Dear Readers,

Some of you may be familiar with my adopted rescue greyhound, Drifter, but you may not be familiar with his chewing habit. To my human eyes, his myriad chew toys strewn across the carpet are easily distinguishable from my belongings. I wouldn’t, for example, accidentally eat my dog’s squeaky monkey toy, mistaking it for a sandwich. To Drifter, on the other hand, anything lying on the floor or within reach of his tall body is something to be chewed. He sees no difference between squeaky monkey and silky scarf. Of late, he has enjoyed a glove, sock, several undergarments, a tube of lotion, and my favorite scarves, which are now his favorite shreds.

As a person who works with children for a living, I find myself saying to him, “Drifter, make a good choice,” which hasn’t seemed to remedy the situation, I think for several reasons. One, he doesn’t understand English, and two, a good choice from Drifter’s point of view is the nearest item within reach of his teeth.

Drifter prefers his Proverbs crunchy.

The nearest item within reach yesterday was my favorite devotional, “God’s Little Devotional Book II,” which he swiped from the end table near my bed. The exact hour of the crime has not yet been pinpointed by authorities, but possibilities include unattended times such as “When Troi was showering” and “When Troi left the house for three and a half minutes to get a coffee from the local coffee shop down the block.” While the time of said crime remains speculative, the authorities have identified the perpetrator as Drifter. Though as the only other occupant of the house I was initially considered a suspect, after interviewing me the authorities have established I had no motive to eat my own book, whereas Drifter’s previous incidents and his predilection for chewing make for an open and shut case. (It’s just a shame I can no longer open and shut my favorite devotional book.)

So I am newly invested in remodeling the interior of my home by transferring belongings of mine that are in close proximity to Drifter to higher and when necessary, hidden locations. Closets, cupboards, and drawers have become my new friends. And in case Drifter’s keen interest in God’s Little Devotional Book belies an interest in salvation, he and I will be beginning the Bible next week. Let’s just hope he only metaphorically devours God’s Word this time.

–Troi out

This is an actual photograph of Shelldon

So my phone rings the other day and when I answer it my friend Hana’s on the line, sounding panicked.

“Are you sitting down?” she asks me.

Of course I’m not sitting down. I never sit down. I’m too ADD to sit down.

“Yes,” I lie, crouching just a little to compensate for my subterfuge.

“I’m so sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,” she says, “but Shelldon’s dead.”

In case you’ve come across this blog not because you’re a close friend who feels obligated to read this post in case I pop quiz you on my recent writings but because you’re a genuinely willing reader of my blog, I should give you the back story on Shelldon. Shelldon was my pet hermit crab last year, intended for permanent residence in my speech therapy classroom, and named after my favorite character on The Big Bang Theory. Due to circumstances beyond my control, Shelldon was unable to remain a classroom pet and I ended up adopting him out to my friend Hana and her son. They have all been a big, happy family for the past year. Shelldon even eats with them at the dinner table, although he prefers crawling across the plate to eating on it.

So after she disclosed his death, I opened my mouth to comfort Hana in her time of need.

“How on earth did you kill him?” I exclaimed [in a comforting tone]. “Do you realize it is almost impossible for a hermit crab to perish?! I forgot to feed mine for 3 months in elementary school and he was fine!”

Her litany of rationales for his untimely expiration (the cold weather, old age, boredom, shark attack) was suddenly interrupted by exclamations of the most unexpected kind –

“SHELLDON, DID YOU JUST MOVE?? I SWEAR I JUST SAW YOU MOVE!! THIS ISN’T FUNNY, TELL MOMMY IF YOU’RE STILL ALIVE……”

It is usually customary to confirm one’s death before calling loved ones to share the news. I pointed this out in my typically comforting and empathetic fashion.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she replied, “I already posted his eulogy on facebook. I guess I should delete it until we’re sure.”

So we attempted to determine whether Shelldon was dead or alive. Basically, here were two adults, one with a bachelor’s degree and one with a graduate degree, which I’m pretty sure equals a doctorate, and we were being outsmarted by a crustacean.

Our basic dilemma was Shelldon’s complete absence of movement, which according to Hana’s observations—-which were becoming increasingly unreliable considering the premature eulogy—-had lasted for days. We had to do something that would force Shelldon, if still alive, to move. Which led me to think of the one thing that would motivate Shelldon to book it.

“Hana, put him in the sink and start running the water,” I told her. “Land hermit crabs can’t swim, so his instinct to protect himself will kick in and he’ll have to come out of his shell and start trying to climb away.”

A few moments later I heard the sound of running water, followed by shrieks of joy. “You’re alive! This is wonderful!” Followed by stern discipline. “Don’t scare me like that again, do you hear me?” (He doesn’t. Hermit crabs can’t hear. He may have heard the vibrations from her shrieks.) Followed by returning to the phone to pick it up and saying, “I have to go. I have a status update to delete.”

So as you reflect upon this story and its relevance (there is none*) to your life during the Christmas season, remember to put a heat lamp on top of loved ones to ensure they are warm enough to come out of their shell this winter.

–Troi out

*Really, if you find the relevance here, you’re thinking too hard.

At the 2009 walk which was an amazing experience

As a supporter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and its annual Out of the Darkness suicide prevention walks, I’m disappointed to write this post. I’d like instead to have seen something better today; something better for the walkers who’ve lost somebody to suicide, for the passersby whose awareness is increased as they witness the walk, for the cause which reduces the stigma attached to suicide and supports education and prevention.

Until last year, the Portland Out of the Darkness walk began outside the World Trade Center in downtown Portland, an area receiving sufficient traffic to be noticed, but not so much traffic as to deafen participants to the activities and events going on within the spot, including information booths and speakers to share their knowledge and experience with the community both before and after the walk. There were tables set up so that families could sit together prior to and after completing the walk. There was even a small cheer squad applauding walkers as they made it through the finish line.

This year’s event headquarters was the Main Street Plaza on the Eastbank Esplanade. Never heard of it? Located under the Hawthorne bridge in one of the premiere hotspots for Portland’s homeless population, the Main Street Plaza manages to find itself directly below every major freeway, or so it seemed. We could barely hear ourselves speak, let alone the event’s speakers, including Senator Ron Wyden. Their voices were effectively drowned out by the traffic overhead.

And the venue could not have been more hidden had we decided to hold the event in a coat closet. Nobody but the walkers themselves, and the homeless people camping out in the midst of the event, would have found the event. And by no means is this a criticism in any way of the homeless population, considering that 20 – 25% of the adult homeless population suffers from some form of chronic mental illness, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, and can benefit from suicide education and prevention. This is a more broad criticism of the decision to hold the Out of the Darkness walk in the darkness. This is a criticism of the decision to uproot its location from an area in which the general population could be confronted with the reality of suicide. This is a criticism of the decision to hide the grief of suicide’s survivors under a bridge when the survivors were brave enough to come out of the darkness to honor those they loved and lost.

And it’s true that none of us came out to the walk this morning for the accommodations. Nobody came out into the cold so that they could sit at an outside table, or so that they could score free coffee. Everybody who was there came for the cause. But after having been in a semi-covered area in the past, with tables at which families could sit, particularly elderly and young participants, warming our hands with a good cup of coffee, listening to speakers we could actually hear, many participants are going to be sufficiently disappointed as to consider forgoing next year’s walk and donating more time to other organizations. I understand that cutting corners on the venue saved the organization a good amount of money, but given the downgraded quality of the event, I have to ask at what cost?

I would like AFSP to keep in mind when planning next year’s event that if it is to sustain the walk, its top priorities should be providing a quality walk for participants so that they return, and placing the event in an area in which those who are less informed about suicide and its prevention have a chance to witness the event. Let’s bring the walk back out of the darkness and give it some staying power. So that people considering suicide get the help they need to have the power to stay with us.

–Troi out

I don’t get it.

I observe that we’ve all been frustrated at Netflix lately, and I know why: It’s that tricky packaging in which they enclose their DVDs. Surely you’ve likewise experienced the dilemma of receiving your Netflix movie in the mail, only to be stumped by the precise points at which you tear, fold, cut, and paste (there is pasting involved, right?), in order to remove your coveted prize from its package. Before I mastered the art of Netflix DVD extraction, I destroyed the packaging of so many DVDs that I experienced a real fear they’d close my account, with this sort of notice: “You need professional help, or common sense.” And while my account remains open, I’ve heard they recently increased their prices, which is no doubt related to the packaging costs they experienced after I opened my account in May.

The price hike, which left all but the top 2% of the world’s movie watchers at a financial crossroads, divided the remaining 98% on the serious political issue of “streaming” versus “DVDs.” And strangely enough, I chose to side with those troublesomely-packaged DVDs, because streaming just sounded too easy. And I don’t know where I would find my excitement if I weren’t scrambling around my condo trying to uncover the DVD sleeve, package, and “that damn DVD I just watched last night, where did it go?” in my own Netflix-inspired version of a mini-scavenger hunt.

Now that I’ve mastered the Netflix packaging, I really hope they never drop the DVDs and transition to a streaming-only system. Where would I use my newfound unwrapping skills?*

–Troi out

*I could unwrap presents given to me by my Readers. My birthday’s just around the corner…..

Dear Readers,

I’ve always had a scrabble problem. Or rather, a spelling problem. That is, a problem spelling too well, and compulsively correcting the spelling of those around me who might otherwise be my friends. My love of correctly-spelled words is the likely force behind my love of scrabble. It used to be a board game (and I hear it still is, in the nineteen hundreds), to be played face-to-face with an opponent you could see, and by extension laugh at when said opponent placed an incorrect combination of letters on the board, commonly known as the misspelled word. When your fit of laughter ended, you were then to challenge your partner, and watch him or her suffer through looking up the word in Webster’s dictionary and reach the eventual conclusion to which you’d already come; that the word was misspelled. Your partner then had to undergo the humiliating act of removing his word from the board and losing a turn, a satisfying end before you placed your next zinger.

And while the advent of spellcheck threatened to render my special skills obsolete in the academic and professional world, it was in the scrabble world that the inaccessability of spellcheck maintained the significance of my spelling superiority.

When at first scrabble programs became available on facebook and in iphone apps (first in the ill-fated scrabulous and then in the current scrabble-like giant words with friends), I rejoiced in my 24/7 access to scrabble (and my concomitant decrease in real-world social interactions, surely a coincidence). However, I soon came to find that the ability to spell, not to mention vocabulary and even the strategic skill of singlehandedly arranging one’s letters to create a word, had been usurped by a fatal flaw in programming. No longer did a person need to know how to spell, or even distinguish between a word and a nonword; a person need only randomly arrange letters in any number of combinations and place them on the electronic board that would declare their word “not a word” until their fortuitous three hundredth attempt when, by sheer luck, they placed the word “burgoo” and the computer accepted it, passing their turn on to their virtual opponent. Their opponent, of course, would not have been witness to their 299 failed attempts, unable to challenge their unwords like “rfgyi” and “gyifr.”

“What do these words even mean?” I asked a friend in the midst of her iPhone scrabble game the other day as I observed words like “chthonic” and “jorum.”

“I have no idea,” she replied, “but the computer accepted them, so that’s all that matters.”

IS that all that matters? Is anybody else interested in returning to the original scrabble game that adheres to the legitimate scrabble rules? Wherein the computer doesn’t notify you that “plirdiger” is a nonword (which I only know after having tried to play it in my current iPhone scrabble game) and allow you infinite retries, but rather displays your word to your opponent, who either accepts your word, or challenges you? Were this the case, upon a challenge the computer would then declare whether or not your placement is in fact a word, and if it were not, you would lose your turn, and your partner would play. Intelligence, not dumb luck, would prevail.

And that is why I’m taking a stand. Readers, I implore you to join me in my movement to Take Scrabble Back. It will be bigger than Scientology, though perhaps not as lucrative.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

I recently wrapped my latest experiment: kindling. Not the dry sticks of wood easily ignited for the purposes of making s’mores, but rather the experience of reading on a kindle*. When my friend first offered to let me borrow his kindle, I wrinkled my nose in distaste, ready to denounce the latest in the wave of computers pretending to be other things,** but then I remembered what Jesus said, about how Thou shalt not judge the kindle in thy neighbor’s eye, if thou hast not removed the kindle from thine own eye, so I decided to accept my friend’s magnanimous offer and launch an investigation into the kindle. And you, my Readers, are the first to receive exclusive coverage of my findings.

*Kindle: (noun) A computer that, having witnessed the savage overthrow of the paperback book, has entered the Witness Protection Program and now masquerades as, inexplicably, a paperback book. To throw the paperback police off its trail, most likely.

**iPod: Computer pretending to be radio; iPhone: Computer pretending to be phone; iPad: Computer pretending to be weird flat screen of no use; Kindle: Computer pretending to be book.

In the following expose, I report my findings objectively with the highest journalistic integrity you’d expect from a speech therapist with no background in journalism.

The Kindle: Pros & Cons

Pros:
• The kindle has internet capability. This is awesome, because not enough things do these days.
• I no longer need a tray or endtable for my coffee. I can actually hold my kindle in one hand, cradle my coffee mug in the other, and click the “next page” button with either my chin or the excess flesh on my giant thumb.
• Flexible text size. I can magnify the text until only a few words are visible on the screen, and I can subsequently brag, “Look how fast I read that page!”

Cons:
• High risk of electrocution. While reading my kindle in the bath, I dropped it into the water (and quite frankly, I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t extend this information to my friend from whom I borrowed it), and this could have led to a disastrous and untimely end for my kindle. And myself. Also don’t take your kindle scuba-diving or on your jet-ski.
• Disorientation. One false click and you’re trapped in a maze of menus accidentally purchasing the entire Harry Potter series when all you want is to get back to the page in your current series where you find out if Katniss is going to end up with Peeta or Gale.
• Speaking of pages. There are none. So when you misclick, you can’t navigate back to a specific page number. And you can’t brag about how many pages you’ve read. You can only say, “I’ve already read 7% of my book!”
• Bookmarks don’t work. So despite tireless attempts to mark my spot by placing a bookmark on the screen, I was thwarted by the complete absence of pages.

The Traditional Paperback Book: Pros & Cons

Pros:
• It has pages, so bookmarks are an effective means of keeping one’s place.
• All books are available as books, but not all books are available as kindles. If you’re having trouble following this logic, it’s much like how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are cardboard boxes, and no rectangles can be triangles without shapeshifting.
• No danger of electrocution, except for that one time when I tried reading in the bathtub while straightening my hair and texting on my cell phone.

Cons:
• Lack of space. In the absence of regular trips to Powells to unload one’s book collection, books quickly fill and eventually overtake one’s living rooms, bedrooms, and even the bathroom. I recently had to sell my toilet to make room for a bookcase in that exact spot. I really need to pee.
• Death. While one’s head remains stable while reading the kindle, everybody is familiar with the slight shift in neck position as one transitions from scanning the left page of a book to the right side. With these slight shifts happening as often as several times per minute, a frequent reader is at high risk of Spontaneous Neck Snap, wherein one’s head actually pops right off after one too many slight shifts. While practiced readers are skilled in shifting their books rather than their heads, no reader is entirely protected from Spontaneous Neck Snap.

And there you have it, Readers, from my (friend’s) kindle to your brain, all you need to know in order to make an uninformed decision whether the kindling experience is right for you. Comment below for your chance to win a FREE TRAINING VIDEO on how to hold the kindle. Comment TWICE and receive a free booklet entitled, “How to Tell If Your Kindle is Upside Down” AND an unlimited subscription to my blog.

*Disclaimer for regular readers: This blog post departs from its usual farcical tone and is somewhat serious. Readers suffering from serious-induced shock are asked to immediately link to other posts for comic relief.

Dear Readers,

Yesterday, I got an awesome t-shirt. It says, “Luke’s Local Artist.” I felt like a fraud putting it on, because anybody within a mile of me can spot that I’m not an artist. The students I work with would have no problem sharing the depth of my visual-spatial impairments watching me attempt a basic stick figure sketch during a lesson. “Here Ms. Troi,” says my student with fine motor impairments who can’t yet use scissors to cut paper as he takes the pencil from me and draws an admittedly superior stick figure to my own, “This is how you draw a person.” So you might be wondering why I would don apparel emblazoned with the word “Artist.”

I donned this shirt last night because I was volunteering for an event called Luke’s Local Artists. This event, inspired by a ten-year old boy named Luke who lost his battle with cancer and actualized by his chemo pal* Ryan Foote, one of the creators of 2600 Strange Ave** (and creator of my awesome t-shirt), brought artists from the Portland area to the Disjecta event space and invited Portlanders to share in an evening of food, drinks, art and music to benefit three organizations who help support children with cancer: Children’s Cancer Association, Children’s Healing Art Project (CHAP), and Providence Cancer Research Center. 100% of the entrance fee ($20/person at the door, $15/person in advance) and the sale from drinks went toward these organizations.

When I offered to volunteer at the event, I didn’t know who Luke was, and when I left the event, I felt sad I’d never get the chance. From stories shared by those who knew him and a letter written in his own words, it was clear that In his three-year battle with cancer, Luke was a steadfast beacon of hope. The kind of hope that can be depleted for much less than the battle he fought. The kind of hope we forget to tap into when we’re tapped out by fear and loss.

People have sometimes asked me why I enjoy volunteering for organizations that matter to me, like the Children’s Cancer Association or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). And I’ll often respond with the flippancy characteristic of the blog posts you’ve come to know (and love?), like the fun or the free t-shirts (my neon green oversized AFSP t-shirt is perfect for first dates, because nothing says “I’m fun!” like neon green and the topic of suicide). But if I were to give an honest answer, it would be, “Because I’m alive, so I can.” I wake up every single morning with the gift of life, which is really the gift of opportunity: opportunity to do more and become better. Luke’s story reminded me that the gift of life is fleeting, and if I embrace this life and catch its curve balls (That’s a metaphor. I’m as bad at catching baseballs as I am at sketching the aforementioned stick figures.) with half the courage and hope that Luke did, I will consider my time here a job well done.

–Troi out

*A chemo pal is an adult matched with a child undergoing chemotherapy, one of the many awesome programs through the Children’s Cancer Association. To learn more about volunteering with this organization, please go here.

**A percentage of t-shirt sales go toward select charities. Please see their website for details.

“Using apps in treatment is a win-win. The client engages with an exciting device, and the clinician is able to model and elicit the targeted skills more easily.” -Sean Sweeney, SLP

Apps: (plural noun) /ae ps’/ : software applications that have brainwashed society into believing in their necessity for human survival, without which mankind will cease to exist in the form of a rapture (alternative spelling rappture), taking place today. Any minute now.

Reading through my most recent ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) newsletter today, I found that my current speech therapy practice of engaging directly with clients using archaic forms of communication such as conversation and eye contact is obsolete, replaced by a much more effective conversational partner known as the mobile app, which is “the future of the profession and some clinicians are already there” (Jeremy Legaspi, pediatric speech-language pathologist).

According to the article, apps can be used as contextual tools to enhance clients’ engagement in therapy and willingness to practice at home to improve transfer of targeted skills to other environments. “For a majority of my clients, the iPad is the first thing they ask for in treatment,” says Legaspi.

And what can the iPad do that other therapy tools can’t? According to Jessica Gosnell, an SLP at Children’s Hospital Boston, there is a “whiteboard” mobile app on which she writes and lists the therapy session’s activities. The client uses the whiteboard app to check off each listed activity that is completed.

Seen at Portland Antiques Shop, this rare artifact is from 2011. Teachers and students wrote on it before the r-app-ture.

This is fantastic, because there is no such thing as a “whiteboard” app in the real world. There is, however, a real whiteboard, on which low-tech SLPs such as myself can write the session’s activities, and another invention called the eraser, that can be used by clients to erase each listed activity that is completed.

The truth is, I can acknowledge the relevance of mobile apps in certain settings. As the article notes, SLPs who travel from setting to setting lugging a suitcase loaded with therapy tools could benefit from the number of resources (books, articulation therapy cards, board games) that could be incorporated into a single device for quick and easy access.

But there are many potential downfalls as well. The article points out that the true purpose of the therapy session —- which is to enhance communicative success whether it be in the area of articulation of speech sounds, fluency, voice, or social communication —- could become peripheral to to using the mobile apps*. Being expected to adapt treatment to a mobile device brought in by a client is another concern noted in this article. And in a career field intended to improve our use of speech and language for human interaction, I remain wary of replacing the rich communicative opportunities of the speech-language therapy environment with a device that could depersonalize that connection.

–Troi out

*This caution as it relates to using mobile apps is not to be confused with the field of AAC—-augmentative and alternative communication—-which is a vital need for those clients who are nonverbal or produce limited verbal output and require the use of a communication device. For these clients a highly-trained professional matches them with an AAC device, and learning to communicate using this device should be a primary focus of treatment.

This is an actual photograph of the tree that fell on Troi

Dear Loyal Readers,

I am writing now to quiet fears of my disappearance. There have been whispers of my bloglessness around these parts, causing a generalized unrest amongst Portlanders. Nobody seems to know what’s going on in this city, because I haven’t blogged about it. In fact, one might argue, if I haven’t blogged about it, did it actually happen? And much like the popular philosophical riddle, “If a tree falls on Troi in the woods, and nobody sees her get pinned under it, did the tree actually fall, and what was Troi doing in the woods in this rainy weather?” the answer, of course, is that it doesn’t really matter, as long as Troi was wearing rain boots and can wriggle out from under tight spaces.

During my absence, I have received many an empassioned inquiry regarding my whereabouts. Here are just a few comments made by my dearest fans:

“The internet has been so peaceful without your constant, unsolicited perspective.”

“Are you dating somebody? Come on, don’t try to hide it. The only time you stop blogging is when you’re dating somebody.”

“Honey, where have you been? Will you call me?”

Nothing less than absolute candor is required in responding to your questions, and therefore allow me without further delay to tell you that I was under a tree in the woods for the past several months and, owing to the fact that I had no bars in the forest (not even the Laurelwood), I lacked the reception to notify you, my loyal readers, of my whereabouts.*

*For those coworkers who sense deceit in this explanation —- having seen me at work every day —- I ask that you be discreet in your observations of prevarication as I have a reputation of honesty to maintain amongst my community of readers.

I assure you that in the future I will not allow my personal life to eclipse my duties as a blogger and will be providing you with material of the high caliber you’ve come to expect from …. other bloggers.

–Troi out

3/01/11
Assotroiated Press

Have you recently found yourself sitting instead of standing? Walking instead of running? Yawning instead of brawning? If so, you may be suffering from a recently identified ailment known as “gym block,” which is characterized by a total inability to get one’s butt to the gym. According to a recent report by CNNNN, the incidence of gym block has risen significantly in recent months and is spreading like mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich. While researchers are scrambling like eggs to develop a vaccine to protect against this dangerous disease, Dr. Troi McTroiferson of Troi Emmanuel Hospital in Detroit warns the general public to watch vigilantly for the signs of gym block and rush like gold to the nearest medical facility if you begin to develop any of the following symptoms:

• Thinking about going to the gym while eating Hostess cupcakes
• Keeping your gym membership as a ruse to trick yourself into thinking you’re actually going to go to the gym
• Walking past your gym to the store to buy another package of Hostess cupcakes
• Conjuring elaborate excuses to avoid the gym, such as losing your gym clothes, misplacing your water bottle, smashing the lock to your gym locker and eating your gym bag

Dr. McTroiferson implores readers to stay out of harm’s way by going to the gym.

“People who have come down with a bad case of gym block will be anywhere BUT at the gym, so it’s basically the safest place to be,” she explains from her hideout at 24-Hour Fitness, where she’s been living since the outbreak was first reported by CNNNN.

In the meantime, the CFDC (Centers for Fake Disease Control) advises people to take general precautions, such as washing their hands before and after reading a magazine. Eating foods high in vitamin C, such as Hostess Cupcakes, can ward off gym block bacteria. And taking a child’s chewable multivitamin (any child will do) can’t hurt, and tastes great!

To receive updates on gym block, please go to www.trekkychick.com, which CNNNN reports is “your source—-and not mine—-for unreliable news.”