It’s 11 o’clock on a Friday evening and I’m curled up in bed with some sweet herbal tea, trying to fight off what remains of this horrific bug. It seems that everyone at work has caught some version of it. Some, like myself, were hit harder than others, but I’m confident that I will be fully better on Monday, after a complete weekend of rest.

One thing that will make this weekend more restful also makes me sad – S. is out of town for the next 10 days. He’s going on a pretty amazing trek with some friends for his spring break (which doesn’t align with mine whatsoever). That means I’m on my own. I have quite a few IEPs to write, so I’ll be up to my elbows in work and herbal tea all weekend.

It’s amazing what moments in life can strike you as being “wow” moments. This evening, as S. was packing, he told me that he’s not *excited* about this vacation, but more stressed about forcing himself to socialize, instead of relaxing, or seeing this as a true adventure. Here comes the moment – he said that it would be totally different if I was going. And he actually seemed like he meant it! Either he knows all the right things to say in the right way to make me believe it, or he really is as crazy about me as I am him. I have felt that way about every trip I’ve taken since meeting him. It’s okay, but not the same without him. It’s funny, we’ve been together three years, and we are so very happy and in love. But tonight, he just told me he loves me in the most convincing way possible, without even uttering those three words. And now he’s going to read this and think I’m insane. But really, I love him so very much and he makes my heart melt in silly, sappy ways.

Also, I’m sick – that makes me more emotional (Funny that I feel the need to apologize for emoting. I think that in itself says as much about me as the rest of this post combined).

I haven’t written much about my job in here, which I tend to forget when I post. I assume, like the people I talk to in real life, my readers are already well-versed on the basics of my position. For future reference, here is my overview: I am a family therapist at a large, well-respected Northeastern therapeutic school. I spend part of my day in the school, doing individual therapy and part of my day making visits to the kids homes, doing family therapy. There’s also a large component of meeting with various services involved with the kid, writing IEPs and treatment planning, coordinating everything between home and school, and often I get to attend field trips to the hospital, or wherever else I may be needed. Every day is different, you never know what to expect – and I love that aspect of it!

Thankfully, I thrive on this unpredictability (I am young, resilient, and my obsessive compulsive and perfectionistic tendencies manifest themselves in ways more compatible than not for this position). However, sometimes it is a little annoying.

This morning I climbed out of bed, got all dressed and pretty (a difficult task, I am not good at mornings), and hopped in my car to go see a family I had an appointment with. They live about 30 minutes away from me, I was running a few minutes late because of traffic close to my house, so I called to let them know. The reply on the other end was “huh, what? I didn’t know you were coming today!” This is a lie. I called Friday at 5pm, after I was supposed to be gone for the day, to remind them. Fine. There is a bit of a communication barrier with this particular family, but the dude I spoke with understands me! I think. Anyway, after ten minutes of sitting in traffic, I had to turn around, sit in traffic going the other way, and now I am eating breakfast and updating Pink Confessions before I head out to my ten o’clock. I had a busy day stacked today anyway, I guess I don’t mind too much.

So this post isn’t going to be too different from the previous: I am not content with my job/living situation, I am excited for Costa Rica, I love my iPhone.

My current position is that of a babysitter/personal assistant who doesn’t make a quarter of what she should be making, isn’t appreciated for her value (I am still thought of as the college girl who was hired as a babysitter, not a woman with an advanced degree in the field), and is basically doing a charity job for a friend, but the friend has no realization of that. I need to get out, but as of now, I have no housing options for the fall other than with this family – although that is leading to more menial, unappreciated tasks. (ex. on my weekends off I spend 6+ uncompensated hours doing work).

I have no problems taking constructive criticism from supervisors when I have a valid chance to defend my choices, but my employer has gone a little off the deep end and her unfounded criticism about people (which runs wild constantly because she thinks that every person who doesn’t devote his or her entire lives to her child is evil) turned toward me last night in a public setting, with no chance to defend myself. It was concerning a book which her child created that was left in a final version as the child had written, with pictures the child chose – not edited to copy my adult, stylized version. She does when she works with her, and as she did with her husband, the noble prize winning author as he was suffering from severe dementia. I will make no judgments about helping along an author who was once glorious in his decline (I think her “editing” in his final years was probably a large portion), but I do not find it appropriate for a young, special needs child. When I discover stories from my childhood, I am pleased to find silly writing styles, and interested by the decisions I made, and I am glad that they were not changed drastically from the original. (This books was edited for misspellings, major grammar, etc., just not COMPLETELY rewritten). </RANT>

Moving on… S. sent me a guide book for Costa Rica, and I am SO excited! Since moving, I have been feeling apathetic toward most things, trying to feign excitement because I know I should be excited, but I have been so stressed out that most emotions have been filtered for survival, including excitement. I’m afraid this colored much of my time in Paris, which is majorly disappointing. However, last night I finally felt truly excited about going. Not just excited to leave here, as has been my recent sentiment, but in reading about the places we may be staying and the things we may do, my fake excitement has turned a corner to genuine. It is quite refreshing (although I think some of my repressed frustration with other situations may be oozing out as well – but I am aware it’s not so healthy to keep it all pent up). I am also happy that I am going to be visiting someone this weekend who can always make me smile and I generally spend hours laughing with. I need it.

In the technological realm, I am happy again. Once the fiasco with transporting my computer was over, it was fixed and returned promptly (with no reformatting, thankfully)! Upon its return I remembered how much I love it. It is so fast, the keyboard is so lovely, and it is just such a wonderful machine. It helps that it’s set up just the way I like it and I don’t have to deal with other people’s junk cluttering it up or slowing it down. whooo!

So… the iPhone! I have to admit I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it or test it out because I have only had two days of being in a typical service area, and I didn’t have access to my computer to get it set up as I wanted during that time period. There are tons of things I love about it. I was concerned about typing without keys, but I have found that if I allow myself to trust the auto correct software, I can be even sloppy about my typing and it still gets it right. I love, love, LOVE the web browsing, my main gripe with my blackberry – it is actually easy to use, and fast!, and unlike my blackberry, I will actually use it on a regular basis. The Google maps is similar to the blackberry version. I haven’t had a chance to really use the gps, as I didn’t want to drive and test it simultaneously, but when I get back to civilization, I will test it out. Standing still, it seemed as accurate as the cell tower version, giving a pretty wide circle, but I may have had it in a mode where the GPS was disabled. I’ll have to play with it more. There are some features that I’m really surprised that it doesn’t have, as expressed by every other reviewer in the world – the lack of picture texting (what?!?), which my blackberry shared. It sends you a message asking you to log into a website from what I’ve been told. As long as all your contacts have phone email, this isn’t a problem, as emailed photos are easy, but still a weird thing to be left out. Another gripe is the lack of copy/paste which I used frequently on my blackberry. Also the lack of push email for Gmail, although I currently am signed up for a free trial of mobileme, from which I have created a hybrid forward, and I will switch it to Yahoo when the free trial is over. Although I expected there to be some sync with google calendar and such, which was also surprisingly left out. Overall though, I really do love it. I am very glad I waited for the second generation model, because the shortcomings now are few enough that the 3g and gps make up for it, but otherwise it would have been a questionable trade from my blackberry simply for better, but slower, browsing. Especially since I no longer have the majority of my friends in in-network calling (sorry guys!).

This entry took two days to write due to the annoyingness of my days, so I am not going to promise anything good in the near future. I will continue to whine up until my departure for C.R.

Oh yes – I am going to a fancy, fancy party this month at which Yo-Yo Ma is giving a private concert (he’s one of the many prominent guests), although “the help” (me) has to remove the child from the property for that section of the party as to not ruin it. Same for his rehearsal the day before. Although, the staff will be forced to cater to us as we are taking up the only two guest rooms on the grounds – because we are also guests of top priority (much to the chagrin of the staff, who recognizes we’re not as internationally known). Although I am excited to meet everyone, including the hostess who has had an interesting enough life to have published an autobiography and enough mula to toss around that she has started a 3 million dollar charitable foundation, and has donated at least triple that to a prominent university. Her other home (not in the sticks of the northeast), has an original Chegall and gardens that are supposed to be absolutely glorious, this property is supposed to be pretty nice as well. I am excited for this party.

So, I am on the plane again. Two hours in to an 8 hour flight. Whoo hoo! The airport proceedings were a little obnoxious because J. set off the metal detector and had to be searched, and then they found a large bottle of balsamic vinegar she had packed in her carry on (what??), and she was ticked because they had to take it away, despite her protestations that it was expensive, and sealed.

Some people not only think the rules don’t apply to their kids (who are the center of the universe), but also think that because they’re American, White, middle aged, and a single mom, that they should be exempt from the same security procedures as others. :p Sorry, that was a bit whiny, but I met other people on this trip who would vocalize that they didn’t think that R. is the center of the universe and shouldn’t be the one constantly deciding everyone’s schedules. It really, really, ticked off J., who obviously thinks otherwise, and I had to try to talk her down, but really – I agree a lot of the time!

Being part of another person’s family for a two week trip abroad is certainly interesting. I really really liked a certain, young member of the family who joined us – we went shopping, exploring, we sat at a bar and people watched, and we got along very well.

But there are still little traditions which are so weird within families, and I wonder if they even realize it (S.’s family makes animal noises every time they go through a tunnel, and he didn’t realize that everyone didn’t do such until fairly late in life). This family is Jewish. Very much so in some ways (they all say “oy gavault (sp)!” and have the same expressive way of doing things, and not so much in others (some of them eat ham, they don’t like hockey).

But another thing this family does, which I find very weird, but don’t connect with any particular group of people is kiss each other on the lips. I come from a family that is not at all affectionate, either verbally, or physically. In a couple self-reflective psych papers I’ve had to analyze this, but I’m not going to do that here. I like families who are verbally affectionate and supportive, I wish my family was more so, but very affectionate families freak me out a little. Not in the way where I see and father and daughter holding hands and think it’s inappropriate, kissing on the lips is weird for me. Also, this family was almost constantly holding hands – daughter and father, daughter and grandparents, sisters – it was just so foreign to my way of thinking. I know it tend to be a European thing, but they’re not European! Anyway. My lips are for S. only. When R. tries to kiss me on my mouth, I promptly present my cheek. I don’t even kiss my own family on the cheek! Anyway… .rambling.

I have never been forced to appreciate art from an academic standpoint. I haven’t had to take any classes to comment on “the way the light hits the tree” and write 6 page papers on it. I didn’t go to elementary school where kids have to take art classes and learn to paint properly. I suffered through art in middle school, managing to eke out one pathetic looking sleeping cat that was the motif through which I acquired passing grades. My parents did not appreciate art, and as a result, my love for it did not blossom. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the arts, for music was a huge part of my life – but visual arts was not.

In high school I took some photography classes. And in college I worked my way into some photo classes that I wasn’t techinically allowed to be in (only visual arts majors were allowed to enroll), and my professor almost always picked my photos as the top two in the line up for the week (think reality shows, where they give the rose, or token to the best person first). It wasn’t a paintbrush and easel, but it was art.

I have had the discussion with S. about how we are so bombarded with images in this culture, and things are so easily accessible that “art” in the old sense is much more difficult to appreciate and come by – not a lot is novel anymore. Even seeing the “great works” is a little anticlimactic, because the images are so easily accessed in books, online, often even showing up in advertising.

The reason I write about this now is because – I’m in Paris (obviously), and I have had the opportunity to run into a few museums with an anxious 8 year old and see some of these famous things in person. Monet, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh – I saw works from them all yesterday. I should be impressed. I should be wowed. But it was sort of like “oh, okay, it’s the real thing. not that different from the recreations.” I didn’t appreciate them as I thought I should. So I guess this post is a little about guilt from not being wowed, but leading into some thoughts I had on taste in general.

I like patterns. I like order. I like things to be in their places. J. and I were having a discussion about art this morning (she still has the wow feeling, I haven’t been able to tell her I’m bored – it would truly change her view of me). She said that she was reading a book last night that said that art should make you appreciate the beauty in every day life. That seeing a beautiful table in a palace shouldn’t cause you to ache for an aristocratic life, but instead cause you to see what a table “could be” and see the beauty in your own life. I see beauty in simplicity. I see beauty in mystery. I see beauty in what could be.

J. is the type who will pick out a table cloth with 6 bright shade of yellow and orange with bright colored flowers all over it. She sees beauty in something that simply makes me want to vomit. After a small amount of thought, I think I appreciate art most when it falls into one of the following three categories: patterns, people, and adventure.

I love patterns. Simple, complex, patterns with light, but NOT patterns overwhelmed with color, or ones that don’t have order. There is a painting in J’s room that I adore. It is this :

It is too chaotic! It makes me feel ucky when I look at it! I just can’t explain it!

Anyway, I’ve been seeing lots of things I should be excited about, but I just can’t get myself to appreciate the beauty of it all. But I’ll also find myself staring up at the architecture and soaking in the wonder of it. Or I’ll find myself in a room full of photography and be amazed. Or looking at landscapes and think “I want to be there!” (instead of, oh.. this makes me better appreciate the beauty of my own small yard, without the glorious mountains and rivers and jungle…). So I according to J.’s view, I’m not appreciating it “right,” but I’m enjoying it in my own way just the same.

I have had a few interesting encounters with the French people and I can’t decide if I should write about them now, or if I should collect them all and just write about the best snippets.

I had the evening off, so I wandered around the city and “licked the windows” (as they say in French) of the fancy designer stores, indulged in a little piece of heaven at La Maison Du Chocolat, saw the Arc de Triomphe, hiked up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower (I didn’t go all the way to the top because the ticket booth to catch an elevator was closed and the machine wouldn’t take me card), and walked back through the streets of Paris. It was about a 10 mile walk, not including the 1000 or so stairs in the Eiffel.

I have decided that I do like this beautiful city. But it would be much more fun if I could do it all on my own schedule. And with S. And with money.

Okay, I guess I will devote a few minutes to interesting encounters.

The first is something that just sort of freaked me out – not an encounter at all. I was at the airport with a huge luggage cart, waiting for Janis to come back exchanging currency, when a women in full Muslim garb walked by me, ten paces behind her husband. The was wearing a black veil (no slit for her eyes or anything), she had on black gloves, black shoes, and was completely submissive. Her husband barked for her to wait somewhere for a minute with the stroller (she was pushing a little boy in western clothing), and she did without a sound. It reminded me very much of the bad guys in the Lord of the Rings. The ones that ride on horses. Or the death eaters from Harry and the Potters. Uck.

Last night I was walking back from the Hemmingway Bar in the Ritz around 1am, and despite my dear friend’s urgings to take a cab, I really wanted to walk through Paris at night. It was beautiful, so I’m glad I did, but as I was walking I was acutely aware of the warnings I had been given by friends about being an unfriendly city. I was walking down a well-lit street that wasn’t jammed-packed, but there were certainly other people on it, when I saw a guy leaning against the outside of a building. He smiled at me and flashed me a peace sign. France is a funny place where people think it’s okay to obviously look you up and down and “appreciate your beauty” – it’s not considered ogling or rude in any way. Well, I looked the other way and continued walking and this gentleman jumped in front of me and said “EEEHH! [lots of speaking in French the way a mother would gentle scold her children.]” I managed to blurt out the only sentence I know in French – “I don’t understand French” – and he laughed and said slowly “You are a beautiful woman.” I again said “I don’t understand” and shuffled off. I admit that when he jumped in front of me my hand grabbed for and wrapped around my keys in a way that would make them a good weapon. It was funny that he was just aggressively trying to hit on me.

There has been a significant police force in the city the last few days because George W. is here trying to win some favor in the eye of the world before he leaves office. Last night, shortly after I was approached by the above dude, I saw two police officers straddling the sidewalk, walking toward me. The one on my left had a giant kubotan, and the one on my right was holding a fairly large automatic rifle. I held my breath as I walked between them, although as I was doing it I realized that was probably more suspicious than walking calmly, but goodness, they freaked me out.

Okay, last one for today. On my adventures roaming the city today, I saw something shiny in the middle of the sidewalk, and a guy to my right swooped in front of me and picked it up (I had no intention of doing anything other than walking over it). He then tried to say something to me in French, presenting the object (what appeared to be a man’s wedding ring) to me. I again, recited my one mastered phrase “I don’t understand French” and he asked me “Eeeennnglish?” I said yes, and he grabbed onto my arm with one hand, put the ring in my other, kissed me on both cheeks and said it was a gift for me, a “magnificently beautiful woman.” I tried to refuse, but he absolutely would not let me. So I finally said “fine” just so he would let go, which worked. He then asked me something about coffee, which I also declined, then he tried to get me to give him money so HE could get some coffee! I was thinking this was a huge scam, so I tried to give back the ring and walk away, but again he grabbed my arm and gestured at my pocket. I pulled out ,70 euro (about a dollar), handed it to him, tried to give back the ring, and tried to get away. It didn’t work. He tried to get more money from me, gesturing that I must have more coins! I said it was for the Eiffel tower and tried to scoot away. He finally laughed and gave in, then went in for more cheek kisses, but at the last moment he turned and tried to kiss me on the lips! I turned my head faster than he could, and scooted out of there as quick as could be, as he waved goodbye to me – although the light hadn’t changed, so I stood uncomfortably there for a few seconds (there were people between us ). So, I got home and pulled out the ring, and it looks like it just might be real gold. It says “18k” on it, and it has the weight of gold. But it could just be a clever fake for his scam. Part of me hopes that it is a fake, because I wouldn’t want someone to have lost their wedding ring, but another part hopes it may be of some value to make up for that icky encounter. I could pay for part of an apartment deposit with it (I’m still a Global Nomad by the way). But why would he give it to me if it was worth something? He said “real gold” when he handed it to me. I didn’t see him plant it, and someone else would have picked it up before if he had put it there before me (he came from behind me). I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to bring it to a jeweler when I get back to the states and see if they laugh at me. J. thinks it may be real as well, so here’s hoping!

au revoir!

The best google search of the week – “tits OR boobs OR breast OR naked OR nude OR cum “tina fey”" Apparently this person was desperate for whatever they could get.

Okay, if neither the title or the opening line have deterred you thus far, it’s your own fault if you keep reading. Today I am going to tell you about all the fun stuff I’m doing with doctors. Not in the kinky – role playing way, but in the legitimate MD way. The decision to be so crass may by partially influenced by the fun meds I’m on, so my apologies.

After an excruciatingly painful descent on the plane last night, I decided I was canceling all my morning clients and I was going to do something I really don’t like doing – see a doctor. R’s doctor decided that she had a sinus infection yesterday, and although they’re not contagious, I was pretty sure I was suffering from the same. After a fairly tumultuous night, I awoke before my alarm and stared at the clock until 9am when my ENT office opened. I saw a nurse practitioner this afternoon and after numbing and expanding my sinuses with weird, gross tasting sprays, she shoved a hollow metal rod up there and determined that I had a fairly severe sinus infection and sent me home, with numb and dripping sinuses and a prescription for steroids and antibiotics. whooo!

The steroids are kind of fun – in that they make me a little crazy/hyper. But the doctor said they would do that. Especially since she told me to take the entire day’s dose in the AM, instead of splitting it into 3/4 doses as prescribed. Although this dosage also had my lying in bed crying because I was so nauseous for a few hours. I will just have to eat more food before it next time. The nurse lady also said that my metabolism will go crazy for the next week, and I will be eating everything in sight, have a lot of energy and may pack on a bit of weight – so use that energy productively! It’s too bad I have to sit for hours studying for big scary exams :/

I’m a little worried about the antibiotics – I’m on the patch, and antibiotics always mess up my cycle :/ This is especially important this month, because I am supposed to get an IUC inserted during my cycle this month, and I’ll have to see if they can change my appointment! The reason for the Mirena is because I am going off my parent’s insurance and am unsure that whatever insurance I obtain through my new, not-yet-obtained job will cover contraceptives. Ahhh.

Although, there were a couple really good points to my day as well – they include: sushi (eggplant tempura rolls are the BEST), a free smoothie (I got a card in my mail for a place that just opened, and the nice guy working gave me a large instead of a small), and… no work (although I will have to reschedule all 9 clients I cancelled. sad for them). ALSO – I am back in wonderful weather!

I’m about to head off to the airport to leave the dreary Northeast and return to the mid-70 sunny weather of the south. But before I go – an update:

The weather here sucks. It’s been rainy, in the 50s, windy and downright cold. After only four and a half days of being here I have either developed an awful sinus infection, or a really, really bad cold. It’s kind of awesome. I miss lying by the pool, which I cannot believe I had the audacity to call boring a few days ago. The sun has finally poked its head out of the clouds this morning, but I am far too sick to enjoy it.

Despite the weather, the week/weekend has been delightful. My flight up here was delayed, and I expected to drag myself off the plane and be a little angry at the world for an hour waiting for my bags – but that wasn’t at all the case. As soon as I got to the baggage area, I heard my name. I was confused. There had to be another J. But then I looked up – and it was S! He was supposed to be out with friends at a bar, socializing, doing the grad student thing, but instead he had left his friends early, taken an hour ride on public transit, and waited 45 minutes for my plane to arrive, just so he could give me a hug. What a wonderful, amazing man! My luggage did take forever, but it was okay, because S was there with me. We took a cab to where I was staying and went out for pizza at 1am. It was a very nice date. He then hopped into a cab and went back to his new, fancy school.

Saturday morning I was awoken by a lovely 8 year old girl at 7am. It was early, but nice. After a fun day of hanging out with her and her mom, S joined us for dinner and then S and I went out to eat at a wonderful dessert place, Finale. We enjoyed a wonderful shareable plate called The Whole Nine Yards, which has 9 different desert choices in abbreviated forms. DELICIOUS! We were dressed up nicely, with the intent of going out dancing, but it was late, we were both exhausted, and I had friends coming into town the following day, so we wandered home around midnight.

Sunday the 8 year old popped her head into our room at 6:30am. Too early! After breakfast and other fun morning activities, S., R. & I hopped in the car to do some awesome shopping at Target. As always, it was slight chaos, but not bad. S bought a nice feather mattress topper for the uber-hard futon that we’d been sleeping on – what an improvement! we had intended to do some grocery shopping as well, but we had to get back for R’s piano lesson. S and I did the shopping at Trader Joe’s while her mom oversaw the lesson. We then rushed back to the house, because a bunch of my friends drove into the city to visit! We scooped up R., and the 5 adults and 1 girl went out for a great afternoon at the Children’s Museum! I think everyone managed to enjoy themselves. It was funny, because adults without children have to wear these little white tags identifying themselves as single adults, and turn over their IDs for their duration in the museum. At first my friends identified themselves as childless, but then quickly changed their story upon seeing their tags. We made many jokes about the “pedophile tags” that afternoon.

After the museum, we brought R home, fed her dinner, then went out for an adults only dinner at Tantric, one of my favorite Indian locations. After, we wanted an excuse to hang out more (although S. and I were so tired we could have fallen asleep on the table), so we went out to Finale for the second night in a row. Around the table we had two orders of the Creme Brulee, two Molten Chocolates, and we all had fun drinks, either of the coffee or alcoholic variety (S. and I shared an ice wine flight – yum!). After dessert, we made our way back to the T, and were very happy to crawl into bed!

Monday morning R. sneaked in for a kiss at 6:15, but S and I slept until 10. It was so nice! We spent the afternoon shopping in the Copley Mall, the Prudential Center, Stel’s on Newbury and we both ended up with new beautiful jeans. S. ended up with a pair of APC raw demin, and I got a cute pair on sale at Armani Exchange. nice! It’s funny shopping in high end trendy places. Way out of my budget, but still fun. I found a really cute dress (in white) that I hope goes on sale soon. I could never pay full price for an item that isn’t a staple. Even the jeans I found were on sale. But after buying a really cute little silk dress at Neiman Marcus Last Call last week, I just couldn’t justify another one.

After that shopping endeavor, S. and I caught a bus over to Harvard Yard so he could meet with a friend, and I traveled amongst both the thrift and high end stores looking at cute things I couldn’t afford. I did find one little dress that I liked that reminded me of Charlotte of Sex and the City, but my stylist (aka S), vetoed it, telling me I am too monochromatic and need to introduce color into my wardrobe this summer. Bah humbug. I didn’t need to spend any more money anyway. We enjoyed sushi for dinner, then wandered around S.’ new campus, and took a very long walk in the rain. We tried to get bubble tea, but the place we went was out of tapioca – bummer! We ended up getting dessert at Sunset, and we also tried some hard cider (yum) and mead (yuck!). After a very long day, with lots of walking and bad weather, we returned to the house and happily went to bed.

Tuesday morning I woke up of my own accord at 6am because I simply couldn’t breathe. After a few hours of drifting in and out of sleep, and driving S crazy, we decided to go enjoy some breakfast, open a new bank account for S, find a place to scope the MacBook Air, and buy flowers as a thank you gift for our lovely hosts. It was pouring cats and dogs, so we jumped on the train to the furthest destination, and found lots of excuses to stop in stores on our walk back. These included coffee and a bagel, my old college Chem lab (that felt weird to go in again!), a bike shop, a mattress store, and other fun things.

After a whole morning of walking, we returned with just enough time for me to shower and take R off the bus. I trained a new babysitter, and S. packed for his return home. He flew out last night (sad- I miss him already!), and as he dealt with a canceled flight, I battled this sinus icky thing.

This morning I didn’t drag myself out of bed until late, but when I did, I found R. was home sick – dealing with the same ickyness that I am. All morning I held her as she cried and and did all of the “I’m not feeling well!!” stuff that I was feeling as well. Her mom just packed her up in the car to go to the doctor’s appointment she had been fighting all morning to get, and I am now ready to depart myself. I am going to run to CVS, grab some more sinus meds (they’re NOT HELPING!), and hopefully don’t die when I’m on my flight home.

So, in preparation for Paris this summer, I decided I should learn at least a few key phrases in French. I decided to do this by watching Paris Je T’aime. Well, that was my obviously not well disguised reason for watching the film. I feel the need to say “film” rather than “movie” simply because it is French. Is that weird?

Anyway, when I started watching it, I wasn’t sure how I felt. I actually ended up watching it in three chunks a tiny but last night, a bit between meetings today, then I finished it this evening. After the first two segments I was afraid it was going to be sad: that there would be no resolution. But at the same time I was worried that it would be sappy – but it is a French film, it couldn’t be that sappy.

See, I loved Amelie. It is one of my favorite films. There’s just something so sweet about it – and I was hoping that this could capture that same sweetness.

And it did! It’s funny, the last character reminded me of my mom. And it made me really , really sad. But then, the character realizes that she loves Paris (I don’t think that’s really giving any part of the movie away), and is happy with life. It is sweet to know that although I worry about some people, because I absolutely would not want their lives, they are happy with them.

I know being in psychology this should not be a surprise. But there’s still something inside me that has completely different rules for my clients and for the people I care about. TOTALLY different.

So for a while now I’ve been wanting to write a post on all of the weird keywords that people punch in to google to find me. I’m not sure if the entire world is aware of this, but website owners can not only see what page you came from (or if you typed me in directly), but can also find out a lot of interesting demographic stuff as well. Google tells me exactly which key words people used to find me, and also what city/state/country visitors are from. It’s kind of fun. Anyway, I usually get some pretty bizarre hits from people, and I feel like it’s a fun topic. So.. here are some of my recent favorites:

There have been a lot that are related to OCD or psychology…
- ocd need to move things
- characteristics of an ocd employee
- ocd dropped my phone
- ocd friend driving me crazy
- ocd has pushed me away
- ocd need to move things
- ocd school (hip hop)
- psychology dislike of eating sounds. <– what???

There are some about Confessions…
- confessions of a long distance lover
- pedophile confessions
- pedophile true confessions

Some people have been feeling a little under the weather…
- my face is swollen from sinus
- my face hurts sick

And some others are just a little weird…
-tina fey naked
(this is a pretty popular one, I’ve received at least 2/3 hits a day from her!)
- scuba naked
- pink tap water
- “chopped my hair off”
- “everyone goes 80″
- i forgot my wallet in the car- proper english
- i hate dr. phil
- vintage scuba sex
- rosette nebula penis

People search for some pretty weird things!

Although, I must admit, I have at times googled the most random stuff. I wonder if the owners of those sites thought “wow, this is one messed-up visitor.” I mean, I’ve seen “two girls, one cup.” Gross. But I had to google it to find it. Sad.

Although, I will update as other weirdos find me. What fun is it to know this stuff if you can’t mock them for it?