Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

I’ve done a search for you on Flickr to share with you the damage that was sustained during these tornadoes in downtown Atlanta. It’s really pretty mindblowing. This is something that just doesn’t happen in downtown Atlanta – at least it wasn’t supposed to.

Take a look: S L I D E S H O W

If you see any picture where you’d like more information, double click on the center of it, and you will see a description and a link to the picture page. There is some repetition in the pictures for two reasons. First, many people have uploaded pictures from media sources (the same picture uploaded many times). Second, there are many pictures of the same scene that are very similar to one another. Notice that you can speed up the rate pictures are shown to you at the bottom of the page.

This is a stunning set of images. I love that Flickr can do this for me: let me see what I couldn’t see from my home here in Raleigh.

I spent 18 of my 38 years in Atlanta, and today and yesterday, they had some seriously bad weather – like nothing they’ve ever had. At least not that I can remember, or my parents can remember, or the local weatherman (Glenn Burns) can remember. My parents spent the day watching doppler radar. Lots of love to my people in the area. I couldn’t imagine that Atlanta would ever declare a state of emergency because of freakin’ TORNADOES! How crazy is that?

Link describing the crazy weather

A Message From Lesley from abbyladybug on Vimeo.

There’s really just too much to say about my high school reunion. It was overwhelming and wonderful in countless ways. As my friend Lesley kept saying, “We went to high school at a really special place.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Northside was part of the Atlanta Public Schools. It was the magnet for Performing Arts (yes, like “Fame”!), yet it was located in one of the richest parts of the city. We also had the only German and Russian classes in the school system so some kids came for that. As a result, we had kids from every part of the city. Some were in the performing arts program. Some weren’t. When kids got kicked out of the fancy private schools of Northwest Atlanta, they went to their home school, which was my school. We had extreme diversity in every way you can imagine. We had people from every part of the city, every income bracket, and racially, I recall that we were around 50/50 black/white. I’ve heard other figures, but for all intents and purposes, that’s about how it felt. At the time, there wasn’t much conflict between black and white, but there was division. The football team was mostly black, as were the cheerleaders. The Latin club and the soccer teams were more white. These are just examples, but it was true in many ways. The only exception to this was the School of Performing Arts. I think that because we were engaged in cooperative activities, we knew each other better there. Still, at both this reunion and the one I went to 10 years ago, we all talked about how that kind of diversity changed us. Pretty Kumbaya experiences, and I mean that in the best way.

One thing that was really special about this weekend was that I had a chance to spend a lot of time with both Lesley (my best friend in high school, even though she didn’t arrive until senior year) and Tristan (my high school boyfriend). While I have been in touch with Lesley since high school, Tristan reminded me that we hadn’t seen each other since early 1991! I couldn’t believe it had been that long. In retrospect, looking back at both my high school experience and at the weekend, I think that my relationships with these two people made me who I am today. First love is expected to do that, and Tristan and I were together for about three and a half years. We had some turbulence at the end of that relationship and got a chance to talk about some of those things. I wouldn’t have guessed I needed it, but now that it’s happened, I’m so glad it did.

There were some things I learned about Lesley that I never knew, even though we’ve always been close. She said that before she moved to Atlanta, she hardly ever went out. She didn’t have many friends because she was expected to babysit for her much younger brother, and she had an after-school job. For her, moving to Atlanta was a real blossoming period for her. That time was the same for me. She assumed I’d always been one to have lots of adventures. I assumed she always had. I think at the time there was some perception among others that we were being party girls, but knowing what was actually going on, that wasn’t true at all. I still got straight A’s that year. I probably smoked more cigarettes than before, but I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs or getting into any real trouble. I was just having a whole lot of fun. I also think people didn’t know how bright Lesley was. She was never as into academics as me (although I’m sure her grades were fine), but she is smart as a tack. Ask her anything. ANYTHING! If she doesn’t know, she will be an expert by the end of the day. I’m so glad she’s moving back to Atlanta, because that means I will see her more. Excellent news for me!

Of course it was wonderful to see Caitlin, Renee, Tatyana, Eric, Todd, and so many other great friends from back in the day, but I felt that I needed a bit of an ode to the two biggies: the two that made me me and with whom I’d somewhat fallen out of close touch. I will always be grateful to them both. There may be times I feel frustrated that I am single right now, but I never go a day where I don’t feel loved by my friends.

Soon, I’m going to write about my evening with Todd and Shannon… another complete treat that I wasn’t at all expecting.

Since receiving my national exam results, I’ve been plotting the best next steps. I have been working on a generic letter to send out with cover letters to agencies serving children in the area. After discussing things with my parents and my friend Kathryn, I have decided to wait until my state exam results arrive to send these letters off. The statemement “I am fully licensed” carries much more weight than “I expect to be fully licensed soon”. The wait should not be more than another few weeks at the most. I had already called one place before making this decision, and they have requested a CV, which I have sent over to them.

At this point, I am not being picky. As long as there is a job that is at least part time and is anywhere in the Triangle, I am willing to apply for it. The one thing I HAVE decided is that I am no longer (at least for now) going to send my CV off to group practices that do not have specific job openings. While an agency – like a school or a United Way non-profit – without a specific listing is OK, I have learned the hard way that in group practices, they are very tempted by someone with my experience, but that adding another partner to a practice that they hadn’t planned on adding is very unlikely. It is so diheartening to interview repeatedly with a place, only to find that they can not actually hire anyone at all. They just really, really liked the idea of hiring someone like me. it’s flattering, but it builds my hopes up a lot for a job that doesn’t really exist.

One thing I’ve learned is that my daily energy is so much more important when unemployed than when employed. If I’m feeling sluggish on a given day when I’m employed, I am carried through by the tasks awaiting me. As an unemployed person who must wake up each day and orchstrate my activities in a vacuum (so to speak), a headache or bad allergies can really do me in. When I was working, I’d have a client who was meeting me at the office at 9am for an assessment or something. And so I’d have to be there, and I’d have someone counting on me. Today, I didn’t feel well, and after half a day of trying desperately to get up enough energy to think about making a plan… I decided to accept defeat, take a few ibuprofen, and rest.

In a few days, I’m heading to Hotlanta, where I grew up, for my 20th high school reunion. Back in the day, I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” Right now, I’m not feeling all that successful. I’ve had this script in my head for it for a while, as my friends will tell you. Here it is: “Yes, I may be divorced, childless, unemployed, and living off my parents at age 37, but on the flipside, I have a Ph.D., and I didn’t get fat.” Yeah, I know. Tacky, tacky, tacky, and pretty much the worst way possible to present myself, but it sort of makes me laugh. And I’ve never been a fan of sugar-coating.

I know that I’m in a transitional period right now. I know it will pass. I know that I have done the best I can in the face of an unexpected divorce at age 32. I understand why the professional transition from Boston to Raleigh has been so difficult and drawn out. I’ll get there. I’ve somehow emerged from everything with good self-esteem, good friends, and virtually no regrets, resentments, or grudges. I’d say that’s a success. Sure, I’d really like to meet someone nice and still have the opportunity to have a raise a child, but I won’t compromise my standards to make that happen. I won’t settle for less than what I deserve. I still have this crazy idea that it will all work out. I hope I’m right.

Hey, at least I have a cute outfit to wear. After much searching, I found a nice dress while out and about with Katy a few weeks ago.

Other important things going on in my life right now:

• My parents left for Africa today. They are going to be “off the grid,” which will be weird. I don’t see them (with my eyes) all that much, but I am usually very in touch with them. Hope they have a grand adventure.
• I’m thinking a lot about my friend Poornima. She has just flown home to India to be with her father, who has been taken ill.