The marshmallow experiment

Recently at internship I’ve been running up against an all familiar dilemma with my clients. We’re coming to a cross roads regarding the challenges of their long term goals vs. their immediate wants. Now that there’s a little bit of freedom of choice on the part of my clients there’s a whole new view on the idea of saving money for future needs and on patience to wait for the right supportive housing environment to come open. It seems I’m living in my own little marshmallow experiment.

I faced this often when I was a teacher. Students would set goals toward behavior or academics or college and then it would get hard or their friends would factor in or they’d simply get tired of doing their homework. Long term goal goes out the window. Granted, I had a lot more control over my 11 and 12-year-old students than I do over my 20 and 21-year-old clients. There’s this ever challenging concept in Social Work called client self-determination. In the end, it’s their life so it’s their choice.

Oh there are days I just hate client self-determination.

Yes, I understand that it is my client’s choice whether she put money aside as a safety net down the line or she buy a new phone now, but that certainly doesn’t make it easier to watch. It’s actually much easier to watch when you close your eyes and put your head down on your desk — this, of course, never happens.

I wonder if this is how Chico feels every time he sees me with a shopping bag. Ever the practical man, my spending habits probably quite rightly make his head spin. But doesn’t he understand the cardigan was on sale? I live quite a bit less hand-to-mouth than my clients, but the same principle remains: gratification now or reward later?

I can hardly control my own marshmallow habits, so I guess it’s not really my place to judge my client’s actions. The impulse to have the freedom now rather than having the security later worries me for them, though. Heck, it worries me for me. Patience and discipline is an awfully hard thing to come by with the clientèle I work with, which is hardly surprising since it’s an awfully hard thing to come by in myself.

Although it’s becoming an ever tricky thing to watch my clients transition out of  the shelter, that self-determination they’ve been so expertly executing is starting to come in handy. Some of their goals are coming true and hopefully some of them are developing into a greater vision and a better future for them and their children. It’s hard to tell at this point, and I know it won’t work out for all of them, or maybe any of them, at least the first go round. Everyone has their marshmallows and the best I can do is help them see what might be sitting on the other side if they’re willing wait.

A mighty fine year

Friday was the man and my’s one year anniversary. You know, the date marking when he finally stopped toying with my heart via gchat and moved himself back from Africa so he could, duh, date me. From 2000 miles away of course. I sometimes wonder why he had to come back from Africa to do that.

Friday was also the day I discovered a new function on my camera phone.

Notice that “the grid” effect creates a problem if you can’t remember how you held the camera the last time you took the picture. Thankfully flowers look good from whatever angle you look at them. Especially flowers your boyfriend walks blocks and blocks to buy for you. Especially those.

You can’t tell in the picture, but his hair is doing this little tuft-y thing that I love and that could easily be achieved with some pomade if someone who had a girlfriend who loves hair tufts would use pomade to achieve said tufts. These tufts were not achieved with any hair goop assistance, but instead magically appeared. It’s like his follicles were wishing me a happy anniversary. Also, wine and cheese platters at Blue Dahlia. Yay.

You’ll notice I’m batting 3 of 4 here, but it’s not really me who messed up that upside down photo. I won’t name names, but there were only two of us there that night and I’m in the photo. Also in the photos: a delightful cup of coffee and an amazing assortment of truffles. And a puppy who was feeling sadly neglected. It has, afterall, been a year since she stopped getting 100 percent of my attention. I’m surprised she’s not wearing black to mark the occasion.

Yes, it’s been a mighty fine year indeed.

For keeps.

I think this handsome Californian deserves his own post for driving half way across the country for me. He and his parents roughed it for three days to make the trek to these parts and then I delighted them with some fine Texas food.

The night his parents left we hit up the splendid food trucks, The Odd Duck and Gourdough’s Doughnuts. Yum, yum, yummy.

Over the last couple of days I’ve had to keep reminding myself that Chico’s not going anywhere. I start to get that “tomorrow he goes home” feeling which usually involves crying and sad faces, but I have to send it packing. Because. It’s. Not. True.

He’s around. For keeps.

St. Patty’s goodness. Dipped in chocolate.

There’s this thing in California called an It’s It. I tend to call it a What’s It, look dubiously at the man and then correct myself. These are very confusing things, y’all. Anyways, an It’s It is a small gift from California dessert heaven. Absolutely delightful. As it happens I’m a big baked goods dessert person and Chico goes more the ice cream/frozen yogurt/cold things route. This is the perfect compromise to our dessert needs. Cookie AND ice cream. Dipped in chocolate. I mean, isn’t everything better when dipped in chocolate?

Problem: they’re only available in California. And Oregon. And Washington. You get the picture.

Add this to the ever growing and somewhat passive aggressive list my California boy is creating about here versus there food. I think we should remember that a loving and always baking girlfriend is on the “only in Texas” side. It’s probably the only thing on that side, and I’m not a food, but I’d say it counts exponentially compared to good pizza, good noodles and What’s Its It’s Its.

Regardless, I’ve now made it a bit of a mission to shush his California food whining by making some of the things he’s given up to move himself here (I mentioned that right? HE’S HERE. FOR KEEPS. Yay.) So for St. Patrick’s Day I made homemade chocolate chip It’s Its with chocolate chip mint ice cream. De-lish.

Homemade TEXAS It’s-What’s Its

• 16 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or organic vegetable shortening
• 1 pint mint or mint chip ice cream
  
• 8 chewy chocolate chip cookies

1. Set out ice cream to soften. If cookies are soft put them in the freezer to harden.

2. Put the chocolate and oil in a small sauce pan and melt. Stir slowly so it won’t burn (chico helped with this and it was very important to him I not burn the chocolate). Set aside to cool once all melted.

3. Remove cookies and sandwich ice cream in between. Even sides out with a knife and return to freezer for at least half an hour.

4. Remove cookies from freezer and dip in chocolate, coating all sides.

5. Eat. Die of happiness.

______

As for now, we’re catching up on some Glee in our post cookie haze and the food whining has ceased for the evening. If it starts up again I just might silence him with some smooching.

After all, one of us is Irish. I think.

Fat Tuesday

What’s better than peanut butter and chocolate? Um, nothing. Nothing at all.

I didn’t really make these for Fat Tuesday, but they will probably make you fat. Or me, depending on how many I eat. I plan to pawn them off on my cohort tomorrow to celebrate being oh so close to spring break. They should also stand as further evidence that I would be the best room mother a second grader could ever ask for.

Homemade Chocolate Peanut-Butter Cups
Ingredients

• 2 bags of chocolate chips (milk, semi-sweet or dark)
• 1 1/2 cups peanut butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/4 cup graham crackers, crushed
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

1. Line a muffin pan with 12 paper liners. Set aside.

2. Melt 1 bag of the chocolate using a microwave, melting the chocolate in short bursts.

3. Using the back of a spoon or a pastry brush, paint a layer of melted chocolate onto the bottoms and sides of the paper liners. Don’t skimp on chocolate here; coat the liners generously. Set the bowl aside with any remaining melted chocolate left in it.

4. Put the muffin pan in the refrigerator for 20 minutes while you make the peanut-butter filling.

5. In a mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, crushed graham crackers, powdered sugar and salt. Stir with a spoon until well combined.

6. Melt the remaining bag of chocolate in the microwave.

7. Remove the muffin pan from the refrigerator. Scoop peanut butter into each cup. I used a melon ball scoop to make it neater.

8. Using a spoon, dollop the top of each peanut butter mixture mound with a generous portion of chocolate.

9. Use the back of a teaspoon to smooth out the tops (alternately, use the spoon to make a swirl atop each cup).

10. Place the muffin pan in the refrigerator. Within one hour, your cups should be set.

11. Remove the pan from the refrigerator and remove paper if you’d like.

cheap pleasures

Apparently Foster, who tears through any toy not made of industrial strength plastic coated in teflon, would have been happy all along if I didn’t drop $12 a pop on Kong bones for her. When I went out to the shed to do laundry tonight I discovered, admist her stash of dog toys, that Foster had found a new love.

Oatmeal.

Or more specifically, an oatmeal canister. Apparently a used up $1.84 canister of oatmeal was all she needed to keep herself entertained for hours. Fine by me, no more high priced military grade plastic toys for her. She can just tear through the recycling bin for her play things.

Just after I took this she decided I was standing too closely, grabbed her canister and took off for the far side of the yard where she tore it in two. TWO TOYS. Two toys which now cost roughly 95 cents.

Obviously, an excited loop around the yard insued.

Reasons my sister should have stayed with accounting

My sister just recently changed her major from accounting to finance. I just recently came to the realization that this was a bad decision on her part.

She’s all “rich people still have money and they still want to invest in fiancancy things… blah, blah, blah.” This seemed like a good call. You know, work for rich people and maybe some of that will trickle down? Good a plan as any. And that sister of mine is very resourceful.

So I should have realized that my sister’s new career path would fail to benefit me the moment she started throwing together words like investment and capital and such. You see, there’s this thing about social work: I’m going to make like zero money. I’m not even being humble here. I’m going to make basically nothing and work really hard and probably never be thanked and always shake my fist at the state capitol building where a bunch of rich white guys are ruining the world. Sounds fun right? Yeah. My sister is probably not ever going to be doing some mad investment deals for social workers.

You know what social workers do have to deal with? Taxes. Oh taxes.

I have to say I’ve never been more appreciative or pro-taxes than I am right now in this moment. Right now when I look at the budget cuts the state of Texas is planning to heave onto the backs of the poor and vulnerable in this state, it makes me completely sick to my stomach. Charge me more taxes by all means (and while you’re at it proportionately charge those make way more than me).

But can someone help me do those new taxes I’m volunteering to pay? Please?

That pile in the photo is my tax documents for this year. I happen to have worked three different jobs in two different states while also paying interest on a student loan, cashing out an americorps grant and paying tuition and fees at a state school. The amount of documentation I received this year makes me want to start rocking in the corner.

All was going well with Turbotax until I accidentally mixed in my 2009 W2 and ended up claiming I made something like $70,000 last year. Yeah. If I made $70,000 last year then I have some serious Anthropolgie shopping to do.

I finally figured out my confusion over what year it actually was and thought all was sorted. I hit the little finish button and prepared to watch my little dollar amount climb up into the green listing in the right hand corner. Green means money for me. Yay green.

Only problem being that the green did not come. Oh no. No green. Much red. $1100 of red. Really? I’m in grad school. Grad school to be a social worker. Come on. Can we start taxing some rich people now because this just isn’t cool.

Although I’d love to blame this on massively unfair taxation policies, I also think this might be some kind of complicated account issue that I can’t quite wrap my math challenged brain around. It seems I have been told to count my americorps money as income while also having to count it as a scholarship for UT. This tells me I’m counting it as $12,000 dollars in funds instead of $6,000. Where I come, from give or take $6,000 is no small potatoes.

So I solved the problem. I’m being over accounted for. But actually I didn’t solve the problem. I identified the problem. Joy.

I thought about just not reporting either the scholarship or the income, but I think maybe that might get me put into jail or my finger shoved into a mouse trap or something. I don’t know. Accountants freak me out — so many numbers, so little smiling.

This is where I needed my sister not to change majors.

These are problems I assume she would no how to fix by now. Don’t juniors in college know tons about taxation policy? Aren’t juniors in college super responsible and practical and wise? What? I was practical and wise at 21.

Anyways, I’m not sure if I’ll ever find time to make it to HR Block so there is a small chance I might commit some kind of accidental tax fraud, or, more likely, just cost myself a ton of money. If I commit the former, it’d be nice to know that in a few years when the IRS tracks me down just rolling in the dough of my social working woes I’ll have a much older and wiser accountant in the family to bail me out of all my financial woes.

I think after all of that I’ve only come up with one reason she shouldn’t have changed majors even though my title suggested multiple. Oh well, never was good with numbers.

News. Of the amazing persuasion.

See how hard he’s working there? I mean, not just working to ignore my endless cell phone picture taking, but also working to set up my new wireless router for my new works better than stupid AT&T inernet. He named my network wannabevegetarian in honor of my falling off the meat-less wagon. So clever, that man.

You know what else that man of mine is? Employed. Totally and completely employed. Here’s the kicker: where is he employed, you might ask? Well, that handsome and so handy with a computer boyfriend of mine is employed in Austin.

Austin, in the state of Texas, Austin.

Austin, where I live, Austin.

Austin, where everything is awesome because I will no longer be crying in airports, Austin.

Okay, so I cried at the sandwhich shop today because I was so happy that he got a job and he’s moving and we’re making it to the same state in just short of a year’s time and that makes me so incredibly happy that I write in run-on sentences. But this kind of crying doesn’t really count because it’s short term.

You know, because the next time he comes to Austin he stays.

He just has to pass his background check. I have a slight suspicion he might be a Russian spy, but any good Russian spy can cover his tracks and pass a background check for a video game company. So I’m pretty sure we’re golden.

Yeah. So that Chico, he’s amazing and employed and soon to be a Texan.

Basically.

Best.

Day.

Ever.

Currently missing

This guy.

Who was in Texas and is now somewhere in the sky, probably over Montana, flying the wrong direction from me.

I actually don’t know where Montana is, but I’m guessing it’s probably not somewhere in between Austin and San Jose. That fact is neither here nor there, considering  Montana and California are nowhere near me.

That is the really important fact in this post. Nowhere. Near. Me.

I would like some chocolate now. And a video game job for my handsome boyfriend because I’m tired of crying in airports and I’m fairly certain TSA is about to put me on some type of watch list.

Just for being awkward and having mascara streaks. Jerks.

Valentines, flowers and Julia

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Did you happen to miss it? It literally looks like Cupid threw up in the dining room at the shelter, so I’m guessing most people were aware. I’m fairly certain that this is the first Valentine’s Day on record where I’ve had an official boyfriend. Most Valentine’s Days are spent with friends having a great meal or throwing a chocolate induced party with my roommates. This very special Valentine’s Day with my very special guy, I went to class (where I had a quiz) and then went to the gym (no quiz, but a commitment to the elliptical). Ironic, no?

I’m not one for all the sad sad “woe is me I’ll be alone forever” lamentations on Valentine’s Day. Nor, am I one for “there better be flowers and chocolate and a serenade outside my door, boyfriend” Now that I think of it, I should have tried to convince Chico that that was infact what I wanted just to see what he’d do. Shoot, opportunity lost.

He did come through on the flowers in spectacular fashion.

Aren’t they pretty? Flowers for my hair. That fella, he’s got great taste in gifts. Doesn’t hurt that I routinely swoon over things on the internets and then promptly send him a link showing him the beautiful thing I’ve found. He probably has a file all cued up for special occasions. I’m nothing if not helpful. Also, if I weren’t so helpful he could pretty much just walk into Anthropologie, close his eyes and point. There would be 126% likelihood that I’d be pleased.

My flowers were waiting for me when I got home from class last night. I was so excited I contemplated wearing the headband one to the gym. But I thought it might be awkward. Little did I know that awkward was already present at the gym. Awkward is named Julia.

I love my gym. My gym has televisions. Televisions with cable. I do not own a television, so I don’t even have the remote chance of having cable. My favorite thing is to find a treadmill near a television that is playing some show I don’t regularly come into contact with. This will distract me long enough to stay on said treadmill for a very long time.

Side note: I think it’s a bit like adding insult to injury that on Valentine’s Day night four of the eight televisions at the gym were showing The Bachelor. Really? Really, we need to inundated with girls competing for love on the one day many girls feel very sad and alone? Um, puke. Thanks ABC, I don’t want a rose that you’re also giving to six other girls. Did you see? I got flowers for my hair.

Oh no, I much prefer high brow things like Real Housewives of Any City to keep me stationed and entertained on the treadmill. Classy.

Speaking of classy, lets talk about Julia. I chose a treadmill that was right in the center of the television action, hoping that I could just ignore all the crying girls and lack of roses. This was a bad choice. This choice put me right next to Julia. Julia the cell phone shouter. I’ve yet to figure out the physics of it all, but Julia managed to power walk, on an incline, while using one hand to hold up her cell phone and shout into it. Amazing.

Lets just say Julia was having a bad Valentine’s Day. She was very upset about some weekend happening in which the guy she was “talking to” decided he would “talk to” a drunken friend of Julia’s and then apologize for the “talking” by calling her Julie (this little shouting rampage was how I discovered Julia’s name, which by the way, is Julia. NOT JULIE. NOT JULIE. NOT JULIE. NOT JULIE.) I’m not quite sure if she had planned on making the “talker” her Valentine’s Day date or not, but apparently after the scene she made at the party he had yet to call. Lets ignore for a second that she thought he would call and focus on the fact that she wanted him to call. Um, what? He was “talking” to your friend two nights ago and now you wish you had just stayed more calm and not overreacted so that you two could be having a nice Valentine’s Day right now? I say again: um, what?

It was all I could do not to lean over and tell Julia that there was enough desperate and ridiculous happening on the four televisions tuned to ABC right now and she didn’t need to add to the mess. I held back because I was fairly certain that this wouldn’t come out as the compliment I was actually intending it to be. Also, because she wouldn’t stop screaming into that cell phone and I was afraid that I would disturb the delicate balance she was managing on that treadmill if I touched her.

Regardless, the whole affair made me once again thankful for the perspective that I’m better than competing for roses or settling for lameness on Valentine’s Day. It also made me thankful for my Valentine video chat date waiting for me at home. Maybe next year instead of Julia I’ll get a dinner out of this day. Or at least some serenading.