Hump Day

Mid week.

Nice day.

Going to drink a big mug of tea.

Listen to a little jazz.

Write a little blog.

Watch a little video.

And get my last night of full sleep for a few days.

I have a school weekend looming.

I’m totally prepped, all my reading done, my papers written, the mid-term is turned in, via e-mail, and my Trauma paper will get turned in once I hit my first class Friday morning.

I’ve got a big busy week, and as per usual, I won’t have time off for two weeks.

Which I always forget about and then wonder why the fuck I’m tired about mid-way through the second week.

Be that as it may.

I am trying to negotiate time in between the spaces to see folks.

I’m half-assed trying to get a tea time with someone and we both have idiotic schedules.

When I grow up I think what I want to be is retired.

Hahahaahaha.

Fuck me.

I have had my down time this week, what with having my stuff ready for school I’ve had quiet afternoons at work until I have to pick up the kids from school.

The mom has been out with the baby at her office all week and I’ve shown up at the house with nary a soul there, tidied, done the dishes, shopped, got dry cleaning, washed up things, even cleaned out the fridge today, ran to Walgreens, put money on the Clipper card, organized, and done meal prep and planning.

But.

I am efficient and quick and I have had down time.

It’s been nice.

Slightly strange, but nice.

I don’t feel burnt out from work and I also feel really useful.

I am doing a lot for the family and helping a lot, what I have found is my routine with them and that makes my job easier and me more efficient.

Sort of like with school.

Once I got the hang of what I need to do I have been a lot more effective in getting what I need done.

Of course I also chafe a bit at the work that still has to be done.

There is always the work.

Then I think.

That is good.

I’m learning, I’m growing, I’m changing.

The change is good.

I don’t always notice it either, but change is constantly happening.

Like.

Turning down an offer to hang out with someone right now.

Part of me is like.

HANG OUT.

The other part of me is like.

Fuck no.

Don’t screw with your last night of full sleep before your weekend of classes.

There was a time when I would have been all like, fuck that, I’m kicking it with this dude, but frankly, unless I’ve kicked it before and know the direction that it is going, it’s too late to just be like, come over, have tea, see what happens.

If it were a lover.

Well.

Different scenario.

You wouldn’t be reading this blog.

But a semi-casual hang out that might have potential is not enough to get me to get out of my comfort zone.

I guess you could say that I’m old.

But.

I think, no, it’s rather, that I have priorities and school is a big one.

I want to meet with people and spend time and date and all that, but unless you’re a good friend, I can’t make a lot of spontaneous mid-week hang out plans.

I have to schedule that shit.

I wish it were different, but then again, I know how lucky I am to get to go to grad school.

The fact that I have a job that let’s me have off on Fridays for class is huge.

I’m not going to jeopardize that, nor that I have to show up and be in form.

Life is going to happen and I won’t always be on task or I will have a date that I have to go on or an experience to pursue that is not congruent with school.

Tonight, however, I’m being a good girl.

And I’m actually pretty proud of myself for that.

I am worth making time for.

I also want to make sure that I am making time for people in my life who are my friends, to keep nurturing those relationships through this whole process.

“You’ll know your real friends by the time you are done with grad school,” she told me at the beginning of the whole process.  “You’ll lose a lot of fair weather friends, but the people who love you will stick with you, and you’ll find that when the opportunity strikes you can spend time with people.  Your friends will understand.”

I fucking hope so.

Because it has been hard.

I miss people.

I miss my friends.

I miss socializing.

I miss not being able to be as spontaneous as I’d like.

Then again.

I don’t miss not having an idea of what I was going to do when I “grew up.”

I don’t miss thinking that being a nanny for the rest of my life is all that I would be.

I don’t miss not having goals that were going to propel me further in this life.

I’m alright with the sacrifice of time.

It’s a dear cost, but I am willing to pay and hopefully when it’s all said and done, when I graduate and I’m just doing the hours to get my licensure I’ll be able to reconnect and pick back up with people.

I have faith.

I know I’m on the path I’m supposed to be on.

I know that without any kind of doubt in my mind or heart.

I’m doing the right thing and I’m happy to be doing so.

So.

Let’s make plans and yes, I might have to book out weeks in advance, but I can do that.

Spur of the moment late night tea time may not happen.

Then again.

It might.

Let’s just keep in touch.

I’ll give you what I can.

I tell myself it will be enough.

Because.

It will be.

Damn it.

 

Home, Sweet, Sweet

Home.

It’s so nice to be back.

Sometimes I go away just to have that feeling again, of how much I love being home.

Home is San Francisco.

Oh.

It could be elsewhere, I did find myself experiencing a very deep fondness for the little neighborhood in Brooklyn that was adjacent to where I was staying in Clinton Hill–The Fort Greene historic area, so, pretty, so many gorgeous brownstones and kids on scooters and the park and the feel of it being a community.

I really liked that.

I could see living in one of those brownstones and sitting on the stoop on a warm night or day, reading a book with a cup of coffee, watching the world go by.

I do like that.

I miss having a place like that to hang out, my place doesn’t have a front porch or a stoop.

However.

There are spots in the neighborhood where I can sit and watch the world go by and I did do that for a little while today after getting back from the airport.

Despite big delays on BART, I still made it home pretty much around the time I thought I would as my flight came in a half hour before it was scheduled, so the time I “lost” on the train wasn’t really lost time.

Plus.

I had my book from the Strand and I pulled that out and started reading and got a good 60 pages into it, popped on my headphones, listened to some Radio Soulwax and just sat.

Sometimes I just need to slow down.

I just got off the phone with one of the women I work with and that was the gist of the conversation, the suggestion to just slow down.

I can get going really fast, I won’t feel, and I will be doing and it tricks my brain into thinking I’m being productive, but sometimes I am just running away from myself.

I take myself wherever I go.

Oh.

There I am again, I thought during a moment of being slightly turned around in Brooklyn and hesitating as to what to do next, literally I was walking around in little circles.

I realized that I was there with me and the “me” was itchy and antsy and getting a little irritated and discontent, which is like my natural state, so I said a prayer asked for guidance and got take out from the Thai place I had dinner at on Saturday night.

Now.

Just stopping and slowing down and letting the world happen, I got to meet Doug and go do the tour of his studio, so even when I seem lost and confused, see, there, I am being looked after and loved.

I sent him a thank you note via e-mail and got just the sweetest response from him today.

He told me the price for the piece I want, several thousand dollars (but he also offered to work out a deal with me, which I super appreciated and despite not having several thousand to drop on an art piece, boy howdy do I aspire to that), and also an invitation to stay at his place the next time I visit–he rents an Air BnB as well, and he said when he comes to San Francisco we must get together.

Also, and I found this so sweet and endearing, that I will make a great, empathetic therapist and I will make loads of money and buy lots of art including his.

That literally brings tears to my eyes.

A very secret wish of mine, to be able to afford to buy the art I love and also to support the artists that I see around me, I love art, it does something to me and creativity and my friends who are artists just blow me away.

“What kind of art do you do,” he asked me outside the doors of the meeting hall, it’s an assumption I get a lot.

But instead of saying I’m not an artist, I said, “I’m a writer.”

And that is a kind of art.

I am creating as I type and when it is right, when the mood is lovely and I am completely transparent I am a conduit and what comes forward is not me, it super cedes me and reshapes me and I am a different person after doing the writing.

In that is great joy.

Yeah.

I want to be an amazing photographer, I am a passable amateur.

Of course I want to draw and paint and sculpt, but those mediums I have never quite had the passion for, the drive for.  I do get ideas and have ways of being in the world that I believe, deep within me, are supremely artistic.

It could just be the way I arrange my hair or hang a photograph on the wall.

But.

I have always wanted to be a patron.

There’s just something super sexy about that.

A dream.

A home, a big one, with lots of light and a studio to write in and a library to read in and rooms for friends to come and do retreats and a cottage in the back and art everywhere and recovery and always the work, the growing the finding of new beauty and subsuming it into my person.

How much art can I hold?

How much love can I give.

That is an art.

The art of smiling, being of service, reaching out, kindness is an act of art.

Art is love.

It is perspective and joy and great waves of sorrow and overwhelming moments of uplift and I can’t comprehend it and maybe, probably, I just don’t want to.

It is an art being myself.

I realize this as I move through the world, how I let myself express myself is an art too.

I can be a living piece of art.

Although sometimes I just need to be a tired human.

The well needed to get refilled today.

When I got home I unpacked my bag and threw my clothes in the wash, I put all my things away, all the notebooks and the few little things I had brought back from my travels and walked up to a little spot in the neighborhood and grabbed lunch.

I sat inside, then I realized I just wanted to sit for a while.

I pulled up a seat at an outside table and sat and watched the ocean in the distance and the neighborhood doing it’s neighborhood deal and then I read for an hour.

Occasionally closing my eyes to the sun and I realized I needed a nap.

So a quick pit stop at Other Avenues for some household stuff and then home.

And a nap.

Oh such a nap.

I slept three hours.

I woke up twice to a text message and to pee, but really, I slept nearly three hours and I can feel I am a bit jet lagged still.

So easy does it the rest of tonight.

Full and grateful heart and a gentle song of jazz on my radio and a little more tea.

And sleep.

In my own home.

In my own bed.

In my favorite place in the world.

San Francisco.

Where my he(art) is.

Blonde Ambition

Or.

As my fabulous colorist told me today.

“Bronde.”

I can’t really go as blonde as I want.

No platinum for me.

Not if I actually want to have hair that won’t fall off my head.

“If I took it platinum it wouldn’t look right with your skin tone,” she added, “and all the elastic in your hair would be gone, it won’t be curly, it would break and be frizzy.”

I trust the woman.

She’s been coloring hair since she was 18.

She’s currently 37.

So something like 19 years of doing this kind of work.

She probably knows better than I do.

Although I wanted it more blonde, it’s pretty damn blonde.

It feels pretty fabulous.

And rather glamourous.

I’m not sure what it will look like or do once the blow out fades.

Which will happen as soon as I take a shower, it will go curly, so one day of fabulous straight hair.

I have never taken the time to learn how to blow out my own hair, I just don’t have it in me to devote that much time to it.

However.

Once in a while, it is nice to let a professional do your hair for you.

And I was really happy about it.

Best color I believe I have ever gotten and a great cut, stylist recommended by my colorist, who specializes in curly hair.

She gave me a great cut.

For those who are curious I went to Harper Paige.

Lizbeth Jones did my color.

“I put some ash in it and a little caramel, and gave you bigger chunks around your face,” she told me as she was rinsing.

I have no clue what she did.

But it did immediately prompt a desire to go lipstick shopping.

Of course the one I found at Sephora was out of stock.

Damn it.

I almost pocketed the sample.

But I know better.

I also did not spend a lot of time in Sephora.

One lipgloss, one of the their brand, and out the door for $12.

I spent more on my cut and color than I have ever spent on my hair before.

I have it.

I just won’t be buying anything else this month.

I used my clothing allowance and my book allowance with a little borrowed from my cafe allowance to cover all my bases.

It’s nice to know exactly how much money I have and can allocate.

Nothing goes on a credit card.

All cash or my debit card.

I left a nice fat tip too.

Because that’s what you do.

I mean.

20%

It’s my hair for fucks sake.

And she did a great job on it.

I’m hella happy.

Can’t you tell?

I just had a friend drop over for tea and he was pretty stoked for it, although he expressed, 1. Go more blonde!

And 2. Holy shit! You went blonde.

He also said I looked great and had lost weight.

I love my friends.

I don’t get to see them very often.

I am busy.

Although I did find myself with odd pockets of down time today and that always throws me for a bit of a loop.

“What are you doing tonight?” My cutter asked me as she finished blowing out my hair.

“I mean, you have to go out with this hair!”

Ceci Coon was the woman who cut my hair.

FYI.

She fluffed my hair, “really, the color is amazing.”

I have to agree.

But.

I did not have going out plans.

I had going to the Inner Sunset and doing the deal plans.

That was about it.

I did do some walking about Union Square, but no shopping, as I said, the wad has been blown.

That being said, however, Lizbeth did assure me that it wouldn’t grow out funky and that I actually wouldn’t need to come back for about three months.

Which is twice the time I thought I would be coming in.

Actually, the way the receptionist who booked me told me, I thought I was going to be coming in sooner to do another layer of the color.

But, Lizbeth was firm about not destroying my hair.

I am actually happily surprised by the amount of length that Ceci was able to keep.

So.

I’m “bronde.”

And I like it.

It’s fun to do something a little out there.

Though, truth be told, I felt like a rich bitch in the salon, all blonde highlights and blow outs.

I felt fancy.

It’s fun to be fancy once in a while.

I didn’t have to tell anyone that the boy most likely to be seeing my hair and going gaga over it will be the five year old I nanny who’s favorite color is gold.

I get to be fancy for me.

I am pleased by the compliments I have received, however.

I ran into an acquaintance crossing the street as I was headed for a late lunch after the appointment.

“OMG! I didn’t recognize you as a blonde!”

She gave me a huge hug, “you look amazing, how’s school?”

We chatted and caught up then parted and went our ways.

I had an appointment to check in with my person and I took care of that, ate some lunch, made my way to the Inner Sunset, killed a little time, bought a pot of lip balm, got a manicure and went and met with my fellows at 7th and Irving.

I was not expecting a “late” (it’s not even 11p.m. right now) drive by tea session with my friend.

I realize how important it is to have friends that do that.

Text me and check in and commiserate.

He’s in school too.

And also.

Congratulate.

It’s a big deal for both of us to be in academia land again.

And while I have moments when I feel rather overwhelmed by it all, the papers, the reading, the processing, the learning, the work, the work, the work.

I have mostly a vast amount of gratitude that I get to do the work.

“I never knew you wanted to go blonde,” my friend said, a little incredulously.

Yup.

I never knew I wanted to be a therapist when I grew up.

But there it is.

Things change.

And today.

They changed too.

Color me.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Oh.

And.

Bronde.

 

 

Getting Busy Working

So that I can do the working.

I did lots of home stuff today to prep for the week.

This was prompted by my monthly spending plan and tally of the previous months expenditures.

Of which I had a few unexpected expenses–$552 outlay for utilities–the deposit for the scooter and the cost of the motorcycle safety course, but still came out ok.

I was a little concerned and did not want to cut it too close, so I did transfer a few bucks yesterday from my savings account to my regular account, just in case something pops up in the next few days I am taken care of.

Nothing like acting like an adult to make one feel like an adult.

I also did laundry, changed out the sheets on the bed, went grocery shopping, within my budget, made soup for the week, home cooked all my meals today, signed up to take the motorcycle written test at the DMV on Thursday and responded to some e-mails.

By 2p.m. today.

I felt like I had put in a full days work.

This is sometimes the case.

I have to get my ducks in a row so that I can have a productive week and work well, which is supposed to lead to me enjoying my down time, but folding laundry has to be a part of that scenario.

I actually enjoy all these things, especially the soup making.

The rainy weather has made having a cozy bowl of soup a lovely thing.

Today I did red lentils with carmelized onions and garlic, carrot, organic chicken breast meat, brown rice, white corn, and crushed tomatoes, salt and pepper, splash of olive oil and some cayenne.

It was awesome.

And now I have meals prepped for the next two days at work.

Where?

In the Castro.

Which I keep reminding myself of, that I will be working from the Castro tomorrow and not Cole Valley.  I will be going in 15 minutes past my normal start time, but as the commute is longer, there really is not a difference in the timing.

I had thought that I might MUNI it in, there’s the possibility of rain tomorrow, but as of this moment, I am pretty set on riding my bicycle to work.

I could change my mind when I get up if it’s downpouring, but that’s later and not now.

Now, suffice to say, is pretty nice.

In doing my spending plan for the month I was able to make an additional allowance for the scooter–the payment I will be sending my friend as well as insurance–and see that I can absolutely afford it.

I am excited.

All will go well on Thursday, when I have scheduled to take the test and fingers crossed, all will go well on Friday, when I head off to court at 850 Bryant to contest the bicycle ticket for running a red light.

I want to procure my scooter insurance with a clean record.

I even allotted money toward paying the ticket, what ever the ticket may be.

I don’t know that I will get off not paying one just because I am showing up for court.  I am only showing up for court because the clerk was so incensed at the ticket and had me pick out a date to do it.

In hindsight, I almost wish I had paid off the fine and not thought about it, but it is $197 and that’s three dollars shy of the scooter payment my friend has asked me to make monthly on the Vespa.

I would much rather the money go to the Vespa then to the city of San Francisco.

I will be a much happier San Franciscan if that happens.

And everyone wants that.

Well, ok, I want that, really.

I could realistically be up and ready to take possession of the Vespa this weekend.

I am going to need to co-ordinate with my friend and see what works best for him.

As the rest of the month looks to be currently booked with work M-F.

This is good.

I like knowing that I am covered.

I do wish that I wasn’t in three different places every week, but a body can get used to it and it’s not the rest of my life.

This too shall pass.

Everything changes.

I can do my best to plan out and take care of myself and make soup with the best of them, but sometimes things happen, bicycle tickets, getting a new scooter, and suddenly life is changing.

Next month my goal is to get my plane ticket to Wisconsin to see my dearest friend.  I had planned on buying it in February, but nope, other stuff happened.

All is well.

Sometimes when all is well I am prone to create a little drama, but nothing even occurred to me today.  I meditated and took things as they came up and I listened to my gut, which is nice, and responded to situations rather than reacted, which was awesome.

And good practice, let me tell you.

I also got to have tea with a darling friend and check in about this and that and Burning Man.

Yeah, I know, it’s not for a few months, the man burns in 183 days!

Who’s counting?

Not I.

But this is her first time and it’s always so fun to talk to virgin burners about their plans and stuff and I get all excited for them and all excited for me.

Nostalgic, and plus, the tickets just went on sale and another friend of mine who has been talking about doing it for years finally pulled the trigger and bought his too.

I feel like it’s going to be a good year for it.

Something different in the air around it for me as well, just a pricking of the thumbs, but a something.

Could just be all the fresh faces who will be attending.

That’s all a worry for another day.

There is no worry today.

Got the work done that needs doing and I am ready to take on the week.

Gently.

But yes, I am ready.