Fill in the Blank

It's been a rough week.

Despite the high of graduating last week, I think the low of not getting the fellowship has followed me into this week. Couple that with slow days at work and too much time to think and it makes for some not-so-good headspace. I have been left feeling like I no longer know which way is up. The trajectory I thought my life was taking is no longer an option, and I am overwhelmed at the infinite choices that are before me.

I was at a friend's house the other night and when I went into the bathroom, I saw words written on the bathroom mirror. At the top was the phrase "_______ is my antidepressant" and below was a list of items and activities. Each day, my friend would write something new, and focus on that, plus the items on the rest of the list, to keep from sliding into a funk. I liked the idea, but hadn't made time to put it into action for myself.

Today, in an effort to keep my life in perspective, I began my own list. Coming up with something today was admittedly tough - a long day of work followed by a night of babysitting that may or may not be a positive experience, depending on the older child and whether or not he's willing to refrain from wrestling with his baby brother (who is not even one and most definitely cannot fight back). But I did finally come up with something, and today, "walking to work" is my antidepressant.

I've already got tomorrow's picked out: on Thursday, "G" is my antidepressant (because "N's beer" probably shouldn't be featured on this kind of list).

The Big Dig

As promised, this is the post where I share a truly embarrassing bit about myself and trust that those of who who are my friends out there will love me despite the horrors to which I am about to expose you.

I have a very small bedroom. My bedroom is where I sleep, eat breakfast, surf the internet, and do homework, so it requires that I have the tools/space with which to do those things (bed, computer, text books, etc.). Because there is such limited space, I am usually good at putting things away in a timely manner so that my room doesn't get too cluttered. However, when I get stressed everything gets thrown on my bed, and when I'm really stressed, I eventually can't find my bed through it all. Lucky for me, I sleep on one side of the bed and don't move around much, so it doesn't much impact my sleep, however it does make me dread walking into my room.

Today, I reclaimed my bed. But before I show you the end result, let's play a few rounds of "find the hidden objects":

Can you find...?
- 2 purses
- 1 new shirt
- 2 jackets
- 1 recently finished box of Trader Joe's candy cane Joe-Joe's
- 1 book
- 1 Jumbo Super Lint-Buster
- 1 wedding invitation
- 1 sewing kit
- 1 photo of my dad, circa 19__
- 1 Christmas "Ho Ho Ho" wall hanging that was only just removed from my door two weeks ago


That was taken a week ago. As my week got crazier and crazier, with graduation approaching, the pile grew...

Can you find...
- 4 purses
- 2 Red Sox t-shirts (1 red, 1 gray)
- 1 letter from the Direct Loan company telling me I need to start repaying my undergrad loans next month
- 2 final papers
- 1 shoebox
- 2 jackets
- 5 plastic bags
- 1 Elvis mug


Today I am proud to say that I have reclaimed my bedroom. I went through all of my school stuff and filled an entire paper shopping bag with papers to recycle. I collected no less than 13 recyclable bottles and cans from near and far corners of my room. I vaccuumed. I dusted. I did laundry (including my sheets).

Slowly, but surely, I think I'm returning to normal after the past few weeks of intense grad school finals/graduation chaos. And it starts here:

Not My Bus

(There's a tiny bit of my brain that thinks I may have told this story previously on this blog, but I don't have the energy to find it, so if I have, I'm telling it again.)

A few years ago, a friend was visiting me in San Francisco. We were headed downtown and needed to catch the bus. I lived half a block from the bus stop, and as we stepped outside, we saw the bus barrel past. I groaned, as I still had to lock my door and I knew there was no way we'd make it. I said with despair, "That was our bus!" and as we watched it continue down the street, my friend replied simply, "No, it wasn't."

Perhaps it was meant as a joke, but those words resonated with me. How many times in our lives do we lament a missed opportunity, rather than see the positives that might come from it? And so "not my bus" has become my motto whenever things don't turn out as I had hoped or planned. Because if I don't end up catching the bus I had hoped to catch, then it must mean it wasn't my bus to catch in the first place.

Many of you know that I applied for a very competitive fellowship earlier this spring. It is in a field about which I am extremely passionate, and would keep me at this hospital which I love working in so very much. The team of people I would work with would be incredible - leaders in the field - and the work would be more rewarding than anything I have done before.

Today I received notice that I did not get this fellowship.

And as sick and as sad as I feel right now, I have to believe that this fellowship was not my bus... that there is something else out there I am supposed to be doing... that there is some bigger reason for this not working out as I had planned or hoped.

And so I trust in that. Despite my disappointment, I trust in that. And I look forward to discovering the bus out there that is mine, and seeing where it will take me.

Alaska: The State I Love to Eat

So my friend Kate received a gift certificate at Christmas from the family she babysits for and we decided we should have a date night. That was nearly 6 months ago, and last night we finally made use of it.

We hadn't made reservations and the restaurant was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night, so we sat at the bar. The bartender Walter was quite nice and gladly poured our celebratory flutes of Prosecco. We toasted to finishing the year, ordered dinner, and caught up on each other's lives.

It's hard to do justice to the experience we had with the man sitting next to us and his daughter, but I'll try:

Man: What is your name?
Me: Phoebe
Man: That is a beautiful name! What a beautiful name! Beautiful.
Me: Thank you
Man (to Kate): And what is your name?
Kate: Kate
Man: Kate!? Don't you feel simple next to Phoebe?

(I can only assume he meant doesn't the name Kate feel simple next to the name Phoebe, but we'll never know.)

He asked if we were celebrating something, and we shared that we had just finished grad school. When he found out we were social workers, he spent the next 10 minutes telling us why social work was such a great field and why the work we do is so important even if we don't get paid much.

Later, after the man had shared part of their second bottle of wine with us, and after repeatedly calling Kate "Nancy" throughout the night, he and his daughter left. The daughter came back because they had forgotten something and as she left said, "Just think - he's increasing your number of future clients every day!"

Our evening ended with Baked Alaska. Neither Kate nor I had experienced this dessert before, and all we could say was WOW. Coconut ice cream and passion fruit caramel. We rolled ourselves out of there full, happy, and feeling like we had properly celebrated the culmination of the past two years of our lives.

Food for Thought

A friend of mine just wrote this article and now I share it with you.

Stay tuned for The Big Dig post - in which I dig my bed out from the piles of clothes, books, and other debris left over from finals.

Show Me the Way to Go Home...

I'm tired and I wanna go to bed.

I had a drink about an hour ago,

And it went straight to my head...

Somehow I got that old camp song in my head while I was walking from the bar where I was having my one celebratory drink (and potstickers! oh, how I love thee, potstickers!) to my car, and it stuck.

Tonight, dear friends, I handed in my last grad school paper EVER. I can't say I'm officially done, because I still have one class to attend tomorrow night at 5, but I can say that I do not have anything left hanging over my head, and that is not a feeling I have had in a very very very long time.

More later. Sleep now.

By the Numbers: an update

Past:
2 - papers written today
1 - hour of babysitting a screaming 5-month-old with his 2.5-year-old sister saying, "Call Mommy and have her get him."
1 - powerpoint presentation created for tomorrow's adventure
5 - enjoyable hours spent on Friday night not thinking at all about school

Present:
3 - classes left
1 - presentation to do
1 - policy paper to be written
1 - group project paper to be edited
1 - take-home test about death and dying to be finished

Future:
1 - week until I (hopefully) hear about the much-desired fellowship
2 - sleep-deprived nights left before the end of my grad school career
12 - days until graduation

Wake Up!

So apparently I have never set my alarm clock for the 8 o'clock hour on a Sunday morning before, because I'm certain I would have remembered a previous experience of being blasted awake by klezmer music. It's not the kind of thing one is likely to forget.

I am Woman - Hear Me... Get Paid 79 Cents to Every Male-Earned Dollar

The backward plight of the working woman
Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe
May 2, 2008

BY NOW the Tale of Lilly Ledbetter is starting to sound like the Perils of Pauline or the Pre-Feminist Follies. At 70, she's the star of a long-running drama about how hard we have to run to keep from slipping backward.

The Alabama woman was just 26 when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to enforce equality in the workplace. The old stalwart - equal pay for equal work - is so universally accepted that we choose to believe it's not just a law but a fact of life.

Our gal Ledbetter, however, worked for two decades in the not-so-female-friendly ranks of Goodyear. Only when she neared retirement did an anonymous tipster slip her a reality check about her paycheck. It turned out that as a female supervisor, she was earning less than her male counterparts. She was paid on average 79 cents for every male dollar, a figure suspiciously close to the national wage gap.

Ledbetter sued and won her case. But Goodyear appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where Samuel Alito had just replaced Sandra Day O'Connor. Last year, in one of the backward flips that characterize the court, a 5-to-4 majority went against Ledbetter on the grounds that she hadn't sued in time. The justices read the law through their retro lens and decided a worker has to sue within six months after her first unequal pay. It doesn't matter whether she knows she's being treated unfairly and it doesn't matter if she keeps getting underpaid.

In essence, as Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center said, if a company could pull the wool over an employee's eyes for the first six months, it's free.

An outraged Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision "totally at odds with the robust protection against workplace discrimination." She concluded her ringing dissent with an appeal to Congress to "correct this court's parsimonious reading of Title VII."

Well, the House of Representatives did just that, and pretty promptly. It passed a bill to restore the rules to allow an employee to sue up to 180 days after the latest unequal paycheck. But when the bill bearing Lilly Ledbetter's name got to the Senate, the Republicans balked. There weren't enough Republican defectors to overcome a filibuster and get the bill on the Senate floor.

Not only did Bush threaten to veto the restoration act, his would-be successor didn't even take time off the campaign trail to vote. John McCain let it be known that he opposed the Ledbetter legislation because it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." This is a little like saying we shouldn't have any laws because they only clog up the courts.

So Lilly lost again. Welcome to 2008. Or is it 1964?

If you've been listening lately, the reasons for the tenacious wage gap between men and women in the 21st century have been dropped on the lap of working women. Women aren't paid equally because they have this nasty habit of giving birth. Or they "opt out." Or they choose jobs that let them get home before the kids' bedtimes. Or they don't know how to negotiate. The fault is not in our workplaces but in ourselves.

The idea that the wage gap might be because of, um, sex discrimination seems soooo 20th century. In fact, the Supreme Court implied that Lilly Ledbetter's lower paycheck was her own fault because she didn't start investigating her employer for sex discrimination as soon as she started her job.

As for the conductor of the Straight Talk Express? McCain said he was all in favor of equal pay for equal work, but that women don't need lawsuits, they need "education and training." So let's begin with a couple of basics.

Lesson One: An unequal paycheck is a thief that keeps on taking. Even in retirement, Ledbetter is still, in her own words, "a second-class worker" with a pension and Social Security check that carry Goodyear's bite marks.

Lesson Two: In 2008, the Republicans are partying - "political partying" - like it's 1964.

Po-tay-to... Po-tah-to

I hate balloons. Hate them. Hate the popping. Hate the squeeking. Hate the sound they make when they're being blown up. All of that tenses up every muscle in my shoulders and puts them somewhere up near my ears.

But I don't feel the same way about mylar balloons.

So today, when I arrived for my final rounds of my internship, and found balloons tied to my chair, I was grateful that I work in a hospital where only mylar balloons are allowed (latex allergies).

Especialy awesome was the largest of the balloons - a 3-foot-high Disney princess castle. And while some might call it a "medieval princess-brothel" I will call it a truly great parting gift*.


*that will be hitting me in the head during the entire 15-minute walk to class tonight.

Do you want to make more money? Sure! We all do!

So I got a job today.

Well, not exactly.

But I got authorized to work up to 32 hours/week at the hospital through May.

Pretty much, it means I do the same work I've been doing all year at my internship, only it's on another unit and now I get paid for it.

So the story is that they hired someone to work on this new unit, but she can't start until June 1st. Right now, there is one woman covering the floor, but she is entirely overworked with her own units, and so it's all a bit chaotic. Anyway, since I have been doing similar work all year, and since I have nothing else to be doing (what with school being over in a week!!!), they offered me this very temporary position. Yay!

Income is good.

Also, I interviewed today for a sort-of full-time position coming up in the hospital (complicated explaination as to why it's not definitely full-time). The position itself is exactly what I want to be doing, but after learning more about it, I'm convinced that the fellowship is definitely still my first choice.

Word on the street is that they're aiming to make a decision about the fellowship within the next week or two (I'm thinking it will be closer to two), so with any luck, I'll have some news on that right around the time I graduate.

As always, stay tuned...

Please Stand By

Fibby is in the process of writing the last papers of her grad school career and has very little time to do much other writing.

By the numbers, her life looks like this:

2 - days left at her internship
6 - classes left
2 - presentations to do
1 - paper about family preservation and reunification to be written
1 - policy paper to be written
1 - legislative testimony to be written and read to the class
1 - group project paper to be edited
1 - reflection paper to be written about above-mentioned group project
1 - take-home test about death and dying to be finished
10 - hours of sleep in the past 2 nights
5 - interviews for desired fellowship in the past week
1 - remaining interview for desired fellowship sometime this week
1 - interview for an upcoming hospital position today
6.5 - hours of playing with C. on Thursday to make her laugh (including up to 2.5 hours of nap time)
2+ - hours of playing with M. (and possibly newborn Z.) on Saturday night to make her laugh

Check back for regular updates on her progress throughout the week.

HotHotHotHotHot

One might think, if one looked at the Boston weather forecast for today and then read this post title, that I am writing about the temperature outside, but one would be wrong.

Where I work, I split my time between the floors where I see families and my cubicle space where I type up notes, check emails, etc. It is this cubicle space that has become a sauna in the past few weeks.

At first, I thought it was just me. I thought I was wearing too many layers or something. But this morning I was sitting in my cubicle overheating wearing a short-sleeved shirt. And then I overheard the woman in the cubicle next to mine call facilities management to complain and inform them that our office space is 80-degrees.

Now, 6 hours later, I just overheard that same girl say she was going to find the facilities person herself because her call this morning had done nothing and it is now 83-degrees.

I am officially melting.

On the Positive Side...

I hate being sick. HATE being sick.

During the first day or so of an illness (cold, stomach flu, whatever), I am grumpy and generally not all that fun to be around. I usually confine myself to my room and disconnect from the world for a while.

After my body goes through the initial shock of the illness, and has regained the upper hand, I begin to return to my usual self. This can mean anything from showering and getting dressed to eating something solid. As I get my strength back, my sense of humor returns too, and provides me with a bit of a coping mechanism.

For example, every few years I get an awful coughing sickness. I have no idea what it is, but it keeps me up coughing all night. I walk around like the living dead for a week or so, and load up on all sorts of medicines that don't really help, and it sucks. But every time I have gotten this awful coughing sickness, I have eventually gotten to a place where I can joke and say, "Well, this sucks, but at least my abs are getting a good workout!"

So wouldn't you know that today, just as I had found the silver lining in this past weekend's sickness ("Well, this has sucked, but maybe I lost a few pounds!"), I got a text message from a concerned friend reminding me to try to eat or drink because I "need the calories".

I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I mean, I'm not a cow or anything, but I'm far from wasting away after a day of no solid foods. Still, the sentiment was sweet. We should all be so lucky to have friends like that.

Best Laid Plans

So my plan for the weekend was this:

Friday evening - get some work done

Saturday morning - get some work done

Saturday afternoon - go see a friend in a ballroom dance competition

Saturday night - meet up with friends

Sunday morning - hang out with friends

Sunday afternoon - get some work done

Sunday evening - get some work done

Monday morning - get some work done

Monday afternoon - watch the marathon

Monday evening - go to trivia night


Here's how my weekend has actually gone so far:

Friday evening - stay at home because I'm too exhausted from my week to get any work done. Kick some ass in Scramble (without any help).

Saturday morning - get up late, do some laundry, go for a run

Saturday afternoon - realize there's not enough time to get any significant amount of work done before the ballroom dance competition. Invite a friend over to hang out. Head to ballroom dance competition. Enjoy immensely.

Saturday night - meet up with a friend for dinner, then head to an improv show. Then meet up with friends from out of town.

Sunday morning - breakfast with friend. Get home... start feeling sick.

Sunday afternoon - sleep, be sick, sleep, watch West Wing on DVD.



This brings us to Sunday evening (now). I really need to make up for the lack of work done so far this weekend, but my splitting headache and wonky stomach aren't motivating me all that much to do so. And there are multiple West Wing episodes to be watched, and Monk and Psych are both on NBC tonight, and... and... and...

But it does leave an unbelievable amount of work to be done tomorrow if I do nothing tonight.


On a side note, if any of you ever get the opportunity to attend a ballroom dance competition, I highly recommend going (especially if it's free). It's fun. As the level of skill increases, so does the level of complexity of the costumes. It's just like you would imagine, only you're there in person to witness it, and you can't stop grinning because it's so surreal and yet so cool. And the dresses... wow.

Also, watching ballroom dancing is a lot more stressful than you might think - especially when watching from high up in the bleachers. From that angle, you see very clearly which couples are heading for a crash with each other, and it gets quite anxiety-producing (especially if the couple you're there to see is involved in such a crash).

Favorite dances: Quickstep (because - wow - that takes some skill) and Viennese Waltz (it just looks so grand with those long, flowy dresses).

Why I Love My Job

Part I:
Last fall, I met with a family whose newborn son had been born with some serious health complications. Eventually it was determined that he had a very rare disease that would be life-limiting. The family was devestated, but also optimistic, and through their faith and strength, they faced the uncertain future of their baby with a sense of determination and also peace.

During their stay, I would often go check in on whichever parent was around, just to give them the opportunity for adult conversation. We'd talk about their children and family and friends and life in general, and they'd ask me about school and my life as well. As an intern, I was aware of the fine line between sharing too much about my personal life with this family, and at the same time, I knew that what they needed at that point was conversation that didn't revolve around their son's health issues, and so I shared with them little stories about school and such.

This family has returned to the hospital for outpatient visits since their original stay, but my schedule hasn't allowed me to drop in and say hi.

Yesterday I managed to catch them, and when the mother saw me her face lit up. We talked and caught up. She told me that though her son wasn't doing any better, they had managed to take a trip to her native country so that her family could meet him. She still had the same positive attitude and peaceful demeanor that I remembered. And most surprisingly, she remembered things about my life that I had shared in our conversations so long ago. She asked about school and my plans for the future, and pulled out details that even I had forgotten I had shared.

It was incredible to re-connect with this mother, and to know that I was as memorable to her as she was to me. I left work with a smile on my face.

Part II:
Today I was riding an elevator with a patient, her younger brother, and their mother. The younger brother was jumping out of his skin with excitement, and when I commented that it looked as though they were going on an adventure, he said, "We're going to see firemen!" All of the family members looked so excited to be getting out of their hospital rooms and going to a hospital event.

I followed them to the event and hung out in the back for a while. It turned out to be a policeman and not a fireman who was there, but the little boy didn't seem to mind.

It was a nice break to my day, and I continued on my way.

As it happens it was a rather slow day today, and so later on I was walking up the stairs and saw a sign - hand-made by someone who I am guessing is about 10 - advertising a magic show.

So I stopped to watch.

If any of you ever need to have your day improved significantly, I highly recommend watching a children's magic show. Not for the magic, but for the reactions of the kids.

There was laughter, there was shouting, there was one kid who just kept exclaiming excitedly "No way!" every time the magician performed a trick.

I couldn't stop grinning. And I still can't.

All the difficult days I've had here were erased with the sights and sounds of a room full of sick kids and their parents being given the opportunity to forget their illnesses for a few minutes and just be kids.

I love this place.

Classic Fibby

My cousin decided it would be fun to scan in some old family photos and to email them to me. I refuse to post the photo of me with big glasses and a hairdo reminiscant of Mary Poppins, but I will share this one.

Play Ball! - Addendum

I have just been informed of another way that people celebrate opening day: giving birth. Apparently, in addition to all of the really exciting things that happened in my life yesterday that I was actively a part of (and that had nothing to do with baseball), an even more exciting thing took place that I wasn't witness to:

Baby Girl HebMo made her grand entrance onto this planet.



Welcome to the world, little one. I'm madly in love with you already and I haven't even met you.

Play Ball!

Some people celebrate opening day by going to the game.

Some celebrate by watching the game on TV.

Some celebrate by getting free ice cream.

Me? Despite the fact that I work blocks from Fenway, my day was spent:

- Following up with a depressed teenage boy who was just diagnosed with a rare chronic illness

- Meeting with a mother to determine the level of medical noncompliance taking place regarding her teenage daughter's medical regimine

- Facilitating a presentation in Class #1 on the topic of family preservation when dealing with medical noncompliance as a result of religious beliefs.

- Sitting through 2 1/2 hours of 10-minute presentations in Class #2.

- Meeting with my landlord to negotiate rent (she wanted to raise it $500, we didn't) (we won)



I did purchase a pair of Red Sox earrings on my way to work in the morning, though, so all was not lost.

Glass Half-Full

It is only appropriate after my last post about my mother finding a matchmaker to help me get a date that I get a call from my sister telling me she is engaged.

Now let me first just say for the record that I am absolutely excited for her and I love her and I love her fiance and she deserves all the happiness that will come to her with this wonderful man.

And yet... she's my little sister. And in less than 6 months she has purchased a house and gotten engaged. I think I'm starting to understand a little bit how it must feel to be a younger sibling, watching your older sibling go through all the important life milestones first and being happy and also jealous at the same time.

I'm not a glass-half-empty kind of person by nature. I'm really happy with where my life is right now and I'm not the type to feel sorry for myself about being single. And yet there's a piece of me that is definitely getting a little down that I haven't yet found someone with whom I can spend my life.

A few years ago, my standard line was, "I know there is someone out there and I'm not worried - I'm sure we'll find each other." I still think that today, but I have to admit I've now considered that it might not happen. DON'T WORRY reader friends - I haven't considered it too seriously. I'm definitely not giving up. But the fact that I've admitted to myself that this whole "finding a life partner" thing might be a little harder than all my coupled friends make it look is noteworthy, I think.

I had a friend who told me recently that she had been thinking about all her single friends and could say why all of them were single... except me. Now of course she could have been saying that to be nice, but I like to think she meant it. I definitely have single friends who are single for good reason (and often don't know that reason), and I also have single friends who are absolutely relationship-ready, but just can't seem to find that person.

I've been "relationship-ready" for a while now. It didn't come easy - there was a lot of soul-searching through reflection, conversation, bad dates, and bad poetry before I figured out who I was and what I wanted. And now I know exactly what I want and unlike the me of years past, I'm not willing to settle for less.

But is that really a bad thing? I like that I'm clear about what I want. I like that I know what I'm worth and that I know (after some memorable experiences) I don't have to or want to settle for less. I believe that I can have funny and kind and intelligent and independent and adventurous and mellow and sexy and an understanding of the rules of basic grammar all in one person.

Most importantly, I still believe I can find that person.

So this is a public pep-talk, I guess. A reminder to myself that despite all signs pointing to the contrary, I will most likely not end up an old maid. (And a reminder to all of you out there who are reading this and who are in relationships that the LAST thing I want to hear is any variation on the popular, "Yeah, it's tough out there, but you'll find someone!")

The fact of the matter is that though I haven't found someone for myself yet, I can still be really excited and happy for the other people in my life who have. And it's not like I don't get to have some fun in the process too - fun weddings to attend, the honor of officiating and/or being the maid of honor in a few, and now the baby showers (oh, the baby showers!).

There are times that I feel that I am overflowing with happiness for others. But it is shared happiness, and it is mine just as much as it is theirs. I feel so lucky to share in the lives of so many incredible people. And though I haven't found funny and kind and intelligent and independent and adventurous and mellow and sexy and an understanding of the rules of basic grammar all in one person just yet, my friends encompass all of those qualities and can fill that role in the meantime.

So for now, I continue to celebrate life milestones with others, and to trust that the happiness of finding a partner-in-crime-for-life will come to me to.