You Can Take It Easy

Holy crap.

That was not the gist of the conversation I was thinking was going to happen today with my professor.

I had been having some trouble registering for a certain elective for my spring semester and had reached out to my professor, who also happens to be my advisor to ask for assistance.

We had a scheduled phone call for today.

Of course.

I figured out what the issue was before the phone call, but only just barely  before, so I decided to call my professor anyway and just check in about the final project I have to do for the class.

“You have gone above and beyond, just great work this semester, I was just talking to Jen (my TA in the class) about your writing, and she agrees, really great work,” he said.

I was so touched and moved.

I thanked him and we chatted a little about the school and the semester and about the registration process and if I had any questions to be sure and reach out over the holiday.

It was such a nice conversation to have with him.

Then he asked if I had any other questions and I did say, yes, about the final project…

“Oh, you can do anything you want, literally anything, do whatever you want, you’ve done so much work this semester, take it easy, relax, turn in whatever makes you happy,” he finished.

I was silently jumping up and down with glee.

I hadn’t gotten as much time the last few days at work to focus on my homework.

I have gotten some done, posted my last big discussion post, but the work I had really wanted to do wasn’t able to get done.  The baby’s been a little under the weather at my nanny gig and his nap schedule’s been way off.

Today, for instance, he was sleeping when I showed up, which is highly unusual and meant basically that he wasn’t going to be taking his regular afternoon nap.

The regular afternoon nap I rely on to do homework in.

In fact, he only slept a bare thirty minutes into my shift, so the little time I did have before he woke up was devoted to household odds and ends and I didn’t crack the paper I had been hoping to address.

So when this professor told me to take it easy and that I could literally turn in anything for the final project, I was so overwhelmingly happy, yeah, I did feel like dancing a jig on the sidewalk pushing the stroller up to the Noe Valley Rec Center.

Interestingly enough.

I have had some inspirations as to what to do for the final project for this class, it doesn’t have to be a paper, although it could be, and I floated my idea past my professor.

“Would it be ok to record myself reciting a poem I wrote during the semester and send that to you?”

“Yes!  I love that, fantastic, and take as much time as you need,” he said.

I let him know I’d have it in by the deadline.

I have turned in all my papers so far on time and I have no desire to start turning in anything late at this point.

I feel like I pretty much got the A for the class, so might as well send it out with a little fanfare and a poem.

A Year of Tears

You pointed out to me

Every time I see you I cry.

I thought about that for a moment.

Then I cried.

Tears slipped down my face.

Do they carve soft channels in my skin?

Do they leave a trace mineral history writ upon my cheeks?

The certainly, the tears, they do, affect my eyes.

Oh.

I could well argue that it is my new phone with its very good camera that shows all those lines around my eyes.

But it shows, those tears, in my eyes.

I have cried over you for over a year.

Yes.

You were right.

I have cried every time I have seen you for a long while now.

Perhaps even a little more than a year.

Though, not that much longer since we have been together.

Apart.

Together.

Apart.

Together for only so much time.

SO MUCH TIME.

A year and  a half.

Oh!

The moon.

I raise my bruised eyes to the sky.

I sing your praises to the moon.

Like a child, I cry for that which I (think) I cannot have.

Longing for you, the moon in my sky.

You say the same to me, that I am your moon.

Your stars.

You talk to me when you are afar.

We talk to each other through the music of the spheres.

The crows carry our conversations to us.

The wind in the trees, a susseration of our words of love.

Each to each.

The avocado tree at work sends my love.

The oak trees where you are pick up the vibrations.

I see you in the beauty of the sunset, in the rise of the moon, in the wind blowing the leaves.

The moon waxes.

Wanes.

We talk to each other from new moon to full moon.

Underneath the Harvest moon.

Through on to the Strawberry moon.

There are many moons, but to me they are all the same, no matter the month.

They are all the Lovers Moon.

And oh.

I love you.

I do.

A secret.

Shhhh.

You may already suspect.

But I will tell you now in all truth, from the bottoms of my feet on up through all the bones of my body, I don’t mind the tears.

Not really.

No.

For they mean I have lived and loved you fierce.

Passionate.

Unrestrained.

With my whole being.

I have loved you.

I love you.

I will love you.

The tears tell me how important you are to me.

So important.

And.

Last night.

Oh.

You held me in your arms.

Such arms, may I always have the fortune to recline in them.

You shining eyes on mine, your kisses showering me.

I knew then.

As I know now.

Every damn day of tears was worth it.

To be, once again, in your embrace

Acceptance this.

Powerful knowing.

The love that matters between the black and white lines of our story.

That is all.

That love.

Surrendered I am to the situation.

For just the being with you my sweet moon brought it all home.

The sea salt tsunami of my love for you shall be the waters I sail my boat upon.

So dear, dear, dear, Dread Pirate Roberts.

I do expect that you will always come back to me.

For true love never dies.

Not ever.

Not now.

Not then.

Not really.

Not until the moon fails to rise and set, to wax and wane.

That moon which blushes with secret admiration for the words we float up to it.

The conduit for our missives to each other.

Telling all our stories of love and adoration, awe and tribulation.

The moon sees us my love.

The moon approves.

 

Free Day

Today.

No reflux.

Knock on wood, I still have a few hours of the day left, but for real, no reflux.

Oh.

I thought it was going to come at any moment and there was a tiny hint of it on the way into work, but it just never really coalesced.

So relieved.

And the fucking doctor’s office finally got back to me.

For a consult.

The doctor went over my referral and denied doing the endoscopy bundled into the consult.

Meh.

I have to see the GI first and then he’ll decide at that time whether or not to proceed with an endoscopy.

Fine.

May 2nd.

More weeks away, but the next step has been taken and maybe there is another answer out there, maybe there is something else that can be done, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.

At least not yet.

heh.

Which reminds me, note to self, I need to register for the fall semester on the 17th of the month, which is basically four days away.

Just popped that on my calendar.

Lots of stuff happening in the next few weeks.

Lots.

I just updated my calendar a bit and also I just signed up for yoga class.

I haven’t been in sometime, weeks and weeks.

School and horrible reflux.

The last time I went I had reflux really badly and it was the most miserable experience, I couldn’t bear to bring myself to go again, if I woke up and had reflux I was either cancelling the class or if I went to bed with it really heavy I would just not sign up for a class.

But since I haven’t had it today and mornings for the last week or so have been pretty stable, I’m going to take a gamble and go.

If it happens, if I get it, I’ll take it easy, or slip out.

I am not going to torture myself, it was so awful when I did it before, it was the worst experience and I’m just not down for making myself feel bad.

However, I am hopeful that I can go and the only pain will be from not having done it in a while.

I am also obligated to go to group supervision, but honestly, it’s not a weekend of school and though it means being time committed to a certain place at a certain time for two hours, I can totally muster through.

I’m excited for the weekend.

I’ve been looking forward to it all week, I’ll get to hang out with my best friend and that will be super nice.

I’ve missed my friend dearly.

It will be really good to catch up and reconnect.

Other things this weekend will be dinners out.

Tomorrow night at Brenda’s with my person after I do my Saturday night commitment.

And.

Sunday at France’s with my best friend to celebrate an anniversary.

I’m going to even get dressed up, Frances is a nice place and it’s hard to get reservations there, from what I’ve been told, but I was able to secure a late reso for us on Sunday and I decided I’m dressing up.

Not nanny clothes.

Not therapist clothes.

Fun, pretty, dress up.

I found a dress on HellBunny and it came today.

Fits perfect.

It’s a fifties style retro dress, sort of fit and flare, sky blue with navy blue and white flowers.

I think it’s quite pretty and I’m excited to go out on the town.

I need that kind of fun in my life, even if I have to get up early and go to supervision the next day, it’s worth it.

I only have a few more sessions left with my solo supervisor!

That feels so strange to say, I remember when I was first seeing him and I thought I would never be done with it, a year and a half!

And it’s gone by quite fast.

Due, in no small part, to being a busy person.

I only meet with him two more times.

Which means I have to get my paperwork in order here soon.

I picked up the paperwork I needed today from my internship and I’ll be bringing that into my solo supervisor to sign on Monday, then it goes back to the school.

I need to also look over my graduation requirements and make sure that I am getting all the right things together to turn into the school to prove that I have fulfilled the requirements.

I need my therapist to sign off on our sessions, 50 of them, which I’m just a tiny bit shy of, but will have by the time my last weekend of classes happens.

And I need to get on the party planning for my graduation too.

Plus.

Oh, let me not forget, I have two more papers to write.

I’m actually hoping to get to one of them on Sunday.

I have some time in the afternoon after I meet with the two ladybugs I normally see on Sundays to do the deal.

My person whom I also meet with asked me to meet tomorrow night, hence Brenda’s, which leaves me with a few solid hours to get some work done.

I’m hoping to knock out the majority, if not all of my Research Methods paper.

It’s a lot to do, but I know I will feel better addressing it sooner rather than later and the more I can get done heading into my last weekend of classes the better.

I’m secretly hopeful that I can have it all done in the next couple of weekends so that I can be chill for my last weekend of classes.

Fingers crossed.

No reflux in the morning and some yoga.

And whatever I get done this weekend.

Well.

It will be enough.

It always is.

 

And Just Like That

I have registered for my last semester of class!

I can hardly believe it.

It feels very surreal.

And.

Fucking amazing.

I will have three classes next semester.

Once a month I will be in class.

Five weekends.

I will be in class from 9 a.m. until 4p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

January.

February.

March.

April.

May.

I will graduate Saturday, May 19th.

Holy fuck.

It’s really happening.

I have to take Integrative Seminar, I really don’t know what that is, and Research Methods, which sounds boring as fuck and like a class that is a box to check off.

The other “class” is my practicum, or what I often refer to as my internship.

I’ll still be seeing the same amount of clients, but I may move some of them around, I’m not quite sure yet.

And that’s ok, that can be figured out later.

I was just looking over the piece of paper that I have been making little check marks on for the last three years.

Here’s a list of the classes I have taken and passed, passed pretty well, you could say, I’ve got a 4.0 thank you very much.

I have taken Group Dynamics.

Therapeutic Communication.

Human Development

Integral Philosophy

Psychodynamics I and II.

The Clinical Relationship.

Professional Ethics and Family Law I and II.

Multicultural Counseling and the Family.

Applied Spirituality.

Gestalt Therapy.

Family Dynamics and Therapy.

Psychopathology and Psychological Assessment.

Child Therapy.

Trauma.

Couple Counseling.

Community Mental Heal & The Recovery Model.

Special Topics in Psychotherapy.

Transpersonal Psychotherapy.

Alcohol & Chemical Dependency Counseling.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

Jungian Dream Work.

Psychopharmacology and Human Sexuality.

Elder, Spousal, & Child Abuse.

And practicum which includes Individual Supervision and Group Supervision.

Whew.

That’s a lot of reading.

Just reading the list made me shake my head, I did all of those?

Really?

Amazing.

And I just have to do three more classes.

Sure.

I have to finish this semester first, but I will, I will.

OH, and although its a not a “class” I am also required by my program to attend 52 weeks of personal therapy with a licensed MFT.

Today marked 26 weeks.

Half way there.

I’m not actually worried about getting in all the therapy, which is one little thing that I don’t have to stress about, thankfully, my therapist went through my program and she told me that she would sign my paper even if I didn’t get the full 52 weeks.

I get the sense though that I will get the requisite amount of hours.

The therapy is good for me.

I have been getting to work through a lot of things that I never even knew I had to delve into, some of which I probably have been needing to address for years without even realizing I did.

I like my therapist a lot and she really has a good perspective on me and who I am and sometimes there is a lightness and a friendliness and almost a sense of talking to not just a contemporary, but a friend, a friend with a lot of perception.

A lot.

And a really helpful way of reframing my experience and also validating all the work I do.

I do a lot.

In some sense I’m a fucking therapists wet dream.

I do the work, I don’t make her work, I process the fuck out of my shit.

I do a lot of grieving, I let go of a lot and then I jump right back in.

Today’s session left me pretty wrung out and sad.

It was mainly expressed first through anger, which has always been a very dangerous emotion for me, I don’t think it was ever safe for me to express anger in my family and I didn’t often even realize I had it unless I was enraged and that feeling, rage, scared me to death.

Very dangerous and very rarely expressed.

Almost never.

I can remember a few times touching into it and frightened me badly.

I know better now, there isn’t really anything wrong with anger, it’s a sign, and it’s a primary emotion, it’s a top emotion, but there’s generally secondary emotions underneath it and that’s where I need to look, under the covers of anger and see what’s underneath.

Most often for me, it’s fear.

Fear of losing something I think I have or fear of not getting what I want.

I had a lot of fear come up today and it was hard to slog through, but I knew the anger I felt was about fear and eventually it all came out and I felt sick with it, on fire with it, I felt like I wanted to vomit it all out, retch it into the wastebasket, scream it into a pillow on the couch.

I just cried a lot and it moved.

It’s probably still moving.

Ah, all the things I get to work on, so very many.

I have discovered so much about myself from doing my course work and now, in the therapy, getting out the secrets and the sadness and the trauma and all the stuff I carry around like it’s a special knapsack full of rocks.

I just want to let them all go, put them back into the stream and let myself float away.

I have burdened myself for so long with false ideas.

“I failed,” I crumpled into my hands, I buried my face in my palms and just sobbed.

I won’t get into the specifics, they’re not relevant, but I can say in a general sense that I have been carrying around the idea that I failed at something and that I had not even realized I believed about myself, that I failed so badly at something that I ruined another’s life.

A.  Who am I to say I’m God?

I’m just not that powerful.

B. I was a child.

I was a child doing an adults job.

Granted.

A super precocious child who might have given off the impression that she knew what she was doing, but ultimately, at the end of the story, I was doing an adult’s job with the resources of a child.

A poverty-stricken, neglected, abused child.

Smart as fuck.

But a baby.

I was just a little girl trying to hold it all together and I couldn’t, I couldn’t make it work and I have been, for years, decades, even, carrying around this idea that I failed.

I was shocked when that popped out of my mouth.

My God.

Oh, sweet, sweet, baby girl.

You tried so hard, you didn’t fail, you did the best you could.

And you got out.

I could barely carry the burden of taking care of myself.

Jesus Christ.

I’m still in awe of my session today.

That so much got sorted out.

Really astounds me.

Therapy.

Wow.

It fucking works.

It so damn does.

Thank God.

Thank fucking God.

So Fresh and So

Clean.

Clean.

My house looks pretty fucking good, let me tell you.

All the laundry done, all the trash and recycling out and swept, swiffered, vacuumed, scrub the bathroom down, tidy the fuck up.

Which means one thing.

Mama had a lot of homework to do today.

My God.

There is no fucking end to it.

Yet.

Me thinks I see a glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh.

The light is far off, but I can sense it getting closer.

I did so, so, so much work today.

My god.

My brain hurt.

Still does, not as much, and hurt might not be the right word, but I was worn out with the material, as I was warned that I might be, but I toughed it out.

I finished all of my Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class.

Huzzah!

But man, it took the stuffing out of me, and I don’t eat stuffing.

Haha.

It was a lot of reading, and a lot of watching some intense videos.

I wrote out responses to five of the sections, I got three out-of-the-way previously.

And I wrote a clinical mock-up of an elder abuse situation and what I would do, from mandatory reporting to clinical interventions and everything in between.

It was a lot of work.

But.

Fuck.

It’s done.

So happy I got all of that out-of-the-way, it really was the big monster in my block of classes.

I also finished all my reading for Transpersonal, which means, drumroll please…

I have no more reading to do for the semester!!

My God.

That feels fabulous.

I am not, however, out of the woods yet.

Tomorrow I have to write two papers.

One will be fairly short, two pages, on a dream I had, it will be my last dream to tun into my Jungian Dreamwork class.

The other will be a bit longer, but not too bad, five pages.

That one will, however, be a bit more formal and honestly despite having finished all the reading for the class I’m not exactly sure where I am going to go with the paper.

I was also in contact with my group today working on our final project presentation that I will be doing the last Saturday of classes.

I’m hoping to knock out both the papers and the group work tomorrow.

And also, if I can swing it, the Psychopharmacology online portion of my Psychopharmacology and Human Sexuality class.

I have a paper in that class due at the end of the semester too and one for my Drugs and Alcohol Class.

Sigh.

That will be for next weekend.

I can get it done though, especially since the Elder, Spousal, and Child Abuse class is completed.

My God.

One more class done towards my degree.

Which reminds me, I have to register for classes in two days.

In two days I will register for my last semester!

I only have three classes.

It is going to feel miraculous after carrying six classes this semester.

I have only done four classes at once before, this semester was a stretch, and obviously, it’s not done.

OH.

And I still will have a final paper for Jungian DreamWork too, it’s just not due until after the last weekend of classes.

Which is always a conundrum.

Crush that bitch out of the park and get it done before my last weekend of classes, or finish that Sunday when I get out of classes.

Because the damn thing is due on the 15th of December and I’ll be working all that week and of course, seeing clients.

There’s no way I can do two big papers tomorrow and the small one and the online portion of my other class.

No.

I will be a wastrel of a person.

But.

Maybe I can do them next weekend.

Maybe.

If not, maybe I can get it started.

It would mean three papers next weekend.

Sigh.

I got invited out to the movies tonight.

I turned it down.

I got invited out to dinner.

I came home and made my own.

I am going to be over the moon when this semester is done, it will be nice to have a little more wiggle room for social outings and such.

Although I do have breakfast plans with my best friend in the morning.

Super excited for that, really happy to get to have some time before I get into the homework grind.

And if I’m good and grind hard and get a lot of it done, maybe I go to yoga.

Not the regular Vinyasa, nope.

My ankle is doing better, but not that much better, no, I was thinking maybe the Restorative yoga, my brain is going to need some restoring to normality by the time I crank out all the homework I have to do tomorrow.

Grateful I know how to write a paper and grateful for my ability to pull together my notes and book references and make it work.

I can do it.

I have my process and I’ve done the biggest work, which is the reading.

That’s the most important.

I’ll skim through my books, grab a stack of post-it notes and flip through my class notes, I will put together a skeleton of the paper in outline by looking through my materials and see what my common themes are.

Then.

I’ll write that bitch.

It’s five pages, so with prep time, reference time, write time, I am going to give it two and a half hours.

Actually.

That seems too long.

Two hours.

I’ll kick out the dream paper in twenty minutes, I don’t have to write it up with references, it’s just me doing what I do anyway, write what I see in my head, so two pages will be twenty minutes, thirty tops.

So maybe I’ll have all the writing done with in that time.

And that should give me enough room and time to finish the rest of the online material I need, I suspect that will take an hour to two and also writing out an outline and making a worksheet for my final project for Transpersonal.

That will take forty-five minutes.

So.

What am I looking at?

Five hours?

I think I can do that.

Breakfast shenanigans are early so I’ll be in the mix by 10 a.m. like I was today, today I finished at 6 p.m. working pretty much straight through, yes, even when I was cleaning I was doing homework.

I had to watch a few videos, but I will admit, I was listening to some of them while I was cleaning, the material at times was graphic and I found it easier to integrate when I was cleaning and sweeping and washing.

So if all goes as planned I’ll be done by five or so.

I have an hour break at 1p.m. to do some work with a lovely lady and get right with God, a break after that for lunch, and then back in it.

It will get done.

It will.

I can do it.

I can.

Go team go!

Heh.

What The Fuck

Are you doing to yourself, kid?

I literally had a Cher from Moonstruck, “SNAP OUT OF IT” moment this morning.

I got up with my alarm, grateful to see that the rain was clearing and that I would be able to ride my scooter to work.

Ah work, back to work, it’s been a minute, is it time to go back already?

Yes, dear, glad you enjoyed your days off, time to hit it again.

I made a nice breakfast and had some coffee and I was just about to settle into some writing when I had this great idea to check the school website and find out about summer classes.

Like which ones I should register for, what I need to have to get to the next step, you know, keep progressing.

Note to self, as it was brought up by a dear friend in the cohort, “you’re planning on taking summer school and practicum?!”

Um.

I was.

Sort of.

I mean.

I had no idea what compelled me, fear, oh, yeah, fear, I forgot, hahahaha, to go online today and blow almost all my morning writing time on trying to figure it out.

Figure it out never works for me, and yet, there I was neck-deep into the figuring it out.

Getting more and more over my head, and without even realizing it, panicked.

Why did I take the last two days off, I should have been dealing with this, I don’t know what to do, I’m fucked, the system is fucked, why hasn’t my advisor responded to my e-mail, why is the registrar so stupid, what is wrong with the….

Whoa girl.

Back the fuck up.

I sent a friend a text asking about the summer courses, she’s always so on top of it, and I got a lot of information back, none of which I was able to assimilate or understand and when I read one of the texts I just about lost it, there was too much, it was too much, I can’t do this.

Do what?

Self-inflicted idiocy, getting myself all worked up over nothing.

I could feel the fear rising in my body and getting stuck at the top of my chest and trying to ride up into my throat.

Very grateful I caught it when I did.

Stop.

Slow down.

Breathe.

Look around.

You are sober, you’re dressed in nice clothes, they are clean, you just ate breakfast, you have coffee, lunch is packed, coffee for work is packed, your hair is done, you have makeup on, the scooter is ready to go.

You are fine.

Breathe.

I started to ignore texts that were still incoming from a number of places.

I don’t have to engage if I don’t have the space.

Then I looked at the time.

Shit.

I had wasted 45 minutes of my precious morning routine on this fuckery.

I hopped up, did the dishes, took out the trash, organized my things, turned my phone to silent and sat and wrote.

Rent is paid.

My phone bill is paid.

I am ok.

I paid for my scooter insurance for another six months.

I have paid for my Healthy SF for the next three months.

I am fine.

I am enough.

It is enough.

I have my practicum placement.

I have a therapist.

I have supervisors.

I don’t need to know what electives I could take for summer.

I can take them in the fucking fall.

If I wasn’t doing the internship I would have the god damn summer off from school.

So relax.

You are ok.

All I had to do, all I have to do, I told myself, was show up to work alive and on time, stay sober and show up tonight at my commitment.

Oh.

And maybe put some gas in the scooter.

I could do that.

When I got to work I was relaxed, had calmed down, and was able to respond to a message from a friend who is going to Paris in May with his wife and two boys about some friends I have in Paris and where he could meet them.

It was nice to stop, get out of my head, and be of service to someone else.

And Paris.

Oh yeah.

That.

You’re going to Paris, doll, in a few weeks, you have a place to stay, you will see friends, there are museums to go to, streets to walk, Metro’s to ride, postcards to write.

I was pretty back to myself and in my body by the time I got to work, which was good, it was full tilt boogie, the kids had missed me, and truth be told, I them, and I got tackled upon my entrance.

“CARMEN! I missed you! I love you! I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Tag! You’re it!”

And it was on.

It was on all day.

The cleaners came.

I made dinner.

I made dessert.

I washed laundry, folded laundry, put laundry away.

I played soccer, Mother May I, tag, hide and seek, good dog/bad dog (the four-year olds made up game), cops and robbers.

And last but not least.

I played lots of snuggles and thank God.

I got to play stay at the house and watch the four-year old nap while the older boy went to the dentist.

I played Debussy’s Clair de Lune and folded towels and baby blankets.

I returned the texts and messages I had to return and I chatted with a few friends.

I also acknowledged that I did accomplish some stuff today in regards to school, even if it wasn’t what I had set out to do, I did discover that the school had posted all the weekend dates for the next Fall and Spring semesters.

That was surreal.

To go through the next year and plug-in those dates into my calendar, ending with the last weekend in May 2018, which will be my last weekend before graduating.

Not that I even know when the ceremony will be.

But I will be there.

Summer school or not, the work will get done.

I also finally managed to set up the forwarding on my school e-mail, they just switched over to a new system, so that all school e-mails are sent to my Gmail account.

That was a big deal.

Just taking all the little, teeny tiny steps to get there.

And breathing.

Pausing.

Responding.

Not reacting.

When the fear sets in.

I see you fear, you just want me to be to be aware of all the pitfalls that might befall me.

Thing is though.

Fear is the pitfall.

Fear is the trap.

Faith is my answer.

And it was my spiritual principle.

God has not brought me this far to drop my on my ass.

I am taken care of.

I am.

Seriously.

On The Path

And I keep on keeping on.

I just registered for my second semester of graduate school.

Hard to believe that I am rounding the bend into the home stretch of the first semester.

It felt odd to be registering for the next semester when it feels like there is still so much of this one left.

That being said.

There’s not really that much more.

I have one more weekend of classes and a final project presentation.

The presentation is the thing I need to focus on next, but I’m still finishing up some of the reading.

I am not going to fret about it.

It will get done.

It always does.

One moment at a time and the work will get done.

I was thinking about that as I deposited a check to my account and immediately pulled a bunch of money out to put into a Christmas card for my Parisian friend who bought my tickets to the ballet at the Garnier Palace Opera House in Paris for the show on the 23rd of this month.

Imagine.

In 22 days I will be in a box seat with people I love watching the ballet in Paris.

In 19 days I fly out of SFO to Paris.

In 17 days it’s my birthday.

December is a big month.

And of course, that final school weekend, that I mentioned already, is December 10th-12th.

I am almost there.

Yet it all seems so far away.

I suppose once the last paper is turned in and I have done the final project presentation I will feel it.

Until then.

It all feels rather surreal.

Like I’m treading water and swimming a million miles a minute all at the same time.

It reminds me of something I read this morning before work, in my Human Development reader about death and how having some knowledge of it makes life that much more rewarding and richer.

That awareness of the present moment being the moment to most focus on.

I can’t see much past what is happening, Paris, et al, as I am so focused on living right here, right now.

It is also an assurance to my mental sanity when I stay in the present.

So many things can go wrong in the future.

Or.

There’s just the fantasy of the future, if this than that, if I wear this will he like it more than that, if I do this will she like me, if I work harder I can do this….

Blah, blah, blah.

It’s just a way to be out of the magic of what is happening right now.

For instance.

Despite being alone tonight.

I am not lonely.

I have some Chet Baker on the stereo.

I have some tea in a mug.

It’s delicious tea.

I have tickets to Paris–my friend got hard paper tickets and they came in the mail today!

I’m going to Paris!

Ahem.

The candles are lit and the air is perfumed.

There are snow flakes hanging from the antlers in the corner and the heater is blowing warm air into the studio–it’s been cold!

There are pretty pictures on my walls, my bed is made, my house is clean, I am registered for classes, friends reached out today and texted me sweet messages.

I enrolled with a friend in my cohort and we managed to get three out of five classes together.

Excellent.

There are many more things that I can reflect on right in front of me.

The photo of my sister and I when we were five and three.

In fact, that’s a thought I keep having, blow it up and frame it and send to my mom for Christmas.

I don’t think she has any other copies of the photo.

I have Christmas cards ready to be written.

Oh!

And if you want a post card from Paris, do let me know, I’ll send one.

Sending postcards has to be one of my favorite things to do, the perfect souvenir, I have postcards that I have sent myself from all over the world.

Rome.

London.

Paris.

Burning Man.

New York.

San Francisco (yes, I do send myself postcards from San Francisco–if it’s somewhere I have never been and I am having an experience I like to document it–heck I send cards to folks that live just down the street).

It’s the thing to do.

Staying here.

Staying in the moment and being kind to myself.

As I was reading school work a bit before I started writing the blog and I realized that I wasn’t really retaining the information.

Sometimes that happens.

So.

I stop.

And refocused and got into the present.

Which is where all the gifts are.

That’s why it’s called the “present.”

Mwhahahaha.

Anyway.

The point being that it’s a night for a little extra self-care, a shower, a snuggle with a cozy blanket, the rest of a French movie my dear Parisian friend suggested–Blue Is The Warmest Color.

I like to watch French movies before I travel to Paris.

It helps with getting the language back into my ear.

French music too.

All the things French.

All the things.

I’m pretty happy right now.

Yes.

I am a touched stressed, there is work to do, but I see it all happening and I know how lucky I am to be doing what I am doing, where I am doing it, and getting to do all the things.

Because.

Ultimately.

I do all the really important things.

If you haven’t figured out what that is yet.

We can have a little talk one on one.

Heh.

Otherwise.

It is safe to say that my life is a miracle.

And I don’t have to be on my deathbed to see it.

I just have to stay.

Present.