Girl Date

With me, myself, and I.

Soon to be followed by girlfriend dates with a number of ladies who have reached out to me over the last few weeks and some ladies I have reached out to.

I have lots of friends, aquaintances really.

But no good close girlfriends that live in San Francisco anymore.

I have realized that I need to cultivate some new friendships and I have been talking to some ladies and exchanging phone numbers and getting re-connected with old friends that I haven’t much seen in the last three years what with grad school and all.

I started today by getting my hair cut by my super fabulous friend who has a salon in the Flood Building downtown.

It’s her own salon.

She has one chair.

And a huge space and it was super cool and she’s also an MFT who’s close to finishing up all her hours and she has an office space at the Flood Building for her therapy practice as well.

I got to see both spaces and I was super happy to re-connect with her, get caught up, compare all things CIIS, we both went through the same program, talk about how hard it is to get hours while working full-time, which is what both of us do, me as a nanny her as a hairdresser, and that we love what we are doing.

I not only got a fabulous sexy adult hair cut.

I got plans for coffee dates when I get back from New York.

It was a marvelous way to start the day and I followed it up with a splurge of shopping at Anthropologie.

I do not often go there, it feels a bit outside of my price range for what I want to spend on clothing, but I had a desire to pick up a couple of dresses for New York and I scored.

I got a pretty simple but sexy little black dress for an evening excursion out in the city.

Of course.

Having gotten it home and tried it on with every pair of shoes I have I realized I will need better shoes to go with the dress.

Sigh.

And I got a super cute day dress in bright deep red that looked really pretty against my skin.

Sometimes red looks weird on me.

Sometimes amazing.

This red really worked and I could see myself sauntering through Brooklyn in it.

I also picked up an amazingly cute skirt and a white sleeveless blouse.

Perfect attire for walks through the museums.

And all the clothes will work well with my therapy clients.

Well.

Maybe not the little black dress.

I don’t want to be the sexy therapist.

I suspect I push it anyway with my tattoos and such, no need to push the envelope further.

But the other clothes will transition nicely.

I was about to consider going back downtown tomorrow when I realized, um, no, it’s the Pride parade, downtown will be a crazy mess.

I mean.

I may have screwed the pooch on getting the dress, but I see what I can find and I’ll pack it anyway, I might run across something in New York.

After the clothes shopping I headed over to the Mission and did my group supervision.

It was good to check in, it was good to connect and I also was able to really feel it sink in that I will be leaving out-of-town for a week, no clients at all next week, no supervision.

I actually felt like I was about to go on holiday when I left the supervision group.

I went and got more of my girl day on by going to the nail salon and getting my eyebrows waxed and a mani/pedi.

I’m ready for the travel!

Then some doing the deal and here I am back home.

A nice bite to eat, some laundry working in the dryer, and I’m happy to be home and feel really mellow and laid back.

I’ll be meeting a couple of ladies tomorrow as well as my person up in the Castro.

Note to self, leave early, the Castro will still probably be overrun with folks.

I’ll probably do yoga in the morning too, just thought of that, time to sign up for a class.

Monday will come and I will take care of my car and maybe I’ll do a fly by a shoe store or two, aside from the car service which will only take a half hour, I don’t have any Monday plans except the flight, which being a red-eye does give me some time to tool around.

I think it’s finally landed.

The realization that I am off for the next five weeks (excepting two weeks of clients), that I am actually about to go on vacation.

What a lovely feeling.

Truly grateful.

And.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Life is beautiful.

Like my new hair cut!

heh.

Red Dress On

I have the song in my head.

And it’s not the one you think, since I sort of bastardized it to fit my mood.

It’s from Masters of Reality, Sunrise on the Surfer Bus, “She Got Me When She Got Her Dress On.”

I got my dress on.

My Norma Kamali original tags and all ($255) from Waste Land for, $45.

Yes.

And it’s red.

And I was feeling it tonight.

“You look like a ripe berry,” my dear friend told me tonight.

All ready for the plucking.

Yup.

I am putting myself out there.

I did a lot of the suggestions, all of them, now that I think about it, that were given to me to do today and over the last week.

“Do something ceremonial, witchy, if you will, burn your sexual ideal, light a candle, have a moment with your HP,” she told me last week after I finished reading some inventory to her.

Of course I didn’t do it.

Totally balked on it.

But it was there in the back of my head so when I went to do the deal today I laid that out and what I intended to do to change that.

See, I got up early.

I got up almost two hours before the alarm I set was to go off, I got eight hours, I had plenty of wiggle room, I just wanted to give myself the option of sleeping in.

Sometimes just the option is enough.

I won’t even take it.

It’s just nice to know it’s there.

The extra time I gave myself lead to me taking on my Saturday with a different kind of relish, getting my cleaning done early, the laundry, getting in a shower, breakfast, an extra cup of coffee, writing.

Still had time and I realized I could go grocery shopping and get that out-of-the-way for the week, because I also planned on making soup today, so that I would have meals for the week at work and not have to think about it.

So I rode my bike up to the Haight to go to Whole Paycheck and pick up a few things.

I realized that when I got to the Haight I had more time then I thought and I pedaled past the grocery store and headed to Book Smith and had myself a little impromptu artist date right then and there.

I grabbed two books–Fondly by Colin Winnette, and A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Yay books!

I already knocked through 80 pages of the Winnette book, and that was just riding the MUNI back and froth from Noe Valley this evening.

Reading is a really important part of my art, seeing how other authors string words together into a narrative is part of how I write.

If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a reader.

And I have been a little lacking in that department this past week not having made time to get to the bookstore or to the library.

Today I made that time and it really is one of my favorite things to do, browse the book aisles in a book store.

So luscious, the paper, the tactility of the books, the smell.

Love.

Which is secretly the thematic of this blog if you haven’t figured that out yet.

As I sit here in my red dress doing my blogging.

After the book store I went to Waste Land.

A vintage and used clothing store in the Haight.

I have popped in before, but never given myself the time to really look.

Oh my.

I saw a coat I will be going back for, which I was tempted to purchase as soon as I put it on and saw how fabulous I looked in it, take my word for it, amazing coat.

But I still needed to pick up groceries before heading over to Tart to Tart and I put it back on the rack and promised I would be coming back for it.

Although having found my red dress, I will be waiting until next month to buy the coat.

I saw the dress, found the dressing room, danced around the dressing room grinning like a mad woman, and bought the dress.

It’s an amazing little dress.

I feel happy wearing it.

I don’t often wear red, but when I do, watch out.

I left the store smiling like an idiot and went over to Whole Foods, splurging on berries and a Persian rose candle to burn in my little ceremony.

“I am going to write it all down, I have a Valentines Day card that I am going to write it on, then I am going to light this candle and go burn the card in the little fire pit in the back yard,” I told her.

I also agreed to sit quietly in contemplation reviewing my work for an hour.

I lit up the fire with old boughs from the Christmas tree and some left over wood from the birthday bonfire I had in December for my belly button birthday.

I sat for an hour.

I closed my eyes and meditated for about forty minutes and the rest of the time I quietly sipped a cup of tea and watched the late afternoon sky as the sun started to go down.

It was quiet and sweet and I vowed to be willing to show up and not be perfect, but to be open to intimacy and to be becoming and let other see that this thing works.

That whole attraction not promotion thing.

I came in the house and put on Bill Withers and sang at the top of my lungs to Lovely Day.

That is what I want to be, somebody’s lovely day.

Then to push the whole thing over the top.

Symbolically, of course.

I bought myself some long-stemmed red roses from a flower shop up in Noe Valley (since red roses are not my favorite flowers but I think they were what was called for).

It was like I had my own private Valentines Day with no one the wiser.

“You look so pretty,” she said to me tonight as I was heading back to the MUNI, back to the beach, back to sit and be carried gently without having to worry about getting hit by a car.

“Every time I see you, you look prettier and prettier, and congratulations on nine years!”

I smiled.

It’s true.

It just gets better and better.

Now excuse me, I need to let my hair down and dance around one more minute in my red dress.

She got me when she got her dress on.

I did get me.

I did.