Thanksgiving

Is just a few hours a way and I keep forgetting its Thanksgiving.

It’s a holiday so all about the food.

And.

Well.

I’m not really in that place anymore.

For me Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what I’m thankful for.

I have so, so, so much.

Love.

A home.

A bed.

A closet full of clothes.

I have food in the refrigerator.

I have a laptop.

An Iphone.

Recovery.

Sobriety.

Abstinence.

Shit.

I have THREE vehicles.

I ran into a neighborhood friend out walking his dog this afternoon as I was headed into a job in the Mission and he saw me getting on my scooter, “not taking the car?!”

And I told him that since I was going to the Mission for a five-hour job and it’s only two-hour parking it was easier and cheaper to ride my scooter.

Five hours of metered parking for a scooter in the Mission is $1.55.

I don’t know what five hours of parking at a meter in the Mission would be, but I know it’s triple if not quadruple that.

Fuck.

Probably more.

“Nice to have choices!”  My neighbor said and strolled off with his dog and a “happy holiday!” over his shoulder.

Damn.

He’s right.

It is nice to have choices.

I used to not have any choice but my feet.

I was so broke for so long, especially in the early part of my recovery, even taking a bus sometimes was out of the question.

It took me a long time to get financially stable.

A fucking real long time.

It feels surreal to know that I have a car on the street, add that to the list of things to be thankful for, I own a fucking car.

I really never expected that to happen this early into my therapy career path, I figured it was in the hazy future, not like, this past Monday!

I have choices.

I have a bicycle.

I have a scooter.

I repeat, but, it still is amazing to me.

That.

I have a car!

Wow.

Yeah.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

I have a job.

I am in graduate school.

I have wonderful friends.

I have better relationships with my family than I have ever had.

I have perspective.

I have faith for the future and a deep abiding belief that I am being taken care of.

I don’t have great big plans for the holiday.

Like I said, the food part paled for me many, many, many years ago.

Tomorrow I will be with my person and some other friends in the Upper Castro/Twin Peaks area, I think I still am waiting on the address and details, for “pizza and Netflix.”

I obviously won’t be eating the pizza.

But I will be enjoying the company, that is a given.

And that’s all I really need to do.

I will sleep in and rise without an alarm.

No yoga at the studio.

I got a good work out today and frankly my body could use a rest.

Not sure how, but I once again sprained my fucking right ankle.

I am currently icing it.

Same ankle that I sprained right before I left for Paris in May.

Not as bad as that sprain, but still it’s gotten tight and swollen, so I took some ibuprofen and I have it elevated and I’ve got a bag of frozen peas on it.

I’m sure it will be fine after a couple of days of chilling out.

God’s way of saying, slow down.

I’ll do homework.

I might even knock out a bit tomorrow, depending.

Then Friday I’ve got the massage in Pacific Heights and I’ll do a tiny bit of Christmas shopping.

I’m not really a Black Friday kind of gal, but there are a couple of stores on Fillmore Street that I want to pop into, mainly Nest, I got a very sweet Christmas ornament there last year.

And the rest of Friday and I suspect all day Saturday, will be homework.

I’ll finish up a CBT assignment, do all of my Child an Elder Abuse homework assignments and finish up the readings for my other classes.

If there’s motivation to do so Sunday, I may write a paper, or work on my final project presentation for my Transpersonal Psychology class.

All the things.

They will get done.

The big push towards the end of the semester.

One more weekend of classes!

Whatever I don’t get done this weekend will be attended to next weekend, then, yes, one more weekend of class!

Very excited for that.

And I’m going to call it a night.

My ankle feels pretty numbed out.

Time for some tea and some rest.

Happy Thanksgiving!

May it bring you many blessings.

And.

Much.

Much joy.

 

Packed!

I’m ready for Burning Man.

All I have to do is get through the week.

And what a week it’s going to be.

Oof.

I have supervision tomorrow morning in Hayes Valley.

Then work, nannying, up in Glen Park.

I might, depending on what is going on with my supervisor and some paperwork, have to spin by my school and drop off a practicum trainee review.

I have seen the review and tomorrow we will be discussing it.

I’m not super excited to tell you the truth.

It wasn’t as great a review as my other supervisor, but then again, this supervisor is tough and smart and I doubt he gives very high marks to anyone he supervises.

I did good.

Don’t get me wrong.

Although I didn’t like his additional comments about how my schedule, school full-time, working full time, the practicum hours at the internship, how I’m working six days a week and have to be careful to not get overloaded and to take time to recharge.

Sigh.

I did a lot of recharging today.

And.

I also did a lot of work.

Laundry, cooking–made a pot roast (god damn was that a great supper, I marinated it over night in olive oil, garlic, sea salt, black pepper, adobo, thyme; then roasted it super slow and low for almost three and a half hours, I also soaked it down with homemade chicken stock to keep it moist while it was cooking and surrounded it by baby potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and turnips.  I ate a nice juicy slice of it for dinner over some brown rice and put a pat of butter on it and some salt, because salt, and my fucking god, heaven), went to yoga, cleaned my house, and yeah.

Packed for Burning Man.

Four large bins, one medium bin, got my cooler ready to load up, but I won’t load it until the day I head out, which is next Sunday.

I’ll be keeping everything in the freezer until the very last moment.

My four man tent, a folding chair, and my parasol.

Ta da!

I’m pretty good at the packing for the desert trip, it’s just a matter of getting my bins sorted and having laundry done.

It used to be that my wardrobe was pretty small and basically I was wearing whatever I owned out on the playa.

A little time and a little bit of purchases here and there and I have slowly acquired a playa set of clothes, although a good bit of my wardrobe still does hop into a bin, it’s not my entire closet.

And there are some things that I absolutely won’t wear out there, which is relatively new in the last couple of years, I would just dump everything I had in my bins and empty my closet.

I do need to get a pair of sunglasses, some good aviators, I couldn’t find my sunglasses and then I realized, oh yeah, stupid, paid way too much for a set of Oliver Peeples prescription sunglasses and lost them at school last semester.

Ugh.

So.

Yeah, that’s about all I have to purchase for the trip, that and the things that will wait until I get out-of-town, like ice and water, that I’ll pick up in Reno at the 24 hour SafeWay.

My ride is coming to pick me up at 1 p.m. next Sunday.

The drive takes about 8-9 hours.

I figure we’ll land on playa around midnight–the stop in Reno and any other pit stops or gassing up that needs to be done.

My ticket and the vehicle pass are at Will Call.

I was gifted a low-income ticket from the organization, it’s still $198 and the vehicle pass is $80, but it’s cheaper than the regular ticket, and I got a ticket, there’s always so many people who can’t seem to get a ticket since the event started selling out years ago.

I remember very well the first time that happened, I was nannying for the head of Media Mecca and there was a great kind of awed hush that came over her when the announcement was made over the radio channel.

It was astounding to think they sold out.

Used to be you could just buy a ticket when you got there.

You could buy a ticket at Rainbow Grocery for fucks sake.

Now it’s a big deal, it’s a lotto, they’re more expensive, they are much harder to get.

But.

Well, I keep getting lucky, I keep getting to go.

I get to keep wearing big flowers in my hair and pretty dresses and my cowboy boots and crinolines.

I don’t show much skin out there per se, sure, my bra top will show, but I always wear a bra, I’m not a run around the desert naked kind of gal.

I like a tan, but not that much.

No.

I wear gingham dresses and crinolines, or fun tights and frilly panties and loose cotton tops.

At night I wear leggings and jean shorts, and layers, I have a cheetah print jacket with a pink silk lining that I only wear at Burning Man.

I have my goggles.

And I have my box of makeup.

Really.

What I like to do is wear lots of geegaws up in my hair and put on pretty makeup.

Throw in a crinoline and my cowboy boots and that’s it.

Oh, yeah, and a few bandanas, always, one around my wrist and sometimes one around my the top of my boot, it’s nice to have a spare for the dust that kicks up.

And like that.

My day is just about done.

I need to get the last of the laundry out of the dryer and wrap up a few loose ends here at the house.

Then my full week, supervision, work, clients, therapy, and let me not forget my first weekend of classes.

Whew.

It’s going to be busy.

But good.

I know my week will be very good and I will have my moments, my quiet, sweet moments in my little home by the sea to ponder how good I have it and how much I am loved.

Luckiest girl in the world.

And packed for Burning Man!

Fuck yeah.

God Damn

That hurt.

I think I broke my toe.

I am not fucking pleased.

I was really hoping it would feel better and when I took off my sock.

Gah.

It don’t look good.

It’s swollen, blackish purple blue.

Grr.

I can walk on it, in fact, I walked on it all day, but it hurts in a few spots that don’t feel right.

I can flex the toe and I gently checked it out, but yeah, I think I may have fractured it.

I’ll be calling the advice nurse in the morning.

On my way to therapy.

Sigh.

I really don’t want to deal with this right now.

I suspect that there is little to nothing that can be done.

Take some ibuprofen and elevate it, I’ve currently got it up and I’ve a bag of frozen corn on my foot.

Damn it foot.

This is the foot I always hurt.

The one with the bad ankle.

The one that I broke before when I was a kid.

In fact.

One of the very same toes.

I broke three toes and part of the bones in my foot the summer between second and third grade.

I jumped off a piece of playground equipment, missed the pole I was leaping for and smashed down, bare foot, onto a cement anchor.

I don’t remember the pain, thank god really, I just know it was bad and it was a while before it was properly taken care of, I was probably in shock for a while, my babysitter kept insisting that I had just twisted an ankle.

Of course.

When my mom came to pick me up she took one look at my foot, went sheet white and scooped me up off the baby sitter’s couch and walked me over to the emergency care clinic across the street.

It was touch and go.

They had to reset my toes and inject pain killers into each one, I got at least three shots that I can remember, the needles so long and spooky, to this day I do not like getting shots.

Tattoos, no problem, though, truth be told, I don’t watch myself getting a tattoo, I’m just not that into it.

You know what.

Fuck trying to figure this out.

Time to make a phone call.

And now.

I’m on hold.

I figured I might as well call the advice nurse at Kaiser now instead of googling what a broken toe looks like and how to deal with it, because that’s what I did first and all I did was freak myself out.

I just checked it again and it does feel tender, and it’s definitely bruised and swollen, but it’s not obviously broken.

Maybe a fracture.

Maybe my imagination.

It just is something I do want to address.

I need to be on my feet and I need to take care of myself.

I don’t want to ignore it and it get worse.

I am hoping that the nurse says keep ice on it, elevate it, and keep an eye on it.

And miraculously the swelling will go away and I’ll be fine.

I checked a few decent sources on the web and I’m getting about all the same thing, ice, elevation, ibuprofen, and watch for swelling, bruising, and discoloration and if it doesn’t go away after a few days then maybe a trip to the doctor.

I mean.

It can’t be that fucking bad, I worked all day on it.

Granted I was aware of it on occasion.

And.

The oldest boy can be rambunctious with me and has a tendency to hop on my feet or steps on my toes.

I pulled him aside at the cafe and told him I really needed him to be careful around my feet today.

It wasn’t until we got back to the house in the late afternoon that I actually looked at it.

Yeesh.

That’s not pretty.

I also showed my charge who was super sympathetic and sweet with me and shared how he had bruised his knee badly on a recent field trip with school and how it hurt to walk and he patted my foot.

It was adorable.

I will say I was a bit surprised to see the amount of bruising.

Since, as I mentioned, I worked on it all day.

It’s not the big toe, which is good, I do know if it was the big toe I would have taken myself in to the urgent care.

It’s the one next to the baby toe.

It wasn’t something glamorous or fun, like when I was a kid and smashed my toe, it was a rousing game of tag and I was fleeing a pursuer.

Nope.

I just banged the damn thing on the foot of my bed while I was changing my sheets.

I’ve banged it before in the same spot, it’s a small area, my space is, well-appointed and everything just where it should be, but a tiny bit tight.

I recall clapping my hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

So.

Let’s just say I hit it much harder than I have in the past.

And this is definitely the first time that I have ever seen a bruise on my toe from stubbing it.

I really do not want to be dealing with this.

“All advice nurses are still assisting other members, please stay on the line.”

Yeah, yeah.

Hurry up.

Thy will not my will be done.

Note to self.

Nothing horrible is happening.

I can walk.

This is nowhere near the extraordinary bad sprain I suffered a few years ago.

It’s just a bit of a nuisance, really.

Small things can unloose me, but I think I’m going to be ok.

I’ll chat up the nurse, keep telling myself it’s fine and.

Nurse!

Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

I don’t have to go in.

It’s not the big toe, and I didn’t break skin, and there’s not much to do unless it was an obvious break.

It was suggested I take it easy, not be on my feet too much (bwahahahahaha), ice and ibuprofen and if the swelling gets worse or the bruising spreads call back, but she didn’t think it was going to be necessary.

Thank God.

I’m not a hypochondriac, but I also tend to down play when I am sick or hurt and muster through.

Grateful I called and I can now say I did, I didn’t just rely on the interwebs to diagnose myself and I’m ok.

I really am.

Just a tiny bit slowed down.

Which in the end is not a bad thing at all.

Nope.

In fact.

It’s just what the doctor ordered.

Pun fucking intended.

Ha.