Soothing Sounds

For this Sunday.

I have felt off kilter all weekend.

Could be that it was my first weekend “off” in some time and the need to get out there and do something was in fierce competition with the need to get the fuck caught up on my reading for class.

I did actually get out of the house today but it was not a success.

And.

It was a total success.

I met friends in Cole Valley and we went to Free Gold Watch and played Street Fighter and Addams Family pinball.

It was fantastic.

Then we walked to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

Which I shall now proceed to call Hardly Strictly douchebag.

I just can’t handle the crowds.

I want to.

But.

I can’t deal with the jostling, the open containers, the copious pot smoking.

I didn’t even make it into one of the proper stages having started to get freaked out by the closeness of the people and the fact that we didn’t really go at the festival with a strategic entry point and I had left my scooter parked at 7th and Irving.

By the time we had crossed Crossover Drive and were still a way to go I thought I was going to start hyperventilating.

It didn’t help that I had not navigated my timing with meeting up with my friends and lunch and there was a tiny bit of miscommunication and the next thing I know I’m miles away from my scooter, in a big crowd of people, hungry and anxious.

Yuck.

I got my friends to the festival and turned around and started walking back to my scooter.

I tried.

I really did.

I also tried to now beat myself up too much as I got on the phone and called my person and sobbed a little about being overwhelmed.

I have just been tender and I know a lot of it has to do with further changes with my job and negotiating that and feeling unbalanced.

I like structure and my job has become, well, weird.

I’m now helping out the other family twice a week and interviewing this week with a referral from the mom of my original family and it feels a little enmeshed and strange and I am frankly over it.

I just want a clear-cut job.

I also know that my boundaries around job stuff are pretty rigid, I think it gives me some sense of self-control and control over the situation and lends to a false feeling of security.

The change that is happening.

Is.

Well.

Happening.

I can’t actually change that, I can roll with it or get rolled over by it.

I can also get out of it.

And I’m aware that I need to broaden my perspective and see that what is happening, this change-up, is not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s in fact.

A good thing.

But it is change and I’m not always, like never, comfortable with that.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this line of thought, just got lost in the cello music I’ve got on –Yo Yo Ma playing Bach sonatas.

Soothing Sunday sounds.

Other soothing things today.

I made chicken soup.

I made a fresh bed with clean sheets.

Two loads of laundry washed, dried, folded, put away.

And despite my consternation in regards to going to the park for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, I did get a nice walk in the park, the sky was blue-the brief rain fell early in the afternoon and passed quickly–the sun was out, I saw two red tail hawks and loads of flowers.

When I got home I took my Family Therapy reading and sat on the back porch in the late afternoon sunlight and read for an hour until my friend called to let me know they were at Java Beach.

I went down and sat outside in the last waning minutes of golden sunset and talked about Paris with them and going to Decompression next Sunday.

Decompression is a lot of people too, but not 100s of thousands, more like 10-15,000 and the venue is comfortable to me and I know people there and I know where I can go to chill out and the space is also smaller.

Anyway.

I shouldn’t get overwhelmed with the crowds and I will see folks that I haven’t seen since the event.

It will be a nice way to wrap up the summer for me.

This week will be lots of work, work interview for more work, and a meeting with my school advisor that I was supposed to have this past Friday but had to reschedule after I dropped my phone in the toilet and had to get a new one Friday before work.

I will, fingers crossed, do a lot of reading.

I have a paper to write on Saturday.

Then Decompression with my friends.

I think that’s how it’s going to be, show up, work my ass off, meet up with friends at least once a week and do something, even if it’s small.

I don’t have to go see a huge festival to feel a part of, if anything I usually feel more isolated in a crowd than I do out of one.

I have felt unaccountably sad in spots this weekend and I’m not sure what to attribute that too, but I’m grateful as well for those feelings, ah feelings.

The good news is I get to have them.

The bad news is I get to have them.

At least I’m alive to feel.

And there is so much goodness in the small, sweet, simple acts of self-care that I have done that I’m ok with the sads, they happen, then the happy will happen and all the others in between too.

The sound of the cello soothes me and I soften towards this place, this being, this quietness of self that is fine just exactly how it is.

I don’t need to fix me.

Just accept me.

That’s all.

That’s it.

Pretty fucking simple when I look at it like that.

And.

Easy.

If I let it be.

Easy like Sunday morning.

 

And Then Some

Today was exactly how I thought it would be and also.

Easier.

Lighter.

Less fraught with anxiety than some Saturdays can be as I recognized early the need to make all the things happen.

RIGHT NOW!

I text a friend.

First day off in two weeks and must make it all happen.

This is my best thinking.

And I know, deeply, that it is skewed thinking.

Flawed thinking.

Thinking with nothing more to it than make miserable happen when there is no need to be miserable.

I slept in.

Not long.

But just a little.

Just enough.

I skipped yoga.

Yeah that.

I also got honest with my person about skipping yoga in a phone call check in this afternoon.

I won’t be skipping tomorrow, especially now that I have made myself accountable to someone else, someone who sees me with a much greater kind of perspective than I see myself.

I made myself a nice breakfast.

Thank you Jesus for persimmons, my sweet little fall indulgence, how I do love thee.

Homemade oatmeal with apple and persimmon, sea salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, unsweetened vanilla almond milk; a hard boiled organic egg with salt and pepper, two big mugs of coffee–Four Barrel pour over.

And.

I am ready for the day.

Plus a little quiet time.

A lot of writing.

I wrote five pages this morning with out batting an eye.

I didn’t realize I had all that much to say, but there it was, it just came tumbling out.

All the words.

The words that spell out anxiety and I’m not enough and there is definitely not enough time.

But.

There is.

There was time to go grocery shopping.

I was shocked actually at how not busy the SafeWay by Ocean Beach was.

I had suspected it would be a mob scene with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

But it was not.

I got in and out and I have to say, I felt really happy with myself when I was standing in line and putting the food on the conveyor belt.

Man.

I take damn good care of myself, my food looks awesome.

I continued that trend by coming home and trussing a chicken and then doing a salt and pepper rub and roasting it in the oven while I did a run up to Other Avenues.

My preferred place to shop, but quite pricey so mostly the little organic things I can’t get at Safeway and the bulk food stuff and some hippy candles I really like.

Then back to the house, brown rice in a pot, groceries put away and onto the spending plan tally for September and doing my plan for October.

October is going to be a chill month.

No buying tickets to Paris.

No more scooter issues please.

I spent two grand more than I normally do this past month.

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot in savings.

Upside.

I do have something in savings.

And I have employment and I’m ok.

Just nothing extravagant for October.

Meeting my basics and sticking some cash in savings.

By two p.m. I was sitting on my back porch eating salt and pepper roast chicken with tarragon butter and brown rice with a brussels sprouts, white corn, and brown mushroom hash.

The sun was warm.

The breeze was cool.

Banjo rifts and guitar licks drifted to me from the park and I relaxed enough to know I had done pretty much everything that I needed to do and now it was time to do the deal and sit down and get square with my text books.

I did hours of reading.

I’m not done.

There are hours and hours to go.

“You are going to get through this,” my friend who I hadn’t seen in months said to me last night outside Our Lady of Safeway as the recovery house boys smoked their cigarettes and crumpled their court cards into their pockets.

I leaned into his warm hug.

“And you are going to be good, and you are going to help so many people, you will get through this, it is not for always, one foot in front of the other kiddo,” he finished, gave me a warm hug and shambled off with one of his guys toward the Lower Haight.

Sometimes the dread of the day lays heavy on me.

The responsibility to get it all done and be good and be on the up and up and get it done and go, go, go, well, it can be tremendous.

Overwhelming.

And.

Self-defeating.

I stopped making judgements around 45 minutes into my reading.

I started to feel good for picking up the books and just making the effort to read.

I don’t have to comprehend it all right now.

But I do have to start somewhere.

And.

I need to get caught up on all my reading.

Not necessarily to fulfill paper requirements or to please anyone, but because this is what I’m doing, I’m getting my Masters in Psychology and this is part of the work.

I have to do it to get the degree and I need the degree to facilitate moving into the next phase of my development.

Development that takes time, slow time, golden time, drowsy with afternoon light and the hours that breach between two and four p.m. when the promise of the day begins to wane towards dusk.

I read.

I read a lot.

Is it enough?

No, my head whispers.

Yes.

My heart confirms.

Today you did enough.

You are enough.

It was enough.

And tomorrow.

Well.

That’s not here yet.

Let’s just stay here.

You and I.

Or.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

As long as it is with your hand in mine and the colors that bleed are not bleeding from my heart, but from the underpinnings of love that color the clouds and light my way forward.

This moment.

This now.

This everlasting love.

Yes.

That.

Always that.

Love.

Let us go there.

Together.

Friday

I finally made it.

Tomorrow is my first day off in two weeks.

It feels surreal and already gone, wasted, like I didn’t do enough.

Sigh.

Sometimes the days they are like that.

But.

I did do a lot today and though I didn’t make it far past the church on the corner across from Safeway, it was enough after work fellowship to feel like I was plugged back into the matrix.

It didn’t hurt that I got a new phone today too.

The rice thing didn’t work with my old phone, I didn’t actually think it would, my phone was submersed for too long in the water, but hey, I tried, and having a day off from my phone was not a bad thing.

Weird.

But weird is ok.

I think that’s how I feel right now.

Just a little bit weird.

Not a bad thing, but just a little turned around, a little unsure the lay of the land.

And probably just a little tired and needing to decompress from the work week, the school week, the stuff and things, the phone.

All of it.

I am super glad I did not buy a phone yesterday as well.

The difference in the place on Mission Street versus going to the Radio Shack in the Inner Sunset was night and day.

First difference was they had a similar model Iphone to the one I dipped into the toilet.

I had an Iphone 5C.

I was able to get an Iphone 5S.

And.

It had a big promotional, so I got it for half of what I would have paid at the store in the Mission which was pushing me to sign up for a lease to buy the Iphone 7.

No thank you.

I mean.

Sure.

If I had a lot of spending cash, but I don’t really need it and the cost seems to out weigh, and I mean out weigh by a lot,  my needs for it.

I’d rather go get my butt back to yoga class and sign up for another six months of studio time then lease a new Iphone 7.

Besides.

I just wanted to buy it out right and not have payments over my head.

So I was super grateful to find out that though I thought I was being flip when I told the man at the store, “I know you don’t carry five’s anymore, but I don’t need a seven…”

And he replied, “actually we have some 5S’s in stock and they’re on promo and you’ve got an upgrade.”

And he got me a great deal.

Half, actually more than half of what I was looking to pay.

And.

The second biggest difference in the two stores, this customer service guy went over my contract with a fine tooth comb and got rid of some superfluous things, got me unlimited talk and text and got me a plan that is $10 less a month than what I’ve been spending.

That was awesome.

Even when I realized I had no contacts in my phone once it was turned on.

Although I did have some texts and was able to get a few numbers programmed in.

Then.

Later today someone made a comment about “why didn’t I back up to the cloud” and I was like, all fuck you in my head, then, I remembered.

Fuck me!

I had.

And now, this is weird.

I did it two days ago.

Two.

The day before I dropped my phone in the toilet I backed it up to the cloud.

I have no idea why, it just occurred to me out of the blue and I did it while I was at work.

I mean.

I have had that phone for years and never once thought to back it up to the cloud.

Then the day before yesterday I decide to do it, its super simple, not sure why I hadn’t before, and when I remembered that I had in fact done the back up I went into my new phone connected to the cloud.

And voila!

All my contacts back.

Fuck yes.

That was super nice.

Also super nice was the realization that I was trying to go to fast again.

And going to fast yesterday was part of the problem with dropping my phone in the loo.

So.

I cancelled an appointment that I was scheduled to be at to do the phone thing and not feel pressed for time and remade it for next week at the same time.

I got a positive response, confirmed and then when the phone wrapped up easily and quickly and I was paid and out the door.

I thought, fuck it, I’m getting my nails done.

I had the time and I don’t want to be out riding around a lot tomorrow on my scooter.

The crazy is already happening.

Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass is going on and there are a lot of extra drivers and people in the city and I just want to keep a low profile.

There is the off-chance I might take the scooter over to a garage of a friend who has a part for a cosmetic fix on my scooter that I didn’t have my shop take care of.

But.

That’s not confirmed.

The only thing that I will definitely do is hit my 7 p.m. spot and I’m thinking about going to yoga in the morning and committing to that now that my brain doesn’t seem so on fire with life in general.

I also picked up my favorite new perfume from Tiger Lily today, Rose Flash, and had a nice time chatting up the ladies there who remembered me and were happy to help me out with the task of smelling really fucking good.

I smell delightful I tell ya.

Tomorrow I think I shall be chill.

And I will probably do some reading for school.

The towering stack of text books to my right is not going anywhere soon and I need to read them.

All of them.

And write some papers.

Although I may not this weekend.

I may just do as much reading as I can and let the papers go until next weekend.

Anyway.

Friday.

I made it.

Thank you God.

Sound of me sighing.

Good night.

Sleep tight.

Don’t let the bed bugs bite.

Those fuckers have big teeth.

heh.

What Day Is It?

Where am I?

I know it’s Friday, but it feels like the beginning of the week.

I am in my second weekend of graduate school and it just hit me.

I left feeling pretty elated though.

I got through the project with my partner, despite a few hiccups, there was horrible traffic on the Bay Bridge this morning, three accidents, and she was almost 40 minutes late to class.

Hell.

I thought I was going to be late.

And I had a friend driving me to school.

It’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and the morning Friday commute from out here in the Outer Sunset was fraught with extra idiots and delayed traffic.

Fortunately my friend is a consummate San Francisco driver and was able to navigate out of the traffic jam and back on the way with relative ease and no little cleverness.

I was thinking he might want to moonlight as a taxi cab driver, except that all my friends who are taxi cab drivers are trying to get out of the gig since it doesn’t pay very well.

I had the option this evening of taking MUNI home, but I really just wanted to get home and I called for a Uber and man, that ride home took as long or longer than if I had ridden my bicycle.

I was like.

What the fuck?

Oh.

It’s Friday.

It’s end of happy hour beginning of weekend, crazy drivers, crazy pedestrians, and a driver who is not from the city and it took me and the guy in the back seat, also a fellow student at my school, having to tell him twice to turn back around and how to get on Fell Street from Market.

Obnoxious.

I did feel for the kid though, he was just a kid when I got right down to it, I wanted to be mad, but the rash of acne on his face and the played out dance music on his generic radio Pandora station really gave it away.

Then I found out he didn’t even live in San Francisco and I almost said, “pull over, I’ll grab a cab at this point.”

I went from feeling fairly rejuvenated to pretty tired by the end of the trip.

That’s ok.

It’s ok that it’s Friday and I will be in bed soon.

I have to be up at 6 a.m. to get ready for class.

Fortunately I am done with the Human Development chapter outline and I am completely caught up on two of my other classes reading.

I do have some reading to get completely caught up, but it’s not enough to panic over and it’s not enough to sit down and do it right now this evening, I’m too pooped.

When I got home I parlayed what last energy I had into taking a hot shower.

My God.

That was just divine.

I could have crawled right into bed.

But.

Habits.

They die-hard.

And.

I knew I would not be able to completely unwind without writing my blog and letting the day fall out of my head.

A great deal of this blog is just processing the day and writing down my experiences and how I get through them, or avoid them, as the case may be at times, but mostly, how I walk through the day and what I see and feel and how that affects me.

Or.

Rather.

How I let those things affect me.

The lie is that he/she affects me.

They affect me when I allow them to.

And.

My cohort affects me.

I really adore the hell out of some of them.

Love really.

I like most of the cohort, and that in and of itself is an amazing thing.

There are a few I’m not great big old fans of, some that have styles different from mine and a few odd ducks that rub me the wrong way, but no one I find horrid and offensive.

And that is miraculous.

But.

I do tend toward a certain few.

And I realized how much I enjoy them and spending time with them and it’s not just about the classes, although of course so much of it is about the class work, it’s about the human connection I have made with them.

One of my classmates made it a point tonight to express how much we need to hang out outside of class and I am so down with that.

Although I tell myself I don’t have the time, I can make a little time here or there for her.

Plus, she lives in town.

There’s another lady I really want to hang out with as well, although I am not certain how we are going to make it work since she lives in Nevada, the hanging out will have to be on school weekends and it’s challenging for me.

But.

Again.

Worth making the effort.

It is rare when I find people who I connect with well.

I know.

I know.

“You have so many friends on Facebook!”

Yeah.

I know.

How many of those friends called me today?

Or texted.

Or said hey, let’s hang out.

Or.

How’s grad school treating you?

What’s new with work?

Dating anyone?

Granted, I’m not giving all my friends a fair shake, they know how fucking crazy ass busy I am.

They are busy too.

It’s the human connection though, I crave it, I want friends, I want to be open and vulnerable and intimate.

No I don’t.

But it sounds nice.

No.

Really.

I do want intimacy.

I do want to be seen.

Even when it’s not the pretty stuff, even when I’m sad or mad or ashamed or upset.

I want you to see me.

Human.

Messy.

Alive.

That’s the gift.

I’m so alive to the moment and yes, tired, but still awake and loving my life and yes it’s busy and I don’t always know which end is up, but I do know I am present for it, I do know I am showing up for it.

And I do know.

How very grateful I am for my friends.

So much love.

Yes.

I mean.

For you.

Just Got The Message

My new mattress arrives tomorrow!

Last night on this cruddy one I have had for the last two years.

I am not complaining, it’s done it’s job and I have slept on worse.

The fold out futon shenanigans that I slept on in Paris for six months was by far the worst thing I have slept on.

Well.

Not true!

I just realized.

I have slept on worse, and really, when I compare and contrast, even on a shitty mattress, it was a shitty mattress in Paris.

I had a friend once who said it didn’t matter how bad things were, if you just tacked on the end of the sentence, “in Paris.”

I was caught in a sudden rainstorm, “in Paris.”

I got lost, “in Paris.”

I overslept, “in Paris.”

I have to do my laundry, “in Paris.”

So.

Yeah.

That futon mattress, in Paris, sucked, but it was in Paris.

I have slept on far worse in Homestead, Florida.

Yes.

There.

On a piece of cardboard box that was slid underneath the thin tent floor of the two-man tent I was sharing with a friend, the cardboard scant protection from the sharp coral rock that our tent was set up on.

Even with the cardboard and a sleeping bag, I could still feel that rock underneath my back.

Imagine, I am imagining now, that for months I slept on cardboard boxes.

I have slept on plywood set up on top of milk crates.

I have slept in cars.

I have slept in the back of Grey Hound buses.

I have slept, on the ground.

I have slept on other people’s lumpy couches.

I have slept on the thin, worn out cushions in my ex-brother in-laws fathers’ camper truck bed.

That sucked.

I have slept in far worse places and on many a baggy couch with broken springs.

I have slept in dangerous neighborhoods were gunshots woke me up in the middle of the night.

I have slept on beaches.

I have slept in the woods, “camping” aka “homeless” in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I have slept in the moldering basement of a duplex on a mattress on the floor.

I have slept cramped against my sister’s small body on a mattress on a floor.

I have slept in the bottom well of an old beater Dodge with a thin pillow braced against the door.

I have slept in far worse places on far worse beds, some which really had no right to be called a bed at all.

I am so grateful.

I have so much.

Do you see how much I have?

I have a full plate.

I have a job.

I have a bicycle.

I have this laptop.

I have graduate school.

(I have a lot to still read, but I’m getting caught up!)

I have stories.

(“Writers would kill to have some of the life material you have, Carmen,” Alan Kauffman said to me with an incredulous shake of his head, “you have had so many experiences!”)

I have love.

My God.

Do I have love.

I found myself pulled up 18th street tonight after work, my feet just knew the way and despite my brain saying, “go home, go read, go study,” I knew that I needed to be somewhere else tonight before I could do just that, go home, go read, go study.

And I found myself at Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro.

And I found myself at home.

I shared my piece.

I don’t remember what I said.

I got my God on.

I got on my bicycle and I got on the way back to the Outer Sunset.

And mysterious coincidence?

Is it odd?

Or.

Is it God?

I ran into a very dear, most welcome, super amazing and loving person on my way home.

“That’s H____________!”

I almost shouted his name.

I could see he was working with someone.

I almost kept riding.

But when you see your person, or I should say, when I see my person, I had to stop, flip a bitch on my whip, and pedal back to where he was sitting with one of my mates.

Oh.

Was it good to see him!

I got the best damn hug.

From him and from my contemporary and we just had us a great big love fest right there on the corner of Sanchez and Noe.

Thank you God for always knowing when I need to see my people.

We made plans to see each other soon and I got a brief, intense, full of love check in.

Then.

Merrily on my way.

Through the autumn turning Pan Handle, through the quiet dark of the park lit only with speculative sodium lamps and the bright white flare of tents being erected in the meadows.

There must be a concert happening this weekend.

I am out of touch.

I have been so busy in my own little world of school and work that I am not paying a lot of attention to other things.

Outside Lands has already happened, so it must be Hardly, Strictly, Bluegrass.

Translation.

Hardly, strictly, ain’t gonna be anywhere near it.

I’ll be in school this weekend.

I made good for the family already, getting them prepped by making not one but two homemade chicken pot pies for them–one to freeze and one to eat Friday when I am not there to make dinner.  Plus I made ginger chicken with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic, onions, and water chestnuts to wrap up in lettuce for dinner this evening.

I’ll do more prep for them too.

And.

A little for me too.

Although, I am pretty set as far as groceries go since my dear friend helped me out with the pick up and lift back to my place last weekend from SafeWay when I was having my near panic attack.

I do have to do a little more reading.

(A lot, but who’s counting)

But I’m kicking through it.

Every morning before I leave for work I have been reading.

Every evening when I get home I have been reading.

Add to that I have managed, don’t ask me how, to continue with my morning writing routine and my evening blog.

I don’t have to know how it works.

I just know that it does.

And it’s going to work even better.

Even sooner.

I’ll be sleeping on a brand new bed as of tomorrow night.

My life.

It rocks.

And it’s not because I’m sleeping on any.

Rocks that is.

I Am, Uh, Good?

Good.

Period.

Not question mark.

Too funny.

I just got off the phone and finished a good check in with one of my people and there was no drama to report, no anxiety, no fear of finance, or work, or food, or sex, or jesus, who the hell is this person?

We ended up talking about different styles of yoga.

I told her I was thinking of taking some yoga and I got the thumbs up.

Certain things I really need to run past others, I can get on the self-improvement kick real quick instead of the self-acceptance thing, and especially around exercise or body stuff, I need to run it past someone else.

And yes, the green light.

Tomorrow I will go to the yoga place and check it out.

I am meeting someone at Trouble Coffee at noon to do some reading and talk some life experience, and strength, and you know, stuff.

Then I figure after an hour of that I will be ready to walk into the yoga studio and say, sign me up.

I have tomorrow off.

I have a speaking engagement in the evening and there is the outside possibility that the Mister may have some time.

The message I received was, maybe Thursday, maybe Saturday.

Maybe I need to date someone else, or make it known to him that I want to date someone who I get to see more than every other week, maybe.

I like him.

I do.

But man, I am 40.

I ain’t saying let’s get married and pop out some kids, but I am saying, jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick, please, some more time together, and some like intimacy.

Like.

I am a dirty girl.

I want to get laid.

But I dont’ want to get laid out of a relationship, Burning Man’s over, ahem.

That being said, my friend on Sunday said something quite pithy about it and it’s been rattling around in my head for the whole three days since we sat down to tea.

Powerful, successful, busy people make time for people they are interested in.

I think he’s just not that into me.

If he were I would be getting some more attention.

I think.

I started scrolling through OkStupid a little again.

I got a few hits, some from guys I actually went on dates with years ago.

But, dude, I’m sorry, there was no chemistry the last time we went on a date, why would there be now?

Thanks.

But no thanks.

So, that’s the only thing I have any concern about?

Life, yeah, is good.

Work has been lovely.

The boys have been just peaches and the days at the park have been so lovely.

Today we went to Kids Kingdom in the Panhandle and there were musicians playing on the benches by the basketball court and not your usual buskers that hang out around the Haight trying to make spare scratch for a hot meal and a pack of cigarettes, an eighth and a bottle of rot gut.

Nope.

I think, I mean, maybe they weren’t but, they were musicians in town for Hardly Strictly Blue Grass, which is this weekend, they were so good.

I have never heard someone play banjo the way this man was.

It blew my hair back.

It was the perfect soundtrack to hang out in the park.

Sunny Indian Summer in the PanHandle.

Lead the Way

I let my older charge out of the stroller and walked behind him as he toddled toward the play area, enjoying the music, the sun, the dappling shadows on the grass.

The baby was in the Snugli happily chewing on my sweatshirt drawstring, teething he is, and I felt just a sense of everything being exactly how it is supposed to be.

The entire day.

The entire eveing.

Everything.

Even the Mister.

You know, there’s nothing wrong with anything that is happening.

I am getting to learn what I need to learn and I am absurdly grateful for that.

I also made some phone calls today.

Leaving messages with most, but finally getting back to some of the messages that have accrued over the last few days.

One of which was a message from someone I used to work with a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Wisconsin.

His father had passed a few weeks back and he discovered a load of photographs from the time we worked together, some of which his parents were in.

I remember them well, sweet, and supportive of their son and his, strange decision to move to San Francisco.

Anyone moving to San Francisco from Wisconsin has to be strange you know.

Why would you leave?

He and I caught up and made tentative plans to have coffee next weekend.

I haven’t sat and had coffee with him in over 8 years.

That is a long time to not see someone who was a huge part of my life when I first moved to San Francisco.

I paved the way for him into a job at the Angelic Brewing Company.

He introduced me to San Francisco’s Mission District.

Vouching for me to my first room mates at 805 York Street.

He was at my first Thanksgiving that I cooked in San Francisco.

A meal that was supposed to be him and two other old co-workers from the Angelic and ended up becoming this epic dinner of 13 orphans.

I have so many fond memories of him.

And some fear too.

I acted badly toward then end of the time I was friends with him and for a long time it was suggested that I not reach out, that my motives may have not been the best.

Sometimes when you are a certain age you play hard and then you grow up.

I just played hard and ran away.

I ran away to the place I needed to be, but I abandoned a lot of friendships along the way.

It was nice to hear his voice and know that the fear is silly and that he probably has no judgements about me.

I am usually the only one really judging me anyhow.

But as of the last few hours, well, I haven’t got a thing to judge.

Oh, I am certain I’ll shake something up.

But right now?

I am just fine.

I am good.

I am perfect.

I always have been.

I just haven’t always allowed myself to see it.

Perfectly flawed.

Perfectly, deliciously, human.

Perfect me.