Unexpected Days Off

I had today off and as of an hour and a half ago, I will have tomorrow off too.

My employers are all very sick.

Sad face.

But.

I am super grateful, wildly grateful, that they told me not to come in.

Flu with severe vomiting is not my gig.

Although I had a friend joke that it would be a great way to work on my abs.

Nah, I’ll pass.

I went to yoga instead.

In fact, holy shit, I can go tomorrow too, I am going to go see about signing up for a morning class.

Hang on I’ll be right back.

Nice!

I got into a 10a.m. class.

I went to a 9:30 a.m. this morning.

The instructor spoke about setting an intention.

Mine was loving self-care.

I did pretty well.

I went to yoga, did my laundry, had a super hot shower, had a fantastic breakfast and a big latte, did lots of writing and then made some phone calls to folks and did some check ins.

I talked with a friend for an hour on the phone.

God damn that was good.

When was the last time I had the time to take an hour-long phone call in the middle of the day?

I cannot remember.

It was delicious.

I went grocery shopping and really loaded up.

I came home and cooked.

I made homemade chicken soup with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions, Andouille sausage and the remains of chicken I had made last weekend.  Mixed it up with some brown rice and froze the entire batch of it.

Meals for a week of work and then some.

I also roasted another chicken, because, well, it’s nice to have roast chicken on hand.

I made another pot of brown rice.

It’s the simplest meal to have and super tasty–brown rice with roasted salt and pepper encrusted chicken and tarragon butter.

Yummy.

Then I just stick everything in the fridge so when I get home from work or my internship or doing the deal I just take some olive oil, heat it up in the pan, add some garlic, slice up a few brown mushrooms, add a cup of brown rice and pull chicken off the roast chicken I made and literally in five minutes I have a hot, super tasty meal and I can kick back and write my blog.

I’m also starting to think about some meal prep for Burning Man, I have grabbed a couple of small things–green drink vitamin mix, a couple of containers of unsweetened chocolate almond milk, and I’m starting to stock pile my beverages.

There’s only so much I can get back on my scooter, so every time I go shopping I grab a bottle or two of sparkling beverages I like to have on playa and start sticking them away.

It’s fun to go grocery shopping.

I like food.

I like cooking.

I like making food for people I care about.

There is something so soothing about making a meal for someone you love.

I love cooking for my employers.

I miss cooking for friends like I used to back in Madison, I used to have some seriously ridiculous dinner parties.

Since I abstain from a lot of the foods I used to so gleefully cook, I don’t as often have dinner parties, but folks are often surprised by what I put together and that it tastes pretty damn good.

I don’t keep any sugar or flour in my house, so that may make having a dinner party a bit of a challenge, or that my space is so tiny, but there was once a friend who defaulted her birthday party to my house and I found myself serving up 6 ladies lunch.

Homemade soup, I think.

And cheese and fruit and I don’t recall a single person complaining, in fact, I ran out of food.

It was all eaten.

But.

When I do have access to other ingredients, like when I cook for my employers, I can have such fun.

Anyway.

There was cooking and shopping and I really enjoyed doing that.

Sometimes I can be very domestic.

Shh.

Don’t tell.

I also did some more work cleaning out my social media.

I deleted a bunch more folks off Facebook and I dropped a couple of groups and deleted a blog or two.

I started going over my Facebook page with a fine tooth comb and removed a few things here and there and I have made it through posts up until 2013.

I still have a bit to weed through and this will be my last publicly posted blog.

And I have a little trepidation about even posting this to social media.

I was assigned two more clients.

One of whom I will start with next week, already talked on the phone and set up our initial session.

Tomorrow is my first session with my first client.

I am going to pull all blogs off social media starting around lunch time I think.

I’m going to go to yoga in the morning and do my morning routine and write and check in with my people about a few things and keep my fingers crossed that the rain doesn’t last too long.

Stupid rain.

Oh well.

At least I won’t have to scooter to work in it.

And hopefully it will pass by the time I have to leave to meet with my client.

I will be giving myself loads of time to get there and get myself situated and feel settled in.

I’m excited.

I’m happy that my time has come that the work is going to be used that I get to do this.

I really do feel so honored and grateful.

I feel really happy that I got to do yoga today and that I get to go tomorrow, that I did so much grocery shopping and cooking and just loving on myself.

I need to take good care of myself so that I may in turn, do the same for others.

And.

Be a model for what that looks like.

Oh.

I know.

I won’t always succeed.

But today.

Well, today I did good.

Yes.

I fucking did.

 

The Man Burns

In 90 days!

Throwing up in my mouth.

SHUT UP.

Wait, I’ve been so super involved in my internship saga and supervision and training and ending my blog, and summer work schedule and shit, I just about peed my pants when I saw that posted on a facecrack group I belong to and really I was like, whatttttt?

Shit.

It’s time to get my stuff together.

Yeah, yeah.

I know.

It’s three months away, but that’s the burn, the event starts a week before that and considering that I am in school the weekend that I will need to leave for the playa, I’m going to have to get my ducks together faster as I won’t have much prep time for the event the weekend that I leave.

I am going to have to start stockpiling beverages, and start food prepping, well, ok, maybe not quite yet, but it’s a good idea to start getting a few things together.

Fortunately.

I have a tent, new last year, a nice 4-man that I did really well in.

I have a blow up mattress, a cooler, a chair, my bins.

Although I might invest in some new bins, the ones I have are easily seven or eight years old, I could stand a slight upgrade.

I may also pick up another cooler, not working event means not getting fed and means bringing all my food, I did pretty well last year, but the one cooler was only for four days of the event.

I’ll want basically double what I brought.

Fine.

That’s not too big a deal.

It’s small stuff really.

I have all the outfits I could possibly want, a decade of going to Burning Man has supplied me with plenty of playa clothes.

I may splurge on a pair of tights, but I don’t need socks, or bandanas, I don’t need goggles or a utility belt, I also have a thick cloth and lace back harness with a little saddle bag that was super handy last year when I didn’t want to wear my utility belt.

I have great boots.

I have my Mary Fucking Poppins umbrella.

I have almost all the things.

And I have Amazon.

For all the other things I need.

I went online this afternoon after having a really nice, slowed down, mellow day.

Slept until 8:15a.m. got up and stripped the bed down and washed all my linens, yes, I’ll be sliding into fresh crisp sheets, such a pleasure, tonight, plus a big load of laundry.  I went to yoga, even though it was an instructor who I don’t like, went anyway (you are going anyway, I told myself this morning when I saw there was an instructor change on the studio’s schedule), took a hot shower, washed the hair up good, ate a nice breakfast, drank a coconut milk latte, put my availability on the calendar for my internship and wrote.

And wrote.

Such a luxury to not have much to do today.

I had a mini panic attack, not really, sort of, yesterday when I realized that for the first time in weeks I didn’t have anything scheduled today.

I called my person and confessed my nerves, I like to be busy, makes it easier to not listen to the radio KFuck in my head,  on AM Station ‘Thinking All About Myself All The Time,’ and told on myself.

I got a cute text this morning telling me what I should do, I don’t think should was part of the message, it was more just a quick list of things to do today.

Rest.

Eat.

Yoga.

Mani/pedi.

Navel gaze.

SUCCESS!

I did all the things.

Yup.

After my writing this morning I headed up to the Inner Sunset and hit my nail spot, I had to wait a little, got a cafe au lait at Tart to Tart and read a trashy magazine in the salon.

Mani/pedi, waxing.

Yes, the eyebrows needed some tending.

Then hopped back on my scooter and headed to the grocery store to pick up some stuff to cook and food prep for the week.

From here on out all my weeks are six days weeks.

And I need to stay on top of my food prep.

I got back from the grocery store, had a very late lunch, al fresco on the back porch.

It was intermittently amazing and horribly chilly, depending on whether or not the wind was blowing.

It was sunny though, so I really didn’t care, when it got too chilly I retreated back to my little studio and just sat in the sun coming in through the back glass door, I got my sunshine fill in for sure.

I made dinner.

Very simple.

Roasted chicken, pot of brown rice.

I got the stuff to make soup out of the chicken when I finish it up.

A chicken can go a long fucking way for me.

It was while I was cooking dinner that it hit me.

Oh yeah.

Fuck.

That thing in the desert.

I better get on taking care of the things I need or the damn thing is going to be here and I’ll be caught with my dusty pants down.

I made a list in my head of the things I needed and the things I wanted.

First.

The things I need: new air mattress battery operated pump, mine broke last year; batteries to run pump; a playa bike and a bike basket.

My bike died last year, it’s a long story, better told elsewhere, but suffice to say I wasn’t expecting to have to replace my faithful stead and I have had some resistance to doing it and I realized, just do it.

So.

Yup.

I got my playa bike too.

One speed beach cruiser.

Done.

I also got the other stuff too, the pump, batteries, and the bike basket.

I have photo evidence that some of the things that were on my old bike are still out there for me, my bike pennant, and the vanity plate that had my name on it, that I got at the LA airport when I did the AidsLifeCycle ride, as well as a pair of fuzzy velvet dice I got in Reno many years back.

Every one needs a pair of fuzzy dice.

I mean, really.

I’m super psyched to have it out-of-the-way.

The thing that I didn’t get, out of my budget right now, but I may still throw down for it, is a pop up car port for shade over my tent.

I am not sure if I will get it or not.

Regardless.

I got my stuff and I posted up to a group I belong to that I am also looking for a ride to and from the event.

So, it’s all out there in the Universe.

I’m pretty excited.

It will be here before you know it.

And.

Ha.

This is great.

To wrap up my day, after, catching some last sunshiny rays on the back porch for dinner, chilly, but so pretty, and the wind had died down a little, I scootered up to a place up on Quintara and 20th and did the deal.

Always a good way to wrap up a day.

I went up to a woman and thanked her for what she had to share and she paused and looked at me, “I know you,” she said.

I looked at her and I realized, yeah, I had seen here somewhere else before, “you do look super familiar,” I replied.

She smiled.

“I wasn’t sure until I saw you up close, you were at Burning Man in 2015.”

Ha!

Yes.

As a matter of fact I was.

Heh.

We caught up and it was funny, my God has such a sense of humor, you know, the afternoon that it hits me that Burning Man is just around the corner so I do my big playa order.

And.

Boom.

I run into someone I met at Burning Man.

I love my life.

And.

Though I am by far not ready for the event.

I am much further ahead then I was this morning.

Seriously.

The Man burns in 90 days!

 

 

Counting My Eggs

And no.

That is not a metaphor.

I am not referencing anything.

I am not putting a cart before a horse, eggs in a basket, two in the bush, one in the hand, sort of deal.

I was literally counting my eggs.

I wanted to figure out what my grocery needs are as I head into the home stretch before traveling out to that big dust bowl in the mountains.

I have a hard-boiled egg with my breakfast and I have been counting them down as I have breakfast, which sort of makes me laugh when I am prepping myself in the morning, but it really got ramped up today when I arrived at work and we started the counting down of the days.

We leave in ten days.

Which seems like forever and yet, not enough time.

The mom and I discussing what needs to go where in our schedules.

I have been covering some extra Fridays for her as she winds her way into the homestretch of craziness and the dad does the same, both parents have big, big, big jobs out there.

Not that any job out there isn’t a big job, it’s a big job just getting out there.

I chatted with a friend today trying to negotiate the way in and out.

So many options.

Early arrival.

Early leaving.

That’s the consensus of most of my friends that go, get there early and leave there early, avoid the traffic and lines both ways if at all possible.

Or get there early and leave late.

Which is what I will be doing.

I will be on playa 9 days before the event even starts.

My time on playa looks to be 19 days this year.

Not my longest stint, that was last year at 22 days, but damn skippy close.

It’s a lot of time to be gone, a lot of time to be in those kind of conditions and a lot of planning and organizing that needs addressing.

Sometimes it can feel like too much.

Like, Jesus, it’s always Burning Man, I am always getting my stuff together or out of storage or back into storage or can you bring that bin over to my friend’s house so they can load it into a container that may or may not be where I hope it will be when I arrive.

Thankfully, I don’t have to negotiate that sort of thing.

But I do timing.

I have my schedule pretty set for the rest of the countdown.

I will finish out this week of work and do my standard commitments and meet ups and get to here at this time for coffee/tea/check in with this that and the other person.

In addition to, I have an appointment to see the ophthalmologist on Saturday after I do my normal Tart to Tart session at 12:15p.m.  The last time I will see that lady until well after September is in session, then off to the eye doc to get fitted with contacts.

I have worn them before and decided it will really be a nicer experience for me on playa to not have to worry about glasses.

I will bring them, but I am going to get two weeks worth of disposable contacts to have out there which will just be so much nicer than always having to wipe off the dust from my frames and also I can wear sunglasses and my goggles without having to worry about not being able to see.

It was tricky negotiating my glasses last year and I prefer to go back to my eyeglass free state that I have had for all my other Burning Man adventures.

Hard to believe that this is number 8 for me.

Eight!

I do have the packing down to a science though, and my footprint is small, so it won’t take long to get it all together.

The trick is to get it all to my employers house while working the full week next week and doing the overnight on Thursday.

The mom and I hashed it out this morning and it looks like what I will do is scoot from my NOPA gig back to Cole Valley next Thursday, pick up mom’s car, drive it out to my place, load my stuff up, then drive back to Cole Valley and nanny for the mom and dad starting at 7p.m. until probably midnight.

Spend the night, load up my stuff in the morning into the camper, I will be in the Bambi Airstream again, and head out late morning, early afternoon.

The hope is, for me, and I think for the mom too, that we can get on the road around the time he goes down for his nap.

The nap has varied from 11 a.m. to noon to 12:30p.m. over the last few weeks, so sometime around then, get on the road and let him sack it out for the first two to three hours of the road trip.

It will be perfect to be able to do everything Thursday instead of Wednesday as we had previously discussed, then I won’t have to live out of my messenger bag for a day and a half, I’ll just be able to pack an overnight bag, which also translate to my overnight in Reno with the family.

We’ll stay in Reno the night of the fifteenth, get up, do a last-minute run on Whole Foods in Reno, then hit the road and be into the event just as the afternoon heat is breaking.

That’s the plan anyhow.

Whew.

It’s a lot of detailed stuff, but it’s also a joy, a deep abiding love for this strange event with its incomprehensible depths of art, culture, music, principles, and community, a love of family, this strange, wild, wonderful group of people who have embraced me, the playa nanny, and continue to support and help me as I them.

I have a community and a fellowship that I will never be without, can’t ever be without.

But I also have Burning Man.

And that just puts the cherry on my sundae.

A very dusty sundae.

But one I enjoy with immense gratitude.

Here we go folks.

T-minus ten days and counting.