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It hadn’t occurred to me until today that The English Beat, (Mirror in the Bathroom/Tenderness)
whom I have listed to for like 20 years is known as just "The Beat" on their side of the pond.
Duh.
Like Chinese food is just "food" in China…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iykbFFDd3ZU
I’m sacrificing a Saturday, getting up at the ungodly hour of 6am to Vulcan mindmeld with a bunch of other Psychologist Directors of trng. all day. Feels like a convening of powerful demi-gods who hold the fates of hundreds of innocent interns in our hands!
Actually I recall the traumas of grad school so well, I tend to my students fairly well.
At such conferences I usually feel like quite the spring chicken among my gray haired colleagues. And why do so many therapists dress alike? Am I destined to wind up in Dansko clogs and a fringed vaguely Eastern or Celtic shawl one day, and all my male colleagues in beards?!
Not that any of my students would tell me I’ve gone out of touch,
since I hold their evaluations and academic fate in my hands…but I do know many of them have told their friends and peers to come train w/ me so surely something is working.
The upside to conference? L.A., baby!
I am heading to see English Beat Friday night with my darling Pepper; whom I almost got in a fistfight with when we met in 6th grade.
Man, we should have thrown down. Who knows what kind of row two suburban little girls coulda had? We’ve both concluded we are workaholid freaks because of our F.O.O.s (Family of Origin).
But this weekend, after working hard I intend to play hard-at not answering my phone nor righting reports or evals or letters of rec, NADA.
And of course, I gotta look up my Korean homies whenever I am in L.A.
I will forever remember my 1st visit to Koreatown after the Northridge earthquake left us dorm dwellers outdoors on the basketball courts sans food & shelter all night. We drove past eerie shattered buildings to find sustenance in Koreatown the next day.
All of my Los Angeles friends currently fall into 2 categories: Those who are much cooler than I.
And those who have infants and are therefore uber cool for very different reasons.
The normal cool friends all work in TV land or live their music and art to the max whilst my passions are crammed incompletely into the box of dayjob conformity. Some of making wads of dough, others are starving artists, but I respect both of those states equally. For real.
Often I’m sorry that I never had the huevos to just dance and write for a living (or try to).
That pre-programmed practical geek inside would not relinquish her totalitarian reign-
the frontal lobes beat down the limbic urges and here I am…a respectable taxpayer with a comfortable life. (although when the moon is full…)
My parent friends include one couple who just adopted 2 babies at the same time(brothers). Their sleep deprivation and stamina humble me…
Both the artistes and the parental units are pretty gutsy in my book!
I also have to fend off this burning impulse, a siren song that is whispering for me to drive that compact rental all the way down to Long Beach.
This addiction? Birds.
I want desperately to barricade myself into the rainbow lorikeet exhibit & spend all my damned money buying birdie nectar. They are so incredibly vivid and bright and beautiful
I can’t ever get over the fact that they are real living creatures…but they are real, and curious too. I tempted them onto my person with nectar, but once upon me they were trying to crawl into my purse, chew the crystals on my bracelet and earrings, and play with my hat.
http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/CURRENT_EXHIBIT/LORIKEETS/index.html
Alas, there are worse addictions and muses to be had, but I must resist.
As it is I seriously contemplated coming home with a Petco parrot I met last week. We sat there staring into one another’s eye (they can only stare with one eye at a time after all), chirping at one another. He’d call out loudly whenever I started to step away, and when he came to rub his scruff against the bars of the cage and be scratched by me- well, it was all over.
I fell madly in love.
But he was $1,500 dollars! There is no way I could come home with a fifteen hundred dollar bird unannounced. With a 30 yr lifespan that avian friend would be a huge commitment.
P already won’t let me forget how I came home unnannounced with 2 "babies", our hammies Panda and Puffy. But at least they weren’t over a thousand bucks!
In fact, they were free complete with cage courtesy of Craigslist. And then traumatized us by dying in 2 years.
sigh.
So I left that feathered love at Petco so as not to disturb the one I am currently nesting with, who of course, takes precedence over all other lifeforms.
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