the voices dying with a dying fall

Good evening, peopleses.

It’s been a busy week or two here at
casa de locos. School work, mostly; with a hefty dose of domestic
troubles– culminating in a decision I feel is probably unwise, but
moreso necessary.

I talked to my research director at length
last week, about graduate school stuff. She went to UVA (one of my top
choices) and then did her post-doc at UCLA. We talked about the
competitive nature of clinical psych programs, and Masters degree
alternatives, etc. etc. I was torn. I look ok on paper, though I could
certainly use more in the "experience" department in regards to
research. Psych departments want good assistants; your PhD is like a
consolation for several years of slavery. I could settle for a
Counseling degree and get out in 3 years, but a school is far less
likely to pay my way, since it isn’t research intensive like the PhD
is. Not a work horse program.
I’ve been mulling it over.

Sunday,
Joss was outside with 2 of the neighborhood boys– the semi-ok ones.
Foul-mouthed, but not particularly violent. They’re in the woods
walking, and Joss sees a snake coiled up around a fallen branch. He
panics. Now, if it were me and I were ten and panicking, I’d run like a
sumbitch.  But not my little monkey. My baby bit remembered back a few
weeks when my dad had killed one with a shovel. So Joss picks up a
stick, and hits it as hard as he can, going for the instant kill so it
wouldn’t suffer. This is an important part of the story. Though
panicking, he didn’t want it to suffer so he tried to kill it quickly.
He repeated this 3 times over the course of his discursive narrative.

He
wanted to know what kind of snake it was, if it was poisonous.  Perhaps
to justify its death.  So he gets a rake (I never did figure out from
where)  scoops it up and starts carrying it to a teenagers house who’s
nice to him and knows something about snakes.  As per the neighborhood
MO, he’s intercepted by several bastardly kids screwing around at a
corner. Who take the snake and start throwing it around.  Someone
catches on that it’s not actually dead, and they start throwing it on
Joss. Repeatedly.  Joss throws it off and they keep throwing it on him,
in his face, trying to get it down his shirt, etc. You can figure out
how this one goes. Joss backed off down the block, and watched the
bastardly kids torture the snake. Dragging it on the asphalt, swinging
it against poles, making a gigantic mess of cruelty in short. He went
to a nearby house and rang the doorbell and told the police officer
that lives there what was happening, and the cop shrugged him off.

Joss
comes home crying rips off his snake gutsy clothes sobbing so hard he
has an asthma attack which his inhaler doesn’t help. I talk him down to
where he can talk and curl up with him on a bed and he tells me the
disjointed story.  When he’s done, I ask questions to clarify details,
holding him. He starts crying again, whispering "I didn’t want to kill
it" over and over and over. It was so quiet I could barely hear it. He
was rocking back and forth a little. Poor kid felt responsible for what
the other kids did to the snake. I kept saying "it’s not your fault"
but I don’t know if it got through. He eventually quieted down , and
went upstairs and played games with Brian. The next morning he was back
to his usual self, in trouble by 9 am.

But that was the last
straw for me. I want to get him out of that neighborhood more than
anything. More than keeping him in arms reach of my dad.

So,
when I graduate in december, I’m taking time off. I’m going to try to
get a  Psych field job helping with some kind of research, hopefully
gaining enough experience to ease my way into Duke or back into UNC. In
the back of my mind, I’m worried that I’ll never go back. I’ll
procrastinate until I’m old enough to retire. But postponing my grad
school apps will give me year and a half to focus more on Joss, and the
financial flexibility to get us into a good neighborhood. I can’t take
it anymore. I think my 10 year old kid’s got a mild case of PTSD. This
is unacceptable.
In case I didn’t mention it, he’s also borderline
failing his grade. That parent teacher conference was a nightmare.
About biting the ADHD bullet, I called the UNC clinic, and it seems a
clinical evaluation is somewhere between $700 and $2000 dollars.
Luckily, I had set some money aside to visit Andy in England after
graduation (oh, uh, Andy, btw, I think I’m gonna have to postpone my
trip ). So, I think this is a somewhat lengthy process, but of
course I’ll let you all know how it goes.

For happier news, my
dad’s 68th birthday was Saturday. I got/had to see my brother and his
family… endearing as they are. We had dinner at the chinese
restaurant where my father has been adopted, where my future
step-sister works. I think he had a really good time, though honest to
gods I think my brother and I were encroaching on the party the staff
was trying to throw him. Anyway, I love the mural in the room we were
in, and couldn’t resist taking a dozen pics of my dad in front of it.
These are my favorites:

Anyway,
that’s all for now. Everything else in my head revolves around
Shakespeare’s history plays and prufrock’s anxiety and regrets. I’m
feelin’ it today for some reason. Something about moments flickering.

love.