fascinating, but by the end of today it felt intensely personal to think about the power of secrets, and the lack of education and support for healthy coping behaviors.

Anyhow, having walked out of the class into the light of day, and traffic, and dealing with the housing office, and my empty apartment, and people heading off to the beach, and thinking about Ultimate, and packing for vacation... I keep wondering if it ever gets any easier to go from a place of emotional intensity, straight out into a world where absolutely everything seems trivial and I want to snap at people who make jokes or don't take something seriously enough because don't they know what just happened in that room? Don't they know what people are going through? How do you process that stuff in a way that lets you return to the world outside and actually engage with life again when you leave the office? How do you learn to make the transition? I suppose everybody goes through this to some degree when they navigate between worlds, so advice is welcome.

Backwash and chuck taylors

I went to a mid-week Eucharist service tonight at a small Episcopal church up the street. I was late, of course, but I was just looking to slip into the back and have a bit of anonymous peace and quiet and liturgy to get my mind off the little hamster wheel of overwhelmedness that it jumped onto the moment I returned from vacation.

Instead, I found myself in a teeny, tiny church with a large, bald, black priest wearing a white robe over shorts and white Converse All-Stars, and four black women interspersing comments about the NBA finals game into their discussion of the reading (Matthew 4-5, two passages coincidentally about being in the midst of chaos). It was wonderful. They stopped in the middle of the chapter and introduced themselves to me, asking all sorts of questions about my program before jumping back into reading. After a bit of discussion and prayer and a time for silence and contemplation, we came to communion. I love the liturgy and tradition surrounding communion, especially in high church. I love that in the Episcopal church they consider it an opportunity to contemplate the mystery of God, because really, some days I just don't get the whole wafer-and-wine thing as a reminder that I believe there is a God and I believe he loves me ('cause some days lately even that sounds crazy).

But, lest I get too wrapped up in the seriousness of the moment, one of the ladies calls out to the rector as he up-ends the cup of wine into his mouth, "Did we leave you any? 'Cause sometimes I really want a lot of that blessing and I take a big swig," and we all disintegrate into titters and giggles and jokes about backwash in the blood of christ... and even though I'm a pasty white girl who wandered in off the street 10 minutes late with no idea who just won the NBA championship, I felt warmly welcomed.

Now that's communion.

Vacation, part II

OK, back from the rest of the week off, which included lots of laying around on the beach drinking free margaritas with Tiffany in Cabo San Lucas, and a fun, quick daytrip to Santa Barbara with Goat, which included biking and banana splits. I'm still working on being in the mood to write, but in the meantime a picture's worth something, right?

Anyhow, now I am back in class, and really enjoying the class (Addiction and Family Treatment) because it feels a lot more practical than the theory stuff we've been stuck learning so far the first year. We've been taking field trips for this class and meeting real people instead of just sitting around reading case studies and writing up treatment plans for imaginary families. But a friend of mine had a good take on that whole process in a recent email: "Glad that you are getting into the actual doing of what you have been looking to do. Doing is usually much more interesting than learning, but i guess if we just did, we would never learn of all the posible ways to do."

So I'll hang onto that for the next few weeks of sitting around feeling useless before I start practicum.

Vacation, part I

Two quick pics from the weekend in Boulder with Becky D... it was a lot of biking around, hiking (or, sloshing through snow for 5 miles to get to a frozen lake), grilling, eating waffles, and hanging out with her friends, all made possible by the generosity of Southwest Airlines who bumped me off a flight last July!
As for that bottle of wine... well... we weren't about to let it go to waste. That's what those bottle cages are for, right??

Nothing to report here other than that it is hot (was in the upper 90s over the weekend) and I am taking finals and very much looking forward to a trip to Boulder starting Thursday to visit the fabulous Becky D, and then a trip to Cabo with the fabulous Tiffany (she won a free trip for two to Mexico and is taking me as her guest... how lucky am I??), where I plan on exploring and relishing old friends and reading the paper and eating slurpees and listening to the podcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and maybe Car Talk if I can find it.

Finals aren't too overwhelming in and of themselves (just two take-home exams) but I think I'm just exhausted from the constant presence of having something to read or write hanging over my head since the beginning of January with only a week's respite in March. I love my program and I'm extremely grateful to be able to pursue a totally new field, and I know that I had a killer schedule this quarter with tons of free time, but I'm counting the days until graduation (369, to be exact). If I ever decide to get a PhD, will you please ask me if I know what I'm doing?? In the meantime, I'm actually psyched to start practicum on July 10, at Glen Roberts Child Study Center, a county-funded community mental health clinic in Glendale. I'll be working there about 20-25 hours a week for a year.

I'll try to come up with something more interesting to say one of these days soon....