So Fresh and So

Clean.

Clean.

My house looks pretty fucking good, let me tell you.

All the laundry done, all the trash and recycling out and swept, swiffered, vacuumed, scrub the bathroom down, tidy the fuck up.

Which means one thing.

Mama had a lot of homework to do today.

My God.

There is no fucking end to it.

Yet.

Me thinks I see a glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh.

The light is far off, but I can sense it getting closer.

I did so, so, so much work today.

My god.

My brain hurt.

Still does, not as much, and hurt might not be the right word, but I was worn out with the material, as I was warned that I might be, but I toughed it out.

I finished all of my Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class.

Huzzah!

But man, it took the stuffing out of me, and I don’t eat stuffing.

Haha.

It was a lot of reading, and a lot of watching some intense videos.

I wrote out responses to five of the sections, I got three out-of-the-way previously.

And I wrote a clinical mock-up of an elder abuse situation and what I would do, from mandatory reporting to clinical interventions and everything in between.

It was a lot of work.

But.

Fuck.

It’s done.

So happy I got all of that out-of-the-way, it really was the big monster in my block of classes.

I also finished all my reading for Transpersonal, which means, drumroll please…

I have no more reading to do for the semester!!

My God.

That feels fabulous.

I am not, however, out of the woods yet.

Tomorrow I have to write two papers.

One will be fairly short, two pages, on a dream I had, it will be my last dream to tun into my Jungian Dreamwork class.

The other will be a bit longer, but not too bad, five pages.

That one will, however, be a bit more formal and honestly despite having finished all the reading for the class I’m not exactly sure where I am going to go with the paper.

I was also in contact with my group today working on our final project presentation that I will be doing the last Saturday of classes.

I’m hoping to knock out both the papers and the group work tomorrow.

And also, if I can swing it, the Psychopharmacology online portion of my Psychopharmacology and Human Sexuality class.

I have a paper in that class due at the end of the semester too and one for my Drugs and Alcohol Class.

Sigh.

That will be for next weekend.

I can get it done though, especially since the Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class is completed.

My God.

One more class done towards my degree.

Which reminds me, I have to register for classes in two days.

In two days I will register for my last semester!

I only have three classes.

It is going to feel miraculous after carrying six classes this semester.

I have only done four classes at once before, this semester was a stretch, and obviously, it’s not done.

OH.

And I still will have a final paper for Jungian DreamWork too, it’s just not due until after the last weekend of classes.

Which is always a conundrum.

Crush that bitch out of the park and get it done before my last weekend of classes, or finish that Sunday when I get out of classes.

Because the damn thing is due on the 15th of December and I’ll be working all that week and of course, seeing clients.

There’s no way I can do two big papers tomorrow and the small one and the online portion of my other class.

No.

I will be a wastrel of a person.

But.

Maybe I can do them next weekend.

Maybe.

If not, maybe I can get it started.

It would mean three papers next weekend.

Sigh.

I got invited out to the movies tonight.

I turned it down.

I got invited out to dinner.

I came home and made my own.

I am going to be over the moon when this semester is done, it will be nice to have a little more wiggle room for social outings and such.

Although I do have breakfast plans with my best friend in the morning.

Super excited for that, really happy to get to have some time before I get into the homework grind.

And if I’m good and grind hard and get a lot of it done, maybe I go to yoga.

Not the regular Vinyasa, nope.

My ankle is doing better, but not that much better, no, I was thinking maybe the Restorative yoga, my brain is going to need some restoring to normality by the time I crank out all the homework I have to do tomorrow.

Grateful I know how to write a paper and grateful for my ability to pull together my notes and book references and make it work.

I can do it.

I have my process and I’ve done the biggest work, which is the reading.

That’s the most important.

I’ll skim through my books, grab a stack of post-it notes and flip through my class notes, I will put together a skeleton of the paper in outline by looking through my materials and see what my common themes are.

Then.

I’ll write that bitch.

It’s five pages, so with prep time, reference time, write time, I am going to give it two and a half hours.

Actually.

That seems too long.

Two hours.

I’ll kick out the dream paper in twenty minutes, I don’t have to write it up with references, it’s just me doing what I do anyway, write what I see in my head, so two pages will be twenty minutes, thirty tops.

So maybe I’ll have all the writing done with in that time.

And that should give me enough room and time to finish the rest of the online material I need, I suspect that will take an hour to two and also writing out an outline and making a worksheet for my final project for Transpersonal.

That will take forty-five minutes.

So.

What am I looking at?

Five hours?

I think I can do that.

Breakfast shenanigans are early so I’ll be in the mix by 10 a.m. like I was today, today I finished at 6 p.m. working pretty much straight through, yes, even when I was cleaning I was doing homework.

I had to watch a few videos, but I will admit, I was listening to some of them while I was cleaning, the material at times was graphic and I found it easier to integrate when I was cleaning and sweeping and washing.

So if all goes as planned I’ll be done by five or so.

I have an hour break at 1p.m. to do some work with a lovely lady and get right with God, a break after that for lunch, and then back in it.

It will get done.

It will.

I can do it.

I can.

Go team go!

Heh.

I’m Gonna Make It!

I might be saying this a tiny bit premature, as I rest with my foot elevated and the perennial sack of frozen peas adorning my ankle, but I think I am.

I am going to make it through my first week back to work.

Today was a pretty damn good day too.

I got to be reunited with my little girl Thursday and she was such a pumpkin and it was so awesome to see her, so many new words and stories and hugs and she immediately demanded to have the lip gloss in my bag.

“What flavor?” I asked her, with an indulgent smile.

“Pink!” she said, then “more, I ate it.”

Ah, yeah, and that’s not what we’re supposed to do, sugar britches, but ok, a tiny bit more.

Today was also my first day doing a nanny share with her and one of my other boys, the youngest, the one who is teething like a poor sick beaver.

I tried it all.

Teething sticks, toothbrushes, ice cubes, frozen mango, frozen grapes, crackers.

He is partial to chewing on shoe laces and the ends of my sweatshirt lace caps from my hoodie.

Anything to alleviate the pain.

Poor guy.

The good news, kid, you won’t remember the pain.

He got super feverish with it this afternoon and couldn’t get settled down and finally I just held him and rubbed his little shoulders and blew on his face and cuddled him until he fell asleep.

Then I just let him sleep there until my other monkey woke up from her nap and miracle of miracles, I mean, how the hell did this magic happen, I swapped them out.

“Carmen!”

She called from out her room.

“Carmen! I pooped!”

No ignoring that.

Sometimes if she wakes up a little and squeaks, I give it a minute, she might just roll back asleep, in fact, often does, but a poop, nope, no going back to sleep with a load in her pants.

I got up off the couch, with the little boy on me, hot face tucked into my bosom, arms bunched underneath his chest, little legs swinging out and walked to my girls bedroom.

I opened it slow.

“Shhhh, A.  shhhh, R. is sleeping.”

Her eyes got big.

“I pooped.” She whispered.

“I know, I got ya, can you help me like a big girl?”

She nodded.

I walked in, closed the door behind me to keep the room dark.

“Ok, lady pants, stand in the corner of your bed by Massimo (her stuffed bear–dad has a thing for Mexican masked wrestlers, and Massimo often sports one, although today he was in a pair of outgrown red and white polka dot footie pajamas that the little miss had outgrown), and hang tight two seconds.”

She moved over to the corner of the crib by her bear, eyes tracking me, quiet as a little mouse and I leaned over the crib on my tip toes, keeping the small bunny on my chest until the last possible second, then plopped him down soft as soft can be on the warm nest of blankets just vacated.

He rolled over, opened one eye, saw me, I smiled and said, sleep bunny, and he closed his eyes and did just that.

I scooped up my little girl, got her out of her sleep sack, changed the poop diaper, put her in her training pants, she’s almost potty trained, and pulled on her tights, I scooped up her hair elastics and some barrettes, and hugged her tight to me and tiptoed out the door, pulling it shut behind me.

Success!

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but my god, it did.

And I was grateful, upon reflection that it had worked out that way, I was now unable to leave the house to do a second outing to the park.

The up and down the stairs–my Thursday family lives in a three-story walk up on the top floor–combined with the outing to the park in the morning, had done me in pretty well.

My little lady and I read books and she had snacks and we whiled away the afternoon reading the entire collection of Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.

It was a great way to get through the afternoon and my little teething monkey slept an hour and a half, his fever broke and he was up just ten minutes before mom came for pick up.

Perfection.

I gave mom the down low on the day and expressed how the massage had work and she said, “he loves back rubs!”

And the words of my friend came into my ear.

“You really should do body work.”

The words of my best friends eleven year old son came into my mind, “oh my god, mom, you’re right, she’s good.”

The words of a lover.

“Why aren’t you doing this for a living?”

While I had sat on the couch waiting for him to settle down, humming my little tuneless song, rubbing his back, with my eyes closed, matching his breath in and out with my own, and then feeling without thought, just touching his muscles in his small little body, I thought, maybe this is what I should do.

Pediatric massage therapy.

It would be lovely service.

I am good with children.

And I could perhaps even help kids with body issues, god only knows I have some experience with physical and sexual trauma from child hood, I can relate to that.

And I love kids.

And I know how to hold them.

So, hmm.

Perhaps something to explore.

I know I give good massage and one of the reasons why I have always said no, I don’t want to do this, is because I feel like there can be an ickiness factor.

An unwanted sexual nature to it and also that there are just some folks I don’t want to touch or be paid to touch.

I don’t think I would get that if I was working with kids.

I feel like this is something to explore and something I could explore while continuing to nanny.

I have some research to do.

And my bag of frozen peas is almost unfrozen.

One more day and I will have made it through.

So grateful for this experience.

For the help, for the love, for all the unexpected gifts and insights.

Looking forward to the full recovery and the playing it forward.

And now off to elevate more and drink some tea.