*psst. people on the left, don't tell the people on the right, but we hate them!

my friend reminded me of that paula poundstone bit recently.

Yesterday was tough - orienation for psych clinical, which I hadn't realized I was nervous about. Additionally, my usual clunky awkwardness was exacerbated by the fact that I spent four hours sitting in a room with Ponytail Perfect Priscilla and her flawless-skinned sister Elizabeth and their five friends, Polly, Perky, Baby Spice, Paris and Azaela. I am not a person who looks smooth and polished, not even when I think that I do to be honest.
I have unkempt and overly hairy eyebrows, which I pluck erratically. I have persistent adult acne, which I keep thinking I'm spend a portion of financial aid money to fix, but then get all caught up with utility bills and other luxuries. I have thrift store clothes, which no matter how carefully I inspect at the store and at home and after the inital run through the laundry, invariably have a stain on the butt, or a hole in the armpit or some such thing.
It's cool with me, usually, really it is. I have lived in this messy body for 35 years now and I'm okay with it, usually. But it's hard to remember that I'm good enough, smart enough and doggone it, people like me, when I am stuck in a room for hours on end with no reality check with folks that are cuter than me, slimmer than me, and doggone it, firmer than me.

So I went to water aerobics last night, and hung out with my people who have rolls, big ones, and not just boring old belly rolls, either. This group has ankle rolls and triceps rolls and I love them. I worried at first that my comfort was at their expense, that I loved these women because of that subconscious habit I have of scanning the room to see if I'm the fattest woman in the room. And I've decided that one of the reasons that I feel comfortable in the locker room is that I see other women who have thighs that look like mine. A whole room of women who have that canyon-y thing around their navel (I wonder if they know that if they squish their belly in the right way, it looks like either a butt or a bagel?!)! Joy. Happiness. Belonging.


The worst part of psych today was walking on the unit. After that, I was cool. I fucked up by not saying goodbye to the patient that I was talking to when we left the unit to have lunch and do our notes. I need to brush up on my open-ended questions. I kept asking informational, factual type questions, and then we'd sort of stare at each other for a bit, and then look back at the TV, or at the man who was grinding his teeth loudly enough to be heard across the room!

The other worst part of psych is that all summer I was in the swanky private hospital (which has places that are sorta gross and undesirable) to the federally operated hospital built in the 50s and not renovated since. Four and six beds to a room, with common showers and bathrooms! This weird yellow tile brick in the walls. Hallways that are pre-fab and feel like that ramp you walk down to get on the airplane. Staff bathrooms that make me regret heartily the bottle of water I carried with me. Big oil paintings of the President. A cafeteria that smells like mustard and old eggs, not sushi and oatmeal bars for breakfast. Where's all those footpedal faucet handsinks? Snort. Still giving patients Haldol?! Sure, it's cheap because it's so old. Course, that's the reason why most folks who can afford to don't use it anymore, because there's a thousand things safer and better...

off to look up whether bruxism could be a form of extrapyramidal side effect... Jo?