Countdown to sanity

Have you ever had so much pressure in your head that you thought your brain might start leaking out of your ears? It's allergy season here in the bible belt.

These allergies do not stop me from getting out and people watching at the cafe. Unfortunately there are no odd people here today for me to gawk at. I'm just waiting for the weather to get even warmer, that's when it gets really good.  

This week involved a lot of near panic attack moments in regards to school and then a lot of being lazy and sick toward the end of the week. 

I had a huge group project due on Wednesday so I spent much of the beginning of the week stressing and meeting with my group in order to bang it out. I'm really proud of the outcome of all of that stressing and hard work (aside from the gray hairs I swear have cropped up). The project was worth 40% of our grade and we won't know what we scored for a week or more but I'm just glad it's over. On Tuesday night after putting in several hours at the computer lab working on the project I was pretty much useless and decided to meet up with my friend for a drink or two. Two turned into about six and getting home at nearly 2:30 a.m. I guess I really needed that respite from school work. We had a great time and a lot of laughs. It made me realize how much I miss going out which I've been neglecting due to my recent bout of hemit-ism. That's apparently not a recognized word but you get my drift. That night started my battle with sleep deprivation. After finally falling asleep at 3:30 I woke up the next day feeling not so amazing but fought through it and attended class and took part in the huge presentation. After classes Jason got to town and we wound up going out to get dinner and drinks afterward. We then woke up at 5 a.m. so I could take him to the airport. I went back home to get a few more winks of sleep before going to my internship. I woke up feeling awful with a sore throat and raging sinus headache. My supervisor sent me home early because apparently I looked about as good as I felt. I went home and watched way too much t.v. then ventured to go babysit. I would have cancelled had it not been allergies that were plaguing me. I got there at 8, played ninjas with the eight year old til 8:30 and sent him to bed. They didn't get home til nearly 2 a.m. I went home and slept for about 10 hours. Much needed sleep I will say that. This Nashville weather and pollen infested air is wreaking havoc on my head. I still attempted to take advantage of the nice weather by studying outside at my favorite cafe all weekend. I continued on my quest to look for a suit even though I am STILL waiting to hear about my internship interviews. 

This waiting is a large cause of my underlying anxiety. I've been keyed up for the last month trying to make plans around fictitious appointments. I just want things to happen and waiting for other people to get back to my advisor is  driving me bat shit crazy. CRAZY. I just want to know where I'm going to be placed so I can start worrying about other things like moving, a job, school assignments and other things I prefer worrying about. If you looked up the Criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) you'd probably see my face next to it. 

Thankfully, among all this craziness is a silver lining. My spring break starts next Friday. FIVE days from now I am officially taking a week off and doing nothing school related. I am going to see my friends in Atlanta over the weekend and then driving back to Nashville. On Monday I get to pick up my love at the airport and spend the day with him. On Tuesday I will be on the road to Kalamazoo to start my trek across Michigan. I can't wait!!! I'm so ready to see my friends and relax. Oh vacation, I adore you. 

So as of now, I'm working on school stuff and counting down the days til I can start my week long hiatus from all things responsible. Yipee.

Have a wonderful, stress-free week. I hope I will. 

she wants a coat made of my leather

Sometimes it's really hard to look at things and say, 'this is really good, I wouldn't change a thing.' Maybe it's in my nature to always want to fix things or make things better or maybe I'm just incapable of feeling content. It's not always a bad thing unless the thing you keep tinkering with doesn't effect just you. That and it makes it impossible to feel completely satisfied. It often goes back to that whole idea of living in the moment. Often I just need to remind myself that I need to enjoy the things happening instead of looking forward to the things to come. 
It was a really great week. My internship went well including getting some feedback on how I've been doing over the semester as well as being included in a meeting regarding improvements that can be made within the organization and some of my suggestions held weight and were included in things to be considered. I felt a little off during classes this week, but that can be attributed to my odd mood at the beginning of this week. I just didn't have as much motivation as I usually do. Outside of school and placement I spent some time with my sister and her boyfriend and enjoyed the sun being out with walks. After placement on Thursday I drove straight to Louisville to see J, pick up my laptop and see a friend visiting from Detroit. Jason's school load is really picking up with several exams over the end of the week and next week. So he spent some time studying we took a time out to hang out and then back to studying for his exam the next morning. I really don't think I could make it through the nursing program he's going through. He was saying words and processes about the body to me I wouldn't even know how to spell. I'll stick to social work and policy. Friday after dropping him off for his exams I excitedly got in my car to pick up my laptop and then realized they needed my external hard drive to restore it, which he said we take a few hours. I ended up running errands and coming back home in the process. Before heading to Best Buy for a second time I got an email from my advisor about legal aid in Louisville for my field placement next year. I called my prospective placement and discussed what I needed to do before scheduling an interview. I'm still waiting to hear back from the other two placements in hopes to schedule them all on the same day. The social worker sounded extremely nice, she was quite talkative and discussed the types of things they do there. I got off the phone feeling positive about the talk but a little nervous that it isn't going to be exactly what I want in a placement. I'll be glad to talk to the others and see what the best fit will be. I know I'll find the right placement. Tangent. After getting my laptop J made dinner and we had friends over for nerdy board games. We had a really good time, lots of laughs, too much wine, the usual. Saturday was kind of a lazy day and kind of unproductive. We procrastinated studying by sleeping in, making lunch, netflix and going for a walk. It was all worth it. Saturday night I got to see my friend from Detroit who is dating a guy here in Louisville. Apparently all the good ones are here in Louisville, and us Michigan girls just can't resist. Oddly though both of our boyfriends are originally from Michigan. We had a lot of fun just catching up, drinking beer and watching UFC, which I feel like I haven't done in ages. We also commiserated about long distance dating. We came to the conclusion that it sucks and takes patience but it's worth it if it's the right person.   
Today has been kind of lazy as well, sleeping in (it's this apartment I swear), making food and finally getting around to school work. And now I'm back to internetting and messing around. Oops. I'm delaying the inevitability of that stupid drive back to Nashville, which I will be making very soon. 
Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

Yup, Those are all dead bodies.

In an office setting it is never a good idea to complete all of your tasks for the week in one day when you have 35 hours of work to satisfy. Last Monday I went in really psyched to get the week going because I had a big weekend planned. A large majority of the week was spent looking for productive things to do and surfing the web for stats and jobs. That and texting people that don’t work regular hours or were apparently just as bored as I was at their job. The last six weeks at work have been beneficial when I was kept busy or given tasks. I have learned a few things about the organizational end of social work and it has given me some things to think about as far as career goals. I feel like the work could have been done part time and I don’t even see a need to finish out the two remaining weeks (though I definitely will) because everything that I have been assigned to do is done. Moral of the story, I can’t wait for the next two weeks to be done.

My field placement interview (internship) was on Friday at the Nashville Career Advancement Center. Usually those interviews are more of a formality and are used to just kind of get an idea if it’s going to be a good fit for the student or if the student will like it. From what it sounds like I’ll be working with the teens in order to ready them for employment but I’ll also be working with the coordinator on the organizational end of things. I think this is going to give me a really good idea of whether or not I’m making the right decision on concentrating on management rather than clinical. I’ve been going back and forth a lot lately with that decision considering clinical and therapeutic settings are all I really know. I’m still debating. This isn’t interesting to anyone but social workers and maybe not even to them, but hey it’s what’s going on with me so deal. Let’s hope I don’t get massive anxiety about this too.

On to the best part of the week…. not working. On the weekdays I spent time at the café and the skate park so mostly a typical week. The weekend involved the boyfriend coming down on Thursday night to spend the weekend with me which is always a fantastic time. So after the interview on Friday we jumped in the rental and headed down to Atlanta. My friends Stacie and Matt have three adorable (and young) children and they all recently located to a small town outside of Atlanta with no friends or family for several hundred miles. I’m the closest familiar face they have to them currently so I wanted to give them a break for a ‘date night’ to get out of the house by themselves for the first time in a long time. The boy and I watched an 8 week old and 2 two and a half year-olds (twins obviously) while Matt and Stacie left the house for an hour. I would have run far away for several hours if I were them but I can also understand it being weird being away from your kids for a while. The kids were great and the baby was the only child awake by the time they left the house. I was nervous but we did fine and there were no catastrophes. It’s been awhile since I’ve been responsible for a child that small. I didn’t even drop him.

Saturday we went to the Georgia Aquarium (the largest in the U.S. I’m told) with my friends, their kids and Jason. We had a blast wandering around and seeing all of the different sections of the aquarium. It was really cool to see how excited the kids were as well. They have a section of the aquarium that has a tank with 6.3 million gallons of water and features a whale shark and giant manta as well as several different types of marine life. It was an amazing sight, the tank was as tall and wide as a movie theater screen (the massive theaters with the stadium seating). The aquarium was packed with people which made it a bit more of a patience tester but we all survived. By the time we were done walking through we were all exhausted (I carried around a 25 pound kid a majority of the time) and ready for lunch. Jason and I drove around Atlanta and randomly came across this cool pub with rooftop seating and discovered the food was amazing as well as the service. I love it when you just stumble upon things like that. From the rooftop Jason spotted an IKEA and decided we definitely needed to go considering neither of us have one in our current cities or residence. Being in IKEA always makes me want to buy a house. After meandering through and finding curtains for his apartment we got back to our car and realized we had spent an hour and a half in there. Yikes. I could lose a whole day in there. The Bodies exhibit was next and was much anticipated on my part for one because it was a surprise I had set up earlier in the week and two because it’s never been close enough for me to see until now. It’s hard to even describe what it was like. It was shocking, surreal, weird, strange, thrilling and a lot of other strong adjectives. I think I used the phrase ‘that’s crazy’ about 43 times. The human anatomy has always interested me in that nerdy scientific way and this exhibit just about gave me a nerd-gasm. It was insane and so worth the trip and keeping it secret for a week. Jason seemed overwhelmed at times due to putting it into the context that he’s going to be a nursing student soon and has quite a bit to learn. He’ll be fine, I know that. We weren’t allowed to take anything into the exhibit so now photos of the trip but I got a few at the aquarium. I’ll include those.

Overall it was a great week which also involved me getting back on track with ‘getting healthy’ aka getting my big booty back to losing weight. Success in that department, I’m down 5 from last week. I know it’s going to be a lot slower than most weeks, but it was an awesome start.

So, hope you all have a wonderful week.