Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

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.

They apparently forgot to include the “you passed” enclosure in a letter they mailed out on September 21st!!! But it’s good news, people. I passed!

So yesterday, I called to schedule my state licensure exam. Apparently, I had 4 months to schedule, and because I had on my national exam blinders, I forgot about the deadline. I’m really glad I learned this on the phone before receiving the letter in the mail yesterday. I’ve been waiting for the pass/fail test results from the national exam, and when I saw that letter in my box, I got really anxious. I opened and saw the word “failure”. Eep! Had a mini-panic, then realized that this was what the woman on the phone had explained - that failure to take the state exam in time results in a failure. There aren’t too many repercussions of this “failure”, only that I have to take and pass the exam within four months… Yeah, that was the plan anyway.

My state exam is now scheduled for October 9th. I’ve heard it’s pretty straightforward. The contents are all printable on about 40 sheets of paper - nothing like the reams of information included on the national exam. Soon, I will be licensed. Oh yes, I shall be licensed.

I’ve avoided blogging too much, since on Monday through Friday, I’m trying to remain focused on professional tasks. I’ve also started setting an alarm to make sure I get up at a reasonable time. Without structure, my sleep and rising times have moved later and later. The side benefit of this new plan is that I’ve bought a new alarm clock, which I keep set to WCPE. My friend Tara is a DJ there during the night shift (”Sleepers Awake”). Despite an extensive classical musical education, my listening time has primarily been devoted to non-classical music. It’s nice to revisit this music once again. The side benefit is that my cats have started sleeping near the radio when it’s on. They apparently like classical music.

I’ve seen some wonderful gigs recently. I’ve written about Andrew Bird before (The review was actually picked up on Scenestars, too). I won’t review him again here, but I will say that this was probably the best of the times I have seen him. He is talented, visionary, unique, quirky, incisive, and seeing him was an utter delight for me. I’ve never been a huge Elvis Costello fan, but seeing him with the symphony with friends on a nice night was a treat. We hit up Whole Foods and brought rosemary bread, Boursin cheese, organic grapes, spinach dip, etc. Part of the time was spent on the lawn, and part was spent in the first few rows taking some excellent pictures.

This Saturday was The Old Ceremony at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, and again, I’m limiting the length of this post since I need to be doing so many other things, but it was a wonderful show. The OTT review I wrote after the first time I saw them still applies, although I will add that I’d forgotten how much better they are live. I love their CD Our One Mistake (available on their web site) and listen to it in the car all the time (have since that first show), but I love that live, the cello and violin are turned up quite a bit more in the mix. This was the first time I’d seen them on their home turf, and the crowd was definitely appreciative. I’m very happy with my pictures from the night, and some of Brian’s pretty much blew my mind.

There’s a little bit of video from the gig. This is their fun encore song, with their string players rocking out on tambourine and cowbell, and who knows what the keyboard player was doing back there. I couldn’t really see, since I was dancing my ass off. Because I was dancing (i.e. moving around) so much, I passed my camera to Shannon to videotape the song. She misunderstood and thought I wanted her to videotape me dancing. So yeah, listen to the fun song and watch me dance around like a fool.

The Old Ceremony Performing “Dumbed Down” at Cat’s Cradle, 9/20/2007 from abbyladybug on Vimeo.

Be sure to pay attention at around 2:35 when Django throws in a riff from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Come ON! How much do I love that?! Oh, I love it a lot!

My mom keeps asking if anyone else took pictures of me in my tiara, and yes… I must admit, I’ve been carrying this thing around since I finished my test on Thursday. You know… just in case! This particular tiara moment was captured by Logiblue (aka Oliver, aka Robbo, aka Robb or Rob… take your pick!)

I highly recommend checking out all of his pictures though. He’s one of my favorites on Flickr and has a real knack for making images look cinematic, despite his recent insistence that he is “losing his cinematic mojo”.

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Everyone likes a tiara (Oliver, Josh, and Alice):

Saw The Mountain Goats for the second time last night. And by “The Mountain Goats”, I mean John Darnielle and his guitar. Amusingly, though, he did walk out on stage alone and say, “Hi, we’re The Mountain Goats.” It was a great show. He played a lot of really old songs, many I didn’t know. So of course today, I’m going to have to look into his back catalog much more carefully! There were some real gems. I think he was kicking himself for some prior heavy-dabbling in alternate tunings. Without a guitar tech at the ready, it meant he had to recall and implement these on the spot. And some were ones he hadn’t done in a while, so recalling just how they went wasn’t exactly effortless.

The crowd didn’t mind, though. They love their John. Although, if you ask me, I’d say they were pretty darn demanding, yelling and screaming requests after every song. I guess that’s what you get with such a large repertoire, and a ton of renegade MP3’s of live performances all over the internets. He responded to one guy’s constant LOUD requests for some obscure number by explaining that he barely remembered the song at all. Some guy on some radio station played it for him, it sounded vaguely familiar… He acknowledged that it was, in fact, one of his children, but knew little more about it than that. This response did not dissuade his audience though. The yells continued all the way through to the end.

What a charismatic and genuine performer. His lyrics are honest and specific and always manage to evoke something so salient for me (and clearly the rest of his fans). He uses his voice in the most unique way to express what he’s saying. He’s a storyteller. If you have the chance, don’t you dare miss him.

There’s a relatively popular song of his that I woke up singing to myself this morning. It seems fitting, given that this is the morning after my big exam. I do feel that I “woke up new” today. It’s about a breakup, but you’ll see how it might (and in fact does) fit my current state of mind:

On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time
I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared
And I began to talk to myself almost immediately
Not being used to being the only person there

Wanna hear what I’m talking about? Listen to some tunes stream on Hype Machine. (Hope that works.)