Overtired and Cranky

This practicum thing is REALLY putting a dent in my social plans. For real.

This morning, I missed a neighborhood coffee - and I LOVE those! - then potential shopping with one friend and going to the gym with another. That would be, um, three different events that I missed to go sit in traffic.

Not really. I missed all of that to meet with my very first one-on-one client and it was actually a great hour or so meeting with a lady who is dealing with a bunch of stuff, but despite everything, has made the decision to own her situation and make the best of it. It was amazing to me and I expect I'll continue to be impressed with this lady as we work together over the next several months. I'll be teaching her things that most middle-class people grow up knowing, like how to write a check and build a savings account, and she'll be doing those things while still living inside the vast framework of data you need in order to survive being poor, like the locations and rules of all the food banks, how to navigate the bus network and the public healthcare system, etc. Things I don't know how to do.

But the drive was kind of crazy. I don't know what it is about I-95, but even with flowing traffic, it took me over an hour to go 34 miles. Maybe it's some kind of special security measure put on by the Pentagon to make the highway actually much longer than it appears on a map? I don't know. It makes me nuts. It also has a lot to do with how my 2.5 hours of volunteering (Friday is art class day at Carly's school) turned into me paying for 5.5 hours of childcare for poor little Bree.

PLB, who was clinging to my leg and crying when I dropped her off with the sweet, sweet women in room 215. That was horrible (for me), but the lead teacher told me that Bree was happy as a clam in about two minutes. Bree told me later that she was sad because Johnny spit juice at her. Then she told me about a minute later that Johnny was sad too...and come to find out, Bree tried to take his cup (she may or may not have hit him with it...the details are a bit fuzzy), and they were both sad, but they hugged and said sorry and now he's her friend.

So that is it. I'm about four seconds away from amutating Paul's feet if he doesn't quit shaking them. =)