Stateside

Kelly: I spent an amazing weekend in Austin, TX with a great friend. I swam in Barton Springs pool which was on my life list of things to do. It was amazing...cool and refreshing for two very sweaty pals :) We ate amazing food at Whole Foods, shopped but didn't buy at Anthropologie, drank Konbucha, walked along the lake, and had great conversation. A simultaneously relaxing and energizing weekend. Oh, and I wore dangley earrings (gasp!). Thanks for sharing the weekend with me, MA!

Choices

Kelly: Lately I've been thinking a lot about choices. We are all a product of our choices.
A co-worker and friend is trying to decide which of two great jobs to take (not a bad problem to have), but I can see how much she is struggling and weighing all of the ramifications that one choice would bring. Each choice that she had made in her life up to this point has enabled her to have the choices that she is facing presented to her. Free will/ the ability to choose is an amazing gift and responsibility.

Matt is facing a choice of jobs. One option is with his company (secure) but pending a contract award (unsecure). The second option is with a small business without a big reputation (unsecure) but the offer is on the table (secure). His ability to be in this position is due to the many choices he has made in his life.

For both my friend and for Matt, the weight of this decision feels enormous; however, six months to a year from now, this likely won't be seen as a "cruicial" decision, merely one of those decisions in the past allowing for another decision to be made in the present.

Bon chance!

Madrid Standard Time

Kelly: We arrived back from Madrid at about 1:oo AM this morning. It would've been worse if we hadn't experienced Madrid Standard Time (MST). MST meant leaving for drinks at 9:00 PM, finding a restaurant maybe by 10-10:30...putting food in my mouth by 11:30, 12:00 and returning to our hotel by 1:00AM. So, you can see why this morning's early arrival wasn't too unsettling. What is more unsettling is that it it now 10:18, and I am not sleepy, despite the fact that I have to work tomorrow and have to sound perky for a radio interview.

Madrid was interesting. It was great to see friends from home. It made me miss being able to see them without three months of coordination and a hit to my bank account. It also made me appreciate being able to hop on a plane in the afternoon and be in Madrid by evening. Madrid was messy. Graffiti, trash, dirt, no sense of order (i.e., waiting in lines was futile). The people were not that friendly. In Germany, there isn't much customer service. Germans don't go out of their way to smile or be polite or make smalltalk. My experience of customer service in Madrid was that they went out of their way to be rude....eye rolls when we struggled with the language, ignoring us when we tried to ask for reservations, etc. The food (excepting the Sangria) was underwhelming which could explain why Matt and I both ate a house tonight.

Okay, time for bed. This girl won't have a chance for siesta tomorrow!

Therapeutic Laughter and Home

Kelly: What a week...much of the week was spent trying to ensure the safety of my high-risk patient...multiple appointments with me and coordination of care with other docs. It is the first time I have had the main responsibility for such a high-risk person. So, today, after a provider told me she was very worried and asked if I could see him, he came to my office. What was the intervention: laughter. I didn't intend for it to be that way, but he smiled, and that was my in...I poked fun at him, he poked back, and we kept going and laughing and smiling. Treatment there is very serious and very heavy and this was an instance where a simple "normal"
interaction did more than all the CBT I could therapize :)

We invited our new cat-sitter over for dinner last night. I loved her, and I knew Matt would, too. We chatted and feasted on salmon, beans, rice, and lots of cheap red wine which could explain my reluctancy to get out of bed this morning. What is the reason we need a cat sitter? I am going home. Home is a tricky location. Our German house doesn't feel like home yet. Maryland, in general feels like home, but I won't be returning to our townhome. I'll be visiting family in PA, which will always be home...like the comfortable sweater that never goes out of style. So, after a week in Texas, I'll be stopping in MD before heading to PA...I am so excited!

We've been trying to get reservations at Volt with no luck and finally realized that we'll be in MD over Valentine's Weekend, hence not a reservation to be found...bummer. The good news is that we just made friends with a woman who is tight with the famed Top Chef/owner at Volt. Super!

So, I'm off to pack my bags (very lightly because my thrift shopping obsession has not been exercised for 4 months and I plan to come back with many bargain finds). I've really been admiring vintage blouses lately. With any luck, I'll find one in Austin, or just some cowboy boots. Enough procrastinating...

Weekend Update

Kelly: This weekend was filled with more home organizing and many thwarted trips to the BX (Base exchange...sort of like a Wal-mart on steroids). We are realizing that we need many converters so that our 110 volt lights and computers will work with the 220 volt system, and even though the converter bins were running over when we arrived, they are dry now. So, we shuttle the three converters back and forth among computers and lights.

We had a really fun night out on Saturday. We invited our three friends over for drinks and then we all walked to the Korean restaurant for sushi. We didn't entertain much in MD, probably because Matt worked long hours and had a long commute and I had a long commute and had three jobs. In fact, most of our entertaining was done in the months leading up to our departure! We are breaking that pattern here...we aren't even unpacked and decided to be social! We laughed a lot...very fun. Today we continued our Sunday walk tradition (if doing something for two weeks can make it a tradition) of walking in a new location. Today, we walked in the residential and commercial sections of Landstuhl. The weather was brisk but sunny...perfect for a stroll. I was inspired to use our new island that we purchased from Ikea on Saturday morning (after I had realized that I had left my CAC at work and we had to go through the hoops to get accesss to get it, but that's another story), and I made my favorite Lentil soup...yum! Then, Matt spent way too long moving all of our internet gear up to his office only to realize that the signal isn't good on the first floor. ugh. We'll leave it like this until he has more energy for moving it all back to the living room...not a good subject in our home right now. We experienced a bit of German culture by attending a craft fair at the cultural center in town...lots of beaded necklaces.

I was feeling stressed about work...expected to have some action plan in place by next Tuesday's meeting but realizing that I'm in formal training 3 days this week and probably still have another day or two of computer trainings to go. Mialley must have sensed it, because she jumped up on my legs and promptly fell asleep. So, my heart melted and I proceded to pet her for a while until my anxiety peaked and I moved her gently to the side and proceeded to create a powerpoint presentation on the COSR program organization and way ahead.