Seven mostly unrelated statements

1. Today Jeff and I got to meet this baby:

Six-week old baby E. and her momma (our friend from grad school) are both looking beautiful, don't you think?

2. Sometime last fall I finally admitted to myself that I really do get migraine headaches. I went to my doctor, got a prescription for the kind medication you take when you feel a migraine coming on, and it turns out that these pills work pretty well like magic for me. Now that I know how to use these magic pills, and am able to stop in its tracks a process that used to mean feeling crappy for a couple of days at a time, I'm feeling pretty silly for not getting them a long time ago.

3. Jeff and I ran 11 miles yesterday, even though we only meant to run 10. Sometimes my mapping/planning skills are a little off, but we did fine! We are easily going to be ready for the half-marathon at the end of March.

4. Presidents day came and went and I have not planted my peas (as you may know, here in the northwest, we plant our peas on presidents day). I decided to wait for a cold spell predicted for this week to pass, and I will plant them next weekend instead.

5. I am now actually really studying for the psychology licensing exam. I have been "studying" since sometime last fall, then took a break for a couple of months, and just got back into it about two weeks ago. Now that I'm actually putting adequate time into it, I'm making progress.

6. Jeff has now been short-listed and/or interviewed by a total of 4 of the schools he applied to for jobs, and he is still a contender for two of them. He has a phone interview tomorrow, so fingers crossed!

7. I have applied to over 10 jobs so far, almost all of which are VA positions, with more upcoming application deadlines on the horizon. Last week I was offered a phone interview for a position in Honolulu! It's a temporary (2 year) grant-funded position through a research institute affiliated with the National Centers for PTSD. There are at least a dozen reasons why this might not work out, but keep your fingers crossed for me on Wednesday afternoon :)

Upward trend

Lately I have been pretty stressed out by some things, all related to the ongoing fact of being very unsettled, future-wise. This is nothing new. It's about being in this purgatory between grad school and "real job," and a whole lot of people I know are in the same boat. But, I have empirical evidence to suggest that what is stressful today will likely eventually be yesterday's news. A few examples pop to mind, as I think about where I was in Februaries past:

Eight years ago around this time, I was unemployed. It was a relatively brief unemployment, after finishing my MA, and happened to coincide with waiting to hear about whether I was accepted into PhD programs. I was extremely stressed, financially and emotionally. And then just like that, I got a part-time job, and soon after that, I got into grad school, and that was that. And actually, something good came out of that stressful period-- I crocheted a blanket to ease stress and fill idle time, and I sleep with that blanket most nights in the winter these days.

Two years ago at this time, I was sick. Really, really sick (from that little bleed I had in my brainstem). I often acted like I was not sick, and that was helpful for getting me through it. But looking back, comparing how I feel now to how I felt then, it is like night and day. I still have some residual symptoms, which I get annoyed by at times. But when I think back to how things were 2 years ago, I realize just how bad off I was then, and how healthy I am now. One really good thing that came out of that experience was strengthening some friendships-- since I was living away from Jeff, I relied a lot on my internship friends during that time, and they were truly there for me. Thanks guys :)

One year ago, I was in a job that was extremely stressful. I got some really good stories out of it, but for many reasons, it was not the kind of place I could stay for long. Once again, I tried to act like it was fine, but realistically, when that job ended, it was like a huge weight had been lifted. My current position? Totally different. I don't come home from work and complain every day. I have energy left at the end of most days. I actually enjoy my work, my environment, and my co-workers. The only major bad thing about this job is that it has to end in September :(

So I'm hoping that soon some of the current stressors will resolve themselves, making way for whatever new ones are sure to follow.

Spring?

Two weeks ago we were digging out of a snow storm, and this weekend it appears to be spring!

Saturday morning Jeff and I went for a lovely 9-mile jog. This is the longest distance I have run in over 2 years (maybe longer?), and I am feeling really good to be getting into that kind of shape again. The motivation for the long runs is that we are training for a half-marathon, at the end of March, that involves running all the way around Mercer Island. Jeff ran it by himself last year, and this year I'm going to join him. We have 7 weeks to prepare to be able to run 4 miles longer than we did yesterday, which I'm hoping should be a breeze.

Speaking of breezes, yesterday afternoon we went out to Gas Works Park to fly kites:

Is it just me, or do I look like a vagrant in that picture? It's hard to figure out what to wear, being in a winter mindset with a sudden attack of spring weather.

The kite on the bottom right is mine:


And here's Jeff:


Punxsutawney Phil might have predicted 6 more weeks of winter, but I have my fingers crossed for a lot more early spring :)

Jumping thorugh hoops

On Friday, over 4 months after starting employment at Seattle VA, I continued my seemingly endless series of jumps through HR hoops. The week following my initial orientation in September, they switched over to a new type of employee ID badge, all fancy with a computer chip in it for logging on to computers and such. I got one of the old badges, just regular plastic, because I started just before the new system was implemented. I was later informed that all employees with old badges needed to make an appointment to get a new badge, which I dutifully did, about a month ago. But unfortunately, because of mis-checked boxes in HR paperwork completed many months ago, they were unable to give me a new badge. At the same time, they had already taken my old badge, so they couldn't give that back to me either. Instead, they gave me what amounted to a fake badge, which had my picture on top, and a phrase including the words "non-compliant" on the bottom. It was suggested that I ignore the problem and hope no one cared, but, very shortly thereafter my non-compliant badge was determined to be unacceptable. Fortunately, this time all the paperwork errors were fixed, I got a new badge, and now I am compliant.

In attempts to prevent the impending situation of future joblessness, I am working on getting licensed, to make myself more employable. Related to this, I spent this weekend jumping through a licensure application-related hoop. In the state of Washington, to get licensed as a psychologist, you must 1) complete an application, and after this is tentatively approved, you are given the green light to 2) take the national exam (EPPP), and then after that, 3) take a state jurisprudence exam, then you get licensed. I am working on step 1, and studying to prepare for step 2.

When I went to fill out the application, I had all the requirements completed except one-- Washington requires that all health professionals, psychologists included, complete 7 hours of HIV education covering a range of general topics. So this weekend I watched 7 hours of DVDs (checked out from the nursing education library at work), and learned some things that may be peripherally useful to me at some point in the future (e.g., issues surrounding sharing HIV-related information with other healthcare providers), as well as many things that I very much hope will not be useful in my practice as a psychologist (e.g., safe clean-up of blood, sputum, and diarrhea).

This was one of those times that I was extremely glad to be a knitter-- enough attention to the DVDs to get the essential information, enough attention leftover to make about one and a half handwarmers :)

Winter Weather Take 2

On Wednesday, the real snow arrived in Seattle. I had arranged to work from home that day, and it's a good thing I did.

This is what our driveway looked like,


and this was the main road:


There were cross country ski tracks on the side streets,


and the park 2 blocks from our house was full of sledders and skiers:

I was very glad to avoid going anywhere on Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday I had to deal with the difficulties of snowy driving in the northwest. Seattle has only 26 snow plows. For comparison, Boston (which is similar in population but nearly half the size in land area), has around 500. Add to that the fact that we have tons of hills and poorly equipped drivers, and you can understand how being out on the roadways might be a bit hazardous.

Fortunately, through snow, ice, and unexpected freezing rain, my trips to work on Thursday and Friday were largely uneventful. Tire chains were necessary on almost all streets on Thursday. On Friday, I needed the chains on the side streets, but the main roads were totally bare, and sadly the chains broke from driving too far on bare pavement :( But if a couple of chain links are, for us, the only casualties of what one Seattle meteorologist called "one of the major meteorological disasters of the past decade," I think we got off pretty easy.