Tired

But.

In a good way.

I got up at 6:30 a.m.

I didn’t get my full night’s sleep, but I got close, I had been up later than I wanted to the night previous, so I was ready for bed when it came last night, but my thoughts were busy being annoying, it took a little while to drop of.

But when I did.

Holy shit

I did.

Slept like a rock.

Grateful for that and that I don’t hesitate to getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, I don’t hit the snooze, I just get the fuck up.

I  read somewhere once that snooze actually back fires on you and it’s better to just get up and go, of course I could just be making that up, but that’s what I do.

I get the fuck up.

I got dressed.

I put on my interview shoes.

I peeped the weather.

Fuck yes!

The rain cleared and I was able to take the cover off my scooter and ride it down to my interview today with my new supervisor.

Yes.

That’s correct, my new supervisor.

I have another.

Score!

Very, very, very happy about that.

It’s a small piece, but I piece I needed to address and I’m so grateful to have it taken care of

And actually.

Scratch that.

It is a big deal and it was more than just a small piece, I put in some work to find this person, co-ordinate my schedule with him, ask questions, collaborate with the practicum placement office and do my homework.

And I showed up.

On time.

Early.

I found motorcycle parking by the Ritual Coffee house in Hayes Valley and I had a full punch card from when I was nannying by the Ritual in the Mission, so I scored a free latte and happily traipsed over to the office on the corner of Fell and Gough.

I let myself in using the code and went up the stairs.

I paced around the waiting room, paid the bathroom an unnecessary visit, just in case, and practiced breathing.

Then.

I met him.

My new supervisor.

We went into his office and talked for an hour.

I told him a little bit about me, how I came into the program, what I was planning on doing with the degree, first my MFT (Marriage & Family Therapist) license, then eventually my PhD in Psychology.

I told him about having taken one class as an undergraduate and then what happened when I was at Burning Man, yes that is where I decided to go to grad school, and how that experience unfolded and led to me applying to CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies), how I balance my recovery with my work, and where I will be doing my practicum hours at.

We had talked for about a half hour when, and I’m not sure exactly when the shift happened, but it happened, and there I was saying, “well I hope that I will be working with you,” and then.

Then.

Then he looked at me, almost surprised, “oh absolutely, the slot is yours.”

Thank you God.

I opened up my binder and handed over my paperwork that I needed him to sign and yes.

He signed them.

Thank God.

And handed them back to me, I felt like I was handling precious metals and jewels so carefully and reverentially I put back those papers, 3/4s filled out, I just need my school advisor and the head of the department to sign off.

He’s one and the same for me, so that should be pretty easy.

Actually.

I should e-mail him too, set up a time to make sure that I had them to him, he signs, then I walk over to the practicum office and hand them off.

God damn it will feel so good to have this all sorted.

It basically is.

And I like my new supervisor quite a bit.

He happened to intern with my favorite professor, which was a serendipitous conversation, he’s psychodynamically inclined, also a hot modality for me, and he went through the same program that I am going through, so he has experience with the school.

Although he admitted he’d not worked with any interns that were getting their hours through the site I’m at.

And we talked about that.

And we talked about my schedule and we set our first date to do the work.

I will begin with him on Monday, April 24th.

I will meet with him once a week for three semesters while I am in school.

Every Monday morning at 9 a.m. for one summer semester, one fall semester, and one spring semester.

Three total semesters of practicum must be compete for me to graduate.

I will graduate from the program in May 20018.

And I’ll get to walk with that graduating class complete in my practicum.

A lot of folks don’t start their practicum until next fall semester, the majority of my cohort, from what I can tell will be starting then,  and they’ll be able to walk, but not graduate officially until after finishing the summer of 2018 practicum.

I will circumnavigate that and be free to walk as a graduate.

I am so down with that I can barely breathe.

I mean.

It’s a hell of a lot of work.

But.

As it was suggested to me today.

“Take a minute and appreciate what you accomplished today,” she admonished me over the phone, “don’t just jump into the next thing to be anxious about.”

Gah.

I know, right?

Because I was so ready to go there, but there is no there there.

I am allowed to enjoy this moment, this work has been, well, work, and I deserve to acknowledge to myself that I have been showing up to it and meeting it and matching it.

And I have a phone interview in the morning before work to secure a therapist.

Fingers crossed that will be taken care of tomorrow and then.

Shit.

I can go back to just “worrying” about my homework.

Bwhaahahaha.

Sigh.

I did that too, today, I did homework on my lunch break.

Maybe I take myself out to do something sweet this weekend, really take a moment to let myself enjoy what I have done over the last week and a half.

It’s been a lot and it is an accomplishment.

Yes.

There is more work to do.

But.

For right now.

Let me just.

Take.

A fucking.

Moment.

You did good today kid, you really did.

Seriously.

Who’s Going To Fold My Laundry?

I mean.

I got the work side of it covered.

Actually did laundry three times already this week at work.

Between swimming lessons, potty training, and boys just being boys, I have a lot of laundry to do.

But what about mine?

It’s just sitting there on the bed, looking at me like, “what you’re blogging, excuse me bitch, you have chores to do.”

My bib overalls spake the loudest.

I really should just haul ass into the shower is what I should do.

I was in the pool today with the family at UCSF Mission Bay and I can smell the chlorine on myself.

Which is actually a scent I quite enjoy.

It reminds me of swimming in high school, one of the few places I always felt safe and secure in.

I lucked into swimming.

I lucked into being on the team and I lucked for sure into lifeguarding.

That haven of chlorine and warm air was a balm to my soul, even if I did not have the words to put on it, I loved that pool, I loved the light that would come in through the windows and I loved that every once in a great while there was no one at open swim and all the guards could be found napping on plywood boxes that held kick boards and pull buoys.

I miss that.

One of the few things from high school that I miss.

Sometimes I see a post of a high school classmate on Facebook and it does make me wonder what my life would look like if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

I don’t know that I would have as many tattoos or that my hair would be multi-colored.

Of course last year when I visited my best friend and her skulk up in the Northern reaches of the state, she pointed out a number of colorful dye jobs–I was not the only one.

Dare say, however, that I was the only one in her 40s with purple and pink hair.

What would life look like if I had stayed in Wisconsin?

It is almost too much of a stretch for my mind to imagine.

I suspect I would be married and with child or children.

Career wise I have no clue.

Although, considering what I was doing when I left it would probably be in the hospitality, food service industry.

Would I be sober?

Also another thing I cannot quite imagine.

Although I believe, knowing what I know, that my disease would have progressed and found me drinking more and more.

I don’t have any doubt about that whatsoever.

I know folks who have gotten sober in Madison, in fact, someone I reached out to during a nadir or despair, but I was not quite there yet, that was to come about four months later, had told me about being sober and going to undergrad and how it was just his luck that his new good friend happened to be the floor manager at the Angelic Brewing Company.

Floor Manager.

I hated that title.

I was not the General Manager, never would be, but I always felt that Floor Manager just did not do justice to the work I put in there.  I am still amazed that I worked there for six years and did the things I did.

Although most of it is a haze of memories and the nights all blur together.

Not that I was black out drinking while I was working there, or doing drugs.

The only thing I did was an ecstasy pill one night after the bar closed in one of the last days of working there.

I was far too controlling and afraid of the repercussions of drinking and I wanted nothing to do with drugs.

I was in charge and God forbid I didn’t do the right thing.

I believe I held myself, and I still hold myself, to far higher standards than any one else was or does.

I realize, just now as I think about an ex and his wife and their two kids in Sun Prairie;  I would rather not continue thinking about what life would be like, if, when, or whatever.

The fact is life is pretty damn good now and I don’t have regrets about it.

Even the laundry sitting on my bed thinks I have done an astounding job of making it here in San Francisco.

I’ve never been forced to leave, and the only time I chose to move away was not to move back to Wisconsin, but to move to Paris.

Not Texas either.

France.

I was just thinking though, I miss my best friend and sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to live closer to her, to get to see her and her husband and the boys a little more often.

I received a voicemail from her the other day and I could hear how much she misses me and damn, don’t I miss her.

Christmas?

I know.

It’s May.

But as I gear up for the ensuing travels and then the start of graduate school I don’t know that it will be any sooner.

I, of course, much prefer Wisconsin in summer.

There’s blueberry picking, strawberry picking, running around in sundresses, warm nights (mosquitos and ticks, but who’s counting those), long walks along the water, and my friend.

Then I think, well, I do like Wisconsin in the winter too, it’s pretty, the snow, the Christmas lights, the stark trees outlined against the grey skies.

It’s a different kind of beauty and one that I know well from the many winters I spent there growing up from five to when I really left, 29.

Twenty four years of Wisconsin.

There are times when I ride through the Pan Handle on my bicycle and I will have a flash, the way the light is falling, the trees, the green of the grass, and it feels, just for a moment that I am on the North East side of Madtown, perhaps the edges of Maple Bluff, and if I was just to go left rather than right I would find myself riding my bicycle past Tenney Park instead of Golden Gate Park.

But it never does happen.

And I don’t want to go back.

There is no there there.

It is here.

Here, in San Francisco where I belong.

“I always worried about you when you said that you were going to find yourself in San Francisco,” my best friend told me.

I think she meant pulling a geographic was not going to solve the problems I was trying to solve.

She was right, I took my problems with me.

But I did find me here.

I found me in Burning Man, in the rooms, in the Mission District, on the long walks through the park, the meteor shower over Twin Peaks, I found me riding a bicycle (who the hell knew that I would be bicycling all this time? Certainly not I), I found me on the beach by the ocean, the sun wrapt in my hair on my face, the sand in my toes; I found me while being a nanny, who the hell was going to call that one?

And I’m going to fold my laundry.

Because I find me in that too.

The simple acts of self-care that I have been taught to do and enjoy.

The small things that I carry out to continue getting to live in the most amazing place in the country and continue to be the most amazing woman I can be.

It all happens right here.

In San Francisco.

Nowhere I would rather be.

Right here.

Right now.