Rest in Peace

The day came, and my kitty baby has gone. I called my mom yesterday afternoon with a question, and caught her just as she was arriving home from the vet. He no longer could eat, and she said he seemed ready. I would have to agree. As a friend texted me in response to the news, he's probably chasing mic ein heaven right now.

Simpkin Arnold Hastings
July 20, 1994 - October 11, 2010

Loved house cat, companion, and friend. Simpkin was born to Maggie Alic Hastings, the first of seven kittens. His brother Beauregard "Beau" Mittens Washburn was adopted to the Hastings' grandparents and visited Simpkin regularly. At age one and a half, Simpkin's mother Magie developed severe allergy to flea bites, and left her suffering, peacefully in her sleep. His brother Beau met a tragic end at age 8 in dealings with a coyote.

Simpkin loved hunting, eating, sunbathing, and being scratched behind the ears.

He is survived by his family, the Hastings, his beloved feline companion Buffy, and three canine housemates. He will be greatly missed.

Buffy and Simpkin (Photo by Steve)

Tad's Birthday

Yet another special occasion this year that Tad and I got to spend together, was his birthday. The only other time we've been together on his birthday was when I visited him for the first time. It was our two month anniversary and we hadn't seen each other in nearly 4 months. That day was fun. We went to church, and then on our first official date. We did mini golfing with another couple. Ironically, that first birthday of his we were together, was the day Valencia was born. :)

Her 4th birthday started with her heartguard meat chewy (which she loves) and a frozen peanut butter kong (which she also loves). We got ready and went over to Tad's place where he surprised her with a new squeaky toy. It's a raccoon with six squeakers in it. While she was enjoying getting to know her new toy, I surprised Tad with 3 of the Glee soundtracks. We hung out for a while listening to the music and then set out for his birthday lunch.

Tad picked Fudrucker's for his birthday lunch. We each got a burger (I got bacon, bleu cheese, and mushrooms, yum!) and shared fries and a drink. It was funny, there was another service dog there when we got there. After lunch we ran a number of errands, including picking up a birthday package from the post office. We were both too stuffed from lunch to think about dinner for quite some time. We hung out and played Guitar Hero until hungry enough to eat something.

For dinner we just heated up some cheddar bratwurst and mashed potatoes, but the drinks were fun. The night before we had gone grocery shopping, and Tad picked up a bottle of grenadine and we made Shirley Temples.

Saturday, Tad bought his birthday present to himself: a recurve bow, arrows, and other archery gear. The store we got it from has a shooting range, and we got to do a bit of shooting. We're doing a badge with the Caravans kids on archery, and realized it'd be a fun hobby to have. Upon making our purchase, we promptly headed down to Sushi Diner to meet Raelene for the double (technically triple) birthday celebration.

Sunday, my mom had planned to bring a pie down when they brought Steve back to the dorm, and then decided that a full family dinner would be better. She made a roast, green beans, and potatoes, and we had pumpkin and peach pie for dessert. I think Tad really enjoyed having a family celebration for his day.

And I know I enjoyed getting to celebrate both our birthdays together within the same year, a first for us :)

Cleft Palate Clinic

Life got really busy with midterms, but I'm squeezing in some blog time.

The weekend before last I had the opportunity to go with my program to a two day cleft palate clinic in Mexicali. The clinic is put on by the Red Cross and is a full team approach type deal. There are surgeons, dentists, nurses, anesthesiologists, and us SLPs. People come from up to several hours away to have surgeries and receive free therapy. It's a pretty awesome program they have going.

My Friday started very, VERY early. I met up with the other SDSU people at 7:30 at the old clinic and from there we carpooled to the Calexico/Mexicali border. I rode with Christine and Jessie (a first year, who I found out is a Christian). It's always such a wonderful thing meeting other believers, I know I get just this sense of safety and peace. Jessie's really sweet, I've really enjoyed seeing her around the building over the last couple weeks.

We all arrived in Calexico at 10 am, and it was already in the 90's. Definitely NOT my favorite weather, but we made the most of it. I was fortunate to end up in one of the cars heading across the border, rather than having to walk. I rode with Dr. Allen, the retired SDSU faculty who leads the trips for us students. A lot of people had complained about her not being personable, but I liked her just fine. She reminds me of one of my grandmothers.

Anyway, we arrived at the Red Cross building and set up for a full day of diagnostics. The clients came in and were checked out by the surgeons. If they needed surgery, they were scheduled and sent to talk to the anesthesiologist. All of the clients, whether having surgery or not, who had any sort of craniofacial abnormality came to see us for a speech screening. Dr. Allen did all of the talking, but as she speaks very limited Spanish, she had us translate. That part was really cool for me, I got lots of practice speaking both to clients and their parents.

The other really cool part was seeing all the variety in cases: cleft palates in all states of repair, teeth growing in places they shouldn't, different syndromes I'd heard of but never seen, etc. In the afternoon we had the opportunity to watch surgeries. I went in to the operating room, but really wasn't able to see much, so I didn't stay long.

Throughout the day we were certainly well fed. There was a giant table of food that everyone had brought to share, mostly snack stuff. They also had a hot meal catered. Friday lunch was rice, tomales, and mole. Once all the surgeries for the day were done at about 10, we went with the whole group to a taco shop. I was super tired, but it was fun chatting, and enjoying some delicious tacos and a beer (which I actually liked, amazing).

We stayed the night in a hotel in town. The property is gated, and it reminded me quite a bit of the hotel my family stayed at in Puerto Rico in January. It was kind of a bummer to have to pay for a hotel room that we were only spending about 8 hours in. I shared with Christine and Janie. We basically showered and then went to bed. We had all brought our own food fro breakfast, and waited for everyone else by the pool and watching a little stray cat, hehe

Back at the clinic it was therapy day. I got to do some more translating, but not as much as Friday. I was also having an awful time staying awake, there were a few times I fell asleep standing up. Tired as I was, it was good to get to see how to work with kids with clefts and repaired clefts. We finished up with the therapy at 4:00, got across the border at 5:30, and made it back to San Diego around 7:30. It was a long couple of days, but definitely worhtwhile. :)

From the Ocean, to the City, to the Mountains

Compared to last year, thus far this semester has been super chill. I'm busy during the week, but with only having two classes, my weekends have been pretty free. This past weekend was chock full of activity, and really fun.

Friday started out with sailing with the young adults group at Braille Institute. I hadn't done anything with Braille since the summer after my senior year of high school, so it was kind of an interesting flashback experience. It was me, Lindsay, Daniel, Krishna, and Kelvin (who I also kinda know from church at Mission, lol). We went with a group off of Shelter Island. They paired us each up with an instructor and had us do the steering. It was a lot of fun. We had a beautiful day to be on the water - not too hot, not too windy.

After sailing, I had enough time at home to change and feed Valencia before heading with Raelene downtown for the Padres/Giatns game at Petco Park. We had seats in the row in front of Nate and his brother-in-law Ben. HOLY COW were these good seats, we were RIGHT behind the Giants' dug out. Yeah, about that, Raelene and the boys were rooting for the Giatns, boooooo. haha it wasn't so bad, considering there was no score until inning 7 when the Giants got a run. Raelene and I had fun chatting and chowing down on some awesome nachos.

Saturday evening I got to go to a place I'd never been before: Mt Laguna. Steve's department was holding an event out there for students, families, and faculties. We picked Tad up on our way out there and enjoyed seeing parts of San Diego that were very unfamiliar to all of us, lol. It's beautiful up on the mountain, pine trees and mountain air and a gorgeous sunset. They had a potluck dinner, and then gave a tour of the observatories that State owns up there. I was very excited to get to be up in the dome of one of them! Once the stars came out, we had a telescope set up to look at the moon and Venus.

Saturday also happened to be my dad's birthday. He was at a work "retreat" (aka conference) all day, so we celebrated on Sunday. We went out for dinner at Pei Wei's and had German Chocolate birthday cake. It was an awesome weekend spending time with family and getting to do some things in San Diego that I don't get to do every day :)

Escapades on Public Transit

I mentioned in my post about my internship that I'm taking quite a bit of public transit this semester for my internship. As such, I have begun collecting a number of interesting stories and experiences. I thought I'd share them here.

The first morning of my internship went smoothly. I had no trouble finding the right buses or bus stops, but I encountered some interesting people. My first surprise was when I got to the bus stop outside of my condo and discovered a homeless person sleeping on the bench. They were there the second morning as well, but I have not seen them since. I was also delightedly amused when, on the second bus, a high school kid boarded with the hugest afro I have ever seen in my life. He is a regular rider, and I get a little joy every time I see him, lol

A more frustrating day came the first Thursday of the semester. Thursday is the day I have both my internship *and* class. Thanks to the slowness of public transportation I have to leave my internship 45 minutes early to make it to class on time. I take the bus back to Fashion Valley and then catch the trolley from there. There are two bus lines that stop outside of Sharp, both of them go to Fashion Valley. One is a regular city bus, the other is a shorter bus/van thing. The 25 happened to come first, so I got on, and was greeted by another black lab. The other dog's handler was a lady in a wheelchair. Unfortunately for my schedule, she got off before fashion valley. It took quite a bit of extra time to get her AND her dog off the bus.

Even more time was lost when at the next stop a lady got on, who spoke basically no English, and refused to get off or pay, though her 3 bus passes were expired. 5 minutes of arguing later, she pulled out a current bus pass and we were on our way. I had definitely missed my trolley at that point, but did still manage to make it to class just in time.

Somewhat frustrating, and somewhat amusing to me, have been my attempts at meeting Tad at work. To do this, requires 3 bus routes. The first week I tried, I thought I could only take the 25 to transfer to the 41, and the 25 never came. After an hour and a half of waiting, Tad picked me up. I later discovered I could take either th 25 or the 120. So last week I tried again. I caught the 120, and told the driver I wanted to transfer to the 41. He told me which stop and said I needed to cross the street, which I had suspected. I got off, crossed the street, and caught the 41...in the wrong direction. Boo, so I stayed on the bus back to Fashion Valley, and looped around, but by that time Tad was off work. Thus for a second week in a row, I didn't mak it and he picked me up from UTC. However, next week I WILL make it!!! lol

Something fun about taking the same routes a the same times is I've met other people on their way to work. They're friendly now, and know Valencia by name :)

Spiritual Growth

I have been aware for some time that the past year has held very few posts on spiritual or emotional growth. Though I created this blog to be my everything blog (thoughts, rants, funny stories, life events, etc) the emotional processing has decreased immensely. This postbreaks that streak, which I hope is a good sign of things to come.

Over the summer I have felt myself beginning to re-stablizie emotionally and spiritually. My prayer life has regained some of it's energy and I find myself in scripture more than I usually have over the last year. But things still aren't the same as they were during my Biola life, and I still miss Biola terribly. I decided that something that might help would be to watch the Biola chapels as they are posted on youtube. This will both help my Biola-sickness, and help feed me spiritually.

The two parts thus far on John 1 have been incredible. I particularly found things sticking with me during Dr. Klink's message, and after Fred Sander's chapel began a read through of the Gospel of John. But I don't have any profound thoughts on truth to share yet, which reminds me of the beginning of my Biola career. I couldn't blog at all for several months being so completely overwhelmed with everything. Perhaps my overwhelmedness (overwhelmment? *shrug*) is a sign of new start for me. The beginnings of new growth that I've longed for for months.

Please pray for me in this time. I am still in a sometimes precarious living situation, intermittent states of fear of being torn down emotionally, and in a secular environment almost everywhere. I know God can grow me anywhere, I just happen to find it more difficult to allow myself to grow here than in the safety bubble of Biola.

Sharp Community Re-entry

I have just completed my first week at my first off campus placement. Never again will I have to do clinic in a university clinic. I have made my first steps into the real world of speech language pathology, and it is very exciting!

The CRP (Community Re-entry Program) works on functional goals for clients with brain injuries with the intent of returning them to school/work/driving/regular life. It is a team of speech pathology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and social work. As an intern, I am currently mostly observing and helping out with scattered therapy activities. By the end of the semester I will be doing full time therapy for the clients.

My schedule fits the perfect balance of busy, but not too crazy. I am in Mon Wed Thurs from 8:00-4:30. Of course, to manage this with public transportation, I catch my first of two buses at 7:00 am, and don't count on getting home until about 5:30 pm. I really like that my placement is actually at a hospital. It feels very professional, but since we are completely outpatient, I don't have to worry about the blood and guts stuff.

I'm really loving getting to know the clients. Each has their own amazing personality and sense of humor. There are currently about 10 in the program, and most of them will be discharged by the end of this month, but I look forward to getting to know the new ones who will be coming in as well.

The funny thing about being an intern, is your supervisor has the liberty to ask you to do little things that don't exactly relate to what you're studying to do. Though I imagine in some cases this could become aggravating, I kind of enjoy being asked to file things or run little errands. I guess it really makes me feel like I'm in the real world instead of the fish tank that university clinics tend to be.

In any case, I have immensely enjoyed my first week and can't wait to get more client contact hours in the weeks to come.