So,
Know how I start new blogs a lot? Well it happened again. Here’s the link: www.chicagospeechgirl.wordpress.com
-Me
July 9, 2009
So,
This will be super short. I found the perfect roommates/house on CL tonight and I sent them an email and I hope they like me! I really really hope. I’m on the verge of praying! The house looks nice, it’s in an awesome location, and the girl who wrote the ad is a self-proclaimed nerd with a cat and a netflix/HBO watcher! Please. I have never wanted anybody to like me as much as I want these people to like me. Seriously.
-Me
You are so sweet, dancing and moving to that beat July 6, 2009
So,
Today would be my mom’s birthday if she were still alive. Whenever I make decisions (other than what to eat or wear), I wonder what I would be deciding if she was still alive or if I would even be in the position to make that decision in the first place. Would I be moving to Chicago if she was alive? Would I have gone on the trip to Chicago last November? Would I have looked for jobs there? Would I have gone to grad school here? Would I have lived in the house I’ve been living in? Who knows? I’m reading The Life of Pi now. Pi was describing what it’s like losing various people in your life:
“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It’s like losing — I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.”
I’m listening to Regina Spektor’s new album, Far. I’m on the third song and, so far, it’s not that great. Oh-4 sounds kind of nice…Nevermind. 5 is not good. “Dance Anthem of the 80s” is okay.
Finding roommates is a pain in the butt.
-Me
You always were a cunning linguist, James. July 5, 2009
So,
The 4th of July hasn’t ever been a holiday I’ve gotten excited about. In general, it annoys me more than anything else. It’s just so incredibly loud. Don’t get me wrong-I love freedom and all that stuff, but I also like quiet time.
Anyway…I watched the Tour de France today. I didn’t really know who to cheer for. What really confused me was the teams. It seems that in most competitions, teams are divided up by countries, but that’s not what cycling is like. The Astana team is the one with Lance Armstrong and a whole bunch of other people. And they’re super great. The guy that won Stage 1 in Monaco today is Fabian Cancellara-he’s Swiss, not on team Astana, and I think I will be cheering for him for the next 3 weeks.
Hm. I’m watching Tomorrow Never Dies right now. A couple of weeks ago I watched Marnie, a Hitchcock movie from the early 1960s. Sean Connery was in it. So dreamy.
I don’t have anything else to say…
Things that make me happy: James Bond, pork tenderloin
Things that make me not happy: nail polish bubbles, hot weather
-Me
P.S. Today I found out that Liberace’s mother was Polish. That’s all.
National Blog Posting Month July 4, 2009
So,
I have run out of books to read in the Cary house! I have two books waiting for me at the library, but guess what…It was closed today, even though it’s only the 3rd and not the 4th. Whatever. So I looked on wordpress and saw a post that talked about the blog posting month thing and basically it’s a challenge of sorts to update your blog every single day for a whole month. I’m going to be pretty bored for the next month, so this works out fairly well I guess.
In my last post I wrote about how I didn’t know what to do about my job offer situation. But, be ready to be proud of me, I finally made a decision! I picked the rehab company! When I called the HR guy, who I have been in contact with since I first sent my resume and who was also one of the people who interviewed me (and said that I present myself very well), he asked me if I was going to make his day. That made me feel wanted and special and wonderful. The other person who has made me feel so great about myself was the other SLP (my former supervisor in grad school) that was at the school I was a sub at. My start date is around August 3rd and I hope to move a couple days before that. For a long while I contemplated living by myself or with other people. I thought I was tired of living with people in general, but in truth it’s just that I’m tired of certain types of people and their “quirks.” If I were to live by myself I would probably end up in a studio apartment that was tiny and still expensive. But for the same price, or even cheaper, I could live in an actual large apartment with other people. My best living experiences, both in undergrad and grad school, were with people I did not know prior to moving in. Also, I will meet more people if I don’t live alone.
Know how a super long time ago and on a different blog I had something along the lines of things that make me happy and things that make me not happy at the end on my posts? Well, here you go:
Things that make me happy: Belgian waffles with fresh peaches and whipped cream, shopping, and Away We Go (it was a wonderful movie)
Things that make me not happy: shin splints, people in my neighborhood that set off fireworks on July 2nd and 3rd
-Me
P.S. I know you awesome readers do not like to participate, but I think you should tell me what has made you happy (and/or not happy) recently. Do it!
I NEED ADVICE July 1, 2009
So,
There was a point at which I thought I would end up turning down all my offers. Many were Early Intervention (birth to 3 years) that would require home visits. And I don’t want to drive. The rehab place with all the Polish people told me it’d be really hard for me to do without a car. BUT they’ve been talking to me for the past few days and said they could change around their schedules to give me clinic visits so it could work out. And they’re supposed to call me so that I can give them my final decision today. So at the same time I have been trying to look for school jobs BUT all the positions are too far away from Chicago. I had been emailing/calling the Chicago Public Schools’ SLP managers, but nobody ever got back to me. UNTIL an hour ago. They said that they got my resume and would like to meet with me! And so now I don’t know what to do. I know schools and that’s what I’m good at. I love being in the schools. But in Chicago that would be a caseload of about 50-60 and very few white kids. At the rehab place, I’d be seeing lots of teeny kids (I’ve never worked with kids that young). But the caseload would be 25-30. And I’d be around Polish people. AND I’d get to work with Polish families. So I don’t know what to do. Plus, just because the school people want to talk to me, doesn’t mean that they’ll hire me. So I could end up with nothing! Email me and tell me what to do. It’s the first two letters of my first name, followed by a dot, and then my whole last name, @gmail.com
-Me
June 20, 2009
So,
I don’t have a whole lot to say about Chicago other than that it was awesome. I got offers at all 3 places I interviewed at, but I’m only considering two of them because the third seems like a bunch of boring older ladies. I have, however, run into a small problem. You see, these positions are mostly early intervention, which requires lots of home visits. And public transportation, though excellent in Chicago, would take quite a while. I don’t want to learn to drive and have a car and learn to parallel park! So I’m going to see if maybe I can negotiate or something with the place I like more (the awesome one with all the Polish people). Sigh. I also found where I want to live-Lakeview. There’s people my age, it’s not too expensive, and it’s pretty safe. I still can’t believe how expensive decent apartments are, but whatev. I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. I went to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. I did a tiny bit of shopping (I can’t do anymore because I need to save my dollars). I went to a show at The Second City, which is this comedy club where a whole bunch of people who are famous now got their start (Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, Chris Farley, Dan Akroyd, and loads more!). It was super funny. On my way from the hotel to the subway/train, I saw Martin Short filming something for TBS with a great dane-I walked right by and was like 2 feet away. On the plane from Chicago to Raleigh, a little kid sat next to me (he was like 8 or 10). His mom and younger brother sat across the aisle. He offered me some starbursts! It was adorable. I was also reading one of my vampire books and on the cover it has a drawn girl sitting on a flying tiger with a vampire looking on. He kept on leaning over to try to look at it.
The End
-Me
This beat be bumpin’, bumpin’. June 15, 2009
So,
I had quite the creepy-grabby-guy experience at Lucy’s/PT’s last night. But let me start at the beginning of that evening…
At 7:30, I went to a Tap Festival show thing at the ArtsCenter. And it was awesome! It really made me miss tap dancing. I had a fantastic seat and it was all just wonderful. Well, there was one thing that bugged me a little. The audience clapped A LOT, which got in the way of my hearing the taps. But anyhow…
At around 10, I went to Ham’s with Katie and some other physics people. It was fun! A group of us (well, Katie, some physics people, and me) had gone there on Tuesday to get the cheap cheeseburgers and a beer tower (or two). This time I got a really tasty Long Island Iced Tea. Mmmm. Nice and strong. And Law and Order: SVU was playing on a tv in the background, along with an episode of Pushing Daisies. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Sometime around 11:30 we went to Lucy’s/PT’s and nobody was dancing. So we sat and had some beer (I had just one). Slowly more people came and we got up to dance (the girls in the group, not the guys). Side note: One of the physics boys was kind of cute and he was funny and he knew about tv and movies. Anyway… The first guy that made me laugh really hard was the butt-dancer. He started dancing behind me and pushing his back (and butt) into mine. It may not sound funny, but it was. Especially since I had a mini-conversation with another guy I knew, while butt-dancing. Sometime around 1, it started. It. It was a Greek (or Turkish) econ grad student. Two guys came up to Katie and me and asked if we wanted to dance. So we said sure. The funny thing is is that after everything ended and we were gone, Katie said that she knew they weren’t American because they asked. Back to the story. So she got the nice one. And I ended up with the…aggressive one. His hands just kept on going back to my butt. And I didn’t really care about that because it made me laugh so hard. And I mean…who can resist it anyway… (J/K). It gets better. Every once in a while he’d move some of my hair, to get to my neck. This, too, made me laugh. Then, his hand moved up and I most definitely pushed that away. I mean, seriously, you don’t do that stuff in public! And then we danced some more. All in all, it was an amusing night and a pretty fun way to spend my last night in Chapel Hill. Oh and I forgot! When we first started dancing, he asked what my name was. When I told him, he asked me if I was Polish and then he said my name the Polish way! I don’t usually make it a point to dance quite like that. In the past, it was either in a joking way with pool table guy or Phillip or Kevin even. Or in a I-know-this-guy-already-and-like-him way.
Okay. I’m going to Chicago tomorrow! Wahoo! Monday and Tuesday are my interview and fun stuff and shopping days. Wednesday is my Polish food and a lot of apartment hunting day. There’s this one pretty awesome apartment right around the corner (literally) from a bunch of Polish stores and restaurants! The whole building is pretty new (3 years) and the kitchen is big and has stainless steel appliances. AND it even has a washer and a dryer in the apartment! It seems like most other places just have a couple in the basement of the building.
-Me
Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worry on the doorstep. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street. June 4, 2009
So,
It has been a while since I last posted. Work has kept me super busy. The nice thing is that in the past month, I have realized that I definitely chose the right field to go into. I love love love being a speech-language pathologist! I still haven’t gotten used to waking up at 6 everyday, but it’s not super hard anymore either. I usually get back home between 3:30 and 4, which I guess is nice. I’m almost done with my application for temporary licensure in Illinois, so I just have to get a job there. The closer June 16th gets, the more nervous I am. But hurray for Chicago! I’m excited.
What else? I’ve become addicted to the Sookie Stackhouse books. After I read Anna Karenina (and ended up not liking it), I decided I wanted to read something light that did not require much thought. I remembered that True Blood (the show about vampires on HBO that I watched in the Fall) was based on books, so I looked them up and bought the first two in the series. I read those two pretty quickly and then I tried to read the Junot Diaz book that I had bought, but I kept on thinking about vampires. So then I called the Bull’s Head bookshop and asked if they had any of those books. And guess what! They did. So I got the next three. There are 8 in all and I am now on the 4th. I really liked the HBO series, but I always felt weird watching it because there are lots of graphic sex scenes in just about every episode. Anyway…
I am giving up on ever finding a pair of flats that will be comfortable. Nordstroms is having their semi-annual shoe sale and I bought this really cute pair of green leather flats. And they were really comfortable when I tried them on. But then I wore them to school and found out, sadly, that they hurt my big toe. I spent that day walking weird-ly because it made it hurt less, but now the muscle or tendon in my leg hurts a whole bunch.
Um. I bought some more stuff at Anthropologie. I got a cute short sleeved shirt cross stitching on it that was on sale. And I got a gray and white semi-fancy short sleeved jacket that I plan on wearing to my interview. I love that store.
Oh I know what else. My PE coaches have an office next to mine. There are two. One is a bit older and is retiring. The other one is around my age and cute. But I don’t know if I actually think he’s cute or if he’s cute because there are like 4 men total that work in the school. One is a kindergarten teacher. I always wonder what he’s like because, seriously, what is a male kindergarten teacher like. There’s also this “science guy” who goes into various classes and teaches kids science. He wears bow ties and oversized regular ties. I think he wears them to be silly, but my grad student thinks that he’s trying to look nice and fancy. Who knows? Because of my wonderful detective skills, I found out his name and looked him up on facebook. He graduated from UNC in 2008 and I can’t see his profile. However, he is with a girl in his picture, who is most likely his girlfriend.
Anyway.
I’m so happy that So You Think You Can Dance is back on tv. There are these two brothers who are in the top 16 guys (they made it through all the tough auditions but there’s one more cut because they need only 10 guys and 10 girls for the show). So these guys have a Polish last name-Kasprzak. That’s a sort of common last name in Poland, I think. It’s the last name of my grandma’s neighbor. But instead of pronouncing it the Polish way, they say it as Kas-per-zac. They’re really good dancers.
I think that’s all.
-Me
Play your instrumet, play your instrument, play your instrument and pass it to the left! May 22, 2009
So,
I am getting very tired of putting up with people’s bullshit. Very tired.
School is going great. It’s making me think that I don’t want to do Early Intervention, but we’ll see. I have 28 kids on my caseload. I see most of them 3 times a week and the rest twice a week. I don’t really like doing the big groups with the Intermediate AU class, but you do what you gotta do. Wednesdays are really hard because from 12 until 2:30, I see 5 groups of AU kids back to back. The last one is actually one boy, but he’s worse than my hardest group, times ten. If you didn’t know what autism was, I’d show him to you. My office/therapy room (which is actually pretty big) is right next to one of the primary autism classes, so it’s always super loud and I can always hear him yelling. When I see him, we always end up on the floor, crawling around, picking him up, pulling him out from under the table, etc. Today I found a radio in the room and listened to classical music for about an hour during my break. It was nice. Yesterday I had one of the AU kids freak out on me. Before speech, his teacher had told me that he was having a tough day. Note: this should always make you nervous-autistic kids having particularly bad days. So he came to the session a little late. One of the things I do is make PowerPoint instruction books with photos for any art projects that we do. We were making ladybugs yesterday and there was one small step that I didn’t think was important enough to make a page for. Well. I learned to not ignore that next time. When I told the kid that was having a bad day that we had to do something not in the book, he went crazy and started yelling/crying- “YOU HAVE TO TURN THE PAGE! YOU CAN”T DO THAT! THAT’S NOT IN THE BOOK! NOOOOOOO!” It was bad. Then there’s this other boy who always thinks other kids are copying him. When he picks orange and one of the other kids picks orange, he fixates on how that kid is copying him. He grabs the paper and for 30 minutes he keeps on returning to the same thought. I just finished writing a social story about copying. So that should be better. In the Int. class there’s one kid that’s super low and he yells and jumps around and yeeeah. The teacher put him in the bathroom for like 15 minutes and stood with her back on the door so he couldn’t get out. He was pounding and yelling and I couldn’t believe it. But I was told that that is normal for him.
I was looking at the menu at The Pump Room, which is the restuarant in the hotel I’ll be staying at in Chicago. I saw that they have a bottle of wine that costs $1100. Over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS! Wowee. I’m excited that I’ll get a gigantic room with my very own king bed that’s part of Chicago’s Gold Coast (one of the nicest parts of Chicago). And the thing is that it’s not much more expensive than my teeny NYC hotel room.
-Me
