I feel like I have been all over the Southeast this December.
I started the month in Birmingham, doing HIV testing. I love my volunteer life. It started with personal health workshops, and when I quit being a graduate student, I got trained to do HIV testing so that I could stay involved with the 1917 Clinic. I totally understand people not wanting to do this, and every time I do a test, I am anxious about the result, but everything has always worked out well. What has been really difficult for me is the counseling I do while the test is developing. I have to get down and dirty with the questions I ask people and it sometimes really makes the people think about the choices they make. My heart goes out for those people. I also have to make the people I am testing feel comfortable enough with me to open up. I honestly do not care what they do in their personal lives, and I forget most of what I am told, but I have to know their histories so I can effectively tell them about how to continue to protect themselves. It also helps me to know when I am doing a good job (or a bad one) so that I can be more conscientous of my counselling approach. (Just a bit of advice to those on the other side of the test: be honest and give feedback about the administrator's approach. It helps us do our jobs better.)
Then, I was off to Auburn to check on the condo. Things were well. I had a little shindig with a couple of my neighbors and I got back in touch with my old resident manager. Good times :)
Then, back to Birmingham to go to the Led Zeppelin symphony. More good times.
Then, off to Knoxville. What a trip! First, it ended up taking me 9 hours to get there. Clearly, a long story. I don't care to go into that now, so all I will say is I learned my lesson: don't fly to Knoxville via Atlanta. If I ever fly there again, I will go through Memphis. I spent a week in Knoxville, babysitting, being an extra set of hands, and reading my Emily Post biography.
Back to Birmingham for Christmas. I was very blessed this year. The tree never made it up, but that's okay. I made some awesome vegetable soup and some terrible cornbread (which really threatened my Southern-ness).
The day after Christmas, I went to Chelsea to visit my Uncle. And two days later, I went out to Hueytown to drop off some donations to T.E.A.R.S., which is an animal rescue place that was out of money and food for the animals. It got me started thinking about getting a dog again, which I believe is a really good idea, especially if I am going to be single in Birmingham a lot more than I originally planned. My cats are too sweet and skittish to protect me, and Feffer is just getting to old to be my attack rabbit anymore ;)
I made a gi-normous donation to Bread and Roses today, and I plan on making even more donations soon. I have years of things that never made it to the front porch for Hannah Home donations.
I have also been working on cleaning out the townhome so that I can do some more entertaining in the coming year. And I've been making my new year organizational lists and goals.
Hopefully, I'll have it together much better this year than in the past few months. (I'm thinking I took on too much at once. I have to remember I'm not 22 anymore. Not that I feel it.)
