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.

 

Fuck Yeah

I feel fucking good.

And that is not something that I normally feel to this degree on a Saturday night halfway through a long weekend of classes.

No.

Normally I feel, tired, depleted, and sad, exhausted, over blown, over whelmed, over it.

But.

Tonight in the last half hour of my last class I got to do a dyad with another classmate and it turned out to be the best dyad I have done in my two years.

The best.

I felt so good.

I felt it all interconnect, I felt all the information that I have been digesting in huge bites and chunks all integrate and I was just there, in the field, doing the work, being myself and I was a therapist.

Man oh man.

It feels really good.

My “client” felt the same way and the person observing said to me afterward, “man, I wish you were my therapist!”

I was so happy to hear that.

I got so jazzed up.

It might take me a minute to come down from it.

Which I’m ok with.

I am.

I have my little routine, my school night routine, literally, not figuratively, I have a school night routine, I have my lunch packed and prepped for tomorrow, the books and notebooks I will need for class and my stash of tea for when I need to compose myself and comfort myself.

A hot cup of tea does me wonders.

Calms down my parasympathetic system.

Hydrates me.

Warms me up.

Gives me something to fiddle with, my glass Mason jar in its midnight blue cozee that says “everything is going to be alright.”

Which was amply demonstrated to me today when I wasn’t on the high I am now.

When I felt overwhelmed, and overdrawn, over taxed.

I had sat through a practicum workshop during lunch and it was so much information and so many people were clamoring to be heard and have their questions answered, I felt completely overwhelmed.

I did, in the end, get the information I needed.

I stayed a little bit after and was fine for being a little late for my next class as I needed to get sorted with my next steps for the internship.

There’s a lot.

I have to get a supervisor that the school approves of.

I have to start outside therapy.

I have to register for the summer with a special registration form that has to be turned into the registrars office in hard copy.

I have to get a three page paper form to my practicum site, get it signed off by my site supervisor, the school supervisor, my advisor, and the head of the program.

Jeez Louise.

Nothing stressful about doing all of that.

Fuck me.

I meet with my site supervisor on Tuesday after work so I really wanted to make sure that I had all the forms that he will need to fill out.

I collected a big wad of paperwork and found out that my site supervisor has a lot of experience  with the school and that I was going to be in good hands.

Which I had already suspected, but it was still nice to hear.

Then.

I ran into a fellow in the cohort ahead of mine who is working in the same site I will be at and I asked him how I should go about getting a supervisor and he said to ask the head of the institution who I will be seeing on Tuesday.

Fantastic fucking idea.

I will ask, I will take his suggestion, I will get a supervisor.

I got a referral to a therapist for my outside therapy work and hopefully I can get that all lined up as well by the time I start the internship.

So many things to do.

By the time I got to my afternoon class I was blown out of the water and in tears.

Fortunately it was mostly lecture and by the time we got to a place I needed to participate more I had calmed down.

Tired.

But calm.

And after some dinner, my last class of the day.

A good collaborative class discussion on the work that was presented last night, we had three guest lectures do a panel on a Community Mental Health program in the city that focuses on being a liaison between the gangs and the city and the county and the police.

They had some great things to say and it lit up a nice back and forth in our class tonight discussing what we had heard and felt about it.

Then a break, and the dyad work and the juiciness of getting to sit in the seat and claim it and show up and be me.

Me.

A therapist.

So good to know that all those years having an open door policy at work are being put to use, or the dozens of years of recovery have been so integrated into who I am that I could draw upon my experience and go there in a therapeutic role.

It was such a good feeling.

And I could see that it landed with my “client” and that change was being affected and that felt good.

Being of service usually feels really good.

This just affirmed once again that I am in the career I am supposed to be in, that my experiences were not for naught, not that I think that, at least not the last twelve years, it has been made very clear that those experiences are gold, that I am going to get to help more folks and that I am good at what I do.

I have years to go.

I have much more to learn.

And I have a deep humility for the process.

Gratitude too.

And there.

I feel like I have gotten my unwind.

Time to get ready for bed.

It’s an early day tomorrow.

Last of the three days.

And.

Grr.

Day light savings.

I’m losing an hour of sleep.

Oh well.

Just grateful that I will be getting any sleep at all.

So grateful.

Seriously.

Come On Girl

Get your sexy on.

Honestly.

All I really want to get on right now is some tea.

Sigh.

End of week school night slumber party may not have been so well advised, but this was it, tonight, or nada.

I have to say eight hours into a ten-hour day I was pretty much contemplating cancelling, I have a share tomorrow when I normally have a single and it will not be a late start to my day, but my normal 8:45 a.m. start.

Which means a 6:30 a.m. get up time.

Then I got a text asking if we were still on tonight and well, my body responded and said, shut up brain, all a tingle and a glow, “yes!”

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, please.

And so, yes, we are on.

Of course when I got home just minutes ago I was back to the, I want to cancel mode, I don’t feel sexy, I feel like a grungy nanny who has been doing grungy nanny work all day long.

I feel like someone who worked a ten-hour day and spent an additional two hours of my day on MUNI.

First the N-Judah to the 24 to work, then the 24 up to the Castro from the NOPA after my nanny share was over, with a solo monkey, who’s folks were going to be late with work, so I ferried him home on the bus.

Then eventually, after dinner time, bath time, snuggle time, and song time, I left to get back on the 24 to the N-Judah to home.

Sigh.

I get home and the first thing I do is disrobe.

I mean.

I don’t know what it is, along with putting up my hair (which is down, since I have a date), I strip down and climb into my yoga pants and a night-shirt.

Then I make tea, thinking about what I am going to blog, and I ice my ankle down.

Which, thank god, was not so bad today, not sure what it was, I did take it easy today and only went to Alamo Square park with the charges and I rested while they were napping.

I even got in a little nap snack, maybe twenty minutes or so, to rest up.

I am starting to feel my mojo come back, I think I was just frustrated too, with the later start to the date than we had previously discussed.

Things happen and when I got the text with the eta it was later than we had discussed.

I wanted to throw a temper tantrum.

Not sexy.

Ugh.

What am I going to do?

I bemoan my fate.

Ok.

Perhaps I am a little dramatic, I mean, really, I am complaining because my lover is going to be taking a little extra time to do something for himself that will probably make our experience better anyhow, so, chill ladybug.

Chill.

I also realized that I was uncomfortable with being dressed when I got home, I like to relax, I want to put my feet up, at least one of them anyway, I want to drink my tea and change into my comfy clothes.

So I did.

Sexy is not what you wear, or what I wear, it’s how I feel.

And if I feel grumpy and frumpy and nanniefied, I won’t be putting out a sexy vibe even in my cute outfit which I picked out this morning specifically because I figured it could weather a ten-hour nanny shift and still bear a resemblance to be sexy.

Besides, the man has seen me naked for Pete’s sake.

I don’t think he’s paying much attention to what I am wearing.

Hell, the first time I was in a walking boot and hobbling around on crutches, I already look sexier than that.

And you know, I am feeling it now.

I stopped my blogging, I striped out of the work clothes, spritzed a little perfume on myself, mussed up the hair, took it down, and slid into some Hello Kitty pajama pants and my new  Day of the Dead night-shirt.

I felt better immediately.

And no surprise, much sexier.

The other thing that is sexy, is taking care of myself.

Which means, having my night-time snack, making myself a little tea (a balance for sure, no one wants to feel overfull when imminent coitus is about to occur, nor do I want to get out of bed fifteen times to pee), writing my blog and taking care of my things.

I have my alarm set.

I have my lunch and dinner set out for tomorrow.

I wrote out a check for Healthy San Francisco and balanced my check book.

I tidied up, not that there’s much to tidy, I am a pretty neat person, and now that my ducks are in a row and my blog near writ and my pajamas on (I did concede to still wearing my bra, I just don’t know that I can meet a lover at the door without one on, that feels too casual, which is again, a hoot, I don’t think he cares, but I do.  And I like the slowing down a bra provides and it’s not the bra I wore to work, it’s hot pink, matches the Hello Kitty pants, heh) I feel better and I know that as soon as he texts.

“I’m here”

I will get a jolt.

And as soon as he kisses me.

I will forget the world, the work, the MUNI, the unsexy and I will unspool and unwind in the best relaxation anyone could ask for, happily provided by the letter “O” and the number “More.”

Tomorrow will take care of itself and I will get through the day just fine.

Probably with a happy smile on my face for most of it.

Who’s sexy now?

Lover, Why Don’t You Come Over

Just not that night.

It’s a school night.

Or that night, that’s too late.

Or.

Well fuck me.

And yes, that’s the direction this blog is going, so if your shy, or my mom, stop reading.

Ok.

So, I have sort of kept this under my hat since I have been pretty focused on healing and finances and Burning Man and being out of work and getting back into work, but yes, I have taken on a lover.

One who I have not written about until tonight because it felt like have a special secret sauce weapon.

You got to love a man who will take care of business while you recline on the bed with a leg propped up on a heap of pillows and your ankle covered in frozen peas.

The first time it happened I must have giggled madly at one point as he admonished me to hold still, trying! trying! While inveigling the perfect position to not disturb the peas, the leg, the ankle.

I will be the first to admit there were a few uncomfortable moments and one that was flat-out painful and the first time was cut short for a while, before the hormones and the ibuprofen took over and we tried again.

Success.

We had plans for our first date to be the Saturday evening after my ankle injury.

Of course I had to cancel.

I called him up and said, hey you remember that thing that we all were discussing about taking pain medication in early sobriety?  That night that you gave me your business card.

“Hey girl with the purple hair!”

He hollered at me as I was about to get on my bike and ride off into the sunset.

Literally.

That’s where I live, in the Sunset.

Aside–I miss riding my bike!  I miss it so much. I miss not having to rely on MUNI, which was so packed tonight it was unbearable and was running late and ugh.

I miss not having to budget forty-five minutes to an hour to my morning commute when it took me fifteen to twenty minutes to ride my bike to work.

That being said, I am beyond grateful that I have a relatively easy commute to MUNI, I walk a block and there’s the stop.  I get off in Cole Valley and then walk a block and I am at work.  Granted, tomorrow’s commute rather sucks, N-Judah to Cole and Carl, 43 to Masonic and Fulton, the 5 to McCallister and Divisadero.

Commute last week took full hour.

Bike ride?

25 minutes.

Sigh.

Soon, soon, I shall be back again upon my trusty whip.

So, having just thrown my leg over my sparkly steed, I paused and turned, and there he was, the guy I had thought earlier, you know, maybe you should give him your number, you have a lot of the same views on things and I liked what I was hearing.

He has a big God and I am a size queen.

“My name’s Carmen,” I said, as he approached and we exchanged pleasantries.

“What are you doing next Monday?” He asked and I was about to say hanging out with you when I recalled a date to go on a motorcycle ride with a close friend who would soon be leaving town on said motorcycle.

“I’m not available,” I smiled, the pause just hanging in the air.

“Well, call me if you ever are,” he said and handed me his business card.

I texted him when I got home.

I said let’s grab coffee.

He said yes.

We made a date.

Date fell through.

Ankle got hurt.

No more date.

Or so I thought.

“How are you doing mija?”

I got a text.

We bantered back and forth and it was cute and flirty and he asked if I needed some frozen peas and I said yes.

He didn’t bring me any frozen peas.

But I did get served.

Ahem.

May I just say that it’s so nice when a guy takes the reins.  It really is, it just clears things right up, there’s not questioning, is he attracted, how can I tell, how should I act, I’m attracted, what do I do next.

I offered him a beverage, “standing” in my kitchen on my crutches with my foot resting lightly in the walking boot, tea, water, bubbly water?

He strode toward me, took my face in his hands and kissed the daylights out of me.

Oh.

My.

How nice.

I mean, nice.

Right to the point.

“Water.”

Ok.

“And let me get it, sit down, ice your ankle, prop it up,” he kissed me again and I just about swooned.

“I’m just going to sit on the bed,” I waived at the bed, the stack of pillows already waiting, the bag of frozen peas sitting on top (just like the princess and the pea except the other way around, I am getting vast comfort from the peas, even now as I blog, there’s a bag on my ankle.  It was a long day at work.), I nestled down and took off the walking boot, pulled my leg up, placed it gingerly atop the three high stack, and dropped the peas into place.

They fell off a few times, but that’s probably more details then you need to know.

My friend joked, “pulling the old damsel in distress move, eh?”

Apparently.

I had no idea that worked, fuck I might have been doing it long ago.

What I heard better though, was something that was said to a neighboring friend that very same evening, just before I had gotten home.

“Be the rock and the let the butterflies settle on you,” he said to my friend.

Oh.

I am usually a moving target, and a fast one at that, on my bicycle, on my scooter, on the run, run, run.

It’s hard to be intimate with someone going 90 mph all the time.

I got real still.

I am trying to connect with that again.

As now, being back to work, it’s hard to co-ordinate a musician/waiter nighttime schedule to my day time nanny hours.

I have you on my brain, I texted earlier today, do you have anytime this weekend that we can get together and be noisy?

He likes that I am noisy.

I am no librarian in the sack.

He shot back a time and night.

Shoot.

I told him my schedule.

Fuck.

How’s this going to work out?

I don’t know, but I am willing to go a night or two with little sleep, we haven’t negotiated that yet.

It’s a challenge dating a musician, I have never done this before, or for that matter, one this much younger than I, but as a friend said, “you would rock a twenty year old’s world.”

And he’s not twenty.

He’s twenty-eight, so there.

Giggle.

It’s fun and I don’t have any attachments to it and it’s nice to have good sex and sex is healing as far as I am concerned and it’s nice to have had the experience of going slow in the beginning when I could not really, um, perform, to the best of my abilities.

The abilities are coming back.

There’s time.

I just wish it was earlier in the day.

I am getting older.

But I am not dead yet.