Day One

And the weather Gods shone down on me and my scooter.

Yes.

It stopped raining in time for me to ride to work.

It did indeed rain a little too, but not until I was already at the job and inside and then it passed and I was able to make the entire day without getting wet.

Although I feel pretty chilled.

I was going to go and do yoga after I got back from doing the deal and I just didn’t have it in me, if I did, I’d be doing yoga right now instead of doing my blog, but I just needed to take it easy and slowly get into my groove.

I went to bed early enough to actually get a full eight hours and though I had some anxiety last night as I was figuring stuff out, figuring stuff out, what fucking ever, I fell off pretty quick.

I was tired from not getting a full night’s sleep after the New Year’s Eve dance.

I fell out when I got into bed.

Grateful I gave myself the extra time this morning.

Because even with navigation and looking at the map three or four or five hundred times I still got lost.

Not horribly so.

But just enough that I had to pull over on my scooter three times to check the navigation.

I was literally within three blocks of the house and I missed the turn and did a loop around and it’s a bit squirrelly in that particular neighborhood, some odd one ways and small side streets, so I was super grateful I had given myself the extra time to figure out where the fuck I was going.

I got there.

And super happy to report that there’s not time restriction on the street parking, I can park my scooter anywhere, although I was also offered the option of parking in the driveway blocking the garage.

So that’s nice.

Tomorrow, if it rains, I take a car.

It’s up and down a lot of hills.

Plus.

Today was technically a holiday, which neither the family or I realized.

I realized when I was on the way over, no traffic.

I mean.

None.

Then it hit me, when a holiday falls on a Sunday, the Monday is considered an off holiday, all the schools go back tomorrow.

So I got the whole family today.

Mom, dad, friend visiting from Finland, and the three children.

6 years.

4 years.

And.

2 days old.

Yes.

Two days old.

Such a little peanut!

Tomorrow it will be me and the mom and the dad and the baby as the two oldest go to school.  I’ll get all the paper work and taxes and stuff worked out.

Today I just got used to being in the house and I also got to go with the middle girl to the Upper Noe Valley Rec Center.

Dad and the oldest boy were working on a project and mama and the baby had a nap.

The friend visiting will be gone soon and dad will go back to work and then it looks like me, the mom, the baby, and then I will do pick up from school.

I might do drop off once in a while too, not quite sure how that’s going to work yet.

Tomorrow the dad will do drop off.

So instead of coming in at 9 a.m. I’ll go in at 10 a.m. and work until 6p.m.

I am hoping that once we get it all figured out I will have a set schedule.

I’m not the greatest at hopping all around.

I’d like to know so that I can schedule myself and doing the deal into a routine that allows me to get some commitments and be accountable to my recovery.

Hella important to me.

Until that happens, might be a week or two, I’m going to be flexible, because I can, and the baby is such a wee little mite he’ll be with mom and I think the dad has off for a few weeks from work to help too.

It’s a full house.

But.

It’s a nice house and I’m grateful for the job and the experience and getting to know a new family.

“Wait!  You’re leaving?” The little girl said to me as I was wrapping up what tomorrow schedule was going to be with the mom.

“Don’t go!  I’m going to miss you!”

Glad to know that I’m already missed.

That made me happy, and I the oldest asked me if I was going to be coming back tomorrow and I said I sure would and if it was ok with him, I’d be picking him up at school tomorrow.

It was ok with him.

I went to put on my jacket and get my stuff and the little girl came over and said, “I’ve decided that you should stay and we should have a slumber party.”

Oh my god.

I love it.

“I think that’s a great idea!” I exclaimed, “but I didn’t bring my pajamas, do you think we could have a slumber party another day?”

She decided it would be so.

Granted, of course, we had or moments.

“I don’t love you,” she said to me at one point today when we were out at the park and I could tell it was time to go home to lunch, hungry, angry (new baby taking all of mama’s time, new strange nanny), lonely (her brother stayed with dad), tired, it was nap time and though she, according to mom and dad doesn’t really nap much, she fell asleep in the stroller on the way back to the house.

I scooped her up, carried her in, got her out of her rain gear and polka dot boots and mom got her settled.

I told her later, “_________ you don’t have to love me, we can start with like and see what happens, ok?”

And then we had a unicorn and dog picnic, played with stamps and Play Doh and told each other stories.

“I have never heard you play like that before,” her dad said to her when she went to show him something.

I felt really good hearing that, the little tone of awe in his voice, the comfort that was there, noted, his child felt comfortable with me and playful and crawled in my lap and snuggled and we talked and held hands and she asked me to find her tickle spots and did I have any and what did the stars on my neck mean and could she wear my glasses?

It was a very sweet first day and I feel that I will make it through my two-week trial without too much struggle.

Really, I think I passed the test today in flying colors when I got asked to stay over night and have a slumber party.

Probably even before that.

Now.

It’s just a matter of getting used to the commute and the timing and when I can get to yoga, I do want to make sure I’m getting to a least one class during the week.

It will all suss out.

Until then.

I think I’ll probably have another early night.

And more hot tea.

Yay!

Made it through my first day.

Happy.

Happy.

Joy.

Joy.

Miss Popularity

Is how I felt today.

I got asked out to lunch by a couple of different people today, plus I got to confirm my travel plans for Thanksgiving and chat with my French girl friend about our travel plans in May to Paris.

Wow.

I am liked.

I know.

I sound kind of like I need to be in therapy, and granted, there will be that part to my program, I have to do a year of therapy in the modality that I want to specialize in, but it was nice, sweet, loving, to feel so embraced and sought out.

I have lunch plans for tomorrow and made lunch plans for the next time I meet with my cohort.

It’s kind of crazy to think that we are almost 3/4s of the way through the semester.

I turned in my two big papers, confirmed that I will be presenting my final project for Child Therapy the first day of class next weekend, and felt really prepared.

It felt good.

Albeit.

I was definitely tired by the end of the day and my last class, dragging a bit, but I got through and had a good day in classes.

We did teacher evaluations for two of my classes and that took up a good deal of time and I also got to see where I want to focus my next bit of energy on–practicum, which is basically training and beginning the process of becoming an intern.

There is so much to do all the time.

I got home and cued up an episode of This American Life to review for my Psychopathology class and started listening to it while I was cleaning out my e-mails and putting together may materials for tomorrow.

Then I realized.

Oh.

It’s going to rain tomorrow.

No scooter riding into school.

Either I catch the MUNI or I catch a car into class.

And either way that means I’ll be in transit and I can listen to the homework assignment on the way to class.

Much more efficient use of my time.

I will write my blog, unwind a little, have a snack, a cup of tea, a little snippet of a video and go to bed.

I will attempt to get more sleep then I did last night.

I will also not be carrying as many books into class.

I simplified down what I am going to bring and will just really be showing up with my DSM V desk reference and my notebooks for class.

I have to say I have engaged with the material and I’m finding some interest and insight, but two out of my three classes are falling a little bit flat and I’m not too excited to be in them.

I have been participating and listening, but I’m not on fire for them.

Which is ok, but makes the day feel a little long.

Fortunately.

I really do have some good friends in my cohort and it felt really sweet and nice to be sought out for lunch dates and travel plans.

Plus.

I got to talk with my girl friend who I will be going to Nevada with and make our travel plans, so excited to get to have a road trip with my friend and be included in her family and home.

She’s coming back into town Tuesday evening, she’ll spend the night and we will leave Wednesday morning to head to Nevada, it’ll be about a three and a half to four-hour trip.

Perfect little road trip.

I am excited.

I do love a drive in a car, I do, I do.

I am very American that way.

I am a passionate observer and I will be taking my camera and I will figure out how to get my photographs to download.

I will.

I’ll be spending Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night there, then we will drive back and she’ll spend Saturday night here in town with me and leave for San Diego in the morning where she’ll be heading to work.

Five nights of girl time!

Very excited.

And though I joked about doing some pleasure reading I may well take the time to catch up on my reading and also start getting my praticum applications ready and working on my resume.

I’m not really sure what the sites will be looking for in regards to a resume, but I’ll be talking with the practicum advisor tomorrow.

So.

I will have some vacation time and lots of girl time I do have a few things I need to attend to.

As well as registering for my next semester of classes on November 27th.

There is much to do.

I don’t want to fall into living in the future though, not too much, there is only so much I can do at any given moment and man, I do attend to a lot.

My biggest focus for the rest of the weekend will be doing my self-care, writing in the morning before class, eating well, getting as much sleep as I can, and showing up.

I have a big speaking engagement on Sunday after class and then right back into a full day of work on Monday.

Right now.

A little jazz on the stereo.

A little easiness in my body.

I little grace to know that all the work is slowly adding up.

And my friendships with the people in my cohort, how important it is to cultivate those too.

There’s a get together tomorrow night after class and I’m not sure I can commit to that, but I may try.

It’s not now.

It’s not right here.

And as I look around my clean, yes clean, got to have a clean house before a weekend of classes, with the candles lit and the lights warm and the music and I am just simply here and can rest, well that’s a really nice feeling, really nice.

Made it through day one of the weekend.

Yes.

Good night y’all.

See you on the flip.

Feeling A Little Bit

Screwed.

Fuck.

I am wide awake.

My last class of the day was really energizing and fun and my professor was on fire and the lecture was great and my brain was firing on all pistons.

And.

Then.

We had a dance party.

I was only going to stay twenty minutes, half hour tops.

Ugh.

I stayed until the security guard was kicking us out of the building.

Sigh.

I have to do my final presentation on my last paper for Multi-Cultural class tomorrow.

And.

I am the first one up.

I had thought I was going to go today, be the last person to speak and get it out of the way.

Nope.

Le sigh.

Oh well.

It did give me some space though to explore a few ideas and I really like what I found in that exploration as well as somethings to talk about in my last therapy dyad of the year.

Of the year.

It’s almost done.

Not really.

But.

Classes are almost complete.

I have two more classes tomorrow and I’ll be done by 4p.m.

One of my girlfriends and I are going to hang out, grab some sushi, do some doing the deal and have a sleep over.

It’s a slumber party!

She skipped the dance party and I think she will be much more well rested than I.

That being said, I am super glad that I went and got some of the energy out of my system, some of the anxiety of being in school and just a little body release.

My back is still a little tender from yoga and I was bunched up in desk/chair all day long.

Grateful to get in my body, get into the music and play with my fellows and cohort for a little bit.

I’m sure I will rue the decision tomorrow as I get up to my 6:30 a.m. alarm.

Oh well.

I am glad I went to the party, I was glad to show up, I was glad to dance, I was glad to free myself, for a moment in time, from the constraints of note taking, processing, reading, writing, interacting, engaging, showing up for, and the whole she-bang.

So even though I am wound up and energized I’m ok with it.

I’m sure I’ll crash at some point tomorrow, I’ll fade, I’ll need a coffee injection or five, but I will be ok.

I’m a little concerned about the next week and getting all the things together that need to come together–10-12 page paper on the concepts of transference and counter transference, a take home exam, a paper on The Trauma of Language and Lancanian theory, a posting to Applied Spirituality and a final small paper for that class as well 2-4 pages.

I’ll get it all done.

I know I will.

My friend from cohort and I who had made plans to go to the Steampunk Masquerade Ball at NIMBY consorted and decided we both had too much work due by next weekend to feel comfortable going out to the event.

I will be getting the things done that I need to do so that I can fly out the next weekend to the Big Apple.

New York.

I’m coming for you.

Which reminds me I need to get a hold of my friend in Brooklyn and ask about his place and how I get in and all that since he’s out of the country when I’m there.

I still can’t quite believe that I have a place to stay in Brooklyn.

I should see if my friend wants anything from San Francisco.

I want to bring a guest gift.

Seems appropriate when he could have Air BnB’d his place and made bank while he was on his trip and he’s not charging me to stay there.

I love my friends.

I am such a lucky girl.

I couldn’t have gotten through the grad school program without some of the women that I met in the cohort.

Extremely grateful.

Extremely privileged to get to know these woman.

And men.

There’s been a great TA who I have really connected with and he’s been such a source of support and connection, as well as one of the guys in my cohort who I actually interviewed with, way, way, way back last year in March.

Hard to believe that I have come so far.

Seems like just yesterday that I was filling out the application and sending in my letters of recommendation and getting my transcripts.

So much has happened.

So much still has to happen.

But I can see that this chapter is coming to a close and I am grateful to share that experience of saying good bye to the cohort, the school, the year that I have been a first year grad student.

“Oh, it’s official,” he said to me as we were chatting.

He being a second year student in the program.

“You’re second year now,” he added definitively.

Well.

Almost.

I have to get through tomorrow and knock out those papers, but yes, I am almost a second year graduate school student.

It feels pretty good.

It feels a little surreal.

But over all I am super proud of all the work I have done and shown up for.

I read all the things, I have turned in all the papers on time, so far, shown up for every class, every lecture, every dyad.

Yup.

I did not miss a single day of school.

That is in itself a mighty thing.

And I remind myself of that again and again.

Just show up.

And right now.

I just need to show up for bed.

I have to wind this down.

I need a few hours of sleep to finish out the weekend.

So close I can taste it.

So.

So.

So close.

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

 

Ticket Please

Wait.

What?

No.

NO.

Damn it man.

I got popped.

My scooter, sans the Childcare Parking Permit, finally got hit today.

At the same time the mom was bringing the boys home from school on the double tandem electric bike the family has.

Argh.

All the boys could talk about was the ticket for a good couple of hours, how I was going to jail, how I was bad, how was I going to pay for it, have I ever gotten a ticket before?

All the little boy questions in the world.

I knew it was coming, I was just hoping to get things sorted out with the SFMTA and slide under the radar until I would have the time to go down to their offices on South Van Ess and get a replacement sticker.

I was going to pay it, the ticket, that is, until I saw that I could contest it online within 21 days of receiving the citation.

I didn’t have it in me tonight to formulate the argument, suffice to say, I have the photo evidence of the parking permit and all the documentation as well as a time date stamp of the e-mail to SFMTA, I just wanted to get on finishing up my paper for Multi-Cultural class and get my reference page typed up and printed out.

Done and done.

And now, I don’t have the stuffing in me to do any more work or to formulate any more arguments.

The lady is tuckered out.

Yoga kicked my ass this morning.

Seriously kicked it to the curb.

Between an intense yoga class and still feeling a little sore and tight from the bike ride yesterday I was already down for the count before even getting to work.

And work.

Well.

It was work.

The mom always has me do weekend food prep for the family, but it increases whenever I am heading into a school weekend since they are without me for three days instead of two.

I did a lot of cooking, laundry, food prep, run to Lucca–where the guys were super flirty with me today, hello, guess I looked cute in my polka dots–and since it’s Thursday, a big outing with the boys to the Mission Farmer’s Market on Bartlett and 22nd.

I love going to the market with the boys.

It’s nanny heaven.

Fruit samples.

Cheese curd samples

Friends from the neighborhood.

Friends from school.

Art projects.

Face painting.

Live music.

It is eclectic Mission neighborhood and a sweet reprieve out of the house for me.

We had a lot of fun at the market today too, since the Golden Gate Parks Department had a mobile ranger station at the market.

Temporary tattoos, badges, stickers, sign up for Junior Ranger Camp.

The boys were over the moon and it was a happy time for them, even as they were straining at the bit to get back to the house and have dinner as soon as possible.

The little guy walked into the house this afternoon, and the one comment out of his mouth before the barrage of “you got a ticket on your scooter,” was: “Oh! Yummy, the house smells yummy, Carmen, CARMEN.”

“Yes, __________,” I said, softly ruffling his head and picking up his little back pack and sippy cup.

“Did you make chicken pot pie for dinner?  I LOVE chicken pot pie,” he asked with serious big round brown eyes, arms wrapped around my knees.

“I did!”

“Yay!”

He jumped up and down and then proceeded to give me all the details on the meter maid.

I have to say that despite my sadness over the ticket and a moments rumination on how I was going to deal with it, pay it, contest it, etc.

I was really proud of how I handled it with the boys.

“Are you unhappy,” the oldest asked me, very serious and solemn.

“Yes, of course I’m unhappy,” I told him, “but unhappy is just a feeling and it will pass and I am already in acceptance about it, I’m ok, I’m not hurt, my scooter didn’t get squashed, there was no accident, I have the money to pay for it, I’ll be alright.”

“Will you go to jail?”  He asked eyes somehow growing wider in his face.

“No, honey, I am not going to go to jail,” I replied and squeezed his shoulder softly.

He breathed a deep sigh of relief, “that’s good, because, Carmen, you’re the best, and I would miss you if you were in jail.”

“Aw, sugar pie, I would miss you too,” I crouched down to look him in the eyes, “but I promise, I’m not going to jail.”

After that.

Well.

It was over.

There was no drama, there was no further story to tell.

It’s interesting, this letting go of the story and of the dramatic.

I find I just don’t have the time for it or the energy and well, it’s not really all that interesting.

I have much more fun stories to tell.

Like.

It’s my last weekend of the year for my graduate school program!

Yes.

I get to see my cohort and friends and participate in my education and show up having written all my papers and having done all my reading.

I am ready to go.

Lunch and dinner are prepped, extra coffee in a Mason jar to take to school, lemon ginger tea, a bag of organic cherries, my books, readers, and notebooks already in a sack.

All I have to do is take the laundry out of the dryer, fold it up, put it away, make a little more tea, watch Daredevil, just a tiny bit, just to unwind a bit, and go to sleep.

I also have a slumber party Sunday night with one of my girlfriends who normally would leave town right after the last day of classes, but is going to stay here and we get to hang out and she’ll get a tiny taste of my SF life.

Plus.

Heh.

I get to have a second date Monday night with the gentleman from last weekend.

Yay.

I’m ready people.

Let’s do this thing!