I Worked Myself Up To A Crawl But I'm Not Fearing It At All

Apparently, when you find your calling, everyone else in the world loves to help you and be friendly. Example:

I went to Petco last night and bought all the necessaries for bringing a baby kitty cat into the apartment. And the checkout dude did his best to flirt with me, of course, but the woman behind me was also buying a litter box/food dishes/scoopy combo dealie and we had a pleasant conversation about how hers and mine differed. And she happily was made to wait in line whilst I filled out an application for a petco card. Then I went to get groceries and there is something about a girl by herself in the grocery store, apparently, that encourages every SINGLE dude in the building to check you out as much and oft as possible, unless perhaps I had something like a tampon stuck to my face. But then I'm leaving and checking out and I don't have my stupid grocery card swipe thing and I try my phone number but mysteriously that's not working, so the Real Live Cowboy in line behind me GALLANTLY says, "why, I have a phone number you can use, little lady" and the clerk is ok with that and I say thanks in my most syruppy voice and bat my eyelashes at him but also make it really obvious that I am perfectly capable of lifting/carrying the bags myself before he can chase me into the parking lot.

And then today I'm walking to stats class, doo doo doo, and I hear quickening footsteps behind me, and it's this guy in my class rushing to catch up to me that I talk to in passing about once a quarter when he does this weird thing where he tries to catch up with me, I'm not even sure of his name, but he caught up and then was like, "wow, this class again, HUH?" all weird. So something in me snaps when I feel confused about why people are interactintg with me and I just become the most friendly helpful nice person, but it feels really genuine. Like, I really enjoyed talking to that dude and the petco people and the grocery guy and the married guy at my stats table later because I have this weird spring in my step grinning all the time like a retard thing going on which probably explains why good shit is happening, or at least why people feel like chatting at me. And then later I came out of stats and I was walking with my friend B and the guy came rushing up again and he was smoking (ew!) and walked by saying something about how bad that class sucks, etc. And I was struck with the idea that as I'd walked out of the class i actually thought, "boy I need a cigarette" which is something I think often these days but since I've never smoked how the FUCK would I know what kind of release it would provide?(not that I'm really ever going to start, don't worry) but isn't that weird?

Huh and then today JD sent me a bunch of free downloads from iTunes/Pepsi that Jess sent him that have to get used by tomorrow so I spent all morning agonizing and finally decided on the following songs:

Jeff Buckley- Sweet Thing (Live) off Live at Sin-e
Jeff Buckley- If You Knew (Live) off ditto that one
The Frames- Fitzcarraldo
the Frames- Your Face/Redemption Song medley
The Frames- What Happens When The Heart Just Stops (live)
Weezer- No Other One (live/acoustic)

HELLS YEAH

today in my adulthood class we discussed tangential bullshit that is really where the coolest discussions in there come from; we talked about the idea of soulmates and I'm struck with how I still manage to entertain that foolhardy idea at times (mostly I think it's bullshit) when I'm feeling less scientific than other days, no one seems to know where the idea came from and I like that about it. Like it jst got stuck in someone's brain one day and they made up all the myths about it and the romance novels and everyone loved the idea and bought into it and ran away with it.

But I like to think that soulmates can refer to a bunch of people in your life. Ok, that means by definition it's something different I guess but still. I care immensely about a lot of people. Do I think I would stop existing/functioning/breathing if any of you died or evaporated tomorrow? No. Not to be a bitch. Not that you would WANT me to fall to pieces though, right?

I'm so glad music manipulates my emotions like nothing else can. Glad that nothing else can fuck around with me quite as well, yeah, but I mean glad that I have something that can make me feel however it is supposed to make me feel at more or less any time I might be listening to whatever it is. I love to assign great meaning to lyrics. How many times have I tried to talk about that before on here? To no avail, the words always fail me miserably.

Oh well. It's my blog, I'll shit all over it if I want to.

melissa i don't know the answer to the research question because I would have to come up with brilliant ideas first. But something that would make their lives a little easier, hopefully.

Then How Come All The Other Unicorns Are Dead?

Oh. My. God.

I stumbled upon My Calling In Life today. Holy. Shit. I'm not even kidding. I've never felt so inspired in my goddamn life.

So I was whining all week because one of the labs I work in (not my advisor's "lab" but the other prof I started working with specifically beCAUSE she has a lab more like what I'm used to and it even has space, which she's constantly fighting to keep, etc. ) was going up to LA today because a couple of the other students are working to get some mildly interesting studies through the LA County Detendency (sic) Court bureaucracy and the school's internal review board and finally, after like the whole year of frustration, things are getting close to being almost set up. Now, neither of these projects were all that appealing to me, as they would involve driving my ass to the far side of LA at ass o'clock of the morning every day I would go to run kids in the study. BUT. THEN.

I agreed to tag along to "check it out" and thought I would be bored stiff but it was a display of solidarity with my lab and so I said I would go and we had to meet at 6:30 this morning to "beat the traffic on the 710" which is smack mid-LA and also didn't happen, but then we got there and it was me, the prof, and the 2 students with vested interests in this panning out in the prof's land rover.

And it's Detendency(sic) court, so it's interesting to this lab because it's maltreated kids, and that's such a hard sample to get, but it's not Juvenile Detinquency(sic), it's the court for ALL of LA county that deals with ALL the child abuse for the BIGGEST county in the state and arguably the largest volume of cases in the world and it's the court where they do adoptions, termination of parental rights, emancipations, etc.

And oh. my. god. The building is huge and really nice and you have to have security clearance to get anywhere and it's swarming with families, and you can tell all the people smiling are there for an adoption and everyone else is in Deep. Trouble.

But we were allowed to sit in on several hearings in one of the courtrooms and first of all, they're designed differently to seem less authoritative and more "the judge is eye-level with the little kids" and they have colorful shit on the walls and are awfully small. But we sat in on one and the first case was a termination of parental rights thing where the woman came in and the judge swiftly and seemingly unfeelingly announced that the mom hadn't done shit and therefore had no claim to her 7 year old who was living happily with a foster family for more than half his life and getting confused by her visits and the mom threw a huge crying fit saying she was his mother, etc. and I thought i was going to throw up and we were allowed to be there but I felt so intrusive, and the kid wasn't there (wasn't in the court, he was probably in the building but in one of the secret back areas which we saw all of....jesus) and it took like five total minutes.

And the next one was way less brutal, we saw a bunch of different ones where this family needs to get this worked out to get this kid back and this other family has the dad needing a background check before he can be declared the legal father of the 7 year old and this other family has a 19 year old getting emancipated from the court system and her mom's trying to get back her four other kids and there's so many babies and baby daddys and and and

this is so not making sense

But what struck me was that these kids all looked like normal kids. And they don't know what the hell is going on, I have no clue what was going on for 90% of the day's events, how could they possibly know. The judge that seemed brutal initially was kind enough to let us into her chambers during a break and talked about how important research is and how it's a shame that it's so hard to get into their system (because attorneys there are already overloaded, of course they don't want to do anything that would require more of them...I don't blame them) but she was super cool and I realized she deals with these kids/parents/families FOR YEARS, she sees them every month or six months and she knows them in some cases better than their parents do and she's really fair and a great giving caring person but SO cool to watch in the courtroom because she would sass the counsel like she was fucking judge mathis or something

but SO nice. And so enthusiastic about seeing what efffect her attempts to make it all less scary/confusing for the kids really has.

Man. Man oh man oh man. I don't know why I'm so inspired. Chris Daniels, what type of law are you going to practice? If you work with kids I want you to grant me access to your clients (assuming you are a public defender, which I guess you probably will not be) and I want to open a business educating attorneys and state employees about how kids need to be handled and what you need to explain to them, etc.

Shit. It was such an emotionally draining day but seeing people be reunited was amazing and yeah it's bad to see a mom freaking out because she can't ever see her kid again but you know it's taken years to get to that point and she most likely beat the hell out of the kid to deserve it.

And all the kids in the hidden secret downstairs playroom (which is giant) were just SO normal. So happy and excited to be playing with these cool toys (there's a whole ROOM of dollhouses) and not worried about anything probably because they don't knwo what the fuck is going on. Suddenly I am absolutely willing to drive to LA every freaking day this summer and talk to these kids if I would be allowed to do everything in my power to explain what the hell was happening to them.

jesus. it's just such a different world. nat, one of the other girls, had to leave the courtroom after the first one cuz she thought she was going to cry and when we found her later she was on the phone with her mom, thanking her for not fucking up her life.

This place made me right-wingedly wish that people had to pass a fucking test before they could have babies, and that at the LEAST they should have to take a class on how to parent...god, it's just such a waste. And such a mess to clean up.

***

anyway.

We are proooooobably getting a kitten Friday, we have decided to name it:

Aleutia "Fang" if it is a girl or Jushin (Jyushin? I have no idea how to spell JOO-shin) "Thun-dar" Liger if it is a boy. Hahahahahahahah

in other news, before my battery dies, my downstairs neighbors had a prolonged, heated yelling match about a new roommate situation that I found so intriguing that I muted the tv and sat with my ear pressed to the screen door for a long ass time. There is one pissed off cussing dude mad that they're getting a 4th roomie but HIS rent is increasing while the others (including the new guy) is going down, presumably because he has a slightly larger room. But they want him to pay $350/month MORE than the rest of them! And from what Yelling Guy was shouting, I gathered that he has supported the skater/surfer/stoner gang and paid their rent when they don't get the money and set up all their utilities and this is how they repay him??!?!? Hahahaha

I was tempted to waltz out onto the balcony and say, "me and my roommates had a similar situation last year and you should split up the common areas as part and the bedrooms as another part and then try to stop calling everyone 'fat bitch' if you want to not alienate your lease partners"

but didn't

oh ho got to go

Love It Seems Makes Flying Dreams So Hearts Can Soar

Ever driven through a crowded parking garage blaring music from The Secret of NIMH on your car stereo? Neither had I until this morning.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Garaba Jean hasn't bothered to write me back, when last time he seemed verrrry prompt, almost eager, so my childishness may have put him off a bit :(:(:(:(~{O:P
<=======8

Hahaha. Yeah, so, too bad. I guess I won't totally give up on him just yet.

In other news, I have decided that there is no fucking point to moping around wondering if I justifiably hate my life. Fuck that. I am, instead, going to goddamn well be the best fucking graduate student this lame program with its soft science and unstructured bullshit has ever seen. Raedy, I would please to be liking you to be my pseudo-mentor. I.E. Just tell me everything they tell you there that you're supposed to be doing to succeed. For instance, are you submitting something for SRCD? I would love to, and am going to wrack my brain all day trying to come up with something I could use and feasibly carry out by then, but somehow since I don't even have anything in the works I am a little worried. I will try, though. I wouldn't miss an IU reunion party for the world. Hahahahaha

So, also Raedy thanks for marching in the stead of those of us who live as far as possible from DC this weekend, I looked through the website's photo gallery but did not find any of you, perhaps this is a good opportunity for you to post some pics on your website? Hmmm?

Anyway, I have a class and then a class and then a few thousand hours of mentally catching up to do today, just wanted to give a shout out and annnounce that I am done bitching and moaning about my awesome life and I will now get back to it...with all the enthusiasm of the first day of the quarter.

LOVELS! WHOA!