Back to Hi Mount, and a new job.

First of all, I returned to Hi Mount Road to take a few pictures of its loveliness. It was particularly stunning today in the aftermath of a CRAZY thunderstorm that kept me up all night and succeeded in knocking a whole lot of orange-yellow leaves onto the sidewalks and streets. Fall is coming! I would believe it 100% if it wasn't still so warm; tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 76 degrees. Oh well. Here are the pictures, anyway....

In other news, I started my new job today. It's kind of crazy. I started off the day in a classroom of five kids, all of them about 11 or 12 years old. All of them had either attempted suicide or threatened to; most of them were pretty severely depressed; one of them apparently spent most of Friday on the floor screaming, even though today he seemed sweet and mild-mannered. They were all very well-behaved, actually, and most of them would talk to me if I prodded them. It was interesting listening to them talk about when they were going to be discharged. Some went home just during the course of the day, while one boy stated, quite matter-of-factly, that he thought he'd be there at least past Halloween. They're so acutely aware of the state of things, even though the adults kind of try to keep them in the dark in an attempt to promote positivity.

I spent the afternoon with the adolescents. We're talking 14 year-old drug dealers, heroine addicts, multiple suicide attempts, etc. And yet, they seemed so normal to me. That might seem strange, but hey, adolescents are adolescents. They clearly care a lot about their hair and makeup, no matter that they currently reside in a psychiatric facility. I was a little afraid that by this age the kids would be manipulative or just rude, but they were actually pretty subdued and they welcomed the opportunity to talk about themselves to someone new.

So, all in all, a pretty fascinating first day. Tomorrow I get to go to rounds in the morning and I'm really looking forward to that. All of these bizarre and sordid short-life histories. It's sad but I'm intrigued. These are not your typical special ed kids; these kids have been through more than I could even begin to understand.

I've had some people ask about Matt, so I'll tell you right now what he's been doing all day, every day: studying. He goes to school from about 8:30 am to 5:00 pm every day, and comes home and studies all evening, usually until about 11 pm. I actually think he's pretty reasonable about it. He doesn't stress himself out too much, he just studies A LOT. I got the chance to go "meet" his cadaver a couple weekends ago (the cadaver he and his group have been dissecting almost every day in anatomy lab). It was insane. I'll tell you what: seeing a dead human being, half dissected, might really affect your ideas of what constitutes a 'person.' I wasn't too disturbed by the experience because I didn't feel like it was a real person, at all. Whatever had made that man a person was completely and totally gone.

Well, that's about it for now. I have to go watch the end of this extremely disappointing Padres game. Matt has apparently taken a couple hours off studying to curse and pace back and forth while Peavey keeps giving up hits to the Rockies. Honestly, I'll be glad when the Padres season is over--they stress me out. Luckily, the Ghargers season is already over!! (I typed that very, very bitterly, just so you know.)