Unfortunately

That’s not covered by your insurance.

My dentist told me this morning.

Ugh.

I sat in the chair and thought to myself, maybe I misheard him, maybe I didn’t hear that right, I mean, he speaks mostly Chinese, which I find oddly comforting, I don’t need to know what he is talking about to his assistant, but I’m pretty sure I had heard what I had heard.

Fingers crossed, please, tell me I didn’t hear what I heard.

Sigh.

But.

I had.

“Crack,” he’d said to the assistant in between poking and prodding and checking my teeth.

I was just in for a routine cleaning this morning.

I had all intents on going to the 10:30 a.m. yoga at the studio on my block and then meandering into my group supervision at 2p.m.

The supervision happened.

Yoga, well, yoga did not.

Nope.

Instead I was under the drill all morning.

My dentist took a picture of my tooth and showed me the crack.

I was surprised by how big it was and also that I hadn’t had any pain to indicate that there was a crack in my tooth.

Which was a really good thing.

No pain meant that it was probably fairly recent.

It had to have happened within the last three months, it wasn’t there the last time I went to the dentist, and it probably had occurred more recently than that.

Certainly nothing came to mind.

Nothing that I remember eating and doing any damage to my teeth.

“It’s not grinding your teeth while you sleep,” he said, answering a question I was just about to pose, “there’s not indication from any of your other teeth that you grind them while you sleep.”

Well, that’s good news.

“You eat anything crunchy?” He asked.

“Nuts?” I said, I do like raw almonds with my apple as a snack.

“Nuts, no good, nuts bad for teeth, you no more eat nuts unless you want to pay me big bucks and keep me in my mortgage,” he chuckled.

“Um no, I do not want to come back for another cracked tooth, I’ll lay off the nuts,” I replied.

Irony.

I kept thinking about my night-time snack, a couple of end of season super ripe and delicious persimmons and some raw walnuts.

Sigh.

No snack tonight.

I’ll still have my tea though.

I was really surprised by the photo and super glad that my dentist had caught it and he explained that I was lucky if there was no pain it meant the damage was manageable and that I would not have to have a root canal.

Fuck yes.

But.

I would have to get a crown.

And thus ensued the “your insurance doesn’t cover this,” discussion I had with my dentist.

Like I said, not really the conversation anyone wants to have on a Saturday morning, but I also knew when he started telling me about the differences between what my insurance would cover, it wasn’t going to cover the full amount, it would have still be $825 out-of-pocket, versus the better quality crown that the dentist was recommending, at $1200, I just sucked it up, made the decision to take good care of myself and signed the paperwork for the better product.

I was asked if I could start the work today and of course I said yes, bye, bye yoga class, and I went out and plugged the meter for parking another two hours and went back into the office, used the bathroom, prayed a bunch, came out signed off the paperwork and got ready to get injected with Novocaine.

He gave me a local, but I still felt the prick of the needle.

Ugh.

I hate needles.

I hate shots, hate, hate, hate.

The second injection was horrible, the local anesthesia hadn’t quite numbed me out in the second location, that one just plain good and hurt.

I sucked it up though, what was I going to do?

And then the dentist went to fucking town.

My god.

I will just say that smell of my tooth being ground down was overwhelming.

Not a pleasant smell, the drill, not a pleasant sound.

The taste of blood in mouth, horrifying.

I just breathed and prayed and breathed and prayed.

I had my mouth wedged open with some sort of device, that also sucks, frankly, it hurt my jaw keeping it open so long and my face felt tender for hours.

As of right now, I am happy to report, that the pain is really ok.

It’s there, sensitive now and again, a dull throb, but it’s doable.

And I have been able to eat.

They did a bunch of molds to get the fit right and then they did the temporary crown.

The permanent one takes two weeks to be ready.

I have to be cautious with the temporary one, nothing crunchy, and no gum.

I can handle that.

And two weeks from today I’ll go in and my dentist will give me the permanent crown.

I am assuming it will mean more Novocaine, but I’ve got two weeks until it happens.

I’m a baby around dental stuff, but at least I showed up and I did do the work and I paid for it all in full at the end of the session, I could have put it off until the permanent crown gets put in, but I figured I had the money in my account, just pay the damn thing.

And for that I am grateful.

I had the money.

I didn’t always have the money.

A little while ago a dental bill for $1285 would have floored me.  It was not pleasant, I will say that, and I did go through a spurt of brief financial anxiety, but I’m ok, I really am.

And so grateful I chose well and chose to take care of myself and my mouth.

There was a homeless man on the sidewalk sleeping when I came out to climb into my new car and go home and make myself a fancy espresso drink with expensive organic coffee beans.

I have it really fucking good.

I have no money problems.

Fuck.

I don’t have problems.

I just have opportunities to learn.

And.

To be stupid grateful at how good my life is.

It really is.

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.

Sexy Got Her Homework On

And her yoga on.

But not her sex on.

Well.

Not true.

I took care of business after my second yoga class today.

Yes.

I said that, two yoga classes today.

I have never done that before.

It’s not that big a deal and at the same time, it sort of was.

I went to my normal 9 a.m. Sunday morning class and got a very good sweat on and proceeded to watch my entire day change in the span of a few text messages.

When I got back from my yoga class I got a cancellation then after I got out of my shower and was getting my breakfast ready, my coffee date cancelled.

So.

I sent a lover a message.

And.

Nope.

NO response.

That kind of day.

So.

I got to do extraordinary amounts of self-care.

Which was needed and much cleaning and house hold attending.

And.

Cooking and grocery shopping.

This next few weeks is going to be busy.

I will be working two weeks straight for the family, the dad will be leaving Thursday for a business trip out-of-town so I will be working next Saturday and Sunday.

It’s actually going to be three weeks of work and school before I have another weekend off.

It’s going to be intense.

So I’m grateful I had today all to myself.

I was good company.

I took some extra time this morning for my writing and I made myself the most delicious coconut/almond milk latte and decided to just let the day unfold and not worry about anything.

I knew I also had to get a paper written for my Trauma class, my step-father made it into a paper this go around, and do cooking and food prep.

But I didn’t force myself or stress.

I just took each moment as its own little exquisite experience.

I washed all my bedding and did two loads of laundry, even washed the rugs in the bathroom, and swept, vacuumed, washed, polished, and cleaned my whole house.

It looks so nice.

I also went grocery shopping for two weeks of food.

I will probably have to re-up on fresh fruit, but I have enough coffee, eggs, oatmeal, brown rice, almond milk, organic carrots, frozen blueberries, and prepared food to get me through the weeks to come.

I roasted a chicken today and I made jambalaya.

I froze the majority of it and canned the rest of the chicken soup I had leftover from last week.

I have meals for days and I feel happy to have dealt with it.

I didn’t leave the neighborhood.

Although I did take my scooter to the Safeway on Balboa to get my groceries.

I wasn’t going to take it further, I knew there was going to be one more episode of rain and sure enough, there was, but not before I had run all the errands I needed to do and the next week and a half looks like sunshine.

That is going to be super helpful, I have my first therapy session with my new therapist Tuesday before work and I have an appointment to see my advisor at school Thursday before work.

The before work, work begins.

In actuality, I realize, it began already last week, I have been doing things before work for the last couple of weeks since the last school weekend.

Which reminds me, I need to swing by the post office before work in the morning and pick up a package.

I think work is going to be pretty busy, not just with working next weekend, but also, its Spring Break for the kiddos, which means I won’t have reading time for school work.

I feel like I’m ok though, I have done a lot of the Couple’s Therapy reading already, finished all my Trauma reading and I wrote my Trauma paper today.

I had some push back on it.

I realize I have been having some feelings of, “over it,” move along, I’m tired of this stuff.

It can get exhausting looking at the trauma minefields in my life history and how I got through some seemingly unscathed, but the patterns of the things I did to survive stay with me, little bombs of shrapnel on my psyche that explode without warning and leave me tired on the side of the road picking the stuff out of the pockets of my emotions.

“I feel brutalized,” I was telling my person yesterday at Tart to Tart, that place has seen a lot of my tears, about an incident that happen last week and how I felt and why I was angry.

We did a lot of work around it and I got some very good suggestions and I took them, I’m still taking them, I will keep taking them as the days move forward.

I hadn’t realized how much I was carrying until I said out loud that I felt brutalized and that it reminded me, I later saw, of my step-father and my mom and some stuff that happened to me growing up.

All the things that happened growing up.

Glad I start therapy on Tuesday, Jesus fuck.

Of course, under the lens of my graduate school work, of course, a lot of stuff is going to come up, the pot just keeps getting stirred and things pop to the surface, so when I sat down to write my paper I realized just how much I didn’t want to write it and I let myself start out that way.

And.

Five pages and 1,562 words later.

I was finished.

In fact.

I finished it so fast that I realized I could go to the restorative yoga class tonight at my studio.

Yes, I had already practiced today, but the restorative is really meditative and relaxing and it’s not about getting a work out, it’s about being in your body and supporting different parts of it that don’t typically get support or rest.

It was just so what I needed.

I came home, lit some candles, checked my messages, saw nothing from anyone, and said, well, I’ll just take care of me and took care of me.

I am actually a little surprised that I had so much sexual energy today, I just finished my period yesterday, but as I am getting older I can tell that sometimes it comes out in different ways energetically.

I also had some fodder for fantasy running around my head that I just let myself have.

I could say it was counter transference from the work I did today, which is another entire blog and far to clinical for me to delve into here.

Or.

I could just say.

After getting flowers, a home cooked dinner, and a restorative yoga class I was just in a yummy, dreamy space.

And I let myself go there too.

Yes.

Thank you self-care Sunday.

You rocked.

Ready for the next weeks work.

Bring it on.

Twas The Night Before

Thanksgiving.

When all through the house.

Not a creature was stirring.

Not.

Even.

A.

Louse.

I mean.

There shouldn’t be a fucking thing stirring.

I cleaned so much today I can hardly stand it.

My house is ridiculously clean.

I washed things that I didn’t even think to wash prior to yesterday’s news.

It had fabric.

That thing got washed.

I mean.

I washed my pot holders.

I did nine loads of laundry.

I think.

I’m not sure, I definitely lost count after six and I know I was still washing stuff.

All my bedding.

Which has to be done every day for a week, just in case.

And frankly, I will be doing it every day, I’m not going to even take a chance.

I got rid of stuff that pained me to get rid of.

All my hair accessories, all my flowers.

I just couldn’t.

I tried to spray them all down, but the thought of there being any infestation.

I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to wear them, I just trashed them all, plus my brush and my comb, all my barrettes, bobby pins, and hair elastics.

Sigh.

I was bummed.

But.

l just knew, there was no going back to using that stuff and I feel better for having let it go.

I can also relate that I haven’t been wearing them as much of late.

I don’t know.

Maybe I’m growing up.

But I did have a thought recently, “what would it be like to not wear flowers in my hair?”

And.

Well.

Fuck.

I get to find out.

At least for a little while.

In the scheme of things, I’m ok.

I was a bit more ashamed of the situation than I realized until I was messaging with a friend and it sort of leaked out and then I was astounded to find out I was upset with myself, for not having realized it sooner, for having to do so much work, for feeling grossed out about having bugs in my hair.

All the grief my brain makes up.

I did some inventory.

I wrote it down.

I called my person.

I cried.

I got some perspective.

Then I went back to washing everything in the house.

And vacuuming.

I have two small area rugs that I just attacked with the vacuum.

I attacked everything.

I’m a bit exhausted from the cleaning.

And more than a little frazzled by the thought of doing the holiday alone.

I was going to be hanging out with a friend, but he had something come up and I realized, well, fuck, as much as I can plan and try to figure things out, life it happens and I can be a sad sack and keep crying over it or I can move on.

Frankly.

I’m a little over the tears.

I have cried now three times today and I’d just like to stop.

This does rank up there in some great holiday memories.

I mean.

Fuck.

At least I’m not waiting tables at the Essen Haus.

I worked two Thanksgiving’s there.

That was miserable.

All you can eat family style Thanksgiving.

And slammed, packed, oozing with people, cheap people with big appetites.

And kids that were untenable and out of control.

I will never forget setting down a tray full of slices of pumpkin pie for a ten top that I had in my section and turning to serve them and seeing a child from another table sticking his fingers into each slice of pie.

I was infuriated.

I took every plate he stuck his fingers in and set them down at his seat.

“We didn’t order that!” His mother said.

“Well, apparently, he thought you did,” I said, and kept putting the plates on the table, “he’s marked all the ones he wants to have, Happy Thanksgiving,” I said and walked away.

“May their trailer home get carried away in the next tornado season,” my best friend told me as I was scrambling to plate fresh pieces of pumpkin pie for my table.

Seriously.

Plenty thankful that I don’t work there anymore.

Or that I haven’t had to work a Thanksgiving in years.

I may have worked one or two while I was at the veterinary hospital, I know I worked a Christmas Eve there, but for the most part, I haven’t in the last decade had to do so.

That’s a gift.

It’s also a gift that there’s a washer and dryer in the garage next to the house.

I washed all my bedding and towels last night when I got home.

And today I continued to do so, I pulled my last load of laundry from the dryer at 5 p.m.

I had started washing clothes and rugs and towels and coats at 8:30 a.m. this morning.

Hell.

I had already had a full day by noon.

Laundry, cleaning, yoga.

I messaged a few more people who might have been to close to my person recently, another friend from school, but so far, it looks like no one else has gotten it.

Relief.

I’m not currently excited about how this holiday is panning out, but I remind myself that I can go and be of service and I have plenty to be grateful for.

In the end.

Thanksgiving is just one day out of the year to be grateful.

I am grateful every day.

I mean.

I really am.

I write a gratitude list twice a day.

Once in the morning in my morning pages and again in the evening, I send one out to my person.

It usually goes something like this:

I am grateful to be alive, sober, abstinent, fed, clothed.

I am grateful my rent is paid, my phone bill is paid, I have a laptop, a scooter, good coffee in the cupboard.

I am grateful to get to go to graduate school.

I am grateful for lice.

Yes.

I wrote that this morning.

It was once suggested to me that I also write down the challenging things in my life, that I get to have challenges, that I get to grow through them.  That the difficulties give me a chance to lean into God.

I mean.

I am grateful my employers paid for my treatment and for the products to clean my house and that I had today off to take care of it.

I am grateful for sunshine.

I am grateful for cooking for myself and eating persimmons.

I am very grateful for persimmons.

I am grateful for getting to go to yoga this morning, that wasn’t in my plan for today either, but I got to do it and that was nice.

I am grateful for flexibility, in my life, in my home, in my person.

I am grateful that I was able to deal with the issue and I get to move the fuck on.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all.

I hope it is one filled with family, merriment, good food, and no lack of lice.

Seriously.

 

Making Head Way

And taking care of myself.

And changing my mind, even when it was uncomfortable to do so.

I got up this morning with an agenda.

Get as much of it the fuck done as I could.

Did I get it all the fuck done?

No.

But.

I made some serious headway and read myself cross-eyed and shoulder slumped.

Seriously.

I need a back rub.

I did self-care.

I cleaned the house like a woman on fire.

Fortunately.

The house is small and it doesn’t take much cleaning.

I pulled the sheets of the bed, did some laundry, put fresh sheets on, fluffed the pillows, took out the trash and compost and recycling, swept, swiffere’d, vacuumed, I hung my new Mike Doughty Living Room Tour 2016 signed poster.

It looks pretty fucking hot.

I picked it up yesterday and got it hung before my back to back ladies and book reading appointments showed up to drink tea and talk about acceptance and spiritual solutions.

Ah.

Thank you God.

Always on the menu for a good day.

I had a friend text me about going to a BBQ in the neighborhood and I made a rash decision, yes, I can, I can make a brief appearance, eat lunch with friends and fellows and then bash out some more reading.

But.

When I showed up the BBQ hadn’t even been lit and it was already “late” for me to eat and I did something that I am rather proud of, I bailed.

In a nice way, in a self-care sort of way.

I just expressed that I needed to eat and that as the bbq was just getting fired up and there was a need to go to Safeway and get more charcoal and other things for the picnic, that maybe, definitely it would be a better idea for me to duck out, feed myself and read like as much as I possibly could until I wanted to vomit.

Ok.

Maybe not vomit, but I mean get a lot read.

The amount of reading for this semester surpasses anything that I have done so far.

I think that I’m on top of it and then I realize, fuck, fuck, fuck, I have so much to go.

But I am making progress and getting myself out of the social engagement with some kindness and gratitude to my friend for helping me get home right after I had been picked up was huge for me.

It felt like a little tiny victory.

I came home.

Fed myself well and hit the books.

I read for about two hours.

Straight, no chaser.

Then I took a break.

And read some more.

Then I took another break and made dinner and food for the week.

I roasted a chicken yesterday so today I pulled a bunch of the meat off it for various meals and then I stuck it in the stock pot and starting the process of making stock for chicken soup.

While that was working I made my version of pork fried rice–brown rice tossed with ginger, turmeric, garlic, onions, some cut up pork loin, a 1/2 rasher of uncured bacon, green peas, organic diced carrots, sliced brussels sprouts, brown mushrooms, and Bragg’s Amino’s.

So good.

Seriously.

And the nice thing.

I stuck a few containers of it up in the freezer.

Although I am not in school next weekend, I am going to be running it down to the wire on some papers I need to write.

I decided to not do any writing this weekend and get caught up with and on par with all my reading for classes.

I caught up completely and have made deep inroads in Family Therapy.

I should have all the reading done for the class by tomorrow, give or take a fat baby nap in the afternoon.

Then I’ll be focusing on my Psychopathology class and getting that reading caught up to date and reading for the next weekend.

Child Therapy has the least amount of labor intensive reading, although there is a lot of it, a stupid amount if you ask me, but hey, grad school, right?

I think the decision to do the reading is going to be the clincher for me.

I always feel so much better prepared if I’m read for the classes that are happening the weekend that they are happening.

Just like I’m in a better place if I have food prepped and ready to go for the work week and the school weekend.

I actually have enough set aside in my freezer to get me through the next school weekend without having to do extra prep next weekend, which was sort of the plan.

I’ll be maintaining my current work schedule, with the exception of working a little more this week then I normally do for my main family, there’s a holiday and the boys will be out of school on Tuesday and I’ll be going in and doing a morning start when I usually do an afternoon start.

Speaking of nannying.

I sent my formal last day request in to my current family right before I started writing this blog.

That was my other big thing to do.

Really look at my schedule and see what made the best sense to me.

I decided to ask for Friday, December 23rd as my last day.

That gives me nine days, with the holiday weekends, before my next gig.

There was also some miscommunication and misunderstanding with my family in regards to my last days with the other family–December 14th–where in they made the connection that I wanted my last day to be that week.

Not necessarily true, don’t want to lose two weeks of paid work, I can afford one though, that’s for sure.

But.

I owned up to the miscommunication and said if they needed my last day to be the 16th of December I would make that accommodation to my schedule.

I realized that if I decided I needed extra cash it really wouldn’t be too hard to grab a couple of nanny or baby sitting gigs–it’s the holidays, everybody needs extra help.

So.

Yeah.

That’s done.

So relieved.

Relieved that I made it through the weekend with a clean house, lots read, good food, some recovery oriented interactions and a little bit of sunshine.

All in all.

A good weekend was had.

And I will probably sneak in an episode of Shameless before I call it a night.

A girl needs a break once in a while.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

She does.

 

Are We There Yet?

My God, when will it be done?  I need to lay down soon, crawl under the covers and just freaking hide.  I have been cleaning all night.  Seriously, I am not a dirty person.  I am quite tidy, ask my friends, ask my employers, ask away, I dare you.  However, I am apparently a big old slob, because my studio was just nasty.

Ugh.

There’s a tear in my tea.

I know what it is, I’m not good at deep cleaning, I don’t like it, I don’t do it well, and I lack the wherewithal to do it on any regular kind of basis.  I’m neat, I keep my space nicely, but I don’t scrub.  My mom once said that I needed a wife.  I don’t think she meant I was of the lesbian order, rather just that I kept myself so busy I needed somebody to pick up after me.

I am beginning to see the wisdom in this.  My time if freaking valuable and maybe, just maybe I am going to consider having some body come in and do a little deep cleaning for me once every other month or so.  I just do not want to go through what I just did again.  Fact is, the studio is probably not as clean as the management company wants it.

Fact is, I have nothing left to give.  I will probably go back again tomorrow after work and doing the deal, but unless somebody waves a big magic wand it’s not going to get much cleaner.  Another issue that the studio has, that my new place does not, thank mother fucking god, is that the studio is on the street.  And the building is old and the windows don’t seal very well, so lots of cable car dirt and traffic soot slide in through the windows.  I kept wiping things down and I must have destroyed a good four sponges just trying to get the soot off the window sills.

Ugh.

At this point I am quietly surrendering.  I give up.  The management company has my go ahead to charge me with a cleaning fee and a touch up painting fee.  I do not care any more.  I just want to be finished.  Now, please.  Please.

Zach, my rental agent, and his boss Michelle came by as she already has the studio rented out to somebody.  Good lord that was fast, sight unseen, and furnished.  So, Michelle wanted to come in and take measurements.  While she was doing that I asked Zach how clean I needed to have the studio.  I was pretty close to throwing in the towel when they swung by at 7:30 p.m.  He said, “leave it how you would want to move into it.”

Oh, no fair man, I’m a fucking perfectionist, it will never be good enough.  Fact is, in some instances it is actually cleaner than when I moved in.  But I knew in my heart that I had neither the time nor the energy to do the kind of justice to it that I felt and feel it needs.

I set a time limit, otherwise I would still be over there scrubbing.  And I went over my time limit by an hour.  And that was as far as I could go.  I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions, or lack there of, when it comes down to how clean I have left it.  I will probably give Zach a call in the morning and let him know I did as much as I possibly could tonight and if the studio is still open when I get home from my day tomorrow, I will make another pass through.

I have to let it go.  I need to be rested for the girls, K. is teething and was a monster today at nap time.  Screaming, and I mean screaming, not crying, I will need all my reserves.

After all, it is the girls and the job that I do with them that made this whole move possible.  I hereby vow to keep my place cleaner and not bitch or gripe about any money that comes out from the deposit.  When it is all said and done I’m fully moved in and both spaces are clean and pretty.  I am human and I think I cleaned up pretty damn good.

Literally and figuratively.