Hairy Tales!

Carleton College alumni are unique, especially when it comes to their hair! Some alumni, such as Andrew E. use their hair to bring them good luck for intense frisbee tournaments

Others such as the developer of the HAIR PROJECT uses his hair to raise money for good causes.

Andrew was a good friend of mine in school. He not only has stupendously creative hair now, but was also one of the co-founders of the moustache club at Carleton, a very popular facial hair oriented club on campus ;) Basically, the coolest guys around! They did funky things with moustaches, sideburns and more! I also can attest to the fact that he owns a pair of stunning hot pink, super short shorts!

Ari, was in the class bellow mine at Carleton. I remember him as VERY smart and VERY flamboyant ;) I remember many stories. I found him by accident on the web but am very glad that I did!

Can anyone top their hair? Perhaps I should work with them in introducing a new "hair therapy" department to Lesley!

Bikes Are Great!

There is no bike in this picture but you will have to use my helmet as proof that I was just on a bike! Even though I took this bike ride over two days ago , I still am thinking about it. Every time I do, I have to smile! I felt very silly on Sunday and had a lot of fun

Nevertheless, today was a terrific day, too, even in bad weather and without a bike. I had some great chats, accomplished some chores and feel relatively prepared to lead three groups for the first time independently tomorrow!

Have a good night
-L

Midnite

I am currently listening to:

Midnite's song "Love The Life You Live"

I LOVE this song so much! It is wonderful!

"Love the life you live/ Lead the life you love"

"Your body is your temple" is a great line. It is so true! I often forget that I am not at war with my body. My body does not deserve a lot of unhealthy food nor does it deserve an unhealthy diet. My soul is a guest within my body and I need to cherish my body as the keeper of my soul. My physical health reflects my mental and spiritual health. Nevertheless, my aim is not to overwhelm myself by trying to achieve sanity, spiritual elevation and physical perfection at once. I believe that by concentrating on making myself healthier physically, hopefully I will have more energy to pursue spiritual and intellectual interests. Comparatively, when I try to enhance my life spiritually I often find that I feel more supported and confident in my physical and mental abilities. Trying to improve just one or two simple things in my life can create a ripple effect throughout many different facets.


So, on which aspect will I concentrate first to relieve my stress? Food is one concern right now. My perspective and approach to eating has been strongly affected by the Corn Interview that I heard on NPR yesterday! Wow! It made me second-guess a lot of food choices I have made in the past few years. I started becoming paranoid that I, too, would join the ranks of urban youth who have begun to be diagnosed as an "over-fed but under-nourished" population.

I don't really think that I need to worry too much, however I am definitely going to try to consume less corn products from now on or at least balance my corn intake with other foods! This will sound silly but I never really thought of corn-syrup or vegetable oil as corn products and they're in everything! I also did not know about the devestating effects of corn on the environment and the economy. I think everything must be taken with a grain of salt, but it is helpful to hear the author's perspective.

Back to my health watch discussion- Sleep is another issue. When I get stressed I consume more sugar and caffeine and then I sleep less and then I become less efficient and more moody so I consume more sugar and caffeine to produce the same amount of work but with much more effort and stress while staying up later . . . you get the cyclic point. So, goal #2 is to get to sleep earlier so that I am not as tired and relatively will not need caffeine or sugar to keep me awake and functional.

Goal #3 is to slowly start working exercise back into my life. I also need to start taking care of my knees and I have an appointment on Tuesday with my PCP. I am writing this blog as a reminder to myself to follow my doctor's directions for care this time and not disregard the physical therapy as "pointless" as I have before.

After all "your body is your temple, your one and only temple" and so I need to start respecting it!

Good night all
-L

April Reminder

Just a reminder April has one of the highest rates of suicide. Unfortunately I'm seeing it mostly in highschool aged children right now.

For some ideas on why it happens mostly in spring check out: Why? To understand a bit more of what is going on at the suicide hotline where I work go type in:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14238237p-15058718c.html

Clients who plan suicides with guns either seem to not want to or do not have the chance to call suicide hotlines very often. Their method is too immediate. ;( Other methods give you a fighting chance to think things out and ask for help. My personal, unofficial observation has been that people who plan suicides with guns have a better chance of blocking their suicidal thoughts if they have already developed a relationship with someone at a suicide hotline or clinic- i.e. if they feel connected to some source of help.

If you, a loved one or a friend need help and/or are suffering from major depression, bipolar disorder and/or a disorder on the Schizophrenic spectrum please check out some of these resources:

• National Suicide Prevention - list of all the resources available for suicide prevention per state.
  
• Facts and Risk Assessment - A list of suicide facts, target populations, risk factors and further links for prevention

I just finished a relatively informal presentation on suicide assessment yesterday. I will keep adding to this list to provide further support. However, the NSP should provide a pretty good starting place.

Have a good weekend!
-L

Toots and the Maytals

Toots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What can I say? Comments I heard were: "Amazing experience!”” Pure energy & reviving!" I'm not sure if I can describe it accurately. It was a complex and primarily emotional experience.

A few of us went down to Avalon to see Toots and the Maytals last night. Toot's music transmitted a sense of soul and positive energy of which I have never encountered. He used his musicality and variety of musical styles to manipulate the concert's energy. I was captivated by the music. He would mix rock/funk & reggae to rev us up, slow country & reggae to cool us down and then he ended with a more gospel/reggae mix to leave us with an elevated spirit.

I was lucky enough to hold his hands for a minute. I have never had that opportunity at any concert. It meant more to me to hear his music once I felt that I had a personal connection.

I have not overlooked the fact that most of Toot's audiences in the USA are white. Yet the vibe at the concert last night was such a nonverbal and transcendental experience that I prefer not to bring a critical analysis of race, Jamaican music, American culture etc into my concert blog. If you would like to comment, fine, but I refuse to go there right now.

Biking the Marathon

Today I joined my friend Julius and biked to the Wellesley Hills portion of the Boston Marathon. We were in time to see the top women's and men's runners. Fantastic!

However, the most impressive guy by far was a middle-aged man running about a 7 min mile while juggling!!!! He is my hero! You may see me practicing juggle-running up and down my street now. It was so cool! I can juggle and I can run a single 7minute mile, but I cannot do both at once and certainly not for 13, potentially 26 miles! Wow!

I had never biked along with runners .The whole experience was new and a lot of fun!

Lesson for today: Human beings are capable of many amazing feats. If we can juggle and race what else can we do?
-L

" What you plan will never happen, something else will!"

Lesson #1- Always bring your cell phone when you leave the house!

*My mom forgot her cell phone.
*I was running 20 min late.
*My mom had not given me the address of the church
*My mom only intended to stay for the music in the beginning of the service
*****My mom forgot to bring her cell phone!

= We missed each other.

I spent the first half of Easter wandering around Newbury St. waiting for my mom to return my messages. When I finally found Emanuel Church, my mom had left but I did not know this. I entered right as they were doing communion. Not exactly the point at which a non-Christian, non-baptized person wants to enter and walk around suspiciously staring at people while searching for her mom.

However, it was still a pleasant day. While waiting for my mom to call me, I had a wonderful chai cardamom soy tea at Tealux. I also had a splendid run this morning and thoroughly enjoyed being in the Copley Sq area before the race tomorrow.

All the runners were out today! No one was in their Easter's best. Instead, everyone looked like they were ready to run the marathon. The clincher was that all the police were swarming the streets looking for bombs. It was weird. The vibe in the area was so intense that by the time I left for lunch, around 12pm, I almost was convinced that the race was today and not tomorrow.

Easter Lunch was great. However, the meal was not as multicultural as I thought. It was the most French couscous I have ever had. It is hard to explain. The thing that really made it French for me was the spice. There was very little and there was nothing to sweeten the couscous such as raisins or nuts, which I have often found in some other couscous dishes. The seasoning of the meat, not the couscous, was the focus. I don't really know if my analysis makes any sense, but this was my impression.

For me, the highlight of the meal was when my mom popped out six boiled but non-dyed eggs for an "egg-knock." Traditionally they should be colored but the absence of color made her presentation of the eggs that much funnier. Everyone wanted to know why my mom was carrying around half a dozen hard-boiled eggs. Egg-knock is another one of my family's unique traditions along with buttering noses on birthdays and a couple other odd ones. When my mom introduced it to our hosts everyone at the table instantly thought of my family’s Birthday Butter Tradition.

My friend Julius later found the birthday butter history(If you are curious to read about this go to: Birthday Butter History and scroll down until the fourth to last paragraph.)

However, the Egg Knock is not from Newfoundland, where the birthday butter tradition originates, but rather Germany (the last paragraph). Yet, both the birthday butter and the egg knock traditions come from my mom's side of the family, which doesn't quite make sense, but we're overlooking it for the moment. My dad, who was actually German, only contributed two traditions: opening presents on Christmas Eve and the Easter-egg-tree. To do an Easter-egg-tree you must blow the yokes out of eggs and then dye them and put them on the branches of pussy willows.

Anyway, no one at the table had heard of egg knocking before and it was a hoot trying to explain it to people. It involves knocking one person's egg against another’s. Each person should have a small pile of eggs from which to draw. The egg that wins one round goes on to the next round. The person with an egg left at the end wins. It is a very silly game but I highly recommend it! My Easter never feels complete unless we do the egg knock.

I think next year I will go for a walk in the woods. That is a more spiritual environment for me than a church. Though, I’m hardly prepared to join the ranks of H. Thoreau ;)

Good day overall

Little Old Ladies

Recently, when my girlfriend's car got hit from behind by an 80 year old woman's car, I instantly thought of this story.

Check out The Little Old Lady Story.

Personally, I think that it is unfair that the elderly get labeled as bad drivers when perhaps it is only 65% their fault ;) Neverthless, as elders they become victims.

These old ladies were anything but victims!

Happy Easter!

Suicide, Death's Door and The End

It is spring, the time for flowers, the time for school to end and the time for suicide. Suicide rates are the highest in the spring. For further explanation see suicide.

Everyone who was trying to just hold it together through the holidays suddenly realizes that they're still depressed even though it is springtime. However, now they feel the pressure to be happy all the time. Worse, they think that everyone else is happy but them. So . . .well, you know the rest. Our phones have been ringing off the hook at the hotline.

Everyone please try to enjoy spring. Feel free to call me if things are rough. No, not everyone is happy. However, I, for one, am trying my damn hardest to enjoy this splendiferous weather!

Monday's Lesson

Puppets serve as a great intervention with children with ADHD. However, perhaps they are not as effective with 20 art therapy grad students ;)

We took puppetry to the next level . . . the psychotic level ;) One poor puppet who was trying to be symptomatic of an ADHD child ended up bashing her buttons off her face. Another puppet had bleeding ears and yet another had a lasso connected to his neck with which he tried to continually leash and choke my puppet. It was puppet mayhem!

Overall, a very fun demonstration and I think if I ever work with children I will try to implement aspects of it. The trick will be preventing the children from getting as wild with their puppets as their potential therapists did today!

Suicide and Paper Mache

Yesterday I assisted in preventing a woman from committing suicide and then taught a young hyperactive boy how to make a life-sized paper mache man. I love being an art therapist on days like this! How cool is my internship?

Jake Ivory's

My old college friends and I recently went to Jake Ivory's. As we walked in, we noticed that EVERYONE was smiling way too much! It was very unnerving! The music was not that great and no one was dancing, they were just standing there like zombies smiling. Intrigued, we walked to the center of the club. There we saw that the TV screens were giving directives such as "Smile," "Clap!" "Sway." This prompted my girlfriend to conclude that everyone had been brainwashed and that we, as unlikely as it seemed, could fall victim to the same fate. Low and behold by the end of the night, we, too, were swaying, clapping and smiling with the cheesy music. Here is the evidence of my experience being brainwashed: