Musings

From COVIDlandia.

And what I am hoping is my last day of quarantine.

The COVID test I took this morning showed the barest, faintest of lines.

I flirted with saying, I’m all good, and running out willy nilly.

But.

I figured one more day in quarantine and taking care to not infect others might be the ethical thing to do.

As opposed, to, oh, I don’t know, randomly licking people and running away saying, “I have COVID!”

I have these thoughts once in a while.

I did go outside briefly today, masked, of course, to go to my office and water my plants.

Oh.

Such sad plants.

I felt so bad.

Poor babies hadn’t been watered in nine days.

No one is at the office on the weekend, so I figured I was safe and I still wore my mask inside just in case and no one was there.

Just my sad little plants.

I gave them all a good watering and then shut the office back down.

Next week I will be doing all my sessions remotely, I figure, just be safe.

I don’t need to expose my suitemates to anything.

I do hope to test negative tomorrow.

I had a moment of thinking, ooh, I’ll go swimming tomorrow if I test negative.

Yeah.

I don’t know about that.

Sounds great, but considering the amount of congestion and aching lungs I have experienced over the past nine days, maybe swimming laps is not the course of action to take on my first day back into the world.

I’ll get up and stretch again and do minimalist yoga.

I’ll go for a walk.

I’ll prep food for the week.

I will dream about all things Burning Man.

Yeah.

That thing.

I am going.

I haven’t really written about it.

I’ve been tied up with all things FINISH YOUR FUCKING DISSERTATION.

I mean.

It’s finished, I mean, finish jumping through the hoops that your school forgot to tell you to do even though they approved you to graduate.

Oh.

You’re missing something and we forgot to tell you?

OOPS.

I mean.

The profound apology from the provost helped, but like, dude, I’ve not actually graduated yet.

Which is also why Burning Man is on my mind.

I “graduate” eye roll, at the end of summer.

That is when I will officially matriculate.

I returned the dissertation with the few edits that the writing center indicated needed to be done; for the pain in the ass y’all have been, you could have just fucking fixed them and moved it along, in 274 pages there were five things that needed to be attended to.

Anyway.

I’ll be connecting with the guy at the center who is the last gate keeper to getting it published on ProQuest on Monday.

Pending his final stamp of approval I will then upload it and that’s it.

It will get published and I will matriculate.

At the end of summer.

Which means.

I get to graduate.

Again.

And this time.

I’m going to do it my way.

At Burning Man.

Yeah.

Where my graduate school journey started back in 2014 when I had a dark night of the soul.

I left Burning Man that year distinctly altered.

I quit the job I had been working.

Got a different one.

And applied to graduate school to get my Master’s in Psychology.

I got in and started in the fall of 2015.

I managed to go to the event in 2015, 2016, and 2017–somehow figuring out how to balance full-time nanny job with full-time graduate school.

I graduate from my Master’s program in May of 2018 and went right into my PhD program in August of 2018.

I could not manage the event whilst doing my PhD program.

My first year missing the event since I started to go in 2007.

I mean.

I managed to go even when I moved to Paris.

I still do not know how that happened.

But my PhD program started each semester with a week long intensive and it was the same week as the event and the amount of work that I had to do to get ready for the intensive was too much for me to even think about going up pre-event.

The year I went in 2016 I didn’t even go for the event, I was up for in the desert for four days and left before the gates even opened.

The PhD work was too much.

Not to mention working full time, plus.

So, I missed 2018 and 2019.

And then the pandemic.

Knocking out 2020 and2021.

Although I had people who asked if I would consider going to “Plan B” the unofficial event last year, you know that one that was not sanctioned by the org, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

But.

I was too close to defending my dissertation, I had also just had the first of my two major surgeries, and it was too much.

This year I had been prepared to go months ago.

I was going to help run and manage a kitchen on playa for an art project a dear friend of mine is builidng.

But an unexpected tax bill, what the fuck accountant?!

And the looming paying back of student loans dissuaded me.

I hung up my apron and prepared to sadly not go.

Except.

Well.

There was this day three weeks ago, a month ago, I don’t know, time is wonky for me still, when it was hot out.

Like hot.

Like 93 F.

San Francisco rarely gets hot.

Even now, in the middle of July, I am wearing a hoodie, and it’s not because I have COVID, it’s because I live in San Francisco and fog.

But it got hot that day.

I remember a couple of last minute client cancellations led me to having a leisurely lunch and left enough time for me to go for a long walk.

Without a sweatshirt.

Without layers.

In a sundress.

And bare legs, I wasn’t even wearing leggings.

Oh my, my, my.

Speaking my fucking language.

Only thing about summers in Wisconsin I really miss–warm nights without having to wear layers, sundresses all day long, hair upswept in a messy bun, humid wind kissing your skin.

Sigh.

This day in SF wasn’t like that.

It was more like Burning Man.

Hot.

Dry.

Warm wind.

I was walking down Laguna crossing Fulton, and I was just drenched in sun and hot wind and I sighed, “oh, this feels o good.”

“Just like Burning Man,” a little voice in my heart whispered.

And like that.

Like that.

I decided to go.

I reached out to a bunch of folks.

I asked after tickets.

I received more than a few offers.

Some of which I couldn’t quite comply with the asks, pre-burn, build week, nannying, work duties, etc.

But one of them I could take and so I did.

And like that.

I had a ticket.

And plans began to brew and things began to fall into place.

Like fast.

Sometimes when I know that I’m supposed to do something, everything just falls into place.

If it’s meant to be you can’t fuck it up.

If it’s not meant to be you can’t manipulate it into happening.

This was definitely meant to be.

And although the loss of revenue missing a week of work being sick with COVID has definitely stung, it hasn’t made it impossible.

My ticket is paid for and my vehicle pass and I’m accruing all the gear that I need.

And maybe a few flowers to stick in my hair.

Like you do.

Or, ahem, like I do.

I got some boots, a new black out tent, a folding camp rocking chair, a new cooler, a new parasol, a new bicycle (I miss my old steed, I was looking at old phots of the event and I will miss that ride, but hopefully my new bike will be up to muster), a new queen size air mattress.

I’ve rented a cargo van with a friend that will be traveling in from Utah and I’ll be picking him up in Reno.

He’s got stuff in SF that I will bring up for him, so right now we are splitting costs on the rental.

I almost thought about stuffing my little Fiat with all my things, mounting a bicycle rack on the roof.

But.

Ahem.

A girl likes her clothes.

And also, unobstructed views whilst driving.

So.

I agreed to the van.

Which I think will actually come nicely in handy.

Provide some shade for my tent as well as be a place to hole up in if there is a dust storm.

And plenty of space for my friend’s gear, plus another if we wanted.

Originally a mutual friend from Marin was going to ride up with me, but he’s bailed.

In all the preparing and list writing and chatting with a good friend of mine who has graciously accepted to take care of my cats, I suddenly had an idea.

Perhaps it was a vestige of COVID fever, perhaps divine inspiration.

I realized, huh, if I matriculate at the end of summer, that means I’ll be “graduating” on playa.

HOLY SHIT.

I can have a graduation party.

At the best party in the whole fucking world.

With all the friends I couldn’t have come to my graduation.

Because I was only allowed three people at my weird ass hybrid zoom graduation reception at my school in May.

I contacted my dear friend with the art project and he’s going to help me plan a ceremony at his art piece!

I’m going to graduate on playa.

I am also going to walk in my full PhD regalia–robe, funny hat with the pom, and my hood.

Oh yeah.

Then I am going to burn it at the Temple and leave the institution behind and move into whatever next phase of life I am supposed to be having.

This year is special too as it marks my 20 year anniversary of moving from Madison, Wisconsin to San Francisco.

My best friend from Wisconsin rode shot gun with me in my little two door Honda Accord packed to the gills, rode I-80 all the way to the Bay back in 2002.

We were gassing up in Nevada getting ready to go through the Sierra’s and she said, looking at some dirty hippy with literally a cardboard sign, begging for a ride to Burning Man on the exit ramp to the gas station, “we should go.”

“Where?” I asked, toggling the nozzle of the gas pump to get every last precious drop into my tank.

“Burning Man,” she replied.

I looked at my car, stuffed full of my life and the soft pack of a super sized duffle strapped to the top and thought, no fucking way am I taking all that I own out to the desert in this car.

I laughed and got back in the car and we started to drive towards Tahoe.

My friend tried one more time to convince me, “this might be my last chance to go!”

______________ “I’m not going, it’s impossible, I can’t take my car out there with all my stuff, and I have to pick up the keys to my sublet in the Mission,” I replied.

And then I remember pausing and thinking, how do you know about Burning Man?

I had read about it in a 1995 issue of Spin magazine.

And yeah, I was definitely down with going, just not right then.

“What do you think Burning Man is?” I queried my friend.

“It’s a radical feminist movement where they BURN THE MAN!”

If I could have fallen out of my seat laughing I would have.

In some ways, my friend is actually right, Larry Harvey and all that he is and that they burn a man, yeah, but there is a very heavy lift that the women in the organization have done quietly behind the scenes for a long time.

Believe me.

I have seen some things.

Anyway.

We did not go that year.

But every since I started going, my friend gives me shit, that she missed her time.

She wasn’t wrong.

She got pregnant just after leaving San Francisco, literally that weekend, and then had three boys.

One who just graduated from highschool.

What the hell?

And here I am, almost 20 years later, all excited about going out to that thing in the desert again.

Where I will graduate into my next level of life.

Or just have a quiet spiritual experience while I ride my bike far out into the edges of the playa to look at the stars.

Who knows where this life is going to take me next.

But I’m down for it.

I’ll be there.

With flowers in my hair.

Seriously.

And maybe a glow stick.

Heh.

On The Eve

Of my fifteenth year of sobriety.

I had to stop and ponder and wonder in awe at the scope of my life in these last fourteen years and 364 days.

I have come so far.

So fucking far.

It leaves me breathless with awe.

I’m a psychotherapist.

I live by myself in the most expensive city in the United States.

Although.

I still cringe at my rent, I can afford to live alone and I understand what a precious gift that is.

I work a lot, it’s true.

I’m still working six days a week and two jobs.

But!

Soon.

I will be done nannying.

I have been a nanny for thirteen years.

That’s a lot of time to be in any career, let alone one in which I have gotten to have so much unconditional love poured into my heart.

Nannying has been a tough job and the most incredible gift too.

I have never had children.

Shit.

I have never even had a pregnancy scare.

I have occasionally thought of what it would be like to have my own child, but really, I have gotten to raise so many beautiful, sweet, amazing children.

I have had so many children tell me they love me.

I have had so many babies fall asleep on my breast and in my arms.

I have felt the soft sweet breath of a child on my neck so many times as I lay them to sleep that I cannot count them.

I have sung a lot of lullabies.

I feel replete.

I do not feel grief stricken for not having had a child of my own.

I have had children.

I have also gotten to give them back at the end of the day and go my own way.

I will be hanging up my nanny clogs soon, my last day with my current family is February 24th.

So by the end of February I will just be working full time as a psychotherapist and a full time PhD student.

Just.

Hahahahahhahahaha.

Oh.

I also got my grades back for this past semester.

Straight “A’s.”

Not like anyone has every question someone with a PhD, “hey how were your grades during your course work?”

Most folks don’t give a fuck, you got a doctorate, you are doing great kid.

I had a 4.0 all through my Masters and I am looking to repeat that with my PhD.

I have also received the news that I have been granted the first person I requested to be my PhD committee chair.

Over the moon.

I found out from a fellow in my cohort that my pick only chose two of us to work with.

I am thrilled and honored that he took me on, it’s going to be some work, the work is nowhere near done yet, but it’s still a great big wonderful thing to be entering the last semester of my course work.

And I’m doing it in two years.

Most of my cohort is doing it in three and some in four years.

I know one other person who is doing the course work at the same pace as I am and we made a pact to get through the whole damn program in 3.5 years.

I am still on track with that.

I am also really on track with getting my hours for my MFT license.

I am 737 hours away from being able to be on my own without supervision, without having to pay extra for supervision and fees and stuff and things.

I will get my hours before the year ends and I am fucking thrilled by that.

My life is pretty amazing.

I looked at my things today, I looked at the art on my walls and the pictures and the beauty that I have surrounded myself with.

I am not rich.

But I am awash in beauty and prosperity and abundance.

I am so grateful.

I have slept on cardboard.

No more of that.

I have been homeless.

I have had to go to food pantries and be on food stamps.

I have worked some pretty grimy jobs.

I have struggled and worked and struggled some more.

I own a car.

What the hell?

A new car, my own car, the first new car I have ever bought.

I go to yoga.

I still can’t always get over that.

Who is this person hopping into her cute little marshmallow colored Fiat and heading up Balboa Street to do yoga?

I have nice clothes.

I bought in Paris. 

I used to wear hand me downs from my youngest aunts.

I used to have only one pair of shoes.

I have a lot of shoes.

I mean.

A girl likes her shoes.

I have framed art that I have bought in Paris too.

I remember having posters pinned up to my walls, when I had walls, I didn’t always.

Or magazine photos taped to my walls.

I always have liked to look at things.

I have gone to so many museums.

I have traveled the world.

Not a lot, but a good amount you know.

Paris, New York, London, LA, Miami, Chicago, Anchorage, Marseilles, Rome, Aix-en-Provence, Austin, Havana, Cuba, Burning Man.

Not bad for a girl raised in an unincorporated town in rural Wisconsin.

I have some pretty amazing tattoos.

I have gotten to meet and hang out with one of my musical hero’s–more than once.

I have extraordinary friends.

I have a way of life that is full of purpose and meaning and service.

I have love.

I have had terrible heart ache and I have survived it.

I have resiliency.

I have lost dear friends to death far too soon.

I have danced under the stars until dawn, in underground clubs in Paris, on top of speakers in dancehalls in San Francisco, arts cars out in deep playa at Burning Man.

I have narrated my story and performed  in front of 100s.

I have recited poetry to audiences small and grand.

I am in the world and I am alive and I am so grateful for that.

For this wonderful, sometimes painful, but always so full, so amazing, so extraordinary, beyond my wildest dreams, life.

Here’s to (almost) fifteen years of sobriety.

And many, many, many more years to come.

So many.

 

Here Again

These old memories.

They bang at my head.

A washing of blue jean sky,

Salt tenderized by the sea.

Light.

So.

Californian.

Like my soul,

Built on mussel sea shells

Found by the sea shore.

Sally sells them for a penny a piece.

(find a penny pick it up)

In a brown paper bag I left them.

Hiding, the shells–

Underneath the Volkswagen’s seat.

The bounce of light against the

Rear window in the back seat of the Bug.

Little girl.

Brown eyes wide.

Watching the clouds scroll by,

Catching glimpses of ocean blue between the dunes.

Side mirror reflections bring me back to now.

Decades later.

Decades.

(All day long you’ll have good luck)

Four to be exact.

Those days down by the sea

Watching the water foam over the shore,

Tiny sandpipers scurry.

Coppertone baby in white panties,

Already insecure in my body,

Scampering at the edges of the sand burning bright

Heat rolling up my legs from my feet.

I am.

Curly headed.

I am.

Sweet lipped.

I am.

Brown as a nut berry.

(See a  penny, let it lie)

Pink soled feet softened by the rasp of sand.

Now I am plagued by these,

Photographs of melancholia–

Nostalgia tinged with seaweed.

The cry of mermaids in the grotto.

Sun high.

Heat on high

Cooking hotdogs on aluminum foil on the hood of the Volk’s.

Sand, a grit in my teeth.

Running back to the water, the ocean nips at my feet.

I find another shell for my paper bag.

(All good luck will pass you by)

Listen for the soundtrack to these memories.

One that drifts on the radio dial of Northern California

70s folk rock.

The outlines of my heart.

The nook in the cafe.

A flash of vinyl, the undertone scratch of needle finding the groove.

The light.

The light.

The light.

The smell of salt.

The hint of driftwood bonfires at the edge of night.

Golden foiled light in the dying

Embers of my childhood.

Bespoke.

Bag of shells.

Halo of white sun as I close my eyes to

Everything.

Lost again in that bright light.

Washed out in the sun.

Freckling my face.

I am.

Softened now

By these.

Kisses of eternity.

Heart Broken

Here I am trying to hit my once a week mark for my blog.

So sad.

I remember when it was every day and the streak was a long one.

I am happy to have a few spare minutes today though and I had an experience over the weekend that I thought I’d like to post about.

It does pertain to my recent heartbreak and break up and my love and my loss.

I am still grieving, I suppose I will for a little while yet.

I’m trying to just be nice to myself about it and when the sad comes let it.

I have stayed very busy through the weekend, although yes, I did actually sleep in on Sunday.

I woke up at my normal time, 6:30a.m. and then again at 7:30a.m. and I almost got up at 7:30a.m. but I was having a rather lovely dream of being with him and I literally thought I heard his voice in my room, so I buried myself in my pillows and said, I’ll just sleep another half hour.

Was I surprised when I woke up at 9!

I think I needed the sleep though and I definitely felt tender about my situation, but also some space and some gratitude for the experience seemed to be working on my heart and I was happy that was happening.

If tender.

Very tender.

Sometimes I completely forget.

Then I see something and it’s all there, the last 22 months, the first six months, the laugher, all the conversations, all the sweet nothings (which meant everything) whispered in my ear.

All the amazing sex.

Fuck the sex was good.

But if it was just all about the sex it wouldn’t hurt the way it has and does.

He and I both acknowledged that many times over the last year when we were really trying to figure things it.

It was that we were also best friends and that is a huge loss.

My person I talk to every day I haven’t spoken to in eight days.

Eight.

It feels like a lifetime.

I can’t imagine going another eight.

Yet.

I figure that is just what is going to happen.

Day after day will go by and one day I won’t miss him.

And one day I will be with the person who fully wants to be with me, can meet my needs and doesn’t have anything holding him back.

I don’t know when that day is, I’m not looking forward to it, I just know it will come.

The day I forget to miss him.

That is really not now.

I get broken up watching crows right now.

There was a joke he told me once, it was rather dark and a bit grim and funny as fuck and he said something about “like a crow laughing at a funeral,” and I just got it stuck in my head.

Thing is.

I like crows.

They’re smart, clever, live in social groups (appropriately called “murders”) and they mate for life.

I was fond of us being crows symbolically.

And of course two freaking crows nest in the neighbor’s house at work.

I see them all the time.

I tell them to send him my love and let him know I miss him.

Desperately.

I’ll see two crows playing and swooping through the air and sort of lose it.

I have a little pile of love cards and notes that I was planning on sending him in the mail, that’s been a part of our courtship, letter writing, and now they just sit desolate and sad on my desk.

There is no one else I can send them to.

I thought about it, but he said no contact by mail too when we ended it.

There really is no contact.

I haven’t blocked him on my phone (I suppose I’m wanting a miracle of change to happen) but social media and internet we’ve had no contact and haven’t been in each other’s social stuff for a while.

I was thinking about him a lot on Friday and missing him and also feeling a little lost thinking about a new client I have.

A couple.

And how I was going to see them the next day and some things I wanted to bring into the session and then I had the voice of doom pipe up in my head.

“How can you be a good couples therapist if you can’t even stay in a relationship?”

Cue some deep sighs and teary eyes, although I didn’t shed any tears.

Instead I directed my attention to the assignment I needed to do for my Creative Arts in Leadership class.

Which was about making a mask of my inner leader after having listened to a guided meditation.

I won’t get into all the details but to say I was instructed to have a question for my inner leader and I decided to go for that one, being a couples therapist who had failed at love.

It took me a while to get into the meditation, partially because it required me to be still and I know me, when I am still the feelings come and sure enough there they were, all marshaled up ready to let me know how much I missed him and how sad I was.

Sigh.

But I got through it.

To sum up the mediation we walked through a woods and came to a clearing and there was a structure there (for me a cottage in the middle of a big wildflower meadow, with a round door and a chimney jutting from the roof and lead paned windows) that we had to approach–our inner leader was there.

Mine opened the door before I could knock.

A beautiful older woman in her mid-sixties, with long silver-grey hair in braids wearing a simple sleeveless cotton shift, her arms and torso covered in blue woad tattoos.

I crossed the threshold and handed her my heart, I didn’t know until that moment I had been carrying it through the woods in my hands.

It was blackened and ravaged by crows.

I asked her how could I possibly be a good couples therapist if I had lost my love?

She didn’t say anything, simply took my heart and held it up to her face with a gentle smile and kissed it.

At once it turned into a beautiful shining apple.

She handed me back the apple and indicated that I should eat it.

I did and instead of going into my stomach the apple went into the empty space where my heart had been.

It took root at once and an apple tree immediately sprang forth loaded with shimmering apples in the golden sun.

I realized that the gift of the pain was a gift of experience I could give back to others.

It was sublime.

It was surprising and I came out of it with a grace and softness that I had not had going in.

I sat down at my desk listened to some Johan Sebastian Bach Cello Sonatas and made my mask.

Then, as per my assignment instructions, I wrote in my journal about the experience.

As I was wrapping it up, the voice of my inner leader spoke up, “who wants a couples therapist who’s never had their heart-broken?”

I scrawled that down in my journal and I knew it was true.

My life experiences are gifts that I get to give to my clients.

They may not accept them, that is not for me to decide, but I can offer them my experience and I believe it is valuable beyond words.

I’m still sad.

I miss my love so much.

But I also know the value of my experience.

Deeply.

I’ve never had my heart-broken before.

He was my first true heart-break.

Now I know.

Now I really know.

How bad it hurts.

Baby.

It hurts so bad.

 

 

I Need Off Canvas

And its only just begun.

I made myself take a break today (I was at work and the baby took a long nap) after two solid hours of writing, engaging and interacting the three different classes I have on Canvas with CIIS.

Canvas is the tech platform the classes are set up on and why yes, not a single one of my professors uses it the same as the others.

Every single one of them does it slightly differently.

And once again I had the feeling of being on top of things to only realize that I hadn’t checked into one of my classes in a few days since I was so busy posting up to the other two.

Sure as shit.

I needed to post and post pretty immediately.

I wasn’t exactly annoyed, but I was tired and I don’t know that I put up the most relevant post, but what I came to understand from last semester is that it almost doesn’t matter.

I just have to constantly be posting something.

Either a substantive post on an assignment or reading, or responding to one of my classmates.

Pretty much every week I need to be in Canvas posting and replying.

I almost didn’t want to write my blog tonight, I just wanted to come home, warm up, eat a hot dinner and crawl into bed.

But if I’m not going to do school work, and I still might do a little more tonight, I am also not going to get into bed and watch hours of Netflix, as tempting as that may be.

I will watch some.

Just not a marathon.

I need to keep that and social media to a dull roar.

The blogging is going to be helter skelter.

I have no clue when I will have time, but I figure, it’s good to stay as close to it as I can.

It’s good for my brain to unload the day and it’s good for me to have something that is not academic writing.

Besides, I’ve said it many times.

The process of writing the blog really keeps me sharp for when I need to write papers.

And boy howdy, the papers are already coming.

I have two due by next Monday.

I also have a training for my internship in Berkeley on Sunday.

I will need to be careful with my time so that I can do all the things that need to be done and all my life stuff as well too.

When I go on trainings I’m gone for half the day, 45 minutes to get to Berkeley, three-hour long training, and then on average the traffic back has been an hour and a half.

By the time I get home I need to eat lunch, which is late as it’s around three p.m. and I need to go to the laundry mat.

I am still not happy about having to go to the laundry mat.

But I am making the best of it.

For instance, this Sunday while the majority of the country was watching the Super Bowl, I was doing laundry and read 46 pages of material in my Varieties of Scholarly Expression reader.

I also did a paper on Sunday as well.

First one of the semester.

And cooked and organized things and went birthday shopping for my oldest boy charge who turns nine tomorrow.

And.

Oh yes.

I took myself on an Artist Date to Cliff’s Variety in the Castro and I bought art supplies for my Arts and Creativity in Leadership class.

I had a lot of fun.

I probably also spent more than I needed to, but honestly, I really think I needed to do it.

It felt good to say yes to myself and to splurge a little.

I mean, it’s art supplies, not crack.

Although when I was checking out I couldn’t help but giggle at all the glittering supplies I had gotten.

Glitter glue.

Glitter markers.

Glitter colored pencils.

Glitter stickers.

Plus some fancy origami paper (I won’t be doing origami with it, I just liked the paper), watercolor markers, pastel markers, and tiny colorful clothes pin holders.

No idea what I’ll do with the latter, but they were so fucking cute I had to buy them.

It was a nice splurge.

I also yesterday, had a Zoom session with one of my TA’s.

This was good, clarifying, and really just sunk it home, I’m in a PhD program.

I really have a lot of work to do and keep doing.

This is a long haul program.

But.

I am hoping to follow my TA’s cue and do some work the summer after I finish my course work so that I can get a head start into that next semester of work where I will be independent.

She told me what she did and it was basically to not take the summer off and work on her proposal for her dissertation so that as soon as the first day of fall semester hit she turned it in to her dissertation chair and was off and running.

She will likely be done in three and a half years as opposed to four and a half.

I’m all for doing it that way.

Get it done.

I am excited, more and more, as the process becomes clearer to me.

Yes, so much work, but rather fascinating work and I’ll be writing about something I am very interested in.

So, yeah, Canvas.

I have gotten three notifications while I have been writing this blog that something new has been posted in my classes, so I will likely hit it up for a few more minutes before calling it a day.

It’s how I managed to get through last semester without falling behind.

The horror stories of people in my cohort who fell behind is enough to keep me active.

Or.

The people who just dropped out completely or disappeared.

I think we lost five people?

I don’t want to drop out and I do want to get my dissertation through, I want to have a PhD.

I want to be Dr. Carmen.

I really.

Really.

Really.

Do.

I Love My Job!

This was the thought that popped into my head as my last client left my office today.

Yes.

I do see clients on Saturdays.

It’s one of the days I have access to the office and I can use it all day long, so I’m trying to build in more clients, but not too many.

I do need to figure out when I will give myself a break to stretch, use the bathroom, grab a bite to eat if I need one.

I have four clients currently on Saturdays.

Which brings my case load up to nine clients.

I can squeeze in one more client and bring myself up to ten clients with my current supervision.

Once I go over ten client hours I have to add in more supervision.

I want to get to 25 full fee clients by next January.

Which means I basically want to be a full-time therapist and not a full time nanny.

Not that I don’t love my nanny job, I love that job too, which was why it was so satisfying for me to feel the way I did when my last client left.

I love both my jobs.

Oh.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of challenges with both of them.

There’s the fact that last week one of my charges was home from school sick with pink eye.

Can you guess how many times I washed my hands?

Good grief.

And the poor lady had to constantly wash too and really couldn’t play with her siblings that much, it sucked for her.  We did a ton of art work and made valentines and cut up cardboard boxes and paper bags and drew and used probably 3/4s of a big bottle of Elmer’s glow in the dark glitter glue.

Where was this stuff when I was a kid?

Then again, my family was so poor, I barely got to have a 12 pack of Crayola crayons.

I cannot tell you how much I coveted the Crayola Markers that many of my classmates had, or the colored pencils.

Oh.

I wanted them bad.

Bad.

Bad.

The amount of art supplies the kids I nanny for have boggles my mind.

Clay, play doh, different kinds of colored paper, a huge box of stickers (be still my beating heart, I am often compelled to take them all with me.  I don’t, but I won’t lie, I’ve thought about it), paint box after paint box, and not just water colors but acrylics too, models and glue, and tape and coloring books and origami paper, funny pens with feathers or in the shape of flamingoes or cacti, ink pens, gel pens, highlighters, colored pencils, cray pas, pastels, face paint, a huge box of that, I mean there’s so much.

There’s literally a huge drawer full of stuff and then a cupboard packed with more.

It’s a treasure trove.

I found myself more into the art this week than my charge might have been, but that may have been coming off my Arts and Creative Leadership class, I did some drawings in that class, used markers and crayons and colored pencils and got down.

It was a party.

I’ve actually loaded up a few things in my Amazon cart to buy, but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet.

Part of me could just go nuts with it so I want to be careful about that, I don’t need to dump too much money into it.

I could also just hit an art store, but I suspect I will get a better deal on stuff online plus, I won’t have to squeeze another thing into my busy schedule.

I am busy.

The client work is great and I’m happy for it, the nanny job is great, and its full time and now school is on.

I mean.

It’s on.

I need to get my school hat on tight.

I didn’t get a chance to really do much homework with the little lady home from school.

I did a little on Wednesday, but nothing Thursday and Friday.

Monday and Tuesday I was still at the intensive.

And I will commend myself for doing a lot of work there too, so I’m not behind, but I only really have Sundays as my day off.

Fuck the Super Bowl.

Which I didn’t even know was tomorrow, but was informed by one of my ladies that I normally meet with on Sundays who asked to have the day off from our work.

I totally didn’t have a problem.

More time for me to study and I will have to write my first paper of the semester.

It’s not due until Tuesday, but as I saw from last semester, I really do have to do a lot of the work for the classes on Sunday.

I tried to get it together today to do some reading.

But I had too many errands to run after I finished with clients.

I ran around and took myself out to lunch and squeezed in a manicure and tried to not get too caught up in the constant notifications on my phone from the Canvas app I have on it that the school uses as a technology platform to teach the online classes.

I am getting much more used to how the classes are set up, but it still takes me a bit of navigating to get through them.

I also sat down and had a Canvas tutorial at the intensive too that I found super helpful.

But yeah.

Tomorrow is a school work day and then I’ll be smack dab back into the busy week.

Sigh.

I also realized, just a few minutes ago, that I haven’t had a day off in thirteen days because of the intensive.

Tomorrow is my first day off in two weeks.

No wonder I am a tired kitty cat.

But a happy one.

I really did have a  great day and I am happy and I feel really useful and I did do a lot of good self-care today.

Heck.

All things considered.

Life is fucking amazing.

It really is.

Day Dream Sky

Standing in line at the cafe.

I eavesdrop on the matrons in front of me espousing the artisanal toast options.

In between chat of avocados and sea salt

I think about you.

Wondering how it is that I seem to have fallen

Again.

Again.

Again.

In love with you.

There is this continuous deep dive into you.

I question the $5.62 I spent on the latte,

Then reverse the thought of scarcity,

Settling, as I do at table, abandoned and

Left to me at just the right time so that I may contemplate

Delirious sun setting splendor through the

Corporeal windows framing the street scene.

The palimpsest of my desire for you underneath that sky,

Like the twining of Christmas lights around a telephone pole,

Wrapped up in you.

Once my latte arrives, I sigh with pleasure.

It was worth the cost of admission.

Like you, it is the best in the city.

Reminding me too, of our moment there months ago

When I sitting ensconced in the window seat fervent with fresh love for you

Scribbling poetry about you into my notebook

Whilst you texted me from the long line sprawling out the door,

“Are you hungry?”

And when I didn’t respond, too wrapped up in my poem, you

My muse,

Brought me back a salad with my coffee.

I saw the text as you were walking back with the plate,

My response would have been, “hungry for you,” but a salad will suffice.

For the moment.

That reply died on my fingertips as I was too caught in the splendor of light

Falling though the window, making you seem already a nostalgia piece.

You lit up, loved up by the glittering filament of sunshine splayed across your face.

I regarded that space today, from a different table, marveling at how

I catch the feeling of you with all my senses.

You embody me.

I am entwined with you.

A double helix.

An infinity sign, worn in silver on my wrist.

Possessed and pleased and dressed up in pleasure, encircled.

The gift of the Universe in a little blue box.

What I once thought was a hoax.

Soap opera.

Dramatic invention.

Fairy tale.

Fable.

Why!

Turns out ’tis true.

There is love and then, there is you.

Inflamed I sit now

Amongst the hum of humanity, the clatter of cups and spoons.

To find myself

Transported to you.

Not for naught this love for you.

Love notes scrawled on a legal pad

Dressed up in a leather-bound folder

My Balthazar baby, conversations on the sidewalk after brunch.

You are everything and everywhere.

Tattooed, literally into my center.

I hold you tight.

I am content.

Knowing, for you told me so,

That I am your dream baby.

Knowing.

That I am.

Now and always.

Your,

Baby girl.

The Last Moments

Of my 45th year.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I will be 46 years old.

It’s a surreal number.

Really.

All of them have been a touch on the surreal side ever since passing 40.

But now, well, as I edge closer to 50 than 40 and my body slowly starts to fall apart, I can say yeah, I’m getting old.

Well.

At least older.

And I’m not kidding about the body thing.

I mean.

I can still shake my booty on the dance floor, or in my house as it stands, I just did some dancing to a really lovely remix of “Take You for a Ride on a Big Jet Plane” and I really did break it out.

But.

The signs of getting older are there.

Despite wearing my hair up in gigantic poufs today and donning pink glitter eyeshadow.

I don’t have clients on Mondays after my nanny gig, so I like to play a little with the makeup and the hair.

But you know.

There’s some wrinkles underneath that glitter and there’s definitely some grey hair in those poufs.

And, you know.

I’m ok with it.

I like who I am.

I have worked really fucking hard to get here and my body has managed to carry me through.

So what if it looks like it’s been well-traveled, it has.

Every wrinkle and grey hair a testament to how far I have come.

I did have a moment though, last night, when I was getting ready for bed and I was like, enough with all the stuff.

My aesthetician did some work to remove a patch of collagen that has been bothering me for years recently and I have to touch it up every night and morning to make sure it goes all the way away and I have begun washing my face with actual cleansing foam instead of soap.

She was horrified when I told her I washed my face with soap.

I felt like I was getting scolded by my mom.

So now, I use some cleansing foam and yes, I always use sunblock, she made that a big ass deal years ago.

God.

I sound all sorts of bougie right now.

I hadn’t seen my aesthetician for eight or nine years, I used to go to her when I had really bad cystic acne.

That is one nice thing of getting older, that damn acne finally went away, but I had it well into my early thirties.

In the last few years I have noticed my skin getting a tiny bit dryer and last year I noticed that I had stopped getting black heads at all.

I used to still get those guys.

It seems that the oil in my skin is drying up.

So now I use moisturizer too.

I’m sure these are things most women much younger than me are doing, but you know, I’m a simple lady with the routines, so this adding in of stuff feels new.

And.

Now I’m wearing a night guard at night so I don’t crack any more fucking teeth and have to get any more crowns.

No thank you.

But it’s weird.

And I have to remember to put it in at night, adding another thing I need to do, on top of also taking my reflux meds.

I swallowed the three tiny pills and popped my mouth guard in and snorted.

It has begun.

I’m taking pills at night and wearing a night guard next thing you know I’ll be wearing Depends.

Ugh.

Anyway.

I’m a lucky bitch and I know it.

I don’t look my age, so now that Mother Nature is actually showing me that I’m not immune to this whole getting older thing, I just want to respect it and embrace it.

I don’t want to struggle against it.

I’m going to be 46 in the morning.

And if it’s anything like 45’s been, it’s going to be a pretty damn good year.

In my 45th year I graduated with a Masters in Integral Counseling Psychology.

I traveled to D.C., New York, Paris, and Marseilles.

I got hired at a private practice internship and started subletting an office space as a licenced Associate Marriage Family Therapist.

I danced.

I sang in my car a lot.

I took walks on the beach.

I loved really, really, really hard.

I cried a lot.

I wrote a lot of poetry.

I started my first semester of a PhD program.

I’m one week away from finishing the semester!  I just posted my final discussion post and turned in my final project for my Creative Inquiry Scholarship for the 21st Century class.

It’s been a damn good year.

I’m happy with who I am and where I’m going, even if I cannot see the final destination, I don’t really need to know that anyway.

Oh!

And I moved!

I went through a buyout and walked through a tremendous amount of fear.

I bought my first ever couch.

And it’s pink velvet, so there.

I’ve done a lot of therapy work and feel better about myself and supported in the work i do as a therapist as well.

I bought art from friends.

I pushed myself out of my school, nanny, internship shell and got back into the fellowship in San Francisco a bit more.

I ate a lot of apples.

I like apples.

I wrote a lot of Morning Pages.

I wrote a few blogs, not as many as I might have considering the issues I had there for a while.  But huzzah!  I have, with much help, gotten the two sites separated and I was happy to post my first blog on my therapy site tonight.

I’ve had a damn good year.

I’m a very lucky girl.

Or woman.

I suppose at 46 it’s time to really step into that women role.

Well.

Except when I wear my bunny slippers.

I don’t care how old I get, I’ll probably always wear bunny slippers.

heh.

So here’s to making it alive, sober, abstinent, happy, joyous, and motherfucking free, one more time around the sun.

Thanks 45, it’s been fun.

Bring on 46.

And That’s About Enough

Fuck.

It’s been a long damn day of study.

I’m all done in.

I could use another two hours of work, but I can’t do it.

I have written two different reaction responses to material.

I finished a book.

I read another dense chapter in another.

I watched one video of an hour and a half and launched into another four-hour documentary.

The level of discourse is deep and I appreciate all that I am learning and I’m tired.

Pooped.

Done.

I also am getting settled into my life, my home, my new space.

I got furniture assembled today and organized.

I hired someone from Task Rabbit to do the work and honestly, I’m so happy I did.

The woman was really kind and quick and it took her, a skilled person, she’s got great reviews, three hours to put together the furniture I ordered.

I did not have three hours to spare today.

I should probably not be blogging, but you know, the blogging saves my fucking ass.

I need to get all the cobwebs out and I need to process and this is where I do it.

Oh, I know, you’ve had to have noticed, I’m not blogging as much or as regularly as I have in the past, but I am doing it when I need to.

It feels like a need.

Just like writing in the morning feeds me and helps me to get ready for my day, the blogging helps me filter through everything that happened and helps me to not ruminate too much on what the day has brought.

It brought laundry.

My first trip to a laundry mat in years.

Sigh.

I’m not going to lie, its not optimal.

I wish I could use the laundry that is here at the house, but I don’t have access to the garage.

On one hand its fabulous, I don’t have to go through the garage to get to my place anymore.

“I am so jealous of your space!” The woman who came over exclaimed looking at my place.

I had to say, it did look pretty spectacular today, the sun was shining in the windows, my God it gets such beautiful light, today was my first time being in the space most of the day, so I got to really see how much light came in.

So much.

I was reluctant to leave today.

But I knew I had to.

I had to do laundry and I did it and yeah, it wasn’t super fun and I feel like the laundry mat rips you the fuck off with the cost of drying and dryers that don’t really dry, but it is what it is and I did study the entire time I was there, which set the stage for the writing that I did for my classes today.

I still have to do a response in one of my classes, I did two out of three today, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do more.

I had to shut down the video I was watching, which I have watched before for my Freudian Analysis class three years ago.  I remember being fascinated by it when I watched it then, now I’m just tired from it, it’s a bit dark and like I mentioned, four hours long.

That’s a long time to watch anything about psychoanalysis and I’m a psychotherapist, it’s material I do enjoy, but it’s a heavy-handed version of Freudian analysis and I just got a bit worn down by it.

Anyway.

I am happy to say that as my home becomes more and more realized, that I am resourcing myself by being in the space.

It is warm and sweet and inviting.

It is also pretty and fun and colorful and it smells good.

I like the good smells I do.

I can look anywhere in the space and I will find something beautiful to rest my eyes upon.

I really like it and I like how unconsciously I have found things that fit together in interesting and arresting ways.

I don’t set out to create these patterns, but they are there when I step back and look, colors that blend with each other, complimentary shapes and pleasing ways of things coming together.

I will, as I have mentioned, post pictures soon, but it’s not quite fully realized, I still have to get my dresser and it will get set up next week, yeah, I re-hired the woman who helped out today, especially since next Sunday I will be deep in a ten page paper.

I can’t spare the three hours of assembly the product says it will take to assemble.

I mean.

It’s hella cute and had I the spare time I would totally do it, I have the tools I have put together plenty of things before, but this is an active act of self-care to delegate this out.

I have to focus on that paper and I have some ideas percolating, so hopefully it won’t break me.

It’s going to be a big week as I end my time with Liberation Institute and say goodbye to some clients and to the group I have been working with the last year and a half.

I also have to get the rest of my things together for Grateful Heart.

Like now.

I’ll be sitting with a friend from school to design my website on Wednesday and I will be getting a phone number and setting up a Square Reader.

I need to research that too, find out how long it will take for me to get the reader, etc.

Jesus.

I just did it.

Now my brain is officially fried.

I just set up and ordered my Square reader.

I will get it sent to me in the mail and hopefully it will arrive, it should, by the time I have my first client who will be using a credit card.

This is happening.

I think I have done just about all that I can today.

I have to call it a day.

Or a night.

I’m cooked.

Time to make a cup of tea and wind down, get some sleep and leap into what is going to be one hell of a busy week.

Seriously.

Through The Sunlit Room

Overcome by your extravagant beauty I fell into your eyes.

I fell into love.

Into loving you.

I had no clue how deep that fall was to take me.

I have no regrets that I have fallen.

Fallen woman.

I am.

Coloured in by states of grace and the softness of your kisses on my face.

You drowned me in the flood of your colour.

In the iris of your eyes as they dilated and opened in the shafts of light falling over you.

Falling in love with you was like falling in love with art.

You are art to me.

Poetry.

Beauty.

Color.

Love.

I had fears of embracing you from before we embraced.

I walked away from you.

I strode away from you.

I got on my bicycle and rode away from you.

Literally.

Thinking to myself, why am I going home alone again?

Why?

As I sit here alone now.

Same table.

Different night.

Unalterably altered by you.

You broke me down though.

You and your shine.

And though danger forbade me I proceeded.

I embraced you and in the embracing.

I found myself.

Not a place I had thought I would stumble upon.

For you showed me to myself.

You displayed to me who I was in your eyes and I became something new to myself.

I knew I was to suffer.

And I didn’t care.

And when I did suffer.

When there was pain.

I stuffed it down.

I sat on it.

I buried it.

I smiled.

And then I cried when you left.

Sometimes slow hot tears that leaked as though steam from a kettle on the stove.

Sometimes torrents that would threaten to capsize me in the very boat of my bed.

The bed we had just ridden through tumultuous love waters to be stranded on the island of you and I.

Population 2.

I became one with you.

I still feel your embrace.

I still feel the weight of you on me.

And.

It fades.

The fading has begun.

I am not overcome by your beauty.

Unless I allow myself to stumble down the hill of photographs stashed away inside my computer.

Or I wallow out into social media scrounging for scraps of you.

Tomorrow will be three weeks since I last saw you.

Since our last kiss goodbye.

Ah.

Now there.

The pain.

It rises.

It is still there, persistent, it says, oh no, not faded yet.

But it is softer.

The sharp edge has dulled down.

The crying does not last as long.

And this too.

Worrisome.

When you are gone.

When I cannot remember the way you smell.

Or how you taste.

Or feel.

The heaviness, so comforting, of you arm across my body.

The crook of your arm as I nestled into it.

Always my safest place.

My home.

In your arms.

And what will become of you?

What will happen when I don’t recall the touch of your hand on my body?

Or in my hair?

Or your mouth on my mouth, my neck, my clavicles.

Remnants.

I have bits and scraps and pieces of you now.

And I try to not try to knit them all together and make a wrap I can put around myself.

To steel myself from being ultimately left by you.

I am afraid to let go of the pain of the loss of you.

Because that is all that seems real anymore.

And if I don’t have that pain.

I will have nothing of you left.

And.

Then.

Then.

Truly.

I will be bereft.