78 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  1. Taxes

    Holy crap…I’m swimming in the whole tax thing.  Almost (almost…) makes me want to move back to Texas where there is no state income tax…forms and more forms….getting headache…can’t take much more…must fetch beer…

  2. Movie

    I saw The Namesake last night, and loved it, and highly recommend it. We read the book in my bookclub, and it was eh – the main character seemed unreasonably whiney and petulant and I didn’t think there was good character development, etc. However, we did pretty much agree that the story of the parents was interesting and would make a better novel.

    Well, the movie is better at showing the story of the parents (Indians, arranged marriage, he’s lived in the states for 2 years finishing his degree and getting a university teaching job, and she marries him and comes over to a whole new, strange life. The son’s story deals with him coping with his strange name, and his straddling the cultures between his parents’ Indian heritage and his Americanization.)

    The mother was played by an Indian acress named Tabu, and she was phenominal – beautiful, and very expressive in a mere glance. The relationship between the parents is very sweet.

    Anyway, if you can get out to see it, do so. Not sure when it’s to be released on DVD.

    • Oooh, good to know

      I’ve been wanting to see that.  If I don’t get a chance to catch it in the theater (I almost never do), I’ll definetly put it on my netflix list.

  3. Masters thesis and I suck

    I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.  I can’t manage my stress. I can’t keep my house clean, or even livable.  I can’t choose a theoretical orientation (input from therapists?).  I can’t write my thesis.  I want to give up but I’m not going to.  I probably suck as a therapist.

    I should be writing two papers right now, but I’m here whining instead.  FYI, I am going to finish it all, I’m just venting, but I am genuinly afraid that I’ll fail.

    • big breath

      In.  And out.

      Erin, you know you are not going to fail.  You have more common sense and intuition in your little fingernail than most people on the planet.

      Can you take a walk?  Get away from the computer?

    • my new mantra

      Be in THIS MOMENT. Don’t think about the past, or the future. Not even the short-term future.

      Works well for tackling irritating work problems, or for restraining myself from going batsh*t when the baby WILL NOT go to sleep at 3:45.

      You can do it!

    • Oof

      I don’t have any good battles at the moment, you got too many.

      Oh, I hear you. Graduate school seems designed to pummel our self-esteem right into the ground. Not to mention these early years of clinical work. Your posts here are always nuanced with a wise perspective on important problems – I am betting money that you are an excellent therapist.

      The whole choosing of an orientation ….. I’ve gone through several iterations of this over the years. I think it’s very hard to have to declare something at an arbitrary time in our training. If I had to say now, my orientation would be really different from, say the second year of my master’s. Maybe if it’s a snapshot in time, that would take less pressure off the choice?

      Hang in there, and let us know how you’re doing.

      RachelD

    • um

      you don’t have to be Superwoman, Erin! You’ve got a masters thesis, a toddler and you’re pregnant! Let the housework go – it’s not the end of the world.

      So, what can you do on your thesis? I speak from great ignorance, as I don’t know your subject from a tin of beans, but boy, I know performance anxiety. Can you pick out one task, like write an outline for one of your papers? Can you open the word document and plunk in a few quotes (I always like to do that because then there’s words on a page)?

      Start small, and things will grow from there.

        • re:grad school

          you can do it, Erin! You ARE doing it!

          12 years down the road, i remember-

          1. the grad student experience sucks for almost everybody. Seek like-minded souls. My thesis group nicknamed ourselves the Stockholm 6, because we felt grad school was a hostage situation, and we were starting to identify with our captors. We are all still friends and talk/email/visit on a regular basis.
          1. Do the bib first. It feels productive and you CAN work backwards from there.
          1. Go stand on your front door step, and take a deep breath. Repeat.
          1. Get enough sleep, and eat vegetables.
          1. You are going to be a terrific therapist!

        • But,

          she used the word ‘unlivable’ to describe her home environment…not good. Perhaps enlist friends/family to help you sort through the junk, do a deep clean, and then move on from there?

          Also, re: thesis – just pick one and do it! Don’t give it too much thought or you will be paralyzed. You can always switch theoretical approaches in practice – and you probably already use multiple approaches – so you just need to write what will get you your degree. I did that with mine – I got it done and haven’t thought much about it since. The thesis was just the last hurdle to jump through to get the degree…

          • Unlivable

            Good point.  If it is really that bad, maybe some help is in order.  Same thing with cleaning/decluttering as with the thesis… start small.  Clean out a junk drawer.  

            Kathleen Kendall-Tackett has some great advice for cleaning.  Stick with one room.  If you find yourself going from room, to room, to room cleaning as you go, it can get too overwhelming.  Use an empty box or two to put items in that belong in other rooms.  

    • Thanks, all

      You gave a lot of good suggestions, and I think breaking it down into managable pieces and living in the moment will help a lot.  I was particularly distraut yesterday because a) the night before dd had accidentally scratched my eye, making it difficult to sleep, so I was too tired to function, b) I found out earlier in the day that my grandmother had terminal cancer.  She and I aren’t all that close, so I wasn’t too sad, but I did feel that I should find the money  and time to visit her, both of which will be difficult and c) yesterday morning, as I was getting Simone ready to go out with my MIL, she said “I’m going with grandma because you don’t want to watch me,” which was a knife in my heart.  So screw it all, I’m taking her to the zoo this afternoon.

      Still, I got some things that had been stressing me out done, so I feel a lot better.  This weekend I’ll be able to clean up enough that I won’t feel like I’m about to die, too.  And for now I’ll just be Rogerian, even though that’s only one of six different theories I have an interest in.  My vision is even back!  Thank you so much for your support!

  4. May I just rant for a moment about rude HR people

    In the past week, I’ve had two very promising interviews, both of which I closed with “What are the next steps?” In both cases, I was told very specifically to expect a call from a NAMED PERSON to set up a second interview. It certainly didn’t feel like a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” thing, but I’m beginning to wonder.

    With one, it’s been over a week and still no word from anyone. I sent an e-mail at the end of last week detailing my availability this week. I phoned and left a voice mail yesterday. Nothing. WTF? It’s not that I’m taking it personally, but truly if they ARE intending to do a second interview with me, this isn’t giving me the best impression of the firm. And if they aren’t – say, the person interviewing me thought I was great but then the second interviewer already found someone else. Or didn’t want to work with someone in a separate city (my boss on that job would be in Seattle) – FINE. But TELL ME!

    In the other, at the end of the interview, the interviewer said “I’m heading to X’s office right now to ask her to schedule a follow up.” That was Tuesday. Again, I ask, WTF!? I tried to send a follow-up e-mail today but my connection crapped out just as I hit send, so I don’t know if it went through.

    How many calls/e-mails do I get as an applicant before I become a nuisance?

    • Keep calling

      I would keep calling or emailing if you are interested.  What do you have to lose?  Sometimes, hiring falls through the cracks when some other big emergency comes in.  Eventually, if they are really not interested, they will tell you.  But in the meantime, keep showing your interest.

      • Thanks!

        I heard from the second place – the one I interviewed with on Tuesday. I have a second interview set up on Tuesday. Hooray! I’m going to phone the other place again tomorrow.

        • good for you!

          Glad to hear it. I’m sure you’ll rock the interview.

          I call this situation the urgency asymmetry – where the situation is extremely important, on the top of a short list, for one person, but one of a number of tasks and not at the same level of importance, for the other person.

          BTW, how’s DD’s sleeping?

          • I wish I could say ‘better’

            Well, I suppose I can say it, but it wouldn’t be true…

            she’s really inconsistent, and it’s got me pretty strung out. She’s teething, though, and I think that’s a lot of it. Come on, first tooth! Cut already!

            • teething agony

              Jess, at 22 months, is doing her incisors and her back molars. Her sleep schedule has gone completely haywire. OK, it’s not as bad as her first six months (and if there’s any silver lining to having an inconsistent, short sleeper, it’s that eventually you get to say “not as bad as when she was — weeks.”), but she’s waking at around 4 a.m. and niggling in bed with us, falling asleep around 5 por 5.30 and up again at not later than 7. All our sleep is distrupted and we’re a bit short tempered…

              Long story short, I empathize.

    • congrats

      on getting an answer from one place! I am STILL waiting to hear from a place I interviewed with over a month ago… I did my due diligence with the company the first time 3 months ago- I called on Fridays to check in and was put off for 2 months, then called in for another interview- for a DIFFERENT JOB!!! Never heard about the first job, and I refuse to call them back ever. It takes 10 minutes for hr to send out a “thanks but no thanks” letter. jack ass

      • no sh*t – how hard is it?

        I mean, when I had my FIRST screening interview with this Big Firm, I asked about the major challenges it was facing, and she said “staffing.” Perhaps they could work on being a leetle bit more responsive, and then they wouldn’t have such problems?

        Actually, she’s turned out to be worth a darn, because she followed up to tell me that first team didn’t want me, but she’s sent my stuff around to a couple of others. Based on her promoting my case, I went in for a videoconference interview for which the first thing the interviewer said was “I think this job would bore you.”

        Greaaaat. BUT, she liked me and passed me along for ANOTHER job, which is the one I interviewed for and was supposed to hear more about last week. Sigh.

        Seriously – if I were in HR, I would not do things that way.

  5. Mood

    I’m in a very fiery (I’m an Aries Moon, it happens) and pugnacious mood today, and reading pinky’s diary about the preschool bully just fuels my fire even more.

    I was thinking and talking about this to my dh the other day: as a SAHM, sometimes I just need a good battle to fight. I don’t mean an argument, but a nice thorny problem to solve. Solve with action, rallying up some peeps, talking it out, getting some movement or light on the situation.

    I think this is why as a therapist I like doing systems work – more than one family member in the room. That’s a lot of energy to work with. And it’s probably why I am looking for the right volunteer gig still …

    But I guess I’ll just unload the dishwasher AGAIN and flip over a load of wash AGAIN. When ds wakes up, we can get out of here.

    How do you all cope with these kinds of days …..??

    RachelD

    • are you channelling me?!

      I’m in a mood, too, and I’m on spring break today and I have the time to indulge it, which probably isn’t the best thing for me to be doing :-)  I don’t know much about astrology but I have had a couple of phone conversations with a shaman, including one on Saturday evening, who talked a lot about me being an Aries with a MOON IN PLUTO, your MOON is IN PLUTO.  I have no idea what that means but it is certainly seared into my skull.

      I’m spending the morning trying to distract myself from worrying about DS.  He left for Mexico yesterday in a school van.  We got an email about 1:30 p.m. from the school yesterday saying, “They’re making good time, they might go all the way to their destination campground — or just stop and rest somewhere.”  ??? We have a phone tree set-up, but no one called.  I tried calling the people above me on the phone tree last evening and no one answered.  What the hell kind of phone tree is that???  DH reached the top phone tree mom and she hadn’t heard anything.  This a.m. the school secretary said she hasn’t heard anything and figures they’re “just out of cell phone range [oh well].”  

      I have never not known pretty exactly where he is or had a way to get in touch with him pretty immediately, ever.  And I am afraid of bandits with guns in Mexico.  I keep trying to think about one mom on the trip with a very good head on her shoulders, and how I know she will know exactly what to do.  Then this morning I wrote on another thread about how terrified I was when I couldn’t hold him right after he was born.  I guess it’s the same feeling, and it is freaking. me. out.

      • Where are they going?

        My husband is pretty familiar w/ Baja and he took my kids 8 hours South there last week while I was working.  There is almost nothing down the coast and he said everywhere he went the people were just amazing.

        I am sure it is hard.  I was nervous not talking to my kids and they were w/ my dh and friends of ours!  

          • glad to have helped

            yes they had a fabulous time.  He went with friends of ours who now live her in San Diego too, but studied at the same University as he did in Ensenada and they were all so happy.  They said the best part was the people who were so friendly and wonderful.  

            They went to Bahia Los Angeles which is about 8-9 hours South.

            • that’s their first destination

              although for some reason I was told to write it down as their port of entry, which can’t be right if it’s that far south.  It probably should have been Tijuana?  Anyway, this connection makes me feel better.  Funny that we “found” each other this week, isn’t it :-)  They should be camping there tonight.

              • Yep

                After all the help you have given me I am glad to have helped!  How funny they are there right now!  You can see my flickr slide-show from Bahia – well actually my hubby took the photos since I wasn’t there. here (The bigger of the blondish girls is my daughter, the smaller boy is my son.)  

                • so much love and fun

                  in those photos.  The kids are beautiful.

                  Before they left, my son was describing the open, covered structures to me where they were planning to sleep (it looks like a kitchen set-up in the photo?).  It’s so cool that I now have a picture in my mind of where he’s sleeping.  Thanks again.  I can’t tolerate sun or I might have joined them!

  6. Aries Sun?

    So you’re an Aries Sun? Ha. This is why we both want to get in there and kick ass at that preschool. Aries women are woman warriors (Joan of Arc is the perfect embodiment of the archetype), loving taking on battles that most peeps think are impossible on behalf of the underdog. I don’t know much about the conjunctions either, but I do know that IN PLUTO is not too good.

    You know a shaman? Fascinating.

    And your ds is driving to Mexico. I will need about 13 years to work up to where you are, being the good mother letting her son have an important experience even if it seems scary to me. I have the same fears about bandits and such, so I hear you on that one. (I was telling dh this weekend that ds is not allowed to go to Africa or Israel without one of our friends from there, otherwise, how would we know anything if he needed help …ds is 10 months, why wait to worry). I wouldn’t like the phone tree situation.

    Those early moments really stay with us. I didn’t get to hold ds right after birth either, and it sometimes bothers me, too.

    RachelD

    • Huh

      I never heard that about Aries but that sounds about right.  I mean, I’m no Joan of Arc, but I do seem to get unnaturally worked up over things that strike me as unfair.  I had hoped the neurofeedback would have mellowed that right out of me but apparently it’s not quite that powerful :-)

      Still no word from my hearty traveler (gulp).  Am relying on John Cusack and Jennifer Aniston to get me through this waiting time.  Have also unloaded the dishwasher and transferred the laundry.  So we soldier on.  Thanks for your comments, they are wonderful to read and think about.

      • moons and aries

        I guess I have to throw in my thirty years’worth of astrology experience…(My husband and I were introduced by an astrologer, and we married in the same year – 22 years ago!)

        Really, my experience right now is that my son is an Aries and boy, does he get worked up over things! This week he insisted we should homeschool him because the class spends too much time going over things he already knows. I know he is smart, the teacher knows it and does what she can, but the slow progress of other kids makes him MAD and he takes it personally.(I would have to increase my medication to homeschool him, but it was be simpler just to commit myself to a mental hospital because I know it would make me nuts!)

        He can blow up in real “drama queen” fashion and then be happy and mellow 20 minutes later. Oh, it is fun.

        Also, mamacita, your Moon can’t be in Pluto – it can be in a sign, but not in another planet.(you can email me if you want to know – I have astrology software.)

        • would love to know more

          about this stuff but don’t know your email?

          As I said, I know nothing about astrology. I took some notes while we were on the phone and just re-looked at them.  There are lots of typos in there, but she definitely said the “moon in Pluto” thing a few times.  Is she off her rocker?  I know she’s a nut (in a good way), but she’s also working with some astrology software.  Does it make a difference that Pluto is no longer a planet?  She did just load this software, maybe NASA got hold of it and tweaked it first….

          • email/astrology

            Hey,mamacita,

            You can email me at taichunyang@yahoo.com if you want to discuss the ins and outs of planets. I have especially studied family systems and how they relate and resemble each other, astrologically.Maybe because I come from Texas and have a lot of birth data on my wack-a-doodle relatives and friends’ families – I have just watched people and how they express themselves and deal with crisis times – and tried to learn a thing or two.

    • Aries chiming in…

      I’m an Aries too, and so is my son.  Two strong personalities.  My daughter also has a very strong personality, but she’s an Aquarius.  This dynamic gets pretty interesting in this house!

  8. my work bully

    I got rid of my work bully!

    I am running a project at work, and the project has an IT solution.  The problem is, the IT person assigned to my project is a delusional, paranoid, batshit bully.  He sends me daily 10 pages long rambling emails, even during the weekends.  He argues, he turns beet red, he documents every conversation with his spin.  He yelled at my co-worker to stop calling Excel a database b/c Microsoft stopped calling it that with the introduction of Windows 95.  I don’t know if anyone watches The Office, but like Dwight Shrute, before he asks me a question, he screams “QUESTION!”

    I was going to acupuncture to help me get knocked up, but now I just go to deal with the stress of him.  I’ve had meeting after meeting with HR, his boss, my boss, our CFO, etc.   On Tuesday, he sent me a really nasty email, and I said, “I’m done.”  I told HR he is harassing me and making me feel threatened and that I will no longer with him.  I said, “It’s him or me.”  

    And I won!  He has been removed from my project, he had to sign a memo that he will not have any contact with me, and he is on indefinite “work from home” status.  YAY!  I feel like a weight is lifted.    

    • whoo-hoo!

      What a great feeling that must be.  It sounds so official, with no possibility for misunderstanding.

      I diaried a while ago about a family I was stressing out about at work.  I felt threatened, especially by the lawyer dad, but my boss (who’s pretty checked-out and ineffective, sad to say) just ignored my requests that she assign someone else.  During our last meeting together, the family casually used the word “criminal” to describe our work on his son’s behalf last year (it wasn’t).  That was my line in the sand and I told the boss I would not work with them again.  Somehow that got through to her, she assigned someone else, and I got that lighter than air feeling.  What a relief.

    • good stuff

      glad you stood up for yourself, Amy. Now, let’s hope the acupuncture can start doing what it’s supposed to be doing. I’ve been thinking about you, but refraining from asking you any questions because I don’t want to put you under any more pressure than you probably are already under!

  9. Imus is done!

    IMUS IS DONE!

    Breaking news!

    CBS cancels Don Imus’ radio show, effective immediately, after uproar over his racist and sexist comments about Rutgers women’s basketball team.

  10. My kids are well enough

    and both went back to school today! Yippee! Just in time because today is the one day a week I teach an ESL class. I finally got to leave the house today!

    The sun is shining, it’s almost 80 degrees in Austin and life is good.

    Hope all the rest with sick kiddos are having some relief by now!

  11. Channelling Aries as well

    Don’t know from Aries sun or anything, but am totally feeling the star sign. Seems like impatience is a common theme for a lot of us right now…

    Me, I’m trying to cope with this job situation. As noted, I have a big opportunity potentially looming – chance to launch/edit a quarterly publication here in Oz. It’s totally what I want to do as the next step, it’d be a great opportunity, I may be able to bring on a respected colleague/friend as staff, and best of all, it’d be work from home, so I could keep on keeping on with the current situation with Jess. But, as with my “urgency asymmetry” meme above with betsybflynn, this is totally A-1 priority with me, but only on a list with the PTB at the HQ… The guy that I’m liaising with is even on vacation (noooooo) until next week. The whole thing has  been dragging on since the end of January, which, admittedly, is not terribly long given the fact that this is a new thing, etc., etc. But I really want to get it going, start the process, and see a contract!

    I keep telling myself to stay cool, and honestly, if this doesn’t work out, the status quo is beautiful – I keep freelancing, and we start for baby #2 a bit earlier than we would if I do this thing. So it’s not the end of the world. But I really would like to sink my teeth into this, ya know?!

    • I just watched a romantic comedy

      and that helped a lot with my nerves.  I decided to take the “watched pot never boils” approach and it seems to be working.

      Best of luck on what sounds like a really exciting project.  Keep us posted!

    • Yes, I know!!

      Your contact is on vacation, great. This does sound incredible, and anything brand new does take extra time. But Aries hates to feel stalled and tends to get attached to plans and fantasies about the future. Damn. Limbo can suck it.

      My fingers are crossed for you. When it all comes through, can you tell us what it is?

      RachelD

  12. Mom at the zoo

    I thought of the ‘pink’ thread when I took the kids to the zoo on Monday.  We were in the gift shop and my younger son (age 3) was playing with a plastic pink flamingo toy.  There was another boy there also playing with one who looked to be about 2.  His mother told him, “You can’t have that.  That’s for girls.  Here, you can have the monkey instead.”

    I about dropped my teeth.  Flamingoes are gendered now because they are pink??!!  (Surely there are some pink, male flamingoes…) I suppose she doesn’t let her daughter eat blueberries either.

    • OMG…

      that reminds me of “A Bug’s Life” where the ladybug (voice of Dennis Leary) gets pissed for being taken for a girl, just because he’s called a ladybug.  

    • oh good lord

      Does that sort of thing still go on???  Maybe he should have aimed it like a semi-automatic weapon.  Maybe then it would have been okay as a boy’s toy.  Sheesh.

    • That is downright embarrassing for that mom

      How did you manage to bite your tongue? I might have said something slightly snarky or looked at her searchingly, esp. today.

      RachelD

  14. Kurt Vonnegut

    Am I the only one to be upset, vaguely depressed and feeling like another one on the team has gone missing? Bloody hell – good, wacky, leftist, nose-tweaking, moralist authors and personalities are dropping like flies (KV, Molly Ivans, Hunter S. Thompson), and wretches like Ann Coulter are still around? That ain’t fair.

    • oh, me too…

      i LOVE Kurt Vonnegut.  God I am feeling old, he’s the same age as my Dad ( or sadly was same age) If I had to name a writer as my favorite, he was it.  Did you read that he onced tried to commit suicide, but later said he’d never try again so as not to set a bad example for his children?  I never knew that.

    • cried and cried

      yesterday morning while reading snippets, watching him talk on YouTube, and just thinking about him.  ”A Man Without a Country” was on the of the talismans that has helped me get through the Bush Admin., knowing I’m not alone / crazy.

      The worst part for me about his death was that he was so, so down at the end.  He essentially said, “Game over, we’re fucked,” especially wrt global warming.  Not that I relied on him to cheer me up, per se, but I wish he could have seen a little more light before he died.  

      This has been an emotional week for me in general.  Glad I have the space right now to grieve / feel whatever I’m going through.

      • me too

        I was also sad – like so many other people have commented, reading him in high school was a total light bulb going off moment for me.  It was so different than anything else I had ever read.

        I am always sad when someone dies before this stupid f#%&ing administration is over. He deserved to wake up in Jan ’09 and say thank God Bush is not my President anymore.  At least he saw the 06 midterms.  No matter how pessimistic a person is that had to give him a little ray of hope.

        I hope Vonnegut was like my dad – my dad is always saying things like “game over”, but I know that really he is a more optimistic person than he lets on.  

        • my parents too..

          they are so distraught and feel incredibly disconnected.  although i think my mother is feeling better given the elections.  and we do have signs of real positive movement.  

      • I could never believe

        he was as pessimistic as he said – he kept writing, after all. Kept protesting, which in essence is a hopeful act, as it presupposes someone sympathetic is listening.

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