Too Tired

To vacation.

I mean.

To book a vacation.

I just tried and frankly it’s just not happening.

I have been thinking about going to Hawaii in July and staying in Paia, Maui where my grandmother was born in 1928.

I looked at flights.

I looked at Air BnB.

Nothing was appealing.

Nothing made me excited.

Granted I’m pretty worn out from today.

Today was my first real full day back to work and back with clients.

I’m tired.

My body is sore.

I thought about going out and doing the deal up in Bernal after I saw my last client, but I felt rather kaput and just drove home.

I did a phone check in and decided I wanted to walk down to the beach for the sunset.

Which was not spectacular, but it was pretty in its own way.

I thought about the conversation I had with my boss about this upcoming summer.

The family bought their tickets for their summer travel and they will be gone for six weeks!

Six weeks!

I am going to have six weeks of paid vacation from June 24th through August 4th.

I am thrilled.

Even though I am so fucking tired it’s hard to be excited right now.

I sort of just want to make tea and call it a night.

But I also thought maybe I should look at flights and places to stay and honestly it just wasn’t at all thrilling

I need to sleep on it and not pressure myself into buying anything yet.

I am not sure why exactly I’m hesitating, but I am and I’m just going to honor that.

It doesn’t feel quite right to book a trip right now and i don’t know why, but it doesn’t feel good.

Of course, I also note to myself that it was hella easy to book for Paris and I basically leapt on the deal I found.

Which was only $7 more than the round trip tickets I was looking at for Hawaii.

Granted, I got one hell of a steal on the tickets to Paris, but something about them being the same price basically and I just sort of balked.

Maybe I don’t want to go to Hawaii?

Will I be bored with ten days of lying around on the beach?

I mean.

I don’t know.

I’m just going to chalk it up to I’m tired, I shouldn’t decide anything when I am tired.

Call it a night.

Make some tea.

Rest some more.

The days off have melted away and I’m not fully 100% but life is back to being 100% on.

So I think I will not beat myself up about feeling indecisive about booking a trip and just chill out tonight.

I don’t need to figure out anything right now.

Not a damn thing.

Nope.

But hey.

I am going to have six weeks off.

Got any suggestions?

There is So Much

To write about.

And where to begin?

I almost titled this blog, One Hour, as an homage to something quite big.

I also thought about naming it, “Are you Here?” as I suspect my ex is back in town.

At least it feels that way.

More about that later.

Then I thought I should write about my awesome and amazing Mike Doughty experience and having gotten to see him on Wednesday of this week and how I played hooky from clients and went out on a school night.

I didn’t really play hooky, I just rescheduled them for later in the week, I had one tonight and I’ll see the other tomorrow after my regular Saturday clients.

Then I thought, oh yeah, I should call this, “Vive La France!”

As I bought a ticket to Paris last night!

Yeah.

So.

All the things.

All of them.

So much going on.

Plus, of course, the school thing that is happening and how I managed to get all my papers done and turned in on time and also how I got back some really amazing comments on my last couple of papers.

“Clarity, erudition, adept usage of third person, meticulous APA style,” I could go on, but then I think that’s just ego.

I”m right on schedule with school at the moment and extremely happy about that, despite feeling a little disconnected from school since I did not get much time this week at work to do homework.

The family had the flu.

Like seriously bad, fevers, aches, chills, super bad sore throat, coughing.

I do not know how I escaped, but I did.

I also got my flu shot this year so that might have helped and as soon as the family was diagnosed with the flu at the doctors they called me and said call my doctor and get Tamiflu, which is a preventative medicine that will work if taken within 72 hours of exposure.

So I’ve been taking that all week and seemed to have skated by the flu.

Thank fucking God.

I cannot afford to be sick.

And.

I don’t like being sick.

Even the small part of me that rather enjoys lying around all day in bed.

The rest of me drives itself crazy when I’m sick.

So I’m super happy I avoided it.

But man, work was a tough one this week.

Which made it easy to ask off for time to work with a client.

Yes.

It’s official.

This week I got my tenth client.

I took a leap of faith when the person reached out and offered expanded hours beyond what I have available.

Meaning.

Wednesdays I work from 9 a.m. to 5p.m. then see clients at 5:30p.m., 6:30p.m. and 7:30p.m.

I offered the client a 4:30p.m. slot.

Technically I’m working as a nanny, but I’ve been in conversation for months now that at some point I would slowly begin the transitioning down of nanny hours for therapy hours.

I hesitated for just a brief moment but knew, really knew, that I had to offer hours that would overlap into my nanny shifts.

And the client took the Wednesday slot.

Which means I have to be done at the nanny gig by 4p.m. now on Wednesdays.

One hour less of being a nanny.

One hour more of being a therapist.

Plus.

This new client found me on Psychology Today and was not a referral from my agency, meaning the client is full fee.

Yippee!

The more full fee clients I get the faster I will transition out of nannying.

I mean, I love the family, but $30/hour versus $140 an hour.

Well.

I know what works better for me.

Anyway.

That’s therapy business.

Then there’s Paris business which in a way segues into ex-boyfriend business.

Yesterday at work I was checking e-mails in a brief moment of time when I wasn’t picking up used Kleenex, hydrating some small child, washing dishes, drawing, cuddling, or making hot tea with honey and saw an interesting email from a friend.

It was an e-mail that he forwarded that there was a one day sale happening for round trip tickets to Paris.

Oooh.

I wasn’t planning on going to Paris this year, I’ve been planning on going to Hawaii in July,(but still haven’t done anything about it as I’m waiting on my employers to let me know when they’re going to be in Finland and if, probably not, but if they are also planning on taking me to Helsinki with them)  going to Maui and staying in Paia, where my grandmother was born in 1928.

But.

I was curious about the flights and a little bug got in my ear and so I searched and shit, the price was too good to pass by.

So I picked the best time for me to go, end of the fall semester, in December.

Yes.

That’s right.

I’ll be in Paris on my birthday and for Christmas.

I fly out of SFO on December 17th, landing the next day at Charles de Gaulle on December 18th, my birthday, in the early afternoon.  I’ll fly back on December 27th.

So I’ll be there from my birthday through Christmas.

I will sit in cafes, go to museums (the Louvre, the D’Orsay, the Jeu de Paume, the Pompidou–which is open on Christmas, I know where I will be, wandering the galleries there for sure on Christmas day, the Orangerie, the Palais de Tokyo, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, the Musee de l’Art Moderne), walk everywhere, read books, go do the deal with the Paris fellowship, hang out with my best girlfriend from my Masters degree cohort…we’ve already made plans to go to the ballet (I messaged her right after I bought the ticket).

I got the ticket from Air France round trip, direct flights there and back for $579.32!

I still can’t believe that!

My girlfriend asked me why December after exclaiming at the cost of the ticket.

I told her that my birthday and Christmas have been really tied up with my ex the last two years and maybe its better for me to be in Paris then in San Francisco and really just do something for myself.

I always wanted him to come to Paris with me and I had even brought it up in the days before we broke up that I wanted to plan a trip with him there.

It is such a screamingly romantic city.

And he’s such a foodie, he would have loved it.

I’m still sad we didn’t get to experience that together.

She understood.

Plus, I told her that it makes sense with my school schedule and it’s the slowest time of year for therapy clients….the last two holiday seasons were really slow and I hear that it’s that way for most therapist.

So.

Yeah.

Booked that ticket.

I don’t think I’ll stay with my girlfriend, despite knowing she’d let me, I think I want a little more autonomy and she’s got young twins, who are super sweet and adorable, but the house isn’t huge and as much as I loved staying with them, I don’t want to stress them out at Christmas.

I figure I’ll Air BnB in the Marais where they live, it’s super central and I know it well enough, and just be an independent lady at Christmas time in the City of Lights.

God.

There’s more to say.

The feeling of my ex being in town, and wanting him to reach out or to somehow bump into him, it’s big, but I’ve not got time to write more.

I need to get up early, lots of clients tomorrow.

So.

I bid you adieu and I’ll see you on the flip.

 

All Showered Up

And ready for Daylight Savings!

Not fucking really.

Not really excited to be losing an hour of sleep on the last day of my three day weekend of school.

It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow, I won’t even notice the difference, it’ll still be gray.

That being said, I am sure that by Monday the extra hour of daylight will be lovely.

Just contemplating the loss of the hour is not fun.

Oh well.

Class, again, went well today.

I am feeling the material and understanding it and doing well and I got to say thank you and good bye to the woman I was the therapist for in the last six sessions of class.

It is a powerful thing to do this work and again, a powerful thing to be told that I am doing well.

I sure hope so.

It did feel like I got a lot out of the work and also that my client did as well.

We lost one of our cohort today.

That was sad.

And yet, despite the confirmation for the student that the program was not a good fit, it confirmed, again, for me, that I am on the right track.

I am not always on the right track anywhere else.

Or at least that I can readily see, but I think, I feel like I’m doing alright.

I’m also going to need to reach out to the relatives on my father’s side of the family and get some more information about the family history for one of my papers.

It’s big stuff.

I’m excited to learn more about my family and as I was thinking about it during class, I had two thoughts, one I wonder if my fondness from mangoes has anything to do with the lineage of my family.

And two.

I really want to go to Hawaii.

I have never been and I have been sticking money away for a while now in an online savings account that I have titled “Paia, Maui.”

That’s where my grandmother was born in 1928.

I really want to see that.

I really want to connect to that history and culture and be there.

It may not be for a bit.

I don’t have vacation time for it at this time.

Although I do have the money to go.

I have thought about when would be a good time, summer, fall, winter, I assume that Christmas is a really busy season.

I have a four day weekend in July for the holiday.

Although I was also keeping that tentatively on my plate for a possible travel to Wisconsin to see my best friend and her skulk.

Ultimately, seeing my friend is the priority, Hawaii can wait, but I feel that it is very much in the near future.

New York and Burning Man, my retreat for school, and possibly a dash back to Wisconsin for a long weekend of hanging out with the best friend.

It’s a good year of traveling.

Who knows what else may come into the mix.

Opportunities seem to be everywhere.

But yes, Hawaii, I would love to go and see you.

It really is about time.

There are stories to write here, experiences to be had, reconnection to be made.

I felt that today, sitting in class, talking about the traumas associated with immigration and exile and how displaced people, refugees, slaves, indentured servants, get moved around, how solace is found in the mothering environment.

I feel that I would find solace there.

I just peeped around the interwebs and I can definitely afford to go.

It’s going to be a matter of when.

I have a odd feeling that it may be sooner than I think but I cannot put my finger on why, I know the family I work for is going to be going on a trip around the time that I will be going to the retreat in Petaluma for my retreat, but I actually am wondering if the dates are lined up.

I think they may not be, I think, in fact, that the family may be gone the week before my retreat?

If that is the case, then maybe then.

It would certainly make for a very busy August.

Which reminds me.

Start thinking about what I want to take with me to Burning Man.

I have a very nice set up for the job I will be doing out there, but I know from my own personal experience, there a few things that I will want to have with me.

It’s nice to order them and have them and stock them up and not think about it too much.

Replace my shoulder harness or get it stitched up.

Check in with my OP (Original Playa) family and get the status on my playa bike.

I know it will need some tending to and might as well get things going.

This is also just a way to make busy, I’m aware of that, but it is a kind of busy that I find fun and engaging and a nice mental break from all the school stuff.

One more day.

And thank God it’s a short day.

I will be done by 4 p.m.

Then off to the Castro.

Hang out with my Puerto Rican fairy godfather.

I’ll pick his brains about Puerto Rico.

Another place I would like to go back to.

I have been once, but it was quite some time ago.

It would be fantastic to go back with a little more family history and also to go sea kayaking again and swim in the bioluminescent sea.

All the things.

All the places.

All the reconnecting.

It’s a good life, my little life, down by the sea, that rain is falling and the wind is blowing, but hopefully soon, sun.

And until then.

I will be the sunshine in my own life.

I’m getting pretty good at it.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.