I hate apartment living

This is my upstairs neighbor.

All day... every day... and all night.

He doesn't work and he has no social life. He does fall down a lot.



I wish my dog wasn't so old that we could go back to living on the top floor.

Nerd problems

I just got my last few grades back for assignments in one of my classes. The thing that makes me angry- I have a 94 in the class, but this professor decided 90-94 should count as an A-. You don't get an A unless you have a 95. Not cool!

It was worth it to go to Denny's that one night instead of focusing on my paper... I can write 10 page papers in 2 hours, they just might not be that good.

I'm not going to lie, if I cared more about this program I would have spent more time on each paper. But I don't, so I didn't.

Summer 2013!!

This summer has been busy. School, school, school, a bit of work, and then a bunch more school. School has consisted of two nights a week attended class for four hours each night, writing (literally) hundreds of pages for assignments, conducting a dozen or so interviews, and finally receiving my field placement.

Aside from that a few other interesting things happened.

1. I moved to a new apartment! This one is on the ground floor as opposed to the third floor. Much nicer, larger, and cheaper!

2. I attended the wedding of a good friend from Philadelphia. I was able to visit with some of my favorite people in the entire world and get homesick for the East coast.

3. I finally, officially dropped to part time status at work. I am no longer guaranteed hours, but I can sign up to work as much as I want (or don't want).

4. I dog sat Coco for Lori. Tess learned what it is like to not be the only dog, and confirmed that she does not like this.

5. I went to Utah for approximately 48 hours to attend a family reunion. My grandparents, their 3 children + spouses, 16 grandchildren + most spouses, and a whole bunch of little 'uns aka great-grandchildren. There were 75 people total. It was fun seeing cousins I haven't seen in a long time and attempting to recognize all the preteens I last saw when they were toddlers.

Here are Coco and Tess trying to recover after a trip to the dog park. This was one of two times that they willingly sat near each other. It shocked me to see them on the same piece of furniture.

This is Nadia the day before she turned 7. This girl is hilarious. Lori offered to share her bed with Nad while we were all crashed at Grandma and Grandpa's. Lori forgot that Nadia likes to hog the bed. Lori ended up sleeping on the floor even though the next morning Nadia swore she "was squished on the side of the bed all night."

And finally, my greatest accomplishment of the summer-- I have completed one of my aunt duties! When I was 5, during a summer trip to Zion's my aunt and older cousin "helped" me with a loose tooth.

This trip Olivier excitedly showed me that both of his front teeth were loose. Like, really loose. (He had already lost one tooth on the bottom.) I asked him to let me pull them, but he didn't like that idea. After playing on the waterslide at the reunion, Olivier ran up to me to tell me something. I stopped him and said, "Olivier, your tooth came out!" He claimed, no, and wiggled his other front tooth. When I told him the other one was gone he looked back at the slide in confusion. Luckily (and disgustingly) one of the other little 'uns found the tooth, so Olivier would have something for the tooth fairy.

I spent the rest of the day attempting to talk Olivier into letting me pull the other tooth. I even went so far as to inform him that when you loose two teeth in one day the tooth fairy gives you a total of $5, instead of only $1/tooth. (I'm sure the tooth fairy REALLY appreciated this....) While the extra cash was tempting Olivier still wouldn't budge on letting me pull it.

That evening the remaining tooth was so loose we were a little concerned he might swallow it. Olivier's dad held him while I kept the aunt-torturing-by-pulling-a-tooth tradition alive and yanked out the tooth. Olivier was not happy with me at all, but once his mouth was no longer full of blood he finally let me sit next to him again.

After a few minutes of contemplation Olivier asked how much money you get if you lose 3 teeth in one day. I told him $20 and asked him if he wanted me to pull another one. He replied no, but did question how much you get if you lose all your teeth in one day. The answer- $100, obviously.

Olivier decided $5 was enough.

best game ever-rock paper scissors

I want to play this.

The future of America

Yesterday a darling six year old perfected the art of testing my patience.
First he walked up to me soaking wet from peeing all over himself in his bed. Then he proceeded to talk back to m and pee all over the floor in front of me.
Later in the day he kept trying to go behind my back to get extra snacks from the other staff.
At one point he walked up to me and with a real snotty voice goes, "I'm getting a chocolate milk." I replied that I would talk to his therapist about not getting anymore extra snacks. His response was to come around the desk and hit me. I grabbed his hand and walked him to the quiet room. He then decided to spit on me. Then he told me he was going to "f me up." When he calmed down and I went to deal with something else he comes out after me and goes, "miss traci, look at this finger." then he proceeds to flip me off.
I miss normal children.

Why are you here?

One of the questions that I ask each of my patients every day is, "why are you here?"
Usual responses include, I hit my teacher, I bit my mom, I have anger issues, I threatened to kill myself, etc. etc.

The other day I asked a 5 year old the usual morning question.

T: R, why are you here? Here at the hospital?
R: my mom brought me here.
T: Why did your mom bring you here?
R: Because she loves me.

I can easily imagine the conversation that happened as R's mom had him admitted. I have heard many parents trying to reassure themselves and their kids they are doing this for their child's own good. I have had to reassure multiple preteens and teens that if their parents didn't care about them, there is no way they would admit them to a treatment center.
It still hurts my heart, though.

FYI, R still is unable to tell me why he is in treatment. He continues to insist that he is at the hospital because his mom brought him to the hospital. Which, I guess, is technically true. However, when I asked him today why his mom brought him to the hospital he replied it was because she forgot to pick him up after she brought him to the hospital.
Whatever. It's a difficult question.

10 years

I graduated from high school ten years ago today. On that day I had no idea I would experience the following things:

*Lived with 21 different roommates
*Attended numerous sessions of conference in Salt Lake City
*Graduated from BYU a year early
*Majored in Psychology
      -this was after a semester of considering everything from linguistics to "I have no idea"
*Moved to Indiana
      -and lived by myself for the first time
*Worked at a psychiatric hospital
     -to this day I still say I never would have done it is I knew what was involved, but I still love it
*Realized how worthless a B.S. in psychology is
*Got my own dog for the first time
*Decided to go to graduate school
*Moved to Philadelphia
     -10 years ago I knew zip about Philadelphia, now it is one of my favorite cities
*Moved to a city in which I knew zero people beforehand
*Experienced the unexpected deaths of two people I was quite close to
*Completed a thesis
*Studied/worked in autism research
*Completed a master's in psychology
*Realized how worthless a M.S. in psychology is
*Worked in a children's hospital
*Lived in Columbus, Ohio
     -Ohio? really?
*More than tripled the number of states I had visited
*Moved back to Texas
     -Ten years ago today I may have sworn to never come back to Texas...
*Lost a grandparent
*Started a graduate program in social work
     -Due to finally discovering a degree which is not worthless
*Gained three beautiful new sisters
*Became an aunt to 2 nieces and 5 nephews
     -These kids are some of my favorite people in the entire world
*Worked with hundreds of kids/teenagers in psychiatric treatment
     -Which included being spit on, bit, hit, kicked, and called some of the worst words I have ever heard, but also received hugs, seen improvement from the worst of the worst, and had the opportunity to spend birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings, and other holidays with kids who have no one in the world
*Killed dozens of plants, but kept my pup alive for 7 years

I have experienced many, many more things, but it is late and I am old now, so I can't stay up as late as I did 10 years ago.
I'm not even going to try and guess what I will experience in the next 10 years.