Full Up

Love and cookies.

That’s what I was thinking about earlier tonight.  I felt suffused with love and cookies.

Specifically Valentines Day cookies that I made seven years ago.  I was remembering some thing Si Payne said to me.

“You must really love us,” he said looking at me through the thick lenses of his black frame glasses.  He had a cookie clutched in his hand.  It was a gigantic heart-shaped home-made sugar cookie.  I had made them the night before using “my” patented sugar cookie recipe.

Really,  a recipe that my mom had found in The Good HouseKeeping Cook Book she had given me.  I can still see pencil marks in the margins of the cook book from her figuring out portions for a double batch of the cookies.

The trick to making a good sugar cookie, as far as I am concerned, that is soft (I am not a fan of the crisp ones although when I was eating sugar I would not turn them down) is to slightly under bake them.  They will finish baking as you slide them off the  hot cookie pan sheet for a moment or two, so they are not raw in the middle, just delicately soft.

Plus, I would cut them out twice as thick as the recipe called for.  Then I would frost them by hand.  Sifted powder sugar mixed with melted butter and a little bit of milk, or cream, what ever I happened to have around.  Some times sour cream.  I would whip up a big batch of frosting then divide it into seven or eight bowls and mix colors of frosting together.

Pink, lavender, egg-shell blue, a soft emerald-green, a creamy yolk yellow, dreamsicle orange.  I always had lots of sprinkles and sugar glass and red hots for decorations.  I frosted probably over one hundred hearts.

Si’s heart was a pink heart with cinnamon red hots and multi-colored candy sprinkles.  I can see it in his hand.  And I can still feel the love that came from him and resonated in me.  I was really startled to hear what he said and realize exactly how right he was.

I really did love them.

I still do.

Them varies.

Them goes.

Them moves away to Oakland or New York.

Them has babies.

Them does stupid, stupid, stupid things.

But the maintaining principles and how they are practised stay consistent for me.  I have learned how to love more and more unconditionally and to let myself be open more and more to that love.

I got a letter from my mom today.  It was the sweetest thing I have ever gotten.  I don’t know how to express how a token, a small round metal chip with a Roman numeral on it can mean so much, but so much it does.

My heart is so full it hurts.  And there are times when I don’t want to feel that and I don’t want to be open and vulnerable.  I don’t want to feel it.  It is such exquisite pain and joy it feels like I can’t expand my heart fast enough to accommodate it.  Then a breath and an exhalation and there, my heart got a little bigger.

I still want those protective walls.

I still want to keep “you” at arm’s length.  The fear is still present and may always be, a little fear is healthy, means I’m alive and my instincts are still serving me.

A life run wild on that fear is not healthy, however, and that gobbling monster has me run at a clip some times to not feel.

I say this as I look at my week ahead and try to plan and make things happen just so, in this way, or that.  And truly, there’s nothing to do, nothing to plan, nothing that has to happen other than the way it is.

I do have a busy week.  Work is hectic.  The shop is getting busier, and it’s growth is obvious.  It will be a really busy summer there, I can already feel it.  My best friend is coming to visit soon, April, and I had to co-ordinate with her tonight.  I had phone calls to take, return, and texts to text.  I needed to touch base with Carolyn about meeting before  work and Jennifer about meeting after work on Thursday.

And that has not even brought me to the weekend.  Or the one day off or how am I going to get my laundry done, clean house, and do my Sunday chores with my….

Shhhh.

It’s ok little busy body brain.  It will all happen.  Exactly how it is supposed to without manipulation, without your plan, or meddling.  Just be easy and take the next action.

Next action.  Finish blog.

See, there, that’s easy.

Next action, type about cookies.  Meditate on love.  The love I hold for myself.  Like paying rent on time and eating beautiful healthy food.  Listening to music that makes me happy.  Go Soul Coughing.  Still on a Soul Coughing kick–listening to Mister Bitterness off of Ruby Vroom.

Such a fantastic song–desire looks just like you with a Uzi 9….desire is a grass fire drinking gasoline.  Jesus.  I love the songwriting.

If I only could write like that.

Oops.  I don’t need to go down that path either.  I write just fine.  I like what I do.  I like my life.  I like my job.

I love my friends.  I love my community.  I love my bicycle.  I love that my best friend is going to stay in my tiny room with me in the back of a Mexican families house with poor plumbing for three days (actually this terrifies me a little, what the hell is she going to think of my bathroom/garage/kitchen?) but who cares as I get to see her for three days!

I love my mom.  I may not be able to always express it very well.  Or in the way she wants me to express it.  But love her I do.

Best part of my day, reading a letter from my mom.

Made me feel the soft song of Silas’s voice on my cheeks as he kissed it–the love that smells like  a soft, warm pile, of heart-shaped sugar cookies with home-made icing.

But better, since I didn’t sneak any off the plate when mom wasn’t looking.

Flirt Bucket

That would be me.

You know what’s handy about working in a bike shop?

Handing out your business cards to cute guys who work in bike shops too.

I am deliberately not responding to the whistle of my Iphone.

I set it to whistle at me when I have a text message.  I have a text message.  I am assuming it is from the gentleman who I gave my card to yesterday.

We started talking yesterday on the corner of Valencia and 15th.  He had come in for the day from Marin and the next thing you know I am getting the grill about why I don’t ride in fixed gear.

Because I am a big fat sissy.

Because I thought, until today, that riding fixed meant riding without a brake.  And it does not!  I also thought, I like to coast, I like having a free wheel, it’s nice for going down hills.  Except that now being in the Mission I don’t have that many hills to ride down.

Although I have bombed 24th from Diamond to Folsom at a pretty damn quick clip the last two Saturday eves in a row.  It’s delirious fun.  I ride down the middle of the lane.  I am going so fast I figure two things–1. No driver is going down this hill faster than me so they can not bother trying to pass me; and 2. the road has a lot of little mini potholes–best to take it down the center of the lane.

However, after listening to Mister Marin espouse the virtues of fixed, I started to wonder, maybe I am ready to take the fixed plunge.  Then between my General Manager and the Head Mechanic at the shop I became convinced that I should at least try it.

The other thing that Mister Marin mentioned was that it was more exercise, more work.  I am down for that.  I need a little more exercise.  My commute went from 25 minutes to five minutes.  My legs are barely warmed up by the time I get to the shop or home from the shop.  I will gladly ride fixed if it means working out my legs some more.

Down with it.

There is also a smidgen of ego laced into all of this.  I want to do what the cool kids do and they apparently ride fixed.  The GM sold it to me like this, it’s more fun.  He would know.  And he used to ride with a free wheel too until one day when he needed to ride a bike and hopped on one of the fleet that is built up for test rides and it was fixed.

He liked it.  He kept trying it out and kept liking it more and more.  Finally, he just made the switch and has not gone back.  That pretty much sold me.

That and the analogy to driving a stick shift.  It was likened to me that way and I love driving a stick, you have more control and I always feel more connected to the car.  Supposedly that same thing will happen for me with a fixed gear.  I have the flip-flop hub on my rear wheel, I’m going to have the mechanics flip it for me sometime this week.

I will have plenty of time to address it as I am at the beginning of six days on.  I thought I was swapping out tomorrow for this Saturday to help a co-worker and it turns out that no, she needs to work next Tuesday.

Fuck me.

I am working six days straight.  Argh.

Jesus the phone is chirping and whistling.

And the lady is putting the writing first.  I know if I get on the phone with a cute guy I am not going to get off any time soon.  I will not finish the blog or I will and it will be late at night.  My writing is my priority.

My recovery is my first priority and that was already addressed, so I am on track and I will have my little blog post up within the next half hour.  The phone can wait.  Besides, if it’s meant to be, I can’t fuck it up, nor can I manipulate it into happening.  I have tried it both ways.

My year book photo went live today on the website and on Facecrack.  That was interesting.  I am still not the biggest fan of the photo, but apparently my eyes are broke because plenty of other people thought it was just fine.

My perception of myself is definitely skewed.  I know that, but it is a good reminder once in a while to know that other people see me differently than I do.

I also have a not so secret admirer in Panama.  He came into the shop on vacation and I gave him the shirt off my back.

I had on a tank top underneath, thank you very much, and he gave me his.  I have since received a few e-mails from him, have designed him a bag (which he wants me to sign!  What?), and have had an invitation extended to me to stay at his home in the jungle when I come down with friends.

Ok then.

Uh, no thank you, but thank you.

I have never been south of the border, but I am not sure that is the place to start.  I do like his tone better than the crazy tweaker guy that I accidentally smiled at before I realized he was a crazy tweaker guy, who comes in once a week to “see” what’s new in the shop.

He just comes in and stares at my chest.

Psst.  The rack is not new.  I have had it for a while.

Last thought before I go check the voicemail and the text messages–which may be from other folks too–I am treading slightly unfamiliar territory.  Mister Marin has already Facecracked me.  The possibility of him reading this post is fairly high.

Oh well, it’s just flirting, right?

And I write about me.  This is what’s happening in my life.

I’m getting whistled at in my bedroom.  That’s funny.

I do have some recovery! I made it all the way through to the end without once checking my phone.  Rock the hell on.

I promise I won’t twist an ankle rushing off to check my messages either.

I am a flirt who wants to go on a bike ride this weekend.

In fixed gear.

 

Tired

Need a weekend from the weekend.  But I got almost everything done that needed to be done.  Then the blog, the blog, the blog, I forgot that it was time to make the donuts.  My whole head got mushy.

But I don’t want to write today mom.

Eat your broccoli!

I mean, write your blog.

I am afraid that what I have of interest is pretty dry stuff.  Guess what I researched today?  Shaolin?  Nope.  Although I did get a reply to my inquiry to the Eight Step Mantis school.  One of the sifu’s just sent me an e-mail.

Classes are $120 a month.  Maybe I’ll stick to biking for a little while yet.  Maybe.  The thing about the classes at this particular school is that I would be in conflict with my work schedule.  In fact, all the schools that interest me are in conflict with my schedule.  I may end up going the yoga route, the easier, softer, uh cheaper way.

No, what I spent a bit of time doing today was researching what it would look like to be an accountant.  I cannot even believe that I am interested in this, but there is something rather compelling about the idea.  It would be a career path I could follow.  I could check out some classes.  Maybe get a certificate in book-keeping.  More training equals more money.

I looked at City College and I think I may drop by the Mission Campus on Tuesday and make a few inquiries.  I have also put out my feelers to a few people who I know that are in the field.

Did I really look at a CPA site today?

Not just one site, I probably looked at five.  The idea is still really a foreign concept and seems to be a direct paradox of what I do and how I have been in the world until now.  On the other hand, it makes great sense.

Greta was right about how I am diligent.  I already have had it commented on at work that I document everything.  It is how I make sure to not make a mistake.  Oh, I still make mistakes, don’t get me wrong, I am nowhere near perfect, but I try really hard to keep my errors to a dull roar.

The irony of looking at an accounting degree or even book-keeping and having dyslexia with numbers is not beyond me, but frankly, I have heard of stranger things.

And what if I just check it out?  I have applied to a number of different writing programs.  Nobody wants me.  I have submitted lots of work.  Nobody wants to publish me.

That is not to say that it won’t happen. It will.  But instead of sitting idly by waiting for my career to coalesce and working yet another somewhat menial labor day job, why not develop some skills that could lead to a profitable career?

It cannot hurt to investigate, despite the idea being relatively hilarious to me that I would even have an interest in this line of work.  I mean mom always wanted me to grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor or some such thing.

I don’t hear of many parents saying, jeez, I sure wish my kid would grow up to be an accountant.

Yet, there is something there to check out.  I don’t know why, why is not a spiritual question, Martines, but it does, it does, merit further investigation.

I can say this much, it holds much more interest to me than being a nanny again.  There is something immutable about numbers.  Despite not seeing them very well, I do know how they are supposed to work.  I want to find out if I could be good at this.

I want to pursue something that I could use to buy a house or plan for retirement.  I like the idea too of being useful at what I do.  Learning more about Quick Books is going to help me be better at my current job.  As I don’t know how long I will be at my current job.

Because if I don’t get health care and a decent cost of living incentive through them within this next year, it probably will not be very long.

That being said, I can utilize the experience of working there and learn, learn, learn.  Remind myself that this will not be the last job I have in my life.

Show up, be of service and pass on my experience.

What cracks me up is how many people talk to me about bikes now.  And look at me like I am some sort of expert.  I guess, when it comes down to it, I do know more than the average person off the street, but I am no expert.

It is nice to see how far I have come.  All I have to do is look on the wall–see how far I have come since that awful hybrid I started out on five years ago.

My bike rack has been installed!

Thomas and his room-mate James swung by and installed it this afternoon.  Now my bike is out-of-the-way, so to speak and I have a little more room in my room.  And it is damn pretty to see hanging on the wall like some glorious piece of art.

I am a little protective of my ride and I am very glad to have a secure safe spot indoors for it.

I have also taken note that it is a nice conversation starter.  This afternoon I met a fellow from Marin who works at Mikes Bikes and I got the low down on riding a fixed gear.

There was a time and a place where the thought of riding a fixed was just craziness.  Now, just like the thoughts of being an accountant, maybe it’s not so far-fetched.

Maybe I don’t know my own limitations.  Maybe I think I can’t do something, and I actually can.

Tattooed dragon, accountant, girl.

That’s one for the books.

Well, Well, Well

What do you know?

I have had an eye-opening day today.  And I got to go shake my booty at the Elbow Room tonight with Beth, Nicole, and Radha.  I love being able to go out and get in good dance then split before it gets crazy.

We were there from 10:30 pm til midnight.  Perfect.  I would have like it if the music got going a little sooner and was maybe a touch more upbeat, but I got a nice groove on and I can feel a little burn in the thighs, so I got my exercise.

I also got hit on by babies.

Babies.

I have had tattoos longer than some of them have had facial hair.

Shit this one wee one could not have even been of age, his face was smoother than the bottom of a newborn.  Maybe he had a mom thing going on.   I’m  a MILF now?  Although, I have no kids, so a cougar?  Or, what did Mister West Oakland call me?

A puma.

Yeah.

Glad I stayed in the city for my dancing.  Instead of hauling over to Oakland.  Although, I do like the People’s Party.  And I would like to make another one of them.  Just not this weekend.

What has actually blown me away about this evening is a small chain of events that started last week and has been dominating its way through my ego over the last few days.  The further acknowledgement of my dyslexia.

I told John Ater about it last night.  He looked at me, “girl”.  And just shook his head.  I can keep some secrets pretty damn well.  I have been working with John for over four years.  And he never knew.

And he told me that it was time I took care of myself.  And oh, wait, that’s right, to stop punishing myself.

Jesus, did he and Carolyn get together behind my back when I was not looking?

Apparently this weeks theme is stop being mean to yourself.  Ok.  I hear you, you may be right.

I took good care of myself today.  I slept in.  I actually got up and was going to stay up and then, I peed, well, that’s what I did, shut up, and I went back to bed.  I slept in.  9:45a.m.  Damn Gina.

Then I had lovely hot breakfast.  Went to Valencia Gardens and saw lovely people.  Then had coffee with Stephanie at Four Barrel.  After a good check in I headed to Rainbow and I got myself sexy food.

I got the perfect mango, an avocado, bib lettuce, a tangelo, a pound of Stump Town Holler Mountain, garlic and black pepper tofu, Pink Lady Apples, a Roma tomato.  I just let my eyes feed me, what ever looked pretty or smelled good, I bought.

Homeward bound late afternoon I dropped the groceries off at the house, then slipped on the flip-flops and padded over to my ghetto fabulous nail salon and got my nails did.  And my eyebrows waxed.  And caught up on the latest W.  Which reminds me, I never got my Nylon subscription, my Vogue subscription, or my W subscription forwarded.

Damn you USPS.

Back to the house for dinner.  And then up to Noe Valley to meet Radha for tea.  I swung into Ambiance and got the cutest little grey and black striped mini dress and a faux antique pair of cameo earrings.  For under $50.

Yes.

Drum roll now please.  The epiphany.  The letting go.  The giving my shit up.  Being vulnerable.  Saying the dirty word out loud.

I shared tonight that I have dyslexia.  It was hard and yes, that’s right, I cried.  What else is fucking new?

But I got some relief.  And that was what John was talking about.  And I got some unexpected help.  Out of nowhere I am approached by a woman I have known for five years but not very well.  It turns out she has dyslexia too.

Not the kind with letters either.  The kind with numbers!  And she’s a book-keeper!

Holy shit batman.

What?

She knows Quick Books like the back of her hand.  She told me that I have nothing to worry about.  That once I learn it and have a system in place I will blow everyone else out of the water, because I know that I have a difficulty seeing sequential numbers I will do what I have done before.

I will create systems of safeguards.  I will double, triple, quadruple check my work.  In other words, I am a businesses wet dream.  Because I know I will install safeguards.

She told me that she also knows that her mind can only take three maybe four hours and then she has to stop looking at the computer.  She has to move onto another task. That is my experience exactly.  I related to her what happened this past Tuesday when I was doing inventory at the shop and she was not surprised at all, I had pushed myself past the point.

I had exhausted my brain.

It is rather like I have an off switch.  I can do so much then I need to stop.  But the up side is this–I will do it better and faster and with more attention to detail than anyone else.  I will make the perfect book-keeper.

Hell, I may even look into doing accounting.

Who the fuck knew that having admitted this would open up a new career path?

What?

Excuse me?

I was just telling Carolyn on Thursday that I did not know what I wanted to do.  That I had no clue.  I mean, I want to write, which is what I am doing now, and I want to continue writing, and I want to get published.  But until that happens, as I just got another rejection in the mail, I need a career.  I need something where in I can make some money, honey.

Greta, the woman who talked to me tonight, told me that a book-keeper who knows Quick Books will earn $20-$25 an hour.  Bring it on.  Further, an accountant will earn at least $100 an hour.  Bring it on.

The irony of being told by a woman who has the same dysfunctional brain that I do, who can’t tell right from left, over from under, or do fractions, is a book-keeper and that I can become one too, is mind-boggling.

A paradox.

A divine gift.

I am blessed to have such “problems”.

My Motives

Are ass.

And are about getting ass.  Literally.  Today I own up to wanting to go dancing to get asked on a date.  To wanting to go to Oakland to go dancing to see if I would possibly run into Mister West Oakland.

He likes to dance and I could see him hitting up the People’s Party.

My motives, bad new bears.  I know better.  And I have another admittance.

My licence is expired.  I say this because I was negotiating with myself about getting a City Car Share to drive over to Oakland to go dancing to impress some guy who I went on three dates with?

What the fuck?

No.

No.

And no.

Tuesday I have a date with the DMV to renew my licence.  It recently expired and I have to physically go in to the DMV to renew as I have moved around so much I don’t have the forwarded information they normally send and I missed my window to renew via mail.

Damn it.

Which, ultimately is good, good to admit I am not allowed to drive a car this weekend. I had a vision of getting pulled over and handing over my expired licence and oops, officer, how did that happen?

I was willing to lie to get some attention.

What else is new?

How about instead, I stay in the city and just because the show at Public Works got cancelled does not mean that there won’t be plenty of other things going on tomorrow night that I can ride my bike to.

I have great wheels that don’t require anything to ride them but a sense of adventure.  So, in the city I will stay.

Funny, I was relaying to Mrs. Fishkin this afternoon at work that the show at Public Works was the first show in a really long time that I have bought tickets to.  Wouldn’t you know it would get cancelled.

Hmmm, something just pricked the back of my memory, I think the Space Cowboys are playing somewhere in town this weekend?  Unfortunately, if memory serves, they’re playing Sunday night.  Sunday is not a great night for me to go out and dance, although it can be a fun night, the dance floor is a bit roomier.

It was already going off tonight as I was making my way home.  Staying off Valencia Street as much as I could.  The bike lanes are considered the double parking lanes and it is a wild fucking ride through that part of the Mission on a Friday night.  There was a lot of activity happening out there.

I was pretty excited about the prospect of just getting back to the homestead and getting cozy with my “new” space heater.  It is adorable.  I got it off Etsy.  It is definitely vintage, but it works really well.  I had a moment of what would it look like to go out and go dancing tonight, but the weather had shifted so drastically to the frigid side of town that I knew I would be happier going home.

My motives elsewhere are actually good.

Occasionally that happens.

I spent a little time earlier looking around for schools for Kung Fu here in the city.  And I discovered that the place I was hoping to go was still up and running.  It is the Eight Step Preying Mantis school here in the Mission.

I went to it when I first moved to the city and they are still operating.  I sent them off a query e-mail about classes and I am going to drop in over the weekend and check the rates out.  If I can swing it, I’m going to sign up.  I would like to be in classes three days a week.

I may even request a change in my schedule to accommodate the school.  I definitely feel ready to delve back into martial arts.  Mantis is not my first preference, but Kung Fu is, and the school is super convenient to where I live, it’s on 20th and Florida.  I live at 22nd and Folsom, it’s basically four blocks away.

I am excited.  Nervous, oh yeah, but excited too.

Adventures in martial arts, here I come.  I had to remind myself as well, that I will probably be frustrated and I will be challenged and I will get to fumble around and not be graceful.  I feel like enough time has elapsed since I last trained that I may actually be able to approach it as a new comer, with fresh eyes and hopefully with a new attitude about why I want to train.

I want to be in my body.  I want to be connected with myself.  I want to keep my strength, which I feel like is rapidly diminishing as I no longer sling toddlers around nor am I riding the same amount on my bike.  Plus there’s a good part of my day spent in a chair behind a desk.  I need to get my exercise on.

Lastly, and here’s where perhaps my motives are not so scrupulous, I want my body to look better.  I want to shape up what still needs a little re-shaping.  I want to drop that final dress size.  I am quite close to my goal, but I feel like I have been plateaued for a good while now.  A little push of exercise will get me there.

And I am not good at being a gym rat.  I need something that will be challenging and different.  I don’t just want to work out on machines.  Plus, the mental stillness I have experienced doing martial arts is stunning.

Getting out of my head and into my body is an important thing.  Despite wanting to out myself on my motives for going to Oakland, I will say this, dancing does it for me very well.  So, I will stop punishing myself, and pat myself on the head and tell myself, it’s alright, if it gets you out of the house on a Saturday night, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

I may not venture to Oakland, but I will venture out.

Suddenly Shaolin

Kung Fu, that is.

I am ready.

I met with Carolyn this morning before work.  It was one of the most productive things I have done this week.  I spent a lot of time grappling with some of the ways I punish myself around my life and what I do.

As though, if I hurt me first, you will be less inclined to.  Or, I will somehow win you to my side.  I don’t even realize I am punishing myself.

I relayed the story of why I stopped training in Shaolin to Carolyn today and wow did it bring up a lot of stuff.  I cried all my eye make up off before I even got into work today.  I worked before I worked, so to speak.

I am getting to have a new perspective and a fresh willingness to do the plan.  I am scared, excited, nervous. I told her about work and the fallout and the drama and how that has played out and got a little more relief and a lot more ego puncturing and a lot of insight.

I don’t feel like a thin layer is being pulled off, it feels like a slab of self is about to get lifted.  I don’t expect that it won’t be without pain, but I don’t have to suffer through it. It will and already has been a period of growth for me that I think I am only just beginning to understand.

One thing that I realized is that I want to train again.  I want to get back into Kung Fu.

I miss it.

I haven’t trained in 9 years.  I stopped training when I moved to San Francisco.  I received my black belt at the Frederick J. Villari school of self-defense in June of 2002.  My god, that’s almost a decade ago.  He is the Grand Master, I got the pleasure of meeting him three times and once getting to be in a workshop with him.  He developed the style, thus the name, and it is a combination of Kung Fu (about 85%Shaolin), Kempo (about 10%–grappling techniques), and Karate (%5, emphasis her on the kicking techniques)

At one point I could knock over a 190lb body bag without breaking a sweat.  You got over it real quick though as the bother of picking up the bag every time it toppled got annoying.  Eventually you tuned your kick to knock it 2/3rds of the way, just enough that it would slowly wobble and then come back up.

Eek.  I am getting old.

But if Mister Landretti can do it at the age of 50, he and I went up the ranks together and got our black belts around the same time, I think, then I can get back into it now at 39.

I did go to the Preying Mantis school of Kung Fu in the Mission when I first moved here.  But I rapidly out paced my abilities to show up for class with my ever-changing work schedule.

I further demolished whatever ties I had to kung fu when my cocaine usage outstripped my desire to train.

Hell, it outranked everything.

I ended up sharing a story with Carolyn about having met a Shaolin monk at R Bar in the Polk Gulch.  I was drinking, I was doing blow in the bathroom and I was sizing up the odds of whether or not I would be getting more.

There was a man, a small Chinese man, indiscriminate age, sitting next to me at the bar sipping a Seven Up.  He inquired after the tattoo on the back of my neck, the Chinese characters for Shaolin, a tattoo I got at Steve’s Tattoo on Willy St. in Madison after I had taken my black belt test.

He asked if I trained Shaolin.  I said yes.  He asked if I went to temple.  I said no.  He asked to see my Horse stance.  I hopped off my bar stool and dropped into the stance.

He knocked me over without getting off the stool.  He pushed me over with a finger tip.

I was mortified.  I politely declined his invitation to come check out the temple he taught at and slunk off to the loo to do more blow.

I could not get his face out of my head.  I could not do enough powder to forget that feeling of failure.  When I got back to the house that night, I was living on 22nd and Alabama, I threw away my black belt.

I felt that I did not deserve it.

Carolyn likened it to punishing myself.  And that I was still, years later, almost a full decade later, still, punishing myself.

Oh my god.

She is right.

How could I not see this?  I earned that belt.  I worked my ass off.  I trained after school before work.  I would get done with classes on the UW Madison campus and head to the dojo and take a class and train until I had to go to work.  Then I would work from 6 p.m. to close.

Repeat, lather, rinse, repeat.

Add a lot of vanilla lattes to the mix.

A lot.

I drank so much caffeine I swore I kept Steep and Brew in business.

I miss training.

I think I said that already.  I am seriously considering Shaolin again.  I would like to surf.  But I don’t have a car to get to the beach or a surf board.  I would like to do yoga, but I don’t know that I am that interested in it to pursue it.

I am already, however, thinking about how it feels to do Katas and how to run numbers and how to do my blocking sequences.  I can feel how my body wants to do it again, I can feel the yearn for it along the muscles in my arms.

I want to throw a punch with beauty and grace and precision.  I want to feel the ache in my thighs again from standing in stance for so long that the muscles trembles with fatigue.

I do like to punish myself!

But what a way to get back into my body.  Kung Fu.

Just saying it makes me smile.  It’s time to do Kung Fu again.

Hiya!

Sconnie Girl

Wisconsin.

I heard you tonight.  I heard you in the voice of a native son from Milwaukee.  Ya know.

Yeah, I do.  I hear you in me every once in a while as well.  And I think, maybe, maybe, maybe one day I will make the great migration back to the Midwest.

It won’t be any time soon, hell, I feel like I just made the great migration back to the Mission.  The last thing I want to think about is moving again.  Fingers crossed, the last of the “home improvements”  will be happening on Friday.

I am home for a little bit.

But when you hear some one from your home state, you notice.  You wonder, would I have dated that person in Wisconsin?  Actually, in a different form, I definitely dated this guy, he reminded me of some one I use to hang with, that’s for sure.

My best friend is coming out from Wisconsin in April.

I have Wisconsin on my mind.  I am afraid that if I say it in my mind one more time I will say it out loud and the accent will fall out of my mouth.  Things that you should know about Wisconsin.

Cheese is good.

Brandy is better.

Beer is the best.

Brats soaked in beer are also highly regarded.

Hunting season is awesome.  Green Bay Packers are Gods. Deep fried cheese curds with ranch dressing is elevated eating.  Fried fish in southern Wisconsin and fish boil in northern Wisconsin on Friday nights.  And Ash Wednesday.

I remember being at the Essen Haus one Ash Wednesday and this S.A. (service assistant, aka glorified busser) came back into the kitchen in tears after having been yelled at by a customer.  Who’s entire meal I think I ended up comping, I was the General Manager at the time.

Mickey, that was her name, she was cute in a pixish kind of way, was in tears after having wiped the ash smudge off a customers forehead.

Oops.

I met Stephanie at the Essen Haus.  She was one of my trainers.  She wore a blue dirndle the night she trained me and had flowers nestled in her hair and cornflower blue ribbons.  She asked me why I was working there.

I had no idea what the hell she meant.  I needed money?

Yes, but she wanted to know what kind of money?  Was I working there because I wanted to buy a cute pair of shoes at East Town Mall or did I need to pay the rent?

I needed to pay the rent.  Bad.  I was one month back to my boyfriend.

She nodded sagely and said, this is the place for you.  And she trained the hell out of me.  And we became good friends.  I have known her since I was 21.  I have known her eighteen years.  My best friend.  She has seen the worst of me.  And the best.

She is also some one that I am usually my utter complete self with.  I have never laughed longer or harder than with her.  She was the first and only girlfriend that I ever had a fight with and we made up.  I don’t even know what it was about but I remember that it was really important to me to make sure that we stay friends.

She does the best Bob Kozel impersonation ever and always makes me do my impersonation of Jason Fricke–two beloved drunks from the Essen Haus and the Angelic perspectively–having his tail chopped off by Ralph, the owner of the Angelic.

I stayed with her when my ex-boyfriend went off the deep end and hit me.

I helped address her wedding invitation.  I sent her a stuffed Eeyore to New Zealand when she was there with her fiance for work.  I called her when I was in the worst place of my life and she was there.

She is my rock.  I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is a true Sconnie Girl.  In fact, I had never even heard that term until it popped out of her mouth on the evening of her wedding in Minnesota.  She had her reception at this beautiful historic hotel in Red Wing–where her grandparents got married.  And Minnesota happens to have a 12:30 a.m. bar call.

Well, Red Wing happens to be on the Wisconsin border.  No one wanted the festivities to end, so the next thing you know, she is rounding everybody up and we are going to the “sconnie side” of the river, last call is 2a.m. call at 2:30a.m.

I will never forget her picking her way with her skirts of white and tulle held up like dream froth over her cute little shoes buckle wedding shoes, through the gravel parking lot of the bar to the river.  We all sat around on picnic tables and drank bottle Budweiser.

The King of Beers.

It was not our normal default, we were all beer snobs at that point, the majority of us at the wedding having either been baptized upon the fount of imported beer from the Essen Haus, or the award-winning beer from the Angelic.  But when in Sconnie you drink what they got.

Once we were up at her mom’s cottage in Northern Wisconsin and we went to a karaoke bar and I was doing shots of, wait for it, Apple Pucker, and swilling Budweiser from long necks.  She looked at me and grinned, her cheeks all aglow like soft apples in cream, “you’re drinking those like a Nascar driver”!

I was.

I don’t miss drinking and all the attendant misery it brings me, but I did have some fun and some of my best times were with Stephi.

She was always good at poking fun at me.  And she has a memory like a steel trap.  She likes fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and she does this cute little thing with her fingers when she really likes what she is about to eat.  It is so adorable I could throw up on her if I wasn’t entirely enchanted.

She sends me sock monkeys as jokes.  Once at Jolly Bobs, it was her bachelorette party and she very definitively said “NO PENIS STRAWS”!  There was no penis paraphernalia to be seen, well, except the little tiny wind up one I got as a joke, I couldn’t help it, it walked on little feet.  I just about peed my pants laughing.

Her good friend Wendy was there and Wendy like to nick name people things–Stephi was  a little strawberry, Steve was an owl, Beth was a turtle (when Beth first got her tag from Wendy, she thought for the longest time she was calling her turd), and well, I wanted to know who I was.

I was also deep into a snifter of Jamaican vanilla rum and quite lit.

“Well, honey, you, well, you’re not going to like it, but I think that you look like a cute little sock monkey”.

Oh, fuck my mother.

A sock monkey?

Oh, yeah, the big red lips.  Great.

I have been Stephi’s sock monkey ever since.

I don’t regret a single moment of it.  I can’t wait to hang out with the original Sconnie Girl, Stephanie Sargent Fox.

I may even let my accent slip out for the weekend.

 

Dyscalculia

a neurological condition characterized by a problem with basic sense of number and quantity and difficult retrieving rote math facts. Often people with this condition can understand very complex mathematical concepts and principles but have difficulty retrieving basic math facts involving addition and subtraction.

OR why my day was ASS.

I have dyslexia.  I hate that word.  I hate it.  I hate it.  I hate it.  I hate my brain.

Hahahahahahahaha.

God is fucking funny.

Jackass.

Nothing really says good times like having to acknowledge this.  I do not want to, it is embarrassing on so many levels.  I am a writer.  For fucks sake.  I have dyslexia.

But it’s not dyslexia in the way most people associate the term with it.  In fact, most people would scoff at me, I am a writer.  I like words.  I am a good speller.  I like to read.

I like to read, a lot, because I don’t retain it very well.  There is a secret joy in this–I get to reread certain things and I always learn something new (One of my favorite books, Dune, I have read six, maybe seven times).  I can retain things if I put them on a different wave length in my brain.  I can retain visual images really well.  I can tell you a story.  I can tell you the colors in the plaid carpeting of the Angelic Brewing Company.  I could describe to you the way the back stair case at the Essen Haus, the one behind the stage leads up into this disorienting other world of glass steins and dolls that would creep out a horror movie producer.

But ask me to tally a check with tax and I am flummoxed.

Or, better yet, ask me to be in charge on inventory.

We did inventory at work today.  I knew it was coming, dreaded, this day in my heart.  In a way, I had prepared my GM for the inevitable breakdown.  I had opened up a little, a very little, about this aspect of my personality, or my brain, if you will, at my review on Friday.

He had talked to me about how I just suddenly am not present and I get really curt and my attitude is one of “cut to the chase and just tell me what you want me to do”.

And it’s true I do.  Because I don’t know how to tell some one that I can’t line up the bikes in order of size because the number of the bikes doesn’t make sense to me.  The bikes are not logically aligned in my system of understanding space and time and numbers.

Today it all came out, tearfully, horribly, awfully, disgustingly.  I was in a corner hiding behind the matting frame in Mrs. Fishkin’s office crying and trying to pull my shit together so that I could go back to work.  In fact, I haven’t stopped crying since I reached my capacity for being able to identify a number of lights in a sequence.

It’s really embarrassing.  I was counting lights, bike lights, those little wobbly bits of silicone that attach to your handlebars.  I was counting red lights and white lights.  They were in four rows, five rows deep, alternating.  I lost count.  I started over.  I lost count.  I started over.  I had too much information.  My brain did not know what to do.  Red first?  Or white?  They’re alternating colors.  And there’s too many of them and oh fuck.

It was like a brain hiccup.

I will never forget the first time it happened to me.  I was in fifth grade, Mrs. Cleveland was my home group teacher, and it was math time.  We were working on fractions.  And I did not get it.  I did not understand.  I could not conceptualize what was happening.  And I was good at math!  Really good.  I was always one of the fastest at addition and subtraction and multiplication.

But fractions?  Oh my god.  It just didn’t make sense.

Another secret.  I was a horrible speller until fourth grade.  I had done really poorly in a third grade spelling bee and I embarrassed my mom with my poor abilities at spelling.  She was aghast as I had started reading really young.  I wonder about this now and again, how “well” was I reading.

She sat me down for hours, hours I mean hours, on end and would grill me on spelling.  I could not spell squirrel for the longest time and she embarrassed me into remembering it.  I don’t know what happened exactly, but I remember the color of the couch, a funky green gold yellow faux velvet thing, that she was sitting on.  I remember the pattern of the fabric.  I remember that she was in sweat pants and was bare foot and was wearing a thin t-shirt and no bra.

I remember how she ridiculed me.

I forced myself to remember how to spell squirrel.

Another secret.  The QWERTY board is my saviour, it makes perfect sense to me.  Perfect.  My fingers fly.  I can type really fast.  The number pad on a calculator makes great sense to me as well, but numbers in a row, don’t.

I managed to bullshit my way through a lot of math.  I hit my real breaking point junior year in trigonometry.  I could not do it.  The negative and positive numbers running on a graph in four directions.

Fuck my mother.

Here are some of the things that I can’t do:

Right from left.  Horrible, do not every ask me for directions or go the opposite of the way I tell you.

Over and under.  No clue.  That one is above and beyond me, pun sort of intended.

Labeled lazy, dumb, careless, immature, “not trying hard enough,” or “behavior problem”

Trig teacher–I’m not letting you drop this class you are too smart, you’re just being lazy.  Three months of tutoring after school with a math tutor and still pulling a soft C.   Straight As in all other subjects.

Perfect oral score on SAT.  Repeat.  Perfect.  Not one wrong.

Math, however, was so embarrassingly bad I have blanked out what the score was, but it brought down my average, oh yes it did.

High in IQ

172 bitches.

Say it with me, works in a bike shop.  I-fucking-Q has meant jack shit to me.  Doesn’t serve, doesn’t help, what’s the point of having a high IQ?

Tests well orally, but not written

See SAT test and every other test I have ever taken.  Did I ever tell you about the one that said my future was going to be in dog grooming?

Feels dumb and has poor self-esteem

Duh.

Easily frustrated and emotional about school, reading, or testing

Yup.

Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, story- telling, sales, business, designing, building, and/or engineering

Check, check, and check.

Learns best through “hands-on” experience.

Almost embarrassingly true, I have to “drive the car” to understand what is happening.  You can’t just tell me.  I have to actually physically do the thing you are trying to teach me.

Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, and/or verbal explanations

BAhahahahahahaha.  Unfortunately, true.  My poor GM, I have given him the gaze of death unintentionally more than a few times, it’s not him, it’s me, but I can’t seem to get him to understand that I don’t understand what he’s saying.

Keen sighted and observant, but lacks depth perception and peripheral vision.

Really?  I still think I’m just stupid, but yup, this is really on the nose.

Has extended hearing; hears things that most people can’t hear.

I have supersonic hearing.  Ask anybody.

Easily distracted by sounds.

Please do not talk to me when I am trying to figure out the morning procedure, balancing the books from the day before.  Please don’t play music.  Please.

Computing math shows dependence on finger counting and other tricks

Oh jesus, how embarrassing is that, I count on my fingers, I count out loud under my breath.  You should have seen me doing the inventory today.

Hysterical.

Until I became hysterical.

Stutters under stress

I stuttered until third grade?  Maybe second.  My mom forced it out of me.  I don’t know how, but it was made to leave.  It will pop out when I am really stressed out though, freaks me out a little when it happens, I like being in control.

Can you tell?

Pencil grip is unusual

And I just thought I was terminally unique.  I have had doctors, teachers, and friends comment on it, I never thought much of it, but I do have an odd way of holding pens and pencils, I write so much long hand that you can actually see a callous on the top part of my middle finger from where the pen sits–it’s apparently on the “wrong” part of my hand.

Can be ambidextrous, and often confuses left and right, and over and under.

The trick to remembering left and right is to stand behind some one and pick up their right hand in my right hand and wave it.  This is how I differentiate left and right.

OR

Spend a lot of money and time with a very patient sensei.  Mister Andrew Kessle, first degree black belt when I was a white belt,  he who patiently taught me blocks one and two, which is left and which is right.  I cried.  It took me three lessons, private hour-long lessons, to get it.  I did not want anyone to know I could not differentiate the two.  But I got it.

I am also stubborn.  I never told a soul that I had this while I was training for my black belt.  I just made myself remember it with muscle memory.  The mirror was the worst–to suddenly be in front of a mirror and have to do left versus right, oh my god.  Scary.  Left and right should not cause histrionics, really.

Can count, but bad at counting objects and dealing with money

BAhahahahahahaha.

Who wants me to do Quick Books now?

Ha.

Can do arithmetic and math, but fails word problems

Story problems, ever hear of them?  Story problems are like sunlight to a vampire.  I am shriveling up thinking about it.

Cannot grasp algebra or higher math.

Repeat.  CANNOT.  Fuck you Mister math teacher in high school.  I hated you so bad I can’t even remember your name.  You were mean, mean, mean to me.  You and your stupid tassled loafers.

Excellent long- term memory for experiences, locations, and faces.

This is true.  Thank god for my memory.  I don’t think I would be able to be a writer without it.  When I write, I write from memory.  From my experiences, which is why I don’t write fiction.  I write some fantastical stuff sometimes, but it all comes from experiences I have had.

Poor memory for sequences, facts, and information that has not been experienced

I am sorry it took me three months to figure out that the 56 cm bicycle went on the right hand side of the bike rack.

Really, I am.

Extremely disorderly or compulsively orderly

Please don’t fuck with my space, I may freak out on you.  I have a system, don’t fuck with it.

Prone to ear infections

Had them all the time when I was little.  I can remember the worst one I had so vividly it makes my stomach turn even now.  Driving cross-country with my mom, my sister, and my mom’s boyfriend Chuck, in a VW Bug.  The bug’s radiator blew up somewhere in the Dakotas?  We stayed at a Holiday Inn with a pool and I swam and we ate cheeseburgers from room service.  I can tell you what the fucking pickle chips looked like on the hamburger, I re-arranged them, crinkle cut french fries, and Heinz 57 ketchup.  My mom in a white hotel bathrobe, brushing her wet hair.  And the slow, creeping, inevitability of the ear ache happening.

I can hear how the pickle crunches in my ear drum.

Prone to ear infections, that would be me.

And there’s a few other symptoms, but those are the tops.  But the best is this:

Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, time pressure, or emotional stress

Yes, which is what led to the final melt down, which ended me hiding behind the mat cutter in Mrs. Fishkins office.  I could not write down the date.  I had lost the ability to hold on to any more numerical information.  I even lost being able to say the date, let alone imagine picking up a pen and writing it.

I fled.  I left work early.  I came home cried off some more make up.  Then I said, you know what, this is good.  This is allowing me to be honest.  My mom is dyslexic, so is my sister and supposedly my dad, although I don’t know for sure.  My sister has it with words and letters.  As does my mom.  I did not suspect that I had it because I had difficulty with numbers not with words.  I love words.  I would like to take a word bath.

Wrap myself up in a red cloak of velveteen words and snuggle down into a heap of them like burnt autumn leaves flaming in the late afternoon sun on a briskly windy day in Wisconsin, when I am twelve and nothing is better than the smell of the oak tree leaves crumbling under foot and the sound of the whisk wire rake pulling them to me in fluffy piles.

It was not until I was in therapy describing the blind spot around numbers that seems to happen to me, this was in my mid thirties, mind you, that it was finally acknowledged and diagnosed by a professional.

Today, I officially acknowledge it.

Perhaps tomorrow I will accept it.

But I won’t count on it.

Weekend Plans

Yes, that is how I roll.  I must suss out all weekend possibilities now.  Yes, I know it’s just Monday.  But there is a Bounce show with Big Freedia (FREEDA) at Public Works on Saturday.

Mama wants to dig it out.

I need a serious dance it out session.  I did a little groove and shake the weekend before Valentines Day, but it was not my cup of tea music wise.  Sometimes you just got to dance to the record that’s on the turn table.

Some times you get to pick.

This weekend I am going to pick.

There are actually quite a lot of good shows going on, but I figure the best thing to do is plan it out, that I am actually going to go and then get a posse of people to go with me.  I will get aspirations to go slam on the dance floor day of and then not having  a distinct plan, I will ditch it.

I have plans for Sunday.  I will be hanging a wall mounted paper towel rack.

Yeah, so um, I can sleep in on Sunday.  Big Freedia and Hard French.

That sounds like sex in my mouth.

Of course, as everything and its god damn brother looks good to me, this could be a dangerous venture.  But if I don’t get laid soon, the next best thing is a hard night of sweating on a dance floor.

Since I made this decision to be in a relationship before establishing intimacy, it has been a bit of a dry spell.

My hormones are a little peeved with me.  Everything smells.

Everything.

Right now everything smells delicious as I am burning a Pacifica candle in chocolate mint.  Smells pretty tasty up in here.  Plus it’s cozy and warm.  The space heater Mrs. Fishkin lent me is cranking out the heat and my ordered one should be delivered any day now, lending the pleasant smell a richness for the warmth its accompanying.

That being said, my poor nose has been on high alert for the last day or two.  I can smell you from a yard a way.  Some times you smell really, really, really good.

Unfortunately, sometime you do not.

Yesterday some one in my close vicinity smelled like diaper rot.  Old, worn out, been sitting in shit, diaper.  Generic, I don’t wash my clothes with decent laundry detergent that can’t quite cut through the fact that in some recent wearing of the track suit, it was shit in.  Maybe not a lot, maybe a little.  Maybe this person just did not wipe his ass well enough.

It smelled.  I thought I was going to gag.  I was also trapped where I was sitting and could not move.  I explained to Carolyn yesterday that it was an apt metaphor for where I am at with certain things in my life.

I can sit in the shit or I can get up and get the fuck out.

Some times, like earlier today when I caught the best whiff of Chanel Number Five, you smell hands down glorious.  This woman trailed just the sexiest, faintest, but distinct wake of scent.

I am not a lesbian, but I might have followed her around for  a while just to smell that.

Favorite smells: wood smoke on an ocean beach, bonfire, fresh-cut evergreens, hot apples and cinnamon, vanilla, vertiver–I love this smell, love.  I like warm musky scents with a sultry edge to them.

On men I like how sweat smells, but depends on who it is.  Some guys, the sweat is so off-putting, acrid, and wrong, it’s like the inside of a chicken soup can lining that’s rotting.

I should have prefaced this with two things: 1.) I have a very developed scent palate  and 2.) at certain times of the month, it is off the chart how sensitive I am to smell.

For instance, no one else in that room yesterday smelled that rotting diaper smell that hung in a little invisible stink cloud around my general vicinity.  It was too faint, unfortunately it was not faint enough, but I doubt if anyone else caught it.  It smelled like soul rot and poorly processed meat products left out to spoil.

Sexy, eh?

I also like how certain colognes smell on a man, Chanel Platinum, Calvin Klein Eternity, oh god, I’ll fucking admit it, Drakkar Noir in small doses can be done right, Tom Ford’s got some nice ones.  I like scents evocative of clean pressed cotton shirts, naughty sex in the afternoon on warm bed sheets, wood smoke, sea salt.

My poor body.  All tortured and on high alert.

It’s like a five alarm bell going off inside, “hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, your eggs are going fast”.

My body and my brain or is it my body and my heart, don’t sync up right now.  My heart says wait, my body says, ‘let’s get it on’ all smooth and sultry like.

My brain is allied with my body, which I should always remember.

Just ignore that alarm jangling off in a corner of your endocrine system, it’s nothing.

Feels like I can smell the night air streaked with pale jasmine.  Feels like Cupid’s perfume.  Feels like Eros and….

Oh shit, feels like spring.

Days are getting a little longer, cherry trees blossoming, time to get your rut on.

Of course.  It’s spring.  My body is coming out of hibernation and wants to know what’s up with the whole Calling in the One scenario.

Where are we on that?

It doesn’t apparently give a good god damn about the one.  I am pretty fed up with that.   I just want the ‘one’ date at this point.

So, instead of letting myself get all headstrong and stupid.  I am going to plan a night of going out and dancing.

Maybe it shouldn’t be to Hard French and Big Freedia, there’s gonna be a lot of sex hormones dancing about at Public Works, nah, if I can’t have it, at least I can hang out along side some people who are getting some.

I’m gonna go bounce it out this weekend.

Thank God for dirty, sexy, grind it out music.

 

Lazy Day Blog

I will admit to you right now that there is nothing of nutritious value in my blog today.  No rants, no recovery (well, that is debatable!), no boys (secretly may have a few on the mind, but god damn it they’re all FaceCrack friends.  You can’t write about boys if you know that might read your blog), no sex, nothing but a nice, normal day.

Normal.  That is all I aspire towards.  Not unique.  Not special.  Not anything above average.  Because when it comes right down to it I am above average in all things.

I am smarter than the average bear.  That doesn’t always work to my benefit, in fact, I am way too often a victim of my over active thought producer.

I am above average in my looks.  This is not modest neither is it vain.  It just is.  I would be lying if I said I was not extraordinarily grateful for the beauty that I have been graced with.

Then again, we are all beautiful.  And what may float my boat, definitely does not float another’s.

And the beauty thing is just a thing.  It has not brought me a boyfriend.  Although it has brought me attention and I am not immune to attention.  Some times it is annoying, drunk, cracked out crazy mixed Hispanic, white, black man, Walter who follows me around with merry derangement in the Mission cackling at me is not pleasant.

Nor is it amusing when he pretend faints in front of the nail salon when I am having a manicure pedicure on a Saturday afternoon.  The nail technicians at the salon do not know what to make of this.  I told him to go away and he goes away.  The staff always gives me a look when he wanders by.  I have an admirer.

I also do not live somewhere average.  I live in San Francisco, which conjures up all sorts of associations for a wide variety of reasons.  Meaning I am artsy, creative, crazy, tattooed, pierced, left-wing, underground, forward thinking, green, local vore, technology driven maven, who likes to go to raves.

Or something like that.

I was just thinking today how lucky it is that I get to have another day in San Francisco.  I am tremendously lucky.  I can boohoo all I want about not having a career or a path or a fill in the blank, but really, I get to live here.  There is no sky quite like San Francisco sky.

Nor is there the temperature variance that makes me walk on one side of the street versus the other.  The shady side is always cold.

I walked around the Mission this morning and as I did, I reflected, how damn lucky it is that I get another day in this city.  The light was clear and bright.  The trees imprinted visions of laced leaves on the cerulean blue sky and the robins sang from the roof tops.

I got my shelving unit from Harringtons and I got to have lunch with Tanya and Coco at St. Francis Fountain.  Such small place, mundane little things.  The essence of my life.  Throw in a good book and I am content as a clam.

I also had a nice ride through the Mission after I finished with my laundry.  I saw Carolyn for an hour, bumped into Jayne, and got to squeeze Joan before heading home to a hot dinner and a hot cup of tea.

Lazy Sunday.  I am almost smug in my contentment.

I expressed to a fellow earlier today that I once equated happiness with excitement.  Or drama.  Something to make my adrenalin jump was “happy”.  Now, happy is breathing in the smell of a late afternoon wood fire being stoked in a fireplace on Dolores Street as the day winds down.  Happy is gazing at the sky with the sun warming the back of your neck.

Happy is a hot cup of tea and a cozy home.

I am happy.  I was also useful today and just a snick of service to a few others.  That makes the day go smooth too.

My thinking would like to manufacture some dis-ease in this bucolic setting.  I should be writing something more entertaining and sexy.  I should be working on a project or focusing on submissions.  I should just chill out.  My thinking is lazy right now too.  Truthfully, the thinking today has been pretty quiet.

I got sunshine today.  I got sleep.  I got laundry.  I got lunch, and a bump into darling Robyn.  I got to play dance party at the diner with Coco in her high chair to Prince.  I got to hug a lot of wonderful people today.  I have listened to music and danced and eaten nice food and my bed is made with fresh sheets.

I have no complaints, no wants, no thoughts to anything other than watching the night sky turn to midnight blue and letting the kettle heat up a little more water for tea.

I am off to snuggle into a book and a tea and maybe a movie in my pajamas.

The do not disturb sign is now on the door.