ARGGGHHHHHH!

I swear, I think trying to get my dissertation proposal defense scheduled is apparently an exercise in psychological torture and I wonder whether it is a test of whether or not we are able to handle such things, as psychologists. In addition to members of my committee reporting various days and times in which they are unavailable, my chair has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth, because he hasn't responded to my emails or to my phone calls. Maybe he is avoiding me. So I still have no idea when my dissertation proposal will be or who will be in attendance.

My mom made is safely back to Tennessee, after a plane delay. The long weekend with her went by too quickly. Rebecca enjoys my mom so, so much. It's delightful to see the two of them together, because it is so obvious what a mutual admiration society they have for one another. I've always thought that it is a wonderful thing to have someone who believes that you could absolutely do no wrong, and Rebecca has that in her Grammy. Last night, Rebecca was in rare form, even for her. She literally laughed the whole way back from Brea to Chino Hills. She found everything Grammy did funny, everything I did funny, and everything she did herself to be absolutely hysterical. Rebecca has a cute little girly giggle, and she often accompanies it by putting her hands over her mouth. Then she also has this deep belly laugh that is sooo un-feminine. She's added the phrase "oh wow" to her repertoire, and she is also saying yucky (although it comes out as "ca-ca", which happens to be a word I absolutely detest). My mom and I had a great time shopping. Most of our shopping was for Rebecca. We bought some things at Janie and Jack on Saturday, and then they were marked down on Monday, so we got price adjustments on them and ended up buying some more. My mom also helped me tremendously in getting things organized for my internship applications. I needed to coordinate all the packages for the people who are writing letters of recommendation for me. I have different letter writers for the different types of sites (e.g., forensic, neuropsych, counseling centers) to which I am applying. So I got all of those things organized, with her help.

Today, I had a busy day back at Casa Colina's inpatient unit. I saw a pretty demented gentleman. Sadly, his family had not really recognized the extent to which he was impaired, so it was kind of a shock to them how severe he really is. The news that he isn't safe to be alone, at all, ever, and the news that his drivers license will be revoked was not pleasantly received. I also saw a gentleman who was quite hard of hearing, and so I was yelling his whole assessment to him. Passersby were probably wondering why some woman was yelling a story about a 3 alarm fire causing $2 million in damage, injuring 7, but killing no one. They probably thought I was a patient.

So it's going to be fast and furious this next week and a half before we go on vacation. I am still praying I can get my dissertation proposed before I leave, but every passing day makes that less likely. Regardless, I know they're going to let me apply for internship, so in that sense the pressure is off.

A nice weekend with Grammy

I'm typing this on Tuesday morning, while my daughter and mother are lounging on the guest bed talking about Rebecca's Dora blanket. My mom made her a little fleece blanket that has Dora all over it, and it is the delight of Rebecca's life. She adores that blanket. Rebecca is going to be a sad little girl in a couple of hours when Grammy and Mama leave and she stays here. But oh what a good time she has had with Grammy!!! Yesterday, she laughed the whole way home from Brea, just full of herself. Such a happy, funny little girl! We've had a nice visit with my mom, and then we'll be headed to Tennessee in less than two weeks.

I got my comp paper back last Thursday, but since then I've been in the midst of trying to coordinate the scheduling of my dissertation proposal defense. It is a nightmare!!! I really want it to be next week before I go on vacation, but I'm thinking that isn't going to happen. Getting 6 people in the same room together is like nailing Jello to a tree. My current hope is that we can have it without one of the committee members being there. Hopefully my chair will let me just have her send in her comments via email or fax or whatever. BLEH!

I'll post more later - I'm off to get ready, take my mom to the airport, and see what Casa Colina has in store for me today!

I passed!

I got the word yesterday morning that I passed my comp paper...and I have no revisions for it. Woo hoo! Officially, that means I've passed to candidacy for the doctoral degree. Yeah...what? Practically, it means that I can set the date for my dissertation proposal. It's no small feat to get 6 people in the same room at the same time. There's a chance it may work out to be on Thursday, October 9, but I'd say that's a long shot. Most likely it will be the week of October 20th, which is after I get back from vacation in Tennessee. I'd like it to be before we go, but I don't know if that will be possible. I'm still crossing my fingers though.

My mom arrived safely last night, and Rebecca was eagerly awaiting her, waving and grinning before she ever saw her. Then she ran to "Geggy" and hasn't wanted anyone else since. I made 4 pumpkin pies for the Harvest Festival to take to church today for the bakery booth. It made for a late night, but I'm glad I don't have to do it this morning. We'll be going to breakfast, taking Rebecca to Gymboree, and who knows what else today.

A couple of videos of Rebecca

As usual, it has been a busy couple of days for me at Casa Colina. I evaluated three patients yesterday on the inpatient unit. I assessed one very unpleasant and acerbic (I combed thesaurus.com to find that word to use in my report) woman who is absolutely FINE and has no memory problems and the ONLY thing wrong with her is her hip and leg and NOTHING is wrong with her brain, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Alrighty sister, I'm with you in that - denial is my favorite state of mind too. Except....she completely bombed every task that required visuospatial integration and executive functioning and that her report now says that she can't drive. Then today, I tested a very pleasant lady who could have passed for my best friend Brenda's twin. Sadly, I don't take quite as much effort to comb the thesaurus for positive adjectives. One of my mentors at Casa Colina and I have a thing about finding descriptive adjectives to spice up our reports and make them a little less monotonous (sadly, this is what makes for spice in the life of psychology nerds like us).

I'm so frustrated that I'm ready to shake some people in my department. I turned in my comp paper exactly four weeks ago tomorrow, and I don't have it back yet. Come on people, I need to schedule a dissertation proposal defense in the next four weeks, and I'd really like it to not be on the very last second before I need to race to the post office to put my internship applications in the mailbox. Surely it will be before the end of this week.

Ramy starts his murder trial next week. His mom and one of his sisters are on their way to the Philippines (or maybe they're there by now...I don't know. They left around midnight last night and I think it is about a 16 hour flight). Regardless, please pray they have a safe trip there and back and don't get mugged or sticken by dengue fever or any other similar malady.

Rebecca is marvelous as always. She loves to tell the dogs "noooo" when they do something they aren't allowed to do. She loves to dance, of course, and she sings along with the Little Einsteins on the rocketship. Any picture of Dora is met with an immediate and ecstatic "Da-Ra!" in at least one octave higher than her normal voice. She loves Baby Lucy and Raggedy more than ever, and I'm pretty sure she attempted to breastfeed Baby Lucy the other day. Sydney remains her favorite creature though (as you can probably tell by the series of pictures in my last post - she was wiping Sydney's face after she had eaten, by the way - and in the videos above). She tells Sydney goodnight and blows her kisses every evening when we go upstairs to bed, and every morning, she says, "Hi Sydney" and waves to her all the way down the stairs. It's awfully nice to come home to a sweet little voice that says, "Hi, Mama!" from the moment she hears my car pull in until I have picked her up! I think my favorite new thing of Rebecca's is that she says "Amen" at the end of prayers. It started last week with her repeating "Amen" after I finished saying each prayer (we do the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be every night and almost every morning). Then at church on Sunday, we got to what she thought was the end of the Lord's Prayer (and really was, the way we say it, but there's an additional ending that the priest tacks on to the end when it is said during mass) and Rebecca said "A-man". I'm also fairly sure that she has attempted to cross herself at least a couple of times, but I can't be certain about it. I'm glad to see that I have taught her something more than how to talk on a cell phone and how to throw a purse over her shoulder!

Tomorrow starts my fall quarter classes at Loma Linda. I think these are the last two classes I may be taking. I'm taking my other religion class, which should be better than the summer one I took - this one is Spirituality in Everyday Life and then I'm also taking an advanced neuropsych assessment class. Both are just on Thursdays, and they fit in well with my schedule. My Thursdays will consist of going to U of R to do dissertation study-related stuff at 9, neuropsych assessment class from 10-12, a meeting or providing supervision for one of my students from 12-1, my religion class from 1-4, and then I'm teaching the projective personality assessment lab from 4-5. Busy, but it all fits in well, and I don't have any time to get in trouble or goof off.

My mom comes tomorrow evening, and she'll be here until Tuesday. We'll be hitting our church's Harvest Festival and shopping and having good food and enjoying playing with and dressing up Rebecca. Please pray she has safe travels!

Playtime with Sydney

A crazy week

It has been a really hectic week here for all of us.

On Monday, Rebecca and I went to free play at Gymboree, cleaned house, and I made some stuff for us to have for dinner during the week. On Tuesday, I was at Casa Colina, and it was a madhouse. On my schedule, I needed to see three of our elderly patients in our SEP program. Each of those included a 2 hour assessment, as well as the interview and chart review. Plus time to score their test results and write up their reports. The SEP program is such that the patients come in on Sunday or Monday and get evaluated all during the week. There's a conference on them on Friday morning, and so obviously the evals have to be done by then. I worked late on Tuesday night working on that.

Then on Wednesday, I had just about the craziest day of my professional career. The morning started off with me giving feedback to one of my patients I tested a few weeks ago, and her husband. It's a hard thing to have to tell people that we just don't know how much recovery is possible from such severe damage. It's a fine line to walk between not wanting to give anyone reason to lose hope but also not giving them unrealistically high expectations. That was a difficult feedback session. Then I co-led a brain injury education group with my supervisor for our lower functioning brain injury patients. The topic was on how emotions are different after brain injuries. In the group, we had several behavior plan patients, who don't get along. Well, there was a reason we'd chosen that particular topic - because all of these people have difficulty with anger management, impulse control, and most forms of socially appropriate behavior. To make a long story short, we ended up having a melee in the group. There were chairs thrown, glasses broken, blood flying, references to Forrest Gump, and general mayhem, resulting in us calling security. My role in this was trying to get the helpless bystanders out of harms way. Needless to say, future attempts to have group psychoeducation for this group have been reconsidered. That afternoon, I did a pretty complicated assessment of a woman who'd had three strokes. The highlight of the day was that I got my student evaluation from the faculty of the deparment of Psychology at LLU. It was pretty glowing, so I was happy. Of course, it had the note in there that I couldn't apply for internship until my comp paper was passed and I'd defended my dissertation proposal, but that was already a given.

Thursday, Nanny Rebecca was off, so I had Miss Rebecca with me. We had a full day, and she was an angel. We drove to Casa Colina to my office to drop off the Tuesday evals. Then we hit the freeway and drove to Loma Linda, where I had to conduct supervision for one of my assessment students. Then we walked over to the other side of campus to pick up something from the IRB office. Next, we drove over to the University of Redlands to see how my dissertation study is going and to pick up the new signed consent forms (8 more participants enrolled - yay!). Then we went back to Loma Linda to drop something off. And then we finally headed home. That night, we went to the L.A. County Fair (see post below).

Ramy starts his murder trial week after next, so he went in to the office yesterday, even though it was his 9/80 and for a few hours this morning. We're both a little stressed with all we have going on. I'm anxious for my dissertation chair to give me the news that I passed (please, God) my comp paper and feedback on my dissertation proposal so that I can go ahead and set the date for my proposal defense. I'm also working on dissertation applications. It is very frustrating for this to be out of my hands, and it ramps up my anxiety. It is one thing to be stressed because of all I have to do in the process, but for it to be in other people's hands makes it so much worse. Get the lead out, people! Surprisingly, a new potential site opened up this week. There's a private outpatient psych clinic with offices in Chino, Upland, and Claremont that has joined the APPIC program. Hello, the Chino office is five minutes from my house! It isn't accredited by APA, so that knocks it down for me, but I'll apply and hopefully will get an interview and will see if it looks like it would be good experience. I'm forcing myself to not try to pin my hopes on certain sites already. I'm trying to not rank my preferences until after interviews.

My mom comes to visit next Thursday evening and will be here until the following Tuesday. We all are looking forward to that. We'll be going to our church's harvest festival and who knows what else. I'd hoped that we'd be able to celebrate me proposing my dissertation, but apparently that isn't going to happen before then. And then just a couple of weeks later, we'll be heading to Tennessee for vacation for a week. We can't wait!

A night at the fair

Tonight we went to the Los Angeles County Fair. It's a pretty different kind of fair than, say, the Lincoln County Fair, and it's definitely a good place to see some of the most interesting people in Los Angeles County. But it is a lot of fun (as a side note - the L.A. County Fair holds good memories for me, because it was one of the most fun places we went to when I was coming out here to visit Ramy before we were married.)

Rebecca enjoyed dancing to a little live reggae music...





Eating a quesadilla...



Riding some rides with daddy....





Munching on a funnel cake...



Getting to know a giant stuffed, Sydney lookalike...



Posing for silly pictures...



And she sacked out before we were even out of the parking lot!

It's not autumn yet!

Despite the fact that I was thrilled we experienced fall-like temperatures last weekend and the fact that I changed the header on the blog to reflect September being the start of autumn, it's really still summer here in So Cal. It's going to be in the high 90s today. So we're back to tank tops and shorts. But it was nice to get a little taste of cooler weather while it lasted.

It seemed like the weekend went by so quickly, and yet I'm not sure what we did. Ramy is getting ready to start a murder trial in a couple of weeks, and he is pretty consumed with that. It's a defensible case, which puts all the more pressure on Ramy. He got up early on Saturday morning and went in to work for a couple of hours. Thursday, I turned in a draft of my dissertation proposal to my chair. This weekend, Ramy and I swapped off turns with Rebecca so that each of us could have a couple of hours to do some work. I did some internship app stuff and worked on the Powerpoint presentation for my proposal. It was a relatively quiet weekend for us.

I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out what my department was trying to pull on me. We got this email saying we needed to turn in an intent to apply for internship form, with signatures that we'd already passed our comps, proposed dissertations, etc. - by noon today. After a flurry of emails and phone calls, it turns out that we don't have to have that form in until our applications actually go in the mail. I swear, I think our department sometimes makes up new requirements and tries to spring them on us at the eleventh hour and then when people get cranked off about it, they claim it was an accident. Regardless, I'm still in good shape. Dr. Vermeersch told me yesterday that my comp was in the hands of my second reviewer, so I should have it back soon (I'm hoping this week, but who knows). Hopefully, he'll read my proposal and give me some feedback on it too. I want to schedule my defense ASAP. It drives me a little bit crazy that all of this is out of my hands and that I'm just waiting on other people.

I'm off to Casa Colina today. Ramy left for work at 6, so I got up early. Rebecca is still snoozing and looks very comfortable.

I always like to do this - here is a picture of what Rebecca looked like a year ago vs now.

My little model

I'm so glad fall weather has made an appearance in SoCal! I've been dying to put Rebecca in some of her cute Janie and Jack fall things, but I can't justify corduroy when it is 98°, even if it is just in a skirt. She looked so cute, and she knew it.

More progress!

I finished my dissertation proposal today!!! I sent it to my dissertation chair and co-chair for their feedback and commentsm so I'm anxious to hear back from them. Then it will just be a matter of making any (hpefully minor) changes they suggest and scheduling the presentation. The sooner the better, because I'm anxious to be able to fully focus on my internship applications. Although I haven't officially proposed my dissertation, the study has actually already begun. I already have 25 people in the study! And I finished designing the online portion of the study and had some friends of mine work as test subjects to be sure there weren't any kinks in the data collection or retrieval process before I send real subjects onto it. So I'm off to a good start. Hopefully everything will continue to go smoothly and no roadblocks will present themselves.

So, it was a busy but fast week here. Monday, my friend Julie came over with her baby girl Adelaide, who is completely precious. I wondered how Rebecca would react to a baby, especially when I held her. But she was totally fine with it. In fact, she loved to look at her and she stroked Adelaide's little arm and said sweetly, "Ohhhhhhhh" just the way she does with her baby dolls.

Tuesday, I was on the inpatient unit at the hospital, and I also went to a training session on traumatic brain injuries, which was very informative and interesting. Wednesday, I was at TLC and did testing on a gentleman who had had a deep brain stroke, on top of two previously-unrecognized ischemis strokes. Basically his brain had no more room for recovery, so this last stroke, which would have been debilitating on its own, obliterated his language abilities and right side sensory and motor stuff. This, of course, made it incredibly difficult to conduct any type of standardized testing with him! But we needed to determine if there was any comprehension left, if he had any reasoning abilities, if he could do any kind of sequencing, etc. It was a complicated case, so I was glad they gave it to me, because it speaks well of how competent they think I am. I also had to do some improptu therapy with a guy who said something in one of the groups that made people worry about him. My days at Casa Colina are very fast-paced and interesting, so that really makes the week fly by. Then today, I was at Loma Linda and in Redlands handling clinic and dissertation stuff.

I've been so busy with all my dissertation stuff and the reports for work that I haven't had much time to hang out with Ramy in the evenings or to watch any of the recent political conventions. So unlike me!

There are several people I know who could use your prayers right now - please continue to pray for Lisa Grubbs (she has begun her chemo/radiation treatments), a little boy from Fayetteville named Caleb who is also fighting cancer, and my friend Lucy's mom who had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago and who has had another heart failure episode today.

Here are a couple of more pics of Rebecca in some M2MG custom jeans my mom did. Soooo cute!


And here are a couple of her cute face!

Central Coast

We are back from our road trip up to California's Central Coast and Santa Ynez Valley. We stopped in Camarillo to look in a couple of the outlets there and to let Rebecca stretch her legs. She napped for less than an hour of our total driving time up there. We had a late lunch in Solvang, which is a Danish community that is super cute, and we walked around there and shopped a bit. Rebecca enjoyed looking in all the store windows, and she particularly enjoyed the pastries we got there. Then we drove on to San Luis Obispo and checked into our hotel. We explored the town of San Luis Obispo and saw the mission there. That mission was built in 1772 and is still used as a Catholic parish church today, which is pretty cool. Other stops on our road trip were at the beach in Morro Bay and in Santa Barbara. It was a nice trip, and on the way home, we took a scenic route through Los Padres National Forest, which was gorgeous, although driving around there did give me a bit of the white knuckle syndrome. Rebecca slept most of our way home!

Here are some pics of Solvang:



This is Morro Bay:

Road trip

We decided to take a last minute, late summer road trip up the coast. So we'll be heading out early tomorrow morning for a trip up to San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. I'm hoping to get some good pictures.

It's been another crazy busy but productive week. We enjoyed our long weekend last weekend and are looking forward to another one! Tuesday, I was on the inpatient unit at Casa Colina and did a couple of elderly patient evals and got caught up on reports. Wednesday I was in the Transitional Living Center with another fascinating case, and I got caught up on reports for there.

Today, I spent all day working on my dissertation. I now have a complete document of my dissertation proposal. I still need to look at it a bit more and make sure it flows somewhat decently before I send the draft to Dr. Vermeersch, but I think then at least I'll be ready to schedule my proposal meeting. I also went over to University of Redlands to see how my study is actually going, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I've already got 12 participants enrolled in the study! Woo hoo! Then tonight, I took my Old Testament final, which I guess is like making it to the Promised Land with the Israelite Children.

I have to admit that I've learned a lot about the Old Testament, particularly about the different ways they melded different accounts of the stories together and the politics going on at the time. Unfortunately, this class has limited my time spent watching the political conventions, although I've tried to catch up when I get home.

My Obama-Biden bumper sticker is on its way to me.