Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

My upcoming weekend is jam-packed!

While I’ve met one “chocolate drop” (Justin) a few times, I’ve never had the opportunity to see them play live. At least not Live live. I did, however, see video of a full show they did in Amsterdam a few months ago, and it knocked my socks off. Even though they are from here, they don’t seem to play here all that much. Tomorrow night, they are playing at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Their concert will be followed up by a film, but I can’t stay for that, because it’s The Crab Man Jake‘s birthday! Not sure exactly what will ensue, but I’m sure it will include food, beers, and hilarity. Yay!

Taken from the Fabchannel show

Saturday is still a bit unclear for me, because there are many things going on, but what I do know is that I will be finishing up my night seeing John Darnielle (lead singer of The Mountain Goats) and probably several other bands at Bull City Headquarters. They are playing a benefit called “The Eye Opener: A Celebration of Trans-Continental Awareness”. This benefits a group of transgendered North Carolinians who are on this trip to India. I don’t know a lot about the group, but I do know that when John plays locally, I go.

Here he is at a recent benefit in NYC. You know, so you can kind of imagine the awesomeness that might ensue:

Sunday is a small brunch for my friend Robert’s Birthday with my favorite people ever. I’m hoping there will be lots of hats.

And so to review, I will be everywhere. Maybe I’ll see you!

$2.50 pints all day at Helios, followed by the Blogger Bash at Edge Office. I’m on it.

I’ll be doing myself a favor and NOT toting the film camera out tonight. I’m drowning in a sea of negatives – some still in rolls; some cut, but not in holders; some in holders but not scanned; some scanned but not edited; some edited and not posted.

I spent the latter part of yesterday watching Jeep and doing little tests. Her allergies are now treated, so she’s no longer got the runny nose, but she has still been hanging out under the bed, under the chair – just low to the ground. She hasn’t had that growly demeanor she has when she’s feeling bad. I kept her out in the living room with the bedroom door closed for a few hours. She’s avoided any chance to jump up on to furniture on her own. I put some little bits of food up on her favorite chair. She was interested, but it took a LOT of cajoling to get her to jump. She also was really reluctant to chase the laser pointer “bug.” Watching her get up, I noticed she seemed a little wobbly.

I think my little girly has arthritis. The doc had mentioned glucosamine for kitties (we had gone through all the possibilities), and looking it up, it seems like the right way to go. I think one reason she’s been feeling bad is that she’s had a few things bothering her (allergies AND arthritis), so when any actual bug gets her, it really knocks her out. It also explains the more frequent “accidents” just outside the litterbox.

I looked it up. A kitty cat that’s 11 years old is like a 60 year-old person. It’s hard for me to think of my girls as seniors, but the truth is, they are.

I am now spending a lot of time following Jeep around, attempting to anticipate her needs. When she looks longingly up at a chair, I pick her up. If I notice she’s been sleeping a while, I help her get down and walk with her to the litterbox. I could be making this up, but she totally seems to think I’m her hero now. She seems to be feeling better for the first time in a long while, and whenever I help her out, she purrs really loudly and gives me noogies. It’s nice to be appreciated! And it’s great to be able to finally help her out. I’ve been feeling pretty helpless to do that recently.

Starting a business is difficult. While there was a pre-existing business in place, it was just one woman doing her thing. While she does have an office that is set up and a billing person, neither the office nor the billing structures are set up for me. More importantly, there is not a large group of people sitting outside said office asking for my services. Nope, I have to go find those myself. The woman I work with has been AMAZING regarding marketing. She has new ideas every day. I get these cute emails all the time. She thinks she’s annoying me with them, but honestly, I couldn’t be happier about them. She’s thinking about the part of a business that, for whatever reason, my mind doesn’t think about on its own. So I’m happily (at least usually) entering back into the world of professionalism – reading the latest research/information about ADHD (since I presume to know something about it and am now a bit behind), making lists, and generally “Getting Things Done.”

I’d pulled out my old PDA again and was starting to use it for listmaking, but all the software for it is pretty outdated. Since it was upgrade time for me with Verizon, I opted for – drum roll, please – a Blackberry (aka Crackberry). I love that I can just throw tasks, ideas, and appointments in there with only a couple of clicks, and it’s all sync’d up with my online stuff. MAGIC!

Crack

There are now two phones in my purse at all times: one for work calls and the other which contains pretty much everything I need to do my job: calendar, address book, email, even MP3’s to listen to. I even went so far as to download some free online talks about ADHD to get my mind back in the right mode of thinking. It’s HARD when you’re out of the game for a while. I’m SO glad I did that, because what I learned from listening to it a few days really caught me up so much, so that today, when I met with a psychiatrist who will hopefully be sending referrals my way, I sounded as if I had been thinking about all of these things all the time for the last year, rather than about things like getting a job and the licensure exam.

Dad had emergency back surgery, and I keep meaning to blog about that. Since mom had one knee replaced in early April and another in early May, his back surgery wasn’t ideally timed. I went down there for several days to help. Back now and busy. I’m working hard trying to get work for the private practice, but since it’s mid-summer, it’s not really kicking in yet. Got a Blackberry, but I can’t for the life of me work out how to sync my contacts (from GMail, Airset, etc.) with the device. That’s driving me nuts. Jeep has a cold. I was dating an awesome guy, but it wasn’t a great fit so we broke up, but it was like the best breakup ever – no drama, lots of respect. It’s a weird thing to be happy about, but it was mutual and the right thing, and so it goes. I need to contact that woman about the teaching job. Being gone got me off track. I can’t find my sunhat, and I’m going to fry later on the Triangle Film Meetup. I need to get my sleep schedule back to normal. This place is such a mess. What does one do with a perfectly good CD multi-disc player? Everyone else has iPods, too. I don’t have the space for it. I need to shampoo the carpet in here. I wonder if Shannon will have any Zyrtec in her bag. I’m out. I should have left sooner. Which film should I use? I should blog more. Should I join that no-frills gym around the corner? Still, the sunhat thing is the big Dukkha in my life at this exact moment.

This old self-portrait seemed about right