the apartment!

i love our place. after a month of work on it (including a 2 week wait for our couch from IKEA - hate that place), it finally feels warm and home-y.

here's the room we share. my bed is the one that looks like a child's. kind of makes me feel small sometimes, but it works great, hah. notice the curtains we hung up, and the desk i made for myself on the right side :D

Here's the lovely living room - the homiest room, i think. Two couches, a red tapestry on one wall, a shelf we hung up on the other. AND, we have plants outside - basil, limes, peppers, mint(!)...so great.

Across from the living room - dining room and kitchen.

The kitchen! MAN, we have such a fully stocked kitchen. we could EASILY host community dinners here. if we had friends, haha :)

ok, well i don't know how to get this image to rotate, but this is my favorite cabinet of the kitchen. odd, i know, but it is so organized and match-y - a perfect example of our stocked-ness.

anyways, just a little tour of the place. feel free to visit us. you know you want to!

houston life: the job

SO -- just to clarify. i just moved to Houston, TX from Lawrence, KS in order to do my music therapy internship, which is required for my studies. i am working at TIRR (The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research) Memorial-Hermann Hospital, an inpatient rehab hospital within the Med Center for patients who have had Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Spinal Cord Injuries, Strokes, Amputations, or things of the sort. the patients i see every day may have deficits in motor skills, speech and language, and memory and orientation due to their injury and/or surgery. they all receive at least 3 hours of therapy - physical, occupational and speech-language - from a consistent therapist on a daily basis, and stay anywhere from a few weeks to a few years at the hospital. the music therapy department makes its own schedule, seeing whichever patients they determine during a given week, mostly in co-treat sessions with any of the above-listed therapists. right now, there are two music therapists on staff, and one other intern.

needless to say, it's been an intense three weeks already! there have been some joys about this internship, and some disappointments, but overall, it is music therapy, which means i love it. i was so eager to jump in there (even on day one) and work with patients. i love my patients; sometimes it is also very hard..most of their stories are just short of tragedies. but, it is truly amazing to see the strides they make on a daily basis.

so, just to describe what exactly it is that i am doing each day. i see anywhere from 2 to 10 patients in a day, ages adolescent to elderly, for half hour sessions each, typically. if i am treating in a physical or occupational therapy session, i am most often facilitating motor movement with any variety of instruments i have on my cart. for example, i might be playing guitar - typically a song that is preferred by the patient - to provide a rhythmic and/or spatial structure for upper and lower extremity movement (walking, reaching, bending, lifting, stretching, stepping, etc). another example is using the drums as a target to play - kicking it with their foot in a certain position, or reaching to play it with a mallet, across their midline, or at a certain distance away from them.

music therapy is a professional therapy because music affects the brain so uniquely - when you're participating in or listening to or making music, your whole brain is activated, not just a certain area - like the Broca's area for processing speech, for example. this means that a patient is often more engaged with therapy when the music is present, making progress more efficient. additionally, the rhythm of music is processed in the motor cortex of the brain, which means that a person can entrain to (or, follow) a beat without even really thinking about it. the brain's connection of rhythm and movement is a direct one, so it can bypass cognition (meaning that people with brain injuries, for example, can still process structure through music!). music therapy can also be used to elicit/improve speech, improve memory function, and decrease pain and anxiety (and these are just goals for the population I work with!). sometimes the addition of music to the therapeutic environment is immediate - one can see a significant change in the patient's progression towards therapeutic goals the moment the music is added - and sometimes music therapy works over a long period of training. anyways, this is why my profession exists - to know how music can be used therapeutically, and be able implement it uniquely with each individual patient. pretty sweet stuff.

so, that's my job. in the midst of treating, i am doing assessments, learning TONS of music (bah! texas country will be death of me. and hannah montana), and reading literature on my field and others (e.g. neuroscience). i am tired - getting used to the 40 hour work week, and being on my feet all that time. but it's getting better - i'm not napping at 5 every day anymore!

on a side note: i get to ride the bus to and from work every day, and i LOVE it. truly a joy during my work week, not only because it's air conditioned (unlike the public transportation in costa rica, por ejemplo), but it is peaceful, and there are cool people, and i enjoy listening to music and relaxing before and after my long day.

anyways, thanks for all your warm thoughts for me. come visit me if you want to know more about my wonderful profession! or just ask me, i guess. but visiting is much better :) love and peace

pray for me

love is patient
love is kind

love is not
envious
or boastful
or arrogant
or rude

love does not insist on
its own way

love is not irritable or resentful

love does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in
the truth

love bears all things

believes all things

hopes all things

endures all things

.

a belated goodbye

(I started this post over a month ago, and never finished it. But it's very pertinent tonight, especially, for me, and I need to finish what I have to say. Here goes.)

So, since I've only posted once in over three months, I guess it turns out blogging is harder than i thought. I've really had zero time since i started packing and saying my goodbyes to lawrence. it is hard to blog, but even harder to say goodbye to my home of four years. lawrence, i will miss you.

i have truly been blessed by my community there. it all started with the rock-a-hawk, the freshmen event at ku that brought me, nicole, and gibson together for the first time. from there, i met half of the manhattan high school class of '05 (not really, but the coolest 20 or so), and subsequently became Honorary Manhattanite (i will never, ever let that title go - keith and jeff). turns out they were all looking for a campus ministry, too, and so we stumbled upon ichthus, a revolutionary (at least to my Presbyterian, pastor-kid's mind) House Church that was seeking freedom of the holy spirit and intentional relationships - life together. since then it has been a crazy ride together and apart at different times, with new faces and old. it's been hard at times, and easy at others. my heart's been the fullest of joy, and seeped with grief, too. and what's most amazing to me is that such a dynamic group, one that is full of transient students and travelers, people coming and going, can still feel like my solid family. i love you people, more than i can even begin to express.

Needless to say, it's been a hard transition away from that. I know it's only been three weeks, and friends will come in time, blah blah, but it has been hard to not be frustrated. Solely because of the fact that those relationships I am literally craving right now, are impossible to instantly satisfy. They will take time. and it has been hard to get connected at this church, because those small intimate group meet-ups that we are checking out right now are only happening once a week. houston is a much bigger city than lawrence, and i can't say communal dinners are a 4-day-a-week thing here (yet)!

So i want to say (even if it's cliche): relish your community of close friends around you. you are blessed.

And (for the record): i do have hope for myself and for katie; really for anyone that's lonely. God doesn't abandon.

And (from my spirit): i love you all in lawrence. i miss you, and miss daily life together. i don't know when life together will happen again for us, but i want to say thank you for that which we have shared already. and while i do daydream about the beauty of the lawrence hills, the ku campus, the downtown coffee shops and maybe even miss the colder weather when it comes around (doubtful), it is really you people that are my home.


i'll hopefully be blogging more often. just got to get used to it. pictures to come...

actually, this is an especially funny post because i haven't told anyone that this blog exists yet :D
mass email: soon!

love,
kate

work in progress

"everyday is the same," he says to me
i leisurely stroll till i find the perfect shade of a tree
i eat what i want and i drink what i drink
put quite simply - it's boring me

the caterpillar faces me again with a glistening eye
"but you," he says, "you men must know how to fly
you race with your cars and you speed through your day
there's so much to do, it's no work and all play

how does it feel to keep your feet off the ground?
it must be fun to never have to slow down

never done this before.

tonight, i got inspired. not really inspired, just inspired to get inspired. thanks to the world wide web, i enjoyed the beauty of the world, alone in my room at midnight - looked at pictures of some friends getting engaged; read the words of a friends who has spent much of her time in africa, and is so thankful for God's grace; listened to a story on npr about an indian man who loves to sing bob dylan songs; learned about sufjan steven's name; heard about the struggle of a musician in releasing a controversial album...and more, getting lost in the connections that are addictive.

in my short lifetime, i already feel i have lost some...things. i don't know what to call it - personality traits, neuroanatomical access, parts of self. i just remember 5th grade being part of the "creative class," the g/t kids that were marked by their imagination. i feel like my creativity has definitely been part of my academic success, i have worked hard, etc. but tonight i don't feel like it comes easy lately. i don't draw anymore, really anything except the occasional tree in my journal; i don't write poetry anymore, don't take the time; it's always been hard for me to write songs, too perfectionist; and i just haven't been creating much outside of academia for a long time. earlier this evening, i was soaked in 30 rock for a few hours out of laze - which is definitely a good kind of mindlessness, don't get me wrong :)

my point - creation is different when there is felt purpose in it. i write in my journal often, but it is such a private practice, that i wonder if my wondering will look differently here, solely because of the fact that it is available to others for their reading enjoyment. maybe i won't be so lazy in dreaming, in naming my dreams, my gifts, the gifts given to those around me. maybe i will develop the gift in expressing my true self, and knowing that more as beloved daughter. hope for authenticity.

so, i secretly saw the beauty of life tonight - through other people, but by myself. i feel the freedom and desire to create this blog, to try to create again. i think this is a good start for tonight.