And we're off

Tomorrow we leave on our trip. Technically tomorrow. It is the middle of Monday night,technically Tuesday morning. After lots of tossing and turning I got up to do all of those things that I'm sure I could do tomorrow but can't sleep for not having done:
*print out travel itineraries
*change purse from fun everyday purse to more sturdy and secure travel purse
*email all people who have expressed interest in Finding Om but with whom I have not had contact.
*Write blog entry.
*Try to get last minute pledges for Run the Republic. Yes, the day I return from 10 days in Prague, Amsterdam and Lithuania I will drive to Denver and climb 55 flights of stairs to benefit lung cancer and my own personal fitness. Wanna help raise money for lung cancer? Pledge at http://www.mrsnv.com/evt/e01/part.jsp?rid=728420&id=1761&acct=0503206973. Namaste.

Then I think I'll go back to bed.

Once I get on the airplane things will be good, but right now the timing of this trip feels really crappy. It is smack in the middle of interviewing people for Finding Om, which is going well. I already have interviwed 5 people and have 4 participants qualified.

I feel like leaving will cause me to lose momentum. Really, this shouldn't be true, because I will leave a message on my voicemail and on email saying that I'll be away and get in touch when I return bla bla bla. If people are interested in free yoga for binge eating, they'll still be interested in a week or so, and I'll just need to get back to work when I return. But it feels stressful.

Wednesday, the day I leave, is also local internship "match day." If you apply for a national pre-doctoral internship through APPIC (Assoc of Psychology postdoctoral and internship centers, once you are done with the interview process you rank-order your choices and then wait for match day, when the rank orders of applicants made by internship sites are compared with the rank orders of internship sites made by applicants, matches are made, and your fate for the next year is sealed.

I did not apply nationally, only here in Colorado Springs. As recently as last year the process here was much more informal. However, starting this year they are doing a local match day. I applied to four places, and I interviewed at two places. Either would be good, and either would be considerably better than nothing. It is conceivable that I not get either; there is a very finite amount of local spots and I don't know how many people applied for each spot. I decided to remain somewhat ignorant of who else was applying where, figuring that this would help keep my anxiety down. For the most part it has.

But match day is tomorrow. And I go international tomorrow. The good news is that my dad's cell phone works abroad, and I gave his number as a contact to both internship sites. So I guess I'm pretty much as available as I would be at home, just borrowing someone else's phone. Somehow it feels like I'm more available if I'm actually home, though.

I supposed the good news is that if I don't get a match I will be sufficiently distracted that I won't care... at least for a while.

Sigh. Maybe I can fall back to sleep now. I doubt I'll post while I'm gone, but you never know what might happen at some bohemian internet cafe.

Stress

Funny how a wealth of really good things can cause so much of it...

The hardest 10 miles

Ever. That's what I ran this morning. I went out with my running partner, Scoop. Today is her 36th birthday-- a young whippersnapper.

I have done 10 mile runs before countless times. Seriously. I have run 15 marathons and many 1/2 marathons and lots of other strange races like run 15 miles up and down a mountain. But I think this morning was the hardest run of them all.

Weird how some days are so killer.

Or is it? My dissertation project is rocking and rolling, which is totally awesome but is also much more time consuming than I had thought about. It is also more emotional than I had realized it would be, because I am talking with so many people who are tortured by their eating issues, many of whom haven't spoken about them to anyone before.

My kids and I are leaving for Europe at 6:30 am Wednesday to join my parents and their synagogue on a trip to visit Jewish highlights in Prague and Amsterdam for a week, after which we will go visit my husband's brother, wife and children in Vilnius, Lithuania for 3 days. Gotta pack for that, make sure the cats have enough food (because I'm not sure my husband knows where supermarket is, let alone the cat food aisle). Need to eat up all the fruit and vegetables. Need to remember to bring our passports. Need to find the right hair gel for 80% humidity.

I want to interview as many people as possible for Finding Om before I leave on Wednesday. Ideally I would like to get the yoga classes and discussion group started in early March. Suddenly that feels very close. Aside from interviewing and qualifying participants there's a lot to do, like come up with the asana sequences we will use, finalize the meditations I will use in class, and solidfy the structure of the post-asana discussion group. I would also love to follow through with the yoga teacher's idea to make a DVD to help participants with their home practice. I have no video equipment or experience or anything, but that's a small matter.

We return home on Feb 23rd. I have the Run the Republic stairclimb on Feb 24th. My little one's birthday party is March 1st, and there's all sorts of art supply kind of stuff I want to have ordered before I leave.

And I feel pressure to get in a quality workout every day before I go, since I probably will not work out for the 10 days I'm away. I may try to spend 15 minutes in the morning going up and down stairs at the hotel or doing sun salutations in my room, but realistically none of that may happen.

So then when I think about how hard the run was today, it kind of makes sense in perspective. I have a lot going on, all of which takes both physical and emotional energy.

Or maybe I'm just a wussy-ass.

Kids Craft Ideas Wanted

Hi Readers. I know you're out there. Right? I must have a few readers.

I NEED YOU, OH FAITHFUL!

My younger daughter is turning 7 on March 1st and she wants an arts and crafts birthday party. I am so very, very not an arts and crafts kind of mom.

Here are my ideas so far.

Make your own pizza for lunch.
Decorate your own piece of birthday cake.

Make a door hanger-- you know, you can buy those foamie-type things that go over doorknobs and buy other foamie-type things that stick onto them.

She would like a pinata, which I may be able to accommodate.

What else?

I know you can make blankets by cutting fringes around the edges of 2 pieces of fleece and then tying them together. Maybe we can make pillows like this, with an assortment of pre-cut fleece from which the kids can choose?

One website suggested having kids make cards for the birthday girl. What about making cards that she then sends back to you as a thank-you note? Cute? Tacky?

Any and all ideas are welcome.

Hooray for Finding Om

I am so excited about my dissertation! Once it got approved by the IRB I printed up a bunch of flyers and spent 2 exhausting days driving around town putting them up wherever I thought I might attract interest-- mainly the local colleges, health food stores and coffee houses. I also took out an ad in the Colorado Springs Independent (www.csindy.com).

To my delight and amazement, I have been getting respondants! I interviewed two people already, and was stood up by a third, which I suppose is to be expected. I have an interview set up for Friday and another for Monday and am in contact with a few other potential participants. I am so excited! It is so rewarding to know that it is a project that people are interested in and for which there is a need. I believe in this so wholeheartedly, and am so blessed to have the opportunity to bring this wonderful form of healing to other people's lives. Yes, I know that sounds really sappy but I mean it.

My vote didn't count

I am a Democrat. However, I am a registered Republican. When I moved to Colorado Springs 10 years ago there was a very heinous candidate in the republican primary, as well as a very wonderful one for whom any democrat would be proud to vote. It seemed imperative to vote in the republican primary so as to get the good candidate on the ballot. Which I did.

Since then I have voted exclusively democratic, yet never felt the need to change my affiliation. Until now. And by the time I realized I might want to vote in the democratic presidential primary, it was too late to change. So, back to square one: vote in the republican primary to help weed out the worst of the worst.

In theory anyway.

The elementary school where my local Colorado Springs caucus was held was packed. I had anticipated this, so was dressed appropriately for the 1/4 mile walk in 6 degree weather. I found my district, said hello to the neighbors and took my place. People were given the opportunity to speak for a minute to state their case for a candidate.

It kind of went like this:
Republican voter #1: If we don't put Mike Huckabee on the ballot then I am afraid the evangelical Christian voters will not come out at all.
Republican voter #2: The only true conservative in this race is Mitt Romney. Vote for him.
Republican voter #3: The democrats like McCain. If the democrats like him, we should hate him.

At the appropriate time I cast my vote-- a check mark in front of John McCain's name on a piece of paper which was put into a hat that was passed around the room. No shit. Check marks on pieces of paper put into a hat that was passed around the room, complete with a joke from guy near me about it being the hat Hillary wears when she rides around on her broomstick. I laughed with gusto. Not.

So here's how it came out.
Ron Paul, the rabid anti-Semite, got 3 votes.
Mike Huckabee, who loves all Jews and hopes we all move to Israel to hasten the arrival of the Messiah, got 6 votes.
John McCain, whom I consider the most palatable republican offering, got 9 votes. At least 8 people agree with me.
Mitt Romney: carried the precinct big time, with a whopping 46 votes.

Kind of depressing. But you know what? I feel a whole lot better for having cast my ballot than I would have if I woke up tomorrow and saw that Mitt Romney won Colorado (which it looks like he's going to) and knew that I had done nothing about it.

Change of plans

My original dissertation design was to include only women in the Finding Om yoga class and discussion group, mainly to make statistical analysis easier when I got to it. But as the responses began to pour (okay, trickle) in, I saw a distinct pattern: men were calling in equal numbers to women. Since this parallels the spilt of people with binge eating disorder in the population, this should be no surprise to me. It was a bit dismaying, though, because I didn't want to turn away any possible subjects.

After some quick consulation with my dissertation chair and the members of my committee, one of whom is a statistician (nice move, huh?), I decided to amend the research design to include men. Not only does this hopefully give my study greater power and broader applicabilty, it adds an interesting element: does yoga work as a treatment for binge eating disorder differently in men and women.

Well, it's my daughter's 10th birthday party today, so I guess I've gotta go.