Rambling? Yup. It's Rambling . . .

Effexor. Don’t ever take it. Even if it works, missing a day is a bitch. It’s as if the meds had never been in one’s system. It’s sick. Not to mention it is a $200+ dollar drug. Without insurance. We have a high deductible to hit before insurance kicks in. So puking up $200 a month for some spin-off of tri-cyclic depressants, because it’s new and oh-so-exciting and if not we’d have to use those old one’s with all their side effects. Hmm. Name a few. Do they include a hard, fast fall back to depressed out of the ability to simply put on shoes and walk outside? Tingling down the arms? Episodes of vertigo? Inability to focus? All at once? Or is it just “weight gain?” Because I can handle that.

            Of course, that raises the questions of how. Of course you can, I can hear Reagan saying, of course. Smart-ass. Hey—if my counselor can call me that, I’ll shoot it right back at her. It’s an equal playing field.

            That may be what I like most about working with Reagan, why she is the first counselor who actually stuck. She treats me like an equal. She doesn’t hide her humanity from me. It helps that I went to her with my palms up saying, “I don’t know what I need; I’m following directions. The doctor-doctor told me to come here. You know, the one you go to if you’re sick or need a physical . . .” Even so, while the client-therapist relationship is respected, she tells me stories of her morning runs, her time back with family in Chicago—she’s not cold. We have mutual friends. It’s a small area. But I’d bet, if we had met through those people, we’d have hit it off as friends. But I can only guess so and I can only trust her because of her openness. 

I Wanna be like Peter Pan . . .

What do you want to be when you grow up??

Well, I didn’t have plans to grow up, actually . . .

What does possibly graduating college have to do with anything?

Fine.

I could hop into the teacher circuit. Get credentialed and find out if that hayride is worth the fleas. That was the plan. But in my drug induced dreams (kidding . . .) I have come up with some projects (that other, more motivated people can do for me)

Bikes for Better

Problem: Colleges are so stinkin’ wasteful. I see it every year when Calvin hauls these big-ass metal catch-alls for crap onto campus—a lot of them. Last year, I saw two kids—excuse me, young men—throw a bike each into one of these metal monstrosities.  !  Excuse me? What on earth do you thi—oh wait, you’re not thinking. Currently, there is a bike missing a wheel and no longer chained to, simply leaned against, a bike rack. It needs a new chain. The gears? Probably rusted out. The frame? Fine. Perfectly fine. Trash? No.

Solution: Bikes for the community program. Create a program to collect defunct bikes, salvage parts, and create functioning bikes for low-income families in the neighborhood.

Bona fide

Be Open, Not Alone. Friends In Disguise Education. Maybe that’s an overboard, stretched title. ;) Junior year of high school I worked with Keidi Lewis (Beck) in the ESL classroom. We had a small group of students from both the High School and the Junior High. One boy from the junior high had somehow missed a huge chunk of education, including cultural expectations concerning behavior and authority. I loved him. When he became too out of control or mouthed off or was simply distracting the other students, I would go on walks with him. Often, he needed to blow off steam. I tried to help him do so without damaging anything, gently guiding him away from trouble. Once he calmed, he would start to talk. He had an excited little soul, very innocent in some ways, although ragged for such a youngster. We would have push-up, pull up, and sit up contests, then race on the track. ESL? Mmmm, not so much. Worthwhile? I hope, for him, that it was. He was alone in his anger so often but when we left the classroom and he realized I cared, he opened. We both learned from each other; we were Friends In Disguise. Maybe there is something out there like that. Mentoring. I don’t know. That’d be sweet.

I could teach ESL abroad. Go on backpacking trips with inner-city kids. Start a Trader Joe’s in Grand Rapids. It would do well. Get a job at Mountain Roasting. Take it over for Steve. And totally revamp the sucker. It’s too expensive and the quality has gone ker-ploop.

Or start my own Coffee Shop and Bakery with Eric. More to come on that one :)

The blog returns--BANG!!

“One’s drinkin’, one’s smokin’, one’s takin’ pills” (“Takin’ Pills” Pistol Annies) . . . well, I think I fill those three roles for my apartment. I doubt, to be a professional stereotype-er, any of the three have smoked. Drank? Meh. With their parents or on abroad trips. Voted left? Hell no. One has a “NOBAMA” sticker on her car. Or had. Her uncle pulled off the N. She flipped when she saw it saying “OBAMA” and took it off entirely. The other two of the apartment, their eyes just about fell out of their head upon hearing the story, the horror! So I brought an Obama poster back from the “Calvin Democrats” table. It’s a pity there was no Green Party table. Last I checked, my overall views balanced closer to Jill Stein. I surprised myself. I thought I’d be uncannily more conservative than I'd like to think of myself. Anyway. All that to say, the boy-band-listening, loud, excitable juniors with whom I live and I are quite different. It’s somewhat entertaining. Lucky for all of us, I’m quiet, and keep my country to myself (“you can kiss my country ass”). The Spanish cigarettes are in their original packaging, in California; the alcohol, well, it’s a dry campus, and they’re not 21 and I’m cheap; but am I takin’ pills? They sure as hell hope so. They don’t know it. But they hope so. Or there will be an Annie shaped carcass slothing about stupidly.