My Alternate Universe

So I'm blogging. I haven't done it very consistently this semester, because I've been so busy with school. I'm currently knee-deep in finals, which means I should be the busiest I've been semester. Naturally, this means that I'm doing everything I possible can to procrastinate, like: cleaning my room, playing with a purple feather boa, blogging, organizing picture files, eating chips, downloading music, watching funny videos on youtube for the 100000000th time, facebooking every 30 seconds, and calling everyone I can think of "just to say hi." I just completed the world's most hilarious hypothetical research paper ever written, and if my grandparents didn't occasionally peek at my blog I would copy/paste it on here. But I don't want to scare them with my gross humor. Even the title would be too much I think.

Quote of the day:
S: "Miss Palmer, can we go shopping with you?"
Me: "No..."
E: "Please?! But it would be like a mother-daughter date!"
Me: "But I'm not your mother."
E: (Wistfully) "I wish you were."
S: "You'd be a cool mom! My dad used to have a green mohawk!"

No, I haven't grown a mohawk. But apparently I'm equally as cool as her dad's old green mohawk.

...I get paid to do this:


Nothing like a little photobooth during the school day to ease the pain of putting someone's hair in a ponytail. The little munchkin I work with wears pigtails EVERY DAY, and is totally inflexible about them. In 5th grade, pigtails aren't so cool anymore. So we're working on introducing ponytails, and right now we can get her to wear them for about 2 hours at a time. But only after she calls me "a mean old witch." No joke.

So I haven't posted in a while... So sue me! I have a full-time job, I'm working on a Master's degree, and I can't ignore my social life. So, to tide you over, here's two photos of my enjoying my new job and my new glasses:


Please ignore the dust from my scanner.

"Whoa! Are you a 5th grader??"
"No..."
"Are you a teacher?"
"Yes..."
"You look like a 5th grader."

"Ms. Palmer! Your name is Lauren?! I just never thought of teachers having names!"

No, they didn't offer me the job on the spot, but they may as well have! I had an interview today with a local public elementary school for a Behavior Therapist position, and I think that it went amazingly well. (So well, in fact, that I promptly put on the Wu-Tang Clan song "C.R.E.A.M." to celebrate. For those who aren't rap aficionados like myself, "C.R.E.A.M." stands for "Cash Rules Everything Around Me." It's a gangsta ode to the dollar bill... several of which I hope to be retrieving soon.) Two women interviewed me as a team, each of whom is in charge of a different position that I am being considered for. Boring play-by-play aside, I knew I slam-dunked when one woman wrote "GREAT!" at the top of my resume. Maybe she should have been sneakier about that little note-to-self, but hey. I'm not complaining. Then, 20 minutes later, one of my old supervisors called to say that they had contacted her for a reference, and she would be giving me a great one. They had back-to-back interviews all day, and they checked my references first! "Dolla dolla bill y'all!"

One of the extremely scary but convenient things about the internet is google maps. I just google my address, and it totally eliminates the need for me to get off my butt and take a picture of the front of my house for this blog post. Convenient, yes; stalker-scary, of course; eliminates the need to run up and down a flight of stairs, how lovely.

I live in Allston. For those of you not familiar with the area, Allston is like a borough of Boston... it's technically in the city of Boston, but is a big enough neighborhood to have a name of its own on the mail. Serviced by Boston Public Schools, the Boston Police and Fire Departments, etc. Weird thing, maybe kind of like Queens or Manhattan is to New York City. It's also where a lot of Harvard is. I live 4 blocks up the road from the Harvard Stadium, literally on the same street. Pretty sweet digs. It's an incredibly central and convenient location, and teeming with youngsters. I made the move to "Lower Allston," which is just a section of Allston that's a little older and a little quieter than Allston Village. Hallelujiah. I'm loving the new place, and the new roommates. There's only three of us here, as opposed to 4 or 5 at the last place (there were always visitors staying for 3+ weeks at the last place) and there's actually a COMMUNAL LIVING SPACE. My last apartment's closest approximation to a living room was the front steps, but here we actually have couches and a TV. It can get a little crowded in there, though, with our friends crashing the couch all of the time:

One of my roomies has two cats. I don't have much to say about that. Except maybe to point out the piece of paper taped to the couch in the above picture says "Do not sit, Cat pee!"
My bedroom in this apartment is literally half the size of the colossal creature cave at my last place, but it's much nicer and now that I'm actually on a lease and I know I'll be here for a while, I'm unpacking and making myself at home. It starts to feel like I really live here once the art goes on the walls, like this particular wall. I'm kind of proud of the way it turned out... it seems very "me." (And it looks much better in real life!)

As you'll notice, the walls are an intense blue/grey color, kind of like a sea-foam blue. At first I was little put-off by the color, and was going to promptly paint it a more respectable color, but the more I live in it, the more I like it. The particular paint choice contrasts the dark wood of the apartment really nicely, and has actually been working really well with my decorations and textiles as well. Much better than I expected. So I think I'll keep it... which will save a lot of man hours anyway.
I'll be stoked when there is no longer this pile of boxes in the corner:

I'm confident that it will be gone by the end of the week.
I'll just have to take care of it in-between starting graduate school and doing the thick pile of reading that I have to do (classes started today... exciting!) filing for unemployment, and applying for jobs. You see, I broke up with my job this last week over a scheduling snafu. Namely, they told me that I could either work there, or go to school, and not have both. I'm not going to go into the pain and trauma that this caused me... instead I'll mention how insane it is. My classes are twice a week at night, meaning that my schedule would have such a minimal change that no one would hardly even notice. But because of arbitrary rules, like only allowing schedule changes in June (?!) I had to choose a Master's degree that will sky-rocket my career or working at place with AWFUL employee relations and a sketchy administration. No offense, previous place of work, but seriously. At least I'm not mentioning the name of the company in this posting... that would just be in bad taste. So now I'm looking for new work, and feeling optimistic about the future. I'll honestly probably get paid significantly better, probably in a position that fits my qualifications better (aka supervisory) with the strong possibility of an administration that's easier to work with. I applied to seven jobs today! Go team Lauren!

"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things."

That line from a Lewis Carroll poem just popped into my head, but it's strangely applicable to what I've been thinking about lately. First and foremost, it's set at the sea. Even though I live in a place that most people associate with the beach, I don't. I've only hit the beach a handful of times since I've been here... as far as that goes, I associate Los Angeles with highways and chaparral-covered hills. I am more apt to associate Massachusetts with the ocean, and I've had it on my mind a lot, because... I'm moving back to Boston!

I don't think that it's a secret that I haven't been a fan of Los Angeles. To avoid offending the few Angelenos that I'm friends with, I'll just say that it's not my scene. That tends to satisfy inquiring minds. I'm an East-coast girl through-and-through, and while I've only ever lived for extended periods of time in London, Utah, Boston, and California, I know for a surety that SoCal is not the place for me. A few more stanzas from the poem mirror my sentiments quite well:
--
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
--
There are a lot of great things about Los Angeles, some of which I don't appreciate. Some of the things that I hate the most about LA are other peoples' favorite aspects of the place. Like the Walrus and the Carpenter, I would love to sweep away those parts of LA life, but they're what gives LA its flavor, and are so intrinsic that they couldn't be removed anyway. I'll just say that Los Angeles will forever be a fun vacation spot, but I will never move back.
I am absolutely thrilled to move back to Boston! I gave my two-weeks notice today at work, so I'm done with all of my commitments here by May 1st, then I make the trek across country before starting my new job on May 11th. It's going to be a hectic two weeks, trying to get everything I own packed up and across country in a time- and cost-efficient manner, saying good bye to family and friends, etc., but it's worth it! I have dozens of friends in the Boston area that I'm still in touch with, my brother Christopher and his wife Megan live in Cambridge, and my Uncle Stan just moved to Cape Cod this week. It's meant to be! I'm going to continue working with children diagnosed with autism and other developmental disabilities at a school in Natick (with 7 weeks of paid vacation,) and hopefully my campaign for admission to graduate school in the area is successful. It's the start of a new, exciting chapter in my life, and I can't wait!

In case you happen to be curious about what kinds of things I have on my extensive "To Do" list, here's a taste:
-Finish up the quarterly progress reports for my clients
-Return the 10+ binders and manuals to work
-Pack up my entire life
-Ship items that won't fit in my car, probably on Amtrak
-Find someone to drive across country with me
-Find housing in Boston
-Make a budget (I have to pay for rent and food now, yikes!)
-Get tickets to Red Sox games
-Be nice to my family for the next two weeks (Caroline told me today in a fit of rage that she couldn't wait for me to leave.)

Let me know if you have any helpful suggestions for how to accomplish these daunting tasks, or if you want to help!

Maybe it's just me. But at a certain point as the evening progresses, I stop doing actual productive work and switch over to non-productive, time-wasting, not-getting-paid-for-it work. Like google, wikipedia, grad school applications. Okay, no, maybe the latter can't be classified as work, but you get the point. I could choose to do more work, but after 7pm it's just not allowed. I have morals, people! Sometimes the draw is magnetic, but...
Okay, I'm being very vague. Here's what got me on this. It's 11:00pm, later than I usually go to bed. I'm done with any work allowed for the day (I finished at 8:59pm, so 2 hours later than previously specified) and I'm blog-stalking. Meaning, I'm sitting in front of my computer, too exhausted from yoga to walk up the two steps to my bedroom to sleep, reading all of the blogs that are listed on the side of my page, and some of the ones that are listed on the side of, say, my brother's page. Blog-stalk, silly, agreed. SO... that's what I'm doing. It's not work-related, it's a diversion. I considered posting earlier tonight, but I didn't have a good topic to rant on. Shopping? I made a trip today, looking for pants with a 25% off coupon to the GAP. I came home with pliers. So I was content to blog-stalk and get ready to hit the sack.
When suddenly, at 11:08pm, I get an email from work. "I haven't received _____, please email me ____ as soon as possible." Girlfriend, don't you sleep? (Just so you don't think I'm a slacker, I didn't know I was supposed to email it to her. I emailed it to someone else.) So then here's the question: I'm at my computer doing nothing productive, and I got that email when it was sent. Should I feel like "busted! I'd better email that off tonight!" or should I feel like "okay, as soon as possible will be within 24 hours, because I don't work past 8:59pm tonight, I loaf." I'm going to go with the second option, because I don't like doing administrative junk like billable hours (my dad groans with me on that one. But he has the flexibility to BS it, because he's important. I'm not.) I like the nitty-gritty with the kids. So, I go to sleep. Just because you're on salary... don't work all night! Do something fun, like looking up "esotericism" on wikipedia!

(PS, if you're someone from work, and you're reading this, DON'T FIRE ME. I'm not saying anything negative about the company or the people in it. Just mentioning how I value a little unstructured free time.)

Saturday was quite a busy day for me! I was all over the place seeing all sorts of people, and it was a blast.
***
In the morning, I had a session with my client in Agoura Hills. Her house is always fun for me to be in, because there are 8 kids (3 with autism) and the place is tingling with excitement. Her mom is also really cool, so during down time I love to chat with her. All of the kids want to play when the tutors come over... apparently my client cries if her brother and sister have sessions and she doesn't. It's funny to me, because sometimes she wants me to leave her alone once I'm there. But other times, like on a previous Saturday, she BEGGED me to sleep over, "please please please please!"
Anyway, Saturday we were sitting at the breakfast table, and my client's little sister was demanding that her breakfast show up miraculously on her plate NOW. When mom explained that it was still in the oven, she said "When I grow up, I'm not going to buy an oven!!!!" She's 6 and still can't say her 'R's, which made it that much funnier. We laughed pretty hard.
Then we did some fall-inspired Arts & Crafts, and the same sister made this lovely rendition of me. I'm happy, and I have lips! I'd say it's a pretty good likeness.

It's amazing how kids learn to draw, and what they incorporate to make their own style. By age 6, they've picked up on what their images are supposed to look like -- hair, hands with 5 fingers, flowers are pink and leaves are green. But my client's older sister, one of the other autistic children in the family, has a style all her own. She's much more severe than my client -- she's 4 years older, but has to be coaxed to make any intelligible words; otherwise she shrieks like a bird of prey when she's excited or mad. Like many people diagnosed with autism, however, she has an uncanny ability.
It's almost impossible to see in this picture because of the sun shining on the concrete, but this little gal can draw like nobody's business. I had the girls using sidewalk chalk to encourage interactive play, fine motor skills, colors, drawing, etc., and of course big sister was invited. Well, I did not expect what I saw! She just busted out with these amazing drawings around the poolside. They're very modern in style, women with understated facial features and overstated arms and torsos. I was so taken aback -- I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Honestly, done in watercolors in vivid colors, I would buy these in a gallery. Wow.
***
After work I popped into the Palmer's house in Agoura Hills to visit my Uncle Lance and his 3 little munchkins, who I've blogged about in the past. They all had neon-colored hair from Hudson's soccer game, and they were getting ready for the beach, so I didn't stay long. Nonetheless, I managed to get a little video of Hudson's showing off his newest tat -- a Boston Red Sox strip I brought over that his dad so deftly applied. What a guy.

**
After an uplifting and non-controversial Relief Society Broadcast, I hopped over to Whitney Low's in Simi for her 23rd Birthday Party! I reminisced in the car about my funniest birthday present in June... $50 in singles in a gift bag from my Grandma Palmer. And the only person who thought it was funnier than me: her. Thanks Marilyn, for being in my life :) Anyway, at Whitney's party -- where Whitney was the belle of the ball in a lovely coral anthropologie dress that made me green with envy -- I met lots of new people who I'll probably never see again, and I saw my old friend Gustavo Soares! I met Goose through Whitney at BYU several years ago, and I quickly learned to associate him with good humor and good times. There have been drag races down 9th east, spur of the moment water polo games, and of course the notorious butt shaving incidents. Goose, however, being a young gentlemen, left us to serve a mission in BOSTON! He's Brazilian, so he was called Portuguese speaking and spent time getting to know lots of my old friends. Well, Goose is back from those 2 years of spreading the good word, and it was so good to see him! Whitney's parents made a killer dinner for the party, and it was an evening well spent. Happy Birthday Whitney!

So let's talk about work. Some people feel dread when it comes to waking up Monday mornings, trudging into the office slurping down a hurried cup o' Joe, wishing they were still warm under the covers.
Not me.
I love getting up to go to the Infant/Toddler program in the mornings, even if I have to leave my house before 7:30am! And I'm here to share an anecdote as to why my job rocks, and it may just make you question your personal career paths.
Every morning after a few minutes of supervised play, and then at the end of the day before sending the kids home, we have 15 minutes of "Circle Time." Sounds simple enough to anyone who went to preschool, but our circle time is a little different. The kids have to have an adult hovering over them at all times to prevent the kind of shenanigans that autistic toddlers try to run on us. They try to jump out of their chairs to do this that or the other thing, or in the case of this morning, one of them tackled me to kiss my arm. But I digress, so here's the long-awaited, fabulous story.
We have one little guy (who I'll refer to by his cartoon alias Johnny Bravo, as to the company privacy policy) who picks Old McDonald to sing twice a day, every day. Heck, sometimes when we're not even doing circle time the kid will run over to where we keep the picture icons and demand to sing his song. Now, his preferences don't end there. We have these knit finger puppets (that look identical to the ones I found on the internet, here)
and every single time Johnny Bravo chooses the pig. You see, each kid gets to choose an animal from the pile to sing about. So Johnny Bravo pulls the pig, screams "pig!" and then proceeds to oink in sheer glee every day, twice a day.
Today, the lead tech in charge of circle time had a great idea. It confused the kids, but it proved for some pretty intense adult laughter! You see, we have some reject finger puppets that don't really work for Old McDonald, and we usually skip them. But the teacher is on vacation this week, and we decided to do something sneaky. So here are the animal options we gave the kids: Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a... (snowman, snail, toucan, octopus, chupacabara, brontosaurus) E-I-E-I-O. The funniest thing about the Island of Misfit Toys remix of our song wasn't the animal choices, but our attempt to make up the noises that these animals make. It wasn't premeditated, so it was a cacophony of strange sounds... if you're reading this alone, or in the privacy of your own home, try to make their noise out loud. TRY not to laugh.
Verily, a chupacabra is a mythical creature and there's a lot of controversy as to what the thing looks like. We didn't have a chupacabra, we had a lizard. But, lizard is boring. So chupacabra it is. In case you were wondering, this is what google makes of the chupacabra:
GORGEOUS.

So it's funny to me, this blogging thing. I started a blog for the first time when I was in London, mostly because it made me feel cool, and so my mom could read it
(when I reminded her to several times). Then I randomly kept blogging. And yet, it's still novel to me that people read my blog the way I read theirs, that they check back and think "poop" when I haven't updated. So then there's that thing, that if you write all the time you risk sounding mundane with every minute detail of your life. But if you only write once in a blue moon, you're so overwhelmed by the task that you put it off forever. So here's a bulleted list, some updates, and maybe some expansion beyond that.
First, here's the token Hadley picture:

Don't worry, I'll add another by the end of this post ;)

So, I could write about...
*losing 25 pounds, a process that has made me much healthier, and much more constipated.
*the joys and travails of working as a behavior therapist.
*being hired to work in my company's infant/toddler program in addition to my regular clients.
*dying my hair red.
*what attracts me to and keeps me from graduate school.
*Major League baseball... how the Red Sox didn't quite make it, and how I've adjusted to Dodger territory.

So, here's a few pictures of a Dodger's game I went to a few weeks ago! The field shot is when Manny was at bat. I was so thrilled, of course, to support my boy Manny!

The Dodgers played the Diamondbacks, with Derek Lowe pitching an outstanding win of 8-2. Here's a picture of myself and a young chap from my ward, Greg. My face looks oddly distorted, but I'd say it's recognizable.


I also thought I'd post a cute picture of one of the little guys I work with, Tyler P. I'm good friends with his cousin Kristen Rane Lanshe, which is a complete coincidence actually. Anyway, his happy face is a good example of why I do what I do. To reap the rewards of good behavior. Let's just say, I'm his mean task-master, and he smiles when I scare him into obedience.

People always assume he's my son when we're out together. I've also probably been suspected of being his kidnapper, too... once I took him to get a haircut. He has sensory problems that make his neck HYPER sensitive... if you brushed the nape of his neck by accident, he would literally perceive it as pain. So the haircut obviously didn't go over too well... he started screaming expletives and running down the street in a ghetto part of Pasadena, yelling "help me! help me! Oh SH**!!!" I smiled and waved at all of the concerned onlookers with my best Miss America wave while chasing him, hoping to keep him out of oncoming traffic. Well, it all turned out nicely in the end, no harm no foul!

Anyway, here's another picture of Hadley. We told her to dress up, but we didn't realize that she also had gender identity problems. Or maybe it was just rebellion against to bows we make her wear all the time? Either way, we're much more explicit to tell her to put on a dress or a skirt now.

Ciao!

Welcome home Lauren!! I've been back for a week and a half from Idaho, and I finally have enough time to write a little bloggitty blog post.

Last week and this week I'm working on a farm called "Danny's Farm" here in the Pasadena area with Tyler Penniall--I call him my free-lance client. I'm also working at my regular job with ABC, and let me tell you, it's a party. The farm is just in the middle of a suburb called Altadena; it's on just a lot the size of a residence, with a little corral and some stalls for the animals. We've got pigs, goats, cows, mini-horses and one regular horse, chickens, roosters, and doves, bunnies, sheep, guinea pigs, cats... I think that's about it. It's really fun for the kids! The two weeks that I'm doing it I'm Tyler's 1-on-1 aide, one of the few aides there. All of the children are developmentally disabled, and most have autism. Funny stuff always happens... like Samantha, a little girl with gorgeous strawberry-blonde hair and freckles with Down Syndrome who is OBSESSED with Hannah Montana. She doesn't really talk, but she constantly head bangs and dances like Hannah Montana. I kind of feel like I need to get a Hannah Montana T-Shirt and wear it to see what she does :)
Probably the best joke I've ever heard was from one of the little guys at the farm-- every day he had another one to tell us that never made any sense. He said "What did Batman say to Superman?" "Smash the door!!" And then he would laugh hysterically. What fun!
An interesting thing that happened to me last night from the farm -- it proved that our house is cursed for birds. Someone came and dropped off a baby chick for us, and I took it home so that it wouldn't be alone in the office overnight. We bonded all night... I let Peace (his or her name) walk around the ground to follow me around all over the house, which was so so so cute, and then I put her to bed. Well, when I went to get her in the morning, she was dead in her cage. It turns out that the chicks really need a heat lamp if they're away from the mothers, to simulate the heat of the chicken coop. Well, I was pretty mortified when I had to tell the director of the farm, but then she tells me that she thought it would die. Well thanks for telling me, Lisa.
Well, y'all might be interested to know that I am now a vegan. I have some digestive ails, and I decided to try going vegan to see if it would help me feel better. And I have my life back! I feel much, much better all the time now that I'm eating vegan. It's pretty exciting, and it feels good to be successful. A little story... when I was 11 I was a vegetarian for 6 months until my grandma forced me to eat her Chicken à la King... she cited death by protein deficiency. Since it's a dietary preference and not idealogical, I've also decided that if I'm somewhere that I need to be polite, I'll eat the chicken or fish and just be constipated for a few days. But I don't imagine it happening very often, because if I don't eat at home where I cook my own food, I'm usually at a restaurant, not in someone's home.
Anyway, life's a party over here! Between the tofu, dead chickens, and flesh wounds from out-of-control autistic children, life is good.

Imagine 4 or 5 quarters stacked on top of each other. Better yet, STACK 4 or 5 quarters on top of each other. See that? Feel that? A bunch of stones bigger than that came out of my doggy's bladder a few days ago. She came home from the vet today after her surgery, so I actually held one of the things in my hands. I wasn't going to, since it was IN HER BLADDER, but my sister Caroline held the stones out to show me and I was so shocked that I had to touch it and hold it in my hand. It feels just like a smooth rock that you would get on the shores of a lake; the perfect skipping rock. It's sick. Can you believe that? No wonder she kept peeing on the couch!

Today at work a few funny things happened. 7 year-olds are great, maybe my favorite age for kids. They're old enough not to be as obnoxious as they once were or throw temper tantrums, and they're young enough to still be soo soo cute and innocent. To preface my first story, you should know that I call all little girls either "girlfriend" or "mademoiselle." Last summer my little cousin told her mom "Lauren's my girlfriend." It was maybe the happiest moment in my life. So anyway, I kept calling my client "mademoiselle" today, and eventually she said, in utter confusion, "I'm not Mademoiselle! I'm Aminah!!!!" It was really cute. I didn't bother explaining that one today. Later on, she showed me her sense of humor when we were doing receptive animal noises. She knows them all and gets them all right (she's 7 for Pete's sake) so the second time I said what "kind of animal makes this noise?" (ROOOAR like a Lion) she said "YOU DO!!!" I'm such a party animal. For that, I made her get up and do a silly dance with me.

Randomly changing gears, my little sis had her wisdom teeth out today. She lucked out in that she only had 3, and one of the missing one was a bottom one (which are much worse.) She's physically fine. When I had mine out, I started the adventure with outrageous, Valium-induced laughter, went on to vomit my blood, gauze, and guts out, then sat on the couch subdued as my cheeks swelled beyond recognition. I was a little sad from a recent breakup, but I'd say I dealt with my pain pretty graciously. Well Alexandra, who can eat and drive and walk around, is the grumpiest little pissant you've ever seen. My mom said "it's like she's angry at the pain." It's hard to be around. But, I'm so glad she doesn't have to go through what my brother and I did! He cried for two days straight and accused the entire family, in a very passive-aggressive note on the counter, that we were on crack.

So yesterday was a day of successes for me! In the morning, I drove up to my office in Valencia to take Part II of my training test. On Thursday we took the written portion, and then were dismissed to stew in fear of failure at home until the oral portion the next morning. I got in there right on time, and my trainer Mario said that I had been particularly fabulous on the test: one other guy and I had passed with flying colors, and had been especially thorough and had kicked the hard parts' butts. So that was a fist-bump with my ego! Anyway, I took the oral part with the Program Manager pretending to be my autistic student. I had to run a lesson with her and correct a behavior problem, so I did! I definitely felt the pressure, I mean here's the Program Manager testing me, scrutinizing my every move! But it went well, and I got even more praise from Mari-izz-o for using several different disciplinary methods. Go me, fist-bump again. Or, as Ms. LaRoche used to have us do in the 1st grade, give myself a pat on the back :)
I got my schedule right then and there, and I had my first real live session yesterday! So I went to this little lady's house (I can't give any specifics, or I could be prosecuted.) She's almost 8, but has the verbal capacity of a 2 or 3 year-old. But she can read, and she's very sweet and has almost no behavior problems. I think she's going to be a really good first case, since she's pretty easy. I'm so excited! I was 45 minutes late to the house because their street has three segments separated by dead-ends, but it was cool... the Field Trainer didn't seem too upset, and it all worked out well. I'm the bomb, which everyone already knew, but... pat on the back Lauren!!!